The VERY colourful life of the Dowager Marchioness of Bath: As the actress-turned-journalist dies aged 78, how she tolerated her husband Lord Bath’s 75 mistresses – but fell out with her son over his wife Emma Weymouth
- Dowager Marchioness of Bath died in Paris, where she spent much of her time
- Anna Gael put up with the infidelities of her eccentric husband Alexander Thynn
- But she was less lenient with son Ceawlin’s choice of bride Emma McQuiston
- She allegedly asked Ceawlin if he was sure about ruining ‘400 years of bloodline’
The actress-turned-aristocrat Dowager Marchioness of Bath has died just 10 days before her 79th birthday.
Hungarian-born Anna Gael died in Paris, where she spent most of her time, despite being married to Alexander Thynn, the 7th Marquess of Bath and châtelain of Longleat House, in Wiltshire, for more than 50 years until his death in 2020.
The couple had, by any measure, an unusual relationship. Not only did they spend most of their time living in separate countries, but Anna also tolerated her eccentric husband keeping more than 70 mistresses, whom he dubbed ‘wifelets’.
‘It was never quite as easy and harmonious as an ‘open marriage’,’ their son and heir Ceawlin, now the 8th Marquess of Bath, once said, ‘but that’s the general gist’.
While actress-turned-journalist Mrs Gael put up with her husband’s womanising that saw him acquire the nickname ‘The Loins of Longleat’, she was less understanding of Ceawlin’s choice of bride.
She allegedly asked her heir – who now oversees 10,000-acre Longleat, best known for its wildlife park – if he was sure about ruining ‘400 years of bloodline’ by marrying Emma McQuiston, the half-Nigerian daughter of an oil tycoon.
Known as Emma Weymouth after marrying Ceawlin, then Viscount Weymouth, in 2013, she went on to find fame as a contestant on Strictly Come Dancing and is close pals with fashionistas like Naomi Campbell, Edward Enninful and Lady Kitty Spencer.
Lord Alexander Thynn, 7th Marquess of Bath, poses with his wife, actress and war correspondent Anna Gael, outside Longleat House
Anna was a model and budding actor when she met Alexander Thynn aged 15 in Paris while he studied at the at La Grande Chaumière art college in Montparnasse
Emma Weymouth, Marchioness of Bath, and Ceawlin Thynn, Viscount Weymouth attend the launch of Idris Elba And David Farber’s Porte Noire Bar and Shop in Coal Drops Yard last year
Emma Weymouth, Marchioness of Bath, attends the amfAR Gala Cannes 2022 at the Hotel du Cap-Eden-Roc earlier this year
Lord Bath and his wife Anna at home in Longleat, Wiltshire, in March 1971
Lord Bath, who died of pneumonia after testing positive for Covid in 2020, aged 87, failed to attend the couple’s wedding. His wife was also absent, claiming they had already accepted another invitation.
Ceawlin was said to have stopped his mother from seeing his son, John, to prevent the child being ‘contaminated’ by her racism.
Anna later denied she was a racist and said she had ‘absolutely nothing’ against her daughter-in-law.
Anna was born in Hungary to a mathematician father and poet mother who moved their family to France when their daughter was just a child.
She began acting as a teenager under the stage name Anna Gael, appearing in films including Therese And Isabelle, and Take Me, Love Me.
She met Alexander at the movies while skipping school aged 15. He was then 26 and a student at La Grande Chaumière art college in Montparnasse.
According to The Times, the English nobleman invited Anna for a coffee, and within month, convinced her to pose nude for him in his art studio.
The couple also spent a year travelling around South America in Alexander’s Jaguar.
Anna Gael (lying down) with Essy Persson in a sensual scene from 1968 film Therese and Isabelle
Viscount Weymouth, future Lord Bath, and Lady Weymouth, pictured outside the London Palladium in May 1975
Anna enjoyed a blossoming career as an actress before she married Alexander Thynn. Pictured in 1977
Thynn and Anna were part of the People for Europe group. Here they are pictured with Sheila Scott, Nicholas Parsons, Doris Hare, Patricia Hayes in 1975
Viscount Weymouth, then 36, attending his brother’s wedding. A year later, he asked Anna whether she would like to make him an heir
When they returned to France, Anna dedicated herself to acting, under the stage name Anna Gaël.
In 1963, she married French director Gilbert Pineau who cast her in several television films, not knowing she was secretly dating Alexander behind his back.
She got her break playing a seductive spy in Jean Leduc’s Via Macau in 1966, before being propelled to international fame in Radley Metzger’s lesbian drama Therese and Isabelle in 1968.
She later denied that it was a pornographic film, saying: ‘The most anyone saw was two pairs of ankles touching each other. It was two schoolgirls getting a crush on each other. You never saw them sleeping or kissing.’
However, the actress admitted she had gone topless for movies when necessary.
She posed for Penthouse in scantily clad pictures in 1970, but later threatened to sue anyone who would republish them, opposing that times had changed.
Throughout her career, Gaël and Thynn kept seeing each other casually in spite of their respective affairs.
Alexander had previously entered into an ‘anti-marriage’ with Tania Duckworth, an Anglo-Ceylonese model, but by age 37, he was ready to produce an heir.
‘I was coming up to 37 and I needed a legitimate son if Longleat was to pass down through me,’ he told People magazine in 1976. ‘I broached the idea of a son and asked did she want to be the mother.’
Alexander with daughter Lady Lenka Thynn, young Ceawlin Thynn and his wife Anna Gael, in 1987
Alexander, then known as Lord and Lady Weymouth, pictured together at Longleat nine years into their marriage in 1978
Anna, clad in black, walking behind Alexander at his brother’s funeral where he escorted their mother The Honorable Daphne Fielding
Anna was still with Pineau at the time, but Thynn later said the relationship was disintegrating.
Eventually, she divorced the director, and she and Alexander agreed to marry in London while she was three months pregnant in 1969 in Kensington.
Anna revealed the couple had pizza after their nuptials, which was ‘awfully romantic.’
Anna Gael, the actress turned aristocrat, in her headshot for the 1969 film The Bridge at Remagen
The actress locks lips with George Segal in a scene in The Bridge at Remagen. Lord Bath described his wife as the ‘sexiest actress of all time’
The young actress in a scene from an episode of Jason King in 1972
In the early days of their marriage, Alexander and Anna each had their own drawing room, and would eat dinner together.
A few months later, she gave birth to their daughter Lenka, who went on to be a model and a TV researcher.
Five years later, Ceawlin was born, and became the eighth marquess.
After their family was completed, Alexander and Anna worked out an arrangement whereby he would spend most of his time at Longleat and she would be filming in Paris.
Ceawlin and Lenka were raised by Alexander and a nanny and would receive sporadic visit from their mother.
Anna told the New York Times in 1972 that she had been criticised for being a distant mother, but that Alexander understood her need for independent and that she couldn’t sacrifice herself for anyone.
Thynn succeeded his father as Marquess of Bath in 1992, and Anna became Marchioness, however, she said she found that side of her life boring.
On the other hand, she said that the title ‘Lady Thynn’ had been detrimental to her acting career because people thought she didn’t need the money.
Speaking at the time of his father’s death in April 2020, Ceawlin had his own take on whether his parents embarked on a marriage of convenience to provide Longleat with a male heir.
‘It’s not that cut-and-dried,’ he said.
‘They just lead such very different lives. It was a love-match at the beginning. She fell for Dad first and Longleat was an added bonus.
‘She found being the Lady of Longleat fun for seven months and then realised it was not that great.’
For many years she remained responsible for conserving Longleat’s treasures and returned every three weeks or so for up to ten days.
Lord Bath with his wife Anna at the wedding of Tracy Ward to the Marquis of Worcester in 1987
For most of their long-distance marriage, which endured for more than half a century, she was based in Paris from where, after boring of acting, she reported on the Vietnam War, the Northern Ireland Troubles and other hotspots. Pictured, the couple in 1992
Their marriage didn’t stop working, said Ceawlin.
‘It was never quite as easy and harmonious as an ‘open marriage’, but that’s the general gist.’
Eventually, she stopped acting and became a journalist, spending two months in Vietnam during the war with the British army, writing for a French news agency.
While working from Cambodia soon after, she was caught in an air raid and was besieged for four days.
Her articles and features were published on the front pages of French magazine including the publication Le Point, and she published several books on international politics.
Meanwhile, in Wiltshire, the 7th Marquess of Bath spent his 87 years sheltering from the chill winds of modern life behind an exquisite Elizabethan facade while dressed as a superannuated hippy and surrounded by an ever-changing court of nubile young women.
While his father, a pioneer of the stately home business, collected Nazi memorabilia including Himmler’s spectacles and some of Hitler’s watercolours, Alexander adopted the ideals of the flower-power generation and covered the walls of Longleat, his ancestral seat, with his own paintings of his 75 ‘wifelets’ and erotic murals.
Yet Lord Bath remained not just married to Anna, the wife he so grievously betrayed, but devoted to her, describing the former French film star as ‘the sexiest actress of all time’.
Anna would complain to a newspaper if it reported that they were separated, insisting that was untrue.
It wasn’t just Emma’s arrival at Longleat that put strain on Ceawlin’s relationship with his parents.
The biggest cause of dispute was over the decision by Ceawlin and Emma to remove some of Lord Bath’s garish murals, which his father had painted for him and his sister when they were children.
The quarrels were exposed by a memorable BBC1 documentary, All Change At Longleat.
Emma Weymouth: the glamourous Marchioness of Bath with the fashion credentials to match
Stepping out in style: The British socialite, 36, wore a low-cut black top with cut-out detail and a pair of matching trousers and heels
Emma appeared on BBC’s Strictly Come Dancing in 2019, where she was partnered up with Aljaz Skorjanec
The current Marchioness of Bath, 36, is as glamourous as socialites come.
Emma married Ceawlin Thynn, 8th Marquess of Bath, 48, in 2013, and the couple now share two sons John, six, and Henry, four.
The boys’ official titles are The Honourable John Alexander Ladi Thynn and The Honourable Henry Richard Isaac Thynn.
His mother Anna Gael apparently questioned her son’s choice of bride at the time of their nuptials.
She allegedly asked Ceawlin – the then heir to Longleat, with its 10,000-acre estate, wildlife park and reputed £150 million fortune, if he was sure about ruining ‘400 years of bloodline’ by marrying Emma McQuiston, the half-Nigerian daughter of an oil tycoon.
BFFs: Emma joined close friend and British Vogue editor-in-chief Edward Enninful at private members’ club for a British Fashion Council bash hosted in collaboration with Swarovski
Friends: Giving an insight into one of the most exclusive industries, Edward’s memoir details how he, a Black, gay, working-class refugee, found a home in fashion and made his mark on it (pictured with Emma Weymouth and Vanessa Kingori)
Lady Kitty Spencer might be a married woman, but she still had time for a girls’ night out in November 2021 with her friends Emma Weymouth and Jade Holland Cooper
On her wedding day, Emma became the first black marchioness in British history.
Yet in November Emma said she doesn’t want her skin colour to be a ‘defining characteristic’ and is a reluctant role model after becoming Britain’s first black marchioness.
Known as Emma Weymouth after marrying Ceawlin, then Viscount Weymouth, she went on to find fame as a contestant on Strictly Come Dancing in 2019.
The Marchioness, who is the daughter of a Nigerian oil tycoon, appeared on the cover of Tatler in November 2021 talking about her grand plans for her family’s Longleat estate.
Toned: The Marchioness of Bath, 36, was making the most of her time away as she soaked up the rays and took a dip in the cooling sea
Looking good: Emma Weymouth showed off her sizzling physique in a black bikini as she hit the beach in Saint-Tropez on Sunday
In the interview she said she had a ‘responsibility’ to maintain the estate.
She added: ‘I aspire to a future where [my skin colour] is not a defining characteristic.’
In the past Emma has also talked about raising her sons on the Longleat estate which contains an enormous wildlife Park.
In 2014 she told Hello! magazine that her eldest son John was getting a varied education from living around animals.
Dressed to impress: Emma Weymouth looked nothing short of sensational as she attended an intimate dinner at The Twenty Two in London on Tuesday evening
She said: ‘He’s learned to roar from being around the Longleat safari park lions and the animatronic dinosaurs. He can make monkey noises, too.’
Emma also enjoys a host of glamourous friends. She is best-friends with Dolce and Gabbana muse and Princess Diana’s niece Kitty Spencer, and she counts British Vogue editor Edward Enninful amongst her close friends as well.
The well-connected beauty was spotted with Enninful at the private members’ club Annabel’s for a British Fashion Council bash hosted in collaboration with Swarovski last week.
When she is not rubbing elbows with the UK’s high flyers, Emma enjoys holidaying in the South of France with her family.
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