Sonia Rosemary Keppel


Sonia Rosemary Cubitt, was a British socialite, author and aristocrat. She was the first wife of Roland Cubitt, 3rd Baron Ashcombe, and, through her only daughter Rosalind, was the maternal grandmother of Queen Camilla. Sonia is also known as the daughter of Alice Keppel, a mistress of King Edward VII.

Childhood

Sonia Rosemary Keppel was born on 24 May 1900, as the youngest child of the Hon. George Keppel and Alice Frederica Keppel. Her mother was the youngest child of Sir William Edmonstone, 4th Baronet, while George was a son of William Keppel, 7th Earl of Albemarle, and his wife Sophia Mary Keppel. Sonia's mother Alice was a British society hostess and a long-time royal mistress of King Edward VII. She was a goddaughter of Dame Margaret Greville and inherited some of her fortune.
Sonia's only sibling was the English writer and socialite Violet Trefusis.

Marriage and children

Sonia met her future husband, the Hon. Roland Calvert Cubitt, at the end of the First World War, shortly after the signing of the armistice in November 1918. Sonia was eighteen, Roland was nearing twenty and a young officer in the Coldstream Guards. He was the fourth of the six sons of Henry Cubitt, 2nd Baron Ashcombe; all three of his older brothers were killed in action during the First World War. Roland was heir to Ashcombe Barony and to a fortune established by his great-grandfather, Victorian builder Thomas Cubitt.
On 16 November 1920, Sonia and Roland married at the Guards Chapel of Wellington Barracks in London.
They had three children:
The couple divorced on 4 July 1947, just a few months before Roland succeeded as the 3rd Baron Ashcombe. Hence Sonia was never styled Baroness Ashcombe. During her marriage she was styled the Hon. Mrs. Cubitt.

Career

Sonia, like her sister Violet, was a writer. She wrote the books Three brothers at Havana, 1762 and The Sovereign Lady: A Life of Elizabeth Vassall, Third Lady Holland, with Her Family.
She was appointed Officer, Order of the British Empire in 1959.

Death

Sonia died on 16 August 1986 aged 86, after a long period of chronic osteoporosis. She was survived by her daughter Rosalind, elder son Henry and four grandchildren. Her younger son Jeremy predeceased her, dying at age 30 in 1958. Eight years later, in 1994, her daughter Rosalind also died from osteoporosis.
Sonia's granddaughter, the future Queen Camilla, became a member of the National Osteoporosis Society in 1994 to help raise awareness of the disease. Camilla became patron of the charity in 1997 and was appointed its president in 2001.

Memoir

In 1958, Sonia wrote her memoir titled Edwardian Daughter, in which she described what her childhood was like in the high-society of the Edwardian era. The memoir was dedicated to her daughter Rosalind.

Books cited

Category:1900 births
Category:1986 deaths
Sonia
Sonia
Category:Edmonstone family
Category:People from Hampshire
Category:Wives of younger sons of peers
Category:20th-century British women writers
Category:Queen Camilla