Life
Lascelles (usually pronounced to rhyme with "tassels") was known to his intimates as "Tommy." He was born the son of Commander The Hon. Frederick Canning Lascelles and Frederica Maria Liddell, and the grandson of Henry Lascelles, 4th Earl of Harewood. He was thus a cousin of Henry Lascelles, 6th Earl of Harewood, who married Mary, the Princess Royal, sister of Alan's employers Edward VIII and George VI.
After schooling at Marlborough College and Trinity College, Oxford, Lascelles served in France with the Bedfordshire Yeomanry during the First World War, after which he became the Aide-de-Camp to his brother-in-law Lord Lloyd, the Governor of Bombay from 1919 to 1920.
He then returned to England and was appointed Assistant Private Secretary to the Prince of Wales. From 1931 to 1935 he was Secretary to the Governor General of Canada. He became the Assistant Private Secretary to King George V and later King George VI in 1936, and in 1942 rose to Private Secretary to King George VI. In 1952 he became Private Secretary to Queen Elizabeth II, a role he held until 1953.
He was also Keeper of the Royal Archives from 1943 to 1953.
His papers are now held in the Churchill Archives Centre, in Great Britain.
He died at the age of 94.
Read more about this topic: Alan Lascelles
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“I call heaven and earth to witness against you today that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Choose life so that you and your descendants may live...”
—Bible: Hebrew, Deuteronomy 30:19.
“Tell me not, in mournful numbers,
Life is but an empty dream!—
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And things are not what they seem.
Life is real! Life is earnest!
And the grave is not its goal;
Dust thou art, to dust returnest,
Was not spoken of the soul.”
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“Professors of literature, who for the most part are genteel but mediocre men, can make but a poor defense of their profession, and the professors of science, who are frequently men of great intelligence but of limited interests and education, feel a politely disguised contempt for it; and thus the study of one of the most pervasive and powerful influences on human life is traduced and neglected.”
—Yvor Winters (1900–1968)