Apsley cuts clan ties with baby’s name

DELIGHTED by the birth of his first child, Lord Apsley has, however, decided to make sure his son and heir is not too closely associated with previous generations of his family at Cirencester Park in Gloucestershire, where Princes William and Harry have played polo.

Ben Bathurst, as Apsley is known, and his wife Sara have named their son Theodore, or ‘Teddy’.

He tells me: ‘Hereditary family names haven’t served us very well in the last few generations, so my wife and I decided on Teddy together.’

Ben’s father, Allen, Earl Bathurst, was involved in a bitter dispute with his American- born stepmother, Gloria, who cut him out of her will and gave the inheritance to two interior designers instead. Gloria was the second wife of Allen’s father, Henry, known as ‘Barmy’ to his friends.

‘We lost my great-grandfather, Allen, in World War II, and my grandfather, Henry, almost split the estate by leaving a large portion of it to Gloria,’ Ben, 33, explains. ‘Since I came back to help run the estate in 2020, Sara and I have been very focused on carrying the torch for the future. Being given someone else’s name only evokes the past, and we are very much about what comes next.’