Glastonbury co-founder Arabella Spencer-Churchill dies
Last Updated: Friday, December 21, 2007 | 12:17 PM ET
CBC News
Arabella Spencer-Churchill, co-founder of the U.K.'s popular Glastonbury rock festival, children's charity activist and granddaughter of iconic former British prime minister Winston Churchill, has died at the age of 58.
Spencer-Churchill died at home in Glastonbury on Thursday after a short battle with pancreatic cancer, her husband Ian McLeod said Friday.
"Her energy, vitality and great sense of morality and social responsibility have given her a place in our festival history second to none," Glastonbury organizer Michael Eavis wrote in a post on the festival's website.
"May her place in the great eternity be always peaceful and perhaps the mysteries of the heavens will accommodate her spirit forever."
Spencer-Churchill eschewed expectations of her as the granddaughter of Britain's great wartime leader and was drawn to a hippy, laid-back lifestyle, even causing a minor scandal in 1971 when she turned down an official invitation to represent the U.K. at NATO's annual festival held in the state of Virginia.
"I'm immensely proud of my grandfather, and I hope he would be proud of me, but … I was no good at being Churchill," she told The Independent newspaper for a profile interview earlier this year.
"People never saw me for me. It doesn't do a lot for your confidence."
Also in 1971, she went on to help found the Glastonbury Festival, the acclaimed, often-muddy, exuberant outdoor musical celebration. She remained a main organizer for the event even through this past summer's edition.
In 1981, Spencer-Churchill founded the charity Children's World, an aid group that seeks to nurture and enrich the lives of young people, especially those with special needs or disabilities through performance workshops.
In 1999, the group expanded internationally, with recent activities including a tour to work with children victimized by the 2004 Asian tsunami.
Spencer-Churchill is survived by a daughter, Jessica McLeod, and Jake Barton, her son from her first marriage.
On Thursday, Barton was sentenced to three years in prison in Australia after having pleaded guilty to participating in a multimillion-dollar ecstasy-making operation.
With files from the Associated PressShare Tools
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