Middletons: Close-knit clan with business savvy
Source: Agencies |
April 19, 2011, Tuesday
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Print Edition
Print Edition
IN joining the royal clan, Kate Middleton is going from her family business to Britain's first family, nicknamed The Firm.
Her background should have helped prepare her for the formidable challenge.
The Middleton clan is blessed with strong ties and commercial savvy. Kate's parents, Michael and Carole, went from airline employees to owners of a successful small business who gained their children access to Britain's loftiest social circles.
Michael Middleton was a flight dispatcher and Carole Goldsmith a flight attendant before they married and, in the 1980s, set up Party Pieces, a business selling balloons, candles, streamers and other mail-order party supplies.
They did well enough to move from a semidetached suburban house to a large home in the affluent village of Bucklebury, with children Kate, now 29, Pippa - now 27 and her sister's maid of honor - and James, 24.
The Middletons strive to give their children every advantage in life. The siblings attended Marlborough College, a 30,000 pound (US$47,000) a year boarding school attended by some of Britain's wealthiest people. Kate went on to the 600-year-old St. Andrews University in Scotland, where her fellow students included, fatefully, Prince William, the second in line to the throne.
The family also owns a million-dollar apartment in London's tony Chelsea area, where the children have lived while working in the capital. All have also worked for the family firm.
Kate's ancestors on her mother's side were manual laborers and coal miners, a fact trumpeted in tabloid headlines like "From pit to palace." The family runs a small business, like many other Britons.
However, Kate's paternal ancestors, the Middletons, have been affluently middle-class for more than a century: merchants, lawyers and mill owners in Yorkshire who amassed comfortable fortunes, sent their children to private schools and became pillars of the community.
Her background should have helped prepare her for the formidable challenge.
The Middleton clan is blessed with strong ties and commercial savvy. Kate's parents, Michael and Carole, went from airline employees to owners of a successful small business who gained their children access to Britain's loftiest social circles.
Michael Middleton was a flight dispatcher and Carole Goldsmith a flight attendant before they married and, in the 1980s, set up Party Pieces, a business selling balloons, candles, streamers and other mail-order party supplies.
They did well enough to move from a semidetached suburban house to a large home in the affluent village of Bucklebury, with children Kate, now 29, Pippa - now 27 and her sister's maid of honor - and James, 24.
The Middletons strive to give their children every advantage in life. The siblings attended Marlborough College, a 30,000 pound (US$47,000) a year boarding school attended by some of Britain's wealthiest people. Kate went on to the 600-year-old St. Andrews University in Scotland, where her fellow students included, fatefully, Prince William, the second in line to the throne.
The family also owns a million-dollar apartment in London's tony Chelsea area, where the children have lived while working in the capital. All have also worked for the family firm.
Kate's ancestors on her mother's side were manual laborers and coal miners, a fact trumpeted in tabloid headlines like "From pit to palace." The family runs a small business, like many other Britons.
However, Kate's paternal ancestors, the Middletons, have been affluently middle-class for more than a century: merchants, lawyers and mill owners in Yorkshire who amassed comfortable fortunes, sent their children to private schools and became pillars of the community.
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