Suzanne Marie Adele Beauclerk, Duchess of St. Albans (1921–2010)

Suzanne Marie Adele Beauclerk, née Fesq, was born in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia to French-speaking parents who were part of the British Empire. When she was a year old, her family moved to Mas Mistral, a farmhouse near Vence in southern France. She later described an idyllic childhood in which she roamed the grounds, observing the abundant wildlife and participating in the annual treading of the grapes. The family went back to Malaysia when her father resumed management of the Assam Java Plantation at Selangor. Suzanne learned to speak English, and after a year at a boarding school in Paris, attended Rosemead School in England. During World War II, she served with the Psychological Warfare Branch of the British Foreign Office. She worked as a news writer in North Africa and Italy before being transferred in 1945 to Vienna. There her commanding officer was Colonel Charles Frederick Beauclerk, the future 13th Duke of St. Albans, whom she married in 1947 after a divorce from his first wife. The couple had five children. Suzanne had taken painting lessons in Rome and had her works exhibited at the Royal Academy. Between 1967 and 1972, she and the duke ran the Upper Grosvenor Gallery in Mayfair. She also was a vice-president of the British armed forces charity SSAFA and a top fundraiser for the Red Cross. She wrote three volumes of her autobiography, including Paradise and Pestilence: Aspects of Provence (1997), about renovating her parents' long-neglected house and property at Mas Mistral and the geography and history of the region. A single volume version was published in 2000 as Mango and Mimosa.