Richard of Gloucester maintains his privacy

Press, 2 April 1985, Page 22

Richard of Gloucester maintains his privacy

By

DIANA DEKKER,

in London The Duke and Duchess of Gloucester, to visit New Zealand for the first time this month, have managed a juggling act with their lives that few of the Royal Family can match. They perform a heavy load of public duties but maintain an almost completely private image. The Duke, aged 40, with his dark hair flopping over his brow, and his glasses, is probably marginally better known from the few photographs which appear of him in the British press than the fair-haired 38-year-old duchess. Yet wads of brief mentions in Royal diaries in Fleet Street papers over the years show that they are consistently opening, appearing at or presiding over one event or another in their official capacities. The Civil List shows that Richard, Duke of Gloucester and twelfth in line of succession, the Queen’s cousin, will earn £94,000 ($244,900) this year, and that he earned £91,000 ($237,100) last year. That is infinitely less than most other prominent Royals, but last year he performed 110 engagements and spent 32 days overseas. The duchess attended to 76 engagements and was overseas for 14 days.

they are not very far behind the hardest-worked group of Royals, the Queen, the Duke of Edinburgh, the Prince and Princess of Wales and Princess Anne. Richard of Gloucester is the second son of the late Duke of Gloucester and grandson of the late King George V. He became heir to his father’s titles after the death of his elder brother, Prince William of Gloucester, in a flying accident in 1972. He succeeded his father in June, 1974, and, following him, is Grand Prior of the Venerable Order of St John. The Duke was born on August 26, 1944. When he was four months old he was taken by his parents to Australia where for two years his father was Governor-General. He went to Eton, where his paintings and pottery were included in annual exhibitions. He read architecture at Cambridge and graduated in 1966. In 1969 he passed both parts of his diploma of architecture at the university, went to work for a firm of London architects and is now president of the Society of Architects’ Artists.

He is involved with numerous organisations. So is the duchess, who is associated as president or patron with many organisations devoted to health. The Duchess is the younger daughter of Asger Preben Wissing Henricken, a lawyer of Odense, Denmark, and his former wife, Mrs Vivian van Deurs of Copenhagen. Birgitte Eva van Deurs was born on June 20, 1946, and was educated at schools in Odense and at finishing schools at Lausanne and Cambridge where she met

her undergraduate husband-to-be. They were married in July, 1972. During the week the couple live at Kensington Palace and at week-ends they generally return to Barnwell Manor, their country home near Peterborough in Northamptonshire. They are devoted to their young family, a son and Earl of Ulster, Alexander Patrick Gregers Richard, aged 10, and two shy little girls, Lady Davina Windsor, aged seven, and Lady Rose Windsor, aged five this month. The Duke can only be said to have made the headlines once in many years. In June, 1984, he made his maiden speech in the House of Lords almost 10 years to the day after his father, Henry, a brother to King George VI and King Edward VII, died. Such maiden speeches are supposed to be brief and uncontroversial, but the

Duke launched into a long and impassioned attack against smoking. His father and his two sovereign uncles had all died from diseases related to smoking. It seemed possible because of his widely-reported speech, that the Duke, one of the quietest members of the Royal Family, might be intending to become more vocal. After all, it was unusual for a Royal Prince to use his position as a member of the House of Lords to make a speech. The Duke’s cousin, Edward Duke of Kent, had not done so after 27 years as a peer. But the Duke’s news media splash was over and he and the Duchess were once more hardly mentioned in print apart from the announcements of their public engagements. Fleet Street did pick up one colourful story in which the Duke was unwittingly the subject. It was reported late last year that publicity-

conscious Thais had failed to lure him into a Bangkok brothel while he was visiting Thailand as president of the British Consultants’ Bureau. It seemed that some unscrupulous characters involved with Thai tourism, over the moon at having entertained the . British Prime Minister’s daughter, Carol Thatcher, at a sex club, had turned their sights on the unsuspecting Duke. An extra event was slotted into his schedule of consultations with members of the bureau over which he presides. Under the pretext that a member did a roaring trade in sauna equipment, the Queen’s cousin was to be lured to a bathhouse where, once his glasses were steamed up, the place of the super-salesman was to be taken by a girl of Emanuelle proportions. Officialdom and common sense fortunately won the day but the story still appeared.