Diana’s stepmother Raine dies at 87

PRINCESS Diana’s stepmother Raine Spencer died yesterday aged 87 after a short illness.

A family statement said the Countess, who married Diana’s father Earl Spencer in 1976, died “peacefully at her home”.

The socialite was the daughter of romantic novelist Dame Barbara Cartland and amassed a collection of aristocratic titles from her marriages to men from the upper echelons of society. At various points in her life she was known as Raine McCorquodale, the Honourable Mrs Gerald Legge, Viscountess Lewisham, the Countess of Dartmouth, Countess Spencer, the Dowager Countess Spencer and Countess Jean-Francois de Chambrun.

She had four children with her first husband Gerald Legge, 9th Earl of Dartmouth. Much has been written about her often strained relationship with Diana, which led to the late Princess’s siblings dubbing her “Acid Raine”. But in the early 1990s there was a reported reconciliation between them.

In an interview last summer the Countess said of her stepdaughter: “We ended up huge friends. She used to come and sit on my sofa and tell me her troubles.”