Penelope Aitken

The Honourable
Lady Aitken
MBE
The Honourable Lady Aitken MBE
Born	Penelope Loader Maffey; 2 December 1910; Peshawar
Died	7 February 2005 (aged 94)
Spouse	Sir William Aitken
Children	Jonathan Aitken; Maria Aitken
Parents	John Maffey, 1st Baron Rugby (father); Dorothy Gladys Huggins (mother);

Penelope Loader, Lady Aitken, MBE (2 December 1910 – 7 February 2005), styled The Honourable Lady Aitken and nicknamed 'Pempe', was an English socialite.

Biography

Born Penelope Loader Maffey, she was the daughter of

Viceroy of India and Governor of the North-West Frontier Province, thus Penelope was born in Peshawar

and spent her early years in India, where three of her siblings died in childhood.

When she was seven years old, she returned to England for

Princess Juliana of the Netherlands

.

In 1938 she met

William Aitken, a nephew of media magnate Lord Beaverbrook, and a journalist at the Evening Standard. They were married later that year at St Peter's, Eaton Square. Their son Jonathan

was born in Dublin in 1942.

In December 2008, Dutch historian Cees Fasseur claimed that Jonathan Aitken was actually the result of a wartime affair between Penelope and

Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands.^[1] The prince's wife Queen Juliana of the Netherlands

stood sponsor for Jonathan Aitken's christening.

William Aitken had joined the

WRVS, helping to evacuate German children to Ireland. In 1944, her husband was badly hurt in a Spitfire crash. She spent two years nursing him back to health, at a time when her baby son was ill with tuberculosis and the family home in London was bombed. She and William had a daughter Maria

in 1945.

William was elected as

Member of Parliament for Bury St Edmunds in 1950, and he was knighted in 1963, making Penelope Lady Aitken. She devoted herself to community work in support of her husband's political career, becoming a magistrate and running the Clothing Exchange, which played a major role in helping the victims of the East Coast floods in 1953. Eventually she was appointed a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE

).

She lived with the children in

death duties and a stock market crash. She restarted her affair with Simon Elwes, and then had a long relationship with Sir John Davis, chairman of Rank Xerox. Gardening was another passion. She created a garden at Playford, her moated Tudor house near Ipswich. Later she created an English garden at her house near Santa Eulalia on the Spanish island of Ibiza

, smuggling sacks of soil and rare plants through customs.

Lady Aitken continued to be seen at many parties and with many men. Satirist and broadcaster Noel Picarda instantly fell in love with her, and eventually became her live-in companion until his death in 2003. Her house and her parties were often the scene of political machinations in Conservative circles and she was often seen holding court among politicians or her family, whether in London, her local pub or the Gironde.

Aitken died of cancer. She had two children – Jonathan Aitken and Maria Aitken. She was the grandmother of the actor Jack Davenport, Petrina Khashoggi (biological daughter of Jonathan Aitken and Soraya Khashoggi (née Sandra Daly), conceived while she was married to Adnan Khashoggi),^[2] Victoria Aitken, Alexandra Aitken and William Aitken. She is buried in the churchyard of St. Mary's, Playford, Suffolk.

References

^ "Jonathan Aitken is of 'royal blood'". theweek.co.uk. Michael Wolfe. Retrieved 21 November 2014.
^ Ridley, Yvonne (10 January 1999). "Family rallies round Aitken's secret Khashoggi love child". The Guardian. London. Retrieved 26 March 2010.

[theweek-1] "Jonathan Aitken is of 'royal blood'". theweek.co.uk. Michael Wolfe. Retrieved 21 November 2014.

[Ridley-2] Ridley, Yvonne (10 January 1999). "Family rallies round Aitken's secret Khashoggi love child". The Guardian. London. Retrieved 26 March 2010.

[1]

[2]