GEORGE (7TH EARL OF HAREWOOD) LASCELLES - AUTOGRAPH 11/06/1989 - HFSID 317212

GEORGE LASCELLES, 7th EARL OF HAREWOOD
Signature of Queen Elizabeth's cousin, no longer the Royal Family's "black sheep"
Signature: "With best wishes/Harewood/Jan. 2nd. 1970" in blue ink and "Patricia Harewood" in black ink. 6x4 stationery from Harewood House, Leeds, West Yorkshire, Great Britain with scalloped top edge. Mounted to a 4¼x5 sheet of paper. Harewood House was built between 1759 and 1771 by Edwin Lascelles. It's still owned by the Lascelles family. George Henry Hubert Lascelles (1923-2011) was the first child of Great Britain's Princess Royal Mary, herself the daughter of King George V. He became seventh Earl of Harewood in 1947, after the death of his father the sixth earl. Lascelles fought in Italy during World War II and was a German prisoner of war from 1944 until May 1945. An opera enthusiast, he served as director of the Royal Opera House at Covent Gardens twice (1951-3 and 1969-1972) and chairman of the English National Opera from 1986 to 1995. Harewood was virtually ostracized by his family after he married Australian violinist and model Patricia Tuckwell in 1967, replacing the first Countess Harewood, whom he only just divorced. (The new couple already had a son, Mark, born out of wedlock in 1964 and thus disqualified from the earldom, which passed at his death to his eldest son, David, by his first marriage, now the Earl of Harewood VIII.) Earl Harewood reconciled with his family, including the Queen, in the 1980s.) Pencil notes (unknown hand). Fine condition.