Londoners Diary, Friday 8 February 2013
Earlier this week I mentioned that the Duke of Gloucester, formerly Prince Richard, is involved in plans to re-inter King Richard III in Leicester, York or Westminster. The Duke is patron of the Richard III Society and the King was himself Duke of Gloucester.
However, he has also told of his admiration for another ancestor, King James I of England and James VI of Scotland.
Speaking at a reception at the Skinners’ Hall in the City to mark Japan400 — celebrating 400 years of British trade with Japan —the duke said the king was an intelligent man who noticed, when he first came to London from Edinburgh, how mercantile strength led to prosperity. “He also had the good sense to marry a wife from Denmark, as I have done,” he said.
Another reason for his fondness for Japan, he told me afterwards, was that his late brother Prince William, who died in a plane crash in 1972 aged 30, worked for the Foreign Office in the British Embassy in Tokyo.
Comments are closed.