BUSINESS MAGNATE MUM AND DAD WHO RILED DAVE

FOR all the Astors’ glittering provenance, it is Annabel, the current Viscountess and Samantha Cameron’s mother, who has in many ways the most romantic past. Her mother, Pandora, was one of the three dazzling daughters of Sir Bede Clifford, a Governor of Trinidad and Tobago and a member of a family famous for the loveliness of its women going back to Henry II’s mistress Fair Rosamund in the 12th century. Annabel’s paternal grandmother was Enid Bagnold, author of National Velvet, the novel that gave Elizabeth Taylor her first screen role. At 20, Annabel married baronet’s heir Reggie Sheffield and they had two daughters, Emily and Samantha. The marriage came unstuck after he apparently ran off with her best friend and in 1976, aged 28, she married Viscount Astor, four years her junior. Annabel (pictured with Astor, left) was by then a successful businesswoman with a Knightsbridge jewellery shop she had set up aged 18.

A favourite of the Princess of Wales, the shop was where Diana discreetly bought gifts for her admirers. After 30 years, Annabel sold the store to develop Oka, her home furnishing company, where the Duchess of Cambridge likes to shop. It is a multi-millionpound empire with 11 stores and a thriving mail order business.

William, the fourth Viscount Astor, is a spirited individual.

He angered David Cameron last year by publicly criticising the Government’s plans for a highspeed railway to Birmingham, and Samantha was said to be furious when he had an affair with a key member of Cameron’s circle, Rachel Whetstone, now married to Cameron’s former ideas man, Steve Hilton.