KIDD, Jane Margaret 1943-2025
Richard R
She was d of Maj Thomas Edward Dealtry KIDD 1910-79 and as her 3rd h Hon Janet Gladys AITKEN 1908-88 d of 1st Baron BEAVERBROOK 1879-1964 and Gladys Henderson 1885-1927 d of Maj-Gen Charles William DRURY CB 1856-1913 sometime head of that Canadian colonial gentry family (v2 p834) and Mary Louise 1856-1917 d of James A HENDERSON QC. She m 1972 (div) as his 2nd of 4 wives Graham Morison 1940-2022 s of Lt-Col Henry Morison VERE NICOLL DSO OBE 1908-99 and Joan 1912-2008 d of Adm Sir Charles Edward MADDEN 1st Bt 1862-1935 and Constance Winifred 1879-1964 d of Sir Charles William CAYZER 1st Bt 1843-1916 and Agnes Elizabeth TRICKEY 1850-1919, but had no issue.
Obit in the Times of 12 Sep 2025:
Jane Kidd obituary: grande dame of British dressage
Coach, selector, judge and author of more than 20 books on the horse world who spurred Team GB to Olympic glory in 2012, dies aged 82
E X T R A C T
… Jane Margaret Kidd was born in Leatherhead, Surrey, in 1943, the daughter of the Hon Janet Aitken (herself the daughter of the newspaper tycoon and politician Lord Beaverbrook) and Major Thomas Kidd of the Canadian Army. Young Jane was in the saddle from the age of four, first at the family farm in Cornwall and later Somerset. Riding was as inevitable as growing up tall; she was 5ft 10in and her brother, the British international showjumper Johnny Kidd, is 6ft 6in… It was [her mother] Janet’s third marriage after, first, one to Ian Campbell, later the Duke of Argyll, which ended in divorce, then to Drogo Montagu, son of the Earl of Sandwich, who was killed in the Second World War. This time, fortunately, the union was happy and long until Major Kidd’s death in 1979…
… In 1972 she married Graham Vere Nicoll, his second of four marriages. It was not successful and she never married again. But she immersed herself in family including her brother Johnny’s daughters Jodie and Jemma Kidd — the model and make-up tycoon, respectively — and polo-playing son Jack Kidd.
Hers was a markedly different life from those of brother Johnny and half-sister Lady Jeanne Campbell, the daughter of her mother’s first marriage. As a young man Johnny was often in the gossip columns and was said to be the model for the polo-playing cad Rupert Campbell-Black in Jilly Cooper’s Riders. Jeanne had been a New York correspondent for her grandfather’s Evening Standard and before marrying Norman Mailer was reported to have been the lover of President Kennedy (whose funeral she covered for the Standard), Nikita Khrushchev, Fidel Castro, Oswald Mosley and Randolph Churchill — a political rainbow of suitors…
… In her last year she refused opiates to reduce her pain. “I cannot help others in giving spiritual direction if I’m befuddled myself,” she said.
Jane Kidd, horsewoman and dressage advocate and administrator, was born on June 3, 1943. She died after a long illness on August 21, 2025, aged 82
https://www.thetimes.com/article/47ecc2a0-88f7-472d-baa6-003e3ae55c88