Lady Edith Foxwell (1918-1996) was a colorful eccentric known as "The Queen of London Cafe Society" in the 1970s and early 1980s. In 1981, she became an investor in London's famous Embassy Club, where celebrities mixed with the aristocracy.
She was born Edith Sybil Lambart on 11 June 1918, the daughter of Captain Hon. Lionel John Olive Lambart and Adelaide Douglas Randolph. In 1940 she married the film producer Ivan Cottam Foxwell, among whose movies was The Colditz Story (1955). After her uncle, Horace Lambert, inherited the earldom of Cavan, she was granted the rank of a daughter of an earl by Royal Warrant of Precedence in 1947.
In her role as a producer's wife she began meeting many celebrities and showed the forcefulness of her personality when she locked the Welsh poet Dylan Thomas in a room for five days, forcing him to remain sober long enough to complete a film script that her husband was producing. She also used to lunch regularly with Noël Coward when he was in London.
She was one of the few members of London society who remained close friends with Margaret, Duchess of Argyll after the "headless man" scandal which, combined with the John Profumo affair involving Christine Keeler, threatened to topple the Government of the day.
In the 1970s she began running the Embassy Club in Mayfair, which was London's first modern New York-style nightclub and which attracted many celebrities - including Marvin Gaye, who was a frequent guest at Sherston, Lady Edith's Wiltshire estate. Sherston became notorious for its sex and drugs parties with a mixture of show business celebrities and members of the aristocracy.
She and Marvin Gaye had an affair before Gaye was shot dead by his father. The story of their affair was told by writer Stan Hey in the April 2004 issue of GQ. The report quoted writer/composer Bernard J. Taylor as saying he was told by Foxwell that she and Gaye had discussed marriage before his death.
As the Mail Online reported
Famous quotes containing the words lady and/or edith:
“A lady is nothing very specific. One man’s lady is another man’s woman; sometimes, one man’s lady is another man’s wife. Definitions overlap but they almost never coincide.”
—Russell Lynes (b. 1910)
“I know that if I’d had to go and take an exam for acting, I wouldn’t have got anywhere. You don’t take exams for acting, you take your courage.”
—Dame Edith Evans (1888–1976)