Marita Crawley

Marita Phillips has written songs for artists such as Peter Skellern, Demis Roussos, William Lovelady and Art Garfunkel.

She has written the libretto for the opera “The Poet and the Tsar”, based on the lives of her great, great, great Grandfathers, Alexander Pushkin and Nicholas I of Russia, to be performed by Helikon Opera in Moscow in 2007.

She has also written a play on Alexander Pushkin, entitled “Song from a Cage.”

Marita Phillips studied acting at The Guildhall School of Music and Drama]] and ballet at the Nesta Brooking School before training as a mime with Adam Darius, with whom she founded and ran The Mime Centre, London.

Marita Phillips and her family are in the Line of succession to the British Throne (627th)

Royal ancestry

Marita and her sisters Natalia Grosvenor, Duchess of Westminster and Alexandra Hamilton, Duchess of Abercorn are close to the British Royal Family, and are related distantly to HRH The Duke of Edinburgh. Their maternal grandmother Lady Wernher was born Countess Anastasia de Torby (later Lady "Zia" Wernher), younger morganatic daughter of Grand Duke Michael Mihailovich of Russia (a grandson of Emperor Nicholas I of Russia) by his wife Countess Sophie of Merenberg, morganatic daughter of Prince Nicholas of Nassau (himself brother of the Grand Duke of Luxembourg by his wife, the younger daughter of Russia's greatest poet Alexander Pushkin. Lady Zia's sister Nadezhda (or "Nada") was wife of the George Mountbatten, 2nd Marquess of Milford Haven, elder maternal uncle of Prince Philip. The Torby sisters were third cousins of the prince through their common ancestor Nicholas I. It is through their Russian grand ducal father that Alexandra, Duchess of Abercorn is descended from Sophia, Electress of Hanover.

Her sister the Natalia Grosvenor, Duchess of Westminster is a godmother of Prince William of Wales.

Family

Marita Georgina Phillips was born the daughter of Lt.-Col. Harold Phillips and his wife, Georgina who was the elder daughter and co-heiress of Sir Harold Wernher, 3rd Bt, by his wife Countess Anastasia de Torby (later Lady Zia Wernher, CBE).

Her Grace, The Duchess of Abercorn is a direct descendant of the Russian Poet, Alexander Pushkin, as well as his African great-grandfather, Abram Petrovich Gannibal. He was Peter the Great's protégé.

Father: Lt.-Col. Harold Phillips
Mother: Georgina Kennard
Husband: Randall Crawley (m. 1966, div., two sons, one daughter)
Son: Aidan Crawley
Daughter: Cosima Crawleyt
Son: Galen Crawley
Husband: Andrew Knight