Rupert Murdoch's mother, Dame Elisabeth Murdoch, has died in Australia, aged 103.
She died peacefully in her home at Cruden Farm, outside Melbourne in Victoria and is survived by three children and 77 direct descendants, including five great-great grandchildren. She would have been 104 in January.
Rupert Murdoch, 81, regards his mother's long life as evidence that he will be able to carry on running News Corporation – the global media company he founded and where he is chairman and chief executive – until an advanced age.
Murdoch visited her recently in Victoria, posting pictures on Twitter of himself and his son Lachlan, who is based in Australia, during the trip.
His mother married Keith Murdoch in 1928 and they spent 24 years together before he died when she was just 43.
Elisabeth Murdoch was renowned for her charitable works and helped create the Royal Children's Hospital in Australia and the Murdoch Children's Research Institute. She was made a dame by the Queen the day the hospital opened.
Murdoch is reported to have frequently stood in firm maternal opposition to Rupert, the second of her four children.
Nine years ago, she told Julie Browning, author of the book A Winning Streak: The Murdochs, that Rupert's purchase of the News of the World "nearly killed me".
Journalist David Leser added on the Daily Beast that, in an interview he conducted with her a year later, she described her concerns about the invasive journalism practised by certain of her son's publications. "I think the invasion of people's privacy is the worst thing," she said. "I think privacy is anybody's right. I really do."
If her remarks about the News of the World cut deep with her son, those about his private life would have proved more painful.
A formidable character, she did not approved of his decision to divorce from his second wife Anna, mother to Lachlan, James and Elisabeth, and to marry 30-year-old Wendi Deng, 17 days later.
"Rupert had a wonderful marriage to Anna and it was a terrible thing to just end it," she said. "When you take a vow to be loyal to someone for all your life, you don't hurt other people for your own happiness. I'm still so fond of Anna that I find it hard to accept Wendi, but I must, of course," she remarked in an interview with the Guardian's Angela Neustatter, conducted on the eve of her 100th birthday.
Rupert has called her "the disciplinarian" and Dame Elisabeth remembers at least one occasion when she took a slipper to his backside. She also had little truck with modern liberal attitudes to bringing up children.
"Children are defiantly disobedient if never checked. I think today's young people are having the most hideous time because they are confused. Parents seem frightened to be in control with their children and don't understand that is what makes them feel cared for, and I think it's the secret to our family closeness," she told Neustatter.
But she was also determined to be a role model for women and, long before the women's liberation movement, had decided she was not going to be a housewife and made history when she became the first woman trustee of the National Gallery of Victoria.
"I'm not a feminist," she once said, "but it's nice to show that women can be useful. And I've tried to be an example to my children – three of them daughters."
According to Bruce Paige, author of The Murdoch Archipelago, she saw to it that Rupert would be fashioned as a continuation of his newspaper baron father, Keith, but it wasn't until the day before he died that he was convinced his son had journalism in him. He received a letter from his son, who was then at Oxford University, describing the British Labour Party conference and remarked to his wife. "Thank God, I think he's got it."
Born in 1909, Dame Elisabeth had an extraordinary life which involved encounters with kings, queens and prime ministers, but started out less auspiciously. Her father worked for the New Zealand Loan and Mercantile Company, but the family were not wealthy.
She caught the eye of her husband Keith Murdoch at the age of 18, when he spotted a photo of her as a debutante in one of his magazines, Table Talk, and announced he wanted to meet her.
At age 41, and one of the most powerful men in Australia, he was considered one of the country's most eligible bachelors. They married a year later when he gave her a wedding present of the 153-acre Cruden Farm where they raised their children.
It was "an utterly committed" marriage, she told Neustatter, and she was bereft when he died of cancer in 1952. Lady Elisabeth, as she then was, threw herself into developing the children's hospital and carried on there as president for 33 years.
In Australia, she is not seen simply as Rupert Murdoch's mother, but is regarded as a national treasure after decades of charitable work and contribution to the arts.
She was the chair of the committee which established the Victorian Tapestry Workshop; trustee of the regional McLelland Gallery and a benefactor of organisations ranging from the Australian Ballet and Opera Australia to the Bell Theatre Company.
According to the Murdoch-owned Herald and Weekly Times, she was known to have contributed to 100 organisations.
Chairman of the Herald and Weekly Times, Julian Clarke, said: "History will long remember Dame Elisabeth Murdoch's extraordinary contribution and generosity to this state and the wider Australian community.
"Undoubtedly, Dame Elisabeth has been one of the great Australians whose intellect and keen interest in others, particularly their welfare, has endeared her to so many throughout her long and remarkable life."
Kim Williams, chief executive of News Corp's Australian subsidiary, News Ltd, said all who worked at the company mourned the loss of "an extraordinary national figure who inspired generations of Australians through her selfless devotion to helping others and by her leadership and her remarkable generosity in fostering both scientific research and the arts".
Williams added: "We feel the loss intensely because she was the wife of Sir Keith Murdoch and mother of our chairman, Rupert Murdoch, both towering figures in our national story and the builders of our own media heritage here at News."
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