Latest news with #ShirleyConran
Daily Mail
14-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Daily Mail
EDEN CONFIDENTIAL: Lace and Superwoman author Shirley Conran leaves half her fortune to designer Jasper Conran, the fashion designer she was estranged from for a decade
Lace and Superwoman author Shirley Conran leaves half her fortune to designer Jasper Conran, the fashion designer she was estranged from for a decade She said she spent 20 years making a fortune – an odyssey which took her from being a penniless divorcee, singlehandedly bringing up two infant sons, to the status of Superwoman. That, of course, was the title of her first book, which topped the bestseller list for four months, propelling her towards ownership of a chateau near Cannes, plus three apartments in Monaco, and – by 1994 – being named as one of the 100 richest women in Britain. But Shirley Conran, revered at the Daily Mail for establishing 'Femail', also said that she spent the next 20 years giving away much of that fortune, often to benefit women's causes or in specific acts of philanthropy, like paying for a new Collection of Modern Art at her alma mater, St Paul's Girls' School. Now, a year after her death aged 91 – just a week after a damehood had been conferred on her in hospital – her will, published this week, shows that she was true to her word. Dame Shirley left £2.5million, a fraction of the riches that snowballed after she received a £1million advance for Lace, just seven years after the publication of Superwoman, in which she'd warned that 'life is too short to stuff a mushroom'. Often described as the first 'bonkbuster', Lace was the first of six she knocked out within 15 years. Yet, by the time she drew up the will, in 2022, there was no chateau nor even one apartment in Monaco. Instead, there were two flats, both in Bayswater, west London, in one of which Dame Shirley lived until her final illness. She left one of these to her grandson Sam and the other to his brother, Max. Both are the sons of Sebastian, 69, Dame Shirley's elder son by the late Sir Terence Conran, the first of her three husbands and the man she would always describe as the love of her life, despite their fractious divorce in 1962, after seven years of marriage. The remainder of her estate is split equally between Sebastian and his younger brother, and fellow designer, Jasper, 65. That last detail is eloquent testimony to Shirley Conran's refusal ever to give up: she and Jasper were very publicly estranged from 2002 for more than a decade. But they were reconciled in 2015 when Jasper married Irish artist, Oisin Byrne. Having co-founded the Mexican restaurant chain Wahaca, her credentials are undeniable, yet Thomasina Miers has fallen foul of political correctness. The former MasterChef winner says: 'It's really interesting to me, this debate about what you're 'allowed' to cook. I've written a new book, Mexican Table, and my publisher's worried about promoting it in the States, for fear of it being called cultural appropriation.' Ay caramba! Ashcroft's next target: Farage Michael Ashcroft was in mischievous mood as he launched Red Flag, his updated biography of the PM, in Westminster. 'What is Sir Keir Starmer's great secret?' he asked, teasingly alluding to 'some fabulous gossip' and thanking 'the many sources' who'd helped him anonymously. 'There are one or two here tonight,' reflected the peer, whose guests included Nick Brown, chief whip under five Labour leaders. Ashcroft is assured of full co-operation on his next book – analysing the rise of Reform. 'We shook hands on it – I look forward to working together,' he added, singling out his star guest: Nigel Farage. He missed very few chances behind the stumps playing for England. Nor does Jack Russell – once named the best wicketkeeper in the world by cricket bible Wisden – let many slip past him as an artist. Determined to 'immortalise' British war veterans, he takes particular pleasure in a recent portrait of Squadron Leader Johnny Johnson, the last surviving member of the Dambusters Raid. 'I'd spent several years looking around the country for him,' he tells me. 'I finally found him in August 2022 – a few miles down the road from me in Bristol.' Johnson died three months later aged 101 – but it was time enough for Russell, 61, to complete the portrait. 'An absolute privilege,' he says. 'The most mesmerizing part was to sit and chat with him and listen to the most amazing life story.' Poppy Delevingne pulls out of movie project Poppy Delevingne is looking forward to giving birth to her first child this month, but, sadly, she's suffered a setback in her professional life. I hear that the model and actress, 39, has left the cast of US film The Gun On Second Street. Its director, Rohit Karn Batra, told me a year ago that he had chosen Poppy because he 'wanted to cast someone who was posh but with a West Virginia twang'. Now, however, he says: 'Poppy is no longer a part of the production.' Speaking at the DDA cocktail party at the Cannes Film Festival, he says her role will now go to Sean Penn's daughter, Dylan, 34. Poppy's spokesman insists it was her decision to move away from the project. First family wedding in a century at Liverpool's Knowsley Hall as the Earl and Countess of Derby's only daughter gets engaged The Epsom Derby is not for three weeks, but the Earl of Derby's family are already celebrating. I hear that the Earl and Countess's only daughter, Lady Henrietta Stanley, has got engaged. Hetty, 28, as she's known to chums, is to marry Alexander 'Sasha' Reviakin, 28, a descendant of newspaper magnate William Berry, the 1st Viscount Camrose. 'They met last year at the National Portrait Gallery,' a friend tells me. Sasha, who attended £52,000-a-year Winchester College, is the only son of Russian art collector Sergei Reviakin and artist Rosanna Gardner. 'We are absolutely thrilled that Sasha has proposed to our beautiful Hetty,' Lord Derby tells me. 'She has looked radiant since the day they started going out last year.' The couple are due to exchange vows at Knowsley Hall, Lady Henrietta's ancestral family seat near Liverpool. It's famous for Knowsley Safari Park, opened by the earl's uncle in 1971. 'It will be very exciting to be hosting a family wedding at Knowsley Hall, which we suspect has not happened for over a century,' Lord Derby adds. The Epsom Derby, in Surrey, was established by the 12th Earl in 1718.
Telegraph
25-04-2025
- General
- Telegraph
I grew up poor. Making rich friends changed my life
Here in Britain, class has long been seen as the great divide when it comes to earning potential and aspiration. But these days, studies show there's an easy way to get ahead – hang around with rich friends, and start early. It certainly inspired me. My childhood in the Seventies was what you'd call 'Bohemian middle class'. My mum was a playwright, my dad worked for the BBC, and they were very young. We lived in a Manchester suburb, first in terraced houses, then in a three-bed Thirties semi until I was nine. We went on annual holidays to North Wales with my grandparents, and my dad's cars (when he had one) were generally held together with bits of string and optimism. I came from a long line of immigrant shopkeepers, clerks and postmistresses. But while we were always a bit skint, my family was also clever. We were never short of books (or blues LPs, in my dad's case). I spent my primary years being sent to work with the top class, which made me both stressed and unpopular with the children in my class. Aged eight, I passed the exam for a very academic private girls' day school, and my grandparents generously helped my mum and dad scrape the fees together. That was when I met rich people for the first time. Of course, we didn't think in terms of 'rich' at that age, but I was very aware that when I went to birthday parties, other girls lived in big detached houses with landscaped gardens and banks of shiny cars in the drive. Several had ponies, in contrast to our beloved scruffy cats who covered my school uniform in orange fur. Some of my new friends would spend half-terms skiing, and summer holidays in Florida or the South of France. My best friend had five siblings and her home life was equally bookish and normal, so it took a while for me to notice the gulf in income between me and my classmates. Nobody mentioned it, it simply existed. I didn't feel jealous so much as curious. Their parents seemed to be lawyers or doctors, dentists or tech entrepreneurs. After school, they'd all board the bus and head to mansions in deepest Cheshire, while I wandered home past the newsagents to our red-brick semi. I sometimes wondered how their families earned so much money, forgetting that most parents were a good 15 years older than my own (and some had inherited it). At 17, most passed their driving tests and were gifted cars. One girl got a sports car. I carried on catching the number 41 bus into town. None of this affected our friendships – on the whole, they were kind, clever, funny girls, even if Nadia did wear Armani jeans at the weekend, and I wore Fifties frocks from a vintage emporium. Still, passing round a forbidden copy of the Shirley Conran novel Lace at lunchtime held the same thrill for all of us. It wasn't until I went to university in Glasgow that I became truly aware of the rich gap. My two flatmates both came from families far better off than mine. They had grown up down south (one had gone to boarding school) and, for them, dropping student loan money on designer clothes and hair-salon visits or buying 'good' wine was entirely normal. I shopped at Oxfam and bought Bulgarian Country White. My hair was a nest. Again, it wasn't that it mattered – they never showed off or mocked me; we just had different attitudes to money. They didn't fret about their finances like I did, or desperately compete for minimum-wage jobs in the holidays (I worked on the Co-op meat counter for one unpleasant summer). But when I left to start my journalism career, I swiftly found myself pregnant at just 21 and finally felt the burn of aspiration. I wanted security for my child; I didn't want to feel that queasy uncertainty about money that ran through my family history. As a result I worked so hard as a freelance writer, I was a blur. I saved madly for a mortgage and bought a five-bedroom house with my new husband, who had three children, when I was 28. I didn't care about cars, but I did care about eating out, holidays – we went to America, the South of France, Majorca – and well-dressed children. It was subconscious but, looking back, my school days were instrumental in this. And this experience is not unique to me: according to a recent study from global research consultancy BIT, children who mix with better-off friends go on to earn an extra £5,100 a year. I wanted my children to have what the well-off children had, I wanted them not to worry about money in the same way I had worried. Only an unexpected tax bill derailed me (I had grown up with a work ethic and the desire to earn money, but no one had taught me about the proper administration of it). But I was the breadwinner, so I picked myself up. Working so hard meant I was missing out on time with my family, and by 34, I was burned out. I opened a vintage shop, and went part-time as a writer. I earned less and, once again, my friends were generally better off – our closest friends lived in a huge house, drove a Porsche, and went to Antigua on holiday. Now, I'm remarried, and we live in a two-bedroom cottage in the Scottish Highlands. I write novels, and buy fancy vet-approved food for our two dogs and the cat. We haven't had a holiday in five years – but we are not poor. I suspect, deep down, that the phrase 'You have to see it to be it' is true. I was spurred on to work hard enough to buy a large house, provide for my son and step-children, pay for holidays and gifts and treats, partly because I'd seen what a well-funded life looked like. More importantly, I'd understood how it felt for my friends not to worry about money, because there was always enough of it. I wanted that feeling too. Do I still have friends who are better off than me? Yes, absolutely. Am I determined to write that bestseller and go on holiday somewhere fancy again? Also, yes, absolutely – the inspiration that started in childhood never stops.
