Buckingham Palace's Christmas celebrations will be put on hold as the Queen mourns the loss of one of her closest friends, Harry Fane, who has died aged 70.
Fane was a long-time fellow adventurer and business partner of her late brother Mark Shand before becoming one of London's top vintage jewelry dealers.
“He was one of Mark’s very best friends,” the queen’s son, Tom Parker Bowles, tells me.
“One of those rare people you were always happy to see.”
Fane, known as the man who knew more about Cartier than Cartier, was born the younger son of the 15th Earl of Westmorland – the Horse Master and Lord-in-waiting to Her Late Majesty the Queen – and Jane Barbara Findlay of the Findlay Baronets.
Buckingham Palace's Christmas celebrations will be put on hold as the Queen mourns the loss of one of her closest friends, Harry Fane, who has died aged 70
Fane was a long-time fellow adventurer and business partner of her late brother Mark Shand before becoming one of London's top vintage jewelry dealers
Fane trained at Sotheby's before he and Shand decided to go into fine art sales and founded their company Obsidian in 1978.
According to Shand, the couple spent the following years “like genteel swagmen in linen suits.”
“With bags of beautiful loot slung over our shoulders, we make our way to the rich and famous, to the riches old and new, in the greedy capitals of America: Caracas, New York, Dallas, Houston, Los Angeles, Palm Beach and Miami. ' he explained.
And although life was certainly picaresque, the two could not avoid one or two dramatic conflicts. When Fane and Shand were pursued by Indonesian paramilitaries with M16s in 1985 for buying human skulls and storing them in cookie jars, they only escaped because the translator they picked up at the Jakarta bus station reacted quickly.
The brilliant interpreter pointed to Fane and said, “This man is a friend of the Queen.”
He then turned to Shand and said: “That friend of the English Prime Minister” – Mark's uncle was actually the then Foreign Secretary Sir Geoffrey Howe. All three men were immediately released.
Fane leaves behind his wife Tessa Fane (68) and children Sam (34) and Sophie Jane (36).