Alice Ormsby-Gore

Infobox Person
name = Alice Magdalen Sarah Ormsby-Gore


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birth_name =
birth_date = 22 April 1952
birth_place =
death_date = c. 17 April 1995
death_place = Bournemouth, Dorset, United Kingdom
death_cause = Heroin overdose
resting_place =
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nationality = British
other_names = Deirdre Stevenson (nickname) [ [http://www.thepeerage.com/p4607.htm ThePeerage.com] ]
known_for =
education =
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spouse =
partner = Eric Clapton (fiance)
parents = William David Ormsby-Gore
Sylvia Thomas
relatives = The Honourable Alice Magdalen Sarah Ormsby-Gore (22 April 1952 - c. 17 April 1995) was a British socialite.

She was the youngest daughter of William David Ormsby-Gore, 5th Baron Harlech and his first wife Sylvia Thomas. A descendent of William the Conqueror and of Mary Tudor, Queen of France, she became engaged to guitarist Eric Clapton but never married. She died of a heroin overdose in 1995.

Teenage years

"Time" magazine reported on Friday, 12 April 1968 that Lord Harlech would be sending his "15-year-old daughter, Alice Ormsby-Gore, to Manhattan's Dalton School for the coming spring term. Alice will stay at the East Side apartment of a family friend, John Hay Whitney, former U.S. Ambassador to the Court of St. James's." [ [http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,838151-2,00.html Time magazine] , 12 April1968]

Eric Clapton

Later in 1968, Alice was to encounter guitar legend Eric Clapton. There is some speculation as to how they met. One account gives credit for the introduction to Ian Dallas in 1969 when Alice was 17 [ [http://www.allmanbrothersband.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=XForum&file=viewthread&fid=15&tid=19279&page=2&orderdate= Hittin' The Web with The Allman Brothers Band :: Where Music Plus Friends Equals Family ] ] . However, Clapton in his autobiography gives the credit to interior designer David Mlinaric in 1968. Mlinaric was completing some work on Clapton's house, Hurtwood Edge, and had taken Alice along with him. [http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/music/article2557616.ece Times Online] , "Loving Layla" by Eric Clapton, 30 September 2007] . David Mlinaric was part of a group of aristocratic hippies who hung out around London in the 1960s and was friends with Alice's siblings, Jane, Julian and Victoria Ormsby-Gore, the older children of Lord Harlech, who had been British ambassador to Washington during the Kennedy era.

The couple announced their engagement on 7 September 1969. In 1970 Alice moved into Hurtwood Edge with Clapton. Clapton had started using heroin quite heavily in an attempt to get over his continuing obsession with George Harrison's wife Pattie Boyd and Alice inevitably also became hooked on the drug. In his autobiography Clapton says “Alice came back to live with me, and she started using too”.

"Time" magazine reported their intention to marry on Monday, 16 March 1970 [ [http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,838151-2,00.html Time magazine] , 16 March 1970]

“Rock Guitarist Eric Clapton, 25, son of a bricklayer, may soon marry Alice Ormsby Gore, 17, daughter of former British Ambassador to the U.S. Lord Harlech—with her father's blessing. "She has gone to see him in New York," said Harlech, "and if they want to get married it is entirely their own affair.”

The couple did not marry but stayed together for five years. Clapton maintains he was not in love with Alice but she was deeply in love with him. In Ray Coleman's book "CLAPTON" she says, “Maybe because I was only seventeen I wrongly thought of it as mutual. My extreme youth made any rational analysis of the situation impossible.” [ [http://www.12bar.de/ftp/text_info/alice_ormsky_gore.txt Slowhand Blues Guitar] ]

Clapton broke the engagement and ended their relationship for good after curing his heroin addiction with the help of Alice’s family.

Death of her brother

In 1974, aged 22, Alice found her elder brother, Julian Ormsby Gore (33), dead in his apartment from gunshot wounds, an apparent suicide. [ [http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,945144,00.html?promoid=googlep Time magazine] ]

Final years

Alice’s father (William) David Ormsby-Gore died in a car accident in 1985, he was succeeded by Alice’s younger brother Francis Ormsby-Gore, 6th Baron Harlech

Alice died in poverty, found dead in a bedsit in Bournemouth, Dorset, having taken six times the fatal dose of heroin. [ [http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4158/is_19950506/ai_n13981016 FindArticles.com] "Peer's sister overdosed on heroin", The Independent, 6 May 1995]

"The Independent" (London) reported on 21 April 1995, the day before her 43rd birthday [ [http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4158/is_19950421/ai_n13978212 FindArticles.com] "Drug Overdose", The Independent, 21 April 1995]

Lord Harlech's sister, Alice Ormsby Gore, 42, who was once engaged to the rock guitarist Eric Clapton, died after taking a drug overdose at her flat, an inquest in Bournemouth, Dorset, heard.

References

External links

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Persondata
NAME = Ormsby-Gore, Alice Magdalen Sarah
ALTERNATIVE NAMES =
SHORT DESCRIPTION = Daughter of 5th Baron Harlech, fiancee of Eric Clapton
DATE OF BIRTH = 22 April 1952
PLACE OF BIRTH =
DATE OF DEATH = c. 17 April 1995
PLACE OF DEATH = Bournemouth, Dorset, United Kingdom