SOCIETY:In the months before her death in 2010, Miranda Guinness made a documentary about her love affair with Ireland, writes BERNICE HARRISON
FROM THE MOMENT Lady Miranda Guinness arrived in Dublin as the 23-year-old bride of brewing heir Benjamin, she cut a dash. Tall, vivacious and beautiful, she had a penchant for sports cars, a love for fashion and the sort of old-world taste that new money can never quite buy.
It was 1963 and her new husband had agreed to become chairman of Guinness – the last of the family ever to do so. Determined to make a go of being transplanted from the glittering social scene the young pair had enjoyed in London, Miranda set about creating a glamorous life for herself in Dublin. And she did. By the 1970s, her parties were legendary – bringing together artists, politicians, business people and diplomats: “I tried to find the most delicious combination of people,” she says in Return to Farmleigh, a new documentary following her final visit to her old home in the Phoenix Park.
For two decades she was arguably the most stylish woman in Ireland – making the world’s best-dressed list in 1979 – and as the home-grown fashion industry started to develop, she was its champion, agreeing to model Irish clothes on a US trade mission, never failing to mention in interviews that she was wearing Sybil Connolly, Pat Crowley or Ib Jorgensen and even persuading Gay Byrne in the early 1980s to devote a Late Late Show to emerging Irish designers including John Rocha.
The social pages in Image magazine, Miranda’s Diary, are said to have been named after her because she was such fixture on the social scene. Even Dubliners far removed from her circle were familiar with her name – the last Guinness ship, which was docked on City Quay and bore the company’s pristine cream and blue livery, was called Lady Miranda in her honour.
The Farmleigh estate had been given to Benjamin by his grandparents, Lord and Lady Iveagh, as an engagement gift. The shock for Miranda when she was welcomed to her new home wasn’t the Upstairs Downstairs scene at the porticoed entrance – the butler, the office manager and the rest of the staff ready to greet her – it was the fast drawing realisation that she hadn’t just married a wealthy man – from a monied and titled family herself, she was probably always going to do that – it was that she’d married a Guinness and all that meant.
“I had no idea of the enormity of the importance of Guinness to Ireland,” she said. “Sure, there was Park Royal [where Guinness was brewed in the UK] but that was just one of many breweries – so coming here and finding what Guinness means to Ireland, I was absolutely blown away.”
A revelation, too, was the more relaxed atmosphere. Benjamin rarely used his title – “It was handy for booking a restaurant in New York but that was all.” And as a former debutante, she discovered that she adored the “un-snobbish element which I’m afraid I would immediately accuse Britain of having”.
As “the number-one businessman’s wife” she was, she understood, part of the PR machine, always dressed to the nines ready to be photographed, obliging and charming. The couple had four children – Edward, now 4th Earl of Iveagh; Rory, Emma and Louisa – and their recollections fill the documentary, about their mother rarely failing to whack herself on the head with the idiosyncratic door of her beloved DeLorean, the line of muddy Wellington boots always in the hallway of Farmleigh and her delight in her beautiful home and garden.
The Guinness marriage was ultimately not a happy one. She had many affairs – including a long-term relationship with Ryanair founder Tony Ryan – and it ended in divorce in 1984. She left Farmleigh and moved to London, where Benjamin, still only in his 50s, came to spend his last months with her in 1992.
When she filmed the documentary in the summer of 2010, she knew she was dying. Her 70th party in the Guinness Storehouse – where she looked 10 years younger and was dressed in a magnificent jewelled kaftan – was effectively her way of saying goodbye to her many Irish friends. The farewell to her first home as a newlywed was more moving. Having lunch in the now State-owned house with her children and grandchildren and being wheeled around the grounds on a beautiful sunny day, she was thrilled to see families picnicking on the lawns and the throngs people enjoying the magnificent garden. She died in December 2010.
Return to Farmleigh is on RTÉ1 on Tuesday night
