(Jenico) Nicholas Dudley Preston, 17th Viscount Gormanston (born 19 November 1939), is an Anglo-Irish aristocrat and British hereditary peer, who sat on the Conservative & Unionist benches in the House of Lords (as Baron Gormanston) until 1999. [1]
Lord Gormanston is styled the Premier Viscount of Ireland, his title being created by Edward IV in 1478. [2]
The only son and heir of the 16th Viscount Gormanston (1914–1940) and Pamela Hanly (1917–1975), only daughter and heiress of Captain Edward Hanly, [3] of Avonmore House, Co. Wicklow [4] and Lady Marjorie Feilding (daughter of the 9th Earl of Denbigh), he succeeded in the family titles before his first birthday. [5]
His father, the 16th Viscount Captain Jenico Preston, King's Own Yorkshire Light Infantry (who married Pamela Hanly in 1939), served in WWII being killed in action [6] at Dunkirk in 1940. [7]
His grandfather, the 15th Viscount Gormanston JP DL , a prominent Irish landowner (of about 11,000 acres), [8] served as a Lieutenant in the 15th (Prince of Wales' Own Civil Service Rifles) Bn, The London Regiment. His maternal great-grandfather was General Sir William Butler, of Bansha Castle, County Tipperary, and his great-grandmother was the celebrated Victorian painter, Elizabeth Thompson (later Lady Butler). The diplomat, the 14th Viscount Gormanston, was his paternal great-grandfather.
The ancestral seat, Gormanston Castle in County Meath, Ireland, was sold to the Franciscan Order of Friars Minor (OFM) in 1947, becoming Gormanston College. [9]
A Roman Catholic as with his recusant ancestors, he was educated at the Benedictine school of Downside, Somerset.
A socialite, Lord Gormanston became a connoisseur of art, being elected FRSA . [10]
Lord Gormanston was one of the few former members of the House of Lords to be in place for both the accessions of Queen Elizabeth II and King Charles III. [a]
In 1974, Viscount Gormanston married firstly, Eva-Antonie Landzianowska (1955–1984), [11] daughter of Feliks Landzianowski (1907–2001), [12] by whom he has two sons: [13]
He married secondly on 2 November 1997 Lucy Arabella Grenfell (née Fox; 1960), only daughter of Edward Fox and Tracy Reed. [21]
Lord and Lady Gormanston live in Kensington, London.
