Lady Annabel Goldsmith, the renowned socialite and friend of Princess Diana during the troubled years of her marriage, left more than £5.6million in her will.

The aristocrat, who died aged 91 on October 18 last year, famously lent her name to the upmarket London nightclub Annabel's, which was founded by her first husband Mark Birley.

Probate records released today and seen by the Daily Mail show the widow of tycoon Sir James Goldsmith left UK assets worth £6,668,035, reduced to a net estate of £5,618,858 after deduction of liabilities.

Mother-of-six Lady Annabel left the bulk of her estate in trust for her two surviving children from her first marriage – entrepreneur Robin Birley, now 66, and artist India-Jane, now 61.

She had three other children from her later marriage to Goldsmith – TV producer and screenwriter Jemima Goldsmith Khan, 52, politician Zac Goldsmith, 51, and environmentalist Ben Goldsmith, now 45.

But a clause in her will stated that they had already been 'generously provided for' by their late father, who was reported to be worth £1.2billion when he died aged 64 in 1997 after a long battle against pancreatic cancer.

Sir James Goldsmith, who was elected to the European Parliament in 1994, founded the short-lived Referendum Party which campaigned against Britain's membership of the EU.

Lady Annabel's will, drawn up in December 2024, requested that most of her personal possessions, known as chattels, be put in a trust fund for the benefit of her son Robin.

But she also left her William W Mr Morris landscape painting featuring two terriers with a dead rabbit and dated 1861 to Charles Filmer, one of the executors of her estate.

There were also legacies of £20,000 to Tristram Powell, £10,000 to James Powell, £15,000 to her great-niece Maude Martel and £10,000 each to her nieces Sophie Pilkington and Cosima Somerset.

The remainder of her estate, including a 1965 trust settlement, was left in equal shares to Robin Birley and India-Jane, known as Jane.

Lady Annabel's other daughter Jemima was famously married for nine years to Imran Khan, the ex-cricketer and former Prime Minister of Pakistan.

Her son Zac, now a life peer, was twice elected as Conservative MP for Richmond Park, and served as Minister of State for Overseas Territories, Commonwealth, Energy, Climate and Environment. He was also Tory candidate in the London mayoral election in 2016.

Lady Annabel was also known as a Eurosceptic political campaigner and author of her best-selling autobiography Annabel: An Unconventional Life.

The renowned hostess was born Annabel Vane-Tempest-Stewart on June 11 1934, the second child of Robin, Viscount Castlereagh, heir to the seventh Marquess of Londonderry and a godson of King Edward VII, and his wife Romaine.

She moved with her family to Brookwood, Surrey, during the war and later went to school in Sussex, and became a keen Girl Guide.

Her father became the eighth Marquess of Londonderry when her grandfather died in a gliding accident in 1949, leading to her becoming Lady Annabel.

She was aged just 17 when her mother died in 1951 after developing an incurable cancer of the mouth.

Lady Annabel went to tutorial college in Oxford after school and became a debutante at 18 when the late Queen attended her coming-out dance.

As a debutante, she became involved with Mark Birley, the 6ft 5in tall Old Etonian son of the portrait painter Sir Oswald Birley and his eccentric Irish wife Rhoda.

Her father disapproved of the relationship but she married Birley, who was five years her senior at a London register office in 1954, and they moved into an attic flat at the top of Lady Birley's house in St John's Wood. Her father, who had drunk heavily, died in 1955 when she was just 21.

Birley worked in advertising before establishing a Jermyn Street outlet for the French firm Hermès.

He and Lady Annabel moved to Chelsea after their first son Rupert was born and later moved into a two-storey Regency house off Onslow Square following the birth of their second son Robin. Their daughter India-Jane Birley was born in 1961.

One of the couple's best friends was John Aspinall, who opened the Clermont Club casino at 44 Berkeley Square in Mayfair in 1962.

The private members' club would later become a haunt of professional gambler Lord Lucan, who famously vanished in 1974 after apparently murdering his children's nanny when he mistook her for his wife.

Mr Aspinall leased the basement of his club to Birley, who converted it into Annabel's nightclub, which opened in 1963, quickly becoming one of the top night spots in London.

Despite having young children, Lady Annabel was a constant presence at the nightclub in the 1960s, and entertained guests ranging from Ted and Robert F Kennedy to Frank Sinatra, Prince Charles, Richard Nixon, and Muhammad Ali.

The late Queen visited the club in 2003. It is thought to be the only nightclub she went to, other than the even fancier Whites on St James's Street.

Lady Annabel started her affair with James Goldsmith in 1964 when he was still married to his second wife. She was persuaded to be unfaithful to Birley after learning of his infidelities.

When she spent her first night with Goldsmith at the Ritz, she recalled how she wore an undergarment called a Merry Widow which she likened to 'a sort of corset, bra and suspenders all in one'

She crammed it into her evening bag when she went home, only for it to fall out in as she fumbled for her car keys in the hotel lobby, where it landed 'with a great clang of suspenders on the marble floor in full view of the night porter'.

Lady Annabel's son Robin was aged 12 when he was savagely mauled by a pregnant tigress while they were on a visit to Mr Aspinall's zoo at Howletts, in Kent, in 1970.

Robin's life was saved by the prompt intervention of Mr Aspinall and his wife, but his horrific injuries left him disfigured. Lady Annabel, who had allowed him to go into the animal's enclosure, was racked with guilt.

Lady Annabel and Birley separated in 1972 and divorced in 1975. She married Sir James Goldsmith in 1978, two years after he was knighted.

She had reluctantly agreed to leave Pelham Cottage for the more spacious interiors of Ormeley Lodge, an early 18th-century house with several acres of grounds between Richmond Park and Ham Common.

The house, which went on the market for £25million in July this year, provided ample space for entertaining and room for their growing family.

Goldsmith spent much time abroad, for business and personal reasons, leaving Lady Annabel occasionally exasperated and jealous, but she knew she would have found it impossible to live with him full-time, and made the best of it.

Lady Annabel had more heartache in 1986 when her first child, Rupert Birley, disappeared aged 30 while swimming off the coast of Togo in West Africa. His body was never recovered.

She famously took on a motherly role to the late Princess Diana who would pour out her woes to her in the later years of her troubled marriage to the then Prince Charles.

Diana recalled in tape recordings made for royal author Andrew Morton how she confronted Camilla Parker-Bowles about her affair with Charles, during a 40th birthday party for Camilla's sister Annabel Elliot at Ormeley Lodge in 1989.

Lady Annabel testified at Diana's inquest in 2007, saying that she had had no intention of marrying Dodi Fayed. She revealed that Diana had confided in her a few days before her death: 'I would need marriage like a rash on my face.'

During her lifetime, Lady Annabel was a donor to the Countryside Alliance and the Soil Association, a patron of the Dogs Trust and a supporter of the Battersea Dogs & Cats Home.

In 2006, she wrote her pet dog Copper's 'autobiography', Copper: A Dog's Life, illustrated by her daughter India-Jane.

Her second husband, Sir James Goldsmith, who had three children from his first two marriages and two children with his French mistress, died in 1997, and her first husband Birley, died a decade later.