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Esteemed royal biographer Hugo Vickers approves of Elisabeth Basfordâs biography of Princess Mary, the Princess Royal and the Countess of Harewood. Itâs praise indeed from someone with such a rich interest in the subject; after all, Vickers edited James Pope-Hennessyâs
The Quest for Queen Mary on the subject of Princess Maryâs mother.
Princess Mary: The First Modern Princess is the first full biography of Princess Mary (b. 1897), the only daughter of King George V and Queen Mary, who Basford argues redefined the role of âprincessâ for the modern age. Ysenda Maxtone Graham, who reviewed the book in the
The first time I met Lady Georgiana Gascoyne-Cecil, daughter of the present Marquess of Salisbury, she was sitting astride the sink in the pantry at a friend’s party in Notting Hill.
There was a long queue for the lavatory, and she just couldn’t wait. But far from showing any sign of embarrassment over her predicament, she was chatting and laughing away with friends and strangers in the queue, apparently wholly at ease.
Indeed, she behaved as if this was a perfectly natural thing for a young woman to do (this was back in the late 1990s) in full view of mixed company.
The seventh Earl of Harewood may well be turning in his grave, the modern custodians of his estate admit.It’s a question of pronunciation, you see, and the decision to give up the centuries-old
The eighth earl of Harewood, David Lascelles, pictured, has given up a centuries-old practice
The eighth earl of Harewood, David Lascelles, has accepted defeat and has given up a centuries-old practice of removing the letter e from the name of his estate.
Pronouncing the name like Har-wood has become too difficult, after taxis taking him to the house in the heart of Yorkshire didn t know where that was.
Lord Harewood s decision to pronounce the first syllable as hare is very different from the views of his father George Lascelles, reports The Times.
He had been an absolute stickler for the traditional pronunciation and even the present earl has been apprehensive about accepting the letter should be sounded.