Maureen Guinness

Maureen Constance Hamilton-Temple-Blackwood, Marchioness of Dufferin (née Guinness; 31 January 1907 – 3 May 1998) was an Anglo-Irish socialite, known as one of the "Guinness Golden Girls". Through her first marriage to Basil Hamilton-Temple-Blackwood she held the title of Marchioness of Dufferin and Ava between 1930 and 1948. After being widowed, she remarried.

Early life and family Maureen Constance Guinness was born in 17 Grosvenor Place (now the Irish Embassy) in London on 31 January 1907. She was the second daughter of Ernest Guinness and Marie Clothilde Russell (Cloè) (1880–1953), daughter of Sir George Russell, 4th Baronet. Together with her elder sister Aileen and her younger sister Oonagh, the three Guinness sisters were known as the "Golden Guinness Girls". Guinness attended a finishing school in Paris, and went on a worldwide tour on her father's yacht called the Fantome with her parents and sisters after which she was debuted in society in 1925. She became known as the most extroverted, flamboyant, and most photographed of the three sisters. She was a well known friend of Baby and Zita Jungman (her cousins through marriage). She married Basil Hamilton-Temple-Blackwood, 4th Marquess of Dufferin and Ava on 3 July 1930 at St Margaret's, Westminster. Her father-in-law died while the couple were on honeymoon, leaving her husband his title and Clandeboye Estate, near Belfast.

Guinness was known for her unusual sense of fashion, and is believed to have provided inspiration for Barry Humphries’ character Dame Edna Everage and Osbert Lancaster's Maudie Littlehampton in The Daily Express. After the death of her father in 1949, she and a cousin became the first women to sit on the board of the Guinness Brewery.

She later became active in charitable work, raising £50,000 between 1958 and 1965 to build the Horder centre for arthritics as well as donating the site in Sussex. She stood down from this committee due to a disagreement, but she later opened Maureen's Oast House in 1996, as a holiday home for arthritics on her Kent estate.