Frances Evelyn "Daisy" Greville, Countess of Warwick (née Maynard; 10 December 1861 – 26 July 1938[1]) was a British socialite and philanthropist.

Although embedded in late-Victorian British high society, she was also a campaigning socialist, supporting many schemes to aid the less well-off in education, housing, employment, and pay, and was often known as the "Red Countess".

Born at 27 Berkeley Square, London, she was the elder of two daughters of Colonel Charles Maynard (1814 – 2 January 1865) and his second wife, Blanche FitzRoy (1839 – 8 December 1933).

They had five children, Daisy's half-sisters including the noted Millicent Leveson-Gower, Duchess of Sutherland, Sybil Fane, Countess of Westmorland and Lady Angela Forbes.

Frances Maynard was considered a possible wife for Queen Victoria's youngest son, Prince Leopold (later Duke of Albany).

Daisy, in a 1923 conversation with Basil Dean, the husband of Mercy, stated that Marjorie was fathered by Lord Charles Beresford.

Lady Charles handed the letter to Sir George Lewis, 1st Baronet, a solicitor who acted for many society figures, for safekeeping.

Arguably, the incident effectively cemented Lady Warwick's superior social standing, as the Prince acquired the Countess as his own semi-official mistress.

Nevertheless, her lifestyle, money spent on charitable projects and years of lavish entertainment and socialite pursuits had depleted the immense fortune she had inherited from her grandfather.

[14] Following the death of Edward VII, and having found herself facing increasingly large debts as a result of her unmanaged philanthropy and carelessness in money matters, an attempt was made to secure the private sale of the late King's letters to Daisy to the new king George V. The letters demonstrated the extent of Edward VII's infidelities and would have scandalised society if they had been made public.

British industrialist and politician Arthur Du Cros offered to pay £64,000 (equivalent to £7,760,000 in 2023) worth of Daisy's debts in return for the love letters and, for his generosity, he was created a baronet in 1916.

[16] In 1928, Daisy was facing imprisonment in HM Prison Holloway for her debts but was released on condition that if and when she published her memoirs she would "undertake to submit it to a literary man".

She donated large amounts of money to the organisation and in particular supported its campaign for free meals for schoolchildren alongside her secretary Mary Bridges-Adams.

[17] She stood as Independent Labour Party candidate in 1923 for the Warwick and Leamington constituency against Anthony Eden who was the eventual winner.

She founded a needlework school at Easton for girls whom she recognised had excellent hand skills that would enable them to gain meaningful and well-paid employment.

She kept a menagerie of birds and animals at Easton, and a set of former circus ponies at Warwick Castle; amongst the creatures kept was a famous white peacock.

From 1912 Daisy began acting as leader and hostess of the 'Warwick Circle' at Easton Lodge, often based around select garden parties and largely dedicated to a reinvention of supposed folk traditions, pageants, dances and dialect plays, under the banner of the Dunmow and District Progressive Club, with newly written 'vernacular' plays performed at Lady Warwick's Barn Theatre at Little Easton.

Conrad Noel, the 'Red Vicar' of Thaxted, whom Daisy had appointed to his incumbency, was a critical supporter stating that this "...smacked of [the] Bloomsbury" set.

Those who contributed and gravitated to be entertained in the 'Warwick Circle' were fellow socialist political proponents and literary figures, including H. G. Wells, Launcelot and Hugh Cranmer-Byng (playwrights and scions of the Torrington baronetcy), Samuel Levy Bensusan (dialect playwright and writer), Ramsay MacDonald, J. W. Robertson Scott, Howell Arthur Gwynne, Sir Walter Gilbey, Henry De Vere Stacpoole, J. M. Barrie, George Bernard Shaw, Cecil Sharp, Arnold Bennett and Harold Monro (poet).