That's right, his is dead already. He died of cancer though. Too bad he hasn't figured it out yet because there would be many more opportunities for him to victimise himself.
09 October 2003
The 17th Earl of Pembroke and 14th Earl of Montgomery who has died aged 64, mixed bohemian interests with the responsibilities of his inheritance.
His birthright required him to look after a great estate, Wilton House, near Salisbury. But his inclinations steered him towards the artistic and the raffish, and, as Henry Herbert, Pembroke developed a career as a television director and producer.
Henry George Charles Alexander Herbert was born on May 19 1939. His father, the 16th Earl, was a gentle character and a scholar deeply interested in the arts who served as a trustee of both the National Gallery and the National Portrait Gallery. The family descended from Richard Herbert, a Gentleman Usher to Henry VII, and a natural son of an earlier Earl of Pembroke. The 1st Earl of the later creation married a sister of Catherine Parr, the last wife of Henry VIII.
Henry's Pembroke grandmother, Lady Beatrice Paget, was deemed indomitable and known to many in the next generation as "Auntie Beeswax". His paternal aunt, Patricia, Viscountess Hambleden, as a lady-in-waiting to the Queen Mother, served until she dropped dead from exhaustion and shingles. Henry's uncle, David Herbert, led the louche life of an ageing bachelor in Tangiers.
When he was 13, Henry was, at the Coronation, a page to the young Duke of Kent, who played a prominent role as one of the three royal dukes seated in front of the peers of the realm.
After Eton, Henry did his National Service from 1958 to 1960 with the Royal Horse Guards, serving in Cyprus. He then went up to Christ Church, Oxford, where he read History.
In early adult life, Henry Herbert became part of an intensely cultured, if wayward, set in London which was headed by the Dufferins, and included figures such as David Hockney, Christopher Gibbs, Desmond Guinness and Jean Shrimpton. He decided to become a film-maker, and in 1965 worked in Norway on the Kirk Douglas picture Heroes of Telemark, as "assistant to an assistant director, which was really just being a glorified teaboy". He added, "The only way to learn is by experience, and I'm not in a position to be choosy."
Shortly afterwards he joined a new independent film company which made documentaries about the music business, and he directed films about the Animals, Otis Redding and Jimi Hendrix, among others. Later he directed What Colour is the Wind?, a documentary about blind children which won the Golden Hugo for the best short film at the Chicago International Film Festival.
At the same time, Herbert forged friendships with the more artistic members of his parents' generation. He enjoyed the company of his Wilton neighbour, Lady Juliet Duff, and her circle of writers, actors and actresses. He made a memorable documentary about Stephen Tennant, the aesthetic recluse of Wilsford Manor who could occasionally be persuaded to come to tea, but then prove somewhat unwilling to leave. Sir Cecil Beaton, who lived nearby at Broadchalke, was devoted to Henry Herbert, in 1965 describing him as "a gangling youth with the possibilities of becoming a character, a personality, an individual".
Graduating to drama, Herbert achieved a certain notoriety with Emily, a film which revealed a great deal of Koo Stark, later the girlfriend of Prince Andrew. But he moved on to direct episodes of Bergerac, the series starring John Nettles as a policeman in Jersey. He also worked on Shoestring, starring Trevor Eve; Danger UXB, the series about a bomb disposal unit during the Blitz; and By the Sword Divided, a drama about the English Civil War. For many years he was a director of Merchant Ivory Productions, for which he directed Malachi's Cove, adapted from a short story by Trollope.
In 1969, when he was not quite 30, Herbert had succeeded in the earldom on the death of his father. This was a double blow, since he considered himself too young to assume the responsibilities which attended his great inheritance. Like many of his generation, Herbert liked informality (in those days he favoured jeans, kipper ties and purple socks) and he was enjoying his bohemian existence as a film-maker in London.
Wilton House, built on the site of an 8th century priory, has been been the home of the Herbert family for 460 years. William Herbert, who was created the 1st Earl of Pembroke in 1551, received the lands at Wilton from Henry VIII. After a fire in 1647, the house was restored by Inigo Jones and his nephew John Webb; James Wyatt's alterations were carried between 1800 and 1811. It had been requisitioned by the War Office between 1940 to 1949 as the headquarters of Southern Command. (Lord Pembroke's grandparents remained in residence throughout that period.)
The estate once encompassed 60,000 acres; by 1870 this had been reduced to around 40,000 acres, and to 14,000 by 1969. The house, which was first opened to the public in 1951, has one of the country's finest art collections, with pictures by Van Dyck, Lely, Reynolds, Rembrandt, Rubens, Teniers, van Leyden, Pannini, Gaspar Poussin and van Goyen.
In 1983 Wilton House, and about one third of the estate, was formed into a private charitable trust, to which the family pays rent. Between 1988 and 1993 Lord Pembroke undertook one of the largest restoration projects ever seen at Wilton. Work was carried out to strengthen the foundations and counteract subsidence; there were repairs to the roof, particularly on the South Range. He established a thriving garden centre. He also invented a "Wilton biscuit" - a large, flat, shortbread-like creation embossed with an image of the house.
Pembroke himself farmed 2,000 acres of arable land on the estate. He relished mixing aesthetic pleasures with more traditional ones, and liked nothing more than to go down to Grovely Wood to track the antelope with a friend in early spring, when the buds had just burst and before the mist had dispersed.
He used about 20 rooms in the house, running it with the help of a butler, a chef, two nannies, and a daily woman, while there were two further dailies for the state apartments. The estate was run by an agent, a farm manager, six gardeners, and various secretaries and game-keepers.
Pembroke had met his first wife, Claire Pelly, at a house party in Yorkshire. While staying with David Herbert in Tangiers, they became engaged - somewhat to the disapproval of the Dowager (Henry's grandmother), who informed the bride that it was the first time a Pembroke had married a commoner since the 14th century.
Having married in 1966, with pages and bridesmaids wearing outfits copied from the Van Dyck portrait in the Double Cube room at Wilton, they had three daughters and, eventually, in 1978, the requisite male heir. To celebrate this birth, the Pembrokes gave a great ball at Wilton in the autumn of 1979; it was attended by the Prince of Wales, and Cecil Beaton could be observed seated between Elizabeth, Marchioness of Salisbury, and Lady Diana Cooper, on a large sofa in the Double Cube Room. The Pembrokes separated soon afterwards, divorcing in 1981. In 1988 Pembroke married Miranda Oram, with whom he had another three daughters.
Pembroke firmly believed that houses such as Wilton were better occupied by the families which created them, and he took his responsibilities seriously. He decried the effects of excessive taxation on individual freedom, and lamented that high taxes drove so much British talent from the country.
He served as a Deputy Lieutenant in Wiltshire from 1995.
Pembroke enjoyed racing (never missing Royal Ascot), and in the 1990s was employed by Wiltshire Life magazine to write a column about the sport. (The Marquess of Bath was the publication's "agony uncle", and the Earl of Cardigan contributed his thoughts on motoring.) His other interests were gardening, photography and ornithology.
Lord Pembroke, who died on Tuesday, had suffered from cancer for the past three years. His son William Alexander Sidney Herbert (Lord Herbert) becomes the 18th Earl.
Last edited: