Adam Shand Kydd, 49, step-brother of Diana, Princess of Wales
Michael Rhodes
sticky end.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/3665159.stm
A howler at the BBC however. They seem to think that Diana's mother,
Frances, is Adam's mother. She was of course his step-mother. If she'd
been Adam's Mama then Diana would have been HALF-sister of the
unfortunate gentleman.
Adam Shand Kydd, 49, is the only son of _wallpaper heir_ Peter Shand
Kydd by his first wife. Adam's uncle, Bill Shand Kydd, was crippled in
a hunting accident. A sister married a member of the de Pass family,
and cousin Lucinda Shand Kydd is Lady Kleinwort.
--
Michael Rhodes (please delete the x to e-mail me)
**************************************************
Michael Rhodes
> Adam Shand Kydd, a STEP-brother of Diana, Princess of Wales, has met a
> sticky end.
>
> http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/3665159.stm
The link has now been updated and corrected. Here's how it started out
last night:-
The step-brother of Diana, Princess of Wales, has died in Cambodia.
Adam Shand Kydd, who was 49, apparently died in the capital Phnom
Penh, a Foreign Office spokeswoman has said.
No further details have been given about the circumstances of his
death or whether it is being treated as suspicious.
It is not known whether Frances Shand Kydd, 68, who was taken to
hospital after falling ill last week, has been informed of her son's
death.
Family friend Father William McLean refused to comment on the death of
Mr Shand Kydd.
Mr Kydd died in the Cambodian capital
A spokesman for Diana's brother Earl Spencer has said that the family
is not commenting on Mr Shand Kydd's death at this stage.
Mrs Shand Kydd was admitted to Lorn and Islands District Hospital in
Oban, Argyllshire, where she has been visited by her son Earl Spencer,
and daughter, Lady Sarah McCorquodale.
Matt Atkinson
> sticky end.
>
> http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/3665159.stm
>
> A howler at the BBC however. They seem to think that Diana's mother,
> Frances, is Adam's mother. She was of course his step-mother. If she'd
> been Adam's Mama then Diana would have been HALF-sister of the
> unfortunate gentleman.
>
> Adam Shand Kydd, 49, is the only son of _wallpaper heir_ Peter Shand
> Kydd by his first wife. Adam's uncle, Bill Shand Kydd, was crippled in
> a hunting accident. A sister married a member of the de Pass family,
> and cousin Lucinda Shand Kydd is Lady Kleinwort.
thank you for the information ...
but what happen to Peter Shand Kydd? Were he and Frances divorced?
How long were they married?
Did Adam Shand Kydd have any children?
- Matt
Shinjinee
> sticky end.
>
> http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/3665159.stm
>
> A howler at the BBC however. They seem to think that Diana's mother,
> Frances, is Adam's mother.
Their error seems to have been corrected by the time I looked this up
(Wednesday 4:50 IST).
Is this Adam Shand-Kydd the author of HAPPY TRAILS?
http://www.biblio.com/books/15364722.html
published 1984 by Heinemann in London, and 1986 by Sphere.
I presume this is a travel-related book, which would also explain his
death in a corner of South-East Asia.
Shinjinee
Sacha
pmmat...@aol.com2d394fc7.0404280318.1e2123d4@posting.google.com
The Daily Mail report is that he was 49 and had a history of drug addiction,
having been treated in clinics in Britain. The ambulance driver who picked
up his body said it was cover in bruises and that he assumed Mr SK had
overdosed on drugs.
He wrote 'Happy Trials' in 1984 and is said to have become depressed when he
failed get his second novel 'State of Siege', published.
His father and stepmother divorced in 1988 but remained close and the Mail's
comment is that she will be devastated by this death.
--
Sacha
(remove the weeds to email me)
Gary Holtzman
> Adam Shand Kydd, a STEP-brother of Diana, Princess of Wales, has met a
> sticky end.
>
> http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/3665159.stm
>
> A howler at the BBC however. They seem to think that Diana's mother,
> Frances, is Adam's mother. She was of course his step-mother.
It's been corrected by now.
--
Gary Holtzman
-------------------- http://NewsReader.Com/ --------------------
Hyfler/Rosner
Adam Shand Kydd
Diana, Princess of Wales's 'literary stepbrother'
30 April 2004
Adam Shand Kydd, writer: born 5 September 1954; died
Phnom Penh 25 April 2004.
Adam Shand Kydd was a person of extraordinary talents who
perhaps never quite found his place in the world. Tall,
striking and humorous, he was immensely affable and a
brilliant raconteur, and in some respects that might have
been that.
But, first, he was possessed of a prodigious, driving
intelligence, a mind that constantly set standards difficult
for anyone to match up to. What he was happy to forgive in
others, he was perhaps not able to in himself. And,
secondly, he was for 21 years the stepbrother of Diana,
Princess of Wales, so that his life was played out more in
the public eye than he might have wished.
Born in 1954, he was the elder son of Peter and Janet Shand
Kydd. When he was 13 his father, a beneficiary of the Shand
Kydd wallpaper fortune (they are said to have invented flock
wallpaper), became involved in a very public affair with
Frances, wife of Johnnie, the eighth Earl Spencer. In 1968
the Shand Kydds divorced; and in 1969 the Spencers divorced
and Peter Shand Kydd and Frances Spencer married. Adam was
14, Diana, the Spencers' youngest child, was seven. Though
Adam was obviously affected by the family turbulence, he
remained on very good terms with both his parents (his
father was to divorce Frances in 1990) to the end.
He spent a certain amount of his childhood on his father's
sheep farm in Yass, north of Melbourne in Australia. Adam
had mixed feelings of his time there, but was much taken by
the possum which ate his tuck. The boys at the school he
attended used to keep illegal sweets under the floorboards,
and on the occasion of some midnight feast Adam lifted the
board to find no tuck, only a guilty possum, now so fat that
it had become stuck between the joists. The possum's face
betrayed, said Adam, an expression of sublime resignation
that engaged his sympathy. He replaced the board without
comment, and let the creature digest his tuck in peace.
Adam continued his education in England at Stowe, whence he
was unjustly expelled, falsely accused of chopping up the
chapel organ with an axe. The real culprit came forward at
some later stage, but understandably Shand Kydd had by then
rather lost interest in formal education. Had his life taken
a different path, he might very happily have become an
academic.
As it was, he went to work as stage manager for the Open
Space Theatre in the Tottenham Court Road in London. Under
the direction of Charles Marowitz it was famous in the
mid-1970s for its radical productions of Shakespeare, and
none more radical than Othello with the stoker. The Open
Space shared its basement premises with a boiler room for
the building above. The company had become embroiled in a
long-running dispute with the boiler man, who was always
complaining about theatrical stuff being left in his "back
passage". Things came to head during a performance of
Othello. Desdemona was dead and Othello was doing his
powerful remorse scene when he was joined on stage by the
boiler man, who started to complain loudly about all the
junk in his back passage. He continued his rant before a
transfixed audience as Charles Marowitz hissed at Shand
Kydd, "Get him off." "You get him off, he's huge and covered
with tattoos," hissed Shand Kydd.
As his love of books increased he became more involved in
the literary world. He worked for a while at the publishers
Cassell's, proofreading military history, and also embarked
on his own book. Happy Trails was published in 1984 and was
a pretty good first novel. It got some very good reviews,
but too many of them were more interested in his links with
the Princess of Wales (Diana had married Prince Charles
three years previously) than in the novel itself. Shand Kydd
was much hurt by this, feeling that he would never be seen
as anything other than Diana's "literary" stepbrother. He
struggled with the follow-up but in the end was unable to
produce anything he felt happy with.
He had a wide circle of friends gathered from the different
stages of his life. Norma Heyman, Thelma Holt, David
Schofield and Jonathan Kent came from his days in theatre.
During visits to his mother's house in Suffolk he got to
know Angus Wilson, Angus McBean and Robert Carrier. From the
literary and journalistic world he was close to Alex
Shulman, Teddy St Aubyn, Alan Jenkins and Craig Brown, among
many others. He was often to be seen with the architect
Christopher Bowerbank and the musician Guy Pratt out and
about in Notting Hill. He was never happier than when
involved in great rolling hilarious conversations with good
friends, sitting crouched, his impossibly long legs crossed
not once but twice, his arms, also crossed, resting upon
them; cigarette in one hand and a drink in the other.
There were many women in Shand Kydd's life, and he was at
various times linked with Carinthia West, Angela Gorgas,
Vivienne Halban and, more recently, with Sophie Mortimer. He
never married but was often in love. Once his flat began
mysteriously to fill up with hugely heavy inedible loaves of
Polish bread, apparently airlifted in from Warsaw at great
expense. Asked why he was buying all this bread which he
obviously wasn't eating, he shyly admitted that he had
fallen completely in love with the girl behind the counter
at the local Polish deli.
Adam Shand Kydd had more than the usual number of
contradictions about his personality. Deeply conservative in
some ways, he had a rumbustious sense of humour which
revelled in the outrageous and the collapse of stout
parties. A voracious reader, he had a huge knowledge of
military history and also a vast collection of dub reggae
records by luminaries such as Prince Far I. Delighted by
good company and wild conversation, he was also
fundamentally a loner and a private person. Generous to a
fault in some respects, he was what we might call careful
with his cigarettes. (He could get a cigarette out of his
pocket and into his mouth without the pack ever emerging.)
His relationship with alcohol also brought out two opposing
sides, the one light and brilliant, the other dark and
ultimately damaging. Though his interests were mainly
literary, he was not without an acute eye and for many years
there hung in his flat a painting he adored. A perfect big
Philip Sutton, bold flowers against bright blue sky.
Until his death this week (he was found dead in Phnom Penh),
he continued his literary pursuits, mainly in the area of
military history. There might well have been a book or two
in him still.
Nick Welch
Michael Rhodes
Diana, Princess of Wales's 'literary stepbrother'
30 April 2004
Adam Shand Kydd, writer: born 5 September 1954; died Phnom Penh 25
April 2004.
Adam Shand Kydd was a person of extraordinary talents who perhaps
never quite found his place in the world. Tall, striking and humorous,
he was immensely affable and a brilliant raconteur, and in some
respects that might have been that.
But, first, he was possessed of a prodigious, driving intelligence, a
mind that constantly set standards difficult for anyone to match up
to. What he was happy to forgive in others, he was perhaps not able to
in himself. And, secondly, he was for 21 years the stepbrother of
Diana, Princess of Wales, so that his life was played out more in the
Michael Rhodes
> April 2004.
The funeral takes place at St Peter's Church, Kensington Park Rd,
London W11, Thursday 13 May, followed by private cremation.
--