Oonagh Browne, Baroness Oranmore & Browne

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oonagh_Guinness

Oonagh Guinness (22 February 1910 – 2 August 1995) was an Anglo-Irish socialite, society hostess and art collector, and the second wife of Dominick Browne, 4th Baron Oranmore and Browne.

Oonagh was the youngest daughter of Ernest Guinness, born on 22 Feb 1910, and became famous for throwing "raffish weekends" at Luggala, a fairytale Gothic lodge in the Wicklow mountains. A Magritte masterpiece hung above the fireplace in the drawing room, looking a little dull after the maid cleaned it with some Vim.

Oonagh's many guests were ferried around in break-neck style in her silver Rolls Royce, although the passengers were likely to be found crouched in the back, hanging on for dear life. Sam, the chauffeur, had a small drinking problem. One guest summed up the journey as "like going from Sodom to Gomorrah".

Oonagh, the youngest, was known as the nice one, kinder to her children and more generous than her sisters. She was also a great collector - of younger lovers and shoes.

Her first marriage was to Philipp Leyland Kindersley on 24 Jun 1929. This marriage resulted in 2 children Gay and Tessa Kindersley.

On April 29 1936, she married Dominick Geoffrey Edward Browne, 4th Lord Oranmore and Browne. They divorced in 1950, not before they had 3 children, including Garech Domnagh Browne in 1939 and Tara Browne (1945 - 1966).

They had three sons, the eldest of whom is Garech Browne, the pony-tailed squire of Luggala. Garech was educated at Le Rosey, Switzerland and established Claddagh records in 1959 to record traditional Irish art and music. Samuel Beckett, Robert Graves, Patrick Kavanagh and the Chieftains, which he founded, feature among Claddagh's diverse recordings. Recorded the music of Irish composer John Field, creator of the nocturne, and the harper-composer Carolan. He also published the music of Frederick May and Seán Ó Riada. In 1982 he married Princess Purna Harshad of Morvi. A British subject, his Irish houses, Luggala, Blessington, County Wicklow and Woodtown Manor, Rathfarnham, County Dublin have been let to the folk/pop group Clannad.

The second son died after a week.

The third was Tara Browne, a friend of John Lennon and an enthusiast of the London Counterculture and, like all its members, a user of mind expanding drugs, who on 18th of December 1966, drove his Lotus Elan at high speeds through red lights in South Kensington, smashing into a van and killing himself. Whether or not he was tripping at the time is unknown, though Lennon clearly thought so. Reading the report of the coroner's verdict, he recorded it in the opening verses of A day in the life, taking the detached view of the onlookers whose only interest was in the dead man's celebrity. Tara's Girlfriend, model Suki Poiter was also in the car, but was not injured.

Portrait of Oonagh by Philip de Laszlo