Businessman, publisher, and politician, born in Paris, France. His family left France at the beginning of World War 2, and he was educated in the UK, where after leaving school he built up a range of companies and developed a reputation as a charismatic, risk-taking financier. He lived both in France and the UK, and received a great deal of media attention for his flamboyant public and private lives, to which he responded aggressively, notably in the libel suit against Private Eye in the 1970s. In the 1980s he worked chiefly in the USA, then developed environmental and political interests, and was elected a member of the European Parliament for France (19957). He was knighted in 1976, and became a controversial figure in the UK when he financed the Referendum Party in the 1997 general election - a campaign he forcefully promoted while suffering from the pancreatic cancer from which he died two months later.
Sir James Michael Goldsmith (February 26, 1933, Paris, France - July 18, 1997, Benahavis, Spain) was a British billionaire businessman and founder of the Eurosceptic Referendum Party.
Born in Paris, he was the son of luxury hotel owner and former Conservative Member of Parliament (MP) Maj. Frank Goldsmith and his French wife Marcelle Mouiler, and younger brother of environmental campaigner Edward Goldsmith. James Goldsmith dropped out of Eton College in 1949, observing: "a man of my means should not remain a schoolboy."
Business
His business successes included winning the British franchise for Alka-Seltzer heartburn relief medicine and acquiring the Bovril company.
Goldsmith is well known for his legendary legal attack on the magazine, Private Eye, who referred to him as "Sir Jams".
Oliver Stone's 1987 film Wall Street featured a British billionaire financier, Sir Laurence Wildman.
Politics
Goldsmith was a close friend of Lord Lucan, the aristocrat who was famously suspected of murdering his family nanny before disappearing completely.
Referendum Party
Goldsmith founded the Referendum Party, which stood candidates in the 1997 general election.
In the 1997 election, Goldsmith stood as a candidate in the London parliamentary constituency of Putney, against Tory cabinet minister David Mellor.
Goldsmith stood no chance of victory, but the declaration made for one of the most memorable moments of the entire election - Mellor lost his seat to the Labour candidate and was subsequently taunted by Goldsmith (who clapped his hands slowly and chanted "out, out, out!") and other candidates.
Mellor correctly predicted that the Referendum Party was "dead in the water", and it effectively died with Goldsmith when he succumbed to pancreatic cancer just weeks later, aged 64.
Personal life
Goldsmith was married three times, and is believed to have coined the phrase: "When you marry your mistress, you create a job vacancy."
His first wife was the Bolivian heiress Maria Isabel Patiño, the 18-year-old daughter of Antenor Patiño and his first wife, the Duchess of Durcal, a member of the Spanish royal family.
Goldsmith's second wife was Ginette Lery, with whom he had a son, Manes, and daughter, Alix.
After his third marriage, Goldsmith embarked on an extramarital affair with an aristocratic Frenchwoman, Laure Boulay de la Meurthe, with whom he had two more children.
Goldsmith died in 1997 of pancreatic cancer, aged 64.
User Comments Add a comment…