OAKSEY, Rt Hon Victoria Baroness (Victoria Mary nee DENNISTOUN) 1938-2024
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She was d of Maj John DENNISTOUN by his c1937 m reg Q1 London to Nancy Mary COURT 1909-90. She m 1959 as his 1st w the 4th Baron TREVETHIN & 2nd Baron OAKSEY OBE 1929-2012, and had a son (the present 5th / 3rd Baron) and a dau.
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Tory Lawrence, gifted painter who left racing commentator Lord Oaksey for Maggi Hambling
Briefly John Betjeman’s secretary, promising him she was ‘pretty hot on ecclesiastical affairs’, she accidentally burnt down his library
Tory Lawrence, who has died aged 86, lived a life of two distinct halves. The first centred on the equestrian world in which she grew up, and encompassed marriage to the jockey and racing commentator John Lawrence (later Lord Oaksey), motherhood and years looking after horses. The second, which began when she took up painting in her forties, led to a full-time career as an artist and nearly four decades as the companion of the painter and sculptor Maggi Hambling……
Victoria Mary Dennistoun was born in Chelsea on April 2 1938, the eldest of three children of Major John Dennistoun and his wife Nancy, née Court. Her father, always known as “Ginger”, was an eccentric, quick-tempered racehorse trainer, based at Letcombe Regis in the Vale of the White Horse, and she was in the saddle practically from birth. She claimed to have learnt to ride at the age of two and by her early teens was the star of local gymkhanas. A natural horsewoman, she gained a reputation as a fearless point-to-point rider and competed with success as a professional showjumper……….
Her husband was John Lawrence, son of the first Baron Oaksey, who had been the presiding judge at the International Military Tribunal at Nuremburg in 1946.
Lawrence was the leading amateur steeplechase jockey of his day – he rode the winner in the 1958 Hennessy Gold Cup and was just pipped at the final post in the Grand National in 1963 – and, as the racing correspondent for this newspaper, was already embarked on a career as a highly regarded journalist and broadcaster.
On his father’s death in 1971 he succeeded to the title and the family, which now included two children, moved to Hill Farm in the Wiltshire village of Oaksey, from which they took their name. The new Lady Oaksey reluctantly undertook the duties of lady of the manor. She was, she admitted, “terrible at opening fêtes”.
After breaking her back while team eventing she was forced to give up riding and revived an interest in art which had lain dormant since her schooldays. In 1983 she enrolled on a course taught by Maggi Hambling at Morley College in south London. Invited to dinner at the Oakseys, Maggi Hambling found herself uncharacteristically tongue-tied, so smitten was she with her pupil; Tory Lawrence was similarly infatuated……………………..
In the early 2000s Tory Lawrence gave up her house at Farnborough, high up in her beloved Berkshire Downs, and moved to a cottage next door to Hambling’s near Saxmundham in Suffolk. She was diagnosed with a brain tumour five years ago; the subsequent loss of her sight was a cruel affliction for someone who had relied so heavily on it.
Tory Lawrence is survived by her two children, Patrick, a barrister and crossbench peer in the House of Lords, and Sara, widow of the racehorse trainer Mark Bradstock, and by Maggi Hambling.
Tory Lawrence, born April 2 1938, died October 19 2024