Her daughter Caroline predeceased her and she is survived by two sons the present Marquess and his brother Lord

Her daughter Caroline predeceased her, and she is survived by two sons, the present Marquess and his brother, Lord Christopher, who are on notoriously bad terms. The eldest boy died in 1930, just before his first birthday, and the youngest, Lord Valentine Thynne, died after hanging himself in 1979. To supplement her income, Daphne wrote articles for newspapers and magazines, which brought her under the protective care of Lord Beaverbrook.They had four sons and a daughter. They employed Russell Page to redo the gardens and were involved in extensive forestry work. (When eventually they were divorced, there was a prolonged court case before three judges to dissolve that earlier marriage, and regularise the unusual situation.)Old Lord Bath in 1928 handed the running of the Wiltshire family seat, Longleat, to his son (not without certain misgivings about his capacity for work) and he and Daphne threw themselves wholeheartedly into the management of the estate.

Weighing in, her father announced that he thought Weymouth an unsuitable husband. They were married in secret at St Paul’s, Knightsbridge, in 1926, and then again considerably more publicly at St Martin-in-the Fields in 1927, the bride dressed by Norman Hartnell. The friends she made then were friends for life, a group that gave each other unswerving loyalty despite infidelities and political differences, everlastingly self-protecting; and a group through which she met Viscount Weymouth, heir to the Marquess of Bath.There was parental opposition to their union, Henry Weymouth’s father declaring that he needed “a steady wife” and finding that Daphne did not fit this category. She passed through Queen’s College in London, and St James’s, Malvern, and gravitated, through her friends the Lygon sisters, to the stimulating world of Oxford in the 1920s, and to that set dominated by Harold Acton, Evelyn Waugh and Brian Howard. Cochran, had the misfortune to be shot in the stomach in 1954 by his mistress Mavis Wheeler, the former wife of Sir Mortimer Wheeler, the archaeologist, a drama which occupied the headlines for many days.Daphne emerged from a childhood which was a mixture of hilarity and insecurity, later described with relish in her memoirs, Mercury Presides (though Evelyn Waugh declared these as “marred by discretion and good taste”).

The family was eccentric; many years later, her brother the fifth Lord Vivian (who died in 1991), variously a farm labourer in Canada, a publicity manager in San Francisco and a partner of the impresario C.B. Good-looking when young, in later life she was a tall, handsome figure, and could have been mistaken for a distinguished actress.
Daphne was the daughter of the fourth Lord Vivian and his wife, Barbara, a former Gaiety Girl, who was to marry three further times. Daphne Fielding was a society author in the decades between 1950 and 1980. Having been a part of the world of Bright Young Things in the 1920s, she was well known in society as the Marchioness of Bath, and following her marriage to Xan Fielding she produced a stream of books of easy charm which achieved great popularity.

But, as if supporting the Safeway takeover theory, it says Asda “lacks scale and needs to expand its penetration of the UK grocery store market” The shares eased 1p to 174p.. Daphne Winifred Louise Vivian, writer: born 11 July 1904; married 1926 Viscount Weymouth (succeeded 1946 as sixth Marquess of Bath, died 1992; two sons, and two sons and one daughter deceased; marriage dissolved 1953), 1953 Xan Fielding (died 1991; marriage dissolved 1978); died 5 December 1997. Geoffrey Brown unloaded 3.4 per cent, most of his stake, at 700p, raising pounds 4.2m. The shares fell 22.5p to 717.5pBritish Aerospace slipped 20p to 1,731p, scant reward for NatWest Securities, which hoisted a pounds 26 target price.Asda, results tomorrow, got the NatWest chop ahead of tomorrow’s interim figures NatWest is looking for pounds 180m, up 10 per cent. Danka Business Systems, the seemingly unstoppable office equipment group, crashed 292.5p to 217.5p; Universal Salvage fell 25p to 80p and Alumasc 63.5p to 242.5p.Eidos, the computer games maker, was ruffled by a director’s disposals. A modest revival since the meeting means it becomes a Footsie constituent before the three chosen last week, which will not become members of the exclusive club until Monday.NA’s inclusion follows the Grand Metropolitan and Guinness roll up into Diageo.Burton, holding investment presentations on its Debenhams demerger, rose 2.5p to 143.5p and Johnson Matthey firmed 2p to 526.5p as Warburg hosted a presentation.Shield Diagnostic added 17.5p to 757.5p on talk Abbott Laboratories is about to buy a stake or even bid.Profit warnings took their toll. The Anglo-Norwegian healthcare group had, at one time, looked a candidate for selection at last week’s Footsie steering committee meeting But a sudden loss of form sabotaged its chances.