Life After the Mcalpines ; As the Glamorous Wife of Party Treasurer Alistair, Romilly Mcalpine Was the Pinup of the Tory Government. But It Was a Life Lived in the Shadow of Terrorism. She Tells Lydia Slater How She Found Peace After Divorce

Summary

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Lady McAlpine is principally famous for her vast collection of outre Vivienne Westwood attire, so it's hardly surprising that I don't spot her at first. Sipping mineral water in a quiet corner of Brown's Hotel, she's a slender vision of quiet, understated good taste in a quasi-Nineties uniform of black skirt, white T-shirt and beige cardigan.

Since her acrimonious 2001 divorce from Lord McAlpine, the former Tory party treasurer, she's lightened her brown hair to ash-blonde and, with her slight overbite and gamine figure, she looks like the principal boy in Jack and the Beanstalk.

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Extract

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Life After the Mcalpines ; As the Glamorous Wife of Party Treasurer Alistair, Romilly Mcalpine Was the Pinup of the Tory Government. But It Was a Life Lived in the Shadow of Terrorism. She Tells Lydia Slater How She Found Peace After Divorce

I'm hesitating about whether to approach her or not; then she gets out a packet of cigarettes from a bright orange python-skin Prada bag with gold clasps. It can only be she.

It's a distinct shame for the Tories that Romilly McAlpine is no longer involved with them. A contemporary of Sandra Paul, Michael Howard's model wife (Romilly is in her mid-fifties, though she won't confirm it), she has the same classy, iconoclastic glamour. When she sold off a collection of a thousand of her favourite outfits at Sotheby's in 2002, it contained ...

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