Diane Hamilton

Diane Hamilton was the pseudonym of Diane Guggenheim (1924–1991), an American mining heiress, folksong patron and founder of "Tradition Records".

The only child of millionaire Harry Frank Guggenheim, president of Newsday and onetime U. S. ambassador to Cuba, and his second wife, Caroline Morton (formerly Mrs William Chapman Potter), Hamilton was born as Diana Guggenheim in New York City, New York. She had two half-sisters, Joan (born 1913) and Nancy (1915–1972), from her father's first marriage to Helen Rosenberg.

Her maternal grandfather was Paul Morton, U. S. Secretary of the Navy, while her maternal great-grandfather was Julius Sterling Morton, U. S. Secretary of Agriculture.

She was married and divorced four times:

Very little is known of Hamilton's life, and only since the publication of the book The Mountain of the Women: Memoirs of an Irish Troubadour by Liam Clancy has it been possible to reconstruct her most notable years. In order to disguise her wealth, she adopted the alias 'Diane Hamilton'.

She lived in Florence, Italy in the late 1950s where she ran a Montessori school and frequented workshops led by Dr. Roberto Assagioli.

In 1955 she traveled to Ireland in search of folk singers. According to Liam Clancy's book, she became acquainted with Tom and Paddy Clancy in New York, and while in Ireland made the Clancy household one of the stops on her collecting trip. Young Liam was invited to continue on the trip with her, and one of the next stops was the home of Sarah Makem who had previously been recorded by Jean Ritchie on her album Field Trip (1954). This fateful meeting brought together Liam and Sarah's younger son, Tommy Makem, who was also recorded. These two, along with Liam's older brothers Paddy and Tom Clancy, would eventually form "The Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem", one of the most successful groups in Irish music history.

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