The Steeple Times

Tag: marriage

  • Written in the sun

    Written in the sun

    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.

     

    Ibstone House, Ibstone, Near High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire, HP14 3YA
    A reception room at Ibstone House
    The house’s swimming pool
    An aerial view of the estate

    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.

     

    Dame Rebecca West DBE (1892 – 1983)

    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.

     

    Solomon “Sol” and Heather Kerzner

    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

  • Virginia McKenna OBE

    Virginia McKenna OBE

    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.

  • Gerry & Kate McCann

    Gerry & Kate McCann

    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.

  • Holly Candy (born Holly Rachel Vukadinović)

    Holly Candy (born Holly Rachel Vukadinović)

    Best known for her role as Flick Scully on the soap Neighbours, this Australian born actress, singer and model struck gold when she married the British property tycoon Nick Candy. Her foray into music as Holly Valance brought success with Kiss Kiss but she subsequently fell out with her manager and had to pay him $350,000 in damages. She’s now most likely to be found on London’s social circuit or out shopping.

  • Stoned & Stoddart

    Stoned & Stoddart

    John Stoddart features in a Parisian exhibition

     

    To mark the 50th anniversary of The Rolling Stones, La Gelerie de l’Instant opens an exhibition named “Photographies de Stoned-and-Respectable” this evening in Paris.

     

    Stoddart’s triptych of The Rolling Stones

    Photographs featured most notably number works by Terry O’Neill, Patrick Anson, the 5th Earl of Lichfield, Albert Watson, Peter Lindbergh and Philip Townsend. A triptych by Whitstable based John Stoddart is one of the undoubted stars of the show.

     

    La Galerie de l’Instant, 46, rue de Poitou, 75003, Paris, France

    Comments Stoddart:

     

    “It’s an honour to be included in this showcase. The Rolling Stones are true legends in their lifetime and I very much enjoyed capturing them.”

     

    The exhibition runs until the 15th September.

     

    La Galerie de l’Instant, 46, rue de Poitou, 75003, Paris, France. For more details, go to: http://www.lagaleriedelinstant.com/photographe/Stoned-and-Respectable-.-a31

     

    View the official website of The Rolling Stones at: http://www.rollingstones.com

  • Anouska Hempel (Lady Weinberg)

    Anouska Hempel (Lady Weinberg)

    The founder of the world’s first boutique hotel moved to London in 1962 with just £10 to her name. She’s acted with Anton Rodgers in Zodiac and was in the 1969 James Bond film On Her Majesty’s Secret Service but it as a designer of global repute that she is best known. Married to Sir Mark Weinberg, the founder of St. James’s Place Wealth Management, Hempel was born on a boat sailing from Papua New Guinea to New Zealand. This society figure’s first hotel, Blakes, created in 1978, is the favourite of personalities such as Sharon Stone and Seal and still sets the barometer for style today.

  • Owen Oyston

    Owen Oyston

    This flamboyant fedora wearing tycoon made his fortune selling an estate agency empire just before the 1987 stock market crash. He’s now worth in excess of £100 million. Married twice to a former Miss Blackpool, his 13th century Lancashire home, Claughton Hall, was moved from the bottom of a hill to the top. He served three years in prison for raping a woman who strangely couldn’t remember in which year the crime occurred. Oyston continues to protest his innocence but with his majority stake in the prospering Blackpool F.C. and other interests, he’s got plenty else to keep himself busy.

  • Vidal Sassoon CBE (1928 – 2012)

    Vidal Sassoon CBE (1928 – 2012)

    He created the “wedge bob” hairstyle and liberated women from the “tyranny of the salon.” Four times married and a Sephardi Jew, Sassoon sold his brand in 1993 to concentrate on philanthropy. The Daily Telegraph once described him as an “anti-fascist warrior-hairdresser” and he will indeed be remembered as a man who led a revolution.

  • Kerry Katona

    Kerry Katona

    Some call her “Warrington’s finest export.” Others don’t. She tried to persuade mums to go to Iceland and in the process went bankrupt. This tragic former Atomic Kitten really should just be kept off our screens.

  • Claus Von Bülow

    Claus Von Bülow

    Tried twice for the attempted murder of his wife, Sunny, who remained in a vegetative state for some 28 years, this socialite and writer has the most mischievous of wits. Subject of the Golden Globe award winning film Reversal of Fortune starring Jeremy Irons and Glenn Close, this distinguished gent is also renowned for telling macabre jokes.