Oh, mummy you were naughty - Dame Barbara Cartland's son reveals all about her racy life

By Kathryn Knight for MailOnline
Updated: 06:12 EDT, 18 October 2008

Resplendent in a voluminous neon pink gown, complete with trademark vivid eyeshadow and spidery eyelashes, Dame Barbara Cartland peers grandly out of a photograph.

As it was taken eight years after her death, one could be forgiven for thinking that Dame Barbara has descended to Earth once more, to consign one last fawn-like heroine into the arms of her darkly handsome prince.

Of course, it's not actually her, though the actress Anne Reid looks uncannily like the romantic authoress as she portrays her in a new BBC drama based on Cartland's life.

Striking: Anne Reid as Dame Barbara

Set largely in the 1970s, at the peak of her commercial success, In Love With Barbara uses flashbacks to tell the story of her youth, forging her career in the 1920s and 1930s  -  while simultaneously cutting a vivid dash through the London beau monde.

One wonders why the life of Dame Barbara, who died in 2000 at the age of 98, hasn't been plundered for drama earlier, for it provides rich pickings.

Aside from her writing career  -  there were 723 published offerings at the time of her death  -  her personal life was just as riveting. Ironically, it provided the sort of drama that would have been considered far too outre to be material for her own novels.

Among the more fruity chapters are a scandalous divorce, adultery and a much speculated upon friendship with Lord Mountbatten. Then there was her role as step-grandmother to Princess Diana through the marriage of Dame Barbara's daughter, Raine, to Earl Spencer, Diana's father.

Family: Dame Barbara Cartland with her sons, Glen and Ian (right), who publishes his mother's unprinted books

Little wonder that her son, Ian McCorquodale, was anxious to cast a protective eye over proceedings. He approved the script before filming began and now professes himself happy with the film.

'It's odd watching your family being portrayed by someone else. It gives you a funny feeling, but I think it's come out rather nicely,' he says. 'I interfered very little. I wanted to make sure Mother was portrayed sympathetically and her personality would come to life.'

But then Ian has taken it upon himself to "keep the Cartland flag flying". Ian is Cartland's eldest son from her second marriage. Her first marriage, to army officer Alexander McCorquodale, with whom she had Raine, ended in divorce in the 1930s and Barbara went on to marry Alexander's cousin, Hugh McCorquodale, giving birth to Ian and then Glen.

Today, Glen dwells in Camfield Place, the 100-acre estate Dame Barbara bought in Hertfordshire, while Ian lives in a farmhouse on the grounds. It is Ian, though, who appears to be the self-appointed guardian of the Cartland legacy.

A life lived: Dame Barbara's personal life was riveting

He has spent the years following his mother's death single-handedly editing and publishing the 160 manuscripts that remain. Each month, another breathless read emerges under the banner The Pink Collection, complete with a pink cover featuring a tremulous heroine and brooding hero.

But these days there is little place for Dame Barbara's hearts-a-flutter heroines in modern commercial fiction. Booksellers have, alas, long since ousted her work from their shelves. 'It isn't mainstream  -  this is dedicated fans all over the world,' Ian admits. 'The ones who do buy her books are incredibly devoted.'

In the 1970s, Ian gave up his job in the family-printing business to become fully involved with "Cartland Inc".

When his marriage collapsed in the early 1990s, he moved back to the family home, dining most nights with his mother in the grand and draughty dining hall. But for all his loyal protectiveness, Dame Barbara's life was far from free of scandal and incident, as the film shows.

There was divorce, for a start  -  quite a scandal in the 1930s, particularly given the accusations of adultery that came with it.

Dame Barbara, already forging a career as a novelist, discovered Alex had been having an affair with a major's wife, but, in the court case, he accused Barbara of dallying with his cousin, Hugh. One headline memorably read, "Divorce suit by novelist: Husband's cruise in liner. Cousin cited in cross petition".

Barbara vehemently denied impropriety, and was believed, though she went on to marry the aforementioned cousin, Ian's father, in 1936.

'People didn't get divorced then, so it was a bit of a scandal,' Ian says. 'It turned out her first husband drank too much, and when she'd decided the marriage was over, that was it. But she went through a horrid time, until she met my father, with whom she was blissfully happy.'

Barbara did not remarry following Hugh's death in 1963, though there were rumours about the nature of her close friendship with Lord Mountbatten, whom Cartland had known since the 1920s, and whose assassination, in 1979, she described as 'the greatest sadness of my life'.

Ian rebutts any notion of an affair. 'They were very, very fond of each other, but it certainly wasn't a sexual affair,' Ian insists. 'It was a great friendship, and there's no doubt they loved each other, but I wouldn't have allowed the programme to suggest anything otherwise.'

Ian's life has not been without its own curses: married in 1970 to Anna Chisholm, he has two daughters, Tara, 37, and Iona, 34, but divorced in 1993. He now lives with his second wife of eight years, the former Royal Ballet dancer Bryony Brind.

Their wedding had to be postponed by several months following the death of Dame Barbara, and their marital happiness was overshadowed when Ian had two strokes within the first two years of their marriage. He now walks with a limp and is paralysed down the left side, although he remains cheerful.

'The strokes have been quite beastly, but I've been so lucky with Bryony, who looks after me beautifully. She went from being a newlywed to a carer. But we love each other very much and we're happy. Love conquers all. My mother loved Bryony, she saw her as a Cartland heroine  -  you could say ours is a real Barbara Cartland story.'

It cannot, one imagines, have been a walk in the park for Bryony while her mother-in-law was alive. Dame Barbara may have professed huge fondness for her future daughter-in-law, but she was always candid about her preference for male company.

That preference seemed to extend to her own daughter, Raine, with whom she was said to have a fractious relationship, though Ian denies this. 'They were perhaps not as close as my mother and I, but they got on very well on the whole,' he says.

One wonders if the irony was lost on Dame Barbara when Raine, after her marriage to the 8th Earl Spencer, was nicknamed "Acid Raine" by her stepdaughter Diana. By all accounts, however, Diana remained affectionately well-disposed towards Dame Barbara.

'I always thought Diana was a very pretty girl. We used to see an awful lot of her when she was a teenager,' Ian recalls.

'She was very fond of my mother, and she used to read her books  -  she was always sent away from here with a book and a packet of biscuits.'

The notion is rather a poignant one, given Diana didn't get her own happy-ever-after. She would certainly know what she was getting: Ian acknowledges that his mother's plots tend to be formulaic. 'Yes, but aren't all books, in a way?' he says.

'There's thwarted love, always a bad chap trying to sneak the maiden away from the hero, but in the end they fall into each other's arms and live happily ever after.'

And that's where the action ends  -  Dame Barbara's pen stayed famously clear of the bedroom. 'There are so few books left that are pure romance. My mother was told to put sex in hers, but she was quite firm about it. She didn't  -  and her books still carried on selling well.'

Ian admits he struggles to adjust to the fact that his mother has gone from this life. 'I always thought she was immortal,' he says. 'She was around for so long, she spanned a century, and it took a long period of adjustment just to get used to her not being here.'

The film will help him to relive some of her finer moments, though whether Barbara would have approved of it is another matter. 'I'm not sure what she would have made of it. Although I'm quite sure she would have insisted on playing herself.'

He pauses for a moment. 'She certainly wasn't pleased with the waxwork they had of her in Madame Tussauds as she didn't think it was pretty enough, so I imagine she would feel much the same way about this.'

In Love With Barbara will be shown on BBC4 on 26 October at 9pm.