Raine Spencer should be remembered for blazing a trail through society, says her biographer

London, early 1990s. If I hadn’t just become Tatler’s beauty editor, I probably wouldn’t have seen Countess Raine Spencer. The occasion was a get-together at an auction house and the soirée was in full swing when a towering vision of huge sculpted hair, huge taffeta skirt and sparkling diamond jewels sailed into the room.

As the crowd dispersed, a hushed reverent awe fell over the champagne-drinking crowd. “Who the hell is that?” I hissed at my neighbor as the woman floated by, smiling broadly, kissing friends on both cheeks, “Dah-ling, hello,” and turning every few seconds to check on her round, smiling husband.

“Where the hell have you been?” my bouclé-drinking partner asked, baffled at my ignorance. That’s Princess Diana’s evil stepmother Raine and her husband Earl Spencer. He’s nice, but she’s a real piece of work.’

So that was Raine Spencer. Having lived in the United States for the past four years, I had vaguely heard about the feud between the world’s most glamorous woman and her stepmother. On this side of the water, however, headlines like ‘Raine, Raine go away!’ galore, and everyone knew exactly who ‘Acid Raine’ was.

But this woman was not at all what I expected. She had poise and presence; who but a royal or a Hollywood movie star could silence a room so completely? I was fascinated.

On my return to Tatler’s office, among the coffee cups, broken pearl necklaces and empty champagne bottles, I consulted the oracle: Peter Townend, the social editor of the magazine and a former author of Burke’s Peerage. After fixating on me with the kind of world-weary frown he might use on a ill-behaved hunting dog, he relieved me. “The thing about Raine,” he said, after giving an overview of her family tree — former debt of the year and bride of the year — “is that it’s what she did before she met Johnnie Spencer that made her so interesting.” makes’.

And so, while I should have been writing about Estée Lauder lipsticks, I instead spent hours researching Raine… and found that she was not at all what she seemed. Neither aristocratic nor fabulously wealthy at birth on September 9, 1929, then-Raine McCorquodale was the daughter of Barbara Cartland, the pink-hued, panda-eyed penner of best-selling novels, who zealously strove to make her daughter what she wasn’t. was : titled.

She also succeeded, after positioning Raine as debutante of the year in 1947, among the 20,000 contenders presented to King George VI in the first ceremony since the war.

Raine was going to marry the Hon Gerald Legge (heir to a county). A smart home in Belgravia, central London, furnished by the interior designer David Hicks, and two children, William, born in 1949, and Rupert in 1953, soon followed. (Her other two children with Legge, Charlotte and Henry, were born more than a decade later.)

By luck or common sense – probably a bit of both – Raine was part of the riotous, smart set led by Princess Margaret, Queen Elizabeth II’s sister. Like many privileged young women of her generation, Raine could have spent her time socializing, doing charitable work, and waiting for her husband to inherit. But she was instilled with her mother’s work ethic.

The formidable Cartland, who had survived a scandalous divorce, had worked hard in her job as a columnist and novelist to send Raine and her two stepbrothers to private schools. Not that Cartland thought Raine’s intelligence was an asset: “Ah, put your hair on, honey. No man wants a smart woman,” she used to say when Raine burst through the door with news of her latest academic achievement.

Nevertheless, as Cartland later admitted after Raine married and gave birth to the necessary heir and reserve, “we both felt she should do something to help.”

And so Raine Legge, as she was then, won a seat on Westminster City Council as a Conservative at the age of 24. It’s hard to imagine what a woman with a butler, cook, maid and nanny would want from a job that handled everything from sewers to parking garages, but she loved the challenge.

She would later win seats on the East Lewisham and Richmond councils, before finally retiring from politics after meeting Earl Spencer in 1972 (Raine and her first husband eventually divorced in 1976). As society’s original It girl in the 50s and 60s, Raine was in demand on newspapers and TV shows clamoring for her take on everything from teenage anxiety to male grooming.

Raine was also a serious player in her role as chair of the Historic Buildings Board of the Greater London Council, helping to save Covent Garden Piazza, the National Portrait Gallery and the facade of what is now Tate Britain. She had also contributed to the world’s first Earth Summit – the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment in Stockholm in 1972 – for which she wrote A Report on the Human Habitat.

But when Raine started making headlines with Earl Spencer, the news clippings revealed a dramatic and dizzying decline in her popularity. A hate campaign saw her pitted as the evil stepmother against the Spencer children, one of whom, Diana, would marry the heir to the throne. The positive headlines had disappeared and instead were the accusations that Raine had done everything from sending the Spencer children away from their bedrooms in their stately home Althorp to selling their legacy in the form of art and antiquities to to finance the renovation of the property.

Fast-forward to 2018, when Raine had been dead for two years. After quitting my job as a magazine editor due to a chronic illness, I spoke to my agent about writing a series of biographies about so-called “difficult women.” Raine’s name rose to the top of the pile. Why? Because as time went by, I had learned more about this extraordinary woman and wanted to make sure she would be remembered for the right reasons.

Just over a decade earlier, she had been the star witness in the coroner’s investigation into the death of Diana, Princess of Wales at the Royal Courts of Justice. The couple had been reconciled since Raine’s third marriage (a year after Spencer’s death) to Count Jean-François Pineton de Chambrun in 1993.

Although the marriage hadn’t lasted, Raine’s relationship with the princess had grown closer: “She called and at very short notice… came over and sat on the couch and talked… she said I had no hidden agenda. Raine told the study.

At a time when Diana was estranged from her mother – the two allegedly argued over Diana with “Muslim men” – Raine had become Diana’s most important confidant and biggest supporter. After all, the two women had three men in common: Count Spencer, King Charles III (then Prince of Wales, with whom Raine had been on a rapport) and Dodi Al Fayed.

It was thanks to Diana and Dodi’s father, Mohamed Al Fayed, that Raine was hired in her last and arguably happiest role, as managing director and occasional store clerk at Harrods. “Mohamed, this is the woman to hire – she can organize anything,” the princess told her friend when the three were at a party in early 1996. “Okay, I’ll offer her a job,” Al Fayed replied. “I thought he was joking,” Raine said later. “Luckily he wasn’t.”

Raine seized the opportunity, forging a successful career in the store and liaising with wealthy customers. She loved the shop floor and worked at the till on every sale. “She was especially good with middle-aged men,” says a friend. “They went in looking for a tie and came out with four cashmere sweaters.”

It was no surprise to learn that Raine had also carefully planned her own goodbye. After reluctantly giving up her role at Harrods when she developed cancer in late 2014 (something she confided to very few people), she threw a dinner for 35 of her closest friends at Spencer House, thanking everyone for their friendship in a thoughtful speech.

It took them a moment to understand that she was saying goodbye. “Raine has never complained or mentioned her illness,” says her friend Julian Fellowes. ‘It was all about living in the ‘now’.’ She had even persuaded another friend, Michael Cole, former BBC journalist and public affairs director for Harrods, to deliver the eulogy at her memorial service, by sending him two typed pages in advance detailing her achievements. “We’ll never see her like this again,” Cole says. “Raine was totally and absolutely one-time.”

Three Times a Countess: The Extraordinary Life and Times of Raine Spencer by Tina Gaudoin published by Little, Brown, £25*

*Go to mailshop.co.uk/books or call 020 3176 2937 to order a copy for £21.25 with free UK delivery until 16th October.