| Honorific Prefix: | The Right Honourable | ||||
| The Earl of Snowdon | |||||
| Birth Name: | David Albert Charles Armstrong-Jones | ||||
| Birth Date: | 3 November 1961 | ||||
| Birth Place: | Clarence House, London, England | ||||
| Father: | Antony Armstrong-Jones, 1st Earl of Snowdon | ||||
| Mother: | Princess Margaret | ||||
| Occupation: | Entrepreneur | ||||
| Module: |
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David Albert Charles Armstrong-Jones, 2nd Earl of Snowdon (born 3 November 1961), styled as Viscount Linley until 2017 and known professionally as David Linley, is a member of the British royal family, an English furniture maker, and honorary chairman of the auction house Christie's UK.[1] He is the only son of Antony Armstrong-Jones, 1st Earl of Snowdon and Princess Margaret, and through his mother a grandson of King George VI and first cousin of King Charles III. When he was born, he was 5th in the line of succession to the British throne;, he is 25th, and the highest who is not a descendant of Queen Elizabeth II, his aunt.
David Albert Charles Armstrong-Jones was born on 3 November 1961, in Clarence House, London, the son of Princess Margaret and Antony Armstrong-Jones, 1st Earl of Snowdon. He was baptised on 19 December 1961 in the Music Room at Buckingham Palace.[2] [3] His godparents were his aunt Queen Elizabeth II, Lady Elizabeth Cavendish, Patrick Plunket, 7th Baron Plunket, Lord Rupert Nevill, and Simon Phipps.[4]
At the age of five, Linley began lessons in the Buckingham Palace schoolroom with his cousin Prince Andrew.[5] He went to several independent schools: first, to Gibbs Pre-Preparatory School in Kensington in London, now known as Collingham College.[6] Followed by the pre-preparatory section of Ashdown House School, East Sussex, then on to Millbrook House School, near Abingdon, in Oxfordshire,[7] and finally to Bedales School, where he developed a passion for arts and crafts. From 1980 to 1982 he studied at Parnham House in the small town of Beaminster in Dorset, for craftsmen in wood.[8]
He has one full sister, Lady Sarah Chatto (née Armstrong-Jones), and two paternal half-sisters, Lady Frances von Hofmannsthal (née Armstrong-Jones) and Polly Fry.[9] He also has a half-brother, Jasper Cable-Alexander, son of his father and Melanie Cable-Alexander, an editor at Country Life magazine.
Linley opened a workshop in Dorking, where he designed and made furniture for three years before setting up his own company, David Linley Furniture Limited (now known as Linley), where he makes bespoke furniture, upholstery, and interior design products known for their neoclassical appearance and use of inlaid woods. He has written numerous books and lectured around the world.[10] His work is sold in retail stores in Belgravia, Harrods, and overseas, including the Bespoke Collection.[11] He borrowed from his company by causing it to make loans, acquiring some £3 million in debts, a situation eventually resolved by the sale of controlling shares for £4 million in 2012;[12] he thereby lost control of the company.[13]
On 1 December 2006, Linley took up the post of chairman of Christie's UK, having joined the board in 2005 as a non-executive director. In 2015, his position was changed to honorary chairman of Christie's EMERI (Europe, Middle East, Russia, and India).[14]
Linley dabbled in the restaurant business with his friend and second cousin Patrick Lichfield; they established a restaurant called Deals in Chelsea, London.[15] According to Princess Margaret's biographer, Theo Aronson, Linley had a flair for the networking aspect of business and was successful in getting people to come through the doors.
Linley's father was originally a member of the House of Lords by virtue of his being granted an hereditary peerage. When the House of Lords Act 1999 unseated most hereditary peers, those whose peerage had been newly created for them (as opposed to inherited from a relative) were offered life peerages to allow them to remain in the Lords. Accordingly, the first Earl Snowdon was also created Baron Armstrong-Jones, and retained his seat in the Lords until his death in 2017, whereupon his son inherited the earldom but not the life peerage or the seat.
In 2018, Linley became a candidate in a by-election to fill a vacancy among the ranks of the crossbench peers.[16] Only hereditary peers are eligible to stand in this election, and only the 31 currently sitting in the Lords as crossbenchers are eligible to vote. Unlike other candidates, he did not write a statement accompanying his announcement of candidacy.[17] He later withdrew from consideration for the seat. Reportedly, his candidacy had "raised eyebrows" due to his relation to the royal family.[18]
In 1990, Linley took legal action against the Today newspaper for an article accusing him of "rowdy behaviour in a pub". He was eventually awarded £30,000 in damages.[19]
On 8 October 1993, Linley married the Hon. Serena Alleyne Stanhope (born 1 March 1970, Limerick, Ireland), daughter of Viscount Petersham (later the 12th Earl of Harrington) at St. Margaret's Church, Westminster. There were 650 guests in attendance.[20] Through her father, Stanhope descends from Henry FitzRoy, 1st Duke of Grafton, one of the illegitimate children of Charles II of England.[21]
He and his wife have two children:
From 2000 until 2002, Linley, his wife and son lived at Kensington Palace with his mother, Princess Margaret, in her declining years.[22] On 8 April 2002, Linley, along with the Prince of Wales, the Duke of York, and the Earl of Wessex, "stood guard" at the lying-in-state of their grandmother, Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother.[23] This Vigil of the Princes had taken place only once before, during the lying-in-state of George V in 1936.
In October and November 2007, rumours circulated on the internet suggesting that a member of the British royal family was the victim of blackmail. The first confirmation that the royal in the extortion attempt was Viscount Linley came from the journalist Nicholas Davies.[24] Ian Strachan and Sean McGuigan tried to extort £50,000 from Linley in September by threatening to release video footage showing sex acts and cocaine use (allegedly by Linley and a male royal aide) on a mobile phone. Linley contacted the police. Strachan and McGuigan were arrested after showing their video footage to an undercover detective, and at trial were sentenced to five years in prison.[25]
In 2011, Linley's daughter, Lady Margarita Armstrong-Jones, was a bridesmaid at the wedding of Prince William and Catherine Middleton. In 2012, his son, styled by courtesy as Viscount Linley since January 2017, was appointed by the Queen as a page of honour.[26] The family has three homes: a flat in Chelsea, London; a cottage on the Daylesford estate in Gloucestershire;[27] and the Château d'Autet[28] in the Luberon, Provence.
He and his wife separated in February 2020, and a spokesperson confirmed they are to obtain a divorce.[29]