Zac Goldsmith and his banking heiress wife Alice Rothschild ‘make decision to separate’

One of James Goldsmith’s most memorable quotes was his oft-repeated aphorism on fidelity: ‘When a man marries his mistress, he creates a vacancy.’

Now there would certainly appear to be a vacancy in the love life of the late tycoon’s eldest son, Zac: the Mail can reveal he has separated from his wife, Alice Rothschild.

Before they were married, their relationship was the subject of a tabloid expose because Sheherazade Bentley was still his wife.

A spokesman for the couple last night confirmed the marriage of Lord Goldsmith, a Government minister, had ended after a decade.

‘Alice and Zac have made the difficult decision to separate,’ the spokesman told this newspaper.

Friends of the couple insist no one else is involved in the split. 

Miss Rothschild (pictured in 2014) is the daughter of financier Amschel Rothschild, who shared an £18 million inheritance when he committed suicide in 1996 aged 41

Mr Goldsmith’s first wedding to Sheherazade Bentley on June 5, 1999 was a lavish ceremony for 350 people at the Ritz Hotel in London (pictured on the day). Their split was prompted by an affair between him and Miss Rothschild, who at the time, was also his sister-in-law

‘They do so amicably and are committed to jointly raising their three children in a happy and healthy environment,’ the spokesman continued.

‘They ask, in the interests of all the family, that the media respects their privacy.’

Friends of the couple insist no one else is involved in the split. 

Lord Goldsmith, 48, who has an estimated fortune of £300million, married Miss Rothschild, 39, in 2013.

The couple married in a tiny thatched cottage within the London Wetland Centre, a nature reserve in south west London, which cost just £500 to hire for the evening.

Fitting 42 guests at their 30-minute ceremony, Mr and Mrs Goldsmith were driven from the bird sanctuary to a grander reception for 170 at Petersham Nurseries in nearby Richmond.

The simple event was a far cry from Mr Goldsmith’s first wedding to Sheherazade Bentley in 1999, with their lavish ceremony for 350 people at the Ritz Hotel in London.

Their split was prompted by an affair between him and Miss Rothschild, who at the time, was also his sister-in-law.

In 2009 had announced that he and Sheherazade, the 49-year-old daughter of actress Viviane Ventura and financier John Bentley, had separated and would divorce after ten years together.

Zac’s brother Ben, 42, was married to but estranged from Alice’s sister Kate, 40, at the time of their wedding. They split in 2012 after Kate allegedly had an affair with American rapper Jay Electronica.

Miss Rothschild shared an £18 million inheritance when her father, Amschel, committed suicide in 1996 aged 41. Her now ex-husband’s father, financier Sir James Goldsmith, left assets worth around £1.2 billion when he died in 1997.

Lord Goldsmith, 48, who has an estimated fortune of £300million, married Miss Rothschild, 39, in 2013. The couple married in a tiny thatched cottage within the London Wetland Centre (pictured leaving their reception), a nature reserve in south west London, which cost just £500 to hire for the evening

In 2009 had announced that he and his first wife Sheherazade Bentley (pictured together in 2007), the 49-year-old daughter of actress Viviane Ventura and financier John Bentley, had separated and would divorce after ten years together

Their split was prompted by an affair between him and Miss Rothschild, who is also his sister-in-law. He lost an estimated £20million in the settlement.

Zac and Alice share three children together; nine-year-old daughter Dolly, born in 2013, the year they wed, son Max, seven, and youngest daughter Edie, five. 

The announcement of his divorce from Sheherazade came four months after Lord Goldsmith, who was an aspiring MP at the time, was reported to have been advised by senior Tories that he should ‘resolve any conflict in his love life’.

His younger brother, Ben, who was married to Alice’s sister Kate Rothschild at the time, was said to have found the situation particularly awkward.

Lord Goldsmith, who was an adviser to David Cameron, was given training in preparation for a general election campaign.

He was interviewed by an official posing as a journalist and was apparently lost for words when asked: ‘You cheated on your wife. What’s to stop you cheating on your constituents?’

His relationship with Alice, the daughter of financier Amschel Rothschild, started in 2006.

Gossip soon emerged about him visiting her in the afternoons.

Initially the meetings were explained away as her simply helping him organise a poker tournament because he is an enthusiastic player.

Friends insisted he ‘agonised’ over leaving his wife.

His father’s love life was unconstrained by hesitation – or convention. Aged 20, Jimmy Goldsmith became entranced by the beautiful 18-year-old Isabel Patino, heiress to a Bolivian tin mining fortune.

When he sought her hand in marriage from her father, Antenor, the latter allegedly said: ‘We are not in the habit of marrying Jews.’

Goldsmith retorted: ‘And we are not in the habit of marrying Red Indians.’

Undaunted – or quite possibly spurred on – by his prospective father-in-law’s disapproval, he eloped with Isabel in January 1954.

But the marriage was cruelly brief. Struck down by a cerebral haemorrhage in her seventh month of pregnancy, Isabel died that May.

The couple’s child – also named Isabel – survived.

His second wife was Ginette Lery, daughter of a Paris Metro worker, who he encountered when she came to work for him as a secretary two years after Isabel’s death.

Theirs could not be described as an exclusive relationship. By the time Ginette gave birth to a son, Manes, in 1959, Goldsmith was having an affair with Sally Crichton-Stuart, later to marry the Aga Khan.

The pattern continued after Goldsmith and Ginette married in 1963, and had a daughter, Alix, who was born the following year.

By then he had switched much of his attention to Lady Annabel Birley, beautiful daughter of the Marquess of Londonderry – and wife of Mark Birley, founder of Mayfair’s most dazzling nightclub, named Annabel’s in her honour.

His relationship with Alice, the daughter of financier Amschel Rothschild, started in 2006. Gossip soon emerged about him visiting her in the afternoons while married to Sheherazade (pictured while she was pregnant in 2001)

Zac and Alice share three children together; nine-year-old daughter Dolly, born in 2013, the year they wed, son Max, seven, and youngest daughter Edie, five

Zac became an MP at the 2010 general election, capturing Richmond Park from the Liberal Democrats. He increased his majority at the 2015 election. In 2016, he was selected as the Tory candidate in the London mayoral election, but he lost to Sadiq Khan after a highly acrimonious contest (pictured with now-estranged wife Alice Rothschild in 2016)

More than a decade later Goldsmith divorced Ginette, after which he married Lady Annabel – by then also divorced – in 1978.

With her, he had Jemima, the film producer, and two sons, Zac and Ben, a financier and former government adviser on the environment.

Yet he continued to divide his time between his new family in England, with whom he lived on the edge of Richmond Park, south-west London, and his previous one in Paris, asserting that ‘not one iota’ of his relationship with Ginette had been changed by divorce.

Zac became an MP at the 2010 general election, capturing Richmond Park from the Liberal Democrats. He increased his majority at the 2015 election.

In 2016, he was selected as the Tory candidate in the London mayoral election, but he lost to Sadiq Khan after a highly acrimonious contest.

The same year, he lost a by-election in Richmond Park that he had initiated by resigning his seat. He stood as an independent, but lost to the Lib Dems, who overturned his majority of 23,000.

He regained the constituency as a Conservative candidate at the 2017 general election with majority of just 45 votes and was appointed as a minister by his friend, Boris Johnson.

Although he lost Richmond Park at the 2019 general election, it was announced shortly after that he would continue to serve as a minister by being awarded a life peerage and sitting as a member of the House of Lords.