Robin Medforth-Mills
| Robin Medforth-Mills | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Born |
8 December 1942 Sproatley, East Riding of Yorkshire, England | ||||
| Died |
2 February 2002 (aged 59) Geneva, Switzerland | ||||
| Spouse |
Princess Elena of Romania (m. 1983; div. 1991) | ||||
| Issue |
Nicholas de Roumanie Medforth-Mills Karina de Roumanie Medforth-Mills | ||||
| |||||
| Father | Cyril Mills | ||||
| Mother | Nora Medforth | ||||
Leslie Robin Medforth-Mills (8 December 1942 – 2 February 2002) was a professor of geography at the University of Durham and a United Nations official.
Family
Medforth-Mills was the son of Cyril Mills, a farm manager, and Nora Medforth.[1] He married Princess Elena of Romania (born 1950) at a civil ceremony on 20 July 1983 in Durham, England which was followed by a religious ceremony on 24 September 1983 in Lausanne, Switzerland. The family lived at Flass Hall, Esh Winning, Durham.[2] The couple divorced on 28 November 1991 in Sutherland, Scotland after having two children, Nicholas Michael de Roumanie Medforth-Mills (b. 1 April 1985), who has been named a Prince of Romania by his grandfather King Michael, and Elisabetta Karina Medforth-Mills (b. 4 January 1989), whose godmother was the novelist Catherine Cookson.[2]
Education
After being educated at South Holderness County Secondary School, near Preston, where in 1960 he was Head Boy, he went to University. Medforth-Mills graduated with a BA degree, subsequently obtained a PhD degree, and later became a professor of geography[3] at Durham University.[4]
Career
In addition to being professor of geography in Durham University at various periods in his life, he also worked for the United Nations system,[5] serving as a UN expert in a manpower project implemented by the International Labour Organization in Sudan in the mid-1970s, in UNICEF in its fund-raising office in Geneva in the early 1990s, and later in its humanitarian operations in northern Iraq , in the mid-1990s after the first Gulf War. He was later posted with UNICEF again in Geneva, and also briefly in New York in the late 1990s. For several years after the fall of the Ceauşescu regime, he was involved in efforts to bring humanitarian aid to institutionalized orphans and other destitute people in Romania, and was a founder-member of the North-East Relief Fund for Romania,[6] set up with Princess Elena of Romania, and the then-Lord Mayor of Newcastle, Terry Cooney, and Harry Charrington.[7]
References
- ↑ Marlene A. Eilers, Queen Victoria's Descendants (Baltimore, Maryland: Genealogical Publishing Co., 1987), page 190
- 1 2 Mail Diary by Nigel Dempster, in the Daily Mail, Monday 14 October 1991
- ↑ "Romania’s exiled King longs to take his family home – after 42 years – and reclaim his throne", article by Mary H.J. Farrell and Ellen Wallace, in People Weekly, 12 February 1990
- ↑ "Right Royal Response", in Evening Chronicle, 22 February 1990
- ↑ "Bags of help for mercy mission", article in The Journal, 22 February 1990 (mentions Medforth-Mills working for UN)
- ↑ "Northern firms urged to back Romanian relief", article by Andrew Smith, in The Journal, Tuesday, 27 February 1990
- ↑ "Princess pleads for aid to Romania", article in the Northern Echo, 27 February 1990
- Weir, Alison. Britain's Royal Family: A Complete Genealogy (The Bodley Head, London, 1999)
- Mosley, Charles. Blood Royal - From the time of Alexander the Great to Queen Elizabeth II (Ruvigny Ltd, London, 2002) (ISBN 0-9524229-9-9)(page 288)