UNITED KINGDOM
Yorkshire Post Today
Mark Branagan
With his Guards officer's dashing good looks, his athlete's energy and smooth flattering manner, no-one really knew what Tory peer's son Piers Grant-Ferris was doing at Ampleforth College.
A highly respected monk and teacher, he was also a celebrated mountaineer who in later life would face near death on the Andes.
The only son of leading public figure Lord Harvington – a personal friend of Margaret Thatcher – he had a spotless family name.
Commissioned into the Irish Guards, Grant-Ferris seemed poised for the sort of brilliant career carved out his by father, a former Deputy Speaker during Ted Heath's government and a member of a prominent English Roman Catholic family.
So pupils wondered why he suddenly retreated from the world. In a place where the 40-something Abbot Basil Hume was regarded as a youthful figure, the only explanation was a vague rumour – that Grant-Ferris had been traumatised by a car crash in which two young women died.