Edward Ford

Sir Edward William Spencer Ford (24 July 1910 – 19 November 2006) was a courtier in the Royal Households of King George VI and Queen Elizabeth II. He is perhaps best known for writing to Elizabeth II’s private secretary regarding the 40th year of her reign, having hoped that the Queen would experience an annus mirabilis but instead finding 1992 an annus horribilis. She used the phrase in a speech to describe a year in which one of her four children was divorced, two more formally separated from their spouses, and Windsor Castle caught fire. Family background Ford was a fraternal twin. His family has strong connections with the Anglican church and with cricket. His father was the Very Reverend Lionel Ford, headmaster of Repton and later of Harrow, and Dean of York from 1926 to 1932; his mother Mary Catherine was a daughter of the Right Reverend Edward Stuart Talbot, Bishop of Winchester, and education campaigner Lavinia Lyttelton; an uncle was Neville Stuart Talbot Bishop of Pretoria; another uncle was a royal chaplain. His brother Neville Ford played cricket for Derbyshire, and three of his uncles played first-class cricket, including Francis Ford who played for England. Education Ford was at West Downs School and was then a King's Scholar at Eton. He won an open scholarship to read Classics at New College, Oxford (where he was elected an Honorary Fellow in 1982). He obtained a first in Mods and second in Greats. Career He was tutor to John Lascelles, son of Sir Alan Lascelles, Private Secretary to King George VI, in 1933. He was a Harmsworth scholar at Middle Temple, before tutoring Prince (later King) Farouk of Egypt from 1935–36. He was called to the Bar in 1937 and briefly practised law until 1939.