The Duchess of Kent, who has died aged 92, was the most unassuming and one of the most popular members of the royal family, having married into it when she wed the Duke of Kent, a cousin of Queen Elizabeth II in 1961. As such, she was entitled to be called Her Royal Highness, a title which she surrendered when she gave up royal duties. As wife of a royal duke, she lost her surname, though she preferred to be known simply as Katharine Kent.
In a family whose members can seem weighed down by their concept of duty, for many years she embraced hers and was a devoted participant in charity work, supporting dozens of organisations. She blazed with empathy and was noted for her diffidence and informality: “I have never liked barriers,” she said. “I find it very hard to arrive and be thought different and perhaps formal.”
It was said she was “a very private woman, who carries off her duties often with more warmth than those born to it”. Latterly, ill health made her increasingly reclusive and more reluctant to carry out official duties, though she did attend the weddings of Prince William and Catherine Middleton in 2011, and Prince Harry and Meghan Markle in 2018. She often travelled by public transport, unrecognised.
At various times she worked as a confidential counsellor for the Samaritans, was a volunteer at an Oxfordshire hospice for dying children and scrubbed lavatory floors at Lourdes, having in 1994 become the first senior royal in 300 years to be received into the Roman Catholic church. As probably the family’s most accomplished musician, she was also particularly associated with musical charities. And, as something of a sports enthusiast, she was a regular attendee and trophy presenter at both Wimbledon and the FA Cup final. She was appointed GCVO by Queen Elizabeth II in 1977.
She was born into the Yorkshire gentry, at the ancestral family home, Hovingham Hall, near York, to Joyce (nee Brunner) and William Worsley. A baronet, her father, a former soldier and later Lord Lieutenant of North Riding, briefly captained Yorkshire at cricket in the 1920s when an amateur leader was thought essential.
Through the Worsley line Katharine was a descendant of Oliver Cromwell and her ancestors had fought on the parliament side against the king in the civil war. On her mother’s side she was the great-granddaughter of Sir John Brunner, an industrialist, Liberal baronet and one of the founders of ICI.
She was educated at Queen Margaret’s school, York, and Runton Hill school in Norfolk, and, displaying a talent as a pianist, tried but failed to win a place at the Royal Academy of Music. “I passionately wanted to have a career in music, but I wasn’t good enough,” she told an interviewer.
Instead she got a job at a children’s home in York and taught music in primary schools. In later years, she became a member of the London Bach Choir and was a patron of many musical charities: the National Foundation for Youth Music, the Royal Northern College of Music, the Yehudi Menuhin school, the Ulster Conservatoire, Making Music and the National Federation of Music Societies. In a BBC Radio 3 interview in 2005 she expressed a liking for rap music and the singer Dido.
She met her future husband, Prince Edward, Duke of Kent, when her father invited him to lunch while he was stationed at Catterick barracks in 1956, though the match was not altogether approved of by his mother, Princess Marina, widow of King George V’s fourth son, Prince George, the previous duke, who had been killed in a flying accident in 1942. She twice forbade the match and made the couple live without any contact for a year before finally agreeing to the marriage, which took place at York Minster in 1961.
Some thought that the duke, formal to the point of stuffiness in public, had the better of the deal in marrying his strikingly beautiful and charming bride.
The couple had three children, George, Helen and Nicholas, but lost a son, Patrick, in the last month of pregnancy in 1977, an event that not only caused the duchess severe depression but may also have spurred her involvement in children’s charities both in Britain and as a Unicef patron. She told the Daily Telegraph 20 years later: “I had no idea how devastating such a thing could be to any woman. It has made me extremely understanding of others who suffer stillbirths.”
In the 1990s she scaled back her royal duties and for 13 years taught music at Wansbeck primary school in Hull, where she was known as “Mrs Kent” and her identity was known only to the headteacher, who told the BBC in 2004: “She is an inspirational music teacher and the children love working with her. They say she never gets cross, she always looks for the positive.”
The depth and range of the duchess’s social concerns gave rise to her decision to convert to Roman Catholicism (subsequently followed by her son, Nicholas), a step that received the Queen’s approval, though, as she was already married to the duke, he did not lose his place in the line of succession to the throne. She told the BBC: “I do love guidelines and the Catholic church offers you [those]. I have always wanted that in my life. 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 for it.’” Cardinal Basil Hume, then the leader of the church in England and Wales, warned his flock against triumphalism in welcoming the conversion of a member of the royal family.
It was as a regular spectator at the Wimbledon Lawn Tennis championships every year that the duchess was perhaps best known, her husband being president of the All England Club for many years. She could be seen bouncing with excitement in the royal box as Virginia Wade won the women’s title in 1977 and sympathetically hugging the distraught Jana Novotná after she lost the final in 1993.
The duchess suffered from ill health, not only depression but also Epstein-Barr virus, a condition similar to chronic fatigue syndrome, and coeliac disease. When asked about this, she replied: “None of us goes through life unscathed.”
She is survived by her husband and their children.
‘ The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties ’
‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.theguardian.com ’
