Credit: PA<\/span><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nIt was a significant decision, as the Act of Settlement of 1701 stated that any royal who married a Roman Catholic would lose their place in the Line of Succession.<\/p>\n
But as the duchess was Anglican at the time of her marriage \u2013 she, and her husband, kept their royal roles and the Duke of Kent kept his position in the line to the throne.<\/p>\n
Her other unconventional act was to channel her passions and interests in a way no royal had done before.<\/p>\n
Every week, for 13 years, the Duchess of Kent took the train to Hull where she became \u2018Mrs Kent\u2019, to the children of a state primary school where she was the music teacher.<\/p>\n
The staff, parents and pupils of Wansbeck Primary had no idea of Katharine\u2019s real identity.<\/p>\n
Only the headmistress knew that the woman who taught music and signing to children in east Hull was a member of the Royal Family.<\/p>\n
Music was one of the Duchess\u2019 greatest passions and she\u2019d always been concerned that talented pupils from less affluent backgrounds didn\u2019t get the chance to excel in music, in the way children did in private schools.<\/p>\n
The Duchess\u2019 teaching job was kept secret until 2004 when she revealed her royal status in the local paper, the Hull Daily Mail.<\/p>\n
Katharine explained how Queen Elizabeth told her to \u2018just go and do it\u2019. So she did.<\/p>\n
In 2005, she told ITV News that she was \u2018immensely frustrated\u2019 that she was unable to find a route forward to help several musically talented children she had taught in Hull.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhy shouldn\u2019t all children have equal opportunities in music?\u201d, she said, whether they attend private schools or state ones.<\/p>\n
After she had stepped back from teaching and from royal duties \u2013 the Duchess of Kent set up a new charity, Future Talent.<\/p>\n
The organisation supports gifted children with programmes to develop their musical talents and awards grants to other pupils to help them buy instruments, go to lessons or attend auditions.<\/p>\n
It was jointly founded by the Duchess and Nicholas Robinson, a former Headmaster of King\u2019s College School in Cambridge.<\/p>\n
In her later years, she lived with her husband at Wren Cottage, one of the properties in the grounds of Kensington Palace.<\/p>\n
It was where she was photographed in 2024 in a wheelchair, watching with her family as pipers from the Royal Scots Dragoon Guards on the Duke\u2019s birthday last year.<\/p>\n\n\nLeft to right: Prince Michael of Kent, the Duke of Kent, the Duchess of Kent and Lord Nicholas Windsor outside Wren House in 2024. Credit: PA<\/span><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nIt\u2019s understood she had a condition which made it very painful to walk and meant she was unable to attend many of the big royal events in recent years, including the Coronation of King Charles and Queen Camilla in 2023.<\/p>\n
The Duke and Duchess of Kent have three children: George Windsor, Earl of St Andrews, Helen Taylor and Nicholas Windsor.<\/p>\n
But Katharine did speak about two pregnancies she endured in the 1970s, one a miscarriage, the other a stillborn and the terrible toll it took on her.<\/p>\n
“<\/p>\n
I had no idea how devastating such a thing could be to any woman”, she once said.<\/p>\n
The Duke of Kent is currently 42nd in the line of succession but at the coronation of Queen Elizabeth in 1953, he was the third person to pay homage to her after his two uncles, Prince Philip and Prince Henry, Duke of Gloucester.<\/p>\n
The Duke and Duchess of Kent have three children: George Windsor, Earl of St Andrews, Helen Taylor and Nicholas Windsor.<\/p>\n\n\nThe Duke and Duchess of Kent at Westminster Abbey in 2011. Credit: PA<\/span><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nShe took a humble approach to her working royal life and never sought the limelight.<\/p>\n
Katharine, Duchess of Kent was much more at hone being \u2018Mrs Kent\u2019 and told ITV News how her time as a schoolteacher enriched her life.<\/p>\n
\u201cA classroom is a room full of learners. I learned more from these children than I ever, ever taught them\u201d.<\/p>\n
This is the Talking Royals – our weekly podcast about the royal family, with ITV News Royal Editor Chris Ship and Senior Producer Lizzie Robinson<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source uk.news.yahoo.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Since the death of Queen Elizabeth in 2022 \u2013 the Duchess of Kent has been the oldest member of the Royal Family. She was 92. Many tennis fans will remember the Duchess from the television cameras at Wimbledon during the many years she presented trophies to the champions, once famously consoling a visibly upset Jana […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2000526,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[363054,363511,363510,363284,363055,24515],"class_list":["post-2000525","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-royalty","tag-duke-of-kent","tag-oliver-cromwell","tag-prince-michael-of-kent","tag-the-duchess","tag-the-duchess-of-kent","tag-the-royal-family"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/Who-was-the-Duchess-of-Kent-the-oldest-member-of.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2000525","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2000525"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2000525\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2000526"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2000525"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2000525"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2000525"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}