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EDEN CONFIDENTIAL: Daughter of Margaret, Duchess of Argyll who was at the centre of A Very British Scandal, dies aged 86, taking her secrets and scars to the grave


RICHARD EDEN: Those who knew the late Frances, Duchess of Rutland, point out that her life was overshadowed by her mother Margaret Campbell's divorce from the Duke of Argyll.

She became the youngest duchess in the country when she married nearly 66 years ago, still not quite 21, thereby becoming chatelaine of the extravagantly turreted, 365-room Belvoir Castle, her new husband’s family seat, overlooking a 16,000-acre estate in Leicestershire. She and her brother Brian – both the offspring of Margaret’s first marriage to American stockbroker Charles Sweeny – urged their mother not to contest proceedings, brought against her by her second husband, the 11th Duke of Argyll. The suspects included Hollywood actor Douglas Fairbanks Jr and German diplomat Sigismund von Braun, but chief among them was Duncan Sandys, the Minister of Defence and Winston Churchill's son-in-law.

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