Lord Tryon, friend to the Royal family and husband of Kanga, the glamorous Australian linked to Prin

The 3rd Lord Tryon, who has died aged 78, was a longtime member of the inner circle surrounding the Royal family, but endured a more embarrassing connection when his wife was allegedly romantically involved with the Prince of Wales.

Anthony Tryon and Dale Harper, as she then was, the beautiful daughter of a wealthy Australian publisher, were married in April 1973 in the Chapel Royal at St James’s Palace with royal permission. Princess Margaret and Prince Michael of Kent were present.

The couple spent their honeymoon in Princess Margaret’s house on Mustique and, calling each other “Ant” and “Kanga”, led a glittering married life, hosting glamorous parties during the 1970s and 1980s at their homes in London and Wiltshire.

They became regular guests at Balmoral and were friends upon whom Prince Charles could drop in unannounced: he even turned up on one occasion in the middle of a dinner party.

He became godfather to their second child, Charles, and often joined them on annual late summer fishing parties at a lodge they owned near Egilstadir on the River Hofsá in north-east Iceland. Prince Charles was staying there in August 1979 when he heard that Lord Mountbatten had been killed.

Sources differ over whether Kanga Tryon had met the Prince before or after he met her husband-to-be. Later on, she was widely reported to have been the Prince’s lover in the mid-1970s, during the early years of the first marriage of the former Camilla Shand (now the Duchess of Cornwall) to Andrew Parker Bowles.

The Prince described Kanga as “the only woman who ever understood me”. It is said that he introduced her to Lord Tryon.

Lord Tryon cannot have enjoyed the innuendoes about his wife’s relationship which surfaced in Private Eye and other publications from the late 1970s, but that was not all he had to endure.

Kanga Tryon was always subject to major health issues. By the early 1990s, her childhood spina bifida had resulted in serious back problems and long stays in hospital for reconstructive surgery.

In 1993, as she recovered, she was given a diagnosis of uterine cancer. Although she was in remission by 1994, the disease took its toll, and as she became increasingly dependent on painkillers and alcohol, she descended into despair and confusion.

In 1996 she entered a rehabilitation clinic in Surrey. During her stay there she fell from a first-floor window, broke her back and became wheelchair-bound.

Lady Tryon’s physical and emotional setbacks were coupled with growing family problems. Her relationship with her husband deteriorated. In September 1997 the couple were divorced on the grounds of her unreasonable behaviour, Lord Tryon stating in his petition that her erratic behaviour had caused him “stress-related illness”.

Two months later she was dead from septicaemia, aged just 49.

By the time of her death Kanga Tryon was said to have been frozen out of the Prince’s circle, allegedly for committing the cardinal sin of talking to the press about their relationship.

The press interest did not cease with her death, however, resurfacing in sensationalised form in an article by Chris Hutchins in the Mail on Sunday in 2001 headlined “My Lover Charles” and purportedly based on “many intimate conversations with Lady ‘Kanga’ Tryon”.

Lord Tryon did not speak to the press about his relationship with his wife, or about Prince Charles. Despite his marital trials and tribulations, according to the couple’s youngest daughter Victoria, he never stopped loving Kanga Tryon.

“It was us children who persuaded him to divorce her because we couldn’t stand all the rows,” she was quoted as saying.

Lord Tryon joined his children at his former wife’s bedside when she died, and he never remarried. Meanwhile his discretion, quiet charm, and loyalty meant that he remained a steadfast friend to the Royal family.

Anthony George Merrik Tryon was born on May 26 1940, the son of 2nd Lt Charles Tryon, elder son of Major George Tryon, a Conservative politician who had served in a number of ministerial positions in the inter-war years and who had been raised to the peerage as the first Lord Tryon a month before the birth of his grandson, in April 1940.

The first Lord Tryon did not enjoy his seat in the Upper House for long, as he died six months later. As Charles, Brigadier 2nd Lord Tryon, GCVO, KCB, DSO, DL, Anthony’s father would serve as Assistant Keeper of the Privy Purse to George VI from 1949 to 1952, then as Keeper of the Privy Purse to the Queen until 1971.

From 1942 Anthony’s mother Dreda (daughter of Sir Merrik Burrell, 7th Bt) ran a prep school for girls at the Tryon family home, the Manor House at Great Durnford near Salisbury, partly as a means of “keeping the roof on”.

Later Anthony began his pre-prep education there, along with some other boys admitted to keep him company, before going on to boarding school; his sister Patricia was educated there until she was 12.

Brought up in royal circles, Anthony was a Page to his father at the Coronation in 1953, and as a Page of Honour to the Queen from 1954 to 1956 his duties including carrying her train at the State Opening of Parliament and Garter ceremonies.

After Eton he spent 18 months as a “jackaroo” in Australia before returning to England, where he joined Lazard’s merchant bank, of which he became a director in 1976, inheriting the family peerage on his father’s death the same year. In 1969 he was appointed to the board of James Purdey & Sons, and in 1972 he was made a captain in the Wessex Yeomanry.

Lord Tryon left Lazard in 1983, however, after which his wife became the family’s main breadwinner, founding an international dress design and manufacturing company named Kanga, and offering hunting, shooting and fishing holidays at the Great Durnford estate.

Lord Tryon continued to work part-time, as chairman of English & Scottish Investors (1977-88), then of Swaine Adeney Brigg (1991–93).

He also served as chairman of the Salisbury Cathedral Spire Trust (1985–2000) and president of the Anglers’ Conservation Association (1985–2000).

He was appointed Deputy Lieutenant of Wiltshire in 1991 and OBE in 2001.

He and his wife had two sons and two daughters. His elder son, Charles George Barrington Tryon, born in 1976, inherits the title.

Lord Tryon, born May 26 1940, died December 22 2018     

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