Baby delight for banking heiress Kate Rothschild
FINALLY a glimmer of light for banking heir Kate Rothschild and her partner Paul Forkan – I am delighted to report that the couple are expecting.
Their first child together is due in June, Kate has confirmed to me – and it represents some much- needed good news for a family plagued with tragedy in recent years.
Kate’s eldest child, Iris, was killed at the age of just 15 when her offroad Polaris Mule buggy overturned at the Somerset farm owned by her father, financier Ben Goldsmith, in July 2019.
The family were left devastated by their sudden loss, and her mother has documented her grief on her Instagram page ever since.
‘I miss you with all my heart Iris, my most precious, treasured angel girl,’ she wrote in one post.
Ben – her ex-husband and the son of late billionaire Sir James Goldsmith – also shared his feelings in a heart-breaking tweet.
‘Dear God, please can I have my beautiful, brilliant, kind little girl back, please God. And if not, please take extra special care of her,’ he wrote.
‘I love her so, so much and I’m so proud of her. It hurts me so much I can’t describe.’
Kate’s new partner Paul, 31, an entrepreneur, has had hi s o wn s hare o f tragedy. When he was just 15, his parents were killed in the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami while the family were on holiday in Sri Lanka.
He and brother Rob, aged 17 at the time, survived the disaster which killed more than 225,000 people. The brothers set up company Gandys – a ‘travelinspired fashion brand dedicated to doing good, by building kids’ campuses [in Sri Lanka, Malawi, Brazil and Nepal] and giving back to other underprivileged children around the world’ – in their parents’ memory.
The expectant couple were also victims of a £500,000 break-in at their London home in 2018.
The news of 38- year- old Kate’s pregnancy comes nine months after ex-husband Ben, 40, welcomed a new daughter with his wife Jemima. The baby has been named Vita Iris in memory of her big sister.
‘We have been blessed with a little Easter miracle,’ Ben said in April.
‘We’ve decided to name her Vita, which means life, because she managed against the odds to cling on to hers after a very difficult start to life. And her middle name is Iris, after her guardian angel big sister.’
Ben also has four other children: Frank and Isaac with Kate, and Eliza and Arlo with Jemima.
ROSAMUND PIKE is the latest star to jump on the garden office bandwagon. I hear the Gone Girl actress, 41, has applied for planning permission to build an outdoor shed, complete with a retractable letterbox window to light up a writing desk, at her £2.3 million townhouse in Islington, where she lives with her businessman partner Robie Uniacke and their two children. The application says Rosamund needs ‘more amenable, useable and flexible space in and around the private, though overshadowed, rear garden’. Goodness, working from home is becoming so glamorous...