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EDEN CONFIDENTIAL: Brother of Diana's 'love triangle rival' dies after a lifetime of drug-riddled tragedy before he was redeemed by marriage

EDEN CONFIDENTIAL: On the face of it, he might have seemed to have it all, being the heir to an earldom and the best part of 20,000 Yorkshire acres.

Indeed, until a redemptive marriage at the age of 58, Johnny Pollington, elder son of the 8th Earl of Mexborough, seemed to be defined by a succession of tragedies. These began when his mother Elizabeth, daughter of the 6th Earl of Verulum, ended her marriage and took Johnny and his younger sister, Alethea, from Arden Hall, the family seat in Yorkshire, to live in London, where she succumbed to alcoholism and depression, sometimes requiring breakfast to be brought to her in bed at 4am. In the late 1990s, he retreated to a basement flat on the border of Chelsea and Knightsbridge where he and two others spent their days smoking crack cocaine, sending the butler out to 'score' the drug for them.

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