Raine, Countess Spencer with Princess Diana in 1997
Tim Graham/Getty ImagesVariously titled the Countess of Dartmouth, Countess Spencer and La Comtesse de Chambrun, Raine Spencer is perhaps best known for being vilified as the ‘wicked stepmother’ of Princess Diana, the future queen, and wife of John Spencer, 8th Earl Spencer, although her biographer claims the two women went on to become ‘close confidantes’.
Born in 1929, Raine McCorquodale was the daughter of romantic novelist Barbara Cartland and printing heir Alexander McCorquodale. The society beauty first married Gerald Legge, 9th Earl of Dartmouth, in 1949, and the pair welcomed four children together.
She began an affair with John Spencer, then Viscount Althorp, in 1973, when the aristocrat was a colleague of hers on an architectural heritage committee. He succeeded his father as Earl Spencer in 1975 and the pair married the following year. (Earl Spencer's wife Frances had left him for wallpaper tycoon Peter Shand Kydd in 1969). However, Raine's presence was not welcomed by her new stepchildren – Lady Diana (the future Princess Diana), then 14, and her younger siblings, Charles, Sarah and Jane.
Raine was apparently ‘unpopular’ with her stepdaughter and her siblings, who referred to the countess as ‘Acid Raine’. Diana admitted to her biographer Andrew Morton, that during her brother's wedding in 1989 she pushed Raine down the stairs, which gave her 'enormous satisfaction'.