IAN (DUKE OF BEDFORD XIII) RUSSELL - SPECIAL COVER SIGNED - HFSID 67215
Price: $120.00
IAN RUSSELL (13th DUKE OF BEDFORD)
He signs a special cover with cachet showing him with the Duchess in
front of Woburn Abbey, which they had opened to the public
Special Cover signed: "Bedford", 8½x4½. Special cover with
reproduced photo cachet, titled "The Duke of Bedford invites you to Woburn
Abbey." (The Duke and Duchess are pictured.) Postmarked Woburn,
Bletchley, Bucks, August 19, 1966, British stamp affixed. Ian Russell
(1917-2002) became the 13th Duke of Bedford at the passing of his father, the
12th Duke, in 1953. He served in the Coldstream Guards in the opening
phase of World War II (1939-1940), but was invalided out of service. He became a
reporter for the Daily Express, and would ultimately write four
books, including The Duke of Bedford's Book of Snobs (1965). When he
inherited the ducal title in 1953, the new Lord Beford, long estranged from his
father and grandfather, had rarely seen the ancestral mansion, Woburn. Finding
the mansion in extreme disrepair and the family deeply in debt, Bedford resolved
to rebuild it with funds raised by opening the estate to the public and using it
for commercial purposes. (Other peers were contemptuous of these measures at
the time, but such steps are common now.) Bedford, twice widowed, returned to
the headlines with his marriage to the third Duchess (shown here), the
colorful Parisian graphic artist Nicole Schneider in 1960. (She would
publish her own racy memoir, Nicole Nobody, in 1974.) A popular figure
and winner of Best Dressed Man awards, the Duke moved to Monte Carlo in 1974,
leaving management of the very successful Woburn enterprise to his son and heir,
Robin Russell. Top right corner soiled. Toning from adhesive residue. Corners
lightly worn. Otherwise, fine condition.
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