BURKE, Kevin Aubrey Francis 1945-2023
Richard R
He was s of Sir Aubrey Francis BURKE OBE 1904-89 and Laura Rosalind 1908-94 d of Rt Hon Sir Henry NORMAN 1st Bt OBE 1858-1939 and his 2nd w Hon Florence Priscilla MCLAREN 1883-1964 d of 1st Baron ABERCONWAY 1850-1934 and Laura Elizabeth POCHIN 1854-1933. He m 1987 Peta Jacqueline Clare d of Hugh BAKER of Tideswell, Derbys. He had a son as above.
colinp
Richard R
Obit in the Times of 25 Aug 2023:
E X T R A C T
Kevin Burke obituary
Oil executive with a cameo role in history as the first boyfriend of Camilla Shand during her 1965 coming-out season
… Kevin Burke was a popular, handsome and independently wealthy 19-year-old, fresh out of Eton, when he met the 17-year-old Camilla “Milla” Shand at her coming-out party at Searcy’s, a Georgian townhouse in Knightsbridge, on March 25, 1965. Rather than wear traditional debs’ white, Camilla was dressed in black chiffon.
“She was terrific fun, enormously popular, and although she wasn’t a beauty, she was attractive and sexy,” recalled Burke, who was considered one of the catches of the season. “She was never tongue-tied or shy, and she always had something amusing to say.”
Within a couple of days the pair were embarking on their “horizontal pleasures”, as Gyles Brandreth explained in Charles & Camilla: Portrait of a Love Affair (2005), when Shand became Duchess of Cornwall. “I cannot confirm they first slept together on March 27, 1965, because I am too much of a coward to ask the duchess directly and Mr Burke is too much of a gentleman to tell,” he wrote, adding that the pair dated for almost a year.
As the season progressed, their friendship deepened and Burke began to learn more about Shand. “He was struck by the store she placed in the fact that her great-grandmother had been King Edward VII’s mistress, Alice Keppel,” the diarist Nigel Dempster wrote, adding that Burke told him: “She was always mentioning it, as if it were something almost talismanic.”…
… Kevin Aubrey Francis Burke was born in 1945, the youngest of five children of Sir Aubrey Burke OBE, an aircraft engineer who, according to his Times obituary in 1989, was involved in some of aviation’s pioneering moments with such manufacturers as Vickers, de Havilland and Hawker Siddeley.
His mother was Rosalind (née Norman), the lively and glamorous daughter of a baronet; she was also a pioneering aviator and during the war created a model aircraft factory. His older sisters were Meriel, Merlene (who died before he was born), Miranda and Melanie….
… Some suggested that after Shand, Burke developed a phobia for marriage and his parents were said to have “despaired” of him settling down. However, in December 1987, at the age of 42, he married Peta Baker, a 26-year-old advertising executive, at St Paul’s, Knightsbridge; Prince Ernst August of Hanover was the best man…
The marriage ended in 2001. Three years later, at the age of 58, he had a son, Max, with Luisa Fairey, a former headhunter whose first marriage had been into the Fairey aviation family. “It was very unexpected, but I’m a very lucky fellow. It’s a gift from God,” he told the newspaper columnist Richard Kay. “I’m not sure that I will be changing too many nappies, though — I think we’re going to need an excellent nanny, and very good earplugs.”
The couple, who lived on a farm near Petworth in West Sussex, married at Chelsea register office in 2008, with Prince Ernst August again among the guests. This time the Olympic skier Jeremy Palmer-Tomkinson was best man. “We’ve done everything backwards,” Burke said at the time. “We had the baby, then the honeymoon — we went to Marrakesh last week — and finally we got married.” He is survived by his wife and son….
Kevin Burke, oil executive, was born on November 15, 1945. He died of undisclosed causes on August 7, 2023, aged 77
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/royal-family/2023/08/22/queen-camilla-first-love-kevin-burke/