Jemima Goldsmith

Jemima Marcelle Khan (born 30 January 1974) is an English socialite known due to her relationships as a former girlfriend of Hugh Grant and the ex-wife of Pakistani cricketer Imran Khan. She is a daughter of Lady Annabel Goldsmith and one of the eight children who inherited the wealth of her late father, billionaire James Goldsmith.

Family and education

Born in London's Westminster Hospital as Jemima Marcelle Goldsmith, Khan is the eldest child of Lady Annabel Vane-Tempest-Stewart and Anglo-French financier James Goldsmith. Her parents started a polyamorous relationship in 1964 while they were married to different partners, but in 1978, the two married for the sole purpose of legitimizing their children. Besides her two younger brothers, Zac, husband of Sheherazade Goldsmith, and Ben, Khan has five paternal and three maternal half-siblings, including Robin and India Jane Birley.

Khan grew up at Ormeley Lodge while attending the Old Vicarage preparatory school and Francis Holland School in Chelsea. She enrolled at the University of Bristol in 1993 and dropped out to get married in 1995, but eventually submitted her dissertation in March 2002 for a 2:1 bachelor's degree in English. She later completed an MA in Middle Eastern Studies at SOAS, University of London. Khan is almost universally reported to be shy, with her ex-husband describing her as "very shy". She is defined as modest, stylish, and levelheaded. She has described herself as a lifelong "coward" who is diffident due to "a chronic inability to make up my mind" and has built a pattern of "pathological indecision".

On 29 December 2000, Khan and her family were part of a British Airways jet to Kenya that was temporarily knocked off course and dived 17,000 feet below, after a passenger tried to seize controls in the cockpit. Her mother later stated, "Jemima was frightened of flying even before the incident; she's petrified [now]". Khan lives in Fulham, London, with her sons Sulaiman Isa (b. 18 November 1996) and Kasim (b. 10 April 1999). Because she wants to have the same last name as her children, she currently goes by Jemima Khan.

Islamic Marriage

At 21, Jemima Goldsmith married the 42-year old Pakistani cricketer Imran Khan on 16 May 1995 in a two-minute Islamic ceremony in Paris. The religious ceremony was followed, on 21 June, by a civil ceremony at the Richmond Register Office and a midsummer ball at Ormeley Lodge. Guests at the ball included Princess Michael of Kent, Elle MacPherson and David Frost, among others. Upon her marriage and subsequent move to Lahore, Pakistan, Khan underwent what she later called a reinvention. Raised a Protestant, she converted to Islam ,she was reported to have changed her name to Haiqa although later claimed that she had never changed her name. At the time, she claimed to have based her conversion on the writings of Muhammad Asad, Gai Eaton, and Alija Izetbegović. She also learned to speak Urdu and wore traditional Pakistani clothes. In 2008, she wrote an article about her German Jewish paternal grandfather Frank Goldshmidt for the Sunday Times Magazine in which she explained, that, like him, she "over conformed" in order to be accepted, "extolling the virtues (ad nauseam)" of her adopted country and its culture and playing down her Jewish roots because of anti Semitism and death threats. She noted that "belonging is as much if not more about what you deny as what you choose.

While married, Khan spent four months each year and the duration of her pregnancies in England, referred to her mother's residence as home, and gave birth to her sons at London's Portland hospital. In 1999, in an accusation believed to be politically motivated, Khan was charged in Pakistan with the non-bailable crime of illegally exporting tiles claimed to be centuries-old antiques of the Islamic era. She then stayed with her mother in England for a year due to the fear of incarceration, returning to Pakistan only after the case was dropped following General Pervez Musharraf's military coup. She returned to UK full-time in 2002. She later recalled that, "I now think, my God, I mean, how did I live five years with Imran’s whole family, who I was very close to? I mean, I really liked and respected them, but obviously, they lived very, very differently... Certainly, I couldn’t make a change like that now." After 18 months in London, she decided that she couldn't live in Pakistan anymore and her divorce from Imran Khan was made public on 22 June 2004.

Relationship with Hugh Grant

Starting in 2004, within months after her divorce, Khan was involved in a romantic relationship with movie star Hugh Grant. She initially put her studies at SOAS on hold for the relationship and gained a new level of fame during the three years she and Grant were partners. A 2005 article in the Evening Standard magazine noted that while "Jemima's profile" was high since her first marriage, it was "soaring since she became involved with Hugh Grant". In 2007, Khan accompanied Grant on the red carpet at the London and New York premieres of his movie Music and Lyrics. As he is followed relentlessly by the paparazzi and featured in print and television media worldwide, Grant's relationship with Khan was high-profile. A survey of visitors to London in 2005 showed that Grant and Khan were the couple with whom a majority of visitors wanted to travel the city.

Grant refused to talk about the relationship in interviews and did not respond to tabloid and other media speculation. Khan was also asked about their rumoured marriage during a UNICEF campaign in 2005, but she only said, "I don't think I am any good at interviews and I am particularly hopeless when I am asked personal questions." During the world premiere of Music and Lyrics in London, which was also attended by Khan's mother and several family members, Grant dispelled all rumours of an imminent wedding by declaring to an interviewer:

People shouldn't believe what they hear. I am not marrying her. I've read and heard we are going to, but there is no truth to it.

After three years together, in February 2007, Grant announced that the couple had "decided to split amicably". Grant's spokesman added: "Hugh has nothing but positive things to say about Jemima." Since then, there have been many unsubstantiated reports about Grant's relationship with Khan because they have been spotted together. Neither Grant nor Khan have directly talked about their relationship and its breakdown to the press. Khan remains best known to much of the public for this highly-publicized romance with Grant.

Charity and other works

Khan and her family are regulars at London society events, including those in support of the Soil Association, and children's charities such as the HOPING foundation and Chain of Hope. In 1998, Khan launched a non-profit clothing company that employed poor Pakistani women to embroider western clothes with delicate eastern handiwork, which were sold in London and New York. Khan stated that all profits were donated to the Shaukat Khanum Memorial Cancer Hospital. The clothes were sold at all the major retail outlets in London including Browns, Harvey Nicholls and Harrods. After producing six collections, her fashion label was closed in 2001. In 2008, she modeled the relaunched Azzaro Courture fragrance donating the fee to UNICEF and designed a collection for Spring 2009. ce">Mann, Rebecca (2008-06-13). "Parfums Azzaro creates a new way to wear Couture". Moodie International Ltd. Retrieved 2008-07-05.</ref> As voted for by the readers of the Daily Telegraph, she won the Rover People's Award for the best dressed female celebrity at the 2001 British Fashion Awards. Khan was featured on Vanity Fair's Annual International Best-Dressed List in 2004, 2005 and 2007.

Khan became a UK Ambassador for UNICEF in September 2001 and has been on field trips to Kenya, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. She has helped raise awareness about UNICEF's Breastfeeding Manifesto and End Child Exploitation campaign. In 2000, Khan established an emergency appeal for Afghan refugees in Pakistan who were affected by drought and Civil War and provided tents and clothing to the 120,000 refugees at Jalozai camp near Peshowar. She set up the Free Pakistan Movement in 2007 and she organised 3 demonstrations outside Downing Street which she, her sons, and her mother participated in to protest the state of emergency in Pakistan and later the arrest of her ex husband. ref name="protest">Lewis, Jason (2007-11-11). "Jemima". The Mail on Sunday. Retrieved 2008-06-23. {{cite news}}: Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |publisher= (help)</ref> Khan has written about her experience in Pakistan for various national newspapers in the UK, including The Daily Telegraph, which published 11 opinion comments by her between 21 October 2007 and 27 January 2008.

External links

• Jemima Khan, UNICEF UK Ambassador, official account of UNICEF activities
• Why I chose Islam, Khan's 1995 editorial explaining her conversion to Islam