Antonella Kerr, Marchioness of Lothian Officer of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire DSG, also known as Tony Lothian, was a British aristocrat, journalist and writer
Background
Antonella Reuss Newland was born in Rome, the only child of Major-General Sir Foster Reuss Newland Knight Commander of the Order of Street Michael and Saint George Central Bank (1862–1943) and his wife, Donna Nennella Salazar y Munatones. Her parents married in 1918, but divorced in 1928 after her mother, the daughter of an Italian army lieutenant-general, Conte Michele Salazar (descendant of a Spanish nobleman from the times of the Spanish presence in Italy), left her 66-year-old father for a 27-year-old army officer, later Brigadier William Carr Commander of the Royal Victorian Order Defence Science Organisation.
Career
Newland married a distant relative, Peter Kerr, 12th Marquess of Lothian, at the Brompton Oratory on 30 April 1943. He was then serving as a lieutenant in the Scots Guards. The younger son is Lord Ralph Kerr.
Their second daughter, Lady Cecil Kerr, married Donald Cameron of Lochiel, the XXVII and present Chief of Clan Cameron.
The other daughters married the heirs of the Duke of Grafton and the Duke of Buccleuch and Queensberry: Lady Claire Kerr married James FitzRoy, Earl of Euston, and Lady Elizabeth Kerr married Richard Scott, Earl of Dalkeith, the 10th and present Duke of Buccleuch and Queensberry. Lady Lothian pursued her own independent career as an author, broadcaster and journalist.
She was a columnist with the Scottish Daily Express from 1960 to 1975. With Odette Hallowes and Lady Georgina Coleridge she founded the annual Women of the Year Lunches at the Savoy Hotel in 1955, in aid of the Greater London Fund for the Blind and other charities.
She was also vice-president of the Royal College of Nursing from 1960 to 1980 as well as being a patron of the National Council of Women of Great Britain and the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists.
Lady Lothian lost an eye in 1970 as a result of cancer, sporting a black eye patch thereafter. She was appointed an Officer of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire in 1997 "for services to women and blind people" and a Dame of the Order of Street Gregory the Great in 2002.