Duff Hart-Davis, who died 10 July, 2025, aged 89, was a biographer, naturalist and journalist.
(Peter) Duff Hart-Davis was born 3 June, 1936, son of Sir Rupert Charles Hart-Davis (1907-1999), the publisher and author and his wife the former Catherine Comfort Borden-Turner.
He was 'officially' a direct descendant of King William IV and his mistress Dorothea Jordan, though his father believed otherwise (see below).
Hart-Davis married Phyllida Barstow (born 1937), the author, by whom he had one son, Guy, and a daughter, the journalist Alice Hart-Davis.
His biography of his godfather, the adventurer and writer Peter Fleming, entitled Peter Fleming: A Biography, was published in 1974.
King William IV = Mrs Jordan > Lady Elizabeth FitzClarence = William Hay, 18th Earl of Erroll > Lady Agnes Hay = James Duff, 5th Earl of Fife > Lady Agnes Duff = Sir Alfred Cooper > Sybil Cooper = Richard Hart-Davis > Sir Rupert Hart-Davis = Catherine Borden-Turner > Peter Duff Hart-Davis (d 2025)
Sir Rupert (according to his ODNB entry) “ostensibly was the son of Richard Vaughan Hart-Davis (d. 1964), a stockbroker, for whom he never greatly cared; but he himself gradually became certain that his true father was Gervase Beckett (1866–1937), brother of the second Baron Grimthorpe, and his contemporaries among the Beckett family tended to agree with him.”
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