Squadron Leader Christopher Charles Blount, LVO, RAF 1925-2024

Christopher Charles Blount, LVO, RAF, died 18 December, 2024, aged 99.

Blunt, courtier, equerry to Queen Elizabeth II, was a pilot who performed one of the first successful ejections from an inverted plane.

He was born 6 February, 1925, son of Air Vice Marshal Charles Hubert Boulby Blount, CB, OBE, MC, RAF (1893-1940), and his wife the former Beatrice Joan Lempriere (1892-1985); and married 12 November, 1957, the Hon Susan Victoria Cobbold (1933-2021), second daughter of the 1st Baron Cobbold, KG, GCVO, PC, DL (1904-1987), and his wife the former Lady Margaret Hermione Millicent Bulwer-Lytton (1905-2004), daughter of the 2nd Earl of Lytton, KG, GCSI, GCIE, GCStJ, PC, DL (1876-1947), by whom he had two sons, James and Oliver, and two daughters, Catherine and Pamela.

Blount was an equerry to Queen Elizabeth II from 1954 to 1957. He accompanied the Queen on a tour of Nigeria in early 1956 and a state visit to Portugal the following year and enjoyed every minute of his time, especially at Sandringham and Balmoral. A lifelong friend of Princess Margaret, who was known for her admiration of RAF officers, Blount liked to say he was little more than a “spare hand” around the royal household, but was proud to have had the chance to serve the Queen in the early years of her reign.

Christopher Charles Blount was born in London in 1925 to a family that became steeped in flying and service in the RAF. His father, Charles, who had served in the Royal Flying Corps in the First World War and was a founder member of the RAF, went on to become an air vice-marshal. He was killed in a flying accident at Mill Hill in 1940. Blount’s elder brother, John, was shot down in a Spitfire over the island of Texel on the coast of the Netherlands in 1941 and spent the remainder of the war as a PoW. He went on to become an air commodore and was captain of the Queen’s Flight before being killed in a helicopter crash in 1967. Blount’s mother, Beatrice Joan (née Lempriere), was originally from Melbourne in Australia. Her brother-in-law, Frank Debenham, was a geologist on Scott’s ill-fated 1910 Antarctic expedition. Blount,was a relative of the singer James Blunt (who has changed the spelling of his surname).

The Blounts made their home in a Jacobean manor house at Barkway in Hertfordshire and had four children: James is a former diplomat who works in business risk management; Ollie is a retired investment banker; Katie runs an interior design business; and Pammy is a travel journalist. Susan Blount died 14 December, 2021, aged 88.

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