How UGLY family court fight ‘devastated’ Rupert’s new love

There is something about the phrase ‘summer bride’ that conjures up a sunshine-dappled day of romantic promise.

Even so, for willowy divorcee and widow Ann Lesley Smith, the day she becomes the fifth Mrs Rupert Murdoch will inevitably come with additional pressures.

And for all the accomplishments of the one-time police chaplain from California — who likes to talk of her “humble beginnings” and how she “defeated the odds” — the chances are that by the time the invitations go out, she will be a bundle of nerves like so many brides-to-be.

Dress, hair, weight, stumbling over the vows and fussing over placement for guests at the wedding breakfast: Often, the worries only multiply as the big day draws near.

Imagine, then, what Ann Lesley must be going through as her marriage into the great Murdoch media dynasty approaches.

Not that the redoubtable Mrs Smith, a youthful and striking 66, has put so much as an elegant foot wrong since she and the 92-year-old billionaire TV and newspaper magnate began dating last autumn.

Indeed, her description of her upcoming nuptials — “it’s not my first rodeo” — was delivered with none of the brashness such an earthy expression might have suggested coming from someone more gauche.

All the same, as the days tick by and the excitement grows, she must be hoping she won’t be trawled into the kind of controversy she faced in the aftermath of her second marriage.

The Daily Mail can reveal that after the death of her country music star husband Chester Smith in 2008, Ann Lesley was accused of “financial elder abuse” and of withholding inheritance money from her three stepdaughters.