Lady Annabel Goldsmith, society hostess and philanthropist who became Princess Diana’s confidant

Lady Annabel Goldsmith, who has died aged 91, was a society figure and hostess, endeared by her warm-heartedness, vivacity and sense of fun; daughter of a marquis and widow of business tycoon Sir James Goldsmith, her name is immortalized in Annabel’s, a nightclub in London’s Berkeley Square named after her by her first husband, Mark Birley.

In the home circle, Lady Annabel was a devoted mother to six children, each of whom has come into the public eye at some point. From his first marriage came Rupert, Robin and India Jane Birley; then came Jemima, Zac and Ben Goldsmith. And she took on a motherly role in Princess Diana’s life during the later, difficult years of the princess’s marriage.

She titled her memoir Annabel: An Unusual Life, and this was an apt description of her married life. While chasing other women, Mark Birley began a relationship with James Goldsmith, who then married his second wife in 1964, and when he married Goldsmith in 1978, they had two children. Goldsmith still remained with his ex-wife and was to have two children with his French mistress.

In other respects, Lady Annabel’s life was a lovingly traditional product of her English background. At school she was a keen girl guide; as an adult, he was never happier than surrounded by children and dogs; and in times of trial he was delighted by a sense of humour, in which japes, high gossip, and comic incidents involving false teeth and women’s breasts, were the chief features.

She also had a cheerful and forgiving nature and knew how to laugh, for in her lifetime, when material needs were sufficiently satisfied, Mrs. Annabel had her share of sorrow, shock, and unhappiness.

She was born Annabel Vane-Tempest-Stewart on 11 June 1934, the second child of Robin, Viscount Castlereagh, heir to the 7th Marquess of Londonderry (and godson of King Edward VII), and his wife Romaine, née Combe. The Castlereagh family lived at 101 Park Street, Mayfair, where Annabel joined her sister Jane, who was almost two years old, at nursery. Their brother Alastair was born in 1937.

Annabel’s parents had met at Dunrobin Castle, the home of the Duke of Sutherland in Scotland. Lady Londonderry, Annabel’s grandmother, was the granddaughter of the third Duke of Sutherland, and she and Lord Londonderry resented their son’s marriage to Annabel’s mother, who was neither aristocratic nor wealthy. Major Boyce Combe, their daughter-in-law’s father, was interested in the brewery.

The Londonderrys understood their nobility and lived in style between three great piles, Wynyard Hall in Co Durham, Mount Stewart in Co Down and Londonderry House in London. Wynyard had three ballrooms; a party at Londonderry House might hold 2,000 guests. There were estates of over 50,000 acres, and the family had become immensely rich from the profits of colliers in the Durham farmland.

Lady Londonderry was the leading Tory hostess of the day. “Circe the Sorceress” to those close to her, she was celebrated for the glittering receptions she gave and the sparkling jewels she wore at Londonderry House, as well as her unexpected friendship with Ramsay MacDonald. Her husband was Secretary of State for Aviation at the time of Annabel’s birth, but in 1935 he was dismissed for expressing pro-Nazi sentiments.

Other than that, Edith Londonderry was fond of her grandchildren, and Annabel and her siblings spent happy, carefree summers with their grandparents, whom they called Mum and Dad, in Northern Ireland. “Those early pre-war years spent at Mount Stewart on the edge of beautiful Strangford Lough, surrounded by the Morne Mountains, retain a magical quality for me,” Annabel reflected years later.

During the war the Castlereagh family lived at Brown House near Brookwood in Surrey. Lady Londonderry gave Annabel a beautiful bantam and called her Josie; his brother got one too, and he called it Jesus, causing a fit. At first tutors taught at home, at 11 Annabel was sent to Southover Manor School in Sussex. Home life with his parents was henceforth at Wynyard Hall.

Old Lord Londonderry died in a skid accident in early 1949. Annabel was 14 years old; her father, to whom she felt close, became the 8th Marquess of Londonderry and became Lady Annabel. But these were dark times. Lady Annabel’s mother had developed incurable mouth cancer and her father began to drink heavily. He was 17 when his mother died in 1951 and 21 when his father died in 1955.

After school came tutorial college in Oxford and then, when Lady Annabel was 18, the debutante stage. “The whole idea of ​​it was to find us husbands,” she explained. “You had to go to all these boring dances and I was very shy and awkward and I hated it. Mums drove the whole thing, picked out your dresses and everything, and of course I didn’t have a mum, which made it very difficult.”

Still, she found the man. During the season she was involved with Mark Birley, the son of portrait painter Sir Oswald Birley and his eccentric Irish wife Rhoda. Lord Londonderry vehemently disapproves, but the young couple – he was 19, she 24 – married in a London magistrate’s court in 1954. Their first home was an attic flat at the top of Lady Birley’s house in St John’s Wood.

A 6ft 5in Etonian who had left Oxford after a year, Birley worked in advertising before setting up the Jermyn Street store for French company Hermès. After the birth of their son Rupert, the Birleys had left St John’s Wood for Chelsea and then in 1959, after Robin was born, they moved to Pelham Cottage, a charming two-storey Regency house tucked away off Onslow Square.

Pelham Cottage had a large, wild and secluded garden, and when I first walked through the gate Lady Annabel felt, she recalls, “I’m sure Mary Lennox felt when she discovered the secret garden in Frances Hodgson Burnett’s book, and I still remember the pure thrill in my throat.” He fell in love with the place and planned to stay there for two decades.

No Invitation Required: In The Pelham Cottage Years (2009), Lady Annabel wrote of the many friends and numerous dogs that featured heavily in her life in those days. One of her and her husband’s best friends was John Aspinall, who in the early 1960s opened a private casino, the Clermont Club, at 44 Berkeley Square after leasing the basement of the building to Mark Birley to convert into a nightclub.

The result was Annabel’s, which opened in 1963 and quickly became London’s most popular ticket. And it was at this time that James Goldsmith, Aspinall’s friend, began to pay attention to Lady Annabel, who, having learned of her husband’s infidelity, was not discouraged. He spent his first night with Goldsmith at the Ritz, which he later recalled as a comical moment to an interviewer.

She wore an undergarment called the Merry Widow, “a sort of corset, bra and suspenders all in one”. Since it was almost impossible to survive without help, she packed it in her evening bag when she left the Ritz for home. Downstairs in the hotel lobby, as she fumbled in her bag for her car keys, the Merry Widow fell out “landing with a great clatter of braces on the marble floor in sight of the night porter.”

The friendship with John Aspinall also led to one of the most terrible events in the lives of Lady Annabel and her son Robin. While visiting Aspinall’s Zoo in Howletts, Kent with her mother, 12-year-old Robin was violently attacked by a pregnant tiger. His horrific injuries left him permanently disfigured, and Lady Annabel, who had allowed him to enter the animal enclosure, was consumed with guilt.

But for the immediate intervention of John Aspinall and his wife, Robin would almost certainly have died. In 1986, no one was there to save Lady Annabel’s son Rupert, her first child, when the 30-year-old disappeared while swimming in a strong current off the coast of Togo in West Africa. “He never came back and his body was never recovered,” his mother wrote, “and my whole world fell apart.”

Shortly after she married James Goldsmith in 1978, Lady Annabel had reluctantly agreed to leave Pelham Cottage for the more spacious interiors of Ormeley Lodge, an early 18th-century house with several acres of grounds between Richmond Park and Ham Common. There was space for the offspring of the couple’s complicated private lives to gather together and also entertain.

Always restless, Goldsmith spent much of his time abroad, particularly in France and the United States, for both business and personal reasons. Lady Annabel admitted that she occasionally had points of irritation and jealousy, but as it was not in her nature to be confrontational, and as she realized that she would have found it impossible to live full-time with her god Goldsmith, she made the best of it.

He was chairman of the Richmond Park branch of the Royal Society of St George, which aims to motivate young people, and a donor to the Countryside Alliance and the Soil Association. He was also a patron of the Dogs Trust and a supporter of the Battersea Dogs & Cats home.

In 2006, he wrote an “autobiography” of his pet dog Copper, Copper: A Dog’s Life, illustrated by his daughter India Jane.

Lady Annabel and her Londonderry relatives had long been associated with the royal family. The Queen attended Lady Annabel’s entrance dance; a cousin, Patrick Plunket, became deputy master of the Queen’s household.

During her troubles, Princess Diana found her way to Ormeley Lodge, where Lady Annabel received her with kindness and confidence. He testified at her inquest in 2007 that Diana had no intention of marrying Dodi Fayed, telling him a few days before her death: “I need marriage like a rash on my face.”

Sir James Goldsmith died in 1997 and Mark Birley, with whom Lady Annabel always kept in close touch, a decade later. Lady Annabel was survived by two daughters and three sons.

Lady Annabel Goldsmith, born 11 June 1934, died 18 October 2025

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