Hugh Richard Arthur Grosvenor, 2nd Duke of Westminster, GCVO, DSO (19 March 1879 – 19 July 1953), was a wealthy British landowner.

[2] Following education at Eton, at the age of nineteen, he briefly attended a French boarding school run by the Count de Mauny, who was rumoured to have made sexual advances towards some of his pupils.

According to his Times obituary (21 July 1953), "he was busy up to the day of his death in great schemes of afforestation in Cheshire, in the Lake District, and in Scotland.

He owned 17 Rolls-Royce motor cars and a private train designed to facilitate travel from Eaton Hall directly into London, where his townhouse, Grosvenor House, was located.

[10] Lord Grosvenor had taken a commission with the Royal Horse Guards and was in South Africa serving in the Second Boer War when, in December 1899, he succeeded his grandfather.

The Duke commanded the armoured cars of the regiment during their 1916 campaign in Egypt as part of the Western Frontier Force under General William Peyton.

However, the chief jailor responsible for the snail diet, a Muslim cleric nicknamed "Holy Joe", was hanged to general approval.

The Duke was described as "a pure Victorian who had eyes for his shotgun, his hunters, his dogs … a man who enjoyed hiding diamonds under the pillow of his mistresses …"[19] He was known for being very conservative and later, right wing.

[24] The British historian Ian Kershaw wrote that Westminster "had a propensity to share some of the Nazis' delusions about Jews and Freemasons", which led him to join The Link.

[sentence fragment][26] Griffiths described him as a member of a "hard core" pro-Nazi faction in the House of Lords, who continued to defend Nazi Germany in the summer of 1939, even as the Danzig crisis pushed Britain closer to war.

She and her husband, the prominent Conservative Duff Cooper, were lunching at London's Savoy Grill with the Duke of Westminster.

[25] The Duke, known for his pro-German sympathies, was reportedly instrumental in influencing his former mistress, Coco Chanel, to use her association with Winston Churchill to attempt to broker a bilateral peace agreement between Britain and Germany.

[29] In late 1943 or early 1944, Chanel and her lover, German spy Hans Günther von Dincklage, undertook such an assignment.

Apart from his four marriages, the Duke had multiple love affairs and was known to make lavish, spectacular presents to his lover of the moment.

After his dalliance with Coco Chanel, he was fascinated by the Brazilian Aimée de Heeren, who was not interested in marrying him, but to whom he gave significant jewellery, once part of the French Crown Jewels.

[citation needed] The Duke died of coronary thrombosis at Loch More Lodge on his Scottish estate in Sutherland in July 1953, aged 74.