Since her twenty-one-month year old son Ben went missing on the Greek Island of Kos in July 1991, Ms. Grist-Needham has tirelessly campaigned to try and find him. Unlike with other cases, little help has been given by the authorities or charities. A volunteer named Scott Morrison has set up a website at http://www.helpfindben.co.uk and it truly deserves the support of each and every one of us.
A German who used many aliases but whose biggest pretence was to give the impression he was a member of the Rockefeller family. The Man in the Rockefeller Suit gives the best account of his exploits but it is for the 2009 parental kidnapping of his child, Reigh Storrow “Snooks” Mills Boss, by a Harvard graduate named Sandra Boss that he is best known. Jailed for four to five years after being convicted for kidnap, he was subsequently also charged with the 1985 murder of a Californian man named Jonathan Sohus. Whilst this fantasist of the first order rots in the clink, his former wife has built a new life in Knightsbridge, London.
This reality television star commented of himself: “I may be a douche to some people, but I actually do run companies. I make a lot of money, and I’m more than capable of supporting myself.” The father of a child by Kourtney Kardashian, Disick owns a restaurant in New York’s Meatpacking District, generally sports Tod’s and boasts an extensive car collection. Sadly one is chrome wrapped.
A fearless child who set about improving school meals by posting photographs and rating the junk she was fed. Her blog, NeverSeconds, became an internet sensation and even Jamie Oliver backed her. Subsequently, bureaucrats at Argyll and Bute Council banned her from taking photographs but all that did was make her more famous. Good for her.
The sale of the former home of Dame Rebecca West
Ibstone House at Ibstone in Buckinghamshire has recently come to the market at a price of offers in excess of £15 million. Now owned by Ariadne “Ari” Getty Williams, the daughter of Paul Getty and Abigail Harris, Ibstone has also been home to Sun City tycoon Sol Kerzner, who is currently divorcing his wife Heather. This Grade II listed house is situated in the Chiltern Hills and was originally built in the late 18th century.
Arranged over three floors and including an extensive leisure and entertaining complex, the property includes 6 principal reception rooms, 7 bedrooms and an indoor pool. A 2-bedroom lodge cottage and large barn stand in the 79-acre grounds that also include gardens designed by Lady Arabella Lennox-Boyd.
Dame Rebecca West, described by TIME Magazine as being “indisputably the world’s number one writer” in 1947, purchased Ibstone House in the late 1930s and lived there with her banker husband Henry Maxwell Andrews.
West, who had affairs with H. G. Wells, Charlie Chaplin and Lord Beaverbrook, used the grounds of the house as a small dairy farm and also housed Yugoslav refugees in the blacked out spare rooms of the manor during the Second World War. After the death of her husband, she sold up and moved to an apartment next to the Iranian Embassy in Prince’s Gate, London. During the 1980 siege there, aged 87, she had to be evacuated.
Kerzner, who has been married four times to Kerzner and tragically lost his son, Butch, in a helicopter crash, has homes around the world and both he and his wife blamed the breakdown of their marriage on his workaholic lifestyle.
Of divorcing her husband, Heather Kerzner commented:
“He’s a hugely important person to myself and my children. I have only positive things to say about him. He’s the most influential person in my life – and that’s worth a lot. He’s one of the world’s most incredible men, he has shown me a different world and we had an incredible life together but sometimes I guess it just doesn’t work out.”
Some time ago the Kerzners sold Ibstone House to Ms. Getty but now she too has decided to sell up. Though best known because of her family name, Aridane Getty has run the Fuserna Foundation since 2005 and is considered a great philanthropist in her own right.
It’ll be fascinating to see what chapter opens next for this magnificent house.
For more information contact Stephen Christie-Miller of Savills on +44 (0) 1491 843000. To download a brochure for Ibstone House go to: http://residentialsearch.savills.co.uk/property-detail/333522/list
For more details on the Fuserna Foundation, go to: http://fusernafoundation.org
This British actress is best known for playing Joy Adamson in the true-life film Born Free alongside her real-life husband, Bill Travers (1957 – 1994). She’s also starred in the Ring of Bright Water, The Camomile Lawn and Swallows and Amazons but it is for her work as a wildlife campaigner that McKenna is best known. She co-founded the Born Free Foundation in 1991 with her husband and along with Ace Bourke and John Rendall helped release Christian, a lion who lived at World’s End in Chelsea, into the wild in Africa. His story has since become one of YouTube’s biggest hits.
Music fit for The Queen
In recent days, Gary Barlow’s albumn Sing has topped the UK album charts with sales of 40,000 copies.
Two hundred and ten musicians, including the African Children’s Choir and the Royal Solomon Islands Police Force Band, helped record this special tribute to The Queen. Produced by Barlow with the assistance of Andrew Lloyd Webber and Gareth Malone, Sing also features Prince Harry on the tambourine, Hayley Westenra, Alfie Boe and the Military Wives choir. Sing will be performed this evening at a special concert at Buckingham Palace in the presence of Her Majesty.
Another tribute I was alerted to came from a singer named Anton Lorien who contacted me via Twitter. He was approached in 2011 by the British Monarchist League who asked him to produce a song for a lady he describes as having: “Given her life selflessly to the people of Britain and the Commonwealth.”
Mr Lorien’s song, Like A Diamond, is available to download on iTunes but I wholeheartedly recommend that you watch the video clip available above. It contains some wonderful footage of The Queen and the clip at 3:33 where our Monarch runs to watch her racehorse is especially worth seeing.
Both Sing and Like A Diamond capture the feelings of our nation brilliantly. Be sure to sing along tonight.
For more information about Anton Lorien’s Like A Diamond, go to: http://www.antonlorien.com
For more information on Gary Barlow & The Commonwealth Band’s Sing, got to: http://www.jubileesing.com
Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II governed as constitutional monarch of 16 sovereign states and headed the 54-member Commonwealth of Nations. Supported by her gaffe prone husband, “Brenda,” as Private Eye nicknamed her, served steadfast through good times and bad. She liked to drive a little quickly when given control of the wheel of a Range Rover and also found washing up relaxing. This monarch like no other will never be forgotten.
Their daughter Madeleine disappeared on the evening 3rd May 2007 from a holiday apartment whilst they sat enjoying tapas with a bunch of friends. Some believe the poor child was kidnapped. Others have alternative theories. A public fund to find “Maddie” raised hundreds of thousands of pounds but Mrs McCann’s book, Madeleine, contains so many references to trips on private jets and meeting famous people that it makes one question whether the search for the child or fame has become the focus.
Whatever she does, “The House of Hancock comes first.” This little known Australian daughter of a bush pilot and prospector is now the world’s richest woman with a worth of some £18 billion. Known as the “Iron Lady,” twice-married Rinehart’s fortune is expanding at a rate of £21,000 a second and if this continues this larger than life lady will be the richest person on the planet. When Prince Philip met her he asked if she’d been invited simply because she had “the largest hat in Western Australia.” Her father called her his “right-hand man” and “young fella” and she’s even taken on three of her own children in court. The Hancock Mountain Range is named after her and commemorates her family’s contribution to mining in the Pilbara region.