I was the secret lover of world’s richest man
Living quietly in Scotland, retired lawyer tells for fist time of her gilded 18yrs at heart of Getty dynasty
ROBINA Lund was lost in the bliss of Schubert and Chopin as she played the grand piano in the empty hall of one of Switzerland’s most exclusive hotels. As she stopped playing, a distinguished older man stepped out of the shadows and thanked her.
The chance encounter in this unlikely setting would change the former debutante’s life forever…
For the man beside her, who seemed entranced by her beautiful piano playing, was the world’s richest man, Jean Paul Getty I.
It was the summer of 1958 and from those first moments in the hotel piano bar, an astonishing romance would blossom – a love story that has remained a secret, until now, as it is revealed for the first time in 81-year-old Ms Lund’s remarkable memoir.
‘We were lovers and there was passion,’ she smiles, ‘but that was just a part of it. I think we enjoyed spending time together best, talking and laughing together.
‘He was lovable and very loving. He had the most engaging lopsided smile and laugh. I know that few people outside his immediate circle ever saw it but it was genuine, warm and endearing.’
Ms Lund enjoyed Getty’s company during most days of her Swiss holiday and felt bad about missing him on the day he left.
Back home, she found a business address and sent him a note to apologise. At her desk at London legal firm Slaughter & May, she learned Getty’s son Timothy had died aged 12 of a brain tumour while they had been in Lugano.
Despite the bereavement, Getty called her and they spoke for hours by phone. Soon, he was calling twice a week.
Getty wanted her as his UK legal advisor and senior press officer, offering variety and work at a level she could not have imagined at 23. She accepted and, within a short time, her duties expanded and Getty was so comfortable with her that she played hostess when he had guests at Sutton Place, the stately home he had bought from the Duke of Sutherland.
Their love affair began a year after she began working for him, with frequent trysts in his suite at The Ritz in London. It became one of the special places where they felt safe enough to be close without interference from the outside world. At other times, they enjoyed stolen moments at the Pavilion, in the grounds of Sutton Place, away from the world of business.
Ironically, his ex-mistress Penelope Kitson thought the house was for her exclusive use, but Getty and Ms Lund would often walk there, under the guise of walking the dog, to make love.
Afterwards, the couple would change the bedding and Ms Lund would put the old linen in a briefcase and deliver it to Bullimore, Getty’s butler – the only person who had an inkling of how close Ms Lund and Getty had become.
But she said: ‘I think the main thing that attracted us was a meeting of minds. I loved his brain and I know he loved mine.’
Getty fell deeply in love with Ms Lund and, although he had five exwives already, asked her more than once to marry him – particularly after discovering Ms Lund was pregnant. On the first occasion, Ms Lund worried about telling her lover, then well into his 60s and already a father of five sons – though Timothy had died – that she was carrying his child.
‘I think he reacted as sweetly as any man could have when given the news. There was no anger, no regret in his eyes, no questions. He just smiled, took my hand and said, “That’s wonderful.” He said of course we would be married.’
Sadly, she suffered two miscarriages, adding: ‘I’d never wanted to marry him, even though I loved him deeply, because of the resentment I feared he’d face from his sons. If either of the children had survived, I would have been his sixth wife. Though I regretted the loss of the children, I never regretted not being his wife.’
Such was his faith in her that she was entrusted to carry out the sensitive negotiations in one of the most sensational episodes to hit the Getty family.
When Getty’s grandson, Jean Paul Getty III, was kidnapped in Italy by Mafia gangsters in 1973 – they sliced off an ear to send to his family and threatened a foot would follow, before a seven-figure ransom was paid – it was Ms Lund who dealt with them.
She recalled: ‘He really suffered. In the end, he had to pay to make sure his grandson came back to him alive, but he conducted himself in a way that showed he wasn’t a pushover and didn’t encourage similar attacks on his family.’
Today, Ms Lund, a self-confessed hoarder from Scotland who grew up mainly in London, retains many letters from Getty, documents relating to his business dealings, notes she made at the time of the kidnapping, and countless other pieces of history.
A year after his death in June 1976, she published a book about the industrialist, entitled The Getty I Knew, only hinting at intimacy but never confirming the depth of their love.
She never intended to write a second book about her life with Getty but has been prompted to begin work after hearing about two major drama projects.
Ridley Scott’s film, All the Money in the World, focuses heavily on the kidnapping and the way it was handled by America’s first oil billionaire, and reaches cinema screens in December.
Dismissively, Ms Lund says she
Though I loved him deeply, I never regretted not being his wife
is unlikely to watch it, and not just because Kevin Spacey, who plays the man she loved, is ‘just wrong for the part’, or because Getty’s principal lawyer is played by a man. She says: ‘Everything I’ve heard about the film tells me the makers weren’t focused on the truth. If they had wanted the truth – and there are things about the kidnapping that only Paul and I knew – they would have had to get it from me. No one even tried to find me. ‘I’m told Paul is portrayed as a mean man who wouldn’t pay the kidnappers. He was anything but mean and the reason he did not immediately cave in was because he had 14 other grandchildren. ‘He feared that if he looked weak, none of them would be able to have normal lives, they could never go anywhere, every one of them would be a target for the Mafia.’
She has also been told the trailer shows Spacey’s Getty slamming his fist on a table and talking directly to a group of reporters, and notes: ‘That’s two things he never did and never would have done.’
Trainspotting director Danny Boyle is also involved in a major drama project, making Trust, a tenpart series about the Getty family.
To play Getty, Boyle has cast Donald Sutherland, who Ms Lund believes is ‘a better choice’ but says she dreads the liberties she knows will be taken with the truth.
Still loyal to the man she loved and eager to defend his reputation, she
A glimpse into the social stratosphere... never before seen pics from her personal collection
says: ‘The half-truths and lies they perpetuate will pass into the realm of fact for most people and they’ll be repeated for as long as people are interested in the Getty family.’
Ms Lund regrets that during Getty’s final year, she did not see him at all. She knew he was ill at their last meeting and although they spoke on the phone, she was nursing her dying father and could not leave him.
In the 41 years since Getty’s death, Ms Lund has liked being out of the spotlight and it is with some reluctance that she has decided to emerge.
Although their love affair was never exposed, it still seems remarkable a major film and a big-budget drama series about Getty has ignored the part she played in his life, a part recognised by many commentators.
Former Daily Mail journalist Olga Franklin wrote at the time: ‘The most interesting thing about him was the woman with him, a lawyer, young and very pretty, Miss Robina Lund, in glamorous hat. I thought she was lovely and couldn’t quite make out the relationship although he deferred to her and asked her advice before answering my questions and so on.’
Bela von Block, Getty’s ghostwriter, also noted her importance: ‘Getty relies on her advice in transactions involving millions of dollars. [She is] his buffer and “Secretary of State” dealing regularly with members of the press, Middle Eastern oil sheiks, international financiers, top political and diplomatic figures and members of European nobility and royalty.’
He added that Getty acknowledged ‘his shapely assistant’s abilities’, often telling people to ‘take it up with Miss Lund’.
It is unlikely that the world’s richest man was in the habit of deferring to many people, or of allowing others to make vital decisions for him, which ought to have made her part in any authoritative account of his life indispensable.
With her own memoir, Ms Lund hopes at least to set the record straight.
She says: ‘I don’t expect that my book will make money. It might not earn me a penny, but money is not the motivation, especially at my age. I just feel it’s time to tell the truth to make sure that it has a chance of cancelling out the myths.’