Background
She was the youngest daughter of William David Ormsby-Gore, 5th Baron Harlech and his first wife Sylvia Thomas.
She was the youngest daughter of William David Ormsby-Gore, 5th Baron Harlech and his first wife Sylvia Thomas.
She died of a heroin overdose in 1995. Time magazine reported on Friday, 12 April 1968 that Lord Harlech would be sending his "15-year-old daughter, Alice Ormsby Gore, to Manhattan"s Dalton School for the coming spring term. Later in 1968, Ormsby Gore was to encounter guitarist There is some speculation as to how they metropolitan
One account gives cr for the introduction to Ian Dallas in 1969 when Alice was 17.
However, Clapton in his autobiography gives the cr to interior designer David Mlinaric in 1968. Mlinaric was completing some work on Clapton"s house, Hurtwood Edge, and had taken Ormsby Gore along with him.
The couple announced their engagement on 7 September 1969. In 1970, Ormsby Gore moved into Hurtwood Edge with Clapton.
Clapton had started using heroin quite heavily in an attempt to get over his continuing obsession with George Harrison"s wife Pattie Boyd.
Alice also became hooked on the drug. In his autobiography Clapton says, "Alice came back to live with me, and she started using too". Time magazine reported their intention to marry on Monday, 16 March 1970:
“Rock Guitarist, 25, son of a bricklayer, may soon marry Alice Ormsby Gore, 17, daughter of former British Ambassador to the United States. Lord Harlech—with her father"s blessing.
"She has gone to see him in New York," said Harlech, "and if they want to get married it is entirely their own affair.”
The couple did not marry but stayed together for five years.
Clapton maintains he was not in love with Ormsby Gore but she was deeply in love with him. In Ray Coleman"s book CLAPTON she says, "Maybe because I was only seventeen I wrongly thought of it as mutual.
My extreme youth made any rational analysis of the situation impossible."
Clapton broke the engagement and ended their relationship for good after recovering from his heroin addiction with the help of Ormsby Gore"s family. Ormsby Gore"s father (William) David Ormsby Gore died as the result of a car accident in 1985.
The 6th Baron Harlech (Francis Ormsby Gore) died at his home in Gwynedd on Monday 1 February 2016.
A North Wales Police spokesman said, “ North Wales Police were called to an address at Talsarnau near Harlech at 11.40am on Monday, following reports of the sudden death of a man in his 60s."
Alice Ormsby Gore died in poverty, found dead in a bedsit in Bournemouth, Dorset, having taken six times the fatal dose of heroin. The syringe was still in her arm. The Independent (London) reported on 21 April 1995, the day before her 43rd birthday:
Lord Harlech"s sister, Alice Ormsby Gore, 42, who was once engaged to the rock guitarist, died after taking a drug overdose at her flat, an inquest in Bournemouth, Dorset, heard.