Standing in front of the covers of
some of her hundreds of historical
romantic novels, Dame Barbara dons
pink, the colour she stipulated she
should be buried in
Dame Barbara celebrates her 90th
birthday, oozing fairytale glamour. She
not only wrote about romance, she
lived and breathed it, and enjoyed
"28 blissful years" of marriage to her
second husband Hugh.
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With her inimitable
personality undimmed to the end
DAME BARBARA CARTLAND
DIES PEACEFULLY IN HER SLEEP JUST WEEKS BEFORE HER 99TH
BIRTHDAY
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The indefatigable romantic novelist Dame Barbara Cartland, who died in her
sleep aged 98, was buried near her home last week, near an oak tree said to
have been planted by Elizabeth I.
Idiosyncratic to the last, Dame Barbara asked to be buried wearing pink
chiffon, accompanied by a tape of Perry Como singing I Believe. Over the
years, she penned over 700 romantic novels and became the darling of Fleet
Street due to her entertaining quips. And then - a bonus for the press - her
daughter Raine married Earl Spencer and she became the future step-grandmother
of the future bride of the Prince of Wales.
Born into a moneyed background in 1901, Barbara's glamorous prospects were
threatened briefly when her grandfather went bankrupt and her father was killed
in the Great War. But her mother determined standards should be maintained and
took the young Barbara and her brother to London to join society.
Whisked off her feet by marriage proposals, she wound up tying the knot with
Alexander McCorquodale. But the knot was soon to come undone and in 1936, she
began "28 blissful years" of marriage to her ex-husband's cousin
Hugh, who died in 1963.
Seduced by romance all her days, Dame Barbara wrote her first novel at the age
of 21. Her daughter Raine remembered: "My mother didn't just write about
romance. She believed in it. She found great personal happiness with Uncle
Hugh, my beloved step-father." |
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