Tory peer and former Page of Honour to Queen Elizabeth II passes away at the age of 79 after a head injury

Lord Charles O’Hagan, godson of the late Queen Elizabeth II, has died aged 79 after suffering a head injury.

The Conservative peer served as a Member of the European Parliament (MEP) for Devon twice, from 1973 to 1975 and from 1979 to 1994.

Charles – full name Charles Towneley Strachey O’Hagan – also had a ceremonial role as a Page of Honour to the late Queen between 1959 and 1962.

When Princess Elizabeth was still in her youth, she became his godmother. In 1960, there was a photograph of him carrying her train during the Order of the Garter ceremony in Windsor.

Charles passed away at the North Devon District Hospital in Barnstaple on March 23. An inquest held in Exeter revealed that he had suffered from a subdural hematoma.

Known as the 4th Baron O’Hagan of Tullahogue, Charles resided in the village of Beaford near Winkleigh in Devon. Reports mentioned that he had a history of falling and experiencing periods of confusion.

Charles was born on September 6, 1945 to father The Honorable Thomas ‘Anthony’ Edward Towneley Strachey and mother Lady Mary Sophia Palmer.

Anthony fought in the Second World War and was a Captain in the Somerset Light Infantry in 1941, before gaining the rank of Major in the Special Forces in 1943.

Lord Charles Towneley Strachey O’Hagan has died aged 79 after suffering a head injury

Queen Elizabeth II’s train is carried by a young Lord Charles O’Hagan, her Page of Honour, beforethe Order of the Garter ceremony at St George’s Chapel in Windsor in June 1960

Charles O’Hagan’s mother Lady Mary Sophia Palmer, later Lady Mary Strachey, in 1955

After the war Anthony worked for the Country Land and Business Association and was an assistant agricultural economist at Bristol University, but died in 1955 aged 39.

As for Charles’s mother Mary, she was Lady-in-Waiting to then-Princess Elizabeth between 1944 and 1947, and then an Extra Lady-in-Waiting until 1949.

This connection led to Elizabeth becoming Charles’s godmother and him later being a Page of Honour in the early years of her reign after her coronation in 1953.

Mary gave evidence at Anthony’s inquest in December 1955, where she revealed she had heard him shoot himself behind the locked doors of his study. 

Following Charles’s death, Mary married her second husband, art historian St John (Bobby) Gore. Mary died in 2001 aged 80, and Gore died in 2010 aged 89.

Anthony’s father – and Charles’s grandfather – was politician and First World War veteran Maurice Towneley-O’Hagan, 3rd Baron O’Hagan, who died in 1961, aged 79.

When Maurice passed away, Anthony had already died six years earlier in 1955 – and Charles therefore inherited the family title aged 16.

Charles became a member of the House of Lords upon taking the family title, before he was excluded along with more than 600 fellow hereditary peers in 1999.

He was educated at Eton College before attending New College, Oxford – where he graduated with a BA in 1961 and later an MA.

Charles was married three times – firstly to the Georgian Princess Tamara Imeretinsky in 1967, before they divorced in 1984.

They had one daughter, Nino Natalia O’Hagan Strachey, who was born in 1968 and became an art historian and curator.

In an interview with Avenue magazine in November 2022, Nino spoke about how her family moved to the 30-room Somerset estate of Sutton Court when Charles inherited it.

She described the 300-year-old estate as ‘an absolutely fantastical place to grow up’ despite it effectively being a ruin with a leaking bathroom and mushrooms growing out of books in the library.

Nino said: ‘My poor old dad had to deal with that plus 80 per cent death duties, so he sold up in 1987.’ But she added that he kept all the family portraits and had been ‘passing things on to me’ along with a family oral history.

Nino is a fellow of the Royal Historical Society and was previously head of research for the National Trust and a curator for English Heritage.

Charles’s second wife was Mary Claire Roose-Francis, whom he married in 1985 – but they divorced ten years later in 1995.

They had one daughter, Antonia Philippa Mary Strachey, was born in 1986.

Later in 1995, Charles married his third wife, Elizabeth Lesley Eve Smith.

The heir presumptive is Charles’s younger brother, the Honorable Richard Towneley Strachey.