London - Arab Today
Lady Soames, the last surviving child of former British Premier Sir Winston Churchill, has died at the age of 91, the Telegraph reported on Sunday.
Mary Soames died peacefully at home on Saturday evening surrounded by her family, after a short illness.
She was the youngest of the five children of the wartime prime minister and his wife Clementine.
She is survived by her five children from her marriage to Baron Christopher Soames, who died in 1987.
One of her sons, Nicholas Soames, the Conservative MP, said: ''She was a truly remarkable and extraordinary woman, who led a very distinguished life.''
"She was not just a wonderful mother to whom we were all devoted, but the head and heart of our family after our father died, and will be greatly missed."
Lady Soames was 17 at the outbreak of the second world war and at 18 joined up for the Auxiliary Territorial Service, the women’s army. She married in 1947.
Her other children include Rupert Soames, the chief executive of Serco, and Emma Soames, the magazine editor.
She went on to write a celebrated biography of her mother, Clementine Churchill, which was published in 1979.
After her husband died in 1987 she served for six years as chairman of the board of the National Theatre.
In her memoir A Daughter's Tale, published in 2011, Lady Soames disclosed she regarded herself as "the child of consolation" for her parents, having been born less than two years after her sister, Marigold, died aged two.
She describes a childhood spent largely at Chartwell, the Churchill's family home, where much of her time was spent with her "Nana" - Maryott Whyte, in fact a cousin who was a trained nurse - and a menagerie of pets.
Source: MENA