At last... inside story of the Rausings’ tragedy
A SEARINGLY powerful account of the tragedy of Eva Rausing, the American wife of Tetra Pak heir Hans, who died from cocaine abuse before being left to decompose for four months in her Belgravia mansion, is about to be published by his sister.
Five years after the death, philanthropist Sigrid Rausing, publisher of Granta magazine, has written the shocking memoir revealing the ripple effects of Hans and Eva’s addiction on all of their family.
The book is being claimed as a literary masterpiece in its candid but restrained account of the most infamous society drugs overdose.
‘The couple had struggled with drug addiction for years… Sigrid tries to make sense of what happened to her brother and his wife,’ says the publisher’s blurb about the book, titled Mayhem: A Memoir, that will be published in September.
It is the first time a member of the Rausing family has given a full account of the downfall of one of Britain’s richest couples, which shocked the nation. The story of how Hans failed to alert the authorities, allowing Eva’s body to decompose for weeks at their £70 million house made headlines for weeks.
Professor Andrew Solomon has praised Mayhem as ‘mesmerising. Rausing explores questions about what it is like to choose or refuse a moral life, what tragedy looks like when it is woven into privilege and how we control or surrender to our perceived destinies’. According to Solomon, the book attempts ‘to find a redeeming vitality from an agonising chaos’.
After Eva’s death Hans sought help for his addiction and, happily, I can reveal he is now completely drug-free.
He has also found love again, with Christie’s art expert Julia Delves Broughton.
They married in 2014, have new homes in London and the country and give tens of millions of pounds to charity, including organisations for drug rehabilitation.
Last month Prince Charles singled them out in a speech for their generosity to his causes.
Sigrid Rausing is founder of one of the UK’s largest philanthropic foundations and her trust has given away around £230 million to human rights causes.
She was brought up in Sweden and is the granddaughter of Ruben Rausing, who founded the food packaging company Tetra Pak.
Her interest in human rights was sparked as a child by a love of animals and hearing her parents talk about the Holocaust.