From privilege to a seamy life

Robin Whitehead. Photo / Supplied

As a scion of one of Britain's most influential, monied and maverick dynasties, Robin Whitehead would have been pushing at an open door had she wished to enter the worlds of business and politics, which have become the natural domains of the Goldsmiths.

But although the striking 27-year-old was just at home as her second cousin, Jemima Khan, with a glass of champagne in front of the cameras at an A-list party, she chose to immerse herself in a more seamy and unconventional world to further her desire to chronicle celebrity life.

Since at least 2006, the filmmaker and photographer had followed the dissolute fortunes of Pete Doherty, recording on film and in photography the life of the heroin addict and rock star.

In so doing, Robin, who preferred to spell her name Robyn, was not following the opportunities offered by the family of her mother, Dido, the daughter of pioneering environmentalist Teddy Goldsmith and niece of billionaire financier Sir James Goldsmith.

Instead, she was pursuing a similar path to her father, the 1960s sub-culture filmmaker Peter Whitehead.

Whitehead, 72, described by a commentator as "the Che Guevara of the camera", was credited with inventing the pop video through his work at the height of Swinging London, making promotional films for then up-and-coming bands including the Rolling Stones, Pink Floyd and the Dubliners.

While putting the final touches to her second documentary about Doherty, Robin, one of four sisters, returned to the tower block flat in London's East End, where her body was found on Sunday evening.

Friends paid tribute on Thursday to the filmmaker's dedication to her task. She had spent two years making her first film about Doherty and his bands, entitled The Road to Albion, released in November.

It is likely Robin gained her fascination with some of the more louche characters in the music world from her father, whose best man at his wedding to Dido Goldsmith was Howard Marks, the Oxford-educated cannabis smuggler, who at the height of his illicit activities was said to control a tenth of the world's hashish trade.

In his autobiography, Marks recalled his life at the time with Whitehead involved "marijuana, LSD, rock music and after-eight philosophy".

Brought up in Northamptonshire, Robin and her sisters were privately educated. Although she apparently chose not to use it, a world of illustrious connections was never far away.

The Goldsmith clan has long trodden a narrow path between membership of the most privileged strata of the establishment and the expression of dissenting views.

In such a context, it is perhaps unsurprising Robin, who once featured in gossip columns as having had a relationship with Doherty, was described by her friends as a "free spirit".

- INDEPENDENT