DEAL BROKER AND TATLER COVERGIRL

Lady Frances Balfour and her great-great niece Sabrina Percy.

LADY Frances came from campaigning stock — her mother and grandmother had been abolitionists. Outraged that she could not vote, let alone be an MP, she became president of the national Society for Women’s Suffrage for 18 years; it was the first national group to campaign for women’s right to vote. A non-violent suffragist, she married Eustace Balfour, whose uncle, Lord Salisbury, had been Prime Minister and whose brother, Arthur, would follow him into the highest office in the land. Lady Frances believed in using her position to broker the deal for women. Her sister-in-law, Betty Balfour, was Constance Lytton’s sister, but she disapproved deeply of Constance’s methods. ‘My gifts, such as they were, lay in being a sort of liaison officer between Suffrage and the Houses of Parliament, and being possessed of a good platform voice,’ Lady Frances said. Her great-great niece, Lady Sabrina Percy, has chosen a rather different lifestyle. The model is the covergirl of this month’s Tatler magazine. The slender, 28-year-old brunette, whose ancestral home, Alnwick Castle, featured in the Harry Potter movies, was on the catwalk for Dolce & Gabbana twice last year. She is a graduate of the London College of Fashion and is also an illustrator, with clients such as Rolls-Royce and Lululemon, the upmarket yoga clothing label. Lady Sabrina’s father is the second cousin to the Duke of northumberland and her mother was a fashion designer.