The blue-blood family feud that would make Jeremy Kyle blush: Their father quit as a minister after being caught with a prostitute. Now, four of Lord Lambton's children are battling over his millions - and this week it turned REALLY dirty
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Surely it is a sign of the times that Edward Richard Lambton, who as the 7th Earl of Durham is one of Britain’s loftiest aristocrats, should chronicle his daily life via Facebook.
Here, the blue-blooded 51-year-old, who calls himself ‘Ned,’ offers his circle of upmarket ‘friends’ a glimpse at his rarefied existence.
In one corner of the site, you’ll see his striking property Lambton Castle, the faux-Norman family seat in County Durham built by ancestor John Lambton, a Victorian statesman.
Lord of all he surveys: Edward Richard Lambton the 7th Earl of Durham with wife Marina in 2011
In another, you can see nearby Biddick Hall, a ten-bedroom Queen Anne house, surrounded by a 7,000-acre estate, where Ned was partly raised, and which he now rents out for weddings and corporate jollies.
Friends can watch videos of Ned, who also owns a motor yacht called Lone Wolf, playing guitar in his band, Pearl TN, in a studio near his apartment in Kensington. They can also, if they so desire, ponder pictures of Ned’s third wife Marina Hanbury, a former model 22 years his junior.
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ShareShe can be seen variously showing off their bonny 18-month-old daughter, Lady Stella, beaming at her wedding to Ned in 2011, and posing in lace underwear, in the couple’s bedroom, later that year.
But the most striking images of his recent life were surely taken at the Villa Cetinale, his magnificent 12-bedroom pile in rural Tuscany. The vast property, with its marble floors, four-poster beds, and sweeping staircases, was purchased by Ned’s late father, Antony, in the Seventies.
It became famous as the bolthole to which Antony, the former Tory minister better known as Lord Lambton, fled after being forced to resign in 1973, when he was photographed in bed with two dominatrix prostitutes.
Last year, Ned invited Vanity Fair magazine, and its photographer, to tour the palatial Villa Cetinale, which is set in 165 acres of gardens and where his recent house guests included those paragons of virtue Kate Moss and Jade Jagger.
Many of their photos captured the 17th-century baroque property’s priceless collection of art, and antiquities, along with its rambling gardens and olive groves. But some had an edgier feel.
Notorious: Lord Lambton at the Villa Cetinale, the magnificent 12-bedroom pile in rural Tuscany
One particularly striking picture, for example, showed Ned in chinos and a panama hat relaxing on a sun lounger alongside not one, but two topless socialites — one blonde; the other brunette.
To the casual observer of these images, it would be fair to assume the playboy Earl, whose inherited personal fortune — including his estates — has been estimated at £180million, enjoys a carefree life.
But reality is rarely quite as simple as it may first appear — especially in the turbo-charged world of our aristocratic elite.
Indeed, a rather closer examination of Ned’s online activity provides clues about the stupendously ugly controversy which has lately enveloped the House of Lambton.
You get an immediate whiff of it by perusing the Earl’s Facebook ‘friends’. There are 323, including an array of prominent toffs — from Petronella Wyatt to the notorious former jailbird and drug addict James, the Marquess of Blandford.
But not one of these ‘friends’ has the surname Lambton.
You get another clue from Ned’s ‘profile picture’ on the social network. Recently, it was updated to an image of a volcano, surrounded by mushroom clouds. Before that, it showed Ned, in martial arts clothes, preparing to deliver a karate chop.
Both images are grimly appropriate. For Ned is currently a man at war. And, as the absence of Lambtons from his friend circle suggests, his opponents are among his closest relatives.
Last week, it emerged that the Earl had recently served a writ at the High Court in London against three of his five elder sisters.
It was the latest development in an unseemly dispute that stretches back to 2006, when Ned’s father died in Italy, at the age of 84.
The death allowed Ned to inherit the Earldom of Durham. He also became the beneficiary of a vast property portfolio, which is largely controlled, apparently for tax purposes, by overseas trusts.
Controversy was soon to break out, however, over his father’s will, which valued his remaining estate at £12million. It stipulated that all of this money would be left to Ned. Not one of the five sisters was to receive a penny.
Family Lambton: Baby Ned with his mother Lady Belinda known as Bindy Lambton and sisters, who are now at war
Though in keeping with the English tradition of primogeniture, under which first born sons inherit everything, those terms are at odds with Italy’s Napoleonic law, which dictates that assets must be evenly split between siblings.
The three sisters, Beatrix, Lucinda (known as Lucy), and Anne, say they were led to believe that Ned would voluntarily offer them a small portion of their father’s estate.
But it wasn’t forthcoming. They are therefore now attempting to sue for a slice of the £12million pot, which was largely comprised of paintings by the neo-classical artist Josef Zoffany.
The sisters argue that since Antony had lived in Italy with his mistress for two decades — and been resident there, for tax purposes, until the time he died — his will ought to be subject to Italian law.
Indeed, in his will — a copy of which has been obtained by this newspaper — Antony declared himself to be ‘domiciled, resident, and ordinarily resident in Italy’.
After receiving Ned’s writ, the sisters said in a statement that he ‘has always thrown his toys out of the pram. The only difference this time is that the toys are his own family. It’s just terribly sad.’
None of them will now speak further about the Downton Abbey-style dispute, saying they do not wish to jeopardise proceedings.
‘My lips are sealed,’ says Lady Lucinda, the 70-year-old TV personality and architectural commentator, when I call.
But no such concerns trouble Lucinda’s husband Sir Peregrine Worsthorne, the former newspaper editor.
‘It’s a very sad business,’ he tells me. ‘It has broken up the family, and it is poisoning our lives. Ned has been entirely irrational and completely selfish. His treatment of his sisters has been highly insensitive.’
Sir Peregrine, 89, denies that the sisters are motivated by greed, or an irrational jealousy of their younger brother. He says they’re seeking a small portion of his estate, equating to roughly £1million each.
Lord Lambton with Belinda Ned and Isabella, in the grounds of their home at Biddick Hall, County Durham in 1973
‘A million sounds like a lot, but it’s nothing to him,’ he adds. ‘He wouldn’t have to sell off the castle or anything. He’s very rich, and they’re not asking for something he couldn’t easily provide. But Ned just doesn’t like being told what to do.’
And if the Earl fails to relinquish the cash, Sir Peregrine claims that the sisters will be left almost penniless. ‘This isn’t a case about greed, but necessity,’ he says.
‘I mean, Lucy hasn’t got a bean. She’s worked all her life in TV, and she’s 70 now. I’ve got my own children, so when I die she will be left pretty hard up.’
Some of the money has already been promised by Lucinda to her grandson to pay for him to attend boarding school. Because the cash has yet to materialise, the child’s school was recently informed that he cannot attend.
‘It was rather embarrassing,’ adds Sir Peregrine.
The other two sisters — Anne, 58, is an actress and Beatrix, 63, is a widow — are for their part ‘extremely hard up’, he says.
‘They really have very little. They were never sent to university, or allowed to learn how to earn a living. It’s terribly sad.’
Sir Peregrine argues that aristocratic tradition gives Ned a moral duty to provide for siblings. ‘We just assumed that he would do something for them, in good time. But of course he never has. So it has come to this.’
Ned, for his part, appears to believe otherwise.
‘Lord Lambton’s will left everything at his death in 2006 to his only son, having already provided for his other children,’ his lawyers said this week.
‘Three of Lord Durham’s five sisters are now claiming under Italian law a share of everything that Lord Lambton ever owned, even assets that were no longer owned by him at his death.’
The lawyers claim a recent agreement to settle the dispute ‘fell apart’ at the last minute. ‘Lord Durham made a proposal.
Lord Lambton was forced to resign in 1973, when he was photographed in bed with two dominatrix prostitutes
Unfortunately his sisters’ lawyer sought to include a term in the wording of the agreement, which can’t be agreed,’ the lawyers say. ‘An offer in excess of this sum remains on the table.’
A friend of Ned, meanwhile, tells me he believes the sisters were ‘looked after’ during their father’s lifetime, and are now being ‘greedy’.
‘The simple fact is that you just can’t keep estates like this together if everything gets divided equally. The money, the capital, has to go with them, otherwise they won’t remain a going concern for the next generation. That’s why we have primogeniture.
‘Tony knew this. He was a very generous man, and a very rich man. He gave Lucinda her home, for example, which is now worth a million or two. And he certainly helped Beatrix, so don’t go thinking they got nothing.’
Whoever you believe, the coming legal dispute is certainly shaping to be a deeply unpleasant.
Indeed, Sir Peregrine says that during the course of the dispute Ned — whose parents were famously promiscuous — has already gone so far as to suggest that the sisters might not be Lord Lambton’s biological daughters.
‘That was completely below the belt,’ he adds. ‘And of course Ned’s paternity is just as chancy as theirs. When you look at the dates, the only child who was unquestionably [Lord Lambton’s] is Lucy, actually. The others are all in question.’
Presumably his rationale is that Lucy was conceived at the beginning of her parents’ marriage, before they both slipped into a life of casual adultery.
Should things continue to escalate, it is by no means impossible that the Earl of Durham and his sisters could be forced to submit to paternity tests.
So how did a family which supposedly occupies the highest echelons of polite society become embroiled in a dispute headed for the sort of denouement you might expect from the Jeremy Kyle show?
Lord (Antony) Lambton is probably to blame. Tall, dark, handsome, and stupendously rich, he became a Tory MP in 1951 and was seen as a rising political star.
But he failed to practise the conservatism he preached, was serially unfaithful to wife Bindy, visited prostitutes regularly and took drugs.
In 1973, when he was a junior defence minister in Edward Heath’s government, the News of the World obtained photographs of him in bed with dominatrix Norma Levy and another woman, smoking cannabis.
After being exposed as her client, Lambton promptly resigned. In a TV interview with Robin Day, he said he enjoyed visiting prostitutes because ‘people sometimes like variety’. In a debriefing with MI5, Lambton added that he had turned to debauchery because of the ‘futility’ of his day job in government.
Soon afterwards, he was fined £300 for possessing cannabis and amphetamines, and fled to Italy, where he took up residence at the Villa Centinale with a mistress, Claire Ward, who had been 1954’s debutante of the year.
For the ensuing decades, until his death, she and Lambton held court at the villa, where he was dubbed the ‘King of Chiantishire’ and famed for hosting drug-fuelled parties.
It was a legendarily debauched existence.
One former lover of his from the era claimed that Lambton would pay black male prostitutes to sleep with her, while he watched. Countless others spoke of his relentless libido.
Petronella Wyatt has claimed that he attempted to seduce her, while she was a teenager, by exposing himself.
House guests over the years included everyone from the Rolling Stones to Princess Margaret and Prince Charles. In later years, Tony and Cherie Blair also paid a visit.
Meanwhile, Lambton’s wife Bindy — who died in 2003 — remained in the UK, with their son Ned, who was 11 at the time of the Norma Levy scandal and went on to be unhappily educated at Eton.
It is hardly surprising, given these circumstances, that the current Earl’s adult life would follow an unorthodox course.
Ned Lambton with first bride Christobel on their wedding day in 1983. The couple divorced in 1995
Though he’s never had what you might call a day job, Ned did play guitar with a rock band called the Frozen Turkeys in the Eighties.
In 1983, he married Christabel McEwen, the mother of his eldest son, Fred, who is now a left-leaning environmental activist.
They split up in the mid-Nineties — she moved swiftly on to the TV personality Jools Holland — after which Ned took up with second wife Catherine Fitzgerald, who is now the other half of actor Dominic West.
In 2000, Ned moved to a mud hut on a beach in the Philippines, saying he wanted ‘to indulge all my Robinson Crusoe, Tarzan fantasies’ and, shortly afterwards, fathered a daughter called Molly, by then-girlfriend Jennie Guy, an Irish artist.
He wooed third wife Marina, an old family friend, by sending her a Facebook message declaring: ‘I know I am way too old for you but I love you.’
This privileged, if unstructured existence is said by Sir Peregrine to be at the root of the current family rift.
‘Ned has never been crossed in his life before, a life of complete self-indulgence,’ he says.
‘This is the first time he’s been questioned by anyone in his life. And, as someone who shares his father’s wilfulness, he seems to find that a very disagreeable experience.’
The dispute has been hugely upsetting for Ned’s two other sisters Rose and Isabella (who is financially secure having married the wealthy landowner Sir Philip Naylor-Leyland).
Both sides in this legal dispute have not spoken for over a year, including at family weddings and funerals, where according to Sir Peregrine ‘we now sit on opposite sides of a large church’.
Of course, the longer things continue, the more both sides will pay to lawyers. The three sisters say the source of their legal funds is a ‘private matter’, though I understand that their costs are being underwritten by a wealthy acquaintance of the family who has a property near Villa Cetinale and is not fond of the Earl.
Ned, meanwhile, has deep pockets, meaning that the dispute could yet continue for years.
‘If he really wanted to settle this, he could do it tomorrow,’ adds Sir Peregrine, wearily.
‘We all could. But, sadly, he’s left us no choice but to pursue this until it brings a result.’
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