Lady Angela Forbes

Lady Angela Selina Bianca Forbes (née St Clair-Erskine; 11 June 1876 – 22 October 1950) was a British socialite and novelist who was known as a forces sweetheart for organising soldiers' canteens in France during the First World War.

Forbes was born at 8 Grafton Street, Mayfair, the youngest daughter of Robert St Clair-Erskine, 4th Earl of Rosslyn and Blanche Adeliza FitzRoy.

Her sisters were Millicent Leveson-Gower, Duchess of Sutherland and Sybil Fane, Countess of Westmorland, and her brothers were the 5th Earl of Rosslyn and Alexander FitzRoy St Clair-Erskine.

[4] Forbes spent much of her life fox-hunting and shooting,[1] and she was depicted riding side-saddle at a meeting of the Quorn in a Vanity Fair magazine chromolithograph by Cuthbert Bradley.

[1] The Publisher magazine said of her novel The Other Woman's Shadow (1912) Lady Angela Forbes’s story presents us with a number of smart society people; they chatter and intrigue in various country houses, and at other times we meet them in London.

At first, the supplies needed were funded by appeals in the newspapers, but in 1915, both the Red Cross and the British Soldiers' Buffets began to charge for their food and drink.

In 1916, Lady Angela opened other canteens in Étaples, the main depôt and transit camp for the British Expeditionary Force in France, to which wounded men returned.

Lord Derby, the War Secretary, replied on behalf of the government, recognising Lady Angela's valuable work and her "zeal and ability".

[1] After the war, Forbes started a short-lived training scheme for disabled soldiers, then a dress shop, and also tried to run Lord Wemyss's Gosford House as a hotel.

Vanity Fair illustration, November 1901