Dame Shirley Conran leaves half fortune to fashion designer son Jasper

Shirley Conran has left half her estate to her fashion designer son, Jasper Conran, from whom she was estranged for a decade.

The author, whose success with her novels Superwoman and Lace took her from penniless single mum to wealthy bestseller, saw her buying a chateau near Cannes, plus three apartments in Monaco. In 1994 she was named one of the 100 richest women in Britain.

Conran spent the next 20 years giving away much of that fortune, often to benefit women's causes.

Now, a year after her death aged 91, her will, sighted by the Daily Mail, shows she left $3.3 million (£2.5 million), a fraction of the riches she once had.

She left two flats, both in Bayswater, West London, in one of which she lived until her final illness.

Conran left one of these to her grandson, Sam, and the other to his brother, Max.

Both are the sons of Sebastian, 69, Dame Shirley's elder son by the late Sir Terence Conran, the first of her three husbands and the man she would always describe as the love of her life, despite their fractious divorce in 1962 after seven years of marriage.

The remainder of her estate is split equally between Sebastian and his younger brother and fellow designer, Jasper.

She and Jasper were publicly estranged from 2002 for more than a decade, but reconciled in 2015 when he married Irish artist Oisin Byrne.