Annabel: An Unconventional Life

Lady Annabel Goldsmith is a daughter of the 8th Marquess of Londonderry. The family fortunes were based on coal-mining. In these enthralling memoirs she tells of her aristocratic upbringing with an increasingly eccentric father, a Conservative MP with strong liberal leanings, and a mother who died young from cancer. But what makes these memoirs particularly interesting is her account of marrying Mark Birley at 20, the creation of Annabel's Club in Berkeley Square, and then her affair and later marriage to entrepreneur Sir James Goldsmith. On the club: this took the basement of a building that John Aspinall had acquired to launch his Clermont gaming club, when gambling was legalised in the early 1960s. It was a huge success from the beginning and remains so into its fourth decade. But the marriage to Mark Birley ended following his serial affairs. By then Annabel was into a relationship with James Goldsmith, who was creating the first of several fortunes in the food industry, and making political waves with his opposition to the EC. Annabel eventually married Goldsmith and had three childrfen, including Jemima (married to Imran Khan, former Pakistan cricket captain] and Ben, who is marrying into the Rothschild family. But tragedy was never far away: Rupert, her eldest son, died in an accident and Goldsmith died from cancer after financing a campaign of candidates opposed to the John Major line on the EC at the 1997 general election. ANNABEL'S STORY is full of good stories. It will be published in the year of Annabel Goldsmith's 70th birthday.