Lord Nicholas Hervey - Family

Family

Lord Nicholas's mother was the only child of the wealthy 8th Earl Fitzwilliam; she was 13 years old when her father died in a small aircraft crash that also killed his intended second wife Kathleen Cavendish, Marchioness of Hartington, sister of John F. Kennedy, in 1948. Lady Juliet was the sole heir to her father's estate, then estimated at £45 million. As an adult, she ran a family stud farm.

Nicholas' father was Victor Hervey, 6th Marquess of Bristol. He also had significant inherited wealth, which he invested into new, albeit minor, businesses. He was once tagged "Mayfair's No. 1 Playboy," in a series of "life story" articles he authored after he served a gaol sentence for jewel robbery, wherein he was convicted as a "cat burglar" of wealthy women in his youth.

The Marquessate of Bristol has many notable and notorious members—including bank robbers, bigamists, politicians, arts patrons and memoirists—and has a noted history of homosexuality and bisexuality extending back hundreds of years.

Nicholas Hervey's parents married in 1960, his father for the second time, his mother for the first. He was the only child of that marriage. Lord Nicholas was a descendent of William the Conqueror on both his mother's and father's side, and his consanguinity index is .1%.

He was heir to the title Marquess of Bristol from his elder half-brother John, the 7th Marquess, the only child of his father's first marriage. His father was noted for being cruel to his eldest son but having good relations with Nicholas. "He treated his son and heir with indifference and contempt," said British-American writer Anthony Haden-Guest. This brother was a tabloid fixture, known for his heroin and cocaine addictions, lavish parties, purported homosexuality and use of male prostitutes; he served two gaol terms for drugs offences and went through an estimated excess of 30 million pounds, comprising both inheritance and investments, and died at 44 with only £5,000 left. Nicholas and his elder brother John were fond of one another.

When Nicholas was eleven years old, his mother divorced his father and married his 60-year-old friend, Somerset de Chair (d. 1996), with whom she had a daughter, Helena de Chair, five years later. In 1996, she married a third time and is now known as Lady Juliet Tadgell.

Nicholas's father's final marriage was to his private secretary, Yvonne Sutton. The couple had three additional children, such that Nicholas's other half-siblings were Fred, the 8th Marquess, at whose Catholic christening Nicholas stood godfather, and the media personalities Lady Victoria Hervey and Lady Isabella Hervey (the face of Playboy UK).