Annabel Goldsmith, a Queen of British High Society, Dies at 91

Annabel Goldsmith, a fixture of British high society who became inextricably linked with London’s nightlife through the ritzy club named after her, died on Oct. 18 at a hospital in London. She was 91.

Her daughter Jemima Khan said on social media that Ms. Goldsmith died in her sleep.

In 1963, her first husband, Mark Birley, gave her name to his new nightclub — and Annabel’s, in the upscale Mayfair neighborhood, quickly became a place to see and be seen. The club, which was sold in 2007 as part of a deal valued at more than 90 million pounds (over $200 million today) and has since moved to a new location nearby, is still among the city’s most exclusive spots.

“Although I have never particularly liked the name myself, Mark thought it was a good one for a club,” Ms. Goldsmith wrote in a 2004 memoir. “I look back on his decision with pride and consider it the most tremendous compliment he could ever have paid me.”

Annabel’s opened when London was finally emerging from its postwar slump. The city “had started to dazzle with a new and magnetic color,” Ms. Goldsmith wrote in her memoir. And she seemed to be the embodiment of it.

But as often as she was seen at Annabel’s, she was not a natural night owl. “I have never been very good at late nights,” Ms. Goldsmith wrote. She nevertheless had the strong character, sense of humor and ability to throw memorable parties — as well as the noble lineage — to become “a high-society ‘it girl,’” as The Telegraph put it.

She attended Southover Manor, a boarding school for girls, and then Cuffy’s Tutorial College in Oxford. Both of her parents died when she was a young adult: her mother from mouth cancer; her father from the effects of alcoholism.

Annabel’s personal life was notoriously tangled, and made her a frequent presence in the British tabloids.

In 1954, when she was not yet 20, she married Mr. Birley, the son of a noted society portrait painter. She later wrote that the two grew apart “almost imperceptibly to ourselves.” Mr. Birley was all but consumed with running Annabel’s, while she spent much of her time raising their children.

She and Mr. Goldsmith had three children, two of them born while she was still married to her first husband. She later wrote that she and Mr. Birley “discreetly divorced” after the birth of her son Zac Goldsmith.

“Neither Jimmy nor I really wanted to get married again,” she wrote, but she and Mr. Goldsmith married to legitimize their children in 1978, by which time he had fallen in love with someone else. A few years later, he moved to the United States, while she and the children remained in Britain.

In 1994, Mr. Goldsmith founded a short-lived political party that campaigned for a referendum to be held on Britain’s relationship with the European Union. After he died in 1997, Ms. Goldsmith continued to support the cause on his behalf. In the 2001 general elections, she funded a campaign against pro-European candidates.

“I feel I owe it to Jimmy to carry on where he was forced to leave off,” she told The Telegraph.

In 1970, her younger son from her first marriage, Robin, was severely injured when he was mauled by a tiger at a zoo. In 1986, her older son with Mr. Birley, Rupert, went missing while swimming off the coast of Africa and was presumed drowned.

“It was worse than my parents dying,” Ms. Goldsmith told The Guardian. “But I said to myself: ‘I have six children. I’ve lost one. I have to be strong for the rest of them.’”

The interior designer Nicky Haslam, a longtime friend, said in an interview that while Ms. Goldsmith always had a certain gaiety, “you could tell there was an underlying line of tragedy that could not leave her.”

“People all think about her as this sort of party girl,” he added, but she was more than that: “She had a wonderful memory for poetry and things like that, which she very rarely displayed.”

Among her confidantes was Diana, Princess of Wales, who spent many weekends toward the end of her life at Ms. Goldsmith’s home in the Richmond area of London.

“I was aware that she came as much for the security and refuge that she found in the place as for the company of my family,” Ms. Goldsmith wrote. “I think she did regard me as something of a surrogate mother.”

Ms. Goldsmith is survived by two children from her first marriage, Robin and India Jane Birley; three children from her second marriage, Ms. Kahn, Zac Goldsmith and Ben Goldsmith; and 18 grandchildren.

In addition to her 2004 memoir, “Annabel: An Unconventional Life,” and another memoir, “No Invitation Required” (2009), Ms. Goldsmith wrote several other books, including “Copper: A Dog’s Life” (2006), about one of her many dogs, and “The Pelham Cottage Years” (2009), about her early years with Mr. Birley.

Until the end of her life, Ms. Goldsmith hosted an annual summer party. The writer Taki Theodoracopulos, a friend, said in an interview that those events always had an ideal mix of guests.

“The better kind of journalists, aristos, writers, a lot of bad boys, a lot of naughty girls,” he said. “It was perfect.”