Britain’s most eligible bachelor will get married: RICHARD KAY reveals all

He is the catch of the year, probably the decade. Tall, handsome, intelligent and loyal, with warm eyes that hide a natural reserve.

All this would be enough for most women, but there is more: Hugh Grosvenor, 33, the 7th Duke of Westminster, is also extremely wealthy. So the marriage next week of the country’s most eligible bachelor to 31-year-old banker’s daughter Olivia Henson is unsurprisingly the subject of considerable curiosity — and outright envy.

For not only will the slim brunette, who most recently has been working as an accounts manager for a sustainable food enterprise, be instantly elevated to the upper ranks of the aristocracy with the title of duchess, she will also be marrying into a family fortune of £10billion, which places her husband as Britain’s richest man under the age of 40.

Ample reason, you might think, to give any bride-to-be a serious case of pre-wedding nerves. But then consider also the guests, drawn from some of the most well-born families in the country and with Prince William acting as usher.

And it is that royal ingredient which has added the most piquant — and trickiest — element of all. For Grosvenor is close friends with both the Prince of Wales and Prince Harry. He is, uniquely, godfather to Prince George and to Harry’s son Archie and he is the godson of the King.

No wonder invitations to the nuptials have been so eagerly anticipated. But the promise of it being the backdrop to a royal reconciliation between the warring brothers or the more likely probability of an awkward encounter, has been avoided.

There are suggestions that steering clear of a weekend and choosing a Friday for the wedding was part of an effort to try to head off any chance of fraternal unpleasantness.

Possibly, but then Harry and Meghan fortuitously were unable to attend. Even so, the rumours that swirled over the planning of the wedding would test the most cool-headed of wives-to-be.

But then Olivia, much like her modest fiance who refuses to let his riches define him, is remarkably low-key.

Despite the grandeur of the occasion — a wedding ceremony with some 400 guests in historic Chester Cathedral and reception in the Grosvenors’ vast Cheshire home, Eaton Hall, built in the style of a French chateau — the couple are approaching their big day with real equanimity.

Perhaps because of the intrigue of the event, which will see many roads between the 11,000-acre estate and the cathedral closed to traffic, they have decided to keep much of the details private.

Even the engagement ring, described modestly as ‘nothing flashy’, summed up this refreshingly unshowy couple.

What we do know, however, is that guests will not be arriving with presents. The couple, who have everything that money can buy, have issued a strict ‘no gifts’ instruction. The wedding celebrations will also include two receptions, a main event on Friday following the cathedral service and another more intimate gathering the following day for family and close friends.

Locals on the duke’s estate are also marking the occasion. In nearby Eccleston, three times winner of the Best Kept Village competition, residents are holding what they call a ‘family fuddle’ — a bring your own tea party in the village hall. There will be a children’s entertainer, a singer, a raffle and even a cake bought from the discount warehouse Costco.

Meanwhile, Chester will be decorated with 100,000 flowers planted in displays across the city throughout the summer, paid for by the duke himself to mark his marriage. Afterwards, the couple will donate their wedding flowers to local charities and organisations.

Other details are being kept under wraps. ‘While they appreciate the interest — and are grateful for the many kind messages they have received — they want the wedding to remain as private as possible,’ says a friend of the couple. ‘Chester is important to them and it means a lot to them to marry there.’

In contrast, Hugh’s father Gerald, who died suddenly in 2016, did not marry his bride Natalia Phillips at the family seat. The ceremony in 1978 was at Luton Hoo, Natalia’s — or Tally’s — Bedfordshire family home. It was, in the tradition of Westminster weddings, a lavish affair. Tally, Hugh’s mother, wore a stunning antique tiara which Gerald had bought to celebrate her Russian heritage.

Royal guests were out in force, among them Prince and Princess Michael of Kent — newlyweds themselves — Princess Alice of Gloucester and Lord Mountbatten, whose granddaughter India Hicks was a bridesmaid, a role she famously repeated when Prince Charles married Lady Diana Spencer three years later. 

Twenty six years on from their wedding, Gerald and Tally’s eldest daughter Lady Tamara married King Charles’s godson Edward van Cutsem in 2004, with the Queen and Prince Philip among the guests.

There was, however, some royal awkwardness back then, too. To avoid the humiliation of being unable to sit with the then Mrs Camilla Parker-Bowles because of their unmarried status, Prince Charles found a royal engagement to detain him elsewhere. It was a diplomatic absence, perhaps not dissimilar from that of Prince Harry.

The royal connections between the families run deep. Tally, who following her son’s wedding will also have a new title (instead of the Duchess of Westminster, she will be styled the dowager duchess) is Prince William’s godmother while her middle daughter Lady Edwina, who is married to TV historian Dan Snow, was a godchild of Princess Diana. 

For many years the Queen and Philip spent the night of their November wedding anniversary at Luton Hoo, the home of Tally’s parents. Despite his own close links to the family as godfather of the groom, King Charles will not be attending this Westminster wedding. 

He is still undergoing cancer treatment and the day before the ceremony he will be leading commemorations at the 80th anniversary of the D-Day landings in Normandy.

Given this rich family history, the highly eligible Hugh — known to friends as Hughie — would have had the pick of any blue-blooded woman. But if there were fortune hunters beating paths to his door, well, they would have been mightily disappointed. 

For you would look in vain for any sign of profligacy or a playboy lifestyle. To be fair, he did let his hair down for his 21st birthday in 2012 when 800 guests, including Prince Harry, caroused through the night at Eaton Hall, where the hip-hop duo Rizzle Kicks played and the comedian Michael McIntyre entertained. The bill was reported to have been a cool £5million.

But because of his natural modesty, he has approached matrimony with a degree of caution.

As for that fortune, it was once said of a previous duke it had been more of a hindrance than help. Hugh’s own father once described his son as having been ‘born with the longest silver spoon anyone can have’, adding: ‘But he can’t go through life sucking on it.’

The Grosvenor Group has land holdings that include more than 1,500 properties in 60 countries. At its heart are 300 golden acres of Mayfair and Belgravia, the Eaton estate in Cheshire, and the 23,000 acre Abbeystead estate in Lancashire.

There are also shooting estates in Scotland and Spain, a shopping centre in Stockholm, a residential tower in Tokyo, an island near Vancouver, and a significant chunk of Silicon Valley in California.

Art works by Velazquez, Rembrandt and Lucian Freud are reputed to hang on the walls of the family home.

Yet despite all this great wealth the duke, who was 25 when he inherited his father’s title, does not have complete control over the company that bears his name.

In the 1950s, the Grosvenor family placed their key assets in trusts to protect the estate from costly divorces, spendthrift heirs and taxes.

What this means is that even if he wanted to sell some desirable property for a bit of extra spending money, the duke could not do it without the consent of the Grosvenor trustees, and they wouldn’t agree to it if it threatened the estate’s financial wellbeing.

This approach — the very opposite of entitled privilege often encountered among the super-rich — was reflected in other aspects of the young aristocrat’s life.

His father, the 6th duke, having himself been bullied and miserable at Harrow, kept his own children closer to home.

After the local state primary school, Hugh went to the private but low-key co-ed Ellesmere College in Shropshire, noted for its relaxed atmosphere. Academically bright, he was a prefect and head of house and played for the school cricket team.

He went on to Newcastle University, where he read countryside management, becoming the first Duke of Westminster to secure a degree.

It is this level-headed modesty, say friends, which makes him such a perfect match for his bride. So what do we know of the girl who has won his heart? With her long brown hair, stylish but understated dress and slim figure, Olivia drew comparisons with a young Kate Middleton; another reason why their nuptials are being talked of almost as a royal wedding.

Like the Princess of Wales, she studied at Marlborough College, where her contemporaries included Princess Beatrice.

But unlike Kate, she is no commoner. She is descended from the Hoare banking family and there are links to the Marquesses of Bristol and the Dukes of Rutland. An uncle, Charles Gordon, is Scotland’s most senior freemason.

Her father Rupert Henson is head of equity sales at HSBC and her mother Caroline works in education. Olivia, who has two younger siblings, speaks Spanish and Italian having read Hispanic studies and Italian at Trinity College Dublin. (Before Marlborough, she was at the prestigious Dragon prep school in Oxford where a fellow pupil was actress Emma Watson.)

She then took jobs with sustainable food enterprises, including Belazu, where she currently works and which imports responsibly sourced ingredients for chefs from across Europe.

The message, whether intentional or not, is that she is a modern young woman, with her own interests. When she and Hugh appeared in Chester earlier this month to visit local charities, the pair’s ordinariness was on show as they talked about their plans to put down roots locally.

Of the story of their romance, they were giving little away. ‘They were natural, but they were also guarded and clearly private,’ says a figure who met them that day.

How very differently Hugh’s parents shared the news of their own betrothal 46 years ago. They met at a midsummer night’s ball at Blenheim Palace and they wanted the world to know about it and share in their happiness.

According to Gerald, it was on the stroke of midnight. ‘It was a fairytale setting,’ he later recalled. Tally, he said, ‘looked marvellous, tall and very striking and tremendously serene and beautiful.’

Grosvenor, who despite his good fortune had been afflicted by loneliness, had feared he might never marry. ‘Suddenly it goes click,’ he said. ‘Marriage is going to make the most marvellous difference.’

Their wedding day pictures were taken by Lord Lichfield, Queen Elizabeth’s cousin, who was then married to Grosvenor’s sister Leonora.

His position in the aristocracy may have been unassailable but the Grosvenor fortune did not bring Hughie’s father life-long happiness — he suffered from chronic depression and had a near-breakdown.

His marriage was also threatened when he was exposed as having used female escorts.

His son, however, is cut from a different cloth. No one doubts that for all its royal connections, his is a marriage that will bring him intense joy.

Additional reporting: Jan Disley