Sir James Michael “Jimmy” Goldsmith

Born: February 26, 1933
Birthplace: Paris, France
Died: July 17, 1997

One of the most famous players in the history of the game of backgammon was also one of its most flamboyant. And if there was ever a man who brought the strategy and gamesmanship of backgammon to every aspect of his life, it was Sir James Goldsmith.

Goldsmith’s life as a professional gambler and risk-taker began when he dropped out of Eton College in 1949 after winning £8,000 on the horses. After some time in the military, he eloped in 1954 with the Bolivian heiress Maria Isabel Patiño, daughter of the Duchess of Durcal, a member of the Spanish royal family, when her father refused to allow her to marry a Jew. Sadly, his 18-year-old bride suffered a massive cerebral hemorrhage while giving birth to their daughter and died soon after.

After being widowed, Goldsmith embarked on his financial career, supported both by socialite Ginette Lery and his prodigious talent at the backgammon table. When Ginette gave birth to their first child in 1959, a penniless Goldsmith went to the Travelers Club on the Champs Elysees and found a rich man he could entice into a game of backgammon, winning enough to pay the doctor and hospital bill.

His successes away from the gaming tables included landing the British franchise for Alka-Seltzer and acquiring the Bovril company. He was also notable as a corporate raider, making $90 million from his attempted hostile takeover of the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company. Despite his reputation for buying up shares in companies he intended to dismember, then selling his stake back to the firm for many times what he paid to avert the threatened breakup, Goldsmith was an ardent environmentalist, and was knighted in 1976.

After retiring from business dealings in 1987 he became involved in politics, both in Europe and Britain, serving as a member of the European Parliament for a French right-wing party, championing British nationalism and was a major financial backer of a leading Euro-sceptic think-tank, The European Foundation. By bankrolling his Referendum Party in Britain to the tune of £20 million he recast the debate about the European Union and unseated a score of Tories.

Aware he was dying of pancreatic cancer, he spent $40 million on the British Referendum Party before retiring to his Spanish villa to die in the bed in which he was born.

Always unconventional, Goldsmith divorced his second wife to marry his mistress Lady Annabel Vane-Tempest-Stewart, daughter of the 8th Marquess of Londonderry and Romaine Combe, by whom he had three children, and then fathered two children by his new mistress, Laure Boulay de La Meurthe, daughter of Comte Alfred Boulay de La Meurthe. He was once quoted as saying: “Marrying one’s mistress creates a job opening.”