Heirs - and hunting

The history of the aristocracy is intertwined with the fascinating history of hunting, Eleanor Doughty discovered while researching her most recent book

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IN March 1946, Hugh Percy, 10th Duke of Northumberland, set out from Alnwick Castle on a mission.

Over four days, he rode his hunter more than 100 miles to Drumlanrig Castle in Dumfriesshire. Upon arrival, he proposed to Lady Elizabeth Montagu Douglas Scott, elder daughter of Walter Montagu Douglas Scott, eighth Duke of Buccleuch - and was accepted.

Hughie Northumberland was master of the Percy for 48 years, following in the footsteps of his older brother George Northumberland and their father, Alan Northumberland. Hunting was his great passion - and served as a way of getting around his enormous estates. It had even intersected with his war.

In April 1941, then foreign secretary Anthony Eden turned up in Greece to see Hughie with a letter from Alnwick. He opened it to find a note from a kennel-huntsman concerning the pedigree of a bitch he was intending to breed from.

For as long as there has been hunting, there have been hunting peers like Hughie Northumberland - gladly riding alongside those from all walks of life, never happier than when in the kennels. While researching my book, Heirs and Graces, the first serious history of the British aristocracy for a generation, I kept bumping into the hunt, as it were, in my research.

There, hunting was in letters and diaries in archives and in the back of people's memories; there it was in castle back bedrooms where 50-year-old foxes' brushes hung; there it was, this wonderful sport that encompasses people from all stations of life, a constant and for some a religion in both the social and sporting lives of the people who not just ran, but also owned, the country.

It felt remiss not to celebrate that - and in turn to explore the hunting lives of some of the icons of that old world before it disappears completely.

THE “HUNTING GENE”