APPENDIX 2
As for the Spencers, Diana’s brother Charles, now twice divorced (and married for the third time), continues to be the 9th Earl Spencer. By no means an idle aristocrat, he was pursuing a promising career in the media prior to his father’s death. Since then he has followed this by writing books and inaugurating the Althorp Literary Festival. Althorp House itself has been much improved since he took over its management. Gone is the tacky décor of Raine Spencer, and the house has had its biggest restoration since the 18th century. To date, he has six daughters but only one son (from his second marriage), so the Spencer succession has been secured for another generation at least.*
The other great family descended from the marriage of Lady Dorothy Sidney to the Earl of Sunderland is the Marlborough branch of the Spencer/Churchills. John Churchill, England’s pre-eminent soldier in the late 17th and early 18th centuries, was created Duke of Marlborough for his great victory over the French at the Battle of Blenheim (1704). Further victories followed: Ramilles (1706), Oudenarde (1708) and Malplaquet (1709). A grateful nation rewarded their hero with a palace, Blenheim, which was built between 1705 and 1724. It is a huge building and the only palace in the UK that is not home to royalty. John Churchill had two daughters, the younger of whom married Sir Robert Spencer, 3rd Earl of Sunderland. They had three sons, the second of whom, Lt General Sir Charles Spencer, 3rd Duke of Marlborough, carried on the Marlborough title, while the third, the Honourable John Spencer, gave rise to the line of the Earls Spencer. The Dukedom of Marlborough has carried on through the centuries and is today held by John George Spencer-Churchill, 11th Duke of Marlborough and 13th Earl of Sunderland.
His son and heir apparent is Charles James Spencer-Churchill, Marquis of Blandford. He attained unwanted notoriety in the 1990s when it was revealed he was a drug addict; he was sent to prison in 1995 for forging prescriptions and again in 2007 for driving offences. As a result of this behaviour, his father disinherited him for a time so that, although he would still inherit the title Duke of Marlborough, the family properties, including Blenheim Palace, would pass to his brother George on whom has already been bestowed the title of Earl of Sunderland. However, the Marquis of Blandford has managed to stay clean from drugs for five years and to rebuild both his life and his reputation with his father. As a result, in November 2012 it was announced by the Duke that he is restoring Lord Blandford’s inheritance; he will, after all, succeed to the Blenheim estate when he becomes the 12th Duke of Marlborough.
A second important line of Spencer-Churchills descends from Lord Randolph Spencer-Churchill (d.1895), younger son of the 6th Duke of Marlborough. He was a Member of the House of Commons and, for a short time, held the post of Chancellor of the Exchequer. However, he overplayed his hand by resigning from this post and never achieved the position he really wanted, that of prime minister. He died from syphilis contracted from a prostitute at the relatively young age of 46.
Lord Randolph’s eldest son, Winston, was half American, with his mother, Jenny Jerome, coming from New York. Winston was born in Blenheim Palace, but as the son of a younger son he had no title. Even so, he was able to serve as Prime Minister as a commoner from 1940–45 (and again from 1951–6) and is credited with steering Great Britain safely through the critical years of the Second World War. Sir Winston Churchill was also a prolific writer as well as soldier and politician. What for other, lesser men would have been an entire life’s work was, for him, a part-time occupation to fill in the hours when he was not actively engaged in politics. This does not mean his writing was second-rate – far from it. His historical works, especially his magnum opus, the four volumes of his History of the English Speaking Peoples, won him the 1953 Nobel prize for literature. As if this were not enough, he was also a talented artist and even engaged in some bricklaying at Chartwell, his home near Westerham in Kent. As it happens, that is not as surprising as it at first seems. Winston Churchill, like his father Randolph, was a Freemason whose original function was building castles and cathedrals out of blocks of stone. Whether or not he attained the rank of rose-croix is a secret known only to his fellow freemasons, but it would be very surprising if he hadn’t.
Like his father and grandfather, Winston’s son, another Randolph, also went into Parliament. He did not achieve very much, but his first wife, the socialite Pamela Digby (who was later known as Pamela Harriman), achieved notoriety as the ‘greatest courtesan of the 20th century’. Not only was she married three times – her third husband being Averell Harriman, the former Governor of New York and US ambassador to first the USSR and then Britain – but she had numerous affairs with other, powerful men. Her son by Randolph Churchill was another Winston, who also went into Parliament. He did not attain high office, though, generally regarded as a lightweight if right-wing Conservative. He died in 2010, leaving behind two sons and two daughters to carry on the legacy.
More interesting due to her flamboyance was Winston’s half-sister, Arabella Churchill. One of the most famous hippies in Britain, she was the joint founder and organizer of the Glastonbury Festival of Rock Music. A peace crusader and charity fundraiser, she embraced Tibetan Buddhism. What her grandfather, Sir Winston Churchill, the Prime Minister, would have made of this we will never know, but he would surely have been much more upset to hear that her son, Jake, was jailed for three years in Australia on drug charges. She died from cancer in 2007.
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* See Chart 21: Dukes of Marlborough and Earls of Sunderland, page 246