Obituary: The Marquess of Bath
5 April
2020
With his
eccentric dress sense and colourful private life, the Marquess of Bath was one
of the best-known members of the British aristocracy.
His profile
was further enhanced as the owner of the popular stately home and safari park,
Longleat House, complete with resident lions.
Alexander
George Thynne (he later dropped the 'e' from his surname) was born in London on
6 May 1932. His father, Viscount Weymouth, was the heir to the Marquessate of
Bath while his mother was the former Daphne Vivian.
It was a
somewhat dysfunctional family. His parents were repeatedly unfaithful to each
other and later divorced, while his relationships with his siblings were also
strained.
He was
brought up in a house on the family estate at Longleat in Wiltshire from where
he went to Eton and then did his National Service in the Lifeguards, making a
name for himself as a boxer.
While at
Eton the death of his grandfather saw the young Thynne become the 11th Viscount
Weymouth, an event which he later described as "a great embarrassment for
a schoolboy."
After
leaving the army, he travelled to Paris where he studied art on the Left Bank
and acquired a taste for the sort of flamboyant outfits which he would continue
to wear throughout his life.
On his
return to England, he went to Oxford where he gained a degree in Politics,
Philosophy and Economics and became president of the Bullingdon Club, the
notorious dining club which would, years later, admit the British prime
ministers David Cameron and Boris Johnson as a member.
Throughout
the late 1950s and early '60s he indulged his love of travel, including a trek
through South America in the company of a young Hungarian actress called Anna
Gyarmathy, whom he would later marry.
He returned
to Longleat with the intention, as he later described it, of becoming a recluse
and devoting himself to his painting. Working with a group of young artists, he
began adding murals to his apartments in the house, many of them of a
distinctly raunchy character.
Evicted
His father
had opened the house to the public in 1949, setting a trend that other big
estates would later follow and, in the mid-60s, bringing in the famous lions.
Thynne
decided that the thousands of people coming to Longleat might pay to see his
paintings and he opened up his apartments to the public. The salacious nature
of some of his work was an obvious attraction to some, but there was also more
serious interest, including a BBC documentary, The Thynne Blue Line.
He
subsequently began taking an interest in politics, campaigning for the setting
up of a devolved region of Wessex and standing under that banner in the 1974
General Election.
He also
changed his surname to Thynn, which was the historical spelling of his family
name. He did so in order to stop the drift in its pronunciation and to ensure
people knew it rhymed with 'pin' instead of 'pine'.
He became
the 7th Marquess of Bath on the death of his father in 1992. The pair had never
become reconciled particularly after his father appointed his younger brother,
Christopher, to run Longleat. On assuming the title, the new Lord Bath had his
brother evicted from the estate.
His
elevation saw him take his seat in the House of Lords where he sat as a Liberal
Democrat and made his maiden speech on the subject of nursery education. He
later lost his place in the upper house when most of the hereditary peers were
excluded.
Most of his
time was now taken up with Longleat where he introduced a number of new
attractions and also appeared from time to time in the BBC series Animal Park
which documented the day-to-day running of the safari park.
Infidelities
Over the
years he amassed a collection of more than 70 girlfriends known as his
"wifelets", many of whom ended up living in cottages on the Longleat
estate and all of whom have been captured in mural form on the walls of his
apartments.
His unusual
lifestyle provided many column inches for the press, not least when police were
called to Longleat in June 2011 after two of the women got into a violent
altercation over who was going to sleep with the Marquess that night.
He,
according to newspaper reports, had gone off to bed and told them to sort it
out between themselves.
Despite his
many infidelities, his wife, Anna, remained married to him - although she spent
a considerable amount of her time away from Longleat.
Towards the
end of the 1980s, he embarked upon a major autobiography entitled Strictly
Private to Public Exposure, a remarkably candid account of his life, detailing
family feuds and his various sexual encounters.
Writer and
broadcaster Gyles Brandreth described it as "elegantly written" and
"a beautifully observed evocation of the lives of the English
aristocracy".
He passed
the management of the business to his son, Viscount Weymouth, in 2010.
Alexander
Thynn claimed to loathe the class system, and broke with family tradition by
sending his own children to the local comprehensive school.
But he was
the first to admit that it was his privileged birth and inherited wealth that
allowed him indulge to himself in the way he did.
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