Bosom buddies become royal godparents | The Sunday Times
Link to the Sunday Times - limited access so I'm just trying to put together a summary (daresay it will be in the DM tomorrow)
SUMMARY
The decision by the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge to choose friends from their school and university days to be godparents to their son is just their latest break with royal tradition.
The couple have spurned the usual list of royal grandees and opted for relative unknowns: Boyd and Emilia d’Erlanger. They have been chosen along with Hugh van Cutsem, one of the duke’s oldest childhood friends, because they will be able to give George a sense of stability and normality as he grows up, according to royal sources.
The choices were made jointly by the couple and are in stark contrast to William’s own godparents at his christening in 1982: the former King Constantine of Greece, Princess Alexandra, the Honourable Lady Ogilvy, the Duchess of Westminster, Lady Susan Hussey, Lord Romsey and Sir Laurens van der Post.
The Cambridges have already moved the ceremony on October 23 from the traditional venue of the music room at Buckingham Palace to the more intimate Chapel Royal in St James’s Palace.
The couple’s choice of godparents sends a clear signal that for the younger royals it is friendship, not social status, that counts.
A royal source said: “They are rather unexpected off-the-wall choices for godparents — not the usual suspects of William’s closest friends who we anticipated. The two of them [the Cambridges] have carefully chosen and agreed them together.”
Boyd, 31, is a partner at the fund management firm Smith & Williamson and is a friend of William’s from Eton.
He was in the same St Andrews hall of residence as the couple during their first year and studied history of art with Kate. The three became firm friends, moving into a flat together during their second year where William and Kate’s relationship began.
For their final two years at university, Boyd also shared Balgove House with the couple. It was a rented farmhouse on the Strathtyrum Estate near St Andrews.
D’Erlanger, also 31, is the co-founder of d’Erlanger and Sloan, the London-based interior design company, and is a long-term friend of William as well as having known Kate since their schooldays at Marlborough College.
She maintained a close friendship with both William and Kate during their brief split in 2007 and accompanied Kate on holiday to Ibiza after the break-up.
Married to David Jardine- Paterson, the son of a Scottish landowner and another friend of William’s from Eton, she is understood to have been advising the duchess on the renovation of the couple’s new quarters in Kensington Palace.
The best known of the three, van Cutsem, 39, is one of the duke’s oldest friends, with close links to the royal family.
(His late father, also called Hugh, was a close friend of the Prince of Wales from their days at Cambridge University and Prince Charles attended his funeral last month with William and Harry.
William was an usher at Hugh van Cutsem’s wedding in 2005 to Rose Astor. He is also godfather to their daughter Grace, who was a flower girl at the royal wedding and almost stole the show when she covered her ears on the Buckingham Palace balcony as William and Kate kissed in front of cheering crowds.
Contenders for the three remaining godparents include Oliver Baker and Alasdair Coutts-Wood, both close friends from St Andrews, who also shared Balgove House with William and Kate.
Alicia Fox-Pitt, another of Kate’s Marlborough friends, could be in the running, together with Virginia Fraser and Olivia Bleasdale, who were both friends of the couple at St Andrews.
Among those who were strongly tipped but have now been ruled out are Thomas van Straubenzee and James Meade, joint best men at the Cambridges’ wedding, Jamie Lowther-Pinkerton, who until recently was principal private secretary to William, Kate and Harry, and Tiggy Pettifer, a former nanny to the princes.
A very interesting read indeed.
