Latest news with #JohnAspinall
Yahoo
04-07-2025
- Automotive
- Yahoo
Lady Sarah Aspinall, model who married into a zoo empire and took her tigers for walks in Belgravia
Lady Sarah Aspinall, who has died aged 80, was a model in Swinging London whose marriages brought her into contact with two wildly contrasting – albeit comparably dangerous – worlds. The first was Formula One, as wife of the driver Piers Courage; the second was the care of large wild animals, as wife of the casino-owner and conservationist John Aspinall, who praised her as 'a perfect example of the primate female, ready to serve the dominant male and make his life agreeable'. In the first year of their marriage she reared three baby gorillas, a tigress cub and a litter of wolves. Of these two milieux, motorsport was the more natural for Lady Sarah (Sally) Curzon, born in Edinburgh on January 25 1945, the only child of the 5th Earl Howe's third marriage, to Sibyl (née Boyter). Lord Howe, better known as Francis Curzon, was the grand old man of British motor racing who had won Le Mans in 1931 with Sir Tim Birkin, and advised his daughter 'never to take notice of safety nets'. Tales of these dashing 'Bentley Boys' had ignited the schoolboy imagination of Sally's first husband Piers 'Porridge' Courage, who resisted his father's wishes for him to succeed as sixth-generation chairman of the Courage brewery, and emerged instead as a formidable talent on the racetrack, driving for his friend Frank Williams's Formula One team and even turning down an offer from Enzo Ferrari. Courage's 1966 marriage to Lady Sally, a saucer-eyed beauty in the Twiggy mould who had modelled mini-dresses for Mary Quant, made them the pin-ups of motorsport – 'like something out of F Scott Fitzgerald,' as the car-maker Charles Lucas put it. In June 1970 Lady Sally Courage was filling in her husband's lap charts at the Dutch Grand Prix at Zandvoort. A fortnight earlier, their friend Bruce McLaren had died at Goodwood. Consoling his widow, Lady Sally had thought: 'That won't happen to me. My Piers will be OK.' By lap 23 Courage was missing and a plume of black smoke had appeared from the dunes. The tannoy broadcast the mistaken report that Courage had been seen walking; in fact, his car was a magnesium-fed fireball, setting alight the nearby bushes and defeating the firemen who tried to extricate the driver. In all likelihood the 28-year-old Courage had been killed before the 20 gallons of fuel erupted, his helmet ripped off by a flying front wheel. The stricken widow returned to London with their two infant sons to face a mountain of debts; later that season Jochen Rindt, the leading driver, was also killed at Monza, subsequently becoming Formula One's only posthumous champion. John Aspinall, meanwhile, had been amassing a fortune – and an equivocal reputation – as owner of London's most rarefied casino, the Clermont Club in Berkeley Square, 'piledriving through the British aristocracy and separating younger sons from more money than they ought perhaps to have had access to,' in the words of his biographer, Brian Masters. 'Parents and trustees viewed Aspinall's arrival on the London scene as comparable with the disembarkation of Lenin at Helsinki station in 1917.' When one habitué of the Clermont declined Aspinall's offer to lunch because he was on his way to Piers Courage's wedding to Lady Sally Curzon, Aspinall had ordered the 'social climber' to tell 'that racing driver that real men don't race but gamble'. Aspinall, who kept tigers and Himalayan bears at his house in Belgravia, saw the world of human relations as an extension – and not a particularly impressive one – of the animal kingdom. 'I know women will eventually revert to the role of female gorillas,' he once observed. He was ambitious to breed: his first wife had given him a son and a daughter, but his second wife had drifted from him in grief after their infant daughter died of a rare heart defect. 'I needed a woman,' he recalled. 'I looked in my telephone book to see who I knew. Couldn't be the wife of a friend, since among my group it is taboo to steal a friend's female. I saw Sally's name and knew that Piers had just been killed in a Formula One race, so I asked her out to lunch.' His courtship proceeded with alpha-male vigour. 'There's a lorry outside filled with flowers,' her housekeeper told her. 'Except it's a jungle.' After 18 months together they married in 1972, christening their son Bassa Wulfhere after the grandfather of Alfred the Great (Bassa) and an army of wolves (Wulfhere), in line with Aspinall's ideological preference for English names over those of Roman or Jewish derivation. That year Aspinall sold the Clermont Club to funnel money into his zoo at Howletts, his Palladian house in Kent. Almost immediately the Aspinalls were ruined by the stock market crash of 1973, and Sally had to sell her jewellery to keep the animals in feed. But marriage to Courage, who had fixed his engines with chewing gum when cut off from his family's money, had acclimatised her to a precarious life. During her marriage to Aspinall 'we went bust several times,' she recalled. 'I was quite used to it. John took the view that objects and pictures were for the good times, and in the bad times, they went.' Their marriage was a remarkable success, lasting three decades until his final illness in 2000, during which she nursed him devotedly. Lady Annabel Goldsmith judged Sally to have been Aspinall's soulmate, recalling one visit when John told her that Sally was 'busy upstairs with the 'baby'. Somewhat baffled, I went upstairs and found her in the bedroom with a tiny baby gorilla in an incubator and a paediatric nurse from University College Hospital.' Sally walked their tigers around Belgravia at night, with only one biting incident, provoked, she said, by 'wearing a coat that my big tiger didn't like. I banged him on the nose and he stomped out furiously.' In 1973 they gambled on expanding to a second zoo at Port Lympne; by 1991, more than a thousand animals were housed between the two premises. She imbibed his philosophy: 'Aspers was my man, my dominant male,'' she observed after his death. 'I don't believe in this feminist stuff. Being 20 years older than me, he knew where he was going. He took you along because he was so exciting, whether you agreed with him or not. He respected the matriarch's role.' He also admired her capability as a hostess, an inherited Curzon trait, while she credited 'Aspers' with making her grow up: 'He would look through people almost like a pane of glass, while accepting them for what they were. He knew me so well. He also respected me and loved me.' As a romantic gesture, in 1984 he bought the Earl Howes' ancestral house in Curzon Street as grander premises for his club Aspinall's; less romantically, a few years later, on James Goldsmith's advice, he sold it at a massive profit days before the 1987 crash. Lady Sarah Aspinall entered a familiar nightmare in 1995 when she was told that her son Jason Courage, an aspiring racing driver, had been knocked off his motorcycle; he was paralysed from the chest down, but learnt to race using hand controls. Amos, her other son with Piers Courage, ran a gorilla orphanage in the Congo and became director of overseas operations of the Aspinall Foundation. Bassa Aspinall, her third son, rebelled against his father's ambitions and became an artist in South Africa. Her three sons survive her. Lady Sarah Aspinall, born January 25 1945, died June 17 2025 Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month with unlimited access to our award-winning website, exclusive app, money-saving offers and more.
Yahoo
27-06-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Wynn Resorts Opens Wynn Mayfair
Wynn Resorts, Limited (NASDAQ:WYNN) is among the 10 Best Casino Stocks To Buy Now. It has officially launched Wynn Mayfair following its acquisition from Crown Resorts, with approval from the UK Gaming Commission. Aerial view of a luxury hotel tower surrounded by lush green landscaping. The luxury private members-only club, which is situated at 27–28 Curzon Street, is part of Wynn Resorts, Limited (NASDAQ:WYNN)'s strategic European development before the Wynn Al Marjan Island resort opens in the United Arab Emirates in early 2027. The Wynn Mayfair has six private salons, a rooftop terrace, and twenty gaming tables located between two historic townhouses in London's Mayfair neighborhood. The public can now enjoy great wines, unique cocktails, and locally sourced food at The Bar and The Dining Room. Originally known as the White Elephant Club in the 1960s, the club rose to notoriety under gaming personality John Aspinall and has welcomed celebrities such as Roger Moore and Princess Margaret. Wynn Resorts, Limited (NASDAQ:WYNN)'s arrival at this renowned location supports its luxury positioning in international markets and fits well with its future expansion plan in the United Arab Emirates. While we acknowledge the potential of WYNN as an investment, we believe certain AI stocks offer greater upside potential and carry less downside risk. If you're looking for an extremely undervalued AI stock that also stands to benefit significantly from Trump-era tariffs and the onshoring trend, see our free report on the best short-term AI stock. READ NEXT: 10 High-Growth EV Stocks to Invest In and 13 Best Car Stocks to Buy in 2025. Disclosure. None. Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
Times
22-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Times
Lady Sarah Aspinall obituary: model married to zoo and casino owner
On June 21, 1970, Lady Sarah (Sally) Courage was sitting in the Williams pits at Circuit Zandvoort, timing her husband, Piers, as he roared past on lap 23 of the Dutch Grand Prix. Driving a new car for the Williams team, he was in seventh place, but as he approached the sharp Tunnel Oost corner, either his steering wheel or the front suspension failed and instead of turning left he went straight on. The car hit a bank and disintegrated, the fuel tank exploded and a wheel bearing flew back with such force that it knocked his helmet off and killed him instantly. The car was still blazing an hour later as Sally was helped away from the track. Piers's body was still in it. He was 28, and Sally, the mother of two boys aged three and one, was a widow at 25. The Courages had been a glamorous young couple. Before her marriage Sally had been a model. The dashing Piers was a member of the Courage brewing family. Their wedding in 1966 had been one of the highlights of the social season. The photographer Patrick Lichfield, who shot her for Vogue at home with her children, included her in his list of the ten most beautiful women. Now with two small boys to bring up on her own, Sally went back to modelling and ran an upmarket flower shop. Then she began seeing John Aspinall, who was nearly 20 years older than her. Larger than life, he won a court case that led to liberalisation of British gambling laws and opened Britain's first licensed casino, the Clermont Club in Berkeley Square. It became the centre of what later became known as the Lucan set after Lord Lucan, who dined there on the night he tried to murder his wife (he killed the nanny by mistake) and disappeared. To the end of her days, Sally maintained that Lucan almost certainly killed himself that same night, drowning himself in the sea off Newhaven, where his car was found the next day. Aspinall had a passion for wild animals, which he bred at his wildlife sanctuary, Howletts, in Kent. Sally had met him in 1967, before Courage died. Her friend Tessa Kennedy, the interior designer, drove her down to Aspinall's neo-Palladian manor on the Howletts estate, which she was decorating at the time. When Aspinall suggested a walk in the woods, Sally found herself accompanied by both adult and baby gorillas, one of which clambered on to her shoulders. After Courage's death, by which time Aspinall had divorced his second wife, he began courting her seriously. In 1972 they married and she moved into Howletts, where she bottle-fed baby gorillas abandoned by their mothers and often shared her bed with a tiger cub. For more than 20 years, zoological societies had dismissed Aspinall as an eccentric collector of animals. They changed their views after his gorilla breeding programme was successful. By the time Sally came into his life, he had more than 1,000 animals and 80 breeding species. His long-term objective was to return species to the wild, particularly captive-bred gorillas and tigers. Sally's affection for the gorillas was tested when Aspinall persuaded her to take their six-month-old baby, Bassa, into the enclosure and lay him gently on the floor for the gorillas to inspect and sniff. To her horror, a huge female called Juju suddenly picked Bassa up and swung up to the top of the cage, where he was passed around from one hairy arm to another. It was some time before Juju swung down again, and put the baby gently back where she had found him. Aspinall, a professional gambler, led a rollercoaster life, well off one day when the roulette wheel ran for him, poor the next after a bad run. He owned shares in companies run by his best friend, Jimmy Goldsmith, worth between £2 million and £3 million. In the financial crisis of 1974-75 the shares collapsed and Aspinall, who had borrowed heavily to pay for them, 'lost everything'. He sold his club for a miserable £500,000, mortgaged his London house and sold his wine, his books and his furniture, and when that wasn't enough he sold Sally's family jewellery. Goldsmith bailed him out almost weekly, but it was four years before Aspinall's finances recovered. His wife stood by him without complaint. One of Aspinall's early biographers, Brian Masters, wrote: 'Lady Sarah Aspinall is the perfect example of a primate female, ready to serve the dominant male. Hence the marriage is hugely successful.' Sally didn't disagree. 'Aspers was my man, my dominant male,' she said. 'I don't believe in any of this feminist stuff. He always respected me and loved me. I'm a very lucky woman. I've been blessed.' Sarah Curzon was born in Edinburgh in 1945, the daughter of Francis Curzon, Fifth Earl Howe, a Conservative politician and racing driver who was five times British champion and winner of both Le Mans and the Mille Miglia. Her mother was Sybil Boyter Johnson, Curzon's third wife. Sally, as she was known, was educated privately by governesses, followed by a finishing school. She later became a superb hostess at her and Aspinall's sumptuous Herbert Baker-designed home south of Cape Town. Goldsmith, Henry Kissinger, Jacob Rothschild, Kerry Packer, Conrad Black, FW de Klerk, Margaret and Denis Thatcher and many others visited them there. Chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi was such a regular visitor that Aspinall built him his own cottage in the extensive gardens, which, much to Buthelezi's amusement, he called the Kraal (Afrikaans for cattle enclosure). Tragedy was never far off. On October 15, 1995, Sally's 28-year-old son Jason Courage was riding his motorbike (at 33mph according to the police report) when a car made an illegal right turn in front of him and he went into it. Jason was paralysed from the mid-chest down. He kept the full use of his arms and could swim, ski and propel himself to Chelsea's home games, which he seldom missed. After a stint in the City, he now runs an investment fund. A few years later, Aspinall developed cancer of the jaw and he died in 2000, aged 74. Sally, who had nursed him night and day, was with him to the end. After Aspinall's death, she moved out of the main house in Howletts to a cottage next to the original gorilla enclosure, and devoted herself to running the extensive gardens at both Howletts and Port Lympne. An inteprid traveller, she often stayed in Cape Town with her youngest son, Bassa, an artist, or visited her son Amos in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where he was working on a project to rehabilitate gorillas to their natural habitat. Lady Sarah Aspinall was born on January 25, 1945. She died on June 17, 2025, aged 80
Daily Mail
19-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Daily Mail
EDEN CONFIDENTIAL: Lady Sally Aspinall, aunt of Prince Harry's ex Cressida Bonas, dies aged 80
She raised gorillas by hand, shared her bed with lion cubs, bottle-fed cheetahs and walked tigers through the rarefied streets of London 's Belgravia – all with the same aristocratic style and spirit she'd displayed as a 1960s model. But the extraordinary life of the beautiful, twice-widowed Lady Sally Aspinall, daughter of Le Mans-winning 5th Earl Howe, and great-aunt of the most glamorous of Prince Harry 's old flames, Cressida Bonas, ended this week at the age of 80. Her youngest son believes she yearned to be reunited with the two men she married. The first was Formula 1 driver Piers Courage, killed competing in the 1970 Dutch Grand Prix; the second, casino king and inimitable wildlife park founder John Aspinall, who succumbed to cancer in 2000. 'I think a part of her died with Piers,' reflects Bassa Aspinall, 53, Sally's only child by 'Aspers' as Aspinall was known to friends including fugitive peer the 7th Lord Lucan. The sense of loss, Bassa adds, was redoubled when his father died. 'It was an amazing love story. She'd kept him alive for six or seven years. Half his face was missing from the cancer. It was morphine and bandage changes four or five times a day.' Their romance had begun as Sally slowly emerged from the trauma of losing Piers, by whom she had two sons, Jason and Amos, without whom, she said, she 'could easily have gone under'. 'To complement my father, you had to be a very special human being. He loved strength in women,' Bassa adds, pointing out that his mother was blessed with abundant courage. 'It's all very well to be loving and caring, but it's another thing to fit into that world,' he says, referring to his father's parks at Howletts and Port Lympne, where wildlife enjoyed previously unimaginable freedom. 'If he said she was safe, she would trust him entirely. He brought laughter and purpose back into her life.' It wasn't just in Belgravia, where tigers were taken for nocturnal walks close to the couple's London address, that heads were turned, but also at Wellesley House, Bassa's prep school, where, he recalls, his mother arrived for sports day 'with two Siberian tiger cubs in the back seat'. But in 1995 she suffered further tragedy. Jason Courage, her elder son by Piers, was riding his motorbike in central London when he was hit by a car making an illegal turn. He was left paralysed from the neck down. By then, Aspinall was afflicted by cancer. Sally didn't falter; she never did. 'She was very stoic,' says Bassa. Her resilience was tested again after Aspinall's death, when she found that much of her life was controlled by those who did not have her wellbeing at heart. Her health began to fail. But in 2019 she moved to South Africa, where Bassa had settled with his wife, Donne. 'She was the daughter that my mother never had – they had an incredible bond,' he tells me, adding that it was Donne, Sally's carer in her final years, who sensed that she was slipping away and alerted Jason and Amos in England. Both flew to Cape Town to say goodbye. 'She died very peacefully – idyllically,' says Bassa, who, together with Donne and their children – sons Redwald and Odin, and daughters Takara and Elysia – was by her side. Imrie 'glad' her son isn't a girl The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel star Celia Imrie says she's grateful that her only child was a boy so they don't compete for parts. Angus Imrie, 30, played 'Creepy Jake' in the hit comedy Fleabag and Prince Edward in the fourth series of The Crown. 'I'm glad he's not a girl, only because we would be fighting for the same roles and that causes tension if there's two female actors in the family,' says Imrie, 72, who was presented with an Icon Award at this year's Raindance Film Festival in London. 'I'm glad Angus is a whole generation younger and is in his own lane. I'm terribly proud of him,' she adds. Presenter: I was meant to be on doomed flight As a presenter of TV show A Place in The Sun for seven years, air travel was part of the job for Scarlette Douglas. But the star tells me she 'hates flying' for a heartbreaking reason. 'I lost a really good friend of mine in the Air France crash from Brazil to France,' she says at the Taste of London Food Festival opening party in Regent's Park. 'The scary thing was I was supposed to be on that flight. She had booked it.' Flight 447 from Rio de Janeiro to Paris crashed into the Atlantic in 2009, killing 228 people. Scarlette, 38, couldn't take the flight because of a job she had in Hollywood. 'Forever my best boy': Lara pays tribute to adored pet Lara Stone has been left devastated by the death of her beloved dog, Bert, who was once at the heart of her family life with comedian David Walliams. The Dutch model, 41, posted a photograph of the border terrier online, writing: 'Love you forever, miss you for always, forever and ever my best boy you'll be.' When Lara split from David in 2015 after five years of marriage, she left their £3.25million north London home with their son Alfred, now 12, and Bert. The former couple went on to share custody of both. David later adopted a second border terrier, Ernie, and often referred to the pair as 'my boys'. Lara has since remarried and has a second son, Bob, one, with property developer husband David Grievson. Monty is Pamela's world Baywatch babe Pamela Anderson has an unlikely hero – Monty Don. The actress, 57, says the green-fingered Gardeners' World presenter, known for his rumpled navy-blue shirt and colourful scarf, inspired her passion for gardening. 'I love Monty Don, his videos and books,' she says. 'He writes so beautifully and poetically when it comes to gardens.' Wait until Pammy meets Alan Titchmarsh. The celebrity gardener claims that when he collected his MBE from Queen Elizabeth in 2000, she told him: 'You give a lot of ladies a lot of pleasure.' Fire guts home of model's sister Jade Parfitt called off this year's Bath Fashion Festival with just weeks to go after a major backer dropped out. Now, the top model is coming to terms with a disaster closer to home. This week her younger sister Amy's house in Totnes, Devon, was devastated by a fire which spread into two neighbouring homes. 'Thanking our lucky stars that no people were injured, but they have a very long road ahead,' says Jade, 47, who encouraged her online followers to donate to her sister's family via the GoFundMe website, with the appeal immediately raising almost £20,000. 'We are so grateful that people are donating their hard-earned cash and sending lovely messages,' Jade added. Meghan Markle had planned to become a British citizen after she married Prince Harry, but abandoned the process long before obtaining a passport. Another foreigner who married into the Royal Family has more staying power, however. Swedish financier Timothy Vesterberg, who wed Princess Alexandra's granddaughter Flora Ogilvy in 2020, received his British citizenship this week. 'I'm very proud of my newly British-Swedish husband,' says art consultant Flora, 30. She added: 'I was very moved by how thoughtful the ceremony was.'
Business Wire
05-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Business Wire
Wynn Resorts Opens Wynn Mayfair
LONDON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Wynn Resorts, Limited (WYNN) announced that it completed the purchase of Wynn Mayfair from Crown Resorts, having received the required approval from the UK Gaming Commission. The prestigious Mayfair casino location expands Wynn's footprint in Europe and the Middle East ahead of Wynn Al Marjan Island resort opening in the UAE in early 2027. Wynn Mayfair spans two historic townhouses at 27-28 Curzon Street, Mayfair, and is London's most exclusive gaming and dining experience. For more than half a century, London's brightest stars, royals, and the society set have flocked to the private members-only club. The club presents a variety of gaming options with twenty gaming tables distributed across the main gaming floor, roof-top terrace, and six opulent salons privé. Upon entering, guests encounter The Bar and The Dining Room, which is now open to the public as well as to members, where specialty cocktails and exceptional wines are offered alongside a menu of locally sourced classic dishes. The club contains an impressive collection of antiques, plush furnishings, and both classical and contemporary works by photographers and artists. Wynn Mayfair's adjacent townhouses are finished with an expansive open-air rooftop terrace that also accommodates cocktails, dining, and gaming and where smoking is permitted. Originally known as the White Elephant Club in the 1960s, it was legendary gaming impresario and animal conservationist John Aspinall who introduced a casino to this historic venue. The White Elephant Club was frequented by an A-list roster of guests that included Richard Burton, Roger Moore, Princess Margaret, Shirley Bassey, Peter Sellers, and Shirley MacLaine. About Wynn Resorts Wynn Resorts, Limited, is traded on the Nasdaq Global Select Market under the ticker symbol WYNN and is part of the S&P 500 Index. Wynn Resorts owns and operates Wynn Las Vegas ( Wynn Macau ( Wynn Palace, Cotai ( Wynn Mayfair ( and operates Encore Boston Harbor ( The Company is constructing an Integrated Resort, Wynn Al Marjan Island, in Ras Al Khaimah, UAE, set to open in 2027. Wynn and Encore Las Vegas consist of two luxury hotel towers with a total of 4,748 spacious hotel rooms, suites, and villas. The resort features 22 signature dining experiences, 10 bars, two award-winning spas, meeting and convention space, three shopping esplanades, as well as two showrooms, two nightclubs, a beach club, and Wynn Golf Club, an 18-hole championship golf course. Encore Boston Harbor features 671 hotel rooms and suites, an ultra-premium spa, 14 dining and lounge venues, a nightclub, and a state-of-the-art ballroom and meeting spaces. Situated on the waterfront along the Mystic River in Everett, Massachusetts, the resort has a six-acre public park and Harborwalk. Wynn Macau is in the Macau Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China with two luxury hotel towers with a total of 1,010 spacious rooms, meeting and convention space, a shopping esplanade, two opulent spas, a salon and two public entertainment experiences. Wynn Palace is a luxury resort in Macau. It offers 1,706 exquisite rooms, suites, and villas, 14 food and beverage outlets, meeting and convention space, an extensive boutique shopping esplanade, SkyCabs that traverse an eight-acre Performance Lake, an extensive collection of rare art, a spa and salon. Wynn Mayfair is a historic private members' club in the heart of London's celebrated Mayfair district. The club offers 20 table games in an elegant main casino and sumptuously appointed private salons, fine dining and cocktails in the Dining Room and Bar, and a stunning rooftop terrace with gaming and dining. Wynn Al Marjan Island will be the first integrated resort in the UAE. Set to open in 2027, the resort will be located 50 minutes from Dubai International Airport in the emirate of Ras Al Khaimah. The resort will offer 1,542 rooms and suites, 22 restaurants, lounges, and bars, a theater, a nightclub, and a beach club. It will feature multiple swimming and wading pools, water features, a five-star spa, a salon, a shopping promenade, and a celebrations and events center.
