IT’S a family saga with a suicide, an assassination, a drowning, car crashes, overdoses, a deadly fall on Mount Snowdon – and lashings of beer.
And now the wild and sometimes chaotic story of the Guinness brewing dynasty is being told in an explosive new TV drama from the creator of Peaky Blinders.
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Starring Happy Valley’s James Norton as the family’s fictionalised enforcer Sean Rafferty, it tells the story of how Arthur, son of the company’s big boss Sir Benjamin Guinness, came to take control of the brewery in 1868 and become the richest man in Ireland.
The idea for the new Netflix series, House Of Guinness, was first dreamed up by Ivana Lowell, the great-great-great granddaughter of Sir Benjamin, whose funeral forms the opening scene of the first episode.
Ivana, 59, said: “We were watching Downton Abbey half-heartedly while chatting and I suddenly thought, ‘Our family would also make such a good TV show — but the difference is, it’s all true’.”
The drama also stars Olivia Rodrigo’s boyfriend Louis Partridge as Arthur’s younger brother Edward. He previously played Sex Pistol Sid Vicious in Danny Boyle’s 2022 TV series Pistol, and is English, so he had to finely tune his Irish accent.
Ivana hopes that the opening eight-part series of House Of Guinness, which is available from Thursday, will be just the first of many, because there are a lot more tragic tales to tell from the sprawling clan — so much so that the family has been said to be cursed.
They have also been known for their extravagant lifestyles, partying with rock stars such as Mick Jagger, buying stately homes which they barely set foot in and jetsetting across the globe.
Ivana added: “Hopefully we can get [the story] to the present day — that’s the dream.
“The family just gets more interesting and wacky.
“My grandmother Maureen and her sisters Aileen and Oonagh, known as The Glorious Guinness Girls, could have a whole series just on them — their antics, the people they married, their wonderful outfits and their outrageous behaviour.”
Tomorrow is the 300th anniversary of the birth of the brewery’s founder, the first Arthur Guinness, who invented the much-loved stout which now sells 1.8billion pints a year.
He founded his company in St James’s Gate in Dublin in 1759 and by 1828 it was the largest brewery in the world.
The Netflix series focuses on his great grandson Edward, who became the richest man in Ireland by floating the firm on the London Stock Exchange in 1886.
Written by Peaky Blinders creator Steven Knight, the drama tells how Edward took total control of the business from his older brother Arthur after Sir Benjamin died.
Historian Adrian Tinniswood, who has documented the family’s homes in his book The Houses Of Guinness, said: “Arthur leaves the business.
“He’s not interested, because he’s got an aristocratic wife, who doesn’t think that trade is quite the thing.”
In the TV series Arthur is portrayed as a playboy by Irish actor Anthony Boyle, who said: “He likes f***ing, likes drinking and likes having the craic.
“He would rather be in London having fun but instead he has to come back to Dublin, and that is where the story begins.”
With Arthur retiring aged just 40, Edward’s philanthropic acts, including building social housing in London and Dublin, led him to be awarded a peerage, becoming the 1st Earl of Iveagh.
‘FAMILY PLAYBOY’
He was so rich that he was able to bequeath “London’s finest country house” Kenwood — which he only ever slept in for one night — to the nation on his death in 1927 at the age of 79.
But some of his descendants fared less well.
His grandson Arthur Onslow Edward Guinness was killed aged 32 by a V2 rocket near the end of World War Two while serving his country.
And Edward’s youngest son Walter was assassinated in Egypt in 1944 by Zionist terrorists aged 64.
He had been known for opposing fascism, so much so that he had called for his former daughter-in-law Diana Mitford — first married to Walter’s son Bryan — to be interned during World War Two because of her support for her Nazi-sympathising second husband, Sir Oswald Mosley.
It was Edward’s middle son Arthur Ernest who was the playboy of the family, with a love of fast cars and adventure, once getting injured in a motorboat accident.
His daughters, Aileen, Maureen and Oonagh — The Glorious Guinness Girls — were devoted to partying.
Oonagh, who married three times, held wild parties in the 1960s at the family’s Luggala estate in Ireland’s Wicklow Mountains.
For her son Tara Browne’s 21st birthday party in 1966, 200 guests were flown in on two private jets.
Adrian said: “Mick Jagger and Brian Jones and the Gettys and anybody who’s anybody was there.
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“The playwright Brendan Behan was lying unconscious on the floor.”
Tara, who is said to have introduced Paul McCartney to LSD, died in December that year when he crashed his Lotus Elan sports car into the back of a lorry in West London at more than 100mph.
In the Beatles song A Day In The Life a year later, John Lennon wrote the line “He blew his mind out in a car” about Tara’s death.
The notion that the family was cursed really took hold in 1978, after four of them died in tragic circumstances in just four months.
In May that year Lady Henrietta Guinness, who had inherited £5million three years earlier, plunged 250ft to her death from the Ponte delle Torri, or Bridge of Towers, in Spoleto, central Italy.
Shortly before her apparent suicide, the 35-year-old new mum reportedly said: “If I had been poor, I would have been happy.”
The following month Ivana’s 18-year-old sister Natalya Citkovitz died from a heroin overdose.
In July Major Dennys Guinness was found dead in his Hampshire cottage after an apparent suicide aged 44, and in August four-year-old Peter Guinness was killed in a car crash in Norfolk.
Ivana herself has suffered her share of trauma.
She was sexually abused as a child, nearly died from third-degree burns when scalded by a kettle aged six and did not discover who her biological father was until she was in her thirties.
‘DANGEROUS BURDEN’
Other family members found their surname a dangerous burden.
In Dublin in 1986 Jennifer Guinness was held for eight days by armed kidnappers who demanded a £2million ransom for her life.
She told them: “You’ve got the wrong branch of the family,” because although her husband John was from the banking side of the Guinnesses, it was not as fabulously wealthy as the brewing side.
After a six-hour siege Jennifer was freed by police and soldiers.
The same year 22-year-old Olivia Channon — whose father, Tory MP Paul, was the grandson of Rupert Guinness, 2nd Earl of Iveagh — died from a drink and drugs overdose at a party.
Two years later, in 1988, Jennifer’s 52-year-old husband John was killed when he fell 500ft from Mount Snowdon in North Wales.
More recently, in 2004 Robert Hesketh, 48, who was the son-in-law of Guinness heir Lord Moyne, died after taking heroin at a party in Marlborough, Wiltshire, and in 2020 Honor Uloth, 19-year-old daughter of Lady Louisa Guinness, drowned in a swimming pool in Chichester, West Sussex.
Irish historian Turtle Bunbury, who has a podcast, Behind The Guinness Gates, reckons that the modern-day family try to avoid the limelight.
It’s not like the time of the Glorious Guinness Girls in the 30s, 40s, 50s, who were in the papers and would have been considered royalty then
Turtle Bunbury
He said: “These days they stay out of the papers by and large, they’re very discreet.
“Most people wouldn’t know who they are.
“It’s not like the time of the Glorious Guinness Girls in the 30s, 40s, 50s, who were in the papers and would have been considered royalty then.”
But there are exceptions.
Family members Jasmine and Daphne Guinness, and Lady Mary Charteris have all worked as models.
When Mary married rock singer Robbie Furze in 2012, Keira Knightley and Georgia May Jagger were among the guests.
Daphne, the granddaughter of Bryan Guinness, 2nd Baron Moyne, has released four albums without yet becoming a chart star.
But the current Earl of Iveagh, the 4th Earl, Arthur Edward Rory Guinness, 56, who lives at the family’s sprawling estate in Elveden, Suffolk, does not crave attention.
In 1997 Guinness became part of the British brewing giant Diageo and the family no longer run the company.
And most of them, including the Earl, do not know what is in the Netflix drama.
Turtle said: “I think they are keeping their heads down, because every time I talk to them they’re just doing nice things.”
- House Of Guinness streams on Netflix from September 25.
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