Saturday March 28, 1987

 Moorhouse Inn, Leeds LS11 5NQ

Wind but sunshine. Graham phoned us from his car at 12 to say they would be with us at 12:30, when sure enough they rolled up. Matthew and Samuel seem more alike than ever, not physically, and one wouldn't think thy are separated by just over 12 months. Gill has been feeling 'under the weather' so much so that a couple of weeks ago they took the boys to the rectory and their grandparents on the Isle of Wight and went off to Paris for the weekend. It was very expensive. They are moving to West Haddon in Northants on April 5/6 after a seven month period of nomadic existence. Allt took them all to Temple Newsam. I cleaned the beer lines. Tonight John and Janette appeared and they sat with Graham and Gill while Ally and I worked. Later, John and I went for a Chinese take-way to the Golden Horn, where I saw 'Mad' Donald, who refused to speak to me. I drove John in his car and he seemed 'wary' about my driving. Naughty of him. We sat up late and retired at 3am after putting the clocks on one hour. Turgid.

The Prince of Wales arrived in Swaziland yesterday for a three-day visit during which he will hold talks with the 18-year-old King Mswati III. The tour will also take the Prince to Malawi and Kenya.

The Countess of Suffolk & Berkshire gave birth to a daughter, on March 28.

The Duchess of Somerset gave birth to a daughter at Queen Charlotte's Hospital on March 28, a sister for Sebastian.

Denisa Newborough.

A Daily Telegraph obituary deserves to be shared here in full: Denisa, Lady Newborough, who has died aged 79, was many things: wire-walker, nightclub girl, nude dancer, airpilot. She only refused to be two things - a whore and a spy "and there were attempts to make me both" she once wrote. She was also a milliner, a perfumier and an antiques dealer; but her real metier , in her early life at least, was what she called 'profitable romance'. Her opinions on the subject of presents from gentlemen would have done credit to the pen of Anita Loos: "I have never believed that jewels, any more than motor cars, can be called vulgar just because they are gigantic. Her admirers included the Kings of Spain and Bulgaria, Adolf Hitler (whose virility she doubted), Benito Mussolini (whom she described as a 'gigolo') and Sheikh ben Ghana (who gave her 500 sheep). When she lived in Paris, she had no fewer than five protectors - all 'shareholders' as she termed them - and persuaded each, who was ignorant of his fellows, to part with a flat or a house. She was earlier married to Jean Malpuech, the governor of Loas, who had died. But the climax of this stage of her career came in 1939 with her marriage to the 61-year-old fifth Lord (Tommy) Newborough, as his second wife. They were divorced in 1947. Denisa Josephine Braun was born on April Fool's Day 1913, in Subotica, Serbia. In her early teens she ran away to Budapest, where for a time she slept under bridges with tramps. Then, styling herself "Baronne de Brans", she became a nude dancer and mistress of boyars, including a pair of twins. A decade of adventures followed, in Sofia, Bucharest, Paris, St Moritz and Berlin. She spoke 14 languages. During the 1939-45 War, she served as a transport officer with the Red Cross, but was dismissed in 1941 because she was not of British birth. In 1946, shortly before her divorce, a receiving order was made against her for debts of £951, which attributed to losses at bridge when her skill had been impaired by unhappiness. She recovered her finances by designing outrageous hats ' "The Nicotine Hat", for example, which was covered with cigarettes, with half smoked imitations hanging over the bridge. In 1958 she published an autobiography, "The Fire In My Blood", the falvour of which may be surmised from such chapter headings as 'Gipsy Love', 'Elegant Sin in Bucharest', and 'On The Trail of the White Slavers'. She was convicted in 1964 of permitting her maisonette in Davies Street to be used  for the purpose of habitual prostitution, though he conviction was quashed on appeal. Lady Newborough was a great beauty and she was charming and funny. By conventional standards, her morality matched her flaming red hair but she remained as proud of the one as of the other. She is survived by her daughter, Juno, who is married to a dentist.

-=-