IAN (DUKE OF BEDFORD XIII) RUSSELL - TYPED LETTER SIGNED 09/27/1961 - HFSID 81438

IAN RUSSELL (13th DUKE OF BEDFORD)
Letter from Woburn Abbey, which he rebuilt and opened to the public, declining to act as a judge in a beauty pageant
Typed Letter signed: "Bedford", 1 page, 8x17. Woburn Abbey, Bletchley, Bucks [England], 1961 September 27. 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, 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. Multiple folds. Faint stains near signature. Corners lightly worn. Slightly soiled. Otherwise, fine condition.