LUCE, Rt Hon Baroness (Rose Helen nee NICHOLSON) 1937-2023

[Richard R]

From the Telegraph of 14 Dec 2023: LUCE Rose died peacefully on 8th December aged 86. Wife of Richard, mother of Alexander and Edward, grandmother of Mimi. Funeral and Thanksgiving at St Mary Magdalene, Bolney, RH17 5QR at 12.30 p.m. on Friday 19th January. No flowers. For those wishing to attend please contact… Freeman Brothers, 126 High Street, Hurstpierpoint…

She was d of Sir Godfrey NICHOLSON 1^st & only Bt 1901-91 and Lady Katharine Constance LINDSAY 1912-72 d of 27^th Earl of CRAWFORD & [10th] BALCARRES 1871-1940 and Constance Lilian 1875-1947 d of Sir Henry Carstairs PELLY 3^rd Bt 1844-77 and Lady Lilian Harriet CHARTERIS 1851-1914 d of 10^th Earl of WEMYSS 1818-1914, gd of 1^st Earl of LICHFIELD 1795-1854, etc etc. She m 1961 the LP Baron LUCE KG GCVO PC b 1936 s of Sir William Henry Tucker LUCE GBE KCMG 1907-77 and Margaret 1908-89 d of Vice Adm Sir Trevylyan Dacres Willes NAPIER 1867-1920 and Mary Elizabeth 1871-1944 d of Adm Sir Michael CULME-SEYMOUR 3^rd Bt 1836-1920, and had two sons as above.

[Richard R]

Obit in the Times of 18 Dec 2023:

Lady Luce obituary

Hostess and memoirist who had tea with Churchill as a child and was crucial to the political success of her husband, Lord Luce

The first time Rose Nicholson encountered her future husband she was unimpressed. It was 1954. The 17-year-olds were on the same French immersion sojourn in the Loire town of Blois. “Le soleil brille,” said Richard Luce in a nervous stab at conversation. That was about the extent of the young Englishman’s French. “There is a rather boring boy here who does nothing but read The Times,” Nicholson, as she then was, wrote to her mother.

Luce’s first impression was somewhat different. “I will marry her one day,” he wrote that night in his diary. In the following years, the future Conservative minister, governor of Gibraltar and Lord Chamberlain to the Queen proposed several times before she finally agreed in 1961.

Throughout their deep and abiding 62-year marriage, she was the indispensable partner and an often-hidden force behind her husband’s public career. It was a role to which she was almost born, and from today’s vantage point it might seem Edwardian in its sensibility. There was also a touch of Florence Nightingale to her life.

Rose Helen Luce was born in London in 1937 into a dual line of politicians. Her father, Sir Godfrey Nicholson, was a Conservative member of parliament for Farnham for more than three decades. Her mother, Katherine (née Lindsay), came from Scottish aristocracy. Rose’s grandfather, David Lindsay, the 27th Earl of Crawford, served in several governments. One of her younger sisters, Emma Nicholson, also became a politician…

…The [Luces] had two sons: Alexander, a nutritionist; and Edward, the Financial Times’s US national editor.

…Her husband, who survives her with her sons, was created a life peer in 2000 and sat in the House of Lords until 2020…

Lady Luce, political hostess, was born on May 13, 1937. She died of complications from Alzheimer’s on December 8, 2023, aged 86

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/lady-luce-obituary-qdpvt523p