Born: 31 January 1907, United Kingdom
Died: 3 May 1998
Country most active: United Kingdom
Also known as: NA
This biography is republished from The Dictionary of Irish Biography and was written by Bridget Hourican. Shared by permission in line with Creative Commons ‘Attribution’ (CC BY) licencing.
Maureen Constance Guinness (1907–98), countess of Dufferin and Ava, socialite and charity worker, was born on 31 January 1907. After finishing school in Paris, she was launched in society in 1925 and was the most flamboyant, extrovert, and photographed of the sisters. Five years later, on 3 July 1930, she married Basil Sheridan Hamilton-Temple-Blackwood (1909–45), eldest son of the 3rd marquess of Dufferin and Ava and, in the Guinness tradition of internecine marriages, her cousin. While the couple were on honeymoon in Burma, Basil’s father died in a plane crash, leaving him to inherit, at the age of 21, the title and estate of Clandeboye, near Belfast. He and Maureen divided their time between Clandeboye and London, where they acquired a house at 4 Hans Crescent, Knightsbridge. Maureen far preferred town but, like her sisters, enjoyed acting as hostess for large parties in her country house, where guests were treated to her practical jokes. These included dressing up as a slatternly maid and getting a young policeman to dress up as a girl and challenge American guests to tennis. The poet John Betjeman, a good friend of her husband, complained that these parties were ‘pretty good hell’ (Betjeman, Letters, 76).
Her husband was a brilliant politician who was successively secretary of state for war (1935), lord privy seal (1935–6), and parliamentary under-secretary for the colonies (1937–40), but whose career was blighted by alcoholism. He signed up for service during the second world war and was killed in 1945 in the campaign to drive the Japanese from Burma, leaving three children. His death seemed painfully ironic since his grandfather, the 1st marquess of Dufferin and Ava, had, as viceroy of India, declared war on Burma and annexed it for Britain. He left an estate heavily mortgaged to pay off gambling debts, which Maureen’s money redeemed. Always financially shrewd, she bought the estate for £192,000 and created the Clandeboye estate company along the lines of the Iveagh trust, which had been set up by her grandfather to protect the Guinness fortune. Three years after her first husband’s death she married (14 September 1948) the much younger Maj. Desmond Buchanan, an antiques dealer and former army officer. The marriage was short-lived and childless, ending in divorce in 1954, after which she married (20 August 1955) Judge John Cyril Maude (1901–86). This marriage survived, though after a number of years husband and wife lived largely apart. She continued to use her title from her first marriage.
Sporting her diamanté-encrusted horn-rimmed glasses, Maureen was known for her idiosyncratic sense of fashion, and apparently provided the inspiration for Osbert Lancaster’s creation ‘Maudie Littlehampton’ in the Daily Express and for the comedian Barry Humphries’ character, ‘Dame Edna Everage’. However she had interests beyond fashion and society: in 1949, on the death of her father, she and a cousin became the first women ever to sit on the board of the brewery. Later she devoted herself to charitable works. Between 1958 and 1965 she raised £50,000 for building the Horder centre for arthritics, for which she donated thirty acres of land in Sussex as a site. A disagreement subsequently caused her to stand down from this committee, but she later opened a holiday home for arthritics on her Kent estate, known as Maureen’s Oast House.
Her time in Clandeboye came to an end in 1966 when she presented the house and estate to her only son, Sheridan, on his marriage to his cousin, Serena Guinness. Her settlements on her children were generous – including an annuity of £17,000 when they came of age – but, unlike Oonagh, she was not maternal. Her youngest daughter, the writer Caroline Blackwood once said her childhood was too painful to talk of, while her eldest, Perdita, observed that her mother’s conversation was all about her glory years as the toast of London society. Others outside her family characterised her as vain and difficult. The art critic John Richardson called her ‘grotesque and amazing and rather fascinating’ (Schoenberger, 40). In 1995 her efforts to pass assets worth £15 million directly to her two grandchildren were contested by her daughters and daughter-in-law but upheld by the court, after protracted litigation. She died in London on 3 May 1998.