Product Description

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.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #172948 in Books
• Published on: 2004-03-08
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 304 pages

Hugh Massingberd, THE SPECTATOR
'I soon found myself enjoying the book immensely.'

Review
'She writes the way she speaks. Directly and amusingly..... This is a wonderful read. Annabel stays a lady through-out - no lurid exposes and the like - yet she has a voice, and a very moving one.' (EVENING STANDARD Taki )

'Annabel Goldsmith's conversation is a joy. Out rattles a stream of anecdote and comment so racy, gossipy and funny........this book is rather like that' (DAILY MAIL Anne de Courcy )

'There are some farcical moments........ she writes best about her servants, who she seems to have had genuine affection and towards whom she has behaved with noblesse oblige'. (Christopher Silvester THE SUNDAY TIMES )

'I soon found myself enjoying the book immensely.' (Hugh Massingberd THE SPECTATOR )

'this is a well-ordered, decently written book.' (Selina Hastings THE SUNDAY TELEGRAPH )

...

EVENING STANDARD, Taki
'She writes the way she speaks. Directly and amusingly..... This is a wonderful read. Annabel stays a lady through-out - no lurid exposes and the like - yet she has a voice, and a very moving one.'

Customer Reviews

Actually, rather good
I think the criticisms of the two earlier writers should be taken with a little salt if they fail to overcome the labour of spelling such tricky words as 'butterfly' and 'entirely'.

'Annabel' is a very amusing and refreshing biography. The story is perfectly 'linear' in fact and rattles along from anecdote to amusing anecdote. Some may be surprised by how well it is written - and I found the author's experiece of life both interesting and informative, even if some may find unpalatable her descriptions of the privileges of post-war aristocratic social life.

The book does not shy away from the tragedies that has touched Mrs Goldsmith's life and shows that her irreverence remains. For me, much is to be learned from this refusal to bow down or to project oneself as a victim.

As a tonic to the grimness and greyness of modern life, 'Annabel' has much to recommend it.

What purpose is there to this woman's life?
I'm afraid this woman's life is entirley without merit and it makes for a rather tiresome book. Aside from breed, which is something 99% of the world's population manage to do, she doesn't seem to have actually done anything with her life. She is purely famous through association. Her ancestors, children, husbands and friends seem to have made something of their lives but all she can be credited with is a talent for flaunting her bosom, an alarming passion for dogs (who she seems to treat better than humans), dire toilet humour and alarming ability to turn a blind eye to the boorishness and chavinism of her male aquaintences.
There is plenty to envy in this book, with all it's tales of priveledge, wealth and fame, but very little to admire. She embodies all that is negative about the upper classes and is enough to make a bolshevik out of anyone, even a mild Tory like me.

Dancing The Night Away
The title is a misnomer, for this book shows a life entirely conventional, save for its cocoon of money. Even the authoress' affair and remarriage would reflect, almost, the norm today in England. She was born into the Londonderry family, from aristocrats from way back, an ancestor of hers having secured the family fortunes by marrying into coal mines in NE England. As a child she lived in at least two huge houses, i.e. Mount Stewart in Northern Ireland and Wynyards, in Co. Durham (now or until recently owned by Sir John Hall, the ex-miner owner of Newcastle F.C.). The scale of the house will be hard for most --indeed, even those who have lived in country houses-- to imagine: 140 rooms.

She was born in 1934. In the 1950's, in her late teens, Annabel "came out" into what was then still called "Society", a fairly ancient term which lasted, even if only in the tabloid gossip columns, into the 1970's. Before very long she married Mark Birley, whose photo at the time shows someone looking very much the "chinless wonder", but that might be an unfairly superficial judgment: he and Annabel gave up their London lives for a while to look after Hungarian refugees fleeing to Austria in 1956 (but were disappointed that many returned in the end; they perhaps failed to understand the strong or even mystical connection between the Magyars and their land). Birley had been a commercial artist at the large ad agency JWT. Now he acquired financial backing and opened Annabel's in Berkeley Square, which club bridged the gap between the white tails nightspots of the aristocracy of the 1930s-1950's and the not very glossy new discos. It's still there and still insists on collar and tie (those refused entry --by the doorman, at that--having included Prince Andrew and George Harrison).

Although the authoress does make the point that they were not particularly wealthy at that time (except for her massive trust fund...) she has evidently never been financially embarrassed; let's put it like that. That was even more so after her affair and eventual marriage to Sir James (Private Eye said "Jams", since his money came largely from speculation in food) Goldsmith, the half-Jewish, half-French businessman who was one of the mega-wealthy on this Earth and with whom she had several children, all remarkably attractive when small in the photos printed. She and Birley also had several children.

Lest anyone think this gilded life was all roses, the lady has had several tragic occurences: one son lost swimming in Togo, of all places, another mauled and permanently facially scarred by a tiger (at her friend Aspinall's private zoo). She and some of her family also came close to death when a crazy African tried to crash their passenger jet en route to Nairobi. Only prayer and pilot skill averted disaster. Amazingly, the obviously well-connected skyjacker was released after a few weeks and returned to "study" in France.

Annabel knew Lord Lucan slightly and was in a sense part of his loose circle, but her insights do not add much to the mystery or its solution.

The photographs in the book are interesting: the lady herself, hugely attractive on the cover and, indeed, in other photographs; various children and the two husbands. There are a few less pleasant photographs, one taken with Lucan and others in Mexico and showing a vile-looking couple --unidentified-- with Lucan and the authoress. And why do so many of these pretentious types wear sunglasses when not in the sun?

One nice thing about this lady is that she seems to have retained the sentimental regard for her retainers of the aristos of old. That does mark her out from the merely wealthy, perhaps. She does see her nannies, servants, drivers as human beings in a sense equal to herself, even though in an employed position. She seems to have forgiven many a flaw in some of them (eg the butler who fell drunkenly into a plate of food a la Fawlty Towers).

It has to be said that anyone looking for signs of social awareness or analysis of the social changes in the UK since 1950 will be disappointed. This is very much a personal memoir and pretends to nothing more. A flaw (for me) was that if someone is called Joe Bloggs and happens to have a title, even if one bought for hard cash in 1920, he is "Joe Bloggs (Lord Bloggs)". So she is very aware of protocol in that sense, yet seems quite happy with the family Jewish connection (Goldsmith and also a son married to a Rothschild). Was it Marx or Engels who remarked that capital has no country? Having said that, Zac, her son with Goldsmith, does seem to be seriously involved in useful environmental and animal welfare work.

Overall, a good read and worth reading. The lady seems quite warm hearted and genuine. Just do not expect startling insights into anything beyond personal life. The rich are different from us: they have more money!