Adrian Foley, 8th Baron Foley

The Right Honourable The Lord Foley
Foley in 1939
Member of the House of Lords
Lord Temporal
In office 31 January 1945. – 11 November 1999 as a hereditary peer
Preceded by	The 7th Baron Foley
Succeeded by	Seat abolished [a]
Personal details
Born	Adrian Gerald Foley 9 August 1923
Died	12 February 2012(2012-02-12) (aged 88)
Political party	Crossbench

Adrian Gerald Foley, 8th Baron Foley (9 August 1923 – 12 February 2012^[1]), was a British hereditary peer, composer and pianist.

Upon the death of his father, Gerald Foley, 7th Baron Foley, in 1927, Foley succeeded to his title at the age of three. He wrote London I Cannot Leave You (1940) at the age of 17, having spent his childhood in Eastbourne. In 1942, he supported Britain's Soviet ally with the composition of the song, "Wishing You Well, Mr Stalin". He composed music for the films Piccadilly Incident (1946) and Bond Street (1947). He appeared on an episode of the American game show To Tell the Truth in 1957.

Personal life

In 1958, he met a wealthy American heiress, Patricia Meek, née Zoellner, during a stage production of Jane Eyre, produced by Huntington Hartford in New York City. On 23 December 1958, the couple married.^[1] They had two children: Alexandra Mary (born 1960) and Thomas Henry (born 1961), before divorcing in 1971. In 1972, he married another wealthy heiress, Ghislaine (née Dresselhuys; former wife of both the 6th Earl of Caledon and the 4th Baron Ashcombe), the only daughter of Dutch-born Long Island resident and former Consul of the Netherlands in London, Cornelius William Dresselhuys and Edith Merandon du Plessis. His second wife died in 2000. On 15 December 2003, he married his third wife, Hannah Steinberg, a member of the Wolfson family.

Death

Lord Foley enjoyed golf and maintained properties near to the golfing areas of the Andalusian region of Spain for several decades. He owned property in Belgravia, London, and lived in retirement near Marbella until his death in Kidderminster in 2012, aged 88.

Notes

1. Pursuant to the House of Lords Act 1999.

References

1. "Lord Foley". The Telegraph. 8 March 2012. Retrieved 2 August 2025.

External links

• Adrian Foley at IMDb

Peerage of Great Britain
Preceded by Gerald Foley	Baron Foley 2nd creation 1927–2012 Member of the House of Lords (1945–1999)	Succeeded by Thomas Foley