Desperate Ben opens his heart after daughter's tragic accident
BEN Goldsmith has movingly revealed the agonising depth of his despair after the death of his teenage daughter Iris in a tragic accident.
She was trapped when her vehicle, similar to a quad bike, overturned on the family’s farm in Somerset on Monday at the start of the school holidays.
With shattering candour, Goldsmith tells me: ‘I just can’t get my head round the enormity of what’s happened — it’s just so unfair. I’m feeling desperate, like I can’t breathe most of the time.’
In a heart-breaking tribute to his adored daughter, he says: ‘She was only 15. I just want my beautiful, brilliant little girl back so much.
‘She was a real star in the making and I am so proud of her. She was an academic superstar and was going to be a huge success. She wanted to be a barrister. No child has ever worked harder.’
In one of these previously unseen photographs, Iris is seen cradling her newly born half-sister, Eliza, in 2016. In the other, she is pictured on a family holiday in South Africa the following year. Iris was one of three children from Ben’s first marriage, to banking heiress Kate Rothschild.
As well as Eliza, Ben has a son, Arlo, with his second wife, Jemima, a model-turned-society caterer.
At the time of the accident, Iris was with a friend who immediately raised the alarm after the vehicle overturned. The emergency services were called but Iris could not be saved.
‘The only solace these last few miserable days has been having all my family here with us,’ Ben tells me.
Rallying round have been Ben’s brother, the Tory MP Zac Goldsmith, and his sister, the television producer
Jemima. Their mother Lady Annabel Goldsmith, who inspired the name of Mayfair nightclub Annabel’s, knows only too well what it is like to lose a child. Her eldest son Rupert died aged 30. A friend tells me: ‘She adored her granddaughter and had seen her just the previous week at her annual party in Richmond.
‘It has left her, like all the rest of the family, utterly bereft.’
Iris’s headteacher at Wycombe Abbey, Rhiannon Wilkinson, said: ‘Iris was sparky, inquisitive with an effervescent, sunny personality, which lit up all around her. ‘The whole school community is devastated by such a tragic loss of a happy, well-respected, successful young woman.’
Iris’s funeral will be held next week in South-West London, near the Goldsmiths’ family home. A family friend tells me: ‘Iris was extraordinarily popular, the church will be packed to the rafters.’