1. Alan Lascelles was thus a cousin of Henry Lascelles, 6th Earl of Harewood, who married Mary, Princess Royal, sister of his employers, Edward VIII and George VI.
20 Facts About Alan Lascelles
1. 2.
Alan Lascelles's mother was the daughter of Sir Adolphus Liddell, son of Thomas Liddell, 1st Baron Ravensworth.
3.
Alan Lascelles returned to Britain and was appointed Assistant Private Secretary to Edward, Prince of Wales, in 1920, serving in that role until resigning in 1929, citing differences with the prince.
4.
Alan Lascelles became the Assistant Private Secretary to George V in the latter months of 1935.
5.
Alan Lascelles soldiered on through Edward's short reign and the protracted crisis of the abdication in 1936.
6.
Alan Lascelles was made a Knight Commander of the Royal Victorian Order by George VI during the 1939 royal tour of Canada and the United States, which he had helped to arrange and manage.
7.
Alan Lascelles had been appointed a Companion of the Order of the Bath in 1937, was promoted to Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath in 1944 and to Knight Grand Cross on his retirement in 1953.
8.
Alan Lascelles had been appointed a Member of the Royal Victorian Order in 1926, before his promotion to Knighthood in that Order in 1939.
9.
Alan Lascelles was made a Companion of the Order of St Michael and St George in 1933.
10.
Alan Lascelles was sworn of the Privy Council, entitling him to the prefix "Right Honourable", in 1943.
11.
In 1943, Alan Lascelles was promoted from Assistant Private Secretary to George VI to his Private Secretary, after effecting the forced resignation of Alec Hardinge, and served until the King's death in 1952.
12.
Alan Lascelles was Keeper of the Royal Archives from 1943 to 1953.
13.
Alan Lascelles retired from his 27 years of royal service on the last day of 1953, at the age of 66.
14.
Alan Lascelles had been asked by then Prime Minister Sir Winston Churchill twice and by the Queen once whether he would like to go to the House of Lords with a hereditary peerage but he declined.
15.
Alan Lascelles did accept appointment as a Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath which, he said, "rated much higher than a peerage".
16.
In 1955 Alan Lascelles was very supportive of James Pope-Hennessy's commission to write an official biography of Queen Mary, although initially he wondered why and by whom this unknown young writer had been commissioned.
17.
Alan Lascelles's papers are now held in the Churchill Archives Centre at Churchill College, Cambridge.
18.
On 16 March 1920, Alan Lascelles married Joan Frances Vere Thesiger, daughter of Frederic Thesiger, 1st Viscount Chelmsford, a former Viceroy of India and First Lord of the Admiralty.
19.
Alan Lascelles died on 10 August 1981 at Kensington Palace at the age of 94.
20.
Alan Lascelles is portrayed by Paul Brooke in the 2002 film Bertie and Elizabeth and Pip Torrens in the 2016 Netflix series The Crown.