Tearaway son of peer leaves suicide mystery

Press, 10 July 1979, Page 8

Tearaway son of peer leaves suicide mystery

NZPA London The youngest son of a rich and noble British family hanged himself on Saturday after a party attended by royalty, and left a mystery about why he did it. Family and friends of the Marquess of Bath said yesterday that they had no Idea why Lord Valentine Thynne, the third son, should have taken his life. “The whole affair is a mystery. It is a tragedy, but there it is," said a spokesman for Lord Bath. The Wiltshire county police in western England said there was no reason to suspect foul play. A postmortem . examination was performed and an inquest was expected to be opened later. The police said that the body was found at 3.45 am. Sunday hanging from a beam in a tavern named the

Bath Arms in Horningsham village, which stands on the Bath estate, 145 km west of London. The pub is one of two on the estate which were run by the 41-year-old Lord Valentine, and is close to the gates of his father’s seat, the great mansion of Longleat, near Warminster. The magnificent, six-teenth-century house is celebrated for the lions roaming in the park as an added attraction for the thousands of paying visitors who help Lord Bath to maintain the building. Lord Christopher Thynne said that his brother had been at a party at Longleat, arranged by Lord Margadale and attended by Princess Margaret and 800 other guests to raise money for a hospital. Also there was Mr Norman St John-Stevas, the leader of the House of Commons in Mrs Thatcher’s Cabinet. __ _____ : _

In his younger days, Lord Valentine, an old Etonian, was a wild figure in the Chelsea set and was known as the “prince of the beatniks.’’ He was twice evicted for holding noisy parties in London flats and he once staged a party on a London subway train. He went from Eton to the Life Guards, an elite regiment, then ran a rock-music club, worked as a greeter in a holiday camp, and managed a restaurant. At one time, Lord Bath had been so angered by his son’s antics that he had cut him off, but Lord Valentine had returned to the family fold and had since settled down, friends said. The Union Jack was flying at half mast yesterday over Longleat. The stately home remained open to the public and Princess Margaret sent a sympathy message to the family.