Having become queen consort last September, Camilla Parker Bowles is attracting more media attention than ever. His links with Charles III and other members of the royal family are scrutinized in detail. But what about his own family, the Shands? If we know that the 75-year-old queen has always been close to her little sister Annabel Elliot, two years her junior, what of his missing brother, Mark Shand? The youngest child of Bruce Shand and Rosalind Cubbitt is died suddenly 10 years ago now, on April 23, 2014, at the age of 62, from a fatal fall. On a trip to New York to attend a charity gala organized by Sotheby’s for the protection of elephants, he goes out to dinner and party at the club Diamond Horseshoebefore returning to his room Gramercy Park Hotel around 2:30 a.m., as specified by TF1 Info at the time of the tragedy. He comes out to smoke a cigarette in front of the Pink bar of the hotel, slides on the sidewalk, his head hitting the asphalt. Unconscious, he was taken to the emergency room at Bellevue Hospital in Manhattan and placed on life support. He succumbed to his injuries the next day at 11:25 a.m.
Shocked and devastated by the sudden loss of her brother, Camilla communicated a few words in the following days to a spokesperson for Clarence House, echoed by our colleagues at Paris Match: “It’s with deep sadness that we need to confirm that the Duchess of Cornwall’s brother, Mark Shand, died todayhe begins. Mr Shand died in hospital following of a serious head injury he suffered in a fall last night. The Duchess, the Prince of Wales and all members of her family are completely devastated by this sudden and tragic loss“. In an interview with Timesshe later recounts the moment she learned of Mark’s death: “An anxious voice on the other end of the line told me that something horrible had happened to my indestructible brother. My charismatic and sometimes exasperating brother, who lived through tsunamis, shipwrecks, poisoned arrows and even terrifying Komodo dragons, was no longer with us.“
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A high level of alcohol detected in the blood of Mark Shand
Mark’s nephews, Tom Parker Bowles and Ben Elliot, travel the day after his death to New York to escort his body to the United Kingdom. On May 1, 2014, Camilla and Annabel held a private funeral service at Holy Trinity Church in Stourpaine, Dorset, where their father’s funeral took place in 2006.
Mark Shand’s accident seems trivial, but an investigation is still open. Nine months after the events, the British press revealed that investigators had found high alcohol level in the blood of Camilla’s brother. Purepeople indicates that he had “consumed five whiskeys and champagne during the evening”. Another factor is also highlighted by expert Sheriff Payne: “His skull was very thin in places. [jusqu’à un millimètre seulement, NDLR]. What another person, with a normal skull, looks like would have survived was fatal to him, as it happens.“
His biggest fight: protecting elephants
Mark Shand is known for writing four travel stories and for having appeared in several BBC documentaries, relating to his travels around the world. Fascinated by India, he made the protection of elephants its fight in Asia and had written several works on them: Travels on My Elephantin 1992, a true bestseller awarded the Travel Writer of the Year award, Queen of the Elephants in 1996 and River Dog: A Journey Down the Brahmaputra in 2003. Motivated by his adventure with an elephant he named Tara, in 2002 he co-founded the Elephant Family foundation, over which he presided until his tragic end.
If his career has been crowned with success and marked by his commitment to the animal cause, Mark Shand has had a rebellious adolescence. First a student at St Ronan’s School in Kent, he then moved to Milton Abbey High School in Dorset, from where he was expelled on the grounds of having smoked cannabis. To put pressure on him, his father sends him to Australia. He takes on small jobs before returning in London, where he set up as an antique dealer. It was during his travels to find rare objects that he developed a passion for adventure and his discoveries.
In 1990, Mark Shand married former French actress Clio Goldsmith. They lived in Rome for a while and had a daughter together, Ayesha, born in 1995. But after twenty years of living together, Shand confirmed in 2010 that he was divorced from his daughter’s mother. According to Paris MatchCamilla’s brother would then have had a long relationship with the model Marie Helvin, who had entrusted to Daily Mail that Mark was “impulsive, emotional with a big heart and the most beautiful body (she’s) ever seen.”
Photo credits: AGENCE / BESTIMAGE