Letter from King is link to tragedy in Kate’s history
IT IS perhaps the oldest link between the Royal Family and that of the Duchess of Cambridge – a letter conveying the sympathy of George V after the war deaths of three of her ancestors, each the siblings of her greatgrandmother.
Kate was shown the document from the First World War yesterday at the Imperial War Museum, which had archived it from family papers. They detail the lives and deaths in France of the Lupton brothers, Francis, Maurice and Lionel. The collection includes a postcard sent by one on the day he died.
“I’m sure so many families had this type of letter and sad stories,” the Duchess said.
She also reacted to the brief telegram sent by her greatgrandfather, Richard Middleton, an Army officer, who wrote to his father-in-law telling him that Francis’s body had been found after he was killed instantaneously by a bomb during the Battle of the Somme.
“It’s so bland, hardly any words,” Kate said.
Anthony Richards, head of documents at the museum, said: “It’s a very formal sort of brief way to give the family what is essentially terrible news that their loved one has been killed in action. You break someone’s heart in just a few words in a telegram.”
He said Kate had known about the three brothers who fought and died for their country after one of her grandfathers undertook genealogy research.
Her family included the former Lord Mayor of Leeds, her great-great-great uncle Sir Charles Lupton, who was filmed in 1915 by a Pathe cameraman inspecting troops of the Leeds Pals battalion at a training camp in the Yorkshire Dales.
Also yesterday, the Duke of Sussex signed off his 16-day tour of the South Seas by saying: “It’s been great, thanks guys.”
He and Meghan spent their last hours in New Zealand at Rotorua, known for its geothermal activity and Maori culture, and were given traditional cloaks – after which Harry spoke for a minute in Maori, with gasps of awe when he used the word “whaiaipo”, or sweetheart. After a final walkabout, they emerged handin-hand from a forest of centuryold redwoods, eventually heading off in a motorcade.