Buckingham Palace has announced that Her Royal Highness The Duchess of Kent died last night at Kensington Palace, surrounded by her family.
Though I love the monarchy I take very little interest in the royal family but for some reason felt great affection from afar for the Duchess - even before in 1994 she converted to Catholicism.
She is sometimes said to be the first member of the royal family since King Charles II on his deathbed in 1685 but Princess Victoria Eugenie ('Ena') of Battenberg became a Catholic in 1906 and then Queen of Spain.
She was George V's cousin and almost killed by a bomb thrown into her carriage as the couple left the church on their wedding day.
The Duchess of Kent was the first person without a title to marry a member of the royal family since the days of the Tudors. I am not sure how good a precedent it was.
If only the present King had married Marie Astrid of Luxemburg necessitating the repeal of the Act of Succession.
When Richard Overy asked me at my Cambridge interview what was the answer to the Irish Question that was my reply. I said it would make Ian Paisley lead Northern Ireland out of the United Kingdom.
He gave me a scholarship for that.
I didn't mean it of course. I was always a Unionist but had it happened it would have been better than what did happen: an agreement with the IRA.
The Duke and Duchess Kent seem figures from the 1970s when they busied themselves attending independence ceremonies for colonies. The Duke of Kent had the duty of awarding the FA cup to the winning team from which I concluded that he had some passing interest in football unlike more important members of his family who liked polo.
The Duchess suffered from depression badly after a miscarriage. I hope becoming Catholic cured it.
She said "I like to know what's expected of me. I like being told: You shall go to church on Sunday and if you don't you're in for it".
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