The Duchess of Kent dies aged 92, Buckingham Palace announces

The Duchess of Kent has died on the age of 92, Buckingham Palace has introduced with “deep sorrow”.

She “handed away peacefully final night time at Kensington Palace, surrounded by her household”, a press release stated on Friday, with flags on royal residences, together with Buckingham Palace, now lowered to half mast.

The Prince and Princess of Wales stated the duchess could be a “a lot missed member of the household” who had “labored tirelessly to assist others and supported many causes, together with by her love of music”.

The duchess, Katharine, was the oldest member of the Royal Household, married to Prince Edward, the Duke of Kent, a primary cousin of the late Queen Elizabeth II.

She shall be remembered as a well-known determine on the Wimbledon tennis championships, the place she handed over trophies – and consoled those that had misplaced, famously together with a tearful Jana Novotna in 1993.

King Charles, who’s in Balmoral in Scotland, was knowledgeable of her dying late on Thursday, and there shall be a interval of royal mourning till the duchess’s funeral, with darkish garments and troops on public duties carrying black armbands.

“The King and Queen and all members of the Royal Household be a part of the Duke of Kent, his youngsters and grandchildren in mourning their loss and remembering fondly the duchess’s life-long devotion to all of the organisations with which she was related, her ardour for music and her empathy for younger individuals,” stated a press release, which had additionally been hooked up to the gates exterior Buckingham Palace.

Prince Harry despatched his condolences privately to the duchess’s household.

Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer paid tribute to how the Duchess of Kent introduced “compassion, dignity and a human contact to the whole lot she did”.

The duchess was a fantastic music lover – supporting music charities and instructing music in a Hull main college, the place pupils knew nothing of her royal id, and the place she was referred to as “Mrs Kent”.

The date of her funeral has not been introduced, however it’s prone to be a Catholic service consistent with the religion of the duchess.

It is not confirmed which members of the Royal Household will attend the funeral, in what will be a busy time for the royals, with a state go to by President Trump approaching. Prince Harry can also be on account of be within the UK subsequent week for charity occasions.

Maybe probably the most acquainted photographs of the duchess’s life are from her appearances at Wimbledon, the place she was recurrently seen watching the tennis and stepping on to the courtroom to present out prizes.

She gave a shoulder to cry on to the defeated Novotna – however 5 years later was there at hand over the trophy to the Czech tennis star.

The duchess additionally spoke of her deep sadness at the 49-year-old Novotna’s death from most cancers in 2017.

Though it was claimed that the duchess later fell out with Wimbledon authorities over her try and deliver the 12-year-old son of a bereaved buddy into the Royal Field.

Tennis star Martina Navratilova posted her personal tribute to the duchess on Friday, with an image of herself and the duchess at Wimbledon, saying it was “superb what number of hundreds of thousands of individuals across the globe she affected in a constructive approach”.

Born as Katharine Worsley, from an aristocratic land-owning household in Yorkshire, the duchess grew to become a part of the Royal Household in 1961 when she married the Duke of Kent, a grandson of King George V.

Princess Anne was among the many bridesmaids at their wedding ceremony in York Minster, with the late Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Charles within the congregation.

The duchess took on an everyday spherical of royal duties, however all through her life she additionally carved out a person path.

She grew to become a Catholic in 1994, the primary royal to transform to Catholicism for greater than 300 years, describing it as “a long-pondered private choice”.

The duchess was obtained into the Catholic church by the then Archbishop of Westminster, Cardinal Basil Hume.

She grew to become a volunteer within the Passage homelessness charity, which Cardinal Hume had helped to arrange – and which is now given high-profile help by the Prince of Wales.

Dame Esther Rantzen praised the duchess for her help for the Childline charity, saying: “She was a tremendous lady… I feel that her royal function was fairly a problem for her as a result of she was fairly a shy individual and he or she had her share of diseases, however, I might inform, I feel she sacrificed herself for the sake of others.”

The Duchess and Duke of Kent had three youngsters, however one other son was stillborn.

That loss in 1977 noticed a interval of intense emotional turmoil. The duchess emerged after a seven-week keep in hospital for what palace officers described on the time as “nervous exhaustion”.

It was an period with a lot much less openness about psychological well being and wellbeing – however she later revealed how a lot she had suffered from “acute despair”.

Music was an enormous a part of the lifetime of the duchess, having spoken of how emotional it made her really feel, as a listener and as a musician, together with singing within the Bach Choir.

Her tastes have been eclectic – selecting Mozart’s Ave Verum Corpus as her favourite piece on BBC Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs – but additionally later talking of her liking for gangsta rap.

In later years, she stepped again from utilizing her royal HRH title and spent extra time working to enhance music schooling for younger individuals.

As Katharine Kent, or Mrs Kent, she lived one thing of a double life, working from the mid-Nineteen Nineties as a part-time music teacher at Wansbeck Primary School in Kingston upon Hull, with out dad and mom or pupils figuring out about her royal background.

She spoke of gifted youngsters trapped by deprivation – describing “estates with Berlin Partitions round them” – and subsequently arrange a charity to assist younger individuals get entry to studying devices.

The duchess espoused the “energy of music to present confidence and self-belief” and stated of her time as a trainer: “My connection will all the time be there. I like these youngsters, I like East Hull, I would not have stayed there for 13 years if I hadn’t.”

She is survived by her husband, the Duke of Kent, aged 89, and their two sons and a daughter.