Not every woman flaunts herself at a glittering showbusiness extravaganza dressed in a masculine jacket slyly open to reveal she doesn’t have a stitch of clothing beneath it.
And it takes the most confident of models to turn up with her hair dyed pink and a dress so sheer it displays her underwear.
But as ostentatious as these red-carpet appearances undoubtedly were, they were upstaged by the figure teetering on giant platform shoes whose black outfit and bouffant platinum-blonde hair resembled a living edition of the creamy beer their family are famous for.
Meet the Guinnesses, whose head-turning presence this week overshadowed the launch of the Netflix period piece about the brewing clan.
For not only did they manage to hijack the paparazzi who pivoted from the stars of the show to this gothic ensemble, they left other guests at the London premiere in open-mouthed astonishment.
If this was a snapshot of the real-life family, then the series would surely be as thirst-quenching as its richly foaming stout.
In eight parts, it purports to tell the story of what befalls the family’s fortunes on the death of its mid-19th century patriarch Sir Benjamin Guinness, leaving four children to determine the fate of the Dublin brewery – and their own.
Penned by Peaky Blinders creator Steven Knight, it is a sassy saga against a rock-‘n’-roll soundtrack of infidelity, sex, a mariage blanc, sibling rivalry and violence.
Meet the Guinnesses, whose head-turning presence this week overshadowed the launch of the Netflix period piece about the brewing clan. Pictured: The family at the premiere
If this was a snapshot of the real-life family, then the series (pictured) would surely be as thirst-quenching as its richly foaming stout
Among the star-studded cast are two very English leading men – Happy Valley’s James Norton as the family’s fictionalised enforcer Sean Rafferty and Louis Partridge, who played Sex Pistol Sid Vicious in Danny Boyle’s 2022 TV series about the punk band.
Early reviews of the Succession-esque drama, are, however, decidedly mixed.
The Irish Times labels it a ‘wildly unfaithful retelling of the adventures… of the Anglo-Irish dynasty’ and sniffily accuses Knight of having an ‘at best rudimentary understanding of Ireland’s experiences of colonialism’. Another waspish aside points out that filming was done ‘mainly in Liverpool’.
But for all Knight’s theatrical inventions, it is the real-life modern heirs of this enduring lineage that are the most compelling – as this week’s extraordinary family photograph which the Daily Mail likened to an aristocratic spin-off of The Addams Family, proved. But more of that later.
The story of the Guinnesses is rooted in tragedy and misfortune, wild behaviour, scandal and sexual promiscuity.
But what is it about a family that for decades has attracted both adversity and infamy and whose very name has become synonymous with great wealth and greater intrigue?
In part, of course, it is its visibility and sheer size. The aristocratic titles – an earldom, peerages and baronetcies – have secured its place in the upper reaches of society, as have the fabulous mansions, filled with treasures from a seemingly inexhaustible fortune.
The late Lord Moyne, better known as the poet and novelist Bryan Guinness, whose first wife Diana Mitford abandoned him for pre-war fascist leader Sir Oswald Mosley, said the reason for the fascination with his family was ‘not unconnected with the advertising of the name with the brewery’s products’.
Among the star-studded cast are two very English leading men – Happy Valley’s James Norton (left) as the family’s fictionalised enforcer Sean Rafferty, and Louis Partridge (centre, with Anthony Boyle as Arthur Guinness, right)
Almost a century ago even Debrett’s, the chronicler of the nobility, described their multiple branches as ‘the most complicated family in the [guide] book.’
But beyond that, the notoriety that clung to the clan was what became known as the ‘Curse of the Guinnesses’.
In earlier times their riches and their lives of privilege, fuelled by the astute and rigid control of the thriving family business, meant they were sheltered in their vast estates from the public gaze.
But in later generations when boundaries of class began to fall, they began to mix in different, more bohemian circles. They befriended rock stars, nightclub owners and celebrities. And they dabbled in drugs.
Along with glamour and the extravagance, tragedy stalked the clan remorselessly. So often and so frequent were these blows that they seemed to be more than just random misfortune.
There have been suicides, an assassination, a drowning, car crashes, drug overdoses, a kidnapping and even a fatal fall from Mount Snowdon.
‘Many of the Guinnesses have had sad lives, but not many of them have been poor,’ an observer once noted.
‘And if they were poor, it was only because they had squandered their inheritance.’
The late Lord Moyne, better known as the poet and novelist Bryan Guinness, whose first wife Diana Mitford (pictured together at their wedding in 1929) abandoned him for pre-war fascist leader Sir Oswald Mosley, said the reason for the fascination with his family was ‘not unconnected with the advertising of the name with the brewery’s products’
This week marks the 300th anniversary of the birth of the brewery’s founder, the first Arthur Guinness who invented the much-loved porter which now sells 1.8billion pints a year.
He established the company at its Dublin base in 1759 and within 70 years it had grown to be the largest brewery in the world.
By the time his great-grandson Edward floated it on the London Stock Exchange in 1886, he had become the richest man in Ireland.
When the First World War broke out in 1914, Edward had added so much more wealth, he was said to be the richest man in Britain, more prosperous even than the most affluent Rothschild.
It is the story of how Edward, known as Ned and later the 1st Earl of Iveagh, achieved this extraordinary success by turning a family of brewers into plutocrats and friends of princes and kings that is at the heart of the Netflix drama.
In Steven Knight’s hands, it is a fable that begins with the death of Sir Benjamin in 1868 and the rivalry between his four children – Ned, the youngest, Arthur, the eldest, Benjamin Jnr and Annie.
Their father’s will had left the business in the hands of Arthur and Ned, ignoring Army officer Benjamin, and Annie who had married into the peerage.
Knight sets it all against the turbulence of growing Irish unrest against the Crown – at the time Dublin was a provincial British city – and the horror of the potato famine.
This week marks the 300th anniversary of the birth of the brewery’s founder, the first Arthur Guinness (pictured) who invented the much-loved porter which now sells 1.8billion pints a year
According to a timely new book about this era written by the current head of the family – and Ned’s great-great-grandson – the 4th Earl of Iveagh, friction between the siblings was fairly modest.
The family were deeply religious with their days bookended by prayers, and as they enriched themselves both Arthur and Ned invested huge sums in social projects, not just improving the lot of their workers but the poor generally with housing and slum clearance.
Both had good marriages, but Arthur’s was childless, leading to speculation that his was unconsummated, or as the current Lord Iveagh delicately puts it in Guinness A Family Succession, a so-called mariage blanc because ‘he was not sexually interested in women.’
There were other skeletons in the Guinness closet: it had been rumoured that an uncle of the brothers, also called Arthur, had been a homosexual and had taken a much younger brewery employee as his lover.
At a time when it was not straightforward to be gay, the scandal was hushed up thanks to the family’s money and a ticket to London where the young employee, who even more embarrassingly was a Guinness nephew, changed his name and became one of the most successful playwrights of the Victorian age – Dionysius Boursiquot.
Where there was rivalry between the two brothers and partners in the business was over their social ambitions, as each sought to have the grandest parties and the most prestigious guests.
There were constant rounds of shooting parties, balls and levees and both spent long periods of each year – the ‘season’ – in England.
But it was Ned who really ran the business, modernising it and taking production to new heights.
By the time his great-grandson Edward (pictured, Louis Partridge, who plays him in the series) floated it on the London Stock Exchange in 1886, he had become the richest man in Ireland. It is the story of how Edward achieved this success that is at the heart of the Netflix drama
And when he finally bought his brother out, the expansion was turbocharged.
Ned used his deep pockets to buy an English estate, Elveden – a house in Suffolk set in 23,000 acres which he bought from the son of the Maharajah of the Punjab, better known as the former owner of the Koh-i-Noor diamond, the world’s most famous jewel.
There, Ned and wife Adelaide would entertain the Prince of Wales – later King Edward VII – and whose son King George V would become a close friend.
And it was where Ned raised their three sons, Rupert – the 2nd Lord Iveagh – Ernest and Walter, before dying in 1927, by then the second richest man in England.
But tragedy was to taint the lives of all three sons – Rupert’s son-in-law, Prince Friedrich of Prussia, mysteriously drowned in the River Rhine, and Olivia Channon, his Oxford undergraduate great-granddaughter, whose father Paul served in Margaret Thatcher’s Cabinet, died of a drug overdose.
Walter, a brilliant politician, was killed by Jewish terrorists in war-time Cairo in 1944.
But the curse said to have struck the family – now firmly entrenched in British society – really began with Ernest’s three dazzling daughters, Maureen, Oonagh and Aileen, who cut a swathe through the social salons of London in the 1920s and 1930s.
Their base was their father’s London home in Belgravia, now the Irish embassy. It was not, of course, his only house. Although only the second son, Ernest owned a spread in Surrey, another in Dublin’s Phoenix Park – a mansion so large it spanned a road by means of an enclosed bridge – and Ashford Castle in Co Mayo.
According to a timely new book about this era written by the current head of the family – and Ned’s great-great-grandson – the 4th Earl of Iveagh (pictured at the House of Guinness premiere in London), friction between the siblings was fairly modest
When the trio ‘came out’, with their looks, their golden hair and their money, they were dubbed the ‘glorious Guinness girls’.
The first to wed was Aileen, who married a cousin, the Hon Brinsley Sheridan Plunkett. Oonagh married at 19 to the Hon Philip Kindersley, with whom she had two children, Gay and Tessa.
From Ernest, she received the beautiful Irish estate of Luggala, but the marriage broke up and she moved on to the 4th Baron Oranmore and Browne, with whom she had two more children, sons Garech and Tara.
Sorrow was not far away. Aged 17, Tessa died during a diphtheria epidemic after vaccination triggered a fatal asthma attack.
Luggala continued to be party central and one regular guest was said to like taking her clothes off and dancing on the dinner table.
At 48, the impulsive Oonagh married for a third time to Cuban dress designer Miguel Ferreras, 17 years her junior.
Almost at once she realised her mistake, and in 1960 it cost her £6million to get out of the marriage.
By now, another tragedy was imminent. Tara, the wildest of her sons who was friends with the Rolling Stones, was killed aged 21 in a car crash driving through Chelsea in his Lotus car, inspiring the Beatles’ A Day In The Life.
The family were deeply religious with their days bookended by prayers, and as they enriched themselves both Arthur and Ned invested huge sums in social projects. Pictured: House of Guinness on Netflix
Maureen (pictured in 1935), Oonagh and Aileen Guinness cut a swathe through the social salons of London in the 1920s and 1930s
The same combination of wealth, glamour and mayhem followed Maureen, second of the ‘glorious Guinnesses’.
She was pursued by London’s most eligible bachelors but in 1930 married Basil Blackwood, heir to the Marquess of Dufferin and Ava.
A great mimic, one of her party pieces was to impersonate her maid to confuse guests.
Her husband’s death in the war was a devastating blow. She married twice more but, like her sisters, kept her title.
There was another blow in later life when her son Sheridan, the 5th and last Marquess, died from Aids. On his death the title became extinct.
Meanwhile, her daughter Lady Caroline Blackwood, another great beauty, took louche behaviour to a new level.
The woman whose coming out dinner was attended by Princess Margaret fell madly in love with the bohemian and capricious painter Lucian Freud and promptly married him, only for it to be dissolved after four years.
She then married composer Israel Citkowitz, 20 years her senior, with whom she had three daughters. The eldest, Natalya, died in her teens from a drug overdose.
The first to wed was Aileen (pictured), who married a cousin, the Hon Brinsley Sheridan Plunkett
Tara Browne, one of the sons of Aileen, was killed aged 21 in a car crash driving through Chelsea in his Lotus car (pictured, the wreckage), inspiring the Beatles’ A Day In The Life
Where there was rivalry between Arthur and Ned (pictured as portrayed in House of Guinness on Netflix) was over their social ambitions, as each sought to have the grandest parties and the most prestigious guests
While still married, Caroline had a son with distinguished American poet Robert Lowell, then at the height of his fame.
They later married but the union was doomed as Caroline descended into heavy drinking.
Elsewhere the current Lord Iveagh’s aunt, Lady Henrietta Guinness, who had married an Italian, took her own life by jumping off a bridge in 1978.
Shortly before her death she was said to have remarked: ‘If I had been poor, I would have been happy.’
The same year Major Dennys Guinness was found dead in his Hampshire cottage after an apparent suicide aged 44, and four-year-old Peter Guinness was killed in a car crash.
Others found the surname a dangerous burden. In 1986, Jennifer, the wife of John Guinness, was kidnapped by terrorists from their home near Dublin.
During her eight-day ordeal she tried to explain to the gunmen that they had gone for the wrong branch of the family and that she and her husband were not part of ‘the Guinnessty’.
She was later freed after a six-hour siege but her husband’s death in a climbing accident in Snowdonia two years later was labelled another manifestation of the ‘curse’.
The current Lord Iveagh’s aunt, Lady Henrietta Guinness (right, with her sister Elizabeth Nugent, left), who had married an Italian, took her own life by jumping off a bridge in 1978
These days the Guinnesses are more discreet, but there are exceptions, as evidenced by this week’s exhibition (pictured). So, who are these colourful figures?
More recently, in 2004 Robert Hesketh, son-in-law of Lord Moyne, died after taking heroin at a party in Marlborough, Wiltshire, and in 2020, Honor Uloth – Lord Iveagh’s niece – drowned in a swimming pool in Chichester, West Sussex.
These days the Guinnesses are more discreet, but there are exceptions, as evidenced by this week’s exhibition.
So, who are these colourful figures? From left, the first is Lady Mary Charteris, 38, daughter of the eccentric Earl of Wemyss, who once practised trepanning – drilling holes in the head to relieve depression and stimulate creativity. A dedicated party girl, Lady Mary is married to musician Robbie Furze.
Teetering on those heels is Daphne Guinness, who grew up in a monastery in Spain where Salvador Dali was a neighbour. She married Greek shipping magnate Spyros Niarchos at 19 and then, following her divorce, entered the London fashion world. Her lovers have included French philosopher Bernard-Henri Levy.
Lord Iveagh, 56, author and head of the Guinness family, became the youngest peer in the House of Lords when he inherited his title aged 23. He has a fortune of around £916million. His home at the aforementioned Elveden has been used as a film location multiple times, including for Netflix’s The Crown.
His interior designer ex-wife Clare came under scrutiny after it emerged she had flown on sex offender Jeffrey Epstein’s plane – dubbed the Lolita Express – 32 times, although she is not suspected of any crime.
Fourth from left is Ivana Lowell, 59, who came up with the idea for the drama. The daughter of Lady Caroline Blackwood, she was sexually abused by her nanny’s husband as a child and nearly died when an accident with a kettle left her with burns across 70 per cent of her body. She lost her father, stepfather and sister before she turned 13 and later discovered her biological father was writer Ivan Moffat.
Next, Jasmine Guinness, 48, is a designer and model whose picture hangs in the National Portrait Gallery. It was hardly surprising that Celeste Guinness, 35, Jasmine’s younger sister, went for a punk look. In 2019, the musician said she had formed an all-female band Deep Tan with Osama bin Laden’s niece Wafah Dufour.
Should Netflix want to make a follow-up series, it has a ready-made cast.
