Michael Middleton | |
---|---|
Born | Michael Francis Middleton 23 June 1949 Leeds, West Riding of Yorkshire, England |
Citizenship | United Kingdom |
Education | Clifton College |
Alma mater | University of Surrey (BSc) |
Occupation | Businessman |
Spouse | |
Children | |
Family | Middleton |
Michael Francis Middleton (born 23 June 1949) is a British businessman. He is the father of Catherine, Princess of Wales, Philippa Matthews and James Middleton.
Born in Leeds, Middleton was educated at the University of Surrey. He joined British Airways and worked as a flight dispatcher. In 1980, he married Carole Goldsmith, who founded Party Pieces, a mail-order party supply company. Middleton joined his wife at the company in 1989. Their eldest three grandchildren, Prince George, Princess Charlotte, and Prince Louis, are second, third and fourth in line to the British throne respectively. The Middleton family resides at Bucklebury Manor, in Berkshire.
Michael Francis Middleton was born in Leeds on 23 June 1949 into a wealthy family with connections to the landed gentry. He spent his early years in Moortown, Leeds. [1] [2] [3] [4] Royal historian Robert Lacey describes Middleton as having aristocratic kinship; his grandmother, Olive Christiana Middleton, was close to her second cousin Baroness Airedale (1868–1942). [5] [6] The Middleton family, including Michael's grandfather Richard Noël Middleton and his wife Olive, had played host to members of the British royal family in Leeds from the 1920s. [7] [8] [9] [10]
Middleton's mother was Valerie Middleton (née Glassborow, 1924–2006), who served as a VAD nurse and code-breaker during the Second World War. His father, Captain Peter Middleton (1920–2010), [11] was a pilot who served as an RAF fighter pilot during the Second World War. He flew alongside Prince Philip as co-pilot on a two-month flying tour of South America in 1962. British Pathé newsreel film shows Middleton alongside the prince during the tour. [12] [13] Middleton has three brothers: Richard (b. 1947), [14] Simon (b. 1952) and Nicholas (b. 1956). [15] [16] Richard's son, Adam Middleton, is godfather to Michael's granddaughter, Princess Charlotte. Adam's sister Lucy Middleton – a lawyer who, like her brother attended Bedales School – is godmother to Michael's grandson, Prince Louis. [17] [18] [19] [20]
Like his father and grandfather, Middleton was educated at Clifton College, a public school in Bristol. At Clifton, all three generations of Middleton men boarded at Brown's House. [21] [22] The archives at Clifton record that Middleton was a praepostor, the title for a college prefect. Middleton represented Clifton at rugby in the 1st XV and also gained his tennis colours. [23] [24]
Following Clifton, Middleton attended the University of Surrey where he was awarded a BSc in 1973, according to the entry in the Clifton College Register 1962–1978, published by Clifton College Council in October 1979. [25] Middleton then commenced studies for six months at British European Airways' flight school to become a pilot [26] before switching to ground crew where he graduated from the company's internal course. He then worked for British Airways as a flight dispatcher. [27] [28]
Middleton met his future wife Carole while they were working for British Airways as ground crew. [29] By 1979, he was promoted to aircraft dispatcher, one of British Airways' Red Caps, [30] at London Heathrow Airport. They married on 21 June 1980 at St James's Parish Church in Dorney, Buckinghamshire, and later bought a Victorian house in Bradfield Southend near Reading, Berkshire. [31]
They have three children, two daughters and a son. Following the birth of Catherine Elizabeth (born 1982) and Philippa Charlotte (born 1983), [32] the family moved to Amman, Jordan, where Michael worked as a manager for BA from 1984 to 1986. [33] Their youngest child, James William, was born in 1987. [31]
Carole Middleton established Party Pieces, a company making party bags in 1987. It branched into party supplies and decorations by mail order and by 1995 was managed by both Michael and Carole Middleton and had moved into farm buildings at Ashampstead Common. The Middletons' business was successful, at that time, though later collapsed. [34] Along with trust funds inherited by Michael from his aristocrat grandmother, Olive Christiana Middleton (née Lupton), [35] the business enabled the family to continue the Middleton family tradition of sending their children to board at independent schools. [36] [37] All three children were sent to St Andrew's School, Pangbourne and both daughters were sent to Downe House School, a girls' boarding school in Cold Ash, and Marlborough College, in Wiltshire. James also attended Marlborough. [38]
The Middletons sold Party Pieces in May 2023 after it fell into administration. [39] The company owed £2.6 million to creditors when it collapsed, including £612,685 owed to HM Revenue and Customs, £218,749 owed to Royal Bank of Scotland for a Coronavirus Business Interruption loan, and £20,430 to an Afghan refugee whose small business was a supplier of helium gas. [40] [41] [42] The company's administrator's report stated that unsecured creditors were unlikely to be paid. [43]
In 1995, the Middletons purchased Oak Acre, a Tudor-style manor house in Bucklebury, Berkshire. [44] In 2002, the Middletons bought a flat in Chelsea, in which their children lived, which they eventually sold for £1.88 million in 2019. [45] [46] Carole and Michael Middleton are also the owners of a racehorse. By 2012, the Middletons had moved to Bucklebury Manor, a Georgian mansion with an 18-acre estate where their grandson Prince George spent his first few weeks. [47] [48] [49]
The British press created the term Upper Middleton Class to describe the family's social position; [50] [51] other reports refer to the family as being "minted [...] with a smattering of blue-blooded antecedents". [52] [53] Their wealth has resulted in the Middletons being reported to be multi-millionaires. [54] [55] [56]
Michael Middleton's grandmother, Olive Middleton was photographed at Headingley, in 1927, in the procession of dignitaries following Princess Mary who was patron of the Leeds Infirmary fundraising committee of which Olive was a member. Olive's husband, Richard Noel Middleton co-founded the Yorkshire Symphony Orchestra of which the Princess and her son George were patrons. [60] [61] Richard Noel Middleton and his cousin Ralph Middleton, grandson of Sir Henry Berney, 9th Baronet, were solicitors at the Leeds law firm Messrs Middleton & Sons founded by their ancestor, William Middleton in 1834. [62] Michael Middleton's great grandfather, politician Francis Martineau Lupton, [63] was the son of Yorkshire landowner Francis W. Lupton, Esq., whose marriage to educationalist Frances Lupton (née Greenhow) on 1 July 1847, is listed in The Patrician – John Burke's supplement to Burke's Peerage . [64] Her father was surgeon Thomas Michael Greenhow whose wife, Elizabeth, was a member of the Martineau family. Many portraits of Elizabeth's siblings, sociologist Harriet Martineau and James Martineau, a friend of Queen Victoria, are held in London's National Portrait Gallery. [65] [66]
Michael Middleton's family is linked, via his Leeds-born cousin, Lady Bullock (née Barbara Lupton), [67] to William Petty-FitzMaurice,1st Marquess of Lansdowne, Prime Minister of Great Britain between 1782 and 1783. Through his direct ancestor, Dame Anne Fairfax (née Gascoigne), Michael Middleton has several descents from King Edward III. [68]
The Rev. Thomas Davis, a Church of England hymn-writer is Michael Middleton's paternal ancestor. [69] [70]
|
Mary, Princess Royal was a member of the British royal family. She was the only daughter of King George V and Queen Mary, the sister of kings Edward VIII and George VI, and aunt of Elizabeth II. In the First World War, she performed charity work in support of servicemen and their families. She married Henry Lascelles, Viscount Lascelles, in 1922. Mary was given the title of Princess Royal in 1932. During the Second World War, she was Controller Commandant of the Auxiliary Territorial Service. The Princess Royal and the Earl of Harewood had two sons, George Lascelles, 7th Earl of Harewood, and Gerald David Lascelles.
Headingley is a suburb of Leeds, West Yorkshire, England, approximately two miles out of the city centre, to the north west along the A660 road. Headingley is the location of the Beckett Park campus of Leeds Beckett University and Headingley Stadium.
Catherine, Princess of Wales, is a member of the British royal family. She is married to William, Prince of Wales, heir apparent to the British throne.
Samantha Gwendoline Cameron, Baroness Cameron of Chipping Norton, is an English businesswoman. Until 2010, she was the creative director of Smythson of Bond Street. She is married to David Cameron, who served as Foreign Secretary from 2023 to 2024 and was formerly Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 2010 to 2016. She took on a part-time consultancy role at Smythson after he became prime minister.
Thomas Michael Greenhow MD MRCS FRCS was an English surgeon and epidemiologist.
Albert Ernest Kitson, 2nd Baron Airedale was a British peer. He was inter alia a director of Midland Bank.
Potternewton also Potter Newton is a suburb and parish between Chapeltown and Chapel Allerton in north-east Leeds, West Yorkshire, England. It is in the Chapel Allerton ward of Leeds City Council.
Chapel Allerton Hospital is located in the area of Chapel Allerton, Leeds, West Yorkshire, England and is operated by the Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust. The main entrance is on Chapeltown Road, with vehicle exits onto Harehills Lane and Newton Road.
Sir Rowland Hirst Barran was a British Liberal Party politician and Member of Parliament.
The Martineau family is an intellectual, business and political dynasty associated first with Norwich and later also London and Birmingham, England. Many members of the family have been knighted. Many family members were prominent Unitarians; a room in London's Essex Hall, the headquarters building of the British Unitarians, was named after them. Martineau Place in Birmingham's central business district was named in their honour.
Philippa Charlotte Matthews is a British socialite, author and columnist. She is the younger sister of Catherine, Princess of Wales.
James William Middleton is a British entrepreneur who is the younger brother of Catherine, Princess of Wales.
Carole Elizabeth Middleton is a British businesswoman. She is the mother of Catherine, Princess of Wales, Philippa Matthews, and James Middleton.
The Middleton family is an English family that has been related to the British royal family by marriage since the wedding of Catherine Middleton to Prince William in April 2011, when she became the Duchess of Cambridge. The couple have three children: George, Charlotte and Louis. Tracing their origins back to the Tudor era, the Middleton family of Yorkshire of the late 18th century were recorded as owning property of the Rectory Manor of Wakefield with the land passing down to solicitor William Middleton who established the family law firm in Leeds which spanned five generations. Some members of the firm inherited woollen mills after the First World War. By the turn of the 20th century, the Middleton family had married into the British nobility and, by the 1920s, the family were playing host to the British royal family.
Philip Christian Darnton, also known as Baron von Schunck, was a British composer and writer.
The Lupton family in Yorkshire achieved prominence in ecclesiastical and academic circles in England in the Tudor era through the fame of Roger Lupton, provost of Eton College and chaplain to Henry VII and Henry VIII. By the Georgian era, the family was established as merchants and ministers in Leeds. Described in the city's archives as "landed gentry, a political and business dynasty", they had become successful woollen cloth merchants and manufacturers who flourished during the Industrial Revolution and traded throughout northern Europe, the Americas and Australia.
Frances Elizabeth Lupton was an Englishwoman of the Victorian era who worked to open up educational opportunities for women. She married into the politically active Lupton family of Leeds, where she co-founded Leeds Girls' High School in 1876 and was the Leeds representative of the North of England Council for Promoting the Higher Education of Women.
Lupo was an English Cocker Spaniel owned by Prince William and Catherine, then known as Duke and Duchess of Cambridge. He was credited with raising the profile of the breed in the United Kingdom by The Kennel Club, and appeared in photographs alongside his owners' son, Prince George.
Gary Christopher Goldsmith is a British businessman and entrepreneur who is known for his work in IT recruitment. He is the brother of Carole Middleton and the maternal uncle of Catherine, Princess of Wales. In March 2024, he became the first housemate to be evicted on the twenty-third series of Celebrity Big Brother.
It was on this job at British Airways that Carole met Michael Middleton, a dispatcher, whose wealthy family hails from Leeds and which has ties to British aristocracy.
The success of that venture, along with a family inheritance ...
Michael Middleton, her (Kate Middleton's) father, spent his first two years (until the age of two) living at Moortown in Leeds
The family home was (in) the aptly named King Lane in an affluent suburb of Leeds (Moortown).
The Princess of Wales' great-grandmother, Olive Middleton, was close to her second cousin, Baroness Airedale, and was photographed in 1927 ...
(Chapter 6 "Party Pieces" and Source Notes) Michael E. Reed has published his fascinating research into the aristocratic ancestry of the Middleton family in the Telegraph and the Guardian and kindly supplied me with photographs of Baroness Airedale ["a distant ancestor of Michael Middleton" - Chapter 6, page 62] in her costume for the coronation of 1911.
As long ago as 1926, the Middleton family played host to the Queen's aunt, Princess Mary and another relative ... was a friend of George V
...Gertrude was the wealthy sister of the Duchess of Cambridge's great-grandfather [Richard] Noël Middleton, a solicitor, director of the family's textile firm and - through his founding of the Yorkshire Symphony Orchestra and his directorship of the Leeds Music Festival - on friendly terms with the Queen's aunt, Princess Mary
Her Royal Highness, Princess Mary attends a garden party held at Headingley Cricket Ground on 27th July 1927...The Lord Mayor, Alderman Hugh Lupton, Lady Clarke and Mrs R.X. Middleton bring up the rear of the procession
As Chairman of the Leeds General Infirmary, Henry (Dubs Middleton) had played host to Princess Mary when she visited the Leeds General Infirmary in 1932.
It (the photograph) shows the Duchess of Cambridge's grandfather, Captain Peter Middleton, with Prince Philip in 1962...flew regularly together on 2 month tour of South America...
Valerie and Peter [Middleton] celebrated the birth of their first child, a son Richard, who was born at the Willows Nursing Home in Broad Lane [Leeds] on 21 September 1947, making him a year older than Prince Charles.
... Michael, and his three brothers, Simon, Nicholas, and Richard and ...
...Simon Middleton, born August 24, 1952; Nicholas Middleton, born September 11, 1956
...Lucy is Middleton's cousin. She's a lawyer and sister of Adam Middleton, one of Princess Charlotte's godparents.
Lucy Middleton - Senior Publishing Lawyer at Penguin Random House ...Educated ...Bristol University...Bedales (1990-1995)
Adam Middleton. At Bedales: 1994-1999
Michael Middleton comes from a line of wealthy Yorkshire wool merchants, whose trust fund enabled him to send his three children to public school. His grandfather was a solicitor, his father a pilot. All three generations boarded at Clifton College in Bristol.
Michael left Brown's in 1967, and with his two brothers, was the third generation of Middletons at Clifton [Michael's father, Peter Francis Middleton and grandfather, Richard Noël Middleton also boarded at Brown's].
He (Michael Middleton) became a prefect himself, represented the school at rugby in the 1st XV and (gained) his tennis colours.
...Management consultant with MONITOR. Praepostor and Captain of unbeaten XV ...
Kate Middleton's father, Michael Middleton, was born in Leeds and attended university in Surrey.
... Michael joined BEA with the intention of becoming a pilot. After six months of flight school, he discovered he wasn't aviator material (his eye-sight was lacking) and opted instead to work on terra firma. ...
He (Michael Middleton) worked as a flight attendant prior to becoming a flight dispatcher (trainee) for British Airways
Mike began his career as an air steward and then became a flight dispatcher
She got a couple of entry-level jobs, first as a department store corporate trainee, then as a secretary for what would become British Airways, later trading a typewriter for the uniform of a ground crew member at the airline. The lingo, she says, was akin to learning another language and "almost like being at university". It was there that she met her future husband, Michael Middleton, who was six years older.
Dispatcher; comprises the Red Caps. These men and women can be described as Flight Managers. Each Red Cap takes ownership of a flight
He (R. Noel Middleton) attended Clifton College in Bristol as a boarder before heading to Leeds University and qualifying as a solicitor. He met and married aristocrat Olive Christiana Lupton.
It was in the Lake District in the summer of 1936 that Peter's mother Olive Lupton was rushed to hospital with peritonitis, dying on September 27, aged only 55, leaving behind a large trust fund for her descendants
This (flat) was bought with cash for £780,000 in 2002 and is worth some £1.2 million now (in 2011). Land Registry records show there is no mortgage on it.
According to the personal finance website lovemoney.com, the Middletons own stakes in racehorse shares, including those for horses Blue Java and Sohraab. The racehorses have reportedly earned the Middletons hundreds of thousands of pounds in prize money.
The couple showed their little Prince off in a photocall outside St Mary's Hospital, London before whisking him off to the Middleton family home.
...tunnelling their way into the higher echelons were the Upper Middletons, a new social grouping. Named in honour of their most famous family...
The Upper Middleton classes, or UMs, have their eyes on the prize: royalty at best ...
When Olive Middleton died in 1936, her will shows that she left a personal estate of £52,031. Olive's will also discloses that by 1936 there were three separate family trusts in operation controlling the bulk of her and her family's fortune
By 1936 there were three separate family trusts in operation controlling the bulk of her and her family's fortune
Arthur Middleton, Hawkhills, Chapel Allerton
This is indeed the case, and the older building was known as Gledhow Grange. It is this house that is the focus of this article. Confusingly, another demolished detached house had the same name and was only about 500 metres to the south on Gledhow Lane. It was this Gledhow Lane house that was occupied by William Middleton, the Duchess of Cambridge's ancestor. Shortly after 1870, Middleton changed the name of his house [Gledhow Grange] to Hawkhills.
A gentleman farmer, William Middleton Esq. had also lived in the area at Gledhow Grange Estate.
On 27th July 1927, at the Headingley Cricket Ground, near Leeds, Princess Mary was photographed as guest of honour at a garden party...Their niece, Olive Middleton (nee Lupton) was also photographed as one of the dignitaries in the procession walking behind Princess Mary. Olive had been on the Princess's fundraising committee for the Leeds Infirmary and her husband, Noel Middleton, had co-founded the Yorkshire Symphony Orchestra with both the Princess and her son George Lascelles as patrons.
The Princess carries an impressive bouquet of carnations and trailing fern and is escorted by former Leeds Lord Mayor Sir Edwin Airey, of the building company, William Airey and Son Leeds Ltd. The Lady Mayoress, Isabella Lupton escorts the Princess's husband, Viscount Lascelles, who is behind his wife. The Lord Mayor, Alderman Hugh Lupton, Lady Clarke and Mrs R.X. [N.] Middleton bring up the rear of the procession.
Frank (Francis Martineau Lupton) entered local politics and was elected a Councillor and then Alderman
Marriage – Francis Lupton, Esq., of Leeds to Frances Elizabeth Greenhow, only daughter of T. M. Greenhow, Esq., ...
(May 1857) My (H. Martineau) niece, Mrs (Frances) Lupton and her husband came for two days
My research revealed that Kate's second cousin, thrice removed, is Leeds-born Lady Bullock (Barbara May Lupton), a Cambridge graduate.
(Michael Middleton's family were) linked to earls, countesses, a former Prime Minister – William Petty-FitzMaurice, (the first) 1st Marquess of Lansdowne, who served as Prime Minister...
Her (Duchess of Cambridge's) father Michael is a descendant of Edward III
38561 – (Michael Middleton's ancestor) Agnes Gascoigne has several descents from King Edward III
Further research found that in 1917, Barbara Lupton had married Sir Christopher Bullock, a Cambridge scholar and descendant of William Petty FitzMaurice
He (Lord Shelburne, 1st Marquess of Lansdowne) is related to (Michael Middleton's daughter) Kate through Lady Barbara Bullock...
"Dame Anne Fairfax, my (Sir Thomas') wif" – as executrix and she is granted administration 11 April 1521.
... he discovered previously unpublished pictures in the depths of the Leeds archives showing the Potternewton Hall Estate where Olive ... (and) her blood cousin Baroness von Schunck ... grew up.
... the Duchess's great-grandmother, Olive Lupton (later Middleton), was born and grew up on the Potternewton Hall Estate near Leeds ... Darnton Lupton had lived at Potternewton Hall from the 1830s and had been Mayor of Leeds in 1844 ... From 1860 the (Barker) family had split their estate and sold Potternewton Hall to Frank Lupton, a wool merchant and mill owner, and the father of politician Francis Martineau Lupton (who was Olive's father and had himself grown up at Potternewton Hall). The Lupton family had been landowners since the 18th century and Frank's brother, Arthur Lupton, a wool merchant in the family firm, owned the adjacent Newton Hall Estate. Arthur had nurtured ideas for subdivisions on his adjoining estates since the 1850s and in 1870 decided to sell Newton Hall to Frank and his other brother, Darnton Lupton.
The snow-covered peaks featured on the Middleton family crest represent the Lake District and are perhaps also a reminder of one-year old Prince George's famous literary relative.