November/December 2020 59
D
ESMOND GUINNESS was born in
, the son of Bryan Guinness,
Lord Moyne, brewer, banker and
poet; and society queen Nancy
Mitford, most beautiful of six
famous sisters, from whom Desmond inherited
piercin china blue eyes. His parents divorced
the year after Desmond’s birth and his mother
secretly married the head of the British Union
of Fascists’ Blackshirt movement, Oswald
Mosley, inBerlinin 1936 at the home of Nazi
propaanda chief Joseph Goebbels, with
Adolph Hitler the uest of honour. It was a bad
social move. And her family abandoned her.
She set up house on Eaton Square in London
with her two small sons Desmond and his el
-
der brother Jonathan, the incipient Lord Moyne.
Mitford was trailed by MI5 and interned in 1940;
and Guinness later recalled visiting her inHol
-
loway Prisonwhen he was 10. She later moved
with Mosley to a bishop’s palace in Clonfert,
which burnt down, and then to Ileclash House
near Fermoy. Desmond’s grandfather, the Con
-
servative Minister of State in the Middle East
and a perceived anti-Zionist, was assassinated
by the Stern gang in Cairo in 1944.
Desmond was educated at Eton, Gordon
-
stoun and Christ Church Oxford, where he stud-
ied French and Italian and developed a taste in
exotic parties. He would appear “clad in leop
-
ard-skin trousers and a fancifully embroidered
sweater”, according to Frederic Mullally, in his
book on the Guinness family, The Silver Salver.
CULTURE
Obituary of
Desmond Guinness
Charismatic saviour of Georgian Ireland
The architectural critic John
Cornworth said Desmond
and Mariga’s restored Leixlip
Castle was “the key country
house in the British isles in
the 1950s and 1960s”.
At Oxford, he met a young German princess,
Marie-Gabrielle von Urach, Countess of Wurt
-
tenberg, grand-daughter of the king of Lithu-
ania, known as Mariga, who seems to have al-
ready fallen in love with Ireland. After national
service he moved to Ireland, at first to Farm
-
leigh where his father spent half the year.
In July 1957, Guinness wrote genteelly toThe
Irish Times: “Sir, As the Georgian Society seems
to have lapsed, has anyone any objection to my
restarting it?”. Nobody of course did, so he re
-
vived it quarterly and edited it. Guinness and
Mariga, had been spurred into action by the
demolition of most of Dominick St and of two
grand and elegant government-owned and per
-
fectly preserved Georgian houses on Kildare
Place, Dublin. A Minister had been quoted say
-
ing they – the houses - stood for everything
60 November/December 2020
tures, were brought back from dereliction or de-
molition. Of course they failed to save much of
Georgian Dublin from demolition but the mood
of the times was against it and against the
“belted earls” too. Then, and over the next gen
-
eration, they did help enormously to change
the public mood.
He partied at Leixlip with the bohemian
cream of the 1960s from Jacqueline Kennedy
to his close friend Mick Jagger with whom he is
rumoured to have lain, and Marian Faithfull/
Jerry Hall; from film director John Huston to
Sam Stephenson and Ulick O’Connor. Princess
Margaret and her husband Lord Snowdon were
his guests and Lord Louis Mountbatten called
at 3am one morning looking for a bed for the
night. His stepfather Mosley, was another fa
-
voured guest. Asked why there were so many
Nazis in the old family photograph albums,
Guinness answered coyly “You may well ask”.
“In the winter of 1958, Mariga and Desmond
said they did not go to bed until 4am from the
beginning of December until the end of Janu
-
ary”, according to Carola Peck in the book ‘Mari-
ga And her Friends’. “They were out every night
- ball followed ball”. In 1958. The IGS also held
Georgiancricketmatches played to therules of
1744. Such fun.
Desmond also promoted concerts in Leixlip
by The Boomtown Rats, who had been refused
by a number of other potential venues; Thin
Lizzy; and, in 1980 both U2 and The Police
whose drummer was hit by a flying bottle. But
despite his friendship with Jagger the Rolling
Stones opted to play Slane Castle instead in
1982.
Playing host to Marianne Faithfull and Mick
Jagger at Leixlip in the 1960s
In 1973, Desmond became smitten by Pe
-
nelope Cuthbertson, the daughter of an English
socialite, described as “an attractive blonde 10
years younger” than Mariga. Between 1966 and
1968 ‘Penny’ - known as “one of the most lust
-
ed-after girls in swinging London” lived with
Desmond on the King’s Road in Chelsea, and
at Leixlip Castle.
Desmond Guinness lectured widely and
entertainingly – often raising money for the
he hated. Frank McDonald, otherwise well-dis
-
posed, notes in his ‘the Destruction of Dublin’
that the first IGS committee included Lord Tal
-
bot of Malahide, Sir Alfred Beit and Lady Dun-
sany, ‘dilletante’ remnants of the ascendancy.
The newly-weds, each charismatic and su
-
per-dynamic, rented Carton House, the ances-
tral home of the FitzGeralds, Lords of Leinster,
near Maynooth from Lord Brocket and became
involved in hunting with the Kildares, and
throwing famous parties.
The same year, Desmond bought the 12th-
century Leixlip Castle, by then reduced to a
shell, on 180 acres, for £15,500.
The Guinnesses scoured auction sales and
slowly began restoring the castle to its former
grandeur, with meticulous taste. He had a
great eye. Nancy Mitford described it as “the
epitome of civilised taste” and the architec
-
tural critic John Cornworth said it was “the key
country house in the British isles in the 1950s
and 1960s”. Horst P. Horst photographed it
forVogue.
Following in the philanthropic tradition of the
Guinness family, with the help of a loan from
his father he took on the ownership of Ireland’s
greatest country house, Palladian Castletown
in County Kildare. Built for Speaker Conolly, it
had dilapidated by 1965 and could have been
lost or compromised by inappropriate develop
-
ment. His donation of the house to a charitable
foundation should be recognised as one of the
greatest bequests to the nation.
The full extent of his achievements is not
even known. His casual charm and enthusiasm
inspired an international volunteer programme
run by the Irish Georgian Society which en
-
gaged in projects all around the country. He
made the IGS sexy and restoration and con
-
viviality mingled exquisitely for the cognoscenti
and the well-got.
Much of what he did was quiet, behind-the-
scenes persuasion of politicians and public of
-
ficials in decision making, such as abandoning
the County Council plan to demolish the early-
18th century Damer House in Roscrea, County
Tipperary for a car park in the 1970s. The IGS
took on the repair of Doneraile Court in County
Cork when it was falling into ruin in State owner
-
ship; and, with the Doorleys, saved Riverstown
House, the ancestral home of the Brownes,
near Cork City.
Desmond and Mariga, every bit as dynamic
as her better remembered husband, in those
early days, saved houses in Henrietta Street
and Mountjoy Square, buying one to prevent
it falling into the hands of tenant-evicting de
-
veloper, Matt Gallagher, though sadly it was
later demolished. Tailors’ Hall, later An Taisce’s
headquarters in the Liberties was rescued with
Uinseann MacEoin, even if its restoration by
others was and remains styleless.
Roundwood in Laois, Longfield in Tipperary,
The Conolly Folly in Kildare and many struc
-
Asked why there
were so many Nazis
in the old family
photograph albums,
Guinness answered
coyly “You may well
ask”.
Plying host to the plyful Fithfull nd Jgger t Leixlip in the 1960s
IGS, especially in the US where he could make
a society dame blush. He contributed to ‘Ar
-
chitectural Digest’. He published ‘Palladio: A
Western Progress’ and ‘The White House: An

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