SHULMAN, Mrs Milton (Drusilla Norman nee BEYFUS) 1927-2026
Richard R
From the Telegraph of 27 Feb 2026: SHULMAN Drusilla Norman (née Beyfus) died peacefully at home in London on 26th February 2026 aged 98. Journalist, editor, broadcaster and writer. Much loved wife of the late Milton Shulman and sister of Angela Darnborough. Beloved mother of Alexandra, Nicola and Jason, and adored grandmother of Pandora, Sibylla, John, Samuel and Tom. Funeral arrangements to be announced.
She was d of Norman BEYFUS 1891-1975 by his 1926 m reg Q4 Chelsea to Florence Noel Ryhs BARKER 1895-1974. She m 1956 as his 2 w Milton SHULMAN 1913-2004 (the Canadian author, film & theatre critic) and had issue, including Nicola who m first 1987 (div 1990, no issue) Edward ST AUBYN b 1960 (2xgt gs of Sir Edward ST AUBYN 1 Bt 1799-1872 who was f of 1 Baron ST LEVAN 1829-1908); she m second 1990 5 Marquess of NORMANBY b 1954, and had two sons (including the ha the Earl of Mulgrave b 1994, married 2023) and a dau.Richard R
Obit in the Times of 27 Feb 2026:
E X T R A C T
Drusilla Beyfus obituary: doyenne of English manners
Author and editor who blazed a trail for legions of women journalists with her keen eye for social mores and seemingly effortless fashion, dies aged 98
…Beyfus was the doyenne of English manners for five decades. Her instinct for knowing how people ought to behave in any social situation sprang not from upper-crust snobbery — even though her mother had once “danced with the Prince of Wales”, as in the 1920s song — but from her instinctive good sense and desire to keep everyone happy. She would ask, what are manners for otherwise? “Manners are the happy way of doing things.”
Her essential volume Lady Behave: A Guide to Modern Manners, written with wit and humour in collaboration with her fellow Express journalist Anne Edwards, first appeared in 1957. This was an era when much that passes unnoticed today — commenting on people’s clothes, asking how much things cost or what others get paid — was firmly unacceptable. Such conventions of traditional etiquette were about to slip out of fashionable use in the 1960s, yet by the time the updated edition of Lady Behave appeared in 1969, instruction was still needed. And by 1993, The Done Thing had to deal with “Condom Etiquette”, “Gay Coupledom”, and even “Tactful Behaviour when the sex wasn’t all that good, or a fiasco”…
… The name Drusilla was taken from a café in Sussex, she claimed, which later became a zoo. Beyfus is pronounced Bye-fuss. Having an unusual name impelled her to advise readers not only how to introduce the Buccleuchs to the Leveson-Gowers (an unlikely circumstance) but, as Beyfus said in her book Modern Manners, to resist correcting other people’s pronunciation: “Never a good idea … It leaves a feeling of discomfiture, and is never forgotten.”…
… Drusilla Norman Beyfus was born in London in 1927, the elder daughter of Norman Beyfus, a City wool broker who aspired to become a poet, and his wife Florence Noel Barker, known as Noel, who had been a singer and dancer in Gerald du Maurier’s company. The family lived in Chelsea and Drusilla attended the Glendower School, the Royal Naval School at Richmond, and finally boarded at the Channing School, evacuated to Ross-on-Wye in 1943.
Her parents’ marriage fell apart when her father lost his money (suddenly) and his sight (gradually) but as a Christian Scientist he could not acknowledge the latter. Noel took her two daughters to live in a rectory near Henley, but there was not enough money to buy blackout material — it was wartime — for the windows… .
… Another of Beaverbrook’s favoured recruits was his fellow Canadian, Major Milton Shulman, author of Defeat in the West, lately demobbed from intelligence. In 1953, Shulman wrote a series called “Shulman’s Beauties of 1953” that included the gamine, much-sought-after women’s editor Miss Beyfus, then 26 and lately involved with the film critic Derek Monsey.
Shulman invited her on a date, after which she returned to her Shepherd Market flat — shared with Toni Scott, a South African model — and wrote in lipstick on her bathroom mirror: “That man is SO annoying.” It took a girl with spirit — to cope with Shulman’s invincible amour-propre and unstoppable racontage. They were married in 1956 at Caxton Hall with Michael and Jill Foot as witnesses, and were together until Shulman’s death in 2004. Her equable temperament withstood five decades of her husband’s vociferous pontificating, his fondness for betting on the horses and his passion for Jewish jokes: but Beyfus said that having earned her own living since the age of 17, she always felt “determined to make a go of things, including marriage”….
…She was followed into the glossy magazine world by all three children: Alexandra Shulman, who became editor of British Vogue, Nicola Shulman, writer and critic, who became the Marchioness of Normanby, and Jason Shulman, the artist who started out as a magazine art director…
… In widowhood and grandmotherhood (“My mother might not know how to knit,” wrote Alexandra after the birth of her son Sam, “but she’ll be able to explain Anselm Kiefer to him”) she maintained her appreciation of theatre, on the judging panel for the Milton Shulman newcomer prize in the Evening Standard theatre awards.
A letter of condolence, as Beyfus told readers, was the most difficult to write, and impossible to dash off. The example she provided included the words: “Your mother was such a sweet, gay, affectionate and brave person, which is how I — and I am sure everyone who met her — will always remember her.” Words most likely to occur to anyone acquainted with Beyfus herself.
Drusilla Beyfus, author and journalist, was born on March 1, 1927. She died on February 26, 2026, aged 98
https://www.thetimes.com/uk/obituaries/article/drusilla-beyfus-obituary-doyenne-of-english-manners-lsls3pv32