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| Lord Moyne. |
The 3rd Baron Moyne, scion of the Guinness brewing dynasty and son of Diana Mitford who wrote about the Mitford family, and went into banking, died 30 October, 2026. He was 96.
Jonathan Bryan Guinness was born 16 March, 1930, son of Bryan, 2nd Baron Moyne (1905-1992), and the society beauty, the Hon Diana Freeman-Mitford (1910-2003), third of the six famed Mitford Girls, who, after divorcing Guinness, married Sir Oswald Mosley, 6th Bt.
Shortly after the birth of his brother Desmond, Diana met Sir Oswald Mosley, 6th Baronet (1896-1980), who was soon to become the leader of the British Union of Fascists. Diana married Mosley in the drawing room of the Nazi propaganda chief Joseph Goebbels in Berlin. Four years later, when Jonathan was ten, his mother was interned, [and] remained there until November 1943, her admiration for Hitler surviving the duration of the Second World War and the revelations of Nazi atrocities.
His childhood was spent in England and Ireland, mainly at the family’s houses at Biddesden in Wiltshire and Knockmaroon beside Phoenix Park in Dublin.
From The Times: While campaigning unsuccessfully for a seat as a Conservative MP, Jonathan Guinness, later the third Baron Moyne, attracted notoriety for saying that murderers should have razor blades left in their prison cells to enable them to “do the decent thing”. The press nicknamed him “Old Razor Blades”. Guinness later insisted he had been misquoted and meant that prisoners should be able to stay “decent” by shaving daily. It was the sort of remark that followed him through life. Many years later, welcoming a journalist to his London office, he remarked that the place had been compared to a brothel, adding hastily that he had never been in a brothel.
As a member of the Guinness brewing dynasty, he had seemed assured of a privileged place in life… yet financial troubles followed him into his later years. In his seventies, he became caught up in a Swedish fraud case, was declared bankrupt and helped to make ends meet by selling health bracelets.
In 1984, with access to unpublished papers and the surviving relatives on his mother’s side, Guinness published, with his daughter Catherine, The House of Mitford, which detailed the lives of Nancy the novelist, Jessica the communist, Unity the admirer of Hitler, and Deborah, Duchess of Devonshire. Reviewers found him too forgiving of Diana and Unity. When Diana died in 2003, at the age of 93, Guinness wrote letters to the press in her defence.
He was twice wed, firstly, 25 July, 1951 (div. 1963), Ingrid Olivia Georgia Wyndham (1931-2009), scion of the Barons Leconfield, daughter of Maj. Guy Richard Charles Wyndham (1896-1948), and his wife the former Grethe Wulfsberg; and married 2ndly, 10 January, 1964, Suzanne (Sue) Lisney (who died 2005), daughter of Harold William Denis Lisney, of Cadaqués, Gerona, Spain.
He succeeded his father as 3rd Baron Moyne, 6 July, 1992.
His first wife Ingrid married 2ndly, 7 August, 1963, Jonathan's cousin, (Henry) Paul Guinness Channon, later life peer as Baron Kelvedon (1935-2007), son of the diarist, Sir Henry 'Chips' Channon, MP (1897-1958), and Lady Honor Dorothy Mary Guinness (1909-1976), daughter of the 2nd Earl of Iveagh, KG (1874-1967).
From his first marriage he had three children, the Hon Catherine Ingrid Guinness (born 1 June, 1952), the Hon Jasper Jonathan Richard Guinness (1954-2011), and the Hon Valentine Guy Bryan Guinness (born 9 March, 1959).
From his second marriage he had two children, the Hon Sebastian Walter Denis Guinness (born 15 February, 1964), and the Hon Daphne Suzannah Diana Guinness (born 9 November, 1967).
Lord Moyne had three further children with Susan Mary Taylor, daughter of Ronald Taylor, of Oldham, Lancashire, - Diana Gloria Isolde Rose Dimilo Taylor (born 1981), Aster Sophia Mary Taylor (born 1984), and Thomas Julian William Jon Taylor (born 1986),
Susan Taylor, who died in 2003, had travelled through Europe and Asia, worked at the Beatles’ Apple offices and performed in circuses. When they met in 1978 she was living in a stone hut in the foothills of the Pyrenees. She attended a party he gave at Cadaqués on the Spanish coast, and they met again at an art exhibition. They discovered an unlikely connection: she had served time in Holloway for a cannabis offence, and he told her that his mother had been imprisoned there. Taylor had never heard of Mosley. Guinness liked her lack of interest in politics. She eventually settled in Cornwall, and Guinness divided his time between her and his wife.
Guinness’s connection with the Guinness name extended to its housing charities and for 40 years — until his removal in 1997 — he served as a trustee of the Guinness Trust. His great-grandfather, Edward Cecil Guinness, later the first Earl of Iveagh, had established the trust in 1890 with £200,000 to provide decent homes for London’s working poor, setting aside another £50,000 for Dublin. The London trust built blocks of flats for poorer families to replace overcrowded accommodation while the Dublin fund became the Iveagh Trust, leading to Brendan Behan’s famous remark: “The Guinnesses have been good to the people of Ireland, but then again, the people of Ireland have been very good to the Guinnesses.”
Lord Moyne is succeeded in the peerage (created UK, 1932), by his second, but eldest surviving, son, the Hon Valentine Guinness, who was married to Lulu Rivett-Carnac (aka 'Lulu Guinness') the handbag and accessories designer.
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