Earl may sue own family after he is thrown off estate
■ IT’S the restaurant where Theresa May entertained French president Emmanuel Macron, but Sir Michael Parkinson’s pub The Royal Oak has been put on the market. ‘It is with a heavy heart that I have made this decision, but an opportunity has arisen that would make it near impossible to carry on with the Oak,’ Parky’s son Nick — who runs the hostelry near Maidenhead — reveals. His favourite guest was the Queen. ‘She’s a very, very easy person — no fuss at all. When we had Macron, we had loads of police, loads of security, people in vans with Uzi guns. The Queen just turned up with a couple of detectives — and that was it. And she’s far more important than Macron, isn’t she?’
THE Duchess of Sussex has spoken of her struggle to adapt to life as a Royal. But it can be just as difficult to marry into the aristocracy.
City high-flier Kelsey Wells has laid bare the disdain which has greeted her since she wed William Seymour, Earl of Yarmouth — and which now threatens to lead to the courts.
Kelsey, 34, married the Earl, 26, last year and has just given birth to their first child, Clement. He will eventually succeed not only to his father’s title but also that of his grandfather, the Marquess of Hertford.
But far from being welcome at the Seymours’ sumptuous 110- room Warwickshire seat, Ragley Hall, Kelsey and William and their baby are living in a cottage beyond the boundary of the family’s 6,000-acres.
‘You could fit the entire square footage of this cottage into the Great Hall at Ragley,’ William reflects.
Their ostracism, the couple believe, results from alleged social faux pas by privately educated Kelsey, whose father is a management consultant and mother a former dance teacher.
These included calling the butler at Ragley by his Christian name — and using Lady Hertford’s bathroom.
‘I nipped in for a moment to finish off my make-up,’ Kelsey explains in January’s Tatler. Shortly after, her fiance was ‘berated for letting me use the bathroom without permission’.
Worse followed when William’s aunt, Lady Carolyn Seymour, wrote to him saying their wedding invitation was ‘embarrassingly awful’ — because it stipulated ‘ Morning Dress’ — and signing off: ‘ You pompous ass/t*t/ p**** — take your pick.’
It was Lady Carolyn who informed the couple this summer that they must leave their home on the estate, The Bothy, and move to their current home to accommodate a carer for William’s grandmother, Pamela, Dowager Marchioness of Hertford.
Now William, who claims he should receive an income from land left by his grandfather, is set to sue his family. ‘I’ve had to put the matter in the hands of my solicitor,’ says William, who regrets that he is now estranged from his three siblings, including Edward, who was his best man.