{"id":573172,"date":"2025-11-16T01:55:14","date_gmt":"2025-11-16T01:55:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/573172\/"},"modified":"2025-11-16T01:55:14","modified_gmt":"2025-11-16T01:55:14","slug":"the-private-world-of-lady-annabel-goldsmith-the-unconventional-aristocrat-who-was-a-mother-figure-to-princess-diana-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/573172\/","title":{"rendered":"The Private World of Lady Annabel Goldsmith, The Unconventional Aristocrat Who Was a Mother Figure to Princess Diana"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Princess Diana laughing with Lady Annabel Goldsmith after dining at Wiltons in London, 1996<\/p>\n

I first came to know Lady Annabel Goldsmith four months after the death of her husband of nearly twenty years, the billionaire financier and political activist Sir James Goldsmith, and ten weeks after the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, who had been her \u201csurrogate daughter.\u201d While doing research for Diana in Search of Herself: Portrait of a Troubled Princess<\/a> <\/a> in late 1997 and early 1998, Annabel and I had two in-depth conversations. We met at Mark\u2019s Club, the Mayfair men\u2019s club owned by her former husband, Mark Birley, and at her elegant home near Richmond Park in London, Ormeley Lodge.<\/p>\n

ICUMI: Part I: The Private World of Lady Annabel Goldsmith, The Unconventional Aristocrat Who Was a Mother Figure to Princess Diana<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cI was careful to keep off the subject of Diana\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

We spoke at length about her friendship with Diana, which had begun early in 1989 after a party at Ormeley Lodge when Diana and Camilla Parker Bowles had a memorable encounter over Camilla\u2019s affair with Prince Charles. Annabel was close to Camilla\u2019s younger sister, Annabel Elliot, and knew Camilla fairly well, which created initial awkwardness with Diana. \u201cWhen we first knew each other, we talked about Camilla,\u201d Lady Annabel recalled. \u201cI used to have to say, \u2018I can\u2019t because of Annabel [Elliot].\u2019 After a bit she gave it up. I had to be careful.\u201d Camilla, in turn \u201chas been very wary of me ever since I was a friend of Diana\u2019s. I was careful to keep off the subject of Diana with Annabel Elliot and Camilla.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe worst thing you can do to your children\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

Lady Annabel said she was \u201cmost definitely\u201d a mother figure to Diana. She traced the origins of Diana\u2019s need for maternal consolation and guidance to her dysfunctional childhood after the acrimonious divorce of her parents, Frances and Johnnie, the 8th Earl Spencer, when Diana was six. Frances left her husband for another man, Peter Shand Kydd, and testimony from Frances\u2019s mother, Ruth Fermoy, influenced the court\u2019s decision to give Johnnie custody of the children. \u201cDiana told me that every time she saw her mother, Frances would weep hysterically and say dreadful things about their father, which is the worst thing you can do to your children,\u201d Annabel told me.<\/p>\n

Share<\/a><\/p>\n

Later on, as an adult, Diana \u201cadored her mother,\u201d and \u201cshe got on very well with her, and from time to time was pleased to see her,\u201d said Annabel. \u201cThey had the same sense of humor.\u201d But Frances \u201chad a terrible problem with drink. You couldn\u2019t call her after 5:30. What it came down to, the reason Diana had to talk to me, was she couldn\u2019t confide in her mother. When she tried to do that in the evening, her mother was on the bottle. She also thought her mother would go over the top and attack Prince Charles.\u201d Diana tried to stop her mother drinking, \u201cbut how do you really do that?\u201d said Annabel.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Princess Diana laughing with Lady Annabel Goldsmith after dining at Wiltons in London, 1996 I first came to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":573173,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7708],"tags":[5105,7710,519,448],"class_list":{"0":"post-573172","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-royals","8":"tag-royal","9":"tag-royal-families","10":"tag-royal-family","11":"tag-royals"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115556891529252353","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/573172","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=573172"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/573172\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/573173"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=573172"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=573172"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=573172"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}