https://www.thetimes.co.uk/imageser...3e62724b847e.jpg?crop=380,570,0,0&resize=1200
Peter Francis Middleton was born in Leeds in 1920, the third son of Richard Middleton and Olive Lupton, a family of wealthy mill owners and solicitors.
After early tutoring at home with a governess where he developed a love of music and nature, Middleton attended Clifton College, Bristol before gaining a place at Oxford to study English. But within months of his arrival there he joined the RAF Volunteer Reserve.
He was posted to Canada as a flying instructor and it was two and a half years before he finally saw action, joining 605 Squadron at Manston, Kent, in August 1944. Flying Mosquito fighter-bombers, he was detailed to try to tip the wings of German doodlebugs to divert them away from devastating London.
As Germany collapsed he was based in Belgium, Holland and Germany itself before being demobbed in 1946.
His first postwar job was with the Lancashire Aircraft Corporation. In Leeds he courted and later married Valerie Glassborow, a bank manager’s daughter. He was 6ft 2in tall; she was nearly a foot shorter, vivacious and enjoyed all his jokes. They had four sons.
Well before his retirement he had discovered another love: sailing. It had started with the building of small dinghies — the first in the family dining room — that he sailed with his sons on the Thames.
In August 1976 he and his wife set sail from the Hamble in their 35ft ketch Nainjaune to cross the Atlantic. They spent Christmas in the Caribbean and then headed for the Bahamas where the following February, ten miles of the coast of the tiny island of Mayaguana, with a terrible crash they hit a reef.
The boat could not be saved and gathering a few essentials they set out for shore in their life raft. Landing on a deserted beach they made themselves comfortable for the night, dining off Scotch and ginger biscuits. The following day they found the main town.
The Mayaguana people were soon chugging out to examine the broken hull of the Nainjaune and her equipment. The Middletons were invited to visit a local family and found themselves being unabashedly served tea on crockery “borrowed” from their boat.
Returning to England, Middleton continued to sail for the next 20 years. His grandchildren recall the best of times being on the boat when they would respond to his every command by crying out irreverently “Aye, aye, Kipper”. They never tired of spreading the underside of his toast with peanut butter, which he hated but responded to with theatrical good humour.
Middleton had a boundless enthusiasm for life. As well as a keen sailor he was a photographer, writer and carpenter, making tiny tables and chairs for his grandchildren, a pirate ship for them to play on in the garden and repairing pews in his local church.
His 90th birthday party was attended by the whole family and three additional guests, including Prince William. His granddaughter Catherine visited him again on her return from Kenya where Prince William proposed to her last month.
Middleton’s wife Valerie died in 2006 and he leaves four sons and five grandchildren.
- Peter Middleton’s obituary, 27 November 2010.
We know that Michael's children are Catherine, Philippa and James.
Richard's son is Adam, godfather of Princess Charlotte and who is Peter Middleton's fifth grandchild? (and whose child is he/she?)