Earl gives his Tatler It- Girl telling off for dig at Diana

SHE adorns the cover of T atler, with the society magazine pro - claiming her ‘The new It- Girl’ and feting her for her uninhibited, chainsmoking style and scarlet hair. But the blaze of attention for Lady Venetia Baring, 25, has come at a fearful cost — earning her a ferocious dressing -down from her father, Evelyn, 4th Earl of Cromer.

‘Lady Venetia Baring alleges that my late mother, the Dowager Countess of Cromer , said “she really didn ’ t like [ P rincess] Diana” and that “Diana should get a grip”,’ he notes in a wither - ing letter to The Times.

The old Etonian peer , 77, then makes it plain that it is, in his opinion, inconceivable that his mother would ever have uttered such words, noting that she ‘served the late Queen for 17 years and was rewarded for her loyalty , work and affection by a CVo’.

‘Throughout her long service my mother was the soul of discretion,’ he adds, pointing out that his mother would ‘no doubt’ have learnt the necessity for such discretion while married to his father, who was successively Governor of the Bank of England and then British ambassador to Washington.

‘It would be totally alien to my mother to make a comment on a member of the royal F amily to anybody, least of all to one of her grandchildren,’ concludes Lord Cromer, ‘and especially to Lady Venetia Baring, my daughter, who was born after the death of Diana, Princess of Wales.’

It’s possible that the peer , now divorced from Venetia’s mother, shelley hu Cheng -yu, and living in Thailand with his third wife, Jiraporn Buengman, felt this was the only way of conveying his disapproval to V enetia, who, Tatler says, has ‘ blocked most of her family on Instagram’. she now lives in south London with her boyfriend, sasha Zhovtobryukh, with whom, she says, she ‘bought a tattoo gun’.

It’s since been put to prolific use. her father, she adds, knows about ‘some’ of her tattoos. ‘he’s one of those par - ents that always said, “If you ever get a tattoo, you’ll be disowned.” ’ seems it ’ s not just tattoos which can secure that fate . . .