“Tyne O’Connell is the Queen Bee incarnate!” The Daily Telegraph

 

“Draped in pink and sipping saki in her fashionable London Warehouse,the impossibly glamourous O’Connell!” Elle UK

 

Tyne O’Connell inhabits the worlds she writes about: exotic, unconventional, off-piste in every way.

 

Working with artists and artisans like a latter day Medici, Tyne designs her own range of artwork, clothes, jewelry and crocodile accessories under her label Apis Regina; a range which is exclusive to her and which no one else can purchase.

 

www.mitfordmatters.com

Contact us: info@tyneoconnell.com

charity

Every girl needs a signature cause because like signature colours, scents and champagnes, what you care about defines you.

While travelling around the world writing books, marrying men, and having babies I did a lot of falling in love, mostly with unsuitable boys but my other grand passion in life has been diamonds, well actually the world’s natural resources in general.

 

I love everything about diamonds: the sparkle, the purity, the history and the symbology of forever. Unlike boys, diamonds never let you down. They really are a girl’s best friend which is why I studied gemology, because there was nothing I didn’t want to know about them.

 

When you commit to a relationship you want all the background info on your beloved. And that’s where I’m at with diamonds. I don’t want a diamond that’s financed a war. As a consumer you can avoid this by asking the dealer for the diamond’s conflict free certificate of guarantee. Make sure you know where your diamond was mined and how.

 

Check out the Global Witness an organisation working to raise awareness and break the links between natural resources and wars. And sadly a lot of wars are being funded by diamonds. Diamonds have financed the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of lives and displaced millions of people. It’s hard to equate beauty and romance with a diamond if unspeakable atrocities were committed to mine it. Conflict diamonds have been linked to armed struggles in Sierra Leone, Liberia, the Democratic Republic of Congo and the Central African Republic and funded Al Qaeda.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The first petition I ever signed was ironically at the counter of a book shop and it was to save a rainforest. I must have been very young because I thought it was hilarious when I saw the name above mine was Sam Woods! Get it? Mr Woods was trying to save forests…woods/trees. Yes, well you had to be there. Or be ten years old. Forests are an international asset but so many of the ancient forests I have walked through and lived in, in Asia and Australia have now been logged.

 

As an author I’m committed to urging writers to donate 1% of their advance and royalties to Global Witness and publishers to donate the same. It’s a small amount that will make a massive difference. Check out the site and see what global witness has achieved.

 

 

Global Witness are also working to change international thinking on forest exploitation and ensure that forests are a benefit to the communities that depend on them.

International PEN is the only worldwide association of writers, founded in London in 1921. Its objectives are to uphold freedom of expression wherever it may be threatened; to resist political censorship; to champion writers in prison and in oppressive regimes; to promote greater international and intercultural understanding and co-operation via writers and the written word. PEN is strictly non-political, holding Category A status at UNESCO and the UN.