The Marquess of Queensberry, sometime professor of ceramics at the Royal College of Art, died 22 July, 2026. He was 96. He was a peer for 72 years.
Queensberry was the 14th Lord Douglas of Hawick and Tibberis [S., 1628]; the 11th Baronet Douglas, of Kelhead [N.S., 1667]; 14th Viscount of Drumlanrig [S., 1628]; the 12th Earl of Drumlanrig and Sanchar [S., 1681]; the 12th Marquess of Queensberry [S., 1681]; the 12th Viscount of Nith, Torthorwald and Ross [S., 1681]; the 14th Earl of Queensberry [S., 1633] ; and the 12th Lord Douglas of Kinmouth, Midlebie, and Dornock [S., 1681].
David Angus Harrington Douglas was born 19 December, 1929, son of the 11th Marquess of Queensberry (1896-1954), and his second wife the former Cathleen Sabine Mann (1897-1959); and he succeeded the family honours on the death of his father, 27 April, 1954.
He was educated at Eton and served as a Second Lieutenant in the Royal Horse Guards. He was appointed professor of ceramics at the Royal College of Art in 1959, and appointed a Fellow of the Royal College of Art in 1990.
He married thrice - firstly, 18 July, 1956 (div. 1969), Ann Jones, daughter of Maurice Sinnett Jones, and former wife of George Arthur Radford; married 2ndly, 10 July, 1969 (div. 1986), Alexandra Mary Clare Wyndham Sich (born 1943), daughter of Guy Wyndham Sich (1898-1958), of Cornwall Gardens, Kensington, and his wife the former Jean Denise Theobald (1919-1979), and married thirdly, 2000, Hsueh-Chun Liao.
Queensberry's mother-in-law, Jean Denise Theobald, was allegedly the illegitimate daughter of the 3rd Marquess of Dufferin & Ava (1875-1930).
Queensberry had issue from his three marriages. Two daughter from the first union, Lady Emma Cathleen Douglas (born 13 Sept, 1956) and Lady Alice Douglas (born 23 July,1965), three sons and a daughter from his second marriage, Sholto Francis Guy Douglas, Viscount Drumlanrig (born 1 June, 1967), and Lord Milo Luke Dickon Douglas (1975-2009), and Lord Torquhil Oberon Tobias Douglas (born 2 Nov, 1978), and Lady Kate Cordelia Sasha Douglas (born 21 Nov 1969), and a daughter by his third wife, Lady Beth Shan Ling Douglas (1999-2018).
The Marquess also leaves a son, Ambrose Carey (born 14 Nov, 1961) from a liaison with Caroline Carey.
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Marquess of Queensberry obituary: Aristocratic ceramicist
From The Times 30 July, 2026
Royal College of Art professor who lived through family tragedy and rubbed shoulders with Swinging Sixties set dies aged 96
David Douglas was playing cards with John Profumo in 1963 when the secretary of state for war learnt that his political career was about to end because of a sex scandal. David Queensberry, as the 12th Marquess of Queensberry was known professionally, was part of a Swinging Sixties set that included not only Profumo but also the photographers David Bailey and Patrick Lichfield and the artist David Hockney. He was also a designer and potter, and from 1959 to 1983 was professor of ceramics at the Royal College of Art.
The family was best known for his great-grandfather the 9th Marquess, who gave his name to the official rules of boxing in 1867 and many years later played a pivotal role in the downfall of Oscar Wilde having taken issue with the author’s homosexual relationship with his son Alfred “Bosie” Douglas. In February 1895 the marquess left a note on public display in the Albemarle Club declaring that Wilde was a “somdomite” (sic). Wilde sued for libel, but the case backfired and Wilde was convicted of gross indecency.
Queensberry remembered his father being visited by the impecunious Bosie, who was still betting on the horses until his death in 1945. “I think he was an awful fellow, extremely right-wing, antisemitic; there was nothing very good to be said about him,” he told The Times in 1995. “But I do think he was, in a minor way, quite a good poet.”…
…David Harrington Angus Douglas was born in Westminster in 1929, the younger of two children of Francis Douglas, 11th Marquess of Queensberry, Bosie’s stockbroker nephew, and his second wife, Cathleen Mann, a portrait artist; his sister, Jane, died in 2007. He had a half-sister, Patricia, from his father’s first marriage and a half-brother, Gawain, from his third marriage.
The family’s history dates back to medieval Scotland when Sir William Douglas died in the Tower of London in 1298 after fighting for William Wallace against the English. In 1633 another William Douglas was created Earl of Queensberry and in 1682 Charles II elevated the title to marquess. The 8th marquess shot himself in 1858 while hunting rabbits, one of his sons died climbing the Matterhorn and another cut his own throat with a razor in a London hotel. The 9th marquess was little loved by his family. He was once charged with affray after fighting in the street with his son, Queensberry’s grandfather, whom he spat at on his deathbed in 1900…
… Queensberry succeeded in the peerage in 1954, and made his maiden speech in the Lords in 1965 in support of reforming the law on homosexuality. Meanwhile, he embarked on a series of complicated romantic entanglements, marrying Ann Radford (née Jones), the actress Ann Queensberry, in 1956. They had two daughters, Emma, an artist, and Alice, a writer and theatre director who married an armed robber she met while volunteering in a prison. They also fostered a Nigerian boy.
During that time he also had a son, Ambrose Carey, from another relationship, though because they never married Ambrose, who founded a business intelligence consultancy, did not succeed in the titles. Ambrose’s half-sister, Carrie, married Salem bin Laden then, after his death in a plane crash in 1988, his brother Khaled. They were half-brothers of Osama bin Laden, mastermind of the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the US.
… his first marriage was dissolved and in 1969 he married Alexandra Wyndham, a model. They had three sons, Sholto, Milo, who suffered from bipolar disorder and took his own life in 2009 aged 34, and Torquil, and a daughter, Kate, who once said: “Despite our 700-year heritage we are proud to be a very modern and gloriously dysfunctional family.” Sholto, known by the courtesy title Viscount Drumlanrig, had been born during Queensberry’s first marriage, but his succession as the 13th Marquess was assured by his parents’ subsequent marriage.
That too was dissolved and in 1999 Queensberry declared: “I’ve failed at marriage twice, so I’m disinclined to embark on it again.” The following year he married Hsueh-Chun Liao, a Taiwanese artist almost 40 years his junior with whom he already had a daughter, Beth, known as Ling Ling, a talented violinist. The so-called “Queensberry curse” struck again when Beth died in 2018, aged 18, after taking drugs at a Notting Hill party…
Professor David Queensberry (David Douglas), 12th Marquess of Queensberry and ceramicist, was born on December 19, 1929. He died on July 22, 2026, aged 96
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