From Brodick to Bletchley and the Blitz, the colourful life of Lady Jean Fforde
Aristocrat who sold title to pay for new heating dies aged 96
HER colourful life stretched from the windswept Isle of Arran to code-breaking at Bletchley Park.
Now Lady Jean Fforde – one of Scotland’s most intriguing aristocrats – has died at the age of 96.
Born Jean Sibyl Violet Graham in Edinburgh on November 7, 1920, her family then owned most of Arran and her lineage was steeped in history on both sides.
The Dukes of Hamilton, her mother’s family, owned Brodick Castle on the island; her father was the Sixth Duke of Montrose. Lady Jean spent much of her early life at her ancestral home at Brodick, as well as Buchanan Castle on Loch Lomondside.
The family was frequently joined by Prince Rainier of Monaco – who went on to marry Hollywood icon Grace Kelly – and his sister, Princess Antoinette.
Describing those days, Lady Jean once said: ‘Prince Rainier and Princess Antoinette, known as Tiny, loved it. They came every year as children – it was so different to what they were accustomed to.
‘We had a boat and went out netting fish and lobster potting. We’d bathe in the sea, then we’d be given hot milk and digestives and a rub down, which hurt.
‘Tiny was a month younger than me and she was my closest friend. We’d play house or climb up a fire escape and drop pebbles down the chimneys. We’d climb along the battlements.
‘When I look back, I can see how dangerous it was and how we risked our lives.
‘Once, we were about eight, Tiny nearly went over the edge. She turned the wrong way, I caught her legs – three storeys up.’
Lady Jean ‘came out’ as a debutante in 1939 but soon found herself desperate to join the war effort. She dreamed of being in the Wrens – the Women’s Royal Naval Service – but having suffered from TB in childhood was ineligible.
Her mother made her remain on Arran. When commandos arrived to train, she fell in love with one named Johnny. But after he was killed in Norway, she once again became restless.
Her father intervened with Lord Mountbatten and she was given a job at the Foreign Office in Buckinghamshire, a position she found terminally dull.
She escaped to London at weekends and stayed at the Dorchester, dancing on the roof as German bombers blitzed the city.
This period of employment was, in fact, with the Government Code and Cypher School at Bletchley Park, in an attempt to crack the German Enigma Code.
The 2014 movie The Imitation Game was based on the now famous decryption effort led by Alan Turing. Benedict Cumberbatch played Turing – who was prosecuted in 1952 for homosexual acts. Keira Knightley portrayed Joan Clarke, to whom he was briefly engaged.
An undiplomatic Lady Jean said the casting was unfair to Miss Knightley, as the real Joan Clarke looked like ‘the absolute back end of a bus’.
Despite the Hollywood interest, Lady Jean remembered the period as ‘a rather dull chapter in an otherwise colourful life’.
She married Colonel John Fforde in 1947. They had a son, Charles, a year later, but divorced in 1957.
Lady Jean gained international attention in 1994 when she sold the Earldom of Arran for a sixfigure sum to pay for central heating in her island cottage.
But she claimed it was less painful than losing Brodick Castle in 1960, when it was handed over to the National Trust for Scotland in lieu of death duties.
She said: ‘The castle and all its contents were taken from me. It was like losing my whole life.’
Lady Jean died on Arran on October 13. She is survived by her 68-year-old son Charles.
‘I can see how we risked our lives’