Barbara Cartland - Marriage and Relationships

Marriage and Relationships

According to an obituary published in The Daily Telegraph on 22 May 2000, Cartland reportedly broke off her first engagement, to a Guards officer, when she learned about sexual intercourse and recoiled. This claim fits in with her image as part of a generation for whom such matters were never discussed, but sits uneasily with her having produced work controversial at the time for its sexual subject matter, as described above. She was married to Alexander George McCorquodale (died 1964), a British Army officer from Scotland, and heir to a printing fortune, from 1927 to 1932.

Their daughter, Raine McCorquodale (born in 1929), whom Cartland later alleged was the daughter of Prince George, Duke of Kent, became "Deb of the Year" in 1947. After the McCorquodales' 1936 divorce, which involved charges and countercharges of infidelity, Cartland married a man her husband had accused her of dallying with — his cousin Hugh McCorquodale, a former military officer. She and her second husband, who died in 1963, had two sons, Ian and Glen McCorquodale.

Cartland maintained a long-time friendship with Lord Mountbatten of Burma, whose 1979 murder she claimed was the "greatest sadness of my life". Mountbatten supported Cartland in her various charitable works, particularly for United World Colleges, and even helped her write her book Love at the Helm, providing background naval and historical information. The Mountbatten Memorial Trust, established by Mountbatten's great-nephew Charles, Prince of Wales after Mountbatten was assassinated in Ireland, was the recipient of the proceeds of this book on its release in 1980.

In 1991, aged 90, Cartland was invested by Queen Elizabeth II as a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in honour of the author's nearly 70 years of literary, political, and social contributions.

Cartland did not get on with her step-granddaughter Diana, Princess of Wales, who notably did not invite Cartland to her wedding to the Prince of Wales. Cartland was openly critical of Diana's subsequent divorce, though the rift between them was mended shortly before Diana's fatal car crash in Paris in 1997. According to Tina Brown's book on the late Princess, Cartland once remarked, "The only books Diana ever read were mine, and they weren't awfully good for her."