VILLIERS, Charles Alastair Hyde 1963-2022
Richard R
E X T R A C T
Charles Villiers, aristocrat in eight-year divorce battle, is found dead in London hotel
A distant cousin of the Duchess of Cornwall who was a litigant in one of Britain’s longest-running divorce battles has killed himself in a London hotel room.
Although Charles Villiers, 59, and his wife Emma, 62, filed for divorce in 2014 the financial settlement had still not been resolved.
The case had been heard in five different courts before 20 judges, with police investigating and dismissing Villiers’ allegation that his wife had committed bigamy. During the row, he claimed he was penniless while she demanded a £3.5 million settlement. Villiers lost the most recent round of litigation at the Court of Appeal in June...
Villiers came from an aristocratic family and was a distant cousin of Camilla Parker Bowles on his mother’s side. His mother, Elizabeth Keppel, was the daughter of Viscount Bury, the son of the 9th Earl of Albermarle, whose mother was Lady Mairi Vane-Tempest-Stewart, daughter of the 7th Marquess of Londonderry.
Villiers was proud of his lineage and would invite journalists to the Park Lane Hotel in London where Londonderry House, his family home, had stood before it was demolished in the 1960s....
...Milton House had been repossessed in 2015. His fiancée, Heidi Innes, 45, an opera singer, ended their relationship in February...
...Villiers had been staying on a friend’s yacht in the Greek islands this month but his host had been worried about his guest’s mental health and arranged for him to visit a clinic in Britain...
He flew Villiers to London on Wednesday [17 Aug] last week, but instead of attending the clinic, Villiers checked into Durrants Hotel, Marylebone, central London. He was found hanged by a housekeeper at the hotel the following day [Thursday 18 Aug].
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/charles-villiers-aristocrat-in-eight-year-divorce-battle-is-found-dead-in-london-hotel-27ctnt6h6
The Group may recall news of the divorce proceedings were posted in February 2021:https://groups.google.com/g/peerage-news/c/gKaR2MRCcGs/m/Rwyx5NKaAQAJ
www.lordmountbattenofburma.com
Suicide Prevention for Men - Liverpool and London | James' Place Charity : James' Place (jamesplace.org.uk)
The above link - is for James' Place... was founded by Clare Mountbatten, Marchioness of Milford Haven - following the suicide of her son James Nicholas Wentworth-Stanley (son from her first marriage) a charity that makes sure that help is available for every man facing a suicidal crisis and to support them to find hope for the future.
colinp
Villiers was involved in bitterly contested divorce proceedings that had lasted eight years and been covered extensively in the press
Charles Villiers, who has died aged 59, had been engaged in writing a biography of his grandmother, Lady Mairi Bury, who supported appeasement and met Hitler, Goering, Himmler, Goebbels and von Ribbentrop; he was once amazed to open a trunk and find photographs of her with Nazi leaders on visits to Germany with her father.
He was also occupied writing a book about English divorce law, based on his experiences in the family courts in England during bitterly contested divorce proceedings that had lasted eight years and been covered extensively in the press.
Charles Alastair Hyde Villiers was born in Newtownards, Co Down, on April 4 1963, the son of Alastair Michael Hyde Villiers and Elizabeth Keppel. His connection with the Keppels made him a distant cousin of the Duchess of Cornwall.
Villiers always described his birth in Northern Ireland as “a happy accident of fate”. His mother was staying at Mount Stewart, her mother’s house, in Northern Ireland, when she was pregnant. Mount Stewart is considered by many to be one of the grandest stately homes in the British Isles.
Its chatelaine, Lady Mary “Mairi” Vane-Tempest-Stewart (later Lady Mairi Bury) was the daughter of the 7th Marquess of Londonderry, Charles Vane-Tempest-Stewart, a controversial figure in Conservative and Unionist politics. A second cousin of Winston Churchill, he served as Secretary of State for Air from 1931 to 1935, but his belief in appeasement won little favour from the wartime leader.
An excellent pilot, the Marquess regularly flew his daughter to Germany, where he attended high-level meetings with the most senior Nazi officials. Villiers always claimed that Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel The Remains of the Day (1989) was based partly on Mount Stewart and his great-grandfather’s association with the Nazi elite.
Villiers, however, had gathered a considerable amount of information for his proposed biography of his grandmother, which, he claimed, would show his great-grandfather’s political views in an entirely new light.
Villiers spent much of his youth at Mount Stewart, where he was his grandmother’s favourite grandchild. The house was legendary for its hospitality...
He married, in 1994, Emma Goodall, from whom he was estranged. She survives him with their daughter.
Charles Villiers, born April 4 1963, died August 18 2022