Harry Mount pays tribute to an eccentric and multi-talented woman who made sure joy was always part of the business plan

Why can’t business be fun? That’s what my late godmother – the Marchioness of Dufferin and Ava, also known as the painter Lindy Guinness (1941-2020) – thought.

As well as being a painter, she was an art-collector, gallery- and golf course-owner, cow-breeder, yoghurt-manufacturer, philanthropist and chatelaine of Clandeboye, one of Northern Ireland’s most enchanting houses and estates.

Her late husband, Sheridan Dufferin, was instrumental in discovering David Hockney at the Kasmin Gallery in New Bond Street, which he ran with John Kasmin. Hockney had his first show there in 1963.

Lindy felt that serious things could be achieved, even if – or especially if – you were enjoying yourself. She wrote in her diary:

“If there is laughter and joy, however serious the business at hand, you create more than if it is too heavy-handed and serious.

“Fun is serious – it’s the best thing to have fun, and to play makes one creative and one makes things that one had no idea were possible.”

As a result of this original attitude to business, Lindy reinvigorated Clandeboye’s fortunes when she took over after the sad death of her husband Sheridan in 1988.

Every year – every month, it seemed – there was a new scheme: an anaerobic digester, which turns agricultural by-products into electricity; Clandeboye Yoghurt; a forest school for local children to learn about nature; ventures with Kew Gardens; the sprouting of new gardens and ripping out of old features with her head gardener Fergus Thompson; filming on the estate. She was always devising new ingenious ways to make the whole place useful.

Her furious activity extended beyond Clandeboye. In 2019, she had the idea of bringing sheep back to Hampstead Heath, inspired by paintings by Constable showing cattle grazing on the Heath in the 1820s and 30s. Two Oxford Downs and three Norfolk Horns – rare breeds – were duly brought onto the Heath by the City of London Corporation, which owns it.

Her business ideas were many and varied. Some didn’t prosper but, more often than not, they were resounding successes. She particularly liked the deal where she managed to get BT to restore Helen’s Tower – a bewitching Victorian folly on the estate – in return for installing a telephone mast there.

She was intensely interested in politics, especially Northern Irish politics. But she played a blinder in never cleaving to one side or the other.

In 2000, she had political councillors of all shades over to tea at Clandeboye to hand over a wood to the country. Still she rose above any local politics. She didn’t ban political chats – far from it – but you wouldn’t have known which way she leaned.

In her diary, Lindy pondered writing a book called The Morphing of a Great Estate. Sadly, she died of cancer in 2020, aged 79, before she could write it. My dearest godmother could also have written The Art of the Deal – and How to Have Fun Doing It.

Edited by Harry Mount, The Last Marchioness: A Portrait of Lindy Dufferin (Venn Press, £16.99) is available exclusively from Heywood Hill book shop, 10 Curzon Street W1J 5HH, and from their online shop here.