Sonia Melchett

Sonia Elizabeth Sinclair, JP (née Graham; formerly Mond; born 6 September 1928), known as Sonia Melchett, is a London socialite and author. Formerly married to Julian Edward Alfred Mond, 3rd Baron Melchett, she married the writer Andrew Sinclair after her husband's death.

Sonia Melchett was born in British India on 6 September 1928, the eldest daughter of Lt.-Col. Roland Harris Graham and Kathleen Graham (née Dunbar) Graham. Her father was educated at Cambridge University, Cambridge and Trinity College, Dublin University and participated in the Second World War, serving as a member of Royal Army Medical Corps. Sonia Melchett was educated at the Royal School, Bath. Her younger sister Daphne Kinsman married Major Anthony Henry Ivor Kinsman and became an actress, broadcaster and writer. She was the presenter of the BBC news programme Look North and wrote the book Pawn takes Castle.

Sonia Graham married the Honourable Julian Edward Alfred Mond, younger son of Henry Mond, 2nd Baron Melchett and Amy Gwen Mond Baroness Melchett (née Wilson) on 26 April 1947, and became Lady Melchett on the death of her father-in-law on 22 January 1949. Mond was the inaugural chairman of the newly privatised British Steel Corporation. For most of their married life they lived on Tite Street in Chelsea, London and on Courtyard Farm Ringstead, Hunstanton, Norfolk. Melchett was a trustee of Royal Court Theatre and the NSPCC.

They built a villa, Casa Melchett, near Formentor in Majorca and took family holidays there. Julian Mond died while on holiday there on 15 June 1973. They had one son, Peter Robert Henry Mond and two daughters, Kerena Ann Mond and Pandora Shelley Mond. Melchett's eldest daughter Kerena Ann Mond married Richard Moorehead, son of the war correspondent and author Alan Moorehead in 1980, and secondly in 1985 married journalist and broadcaster Adam Boulton. Melchett's second daughter Pandora Shelley Mond is an artist, who, in 1991, married Nicholas Wesolowski. On 25 July 1984, Lady Melchett remarried, to Andrew Sinclair, a novelist, historian, biographer, critic, filmmaker and founding member of Churchill College Cambridge. Sonia Melchett has seven grandchildren two of her grandchildren by her son Peter 4th Baron Melchett have been born out of wedlock. The grandson cannot succeed to her husband Julian 3rd Baron Melchett peerage because children born out of wedlock cannot succeed to peerage titles.

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