The first book Alannah Weston remembers reading with her mother was Black Beauty. “I found it the other day, an old copy from 1945 or something,” she says. “It was my dad’s. I would cry and cry and say ‘read it again’. Reading goes right back to childhood.”
Books are on her mind, as she is in Dublin to announce a €7 million donation to Trinity College Dublin on behalf of the foundation established by her parents, Hilary and Galen Weston. The Westons built an Anglo-Canadian business dynasty that, at its height, included Selfridges in London, Brown Thomas in Dublin and Holt Renfrew in Canada among other interests. The Hilary and Galen Weston Foundation already supports scholarships in sustainability and this new donation will underpin the construction of a new gallery within the university’s celebrated Old Library.
Alannah’s mother, Hilary Weston, formerly Frayne, didn’t attend Trinity herself. After the death of her father in 1960, she left her Loreto Abbey school to work as a model, supporting her family and enabling her brother to go to university instead. It was through her modelling that she met her future husband, Canadian businessman Galen Weston. He had spotted her modelling hot pants and tights on a Dublin billboard. Estate agent Corrie Buckley set the pair up on a blind date, as Galen explained to Kathy Sheridan in this newspaper back in 2008. “She looks pretty good,” he had said to his friend.
They were married in 1966, three years after that first meeting, and remained together for more than 50 years, until Galen’s death at the age of 80. Their children, Alannah and Galen Jr, who the couple would refer to as “Irish twins”, were born at either end of 1972.
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On the day we meet, Alannah Weston, casually dressed in jeans, white runners and a blue roll-neck sweater, is quietly low-key. She wears a plain pendant, which she sometimes touches as she’s thinking.
Together, Hilary and Galen Weston went on to build on Galen’s early business success. He had set up Power’s Supermarket on Dublin’s South Great George’s Street, which grew into the Quinnsworth chain with Associated British Foods (ABF), which had itself been established by Alannah’s grandfather Garfield Weston. Quinnsworth was sold to Tesco in 1997 and ABF is now a PLC run by Alannah’s cousin George Weston. Their retail empire expanded to embrace Brown Thomas and Selfridges. They set up Penneys and its international sibling Primark, also now owned by ABF, while their Canadian interests include food retailer Loblaws and high-end department store chain Holt Renfrew. After Galen died in 2021, Brown Thomas and Arnotts were sold as part of the Selfridges Group, to Central Group and Signa Holding, a Thai/Austrian consortium, for a reported £4 billion. The family’s net worth is said to be north of €11 billion.
“Ireland is where it all started for my family,” says Alannah. “My parents met here, we were born here, we grew up in Roundwood Park until we were 11. So, I guess it’s kind of coming home to your roots in a funny way.”
Trinity College is part of the family history. In a 2004 ceremony marking the centenary of the first admission of women to Trinity, Weston was among those selected to receive an honorary degree, in her case, a doctorate in law. “It’s very moving when you are recognised in your own country, even more so in your own city and in the company of such illustrious women,” she said at the time.
Those illustrious women also honoured included Druid Theatre’s Garry Hynes, the late poet Eavan Boland and Judge Fidelma O’Kelly Macken, the first female judge to be appointed at the European Court of Justice. Hilary Weston was no slouch either. She and Galen worked as a team. In the early days of Penneys, Alannah recalls, her mother would draw up dresses based on the latest fashions, get them made by local seamstresses and they’d go straight into the shop window. “The girls would buy them for the dance on Saturday, that was how it all started.”
When Galen bought Brown Thomas, some said it was as a wedding present, but he qualified it: “I did buy it for her but it was a place for her to work.” Galen’s own father had bought Fortnum & Mason for his wife. After working as a director of Brown Thomas and later as deputy chair of Holt Renfrew, in 1996 Hilary was appointed lieutenant-governor of Ontario, a role that required her to stand in for British queen Elizabeth II on state occasions. “She had this presence,” says Alannah, her accent the product of her international life: Ireland, Canada, and Britain, where she now lives, in Wales, with her husband and two children.
Underneath her poise she is, understandably, still grieving her mother, who died last August. “One of the things I cannot do is go through her clothes. Her clothes were kind of like her superhero outfit.”
As a public figure, Hilary travelled for a slew of different events and she expanded the boundaries of the lieutenant-governor role, taking in the province’s remotest regions. “I thought,” recalls Alannah, “it’s a form of artistry in itself. Knowing you can somehow embody the moment, in the way you express yourself through clothes.”
Another talent Hilary had, according to her daughter, was a charisma that made people feel special. A founder of the Ireland Fund of Canada, she used her role and the family’s charitable foundations to promote volunteerism, support young people, healthcare, research and the status of women. “She was tall, she was gorgeous. She kind of dazzled. She lit up, but not for herself. Her gift was to do it for others.”
They were a close-knit family. “I think Dad and I probably had more natural chemistry,” Alannah says. “We were both sort of extrovert. He was a very playful person and he had incredible energy.” Both parents taught her the value of tenacity. “When I was applying to university, the teacher said: ‘I don’t think she’s quite the level of Oxford or Cambridge.’” Hilary asked why she couldn’t try. “She was determined because education had been denied her […] I wonder if she’d come from a more privileged background whether it would have been so important.”
Alannah studied English at Merton College Oxford. She loved it. Still, she stood out. Her father persuaded the college to allow his daughter a mobile phone, “for security reasons”, she says. “Which wasn’t true at all,” she continues. “He wanted to be able to call me; he was a big phone person. They used to call my rooms Silicon Valley because I had a laptop and a phone and a fridge. The fridge was very popular, everyone used to keep their milk on the window.”
In 1983, an IRA plot to kidnap Galen was famously foiled thanks to a tip-off. Gardaí ambushed the would-be kidnappers, while Galen was in England – playing polo with the then-prince Charles. “We don’t kind of talk about that,” says Alannah. “There was a time … there were things that, as a child, you didn’t really know.”
Don Tidey was kidnapped that same year and the Westons left Ireland for Canada. The Weston parents played things down, according to Alannah, but it did lead to a change in life. “I was quite happy not to have to take the bus, but then you get to a certain age where you’re, ‘Oh my God, I’m going to die of embarrassment.’ But you get over that, because then everyone’s saying, ‘can we have a lift?’ So much of life’s experiences is in the lens you choose to look at it through.”
When, as a teenager, she would say to her father, “I don’t fit in”, he would answer: “You don’t fit in anywhere, but you fit in everywhere.” She recalls the film Clueless: “There’s the geeks, the jocks and the princesses. It’s kind of being human.” So which one is she? “I was a geek, but I had nice clothes.”
After university, she got a job on the Telegraph with a column “called Zeitgeist – or something. What the young people were up to, what was hip.” She came to Dublin to do a story on the nightlife. “Do you remember the Chocolate Bar? Lillie’s Bordello? It was fun... I was not cool,” she adds. “But I liked being there and observing.”
A foray into the art world led to working with artists from Ed Ruscha (“charming”) to Christo (“chewed garlic all day”) and Hurvin Anderson (“I was very lucky to buy one or two things”).
“But then, once I got into conservation and nature, that became my obsession.” As creative director of Selfridges, her 2011 Project Ocean partnered with the Zoological Society of London to take over the department store’s windows and atrium. She brought in activists, from the then-prince Charles to Katharine Hamnett, drawing attention to overfishing and marine pollution. Her podcast, How to Lead a Sustainable Business, made while she was chair of the Selfridges Group, includes conversations with IKEA chief executive Jesper Brodin, former US secretary of the interior Sally Jewell, author Emma Dabiri, Groove Armada’s Andy Cato, and businessman and cookery writer Henry Dimbleby.
With a line-up like that, who would she pick out? “Emma Dabiri is fantastic, I’d love to meet her again... But for what I do now, the people who are most inspiring were Andy Cato and Henry Dimbleby because they made me see food in a completely different way.”
Dimbleby co-founded the Leon restaurant chain and the Sustainable Restaurant Association, while Cato is now a full-time sustainable farmer, whose Wildfarmed network aims to raise awareness of regenerative farming. Now owner of a farm in Wales, she wants to use her resources to demonstrate how positive change can be effected. She speaks with passion about the likes of Ireland’s Hometree in Co Clare and GIY in Waterford.
Changing minds is a process that takes time. “They think I’m mad,” she says of her Welsh neighbours. “I tell them I’m Irish. It’s part of who I am. The Irish and the Welsh have more in common than the English, I think. And so, being Irish, I’m forgiven. And being Canadian, I’m expected to be, you know, exotic…. In fact, sometimes I feel myself there more, sometimes, than I do anywhere else.”
The €7 million gift from the Hilary and Galen Weston Foundation will support the design and construction of the Hilary Weston Treasures Gallery on the ground floor of the Old Library. Lead architects are McCullough Mulvin, and the Gallery will showcase The Book of Kells and other rare manuscripts and artefacts. The Old Library and Long Room remain open until the end of 2027, and works are expected to be completed in 2030. Alannah Weston will speak at this year’s Festival of Gardens and Nature, which takes place on May 2nd and 3rd, in Stradbally, Co Laois.
This article was amended on March 16th and March 18th, 2026
