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Sir Angus Ogilvy September 14th1928 – 26th December 2004
On the 26th January, 2004, Sir Angus Ogilvy, devoted husband of Princess Alexandra passed away at the age of 76. Sir Angus had been extremely unwell for some time. Our thoughts, prayers and deepest sympathies go out to Her Royal Highness and her family. Sir Angus's funeral was held on the 5th January 2005, and was attended by HM The Queen, The Prince of Wales and many other members of the Royal Family. SIR ANGUS OGILVY, the husband of Princess Alexandra of Kent, sacrificed what could have been a brilliant City career after being named in the Lonrho scandal, to protect the position of his wife, and because, as an honourable man, he regarded it as the only possible thing to do. He should, however, be more appropriately remembered for his personal charm, courtesy and kindness, for decades of dedication to charitable causes, and for the unfailing support he gave Princess Alexandra in the carrying out of her official duties, both at home and overseas.
His happy marriage to the daughter of Prince George, Duke of Kent, the fourth of the five sons of King George V and Queen Mary, and Princess Marina of Greece, was overshadowed by his involvement in the 1973 trade sanctions-breach affair, and by the headline-making family quarrel which erupted in 1990, when his pregnant, but unmarried, only daughter, Marina, sold to a newspaper the details of the row, caused by her relationship with her freelance photographer boyfriend. But if he had been at fault in his business dealings, Sir Angus more than atoned for it by his charitable endeavours, and he felt that the shadow over his professional life was lifted when the Queen, in 1989, appointed him as a Knight Commander of the Royal Victorian Order, an honour only in her personal gift. Sir Angus James Bruce Ogilvy was born in 1928 into a line of Scottish aristocrats, which could trace their ancestry to the l2th century, and with a history of service and friendship with the Royal Family. His grandmother, Mabell, Countess of Airlie, was Lady of the Bedchamber and a close friend to the Princess of Wales, later Queen Mary, for many years. His father, the 12th Earl of Airlie, was Lord in Waiting to King George V and Lord Chamberlain to Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother, both as Consort to King George Vl, and Queen Mother. An ardent Scottish nationalist, he was also a Representative Peer for Scotland in Parliament and Lord Lieutenant for the County of Angus. He held several business appointments, among them Governor of the British Linen Bank and Chairman of the North of Scotland Hydro-Electric Board. There was a mixture of tradition and unconventionality in his character, and he once claimed in the House of Lords to have ordered a Highland battalion to reveal whether they were wearing anything under their kilts. He set a challenging role model for his second son, whose elder brother, David, became the 13th earl on the death of their father in 1968, continuing the family tradition of royal service as Lord Chamberlain to The Queen. Sir Angus was educated at Heatherdown, near Ascot; at Eton, and at Trinity College, Oxford, from where he graduated in 1950 with a BA in Modern Greats. He was commissioned in The Scots Guards during his National Service, from 1946 to 1948 and remained on the Reserve List of Officers. His energy, likeability and social connections made him a good catch for the group of successful buccaneering trusts headed by the remarkable financier and talent-spotter, Harold “Harley” Drayton. He was made a director of this group in 1956 and he subsequently represented it on the boards of many of its associated companies, at one time holding 50 directorships. He impressed his employers as a hard working, conscientious and popular executive, but two unrelated events subsequently transformed his life. The first was meeting, in 1961, the modestly successful entrepreneur, R. W. “Tiny” Rowland in Rhodesia, becoming instrumental in persuading the Drayton Group to finance the expansion of Rowland’s business, which had previously been chiefly concerned with various concessionary interests in Rhodesia. Rowland, already a mysterious figure, the son of a German businessman yet a one-time British soldier, was an importer and trader, dealing also with mining companies in Africa. Sir Angus instantly took to him and, inspired by Rowland’s visionary approach, he became convinced that he had found the right man to revitalise the London and Rhodesia Mining and Land Company (Lonrho), which was then part of Drayton. The deal was to give Rowland options on Lonrho shares, and at the time the decision seemed to have a touch of magic. Under Rowland’s dynamic, relentless leadership, Lonrho grew into a powerful, diversified and successful international conglomerate. Disaster struck in 1973, prompted by a Lonrho boardroom feud, revolving around Rowland’s aggressive management style as chief executive, and over the handling of the company’s financial organisation. The bitter board-room battle went to the courts, and those involved with Rowland suffered from association with business practices and techniques regarded as offensive to conservative City interests. The scandal drew from the Prime Minister, Edward Heath, the memorable verdict that this was “an unpleasant and unacceptable face of capitalism”. He found some solace in the fact that several of the companies he had served so faithfully were unwilling to let him go, although he had clearly stated that his dramatic resignations were in most cases not open to persuasion, and in the circumstances were “the only honourable thing to do”. The Rank Organisation, for instance, rejected his resignation, as did the property group MEPC, but his business career was shattered. He retained a few directorships, and was invited to join the boards of GEC and Sotheby’s, but thereafter poured his energies into voluntary and charity activities.
This was widely regarded as a loss to the business world to which he had brought his great capacity for hard work, invaluable contacts, initiative and loyalty, and also his engaging personality. What was described as “the rift in the lute” was his gullible nature and his dislike of rows, and perhaps, too, his tendency to be absorbed by current interests and a lack of the essential business ingredient of farsightedness. The other defining happening in his life was his engagement to Princess Alexandra in 1962, and their marriage, at Westminster Abbey, on April 24, 1963. Princess Alexandra was the granddaughter, and great-granddaughter of British and Greek sovereigns, and a descendant of the tsars of Russia. A first cousin of the Queen, and then 12th in line of succession to the throne, she was one of the most popular members of the Royal Family. Her father, Prince George, Duke of Kent, was killed in an aircraft crash while on active service with the RAF during the Second World War when she was only five, and she was brought up in relatively modest circumstances. Her dynastically conscious mother, the daughter and granddaughter of Russian Grand Duchesses, envisaged her as a Queen, and as a young woman her name was linked with Crown Prince Harald of Norway and Crown Prince Constantine of Greece. Harold Drayton said, when his protégé told him of the engagement: “That is fine, but you will one day have to choose between a princess and a career.” But the omens were good. Sir Angus had known Princess Alexandra for eight years, and they shared many friends and interests; in music and the outdoor life, riding, sailing and walking. The Royal Family, not least the Queen, was delighted with the match. A worldwide television audience of 200 million watched the wedding ceremony. The couple’s son, James, was born in 1964, and Marina, who was to cause such heartache, in 1966. Sir Angus’s career was promising, but the new social demands on him imposed financial pressures and fuelled his natural tendency to be a workaholic. He knew that maintaining Princess Alexandra as a member of the Royal Family, with its concomitant duties and obligations, would be costly, but he was resolved to generate the necessary income himself. He later told an interviewer: “It was financial brinkmanship. People used to say I was always determined that my wife would only fulfil her duties in the best and most proper style.” He refused a grace-and-favour residence, and in the first year of his marriage bought, from the Crown, on a mortgage, the lease of the 12-bedroom Thatched House Lodge, in Richmond Park, for the staggering 1963 price of £150,000. Of his two children, James followed the conventional path of a career and a suitable marriage. Marina, adored by her parents, was musically talented and much praised for applying anonymously to take part in a gruelling Operation Raleigh expedition to Central America, financing herself by working in a department store. But then she horrified her family when she announced that she was pregnant by her boyfriend, Paul Mowatt, a photographer, and the son of a jazz trumpeter. By selling her overwrought version of the family’s dismay to Today newspaper she overnight destroyed her parents’ image of broadminded understanding and closeness. It was a sensational account, although the deeply distressed family was somewhat comforted by the postbags of sympathetic letters received from other parents. But it was Sir Angus who gave the 23-year-old Marina away when she married her lover at a church close to Thatched House Lodge in February 1990. It was an unconventional ceremony, and not one member of the Royal Family attended, other than the bride’s mother. Later, following the birth of her daughter, Zenouska Mowatt, in May that year, Marina became reconciled with her parents. The years succeeding the Lonhro debacle were, for Sir Angus, a time of therapeutic and intense activity, during which his shrewd judgment in being able to distinguish worthy and sensible causes from the trivial and the meretricious proved invaluable. He was already president of the Imperial Cancer Research Fund, the largest cancer-research organisation in Europe, and had been chairman of Youth Clubs UK, the biggest non- uniformed youth organisation in Britain, from 1964 until 1969. He was patron of Arthritis Care; vice-patron of the National Children’s Homes; chairman of the advisory council of The Prince’s Youth Business Trust; a trustee of the Leeds Castle Foundation, as well as being a member of the governing council of Business in the Community, and of the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge. He was also a member of the Royal Company of Archers, the Sovereign’s Bodyguard in Scotland, in which his father served as one of its four lieutenants. Those who met him found him unaffected, inquisitive and helpful. To perceptive friends he sometimes gave the impression of being troubled and anxious, but they found him a wonderful and studiously elegant companion and conversationalist, although somehow lost in a world of priorities, which were not really his. He also had an engaging eccentricity about time, exemplified by an endearing habit of telephoning colleagues on the very instant an idea struck, often to great effect. He loved reading, music, and the countryside, and found intense pleasure in solitude. Recently he had to battle against throat cancer, but was able to attend one of the Golden Jubilee concerts in the grounds of Buckingham Palace in June 2002. He will be remembered with great respect and affection, and it was said that he lived his life according to his family motto: “To the End”. Copyright - The Times.
Photographs of Sir Angus’s Funeral
The Princess looks on as her husband makes his final journey
The Royal Family attend Sir Angus's Funeral
Grief and Reflection
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