Susan Barrantes

Susan Mary Barrantes (née Wright, previously Ferguson) was born on 9 June 1937 in Bramcote, Nottinghamshire. She was the daughter of FitzHerbert Wright and the Hon. Doreen Wingfield. Her maternal grandfather was Mervyn Wingfield, 8th Viscount Powerscourt. Susan was the youngest of four children, with two sisters named Brigid and Davinia, and a brother named Bryan. Her father was a director of the Butterley Company, a coal and iron producer in Ripley, Derbyshire. She was a great-granddaughter of Francis Wright, an industrialist and philanthropist.

She completed her schooling and attended secretarial college for a brief period. During the debutante season of 1954, she was presented at the court of Queen Elizabeth II.

On 17 January 1956, she married Lieutenant Ronald Ferguson at St Margaret's, Westminster. Ronald Ferguson, born in 1931 and deceased in 2003, attained the rank of Major. He was involved in polo, played with the Duke of Edinburgh, and served as the polo manager for Charles, the Prince of Wales. Susan and Ronald had two daughters: Jane Louisa, born on 26 August 1957, and Sarah Margaret, born on 15 October 1959. Sarah later became the Duchess of York.

In 1972, Susan left her family and moved to Argentina with professional polo player Héctor Barrantes, causing stirred social interest. Her daughters continued to be raised by their father and extended family. She divorced Ronald Ferguson in 1974. The following year, she married Héctor Barrantes. The couple relocated to Tres Lomas, Argentina, where they lived on the estate named "El Pucará." According to her writings and films, she considered this period the happiest of her life, as it allowed her to pursue her interests in documentary filmmaking and polo. She also assisted her husband's business in breeding polo ponies and cattle until his death from cancer in 1990.

Following Héctor Barrantes's death, Susan faced financial difficulties. She sold more than half of her farm to Kerry Packer, an Australian media entrepreneur, and moved to a large flat in the Recoleta-Palermo district of Buenos Aires. There, she established a television production company focused on films about horses.

Throughout her life, Susan maintained close connections with Prince Charles, who wrote a foreword to her book titled "Polo."

Susan Mary Barrantes died in a car accident on 19 September 1998 at the age of 61. She was driving a Rover 400 on a rural highway when her vehicle collided head-on with a Renault catering truck driven by Jose Maria Rodriguez, who sustained a broken ankle. Susan was not wearing a seatbelt and was decapitated in the crash. Her 25-year-old nephew, Raphael, was also in the car and sustained minor injuries. She had previously been involved in a serious traffic incident the year before, when her car flipped approximately seven times.

She is buried beside her second husband in a vault beneath her home on the "El Pucará" estate, adjacent to a polo field in Tres Lomas, Argentina. Her death occurred approximately one year after the funeral of Diana, Princess of Wales, whom she and her daughter Sarah attended.