Henry Fitzalan-Howard is still getting to grips with returning to the ancestral pile, Arundel Castle. ‘I don't know whether I’m just getting forgetful in my old age, or if it’s genuinely true, but if you give me a set of keys and a half an hour, I'll take you to a door that I swear I've never been through,’ he says. Henry, 36, and his family – wife Cecilia and their three daughters, aged five, three and seven months – moved back to Arundel from London last summer.
While he’s never gone long without coming back – and indeed, Henry and Cecilia were married from the castle in 2016 – this move heralds the dawn of a new life in many ways. Their oldest daughter has started school locally, and Henry is running his insurance company from offices in town, our sister title Sussex Life discovered . Life is busy for the Earl of Arundel – having three children under five doesn’t allow for time for relaxation and reflection – but it sounds like the kind of jolly domestic muddle familiar to many of us.
Just on a rather grander scale. Arundel Castle has been Henry's home since he was four (Image: Getty) Henry spent his childhood at Arundel Castle with his parents and four siblings from the age of four. His father, Edward Fitzalan-Howard, inherited the dukedom in 2002.
‘It hadn’t been lived in full-time since the 1950s, so for my parents it was a heck of a thing to take on,’ says Henry. ‘And although it’s very busy in the summer, in the winter it is very quie.