Dickie’s moving last plea: Put my ashes with girls I lost in tsunami
OSCAR-WINNING film director Richard Attenborough made a moving last request for his ashes to be placed with those of the beloved daughter and granddaughter he lost in the Boxing Day tsunami, it has emerged.
Lord Attenborough was devastated by the deaths of his daughter Jane Holland, 49, and granddaughter Lucy, 15, in the disaster, which killed about 230,000 people in 2004.
Probate records released yesterday reveal that the Labour peer and actor, who died aged 90 in August last year, left an estate of £1.5million in the UK and a request in his will that he be cremated.
He asked for a third of his ashes to be ‘interred in casket together with or alongside’ the ashes of his daughter and granddaughter in a vault at St Mary Magdalene Church, Richmond, on the outskirts of London.
The vault containing the ashes is under a flagstone with an inscription in memory of the pair, placed in the nave of the 16th Century church.
Canon Robert Titley, the church’s rector, said: ‘Lord Attenborough’s ashes have not yet been interred, but they will be soon. We are just waiting for some refurbishment work in the area of the vault to be completed. The Attenborough family have been extremely understanding.’
The church is only a short distance from the £11.5million house where Lord Attenborough – director of the Oscar-winning film Gandhi and the brother of wildlife broadcaster David Attenborough – lived for many years with his wife Sheila.
His will also requested that a third of the ashes be scattered at his house in Chateauneuf de Grasse, south-east France, and that the final third go to his former Scottish property on the isle of Bute.
Lord Attenborough, who read a lesson at the national memorial service for tsunami victims at St Paul’s Cathedral in May 2005, described the tsunami as ‘the worst day of my life’.
Jane Holland, who was a charity arts officer, and her daughter Lucy died when their holiday villa in Khao Lak, southern Thailand, was destroyed by giant waves.
Jane’s husband Michael, a shipbroker, and son Samuel, an actor, escaped because they were playing golf on a course a mile or so inland. Their other daughter Alice, then 17, suffered serious injuries but survived.
Mrs Holland’s mother-in-law Audrey, 81, who was on holiday with them, also died in the disaster.
Lord Attenborough, who appeared in 60 films including Brighton Rock, The Great Escape and Jurassic Park, and directed a dozen others over the course of his six-decade career, left the bulk of his estate in trust for his wife of 69 years, who survived him.
His estate of £1,566,692 would not have included assets held overseas or in other family trusts.