SCOTTISH DUKE'S SON

Evening Post, Volume CXXV, Issue 144, 21 June 1938, Page 14

SCOTTISH DUKE'S SON

INTERESTING ENGAGEMENT

(From "The Post's" Representative.) LONDON, June 1.

The engagement has been officially announced of Lord David DouglasHamilton, youngest son of the Duke and Duchess of Hamilton, and brother of Lord Malcolm Douglas-Hamilton, who recently visited New Zealand, and Miss Prunella Stack, the 23-year-old leader of the Women's League of Health and Beauty.

In January, when the engagement I was reported by several London newspapers, the couple and the Duchess o'f ; Hamilton, Lord David's mother, emphatically denied it. The Duchess was reported to have declared that she was "incensed" by the report, but today she issues a denial of that remark and says: "Now that the young people are ready, I can say that the Duke and I are very pleased, and they have my entire blessing." Lord David and Miss Stack are making holiday at the Hamilton home at Dungavel Lodge, Scotland. Lord David Douglas-Hamilton was born at Dungavel in 1912, and was edu-

cated at Harrow School and at St. Andrew's University, where he took his M.A. degree, and at Balliol College, Oxford, where he graduated from the School of Economics, Politics, and Philosophy. He has travelled extensively in Germany, Central Europe, and Russia. He has worked as a miner in a coal mine in the Ruhr, and also in two labour camps in Germany. He has studied social conditions at home and abroad, and has worked at welfare centres and at the Peckham Health Centre in London. He was captain of the Oxford University boxing team, and won the inter-university competition in 1935. He has also competed in the Scottish amateur boxing championships. Lord David is a keen mountaineer, and has climbed extensively in Scotland, Switzerland, and Austria. He made an expedition to the Caucasus, where he climbed Mount Elbrus (the highest mountain in Europe). He was accompanied by one Caucasian guide, with whom he had no common language. Miss Stack is the only child of the late Captain E. H. Bagot, 2/Bth Ghurka Rifles, and the late Mrs. Bagot Stack, and niece and ward of LieutenantColonel A. J. Cruickshank, Royal Engineers. She was born at Lansdown, ! India, in 1914. She is leader of the Women's League of Health and Beauty, which was founded by her mcther in 1930. When the National Fitness Council was formed last year she was invited to become a member, and is on both the technical and propaganda committees. She inte'nds to carry on the work of the league, which has a continuously growing membership.

Lord David said to a newspaper representative in Glasgow: "I was introduced to Prunella by my brother; the Marquess of Douglas and Hamilton, about eighteen months ago in London." No date has been fixed for the wedding, but it is expected that it will take place in St. Giles's Cathedral, Edinburgh.