Obituary: Angela Culme-Seymour, celebrated beauty who finally found contentment at a Scottish spiritual retreat after a colourful and racy life

Published on Monday 6 February 2012 00:00

Born. 3 August, 1912. Died: 22 January 2012 at Roberton, by Hawick, aged 99.

Angela Culme-Seymour was a celebrated beauty and a member of the fast set who became the toast of London society before and after the Second World War. She personified that society and had a string of lovers and husbands – including Winston Churchill’s nephew, an English peer, a French count, an army major and a professor of atomic physics. It was quite a catalogue and Culme- Seymour only found peace when she married a Turkish mystic and settled in Hawick.

Culme-Seymour had a beguiling allure and a vivacious personality. She bedazzled her way through London society and led a racy and sparkling life. When she came to write her autobiography, Bolter’s Grand-daughter, she captured the public’s attention for being so honest and forthright.

Culme-Seymour was the grand- daughter of Trix Ruthven – a society beauty who famously deserted her first and second husband and then her children. She was known as “The Bolter”: Culme-Seymour followed in her grandmother’s footsteps in the grand manner.

Angela Mary Culme-Seymour’s father was killed at Ypres when she was three, she attended Bedales and Dartington Hall and did the season in London. She met and married Churchill’s nephew, Johnny Churchill, in 1934 and for some months stayed with “uncle Winston” at Chartwell in Kent.

They moved to Spain shortly before the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War but Culme-Seymour left Churchill and lived in Paris with a French count, René de Chatellus. She did not marry him for a decade, but in the ensuing years she enjoyed many relationships.

In 1937 she had an affair with, and later married, the author Patrick Balfour, joining the London literary set led by Cyril Connolly and Evelyn Waugh. In 1939 Balfour inherited the title of Lord Kinross but her extravagant lifestyle persisted. The new Lady Kinross recalled in her autobiography travelling by the night train to Edinburgh to attend her father-in-law’s funeral and sharing a sleeper with “a painter called David something”.

During the war, Culme-Seymour served with the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force but when her husband was posted to Egypt the marriage ended and she had a five-year affair with Major Robert Hewer-Hewitt. That also soon proved ill-advised as the major lost his money in an ill-conceived business venture and Culme-Seymour kept them going by making and selling plastic figurines in Devon.

Culme-Seymour was then contacted by the Comte de Chatellus, who proposed to her and suggested she come to live with him in Paris. She did, but that too did not last long and she astonished her friends – and her own family – by eloping with a renowned atomic physicist called Derek Jackson. The scandal was intensified as he was married to her half-sister, Janetta Kee.

This roller-coaster of a life continued in Paris where Culme-Seymour and Jackson lived for three years: then he walked out on her After a few years in Australia, Culme-Seymour returned to London in the mid-Seventies and married a Turkish aristocrat, Ali Bulent Rauf.

They lived in Turkey and he introduced her to the writings of the 12th-century Andalusian spiritual teacher Muhyiddin Ibn ’Arabi. Her husband’s strong beliefs in the philosophy of Ibn ’Arabi’s led him to co-found the Beshara School of Esoteric Education at Roberton by Hawick.

The Beshara School was founded in 1973 as a residential study and retreat centre in a fine Georgian mansion, Chisholme House. Built in 1752, it is set in 187 acres of splendid woodland and gardens, which have proved and ideal location to investigate and develop self-awareness and self-knowledge. The school now attracts students from all over the world who come to follow the courses and spend time in contemplation.

Bulent Rauf encouraged Culme-Seymour in her study of the teachings and was enthusiastic when she decided to translate Ibn ’Arabi’s writings from the French. The edition was warmly praised when it was published as Wisdom of the Prophets. Culme-Seymour was asked about her time working on the translation: “I don’t know exactly” she replied and then added, “a sort of feeling of love perhaps.” Her husband was a consultant to the school in Hawick and president of the society until his death 1987. Culme-Seymour then became its honorary life-president. The teachings of the school brought Culme-Seymour a contentment and peace in her later years.

She brought out Bolter’s Grand-daughter in 200. It is a witty and starkly honest account of her flamboyant life detailing her stormy relationships, marriages and liaisons. Nothing typifies her straightforward nature more than her description of the end of one of her relationships: “I was vache, ungrateful and promiscuous”.

Culme-Seymour spent her final years in Chisholme House.

ALASDAIR STEVEN

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