Charles Forte, Baron Forte

Charles Carmine Forte, Baron Forte (26 November 1908 – 28 February 2007) was an Italian-born Scottish hotelier who founded the leisure and hotels conglomerate that ultimately became the Forte Group.

Early life Charles Forte was born as Carmine Forte in Mortale, now Monforte, Casalattico, in the province of Frosinone, Italy on 26 November 1908, eldest son of Rocco Giovanni Forte and Maria Luigia, daughter of Michelangelo Antonio Forte. His parents were distantly related. He emigrated from Italy to Scotland at the age of four with his family.

He attended Alloa Academy and then St. Joseph's College, Dumfries, as a boarder, followed by two years of studies in Rome.

Early career

After Rome, Forte rejoined his family, who had moved to Weston-super-Mare, where his father ran a café with two cousins. Charles' main training at the age of 21 came in Brighton, where he managed the Venetian.

At 26, he set up his first "milk bar" in 1935, the Strand Milk Bar Ltd. He was created a life peer on 2 February 1982 as Baron Forte, of Ripley in the County of Surrey. He was also a knight of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta.

Since 1974 he was a Count in the Italian nobility, a title created by King Umberto II.

Family In January 1943, Forte married Irene Mary, daughter of Giovanni Chierico, of Venice; her family ran a delicatessen on Wardour Street, Soho. Lady Forte had been apprenticed to a Mayfair couturier, where she learned sewing and gained an appreciation of quality materials. After her father's death when she was 17, she ran the family shop for three months whilst her mother was in Italy; it was destroyed by a bomb during the Blitz in 1940.

From the 1950s, Forte lived with an extended family including his parents and children at Greenway Gardens in Frognal, Hampstead, London. They attended services at the Roman Catholic St. Mary's Church in nearby Holly Lane, Hampstead.

Together, they had six children, five girls and a boy: The Hon. Sir Rocco John Vincent Forte (born 1945), who was knighted in 1995. On 15 February 1986, he married Aliai Giovanna Maria Ricci in Rome. They have three children. The Hon. Olga Forte CBE (born 1947), who was married firstly to the late Count Alessandro Polizzi and secondly, in 1993, to The Hon. William Shawcross. Olga had two children with Alessandro: Alexandra Polizzi, a hotelier and the presenter of Channel 5's The Hotel Inspector Charlotte Polizzi (b.1973), who married TV celebrity Oliver Peyton The Hon. Marie Louise Forte (born 1950), who married Robert Alexander Burness and had two children. The Hon. Irene Forte (born 1956), who married US Ambassador John Danilovich and had three children. The Hon. Giancarla Forte (born 1959), who married Michael Ulic Anthony Alen-Buckley and had two children. and she is buried with her husband.

Lord Forte's family came from Mortale (later renamed Monforte in his honour), in the Lazio region of Central Italy, where he retained the family home.