Carla Thorneycroft, Lady Thorneycroft

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Carla Thorneycroft, Baroness Thorneycroft

Peter Thorneycroft. Lady Thorneycroft helped establish the Venice in Peril Fund
and was a noted philanthropist and patroness of the arts.

Early life

Carla Maria Concetta Francesca Malagola, Contessa Cappi was the elder daughter of the Italian Count Guido Malagola Cappi and his wife, Alexandra (née Dunbar-Marshall) who had come over with her mother from

Frari
basilica, and then in Rome.

Her father was an

interior designer and a talented photographer. Alexandra and Guido lived in Venice and Rome and Carla was educated by Roman Catholic nuns, along with her siblings, Anna-Viola and Francesco. Francesco, later known as Francis Dunbar Marshall Malagola (1918–2001), was an artist whose works are conserved in a wide range of European collections and museums. [citation needed
]

In 1930, Carla and her mother met Major Mervyn Thorneycroft while on holiday on Capri, and later visited his home, Dunston Hall in Staffordshire, where she first met her future second husband, the Major's son, Peter Thorneycroft, newly commissioned in the Royal Artillery. They were quickly engaged, but the engagement was broken off after she returned to Rome. She married Count Giorgio Roberti, in 1934, aged 20, and had a son and a daughter. [citation needed]

During the

Red Cross at the Principessa Piemonte
hospital in Rome.

Life in England

Her marriage was annulled in 1946, and she then took her young children to England. She impressed the Vogue fashion editors with her startling new ideas which they commissioned from her and her forthright attitude won her praise at Vogue. She worked with John Deakin, Cecil Beaton and Norman Parkinson. Her interior design skills and instinctive eye were spotted and she assisted John Fowler and Sybil Colefax to renovate Chevening and worked with Nancy Lancaster.

She met Peter Thorneycroft again at a party hosted by

MP
in 1938. He had been married and divorced. They married in 1949, and she left Vogue in 1951.

She was a founder member of the

Italian Order of Merit in 1967.[1]

Meanwhile, her husband held a succession of ministerial positions. He was

Minister of Defence and then Secretary of State for Defence from 1962–64. He left the House of Commons in 1966, and became a life peer in 1967. He was Chairman of the Conservative Party from 1975–81. [citation needed
]

She supported his political career, and spoke on his behalf in his re-election campaigns. She was a trustee of the

Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1995, for her work for the Conservative Party. [citation needed
]

She was also a founder of the League of Friends of the

Italian Hospital in London from 1956 until it closed in 1989, a vice-president of the British-Italian Society for 50 years, a trustee of the Rosehill Arts Theatre, a trustee of the Chichester Festival Theatre Trust from 1962 to 1988, and a vice-president of the Council of Friends of Westminster Cathedral from 1993. She was a trustee of the Royal School of Needlework
for 8 years, from 1964–76.

Family

Her husband, Giorgio, and her son, Piero, Count Roberti, from her first marriage predeceased her as did her second husband, Peter Thorneycroft. She was survived by a daughter, Francesca, from her first marriage, a daughter from her second marriage, Victoria, and a stepson, John Thorneycroft.

References

  1. ISSN 0307-1235
    . Retrieved 22 April 2020.

Works cited
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