Ian McCorquodale with his mother, Dame Barbara Cartland
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Ian McCorquodale, the son of author Dame Barbara Cartland and half-brother of Princess Diana’s stepmother, Raine, Countess Spencer, has died aged 85.
Devoted to his mother until her death in 2000, McCorquodale managed her career and, later, her estate, taking great pride in championing her collection of published works (which, at the time of her death, numbered 723). Following the breakdown of his first marriage, he moved back in with his mother at the family estate of Camfield Place, near Hatfield, Hertfordshire, The Times reports, and once revealed how there was a black tie dress code for dinner, even when it was just the two of them. ‘We ate formally with all the silverware until she was 97,’ he said.
Born in 1937, McCorquodale was the elder of two sons born to Cartland and her second husband, Hugh McCorquodale, who was the cousin of her first husband, Alexander McCorquodale. Alexander was the father of Raine Spencer, who became stepmother to Diana, Princess of Wales, on her marriage to John Spencer, the 8th Earl Spencer. Variously titled the Countess of Dartmouth, Countess Spencer and La Comtesse de Chambrun, Cartland’s daughter was perhaps best known to the press and public as ‘Acid Raine’, Diana’s wicked stepmother.
Dame Barbara with her daughter Raine and sons Ian and Glen, 1940
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Ian McCorquodale’s childhood was partially spent at a Grade II-listed mansion in Mayfair (currently on the market for £35 million), where his mother entertained family and friends including the Duchess of Argyll, Lord Mountbatten and Prince Philip. In 1947, Cartland hosted her 18-year-old daughter’s coming-of-age party there, after which Raine was named ‘debutante of the year’. Just months after her ‘successful season’, Raine married the Hon. Gerarld Humphry Legge, who was to become the 9th Earl of Dartmouth. The couple shared four children before they divorced. In 1976, she married the 8th Earl Spencer.
Cartland and her family also spent time at a country home in Bedfordshire, before moving to Camfield Place in 1950. Ian McCorquodale was educated at Harrow School and later Magdalene College, Cambridge. ‘On graduating he joined the family publishing firm before moving on to become sales and export manager at the British Printing Corporation (BPC), before its sale to Robert Maxwell,’ The Times notes. He was a one-time owner of Debrett’s Peerage.
He married firstly, in 1970, Anna Chisholm, daughter of RAF squadron leader John Harry McKellar Chisholm, and the couple had two daughters before divorcing in 2003. In September 2000, he wed Bryony Jane Susan St John Brind, a former ballerina who was 22 years his junior. The date of their wedding was originally set for 21 May 2000 but was later delayed because of his mother’s poor health. Cartland eventually died on the original wedding date. Despite being much younger than her husband, Brind died in 2015 aged 55. In the final years of his life, McCorquodale suffered two strokes. His cause of death has not been disclosed.
