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Lord Black of Crossharbour asks his wife, Barbara Amiel, in a recent Canadian TV docudrama, whether she would still love him if he lost all his money.

“No, because if you were penniless you would not be who you are,” the fictional Lady Black, played by Lara Flynn Boyle, replies, “and it’s who you are that I love.”

It is a cruel line that perfectly sums up the popular view of Lady Black, an outspoken conservative columnist, as a gold-digger whose unbounded extravagance contributed to her husband’s downfall.

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BACKGROUND

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But based on the evidence of recent weeks it may also be unfair.

Throughout her fourth husband’s 14-week trial, Lady Black, 66, played the dutiful wife and stepmother to his three children.

Almost every day, she sat for hours behind her husband in the front row of the public gallery as former friends and business associates testified against him. With gritted teeth, she listened to evidence about her $62,000 (£30,500) surprise 60th birthday party, the $2.6 million diamond ring Black bought her and which she may now have to forfeit, and their trip to Bora Bora aboard the corporate jet. There, her husband lamented, “we felt like geriatric freaks among a sea of honeymooners – loutish young men and their perky wives”.

Sitting beside Lady Black in court from start to finish was Black’s daughter from his first marriage, Alana, joined on occasion by his sons Jonathan and James.

During breaks, Lady Black tried to shield Black – almost physically – from inquiring reporters. Early on, she was hit on the head by a TV camera as the couple tried to navigate a scrum of press outside the Chicago court.

“Chicago routine is straightforward,” she wrote in a recent column in the Canadian magazine Macleans: “Get up at 6:45am, leave for court at 8:25am, pat-down by pleasant court security man 8:50pm, listen to nasty things said about us till 5pm, with a lunch break for one banana and a carton of skim milk (in lieu of the utterly foul Styrofoam boxes of fries, chicken and something weirdly yellow that appear in the small room set aside for defence counsel) . . . Back to the hotel, watch Joanie and George for five minuters, make dinner in the nifty galley kitchen or our hotel suite and then write till bedtime. “. . . Day ends with hand laundry and hot bath while listening to iPod with Brahms symphonies and Roy Orbison before reading myself to sleep . . .”

The strain of the trial showed early on when Lady Black erupted at a Canadian Broadcasting Corporation producer who followed her into the lift, denouncing her as a “slut” and the entire journalistic profession as “vermin”.

But as the trial came to an end she sought comfort from husband No 2, George Jonas, a once-dashing journalist with whom she co-wrote a best-selling book. The two sat shoulder to shoulder in court.

Although Black faces possible financial ruin because of a spate of lawsuits, forfeitures and fines, Lady Black controls her own funds. At one point, court papers showed that she had lent $2 million to her husband.

But Black’s conviction and the prospect of a lengthy jail term inevitably renewed speculation over the future of the Blacks’ marriage. Lady Black is said to have told friends she wants to move back to her native Britain to live in a small house in Chelsea, but is concerned by the possible social consequences of her husband’s conviction.

Peter Newman, a biographer of Black who gave Ms Amiel her first column when he was editor of Macleans, said Lady Black “is not known for sticking around”.

George Tombs, another Black biographer, painted a grim picture of prison visits. “If she went to visit him, it would be through a glass window with a monitored telephone and guards stalking around,” he said.

“She said a long time ago she was a ‘wandering Jew’ with her toothbrush and her mini-valise packed to go at a moment’s notice.

“I think she enjoyed the world of wealth and glamour but she saw it as something that could be here today and gone tomorrow.”

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