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Prince Andrew caught in a lie over contact with Epstein / Prince Andrew adviser’s letter to alleged China spy reveals closeness of ties

Prince Andrew adviser’s letter to alleged China spy reveals closeness of ties

 

Two-page document praises loyalty of Yang Tengbo and says he is ‘at very top of tree’ within Duke of York’s network

 

Dan Sabbagh Defence and security editor

Fri 31 Jan 2025 17.07 GMT

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025/jan/31/prince-andrew-advisers-letter-to-alleged-china-spy-reveals-closeness-of-ties

 

The full text of a gushing letter written by Prince Andrew’s adviser to alleged Chinese spy Yang Tengbo reveals how intimate the relationship between the two had become in the aftermath of the prince’s disastrous 2019 interview with the BBC.

 

Extracts from the correspondence were quoted in a judgment upholding a decision to exclude Yang from the UK last month, but the two-page letter written by Dominic Hampshire at the end of March 2020 is eye-catching for its tone.

 

The letter had been relied on by the Home Office to demonstrate that Tengbo was able to generate relationships between prominent UK figures and Chinese officials.

 

Hampshire, a senior adviser to the Duke of York, complains in the letter – subsequently recovered by police from Yang’s laptop – that he had “watched numerous people disappear from his [the Duke’s] network” and that the prince had been surrounded by “red carpet chasers”.

 

But he goes on to to praise Yang as being one of “a very small number” of people previously connected to Andrew who had continued “to show total support and loyalty,” amid fierce criticism in the wake of the 2019 interview of the prince’s friendship with abuser Jeffrey Epstein.

 

The letter is among dozens of documents released by the immigration court on Friday, and has already been partially quoted in its judgment last month. Hampshire had assured Yang “you sit at the very top of a tree that many, many people would like to be on”.

 

The prince’s aide goes on to write that Yang was fortunate to attend a celebration of Andrew’s 60th birthday at Windsor the month before, which had been scaled down at the Queen’s request after he struggled to answer questions from the BBC’s Emily Maitlis over his friendship with Epstein.

 

“I also hope you fully understand what your invitation to his birthday party meant; this was not an engagement or an exclusive dinner. This was strictly his and his family’s personal life that very, very few people have the privilege to ever be part of,” Hampshire wrote.

 

“Moreover, remember that you were originally invited to their house and therefore on the much smaller original guest list. Despite press reports to the contrary, I know for a fact that there were very few people who were not able to make it.”

 

In the 2019 interview with the BBC, Andrew had said he cut off contact with Epstein in December 2010, but emails disclosed in a separate legal action have now revealed they were still exchanging messages in late February 2011.

 

Epstein suggested the Duke might see banker Jes Staley, and after a back and forth, Andrew wrote: “Keep in close touch and we’ll play some more soon.”

 

Yang, a Chinese-born entrepreneur who had lived in the UK, was excluded from the UK by then home secretary, Suella Braverman, in March 2023 on the advice of MI5, and the court concluded that she “was entitled to conclude that the applicant represented a risk to the national security of the United Kingdom”.

 

He maintains the allegations against him are “entirely unfounded”. On Friday, he said he was seeking permission to appeal against the court’s decision in a statement.

 

A witness statement from Yang provided to the immigration court said that he first met Hampshire after he had been sat next to Andrew during a VIP dinner hosted by Buckingham Palace in October 2019 and he was advised by the prince to contact him. “The duke wrote Dominic’s number down on a piece of paper,” Yang said.

 

Hampshire’s letter describes how rapidly their relationship developed after meeting at the Corinthia hotel in London on 23 October. “Immediately, I learned of a whole new level of obsessive confidentiality and a slightly different way of communicating,” a sentence partly quoted in the court’s judgment.

 

“We have dealt with the aftermath of a hugely ill-advised and unsuccessful television interview; we have wisely navigated our way around former private secretaries and we have found a way to carefully remove those people who we don’t completely trust,” he added, using language that has been partly quoted by the court.

 

Hampshire, a former Scots guard and long-time friend and fixer for the duke, heaps praise on Yang’s punctuality: “You bring a completely new level to timekeeping – I aim to be at every meeting at least 15 minutes before it starts and without exception, you are already there!”.

 

The purpose of the letter, Hampshire says, is “a personal note from me to you” and apologises for its length, which he says is “very British”. It nevertheless emphasises the closeness of their relationship: “After this short amount of time, I feel an unusual bond of friendship, trust, support and loyalty.”

 

Seven months later, another letter from Hampshire says that Yang is authorised to act on behalf of an investment scheme called the Eurasian fund in China. It says he has the authority to act on behalf of Andrew “in engagements with potential partners and investors in China” but also asks that “this relationship remains confidential”.

Spy scandal: Prince Andrew targeted because he has 'a lot of vulnerabili...

France's president Macron announces Louvre renovations as Italy offers t...

‘We won’t come again’: dazed visitors fed up with overcrowded Louvre

 

‘We won’t come again’: dazed visitors fed up with overcrowded Louvre

 

Paris attraction in need of overhaul amid complaints of leaks, long waits, lack of signage – and too many people

 

Angelique Chrisafis

Angelique Chrisafis in Paris

Tue 28 Jan 2025 06.00 CET

https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2025/jan/28/we-wont-come-again-dazed-visitors-fed-up-with-overcrowded-louvre-paris

 

As the crowds poured out of the Louvre, the look of dazed exhaustion on many faces confirmed what the museum’s director had warned last week: a trip to Paris’s biggest cultural attraction has become a “physical ordeal”.

 

Myriam, 65, a former secondary school science teacher had driven from Belgium with her husband to show their 12-year-old granddaughter the Mona Lisa. They left disappointed. “I think the Louvre is a victim of its own success,” she said. “We won’t come again.”

 

They had squeezed through huge crowds on Monday to try to catch a glimpse of Leonardo da Vinci’s masterpiece, but found the room badly designed and with no proper flow of people. They had been baffled by the lack of signage in the vast wings.

 

“There are so many people. Lots of rooms aren’t numbered. The staff are very friendly, but you feel they’re more there to show people the way than to protect the paintings,” said Myriam. “Then there’s the wait to get in – we had time-slot tickets but still had to wait 45 minutes outside. I hadn’t realised we needed separate tickets to the temporary exhibition and it was sold out.”

 

On Tuesday, the French president, Emmanuel Macron, will deliver a speech at the Louvre in which he is expected to unveil details of new investment, which could involve major overhaul – even a potential additional entrance. But the work required is vast and the government is facing severe budget constraints.

 

One of the largest arts centres on the planet and the world’s most visited museum, the Louvre attracts more than 8 million people a year. When it was modernised in the 1980s, it was designed to welcome 4 million visitors a year, yet now handles more than double that number and is increasingly stressing out its visitors.

 

On Monday, a 74-year-old clinical psychologist from Paris, who said she had been a regular visitor to the Louvre for 40 years, exited the popular temporary exhibition, Figures of the Fool, feeling battered.

 

The Louvre is the most popular museum in the world, and a major cultural hub in Paris. Photograph: Blondet Eliot/Abaca/Rex/Shutterstock

 

“I’m leaving in a state of extreme fatigue and I’ve vowed never to visit again,” she said, declining to give her name. “The noise is so unbearable under the glass pyramid; it’s like a public swimming pool. Even with a timed ticket, there’s an hour to wait outside. I can’t do it anymore. Museums are supposed to be fun, but it’s no fun anymore. There’s no pleasure in coming here anymore. And to get out you’re made to walk the length of a shopping arcade to force people to buy things – commercial interests have taken over everything.”

 

The Louvre’s director, Laurence des Cars, warned in a damning note to the culture minister this month that the facilities were below international standards, the visits were not easy and involved long waits, and the building was in poor repair, including leaks and poor temperature controls. Despite investment in new outposts of the Louvre, including in the northern former coalmining town of Lens and in Abu Dhabi, the vast Paris museum has not had a significant structural overhaul in decades.

 

Macron, who chose the Louvre as the backdrop to his presidential victory speech in 2017, has decided to personally address the crisis. After the recent renovation of Notre Dame cathedral five years after it was damaged by fire, the Louvre could be Macron’s next legacy project, as he seeks to focus on issues that could unite the deeply divided political class and voters. “The Louvre is the most-visited museum in world, it deserves all our care,” said one Élysée official.

 

Another Élysée source said: “The situation is urgent and the Louvre is our shared heritage. France’s power in the coming years is its capacity to show its independence on a range of issues, particularly as a cultural exception.”

 

The Louvre, which has been used for diplomacy and soft power by several presidents, is seen as too important for its image to be tarnished.

 

Nurperi, 40, a physiotherapist from Ankara in Turkey, who had visited with her children, enjoyed the Islamic art and braved the crowds for the Mona Lisa. “The art works were beautiful,” she said, but conceded there could have been better information and signage, more toilets and, ideally, less queuing.

 

Véronique, a retired administrator from Paris said: “The Louvre is just so huge. I went to the Musée d’Orsay recently and, although it’s also popular, it seemed more accessible, and more human – much less crazy than the Louvre.”

The Widows of the Plaza Hotel

 

The Widows of the Plaza Hotel

 

Before Eloise became known as the luxury hotel’s most famous guest, a host of wealthy dowagers held court there.

 

By Julie Satow

June 7, 2019

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/07/realestate/the-widows-of-the-plaza-hotel.html?fallback=0&recId=1MLhXoAhzFiHMwaTTE2Sob87C63&locked=0&geoContinent=NA&geoRegion=CA&recAlloc=top_conversion&geoCountry=US&blockId=most-popular&imp_id=470274916&action=click&module=trending&pgtype=Article&region=Footer

 

The Plaza Hotel’s best known resident may be a fictional 6-year-old named Eloise, but from the moment the imposing French chateau-style structure opened in 1907 until well into the 1980s, it was known for a series of real-life wealthy dowagers who made it their home.

 

There was a Russian princess who kept a lion in her bathtub; a Southern belle credited with inventing the cocktail party; a recluse who called for her chauffeur and car at 10 a.m. every day, although she hadn’t left her room in years; and a fastidious older woman who spent her days patrolling the Plaza’s perimeter, clearing sidewalks of cigarette butts by stabbing them with her umbrella tip.

 

They were an eccentric bunch: single, mostly older and all wealthy. From Vilma Lwoff-Parlaghy, the Russian princess who moved into the largest suite at the Plaza in 1909, to Fannie Lowenstein, who became Donald J. Trump’s most difficult tenant when he owned the hotel in the late 1980s, these dowagers lived extravagantly, surrounded by their dogs, diamonds and private nurses. Over the decades, they became known as the “39 widows of the Plaza,” and while the origin of the phrase remains murky, as there were more than 39 of them over time, the name stuck.

 

When Princess Vilma, or Her Serene Highness, as she preferred to be called, moved into the Plaza, 90 percent of the hotel’s guests lived there full-time. At the turn of the last century, in fact, the words “hotel” and “apartment” were often used interchangeably.

 

Since then, those terms have become quite distinct. Although recently their meanings have again begun to overlap, as high-end condominiums become increasingly like hotels, advertising hotel-like amenities and perks like private lounges, state-of-the-art gyms and luxury catering services. At 432 Park Avenue, for instance, a concierge will secure a celebrity guest for a birthday party or house-train a pet, while at 30 Park Place, in TriBeCa, residents have access to a clairvoyant or a crystal healer, depending on their needs.

 

But in many ways, the modern version of hotel or luxury condo living is very different from the one that Princess Vilma knew. Today’s high-end buildings have sleek and modern — but often cookie-cutter — finishes intended to have wide appeal. When the Plaza opened, its builders spared no expense to ensure that the hotel was unique, buying Baccarat glassware in France, spending lavishly on Irish linen and Swiss embroidery, and acquiring 4,000 pieces of flat silver for today’s equivalent of $8 million, to use in the hotel’s restaurants.

 

And while many current buyers of high-end condominiums choose to keep their identities hidden behind shell companies, the opposite was true in the past, when the legends of the widows grew and became closely identified with the hotel itself. Many of the women (and a few men) were tourist attractions in their own right, with visitors flocking to the hotel as much to glimpse a quirky widow as to see the Pulitzer Fountain or to have a drink in the Oak Room.

 

[ Read Tina Brown’s review of Julie Satow’s book “The Plaza.” ]

 

The Plaza staff grew accustomed to the widows’ peculiarities. One hotel manager began walking outside to get from one end of the building to the other, to avoid passing through the lobby, where persnickety widows would invariably be positioned on the divans, ready to greet him with a barrage of complaints.

 

The concierges also created a secret signal — a repeated tugging of the ear — to indicate that they needed widow assistance, preferably in the form of an interruption from a fellow staff member. But while the widows were a constant thorn in the side of many, they were also the financial backbone of the hotel. During the Great Depression, when the Plaza was desperate for paying guests, it was the wealthy widows, with their regular stream of rental income, that helped keep the hotel afloat.

 

Among the most steadfast was Clara Bell Walsh, a broad-shouldered horsewoman who claimed to have arrived when the hotel opened in 1907 and who remained until her death a half-century later. “Clara Bell Walsh is almost entirely known for her residence in the Plaza, as though one’s address were a dominant personal characteristic,” wrote Lucius Beebe, a syndicated columnist for The New York Herald Tribune, who often chronicled her activities.

 

Mrs. Walsh was the only child of one of Kentucky’s wealthiest families; her grandfather Henry Bell had been an associate of the multimillionaire merchant A.T. Stewart. As well known for her entertaining skills as for her riding ability, she was credited in the press for holding the first society cocktail party. One notorious soiree featured a kindergarten theme: Guests, dressed as poor little rich girls and sailor boys, had to navigate an obstacle course to reach the bar, where drinks were served in baby bottles.

 

At the Plaza, Mrs. Walsh held court in her suite, swathed in ermine wraps, her nails painted to match the color of her dress. Her guests, who included theater stars and singers, sat on brocade Edwardian sofas, among tables crammed with Chinese lamps and tiny animal figurines. As drinks flowed, Mrs. Walsh’s food consumption — or lack thereof — was a source of constant speculation. “Clara Bell Walsh would like to live on a diet of Kentucky products but finds a lack of necessary vitamins in ham and bourbon exclusively,” Mr. Beebe quipped.

 

When she wasn’t entertaining celebrities, Mrs. Walsh frequented the Persian Room, the Plaza’s nightclub, where she was such a notable presence in the front row that Kay Thompson, the performer who later wrote the “Eloise” books, co-opted several of her idiosyncrasies. When Ms. Thompson’s 6-year-old alter ego had her hair done in one book, it was at the men’s barbershop in the Plaza’s lobby, where Mrs. Walsh had hers done. Ms. Thompson also liked to go out with two red dots on her eyelids that would flash when she blinked, a nod to Mrs. Walsh’s habit of attending dinner parties with fake eyes painted on her eyelids.

 

But while Mrs. Walsh was undoubtedly a grande dame of the widows, she is not the best remembered. That dubious honor is reserved for Fannie Lowenstein, the most cantankerous of the widows, who arrived at the Plaza in 1958 as a young divorcée and soon met a fellow hotel resident who became her second husband. Not only did her new husband have a seat on the New York Stock Exchange, but even better, he also had one of the few rent-controlled Plaza apartments.

 

When her husband died, Mrs. Lowenstein continued to live in splendor in their three-room suite, paying just $800 a month for rooms that might have rented for more than $1,250 a night. She couldn’t be evicted, so the Plaza staff treated her with extreme deference, fearful of provoking one of her tantrums.

 

When she arrived for dinner in the evening, a waiter would take her regular order of asparagus soup and Hennessy cognac, while the musicians would stop whatever they were playing and the violinist would serenade her with the theme song from the Broadway musical “Fanny.”

 

Stories about Mrs. Lowenstein are plentiful, but one of the most frequently recounted is about the time she came down to the Palm Court during Sunday brunch and, in a fit of pique at the management over some perceived slight, relieved herself on the rug in front of a shocked crowd.

 

When Donald J. Trump bought the Plaza in 1988, Mrs. Lowenstein was still alive, one of a handful of widows who remained. The future 45th president of the United States paid more than $400 million for the hotel — a record-shattering $495,000 per hotel room — before losing it in a bankruptcy three years later. In the beginning, Mr. Trump’s most difficult tenant seemed content. But the honeymoon was short-lived, and it wasn’t long before the new owner had run afoul of the demanding doyenne.

 

Months into his tenure as owner, Mrs. Lowenstein began complaining of what she called “indoor air pollution” in her rooms. She insisted that it was causing her curtains to shrink and her Steinway grand piano to grow mold. She mounted an assault on the ownership, repeatedly calling the city to register complaints. Soon, inspectors were writing increasingly urgent missives to management.

 

At the time, Mr. Trump was involved in a messy divorce from his first wife, Ivana, amid rumors that he was having an affair with Marla Maples, who would become his second wife. “Ivana and Marla have been a lot to handle,” Mr. Trump told The National Enquirer at the time, “but my relationships with them have been smooth as silk in comparison to my contacts with Fannie Lowenstein. When she’s done with me, I’m soaked in sweat!”

 

If Mrs. Lowenstein managed to lock horns with a future president, Princess Vilma did not show similar gumption in her day. The future princess was a noted portrait painter as a young woman in Berlin, where she had her own studio and did a brisk business capturing the likenesses of a stream of European aristocracy, most notably the German Kaiser Wilhelm II. Her relationship with him spurred much gossip, The New York Times reported in a profile published when she was not yet 30, noting that “sneers were cast at her work and at her personally,” although the same article also called her “a talent decidedly above the commonplace.”

 

When Princess Vilma arrived at the Plaza in 1909, she came with a retinue that included three French maids, a first, second and third attaché, a marshal, a courier, a butler and a chef. But that wasn’t all. A private bodyguard — dressed in a tall hat with a plume of feathers and a ceremonial sword — led a menagerie that included one white, yapping dog, two guinea pigs, an ibis, a falcon, several owls and a family of alligators. Eventually, a pet lion joined the veritable zoo.

 

By then, she had been divorced twice, most recently from a minor Russian prince, from whom she received her title. She began advertising her portraiture services in New York, and one of her first clients was Maj. Gen. Daniel E. Sickles. A 92-year-old veteran of the Civil War, General Sickles had lost a leg fighting at Gettysburg. (He saved the limb and later sent it to Washington, where it was displayed as part of a museum exhibition.)

 

One day soon after Princess Vilma finished painting General Sickles’s portrait, the pair attended the Ringling Brothers Circus at Madison Square Garden. There, she fell in love with a baby lion, and the general promptly bought the lion for her. Named General Sickles, in honor of his patron, the lion lived in the bathtub of her Plaza suite until he outgrew it and the hotel’s patience. The lion was then sent to the Bronx Zoo and after he died, Princess Vilma had him buried at a pet cemetery in Westchester.

 

No one knew where the princess’s money came from, but in 1914, when World War I broke out in Europe, her once-abundant wealth suddenly vanished. Soon after, she was dogged by her lawyer, banker and the stables where she boarded her horses, for nonpayment. She fled, leaving her Plaza suite, an unpaid bill for $12,000 and numerous belongings behind. In 1923, she died in a cramped room on East 39th Street, surrounded by her unsold artwork and a single maid for a companion, with a line of creditors waiting outside her door.

 

But while the once glamorous Princess Vilma came to a sad end, the tales of the widows of the Plaza, like the hotel itself, have endured.

 

Julie Satow is the author of “The Plaza: The Secret Life of America’s Most Famous Hotel.”

The Bookworm...

England’s biggest murder mystery has a new break-through | Lord Lucan | ...

REMEMBERING: The never ending story of 'Lord Lucan's Disappearance'

Neil Berriman says Lucan, who vanished after the murder of Sandra Rivett in 1974, lives as a Buddhist in a shared house.

SEE ALSO:

https://tweedlandthegentlemansclub.blogspot.com/2017/05/lord-lucan-my-husband-mon-05-jun-2017.html

https://tweedlandthegentlemansclub.blogspot.com/2017/09/lady-lucan-found-dead-at-london-home.html

https://tweedlandthegentlemansclub.blogspot.com/2015/12/lucan-tv-reviews-i-suppose-its-not-100.html

Son of Lord Lucan's murdered nanny claims to have found missing Earl alive

 Andy Lines 13 hrs ago

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/uknews/son-of-lord-lucans-murdered-nanny-claims-to-have-found-missing-earl-alive/ar-BBZpZKP?li=BBoPWjQ&ocid=mailsignout

Richard John Bingham, Lord Lucan who mysteriously disappeared after the murder of his children's nanny Sandra Rivett, at the family's Belgravia home in 1974. He has never been seen since

The son of the nanny killed by Lord Lucan claims he has found the peer in Australia.

Neil Berriman says Lucan, who vanished after the murder of Sandra Rivett in 1974, lives as a Buddhist in a shared house.

After telling police of his findings, he said: “I know he’s still alive.”

The man he believes to be Lucan is in his mid-80s and seriously ill, awaiting major surgery and virtually housebound in a large shared detached house in the suburbs.

Mr Berriman, 52, has been to Scotland Yard’s Cold Case Unit with his findings, telling them: “I believe I have tracked down the man, Lord Lucan, who murdered my mother.”

a man holding a sign posing for the camera: Neil Berriman has spent thousands on his own investigation© Ian Vogler/Daily Mirror Neil Berriman has spent thousands on his own investigation

He said the officer he spoke to agreed that police must look into his claims. He added: “They will now have to investigate this properly.”

The building contractor and father-of-two claims Lucan based himself in Perth on arrival in Australia, but moved to another part of the country after a series of disagreements with pals.

He now has a new group of friends. Two are young Englishmen, and another is an Australian he first met on a Buddhist retreat 11 years ago. They all take part in daily meditation sessions.

The mystery man needs a part-time carer, and often sits on the verandah listening to trains in the distance. The friends confirmed to the Daily Mirror that an elderly Englishman who looks like Lucan lives at the house.

Lord “Lucky” Lucan, who would have turned 85 last month, disappeared after the murder of Miss Rivett at the family’s exclusive mews home in Belgravia, Central London, on November 7, 1974.

He had run up huge gambling debts, his volatile marriage to Lady Veronica Lucan had collapsed and the couple were going through a bitter custody battle over their three children.

Police believe he attacked Miss Rivett with a taped-up piece of lead piping after mistaking her for his wife.

After the attack he fled and was last spotted at the manor house home of Peter and Susan Maxwell-Scott in East Sussex.

At the time there were rumours he had committed suicide by throwing himself off a cross-Channel ferry from Newhaven days after the murder. But no body was ever washed up, and the mystery of his disappearance has endured for 46 years. It has always been thought possible that powerful friends may have helped him escape to avoid a lengthy prison sentence.

Lord Lucan was a member of the Clermont Set, a group of powerful, wealthy people including millionaire businessmen Sir James Goldsmith and John Aspinall. There have been sightings in South Africa, the Maldives, India and even India. But, despite extensive police inquiries, he has never been found.

Mr Berriman’s quest began when he discovered 12 years ago that he was Sandra Rivett’s secret son, who had been adopted shortly after birth.

When Lucan was formally declared dead by the High Court on February 3, 2016, he received a detailed tip by letter that Lucan was in fact alive.

He then decided to spend £30,000 of his own cash on a private investigation. As he dug deeper, he claimed evidence showed that Lucan had indeed escaped British justice.

Mr Berriman, who lives with partner Kim in Milland, West Sussex, said: “He has been alive all this time. Lying about who he is. Lying about it to his new friends.

“They are fully aware he is a mystery elderly Englishman and not who he is claiming to be.

John Bingham, 7th Earl of Lucan wearing a suit and tie posing for a photo: Lord Lucan with his wife Veronica, Lady Lucan© Universal Pictorial Press Lord Lucan with his wife Veronica, Lady Lucan

“The people he lives with know he has a mystery past and what he tells them does not add up. They have had their suspicions for many years.

“Lucan is a deceitful conman and he is the man who murdered my mother.

“There is absolutely no doubt in my mind he escaped that night, with the help of friends who helped him get across the Channel and get a new passport, and incredibly he is still alive.

“From my own inquiries he’s had at least six different identities."

The police have asked Mr Berriman to return to them to fully present the evidence painstakingly collected from his personal four-year investigation. Now he is demanding they put a team of detectives together to look into his fresh information fully. Attempts are still being made to try to confirm independently if his claims are true.

Scotland Yard said it would not comment on the case, adding: “Generally however we don’t comment on who we may or may not speak to when/if a case is reviewed.” The mystery man is aware of the claims, but the Mirror has chosen not to reveal his identity.

Mr Berriman admitted the search has taken over his life. He said: “I’ve spent around £30,000 of my own money in this search for the truth.

“I’ve paid for flights, hotels and even expert facial recognition technology for analysis. That showed a similarity of over 85% – and that is taking into account all the plastic surgery he has clearly had. It certainly has all added up.

a person in a newspaper: The frontpage of the Daily Mirror in 1974 as the scandal broke© Provided by Mirror The frontpage of the Daily Mirror in 1974 as the scandal broke

“It’s taken me all over Australia and it’s taken me to meet all sorts of people who have helped me along the way – my journey to discover the truth.

“But I consider every penny was well spent – it has enabled me to get where we are today. It took over my life but it had to be done. I know some people would say that it’s become an obsession.

“That may be so. But I would simply say to them: put yourself in my shoes.

“What would you do if your mum had been killed, and no one had been brought to justice and the man who killed her was never found? You’d do exactly what I’ve done to discover the truth, I think. This has brought me and my family so much stress and heartache.”

John Bingham, 7th Earl of Lucan standing in front of a mirror posing for the camera: Lord © PA Lord

But Mr Berriman added, with a tear in his eye: “There is absolutely no doubt in my mind it was the right thing to do.”

If Lord Lucan is still alive it would have serious repercussions for the current Lord Lucan, George Bingham, who is the son of the fugitive.

George Charles Bingham, the 8th Earl of Lucan, would lose his title and inheritance if his father is still alive.

The earldom of Lucan was created back in 1795 during the reign of King George III.

The Binghams are an Anglo-Irish aristocratic family. Among them were George Bingham, the 3rd Earl of Lucan, who is best remembered for his controversial role in the Crimean War, when he lead the cavalry division involved in the infamous Charge of the Light Brigade.

REMEMBERING 6 Nov 2024: Where is Lord Lucan? | Lucan | Official Trailer - BBC / Lucan review

 

Review

Lucan review – stick with this wild documentary to the end and you will be astonished

 

Fifty years ago, Lord Lucan murdered Sandra Rivett then disappeared. This surreal series follows the victim’s son as he hunts down the fugitive peer – and ends up somewhere totally unexpected

 

Rebecca Nicholson

Wed 6 Nov 2024 22.00 GMT

https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2024/nov/06/lord-lucan-bbc-documentary-review

 

Richard John Bingham, the 7th Earl of Lucan, was declared dead in 1999, but that did nothing to halt the highly profitable cottage industry of speculation about him, which has chugged away since 1974, when he murdered Sandra Rivett, his children’s nanny, then disappeared.

 

At first glance, you might think that this three-part documentary will be another contribution to this conspiracy-minded canon. But this is not a “have we found him?” film. I cannot emphasise enough how much it is worth sticking with it until the end. What unspools is a sometimes tender, sometimes troubling rollercoaster that ends up in surreal and unexpected territory. There is a fake monk, catfishing, drag queens and Timothy Leary. You have probably not seen this side of the Lord Lucan story before.

 

The first episode is the most straightforward. The film-maker Colette Camden has found a new way of outlining what happened on 7 November 1974. A builder in Hampshire called Neil Berriman thinks he has tracked down Lucan, she explains. (There is a strong argument that the true subject of the episodes is Berriman, not Lucan.) Berriman’s mother, who had adopted him, would talk to him about a “brown envelope” containing information about his biological parents. For years, he wasn’t interested in even looking for it, but when he did eventually open it, it delivered a shock: newspaper cuttings about one of Britain’s most notorious crimes of the 20th century. It revealed that his birth mother was Rivett, the woman who had been looking after Lucan’s children for mere weeks when he bludgeoned her to death.

 

As you would expect from a modern documentary, and one which involves Rivett’s son, this shifts its emphasis from the headline-generating exploits of the “fugitive Lord” – the profligate gambler and drunk, known to his friends, ironically, as “Lucky” – to the 29-year-old woman whom he murdered, the justice he eluded and the consequences of this violent crime for those left behind.

 

Berriman has made it his mission to learn everything he can about the case – seemingly to the concern of his family – and episode one provides an overview of what he has discovered. There are interviews with people who knew Rivett, who knew Lucan, who attended the crime scene; and with people who, like Berriman, have made the investigation their primary focus (although without having the same personal attachment).

 

It is here that the series starts to rev up and speed off into the distance, where it shape-shifts into something else entirely. Berriman has spent years working with the investigative reporter Glen Campbell, who has reported on the case extensively (and called his dog Lucan). They have pursued countless theories and potential sightings. The film joins them as they are on their way to confront a man they have tracked down in Australia, whom they seem certain is the aristocrat.

 

To watch this with a critical eye is to notice that we, the viewers, cannot see or hear much of their evidence: a confidential police report that would compromise the job of the person who leaked it; a detail given off‑camera by Lucan’s brother. There are a lot of people saying “bullshit”. Often, there is no clear sense of what is true and what the people at the heart of this story want to believe. (There is, however, a clear sense of how much some of these men will make excuses for a friend who brutally murdered a woman – a small but deeply depressing detail.)

 

It is not a rigorous investigation so much as an empathic portrait of human obsession. Camden is evidently fond of Berriman, and her involvement in the story grows more pronounced as the episodes progress. I kept thinking of The Journalist and the Murderer, Janet Malcolm’s classic study of journalistic ethics and the relationship between reporter and subject, wondering to what extent this documentary exists in a murky area. The programme gives Berriman (and, by extension, Rivett) a voice – and it’s hard to deny that he deserves that voice.

 

By the time Lucan explodes into its surreal final act, you will be feeling astonished and uneasy about some of the people caught up in the whirlwind of pursuit. This extraordinary documentary lingers in the mind and leaves a lot more questions behind it than whether or not Lucan lived beyond 1974.

 

 Lucan airs on BBC Two and is available on BBC iPlayer

Murder in the House of Ullens: The fall from grace of one of Belgium’s richest families / April 10, 2023: Myriam Ullens, 70, Philanthropic Baroness, Is Killed

 

Murder in the House of Ullens: The fall from grace of one of Belgium’s richest families

 

Police say a dispute over money is behind the shooting of Baroness Myriam Ullens.

 

By NICOLAS CAMUT

in Ohain, Belgium

Photo-illustrations by Beatrice Caciotti for POLITICO

 

January 27, 2025 4:02 am CET

https://www.politico.eu/article/myriam-ullens-baroness-murder-trial-baron-nicolas-guy-belgium-ohain/

 

On a cold and overcast morning in March 2023, Nicolas Ullens sat in a van outside his family’s estate, in a plush suburb an hour’s drive from Brussels.

 

Nicolas, then 57, had come to ask his father, the Baron Guy Ullens — once one of the richest men in Belgium — for money.

 

The baron had refused.

 

A short time later, 70-year-old Myriam Ullens, his father’s second wife, drove out of the estate at the wheel of a Volkswagen Golf, her 88-year-old husband in the passenger seat.

 

Nicolas was waiting in the van, his handgun loaded. As the Golf passed the gate of the property, he blocked their way. He got out of the van, walked up to the driver’s window and fired six bullets, killing his stepmother and injuring his father.

 

Half an hour later, he turned himself in at a nearby police station and confessed to the crime.

 

Those are the facts of the day that marked the end of Myriam’s life.

 

What followed was a battle of narratives. They featured many storylines: a declining empire of colonial riches; scrambles up (and down) the social ranks; a caricatured stepmother; a failed whistleblowing attempt; all taking place in an elite game of reputations and fortunes, jealousy and control.

 

The perpetrator, the witness, the family, the lawyers, the press and the public have all argued their sequences of events that led up to this critical morning.

 

In the coming months, each author’s variation will be played out on the austere stage of a criminal court in the Belgian city of Nivelles, where Nicolas is set to stand trial.

 

Myriam, for her part, will not have that luxury.

 

Act 1: The Inheritance

In the Belgian aristocracy, a family’s standing is determined by three things: rank, money and how far back its lineage can be traced. The Ullens can count on the last two.

 

Originally a family of wealthy merchants and financiers from the port city of Antwerp, the Ullens were ennobled in 1693, when Belgium was under Spanish rule — meaning that their title is older than their country.

 

That title was awarded by Charles II, king of Spain, “a source of great pride for the family,” according to Jean-François Houtart, the author of a book tracing the history of Belgium’s most ancient families.

 

This makes the Ullens part of the Belgian nobility’s inner circle. There are roughly 1,200 aristocratic families in Belgium, a total of 32,500 people — but only about 350 families were already noble before the French Revolution.

 

“In the Belgian pantheon, the Ullens family ranks high,” said Houtart. “It’s quite a prestigious family, but mostly because it has money.”

 

The Ullens built their wealth at a time when Antwerp was the main trading center for colonial goods in Europe. Ships docked there to unload their precious cargoes of spices and sugar, cultivated by slaves, in the city’s warehouses.

 

Guy Ullens, born in 1935, inherited part of that fortune. In the 1980s, the baron-turned-businessman headed up the sugar producer Raffinerie Tirlemontoise, which had a quasi-monopoly on Belgium’s beetroot sugar refining industry.

 

In 1989, the firm was sold for €1.25 billion to a German company. Perhaps sensing the times were changing, the family holding moved away from sweets; instead, in 1999, it took over the American diet giant WeightWatchers.

 

By 2014, Guy’s personal fortune was estimated at over €3 billion, which he’d splashed on lavish properties — in China, the United States, an upscale Swiss ski resort, the swanky French sea town of Saint-Tropez and Belgium — and art.

 

In the 2000s, the baron’s art collection had grown to become one of the largest in the world. Some of it was stored in Geneva, Switzerland — but many pieces were showcased in the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art in Beijing, the first contemporary art museum in China. It was inaugurated in November 2007, a few months before the 2008 Beijing Olympics, and quickly attracted illustrious guests such as the freshly elected French President Nicolas Sarkozy as well as Prince Philippe, heir to the Belgian throne.

 

With this growing prestige came additional distinctions. In 2010, during Sarkozy’s presidency, Guy was awarded the rank of knight of the French Légion d’honneur.

 

However, much of the baron’s wealth relied on the family holding’s golden goose, WeightWatchers, which had gone public in 2001.

 

And as the share price of the U.S. weight loss giant plunged, so did the baron’s fortune, which is currently valued at between €200 and €300 million.

 

He sold a yacht for about €18 million in 2015, as well as the Saint-Tropez property, according to Le Monde, then auctioned off parts of his art collection. The Beijing museum soon followed.

 

In just a decade, Guy’s wealth had been reduced to a tenth of his former affluence.

 

Act 2: The Lovers

But Guy had not been enjoying his riches alone.

 

At the turn of the millennium, at 64, Guy married Myriam Lechien, then 46. It was his second wedding, her third, and the conclusion of an affair that had been going on for eight years.

 

The daughter of a Belgian army officer, Myriam was born in Germany, where her father was stationed during her childhood.

 

A single mother, she had raised two children from her first marriage on her own. In the 1980s, while Guy was running the largest sugar business in the country, she was making pastries in her kitchen and delivering them to restaurants.

 

Guy and Myriam Ullens attend an event of their foundation in London in 2013. Next, the visits of Belgian King Philippe and Queen Mathilde and then-French President Nicolas Sarkozy to the Ullens’ Beijing museum in 2007. | Nick Harvey/WireImage for Mimi Foundation, François Mori and Frederic J. Brown/AFP via Getty Images

 

She met Guy when her business was taking off and she was looking for an associate. “It was love at first sight … I didn’t even know that was possible,” she later told French public broadcaster France 2.

 

For most of the year, Guy and Myriam — or “Mimi,” as she was known — lived in a fancy Swiss ski resort where the Belgian royal family regularly stays in the winter.

 

“Our main ‘houses’ are a plane and a boat,” Guy told The Wall Street Journal in 2013.

 

Myriam’s pastry days were long gone — she had sold the business during her affair with Guy — and she took on a new set of activities, which included the launch of a high-end fashion brand, Maison Ullens, in 2009.

 

In Belgium’s cloistered high society, the flamboyant couple quickly became the talk of the town, with much of the chatter focusing on Mimi.

 

“When a woman marries a wealthy man … tongues begin to wag,” said Hugo Strachwitz, a British nobleman familiar with the practices of Europe’s aristocratic circles. “As a … relatively new arrival within society, one of the quickest ways to gain acceptance is by dispensing as much charity as possible.”

 

Myriam, who had “always dreamed of doing charity work,” asked the baron to finance schools, orphanages and a maternity center in Nepal. After beating breast cancer, she opened a foundation helping cancer patients in Belgian, French and Swiss hospitals.

 

Despite her best efforts, however, Mimi never seemed to gain acceptance in the muffled world of the Old Continent’s aristocracy.

 

For newcomers like her, “an amount of humility is expected that she did not exercise,” said Strachwitz. “Being outspoken is never a good way to enter a new community.”

 

In a 2015 interview with Europe 1, Myriam said her new life as a billionaire’s wife came with its share of issues. “You have just as many problems when you’re rich as when you’re poor, but it’s different,” she said. “The problems are different.”

 

Act 3: The Son

Nicolas Ullens, one of four children from Guy’s first marriage, was facing his own challenges.

 

For over a decade, Nicolas had worked for the Belgian civil intelligence service, a prestigious position — albeit in the shadows — suited to the son of a well-respected family.

 

But in 2018 he resigned, later claiming to have uncovered a money laundering and corruption scheme as part of his work as an intelligence officer. The network’s apparent masterminds were Didier Reynders, at the time Belgium’s foreign minister, and his longtime adviser and right-hand man for over 20 years, Jean-Claude Fontinoy, Nicolas asserted.

 

Claiming to be a whistleblower, he published several videos backing up his theories on YouTube and a separate video channel, and defended his claims in the Belgian press.

 

In an 11-minute clip entitled “The adventures of Didi and Fonty — shady business in Kinshasa,” Nicolas, facing the camera, claimed to have found irregularities in the construction of a new Belgian embassy in Congo — a former Belgian colony — for which he said Reynders and his adviser bore responsibility.

 

Nicolas went to the police with his findings. These were investigated by the Brussels public prosecutor’s office, which closed the case a few weeks later due to the lack of evidence against Reynders.

 

In the meantime, Reynders had been nominated to serve as Belgium’s European commissioner, and was ultimately awarded the justice portfolio. Contacted by POLITICO when he was still commissioner, Reynders’ Cabinet declined to comment on the legal proceedings.

 

When discussing the Nicolas Ullens case after Myriam’s murder, Reynders looked confident, “serene,” one of his former advisers recalled. “He simply told me that [Nicolas] Ullens was ‘a madman who, besides, had murdered his mother-in-law.’”

 

Fontinoy, the other person accused by Ullens, told POLITICO he was “never” approached by prosecutors in the case.

 

“I have nothing to answer” to Nicolas’ accusations, he said. “I’ve never met him, I’ve never spoken to him.”

 

That case cost Nicolas his job, his reputation and nearly landed him in jail. In January 2021, the Brussels prosecutor’s office opened an investigation against him for breaches of professional secrecy. The prosecutor’s office told POLITICO the investigation is ongoing.

 

Between the family’s business activities taking a sour turn and his father and stepmother’s grand lifestyle, Nicolas’ fortune was slowly melting away.

 

Act 4: The Press

The day after Myriam’s killing, the local prosecutor’s office issued a statement saying the suspected killer had justified his deed “in the context of a family dispute, notably of a financial order.”

 

The gruesome details of Myriam’s murder were splashed all over the national press, on both sides of Belgium’s language barrier. The baron’s wealth and notoriety as a patron of the arts also earned his deceased wife a eulogy in The New York Times.

 

Yet it wasn’t long before the tone began to change. Before the murder, references to the Ullens in the media had been sparse, limited to millionaires’ rankings or gushing coverage of Guy’s passion for the arts and Myriam’s charity work (sometimes mixed with laudatory accounts of their love story).

 

As journalists seized on this Belgian noir, gorging on the macabre details of a case that seemed ripped from a true crime novel, the story began to focus not on the misdeeds of the alleged murderer — but on his victim.

 

In leaked excerpts from the suspected shooter’s police questioning and testimonies from relatives, Myriam was depicted as a manipulative stepmother scheming to keep the family’s billions to herself, and blamed for frittering them away.

 

Nicolas complained of his “awful stepmother” whom he accused of diverting the family’s money toward her two adult children from a previous marriage, at the expense of the baron’s four biological children.

 

In an interview with Belgian daily Het Nieuwsblad published two days after the murder, Brigitte Ullens, Nicolas’ sister, accused Myriam of “want[ing] everything for herself” and “destroy[ing]” the family.

The funeral of Myriam Ullens in Ohain on April 7, 2023. Next, journalists during the ceremony and a security perimeter during a reconstruction of the murder scene in May 2023. | Nicolas Maeterlinck/Belga via Getty Imagess

 

 

In another, published by Het Laatste Nieuws several months later, the former wife of Myriam’s son claimed she had been a “manipulator” who “played with people like Lego blocks.”

 

Laurent Kennes, the lawyer for Myriam’s children, said the media frenzy portraying the baron’s wife as a “venal stepmother” was “very, very shocking.” He refuted claims that she had taken advantage of the family’s wealth, saying the baron “gave to everyone,” his four children and two stepchildren.

 

“Since when is it a motive for murder, or even for blame, to accept money from your husband?” the lawyer asked.

 

Since October 2023 and his release after nearly six months in jail, Nicolas has lived under house arrest. He has to wear an electronic bracelet while awaiting trial, which likely will not start until next year. The court where the trial is to take place is facing a shortage of clerks.

 

In several months’ time, from the dock of the accused, Nicolas will have to face his father, who has chosen not to speak publicly since the murder. Days after the shooting, Guy filed a civil lawsuit against his son.

 

The court and the 12 jurors will have to assess whether the murder was premeditated — which Nicolas denies.

 

Nicolas’ lawyers declined to comment before the trial. In April 2023, shortly after the murder, his legal team spoke to Le Soir.

 

“Of course, in wealthy families, money is the source of a lot of tension, but this case is not just about money, it’s about human relationships,” said Dimitri De Beco, one of his lawyers. “It’s much more complex than that, we’d like to bring that up during trial.”

 

Dozens of witnesses, including many family members, are expected to take the stand during the trial. The testimonies from Nicolas’ siblings, his father, Myriam’s children and grandchildren as well as family friends who can attest to the bond (or lack thereof) that the baron and Myriam shared, will lay bare the family’s divisions.

 

The personalities and characters of Myriam and Nicolas, as presented by the witnesses picked by both sides, will also be crucial elements of the proceedings.

 

When the trial eventually starts, all of the case’s protagonists will have the chance to say their piece. All but one: Myriam, who was buried in April 2023.

 

April 10, 2023: Myriam Ullens, 70, Philanthropic Baroness, Is Killed

 

A stepson was held on charges of shooting her over family money. She started institutions in Belgium, Nepal and China, including a major museum in Beijing.

 

Alex Traub

By Alex Traub

Published April 10, 2023

Updated April 11, 2023

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/10/arts/myriam-ullens-dead.html

 

Myriam Ullens, a pastry chef who married a billionaire Belgian aristocrat and turned his fortune into a globe-spanning source of philanthropy, was fatally shot on March 29 in Ohain, a village in the Walloon Brabant province of central Belgium. She was 70.

 

Her stepson Nicolas Ullens presented himself to the local police and said he had killed Ms. Ullens, the province prosecutor’s office said. The authorities seized a handgun from him and proceeded to the home of Ms. Ullens and her husband, Guy Ullens, where they found her dead in a Volkswagen and Mr. Ullens beside her, in a state of shock, with a wounded leg.

 

According to the prosecutor’s statement, Nicolas attributed his actions to a family fight over money and said that moments before he shot his stepmother he had been arguing with her and his father at their home and had been asked to leave. He was being held in jail and has been charged with premeditated murder and violating weapons laws, the prosecutor’s office said.

 

Ms. Ullens’s death was a sordid end to a life that had seemed like a fairy tale, or at least a fairy tale in the age of global capitalism.

 

In the early 1990s, Ms. Ullens (pronounced YU-lens) was raising two children on her own and seeking investors so that she could expand her small pastry business, which had shops in Brussels and Waterloo, Belgium. She arranged a meeting with Mr. Ullens, a titled baron and married father of four who had recently sold his family’s beet sugar refinery for $1 billion.

 

When the door opened and he appeared, Ms. Ullens experienced a “coup de foudre” — a French expression that equates love at first sight with a thunderbolt — she told the French magazine Madame Figaro in 2014. “He is my Pygmalion, the man whom I love and who made me break out of my shell,” she said.

 

Mr. Ullens, in a 2014 interview with The Kathmandu Post, fondly described her as the “queen of pastry” with a passion for charity.

 

In 1999, after Mr. Ullens divorced his wife, he married Myriam. The same year, his family firm, Artal, bought Weight Watchers for $735 million in what Forbes in 2018 called “one of the best private equity deals ever.”

 

“Guy asked me to quit my company,” Ms. Ullens told Global Citizen magazine in 2015. “I accepted, but told him I was going to get involved in philanthropy instead.”

 

In 2000, Mr. Ullens — whose full surname, which he often abbreviated, is Ullens de Schooten Whettnal — retired from business, missing out on billions in potential future earnings, according to Forbes. With his new wife, he put his fortune in service to a charitable spending spree.

 

The Ullenses’ most remarkable project, opening in 2007, was the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art in Beijing.

 

It “was the first international-standard museum in China dedicated to contemporary art,” Alexandra Munroe, senior curator of Asian art at the Guggenheim Museum in New York, said in an interview. “It had capacity in scale that no other museum in China had at the time of its opening, and that very few have even reached since then.”

 

The museum’s first exhibition, “’85 New Wave: The Birth of Chinese Contemporary Art,” helped establish a new canon in art history. At the same time, the museum brought to China the work of foreign artists like Robert Rauschenberg.

 

The idea for the museum arose from Mr. Ullens’s years of travel to China as a businessman, and from the passion for China he shared with his wife.

 

“When we started going there in the early 1990s, Chinese contemporary art was not as fashionable,” she told Global Citizen.

 

“Artists hid themselves in the aftermath of 1989,” she added, referring to the violent crackdown on pro-democracy protests at Tiananmen Square. “We would visit them in very hidden places, looking at the paintings with a torch in a staircase or a parking lot.”

 

In 2017, the Ullenses sold the museum to Chinese investors in a deal put together by Lunar, a Shanghai private equity firm. Since then, its internationalist spirit has persisted. From this past October to January it presented “Somewhere Downtown: Art in 1980s New York,” an exhibition that included more than a dozen works by Jean-Michel Basquiat and Keith Haring.

 

The institution has also grown; it now includes three buildings throughout China that draw more than a million visitors a year. Its success has inspired several of the museum’s Chinese benefactors to open art institutions of their own, Philip Tinari, the U.C.C.A.’s director, said in an interview.

 

Myriam Lechien, who was also known as Mimi, was born on Sept. 23, 1952, in Cologne, in what was then West Germany, where her father, Paul, a colonel in the Belgian Army, was stationed. Her mother, Monique (de Drijver) Lechien, was a homemaker.

 

Her parents sent her to a boarding school in Belgium near the country’s border with West Germany. On a trip home, she met a young Belgian soldier named Roger Lemaire, who, like her father, was stationed in West Germany. She married him when she was 18.

 

The couple had two children, Gilles and Virginie, but divorced when Myriam was in her mid-20s. A second marriage, to Christian de Moffarts, a conference planner, also ended in divorce. In the late 1980s, she began baking pastries in the kitchen of her home and delivering them to restaurants.

 

Nevertheless, she still found time and energy to try to help those less fortunate than her. She began visiting Nepal after a friend told her that it was an affordable and practical place for charitable endeavors. Her fledgling efforts to help children with poor or absent parents culminated, after she met Mr. Ullens, in her establishment of an orphanage outside Kathmandu, the nation’s capital. Nearby, the baron and baroness also built the Ullens School, which offers an international baccalaureate curriculum.

 

Her other projects included the Mimi Foundation, which created support systems for cancer patients in French and Belgian hospitals; Club des Combins, an organization that provides insurance to the mountain guides of Verbier, an alpine Swiss resort; and Maison Ullens, a clothing line that aims at “the perfect travel wardrobe,” according to its website, with stores in Paris, New York and Aspen, Colo.

 

The European press described the Ullenses as friendly with European aristocrats like Prince Charles and Belgium’s king and queen. Their travel between Switzerland, China, France, Belgium and the Maldives led Mr. Ullens to tell The Wall Street Journal in 2013, “Our main ‘houses’ are a plane and a boat.” He complained about the lack of wall space in their Swiss chalet for hanging their art.

 

Since the fatal shooting, the Ullenses’ munificence and glamour have been scrutinized and gossiped about in the Belgian news media. Nicolas Ullens was already a figure of some notoriety as a former Belgian intelligence officer who in recent years had made dramatic accusations of government corruption. Following Mimi’s killing, Nicolas’s sister, Brigitte Ullens, has publicly defended his character and accused their stepmother of financial selfishness and of dividing the family.

 

In addition to Nicolas and Brigitte Ullens, Ms. Ullens is survived by her husband; a brother, Philippe; a sister, Geneviève Lechien; her children from her first marriage; two more stepsons; five grandchildren; and many step-grandchildren and step-great-grandchildren.

 

One factor inspiring the Ullenses to build so many institutions was the pleasure they took in starting something new together, Laurent Degryse, the husband of Ms. Ullens’s daughter, Virginie, said in a phone interview.

 

“They would wake up in the middle of the night, prepare jasmine tea and start a whole conversation,” he said. “At the end of the night, the project would have taken another turn.”

 

Koba Ryckewaert contributed research.

 

Alex Traub works on the Obituaries desk and occasionally reports on New York City for other sections of the paper. More about Alex Traub