Death of the dowager Lady Farnham
David Beamish
Lady Farnham had been the 95-year-old monarch’s Lady of the Bedchamber since 1987 and rode alongside the Queen on the way to the Diamond Jubilee service in 2012 after the Duke of Edinburgh was hospitalised.
She was married to Barry Maxwell, the 12th Baron Farnham, an Irish peer and Nova Scotia baronet who died in 2001.
Her death on Dec 29 after 44 years of royal service follows the recent passing of another close confidante, the Duchess of Grafton, the Queen’s Mistress of the Robes. Ann Fortune FitzRoy served in the prestigious role from 1967 until her death on Dec 3 at the age of 101."
dpth...@gmail.com
Diana, Lady Farnham, DCVO, died at home on December 29, 2021; wife, mother and grandmother. Interment of ashes at Kilmore Cathedral, Co. Cavan, at a later date.
Published on the Irish Times website on 31st December 2021
born 24 May 1931, daughter of Nigel Eric Murray Gunnis, and of his wife, Elizabeth Morrison (first cousin of 1st Lord Margadale).
married 1959 Barry Owen Somerset Maxwell, 12th Lord Farnham (1931-2001).
She was a Lady of the Bedchamber to the Queen.
Harry Merritt
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Peerage News" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to peerage-news...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/peerage-news/ae0cc777-0c9d-41f1-984e-bfbb2616c9bcn%40googlegroups.com.
sven_me...@web.de
dpth...@gmail.com
colinp
colinp
She was by the Queen’s side at her Diamond Jubilee when the Telegraph described her as one of the ‘unsung heroes’ of the celebrations
Diana, Lady Farnham, who has died aged 90, was for more than 30 years a Lady of the Bedchamber to the Queen, a role in which she combined immense charm with a sharp mind and great organisational skill.
Once a political appointment (Robert Peel famously rejected the premiership in 1839 when Queen Victoria refused to replace her Whig Ladies), the post had long since become entirely administrative and ceremonial, the principal duties being accompanying the Queen on official visits and providing her with support and companionship.
It was a role for which Diana Farnham, with her gifts for friendship and unerring loyalty, was well fitted. Appointed in 1987, she was appointed DCVO in 2010 and was still in the Queen’s service at the time of her death....
She was born Diana Marion Gunnis on May 24 1931, the elder of two sisters, into a family with Glaswegian roots. She spent her early years at Sissinghurst in Kent, where Harold Nicolson and Vita Sackville-West were near-neighbours. Her father, Major Nigel Gunnis of the Royal Artillery, fought in North Africa and Italy during the Second World War before becoming part of the British Military Mission to Romania.
From her mother, Elizabeth, née Morrison, a strong-minded woman with a tendency to domineer, she inherited Irish connections through descent from the Hills, Marquesses of Downshire. Her parents divorced, and she spent much of her childhood with her mother at Codicote in Hertfordshire....
Her natural intelligence was sharpened, and her appreciation of the arts enhanced, by assisting her bachelor uncle, Rupert Gunnis, the art historian, with the research for his well-regarded Dictionary of British Sculptors 1660-1851, published in 1953.
A blissfully happy marriage in 1959 strengthened her Irish links. Barry Maxwell, the 12th Baron Farnham, had inherited his Irish title from his grandfather as a result of the early death of his father, Somerset Maxwell, Conservative MP for King’s Lynn, who was fatally wounded at El Alamein in 1942.
Diana later inherited a cottage from her mother at Burnham Overy Staithe on the Norfolk coast, which she called her “seaside escape”.
Diana Farnham undertook a great deal of public work outside the royal sphere. She helped to settle refugees who fled from Hungary when the Soviet Union invaded their country in 1956. She served as a magistrate in east London for many years.
A passionate devotee of ballet, she took a deep interest in the work of the Dance Teachers’ Benevolent Fund, of which she was vice-president, and was a huge supporter of the English National Ballet. She was a trustee of the British Kidney Patient Association and patron of Friends of the Elderly, a charity that runs care homes in seven counties....
Her wedding photographs show how very beautiful Diana Farnham was as a young woman. She retained her striking good looks, accompanied by great poise and elegance of bearing, until the end of her life.
The twinkle in her eye never faded. “Pop out and get a bottle of whisky,” she said to her devoted young priest from the Chapel Royal when she was in hospital, pressing a £20 note into his hand. “I am an hour closer to eternity and it may not be available there.”
She is survived by her two daughters.
Diana, Lady Farnham, born May 24 1931, died December 29 2021