Lady Ursula d'Abo

Lady Ursula d'Abo
Lady Ursula at Belvoir Castle in 1937, dressed in Norman Hartnell for the coronation
Born
Ursula Isabel Manners

8 November 1916
London, England
Died2 November 2017 (aged 100)
West Wratting Park
West Wratting, Cambridgeshire
England
OccupationSocialite
Spouse(s)Anthony Marreco (1943–1948, divorced)
Erland d'Abo (1951–1970, his death)
ChildrenJohn Henry Erland d'Abo
Louisa Jane d'Abo
Richard Winston Mark d'Abo
Parents
RelativesManners family

Lady Ursula Isabel d'Abo (née Manners, formerly Marreco; 8 November 1916 – 2 November 2017) was an English socialite and aristocrat who served as a maid of honour to the Queen at the Coronation of King George VI and Queen Elizabeth in 1937. She received international media attention after her photograph from that day, standing alongside the British royal family on the balcony of Buckingham Palace, circulated in the news. Reporters focused on her beauty and distinctive widow's peak, and an American wrote to the editor of a newspaper, asking "who is the girl with the widow's peak?" Her title of her book, The Girl with the Widow's Peak: The Memoirs (2014), played with this question.

Winston Churchill nicknamed Lady Ursula in 1938 as "the cygnet" for her comparative youth and beauty among a travelling company that accompanied the king and queen on a royal tour in France that year.

During World War II Lady Ursula worked as a nurse with the Voluntary Aid Detachment before being appointed to a managerial position over 2,000 women employees at the British Manufacture and Research Company's munitions factory in Grantham. In her later life she received attention for her brief relationship with Maharaja Man Singh II of Jaipur and her long-term affair with American oilman J. Paul Getty.