Bruce Shand - Later Life

Later Life

Shand returned to England in 1945, declining an opportunity to continue service in the Army. On 2 January 1946, he married the Hon Rosalind Maud Cubitt, daughter of the 3rd Baron Ashcombe and the former Sonia Keppel. They had two daughters, Camilla and Annabel, and a son, Mark. He had many business interests, but was most notably a partner in Block, Grey and Block, a firm of wine merchants in South Audley Street, Mayfair, later joining Ellis, Son and Vidler of Hastings and London. He kept a house in Kensington and a second in Plumpton in Sussex, but later moved to Dorset.

Shand was a Deputy Lieutenant of Sussex, and Vice-Lieutenant of East Sussex from 1974 until 1992. He remained passionate about fox hunting, and was Master of Southdown Fox Hounds from 1956 to 1975. He was Exon and later Adjutant and Clerk of the Cheque of the Queen's Body Guard of the Yeomen of the Guard. He wrote a memoir of his war entitled Previous Engagements, and was a reviewer of military books for Country Life.

Shand maintained a public silence throughout his daughter's relationship with the Prince of Wales, particularly after the relationship became public knowledge.

His wife, the Hon Rosalind Shand, died 14 July 1994 aged 72, having long suffered from osteoporosis. He died from cancer in 2006, aged 89 at his home in Stourpaine, Dorset, with his family at his bedside. After a funeral service at the Holy Trinity Church in Stourpaine on 16 June, Shand's body was cremated.