{"id":436487,"date":"2026-05-07T07:31:19","date_gmt":"2026-05-07T07:31:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/436487\/"},"modified":"2026-05-07T07:31:19","modified_gmt":"2026-05-07T07:31:19","slug":"at-home-with-the-duke-and-duchess-of-beaufort-at-badminton-house","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/436487\/","title":{"rendered":"At home with\u2026 The Duke and Duchess of Beaufort at Badminton House"},"content":{"rendered":"

Music’s been a big interest of Beaufort’s for years, and stardom seemed to beckon in 1985 when he was one of 15-strong The Business Connection. A band jam-packed with aristocrats, it got double-page spreads the same day in both the Daily Mail and Daily Express, something not even the Stones achieved. The lap-dance entrepreneur Peter Stringfellow took them up, they appeared on TV<\/a> and Mick Jagger<\/a> came to see what all the fuss was about. Valentine Lindsay, the bass guitarist, recalls band members turning down promotional gigs because ‘they’d say, “I’m going boar hunt\u00ading in Germany.”‘ Keyboardist Pickford Sykes was amazed ‘this bunch of toffs wasn’t pelted with potatoes’. Beaufort got crosser and crosser with his much-publicised fellow frontperson, Lady Theresa Manners, and the band fizzled out. Later, Beaufort played with the arcanely named Planet Potato, before moving on to The Listening Device, who’ve also played Glastonbury<\/a>.<\/p>\n

For all the party-going ebullience and pomposity-pricking of his very funny and well-written memoir (which includes, among other stories, Jerry Hall saying of Beaufort, after he’d boasted of a carnal dalliance with her, ‘If that boy’s c**k was as big as his mouth, he’d be a great lay’), Beaufort is, says the duchess, quite a shy person.<\/p>\n

What’s clear from the way the couple behave together is how successful the duke’s second marriage is. His first, to Tracy Ward, foundered, though not before the couple had three children: Bobby, now the Marquess of Worcester, Lady Isabella Somerset<\/a> and Lord Alexander Somerset. Beaufort’s ex-wife still lives in the ‘rather charming’ house in Badminton village they once shared, ‘which is a minor irritation every time I drive past’.<\/p>\n

Georgia Beaufort is the granddaughter of Anthony Powell, that great novelist of aristocratic and bohemian society, who was himself best friends with the 6th Marquess of Bath, Beaufort’s grandfather. Their romance was, says Beaufort, a ‘slow burn’, but she complements him beautifully. Accompanied by her Cavalier King Charles spaniels, Frank and Minnie, she’s wearing a Fair Isle jumper, an ivory blouse and faded black jeans; a journalist and documentarian, it’s clear it’s she who deals with the logistics of life.<\/p>\n

And it’s just as clear that she and Beaufort are engaging hosts for those who sometimes take the shoot and stay in the house – Americans amaze Beaufort with their tendency to eschew alcohol. ‘Harry’s good at … ‘ the duchess begins. ‘Drinking,’ the duke chips in. In fact, she goes on, laughing, he’s very good at putting people at their ease, and drink helps.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Music’s been a big interest of Beaufort’s for years, and stardom seemed to beckon in 1985 when he…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":436488,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[93,61,60,179756],"class_list":["post-436487","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-paywall-sample-for-0-days"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/436487","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=436487"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/436487\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/436488"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=436487"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=436487"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=436487"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}