Michèle Suzanne Renouf (née Mainwaring; born 1946) is an Australian-born British political activist. An article in The Sunday Telegraph in February 2009 described her as a "one-time actress" and "former model and beauty queen" who since the late 1990s "has attended and spoken at Holocaust 'revisionist' conferences and written papers on the subject".
She is known for her defence of Holocaust deniers such as David Irving, Robert Faurisson, Bishop Richard Williamson, Germar Rudolf, Ernst Zündel, and Fredrick Töben in broadcasts and her Telling Films documentaries. She has been frequently characterised in mainstream sources as a Holocaust denier. Renouf has also described Judaism as a "repugnant and hateful religion."
Early life and education
Born Michèle Suzanne Mainwaring, in childhood she became a ballet dancer and Member of the Royal Academy of Dancing, and a model, appearing in magazine advertisements and international television commercials. In her teens she became a beauty queen, winning several titles including Miss Newcastle & Hunter Valley 1968.
In 1968, she graduated with a Diploma in Art (Education) after four years training at what was Newcastle Technical College (subsequently Newcastle University), then affiliated to the National Art School and now part of the Hunter Institute. During 1991-92, Renouf gained a diploma in Landscape Design at the English Gardening School. From 1999 to 2001, she studied for a post-graduate degree in the Psychology of Religion at the Heythrop College, University of London. Renouf has worked as an actress and model.
Renouf has claimed her collegiate studies in Australia also involved summer schools at the Sydney campus of the National Art School, but the archives have no attendance records for such events. In Tehran she claimed to have been expelled from Heythrop College for her views on Judaism and officially asked to study elsewhere. A review of Renouf took the Principal's side, producing records which proved she was failed for not submitting any work for assessment.
Marriages
Daniel Ivan-Zadeh
Her first marriage in January 1970 was to Daniel Ivan-Zadeh, a consultant psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, and descendant of Russian nobility whose family had fled from the collapsing Russian Empire during the Bolshevik October Revolution in 1917, changing their surname on arrival in Persia. Mainwaring claimed that she had adopted his mother's family title of Countess Griaznoff (a name also spelled Griaznov or Gryaznov) only for the purposes of charity fundraising.
During the 1970s and 1980s, her charity related endeavours (which included aiding Russian refugees) regularly appeared in society publications such as Tatler and the Court Circular, including numerous events under Royal patronage. At this time she was recruited to the Ladies Committee of the European-Atlantic Group (after more than twenty years service she was ousted in 2000 after the Group's founder, Elma Dangerfield, objected to Renouf inviting David Irving as her guest to an E-AG dinner).
Renouf claimed her first husband, Daniel Ivan-Zadeh, to have been of Russian nobility. The Australian reports:
Ivan-Zadeh had always been plain "Mr" or "Doctor" but Renouf says the family had once claimed a title through his great-uncle, so she began styling herself as Countess Griaznoff "for my charity work". No such title exists in the major lists of European noble families such as the Almanach de Gotha or Burke’s Royal Families of the World.
According to Renouf, this was 'media spin' and ignored the fact that, as Wikipedia's entry on the Almanach de Gotha points out, "most princely families of the Russian Empire were not included in the Gotha at all" and the Gotha is renowned for its "condescending attitude towards Eastern European nobility and royalty". The notorious anomalies of the Almanach de Gotha's position on Russia are discussed by Nicholas Romanov, Prince of Russia.
The Griaznoff family was well known in Russian court circles for several centuries, since the time of Ivan the Terrible. The assassination of General Griaznoff in January 1906 was one of the most celebrated successes of a Russian revolutionary gang which included the young Joseph Stalin. In 1921 it became the subject of the first Soviet Georgian historical film, directed by Ivan Perestiani, The Murder of General Gryaznov (1921).