From HRH to teacher in Hull: inside the eccentric life of the Duchess of Kent

Younger readers might struggle to remember the Duchess of Kent, who has just died at 92 at Kensington Palace, surrounded by her family.

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But, when she married the Duke of Kent in 1961 at York Minster - near Hovingham Hall, the family seat of her father, Sir William Worsley - it was huge international news.

The 28-year-old was a great beauty – and her husband, her junior by more than two years, was the Queen’s dashing first cousin.

The intervening decades meant - as they always do for the monarch’s cousins (and, in the case of Prince Harry, the monarch’s son) - a decline in attention, as the couple fell further down the royal pecking order.

That suited the Duchess of Kent (unlike, say, the Duchess of Sussex) down to the ground. Highly intelligent, extremely musical (her daughter, Lady Helen Taylor, has testified to her piano-playing (at near concert pianist level) and shy, she didn’t need or want royal status to attract attention.

And so the 64 years since her marriage saw her finding more roles outside the royal fold. She asked the Queen if she could end her royal duties and, in 2002, give up her HRH status – something that other more needy royals, like the late Duchess of Windsor, would have given their eye teeth for.

Instead, the Duchess of Kent devoted herself to her real dream - giving singing lessons once a week at Wansbeck Primary School, Hull. Out of that job came her favoured charity, Future Talent, giving music lessons to and providing musical instruments for underprivileged children, aged from six to 18.