Rory McEwen (artist)

[1][2] McEwen was educated at the family home, Marchmont House in the Scottish Borders, by a French governess named Mademoiselle Philippe, and at Eton College,[3] where he was taught by Wilfred Blunt, who described him as "perhaps the most gifted artist to pass through my hands".

The brothers played their way across America, cutting 'Scottish Songs and Ballads' for Smithsonian Folkways Records and appearing on the coast-to-coast Ed Sullivan Show on CBS, twice, before returning home to Britain.

He was a regular on the daily BBC Tonight TV programme presented by Cliff Michelmore,[citation needed] writing and performing topical calypsos, whilst also working as the art director[3] for the Spectator magazine.

[citation needed] George Melly, the Clancy Brothers, Dave Swarbrick (later of Fairport Convention), Bob Davenport and the Americans Dick Farina and Carolyn Hester were among their guests.

It was typical of Rory McEwen's Scottish internationalism and versatility that, as an offshoot of his admiration for Indian music, George Harrison took sitar lessons from Ravi Shankar in his house, and that he visited Bhutan in the last days before tourism.

Her grandparents were Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Strauss's librettist and founder of the Salzburg Festival, and Americans Ava Lowle Willing (who later became Lady Ribblesdale) and John Jacob Astor IV, the multi-millionaire investor, inventor and writer, who drowned on the Titanic.