Lady Annabel Goldsmiths summer party draws A list celebs

We thought the summer party season had peaked on Wednesday with The Spectator’s summer bash, but it turns out there was one on the same day to rival even that. Down in Richmond at Ormeley Lodge, Lady Annabel Goldsmith discreetly threw her glamorous summer party. It was so good that some of The Spectator’s own writers decided to defect. Taki, the magazine’s High Life columnist, was seen chatting to former Tory MP Jonathan Aitken in what was affectionately dubbed “jailbird’s corner” (in the Eighties, Taki spent time in Pentonville on a drugs charge, and, in the Nineties, Aitken was sent down for perjury). “It really was the place to be. Prince William of Wales was there,” claimed a mole at the party. The guest list, like the spread, was extravagant. For decades, Lady Annabel, 89, has hosted an annual bash for the great and good. A major figure in the swinging London of the Sixties, she gave her name to Mayfair club Annabel’s. In previous years she has hosted her party at various Mayfair clubs but this year opted for something closer to home. Ormeley Lodge is the grade II listed Georgian house she bought with her late husband Sir James Goldsmith in the Seventies. We understand that Ellie Goulding, a friend of Lady Annabel’s son Zac, couldn’t make it as she was at a conservationist event.

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