Janey Compton - Telegraph Her best friend at this time was Kennedy's daughter Kathleen (known as "Kick"), who later married William Cavendish, Marquess of Hartington, and was killed in a plane crash in 1948. Janey was on holiday with the Kennedy family in the South of France when war broke out in 1939, and she and Kick had to make a hasty return to Britain, boarding the train while still wearing their bathing costumes. She then attracted the attention of the soigné film star David Niven, to whom she is said have been briefly engaged, before marrying, at the age of only 20, Peter Lindsay, who developed the French ski resort of Méribel. At the beginning of the war Janey trained as a nurse in London, but she soon transferred to a clerical role at SOE and was sent to Ceylon, where she became a close confidante of Lord Mountbatten, then Supreme Allied Commander South-East Asia. Her marriage to Lindsay broke down, and in 1946 she took as her second husband Max Aitken, the war hero and son of Lord Beaverbrook. They had two daughters before the marriage was dissolved in 1950. The following year she married Robin Compton; curiously, his father, Eddy, had many years earlier proposed unsuccessfully to her mother, Mary. Having left her mark on Newby Hall, Janey Compton was recruited by Richard Broyd's Historic House Hotels Group, for which she redecorated and restored Middlethorpe Hall, near York, and Hartwell House, near Aylesbury. She also advised on the interior of the Cadogan Hotel in London. Robin Compton died in 2009, and she is survived by their two sons and by the two daughters of her second marriage. Janey Compton, born January 15 1920, died April 7 2012