Nicholas Harold Phillips (23 August 1947 – 1 March 1991) was a British landowner in Hertfordshire and Bedfordshire with royal connections. As a descendant of Sophia, Electress of Hanover, he was in the line of succession to the British throne.
Phillips was the son of Colonel Harold Pedro Joseph Phillips, Coldstream Guards, by his marriage to Georgina Wernher. He was educated at Eton, the University of London and the University of Lausanne.[1]
He had four sisters, who included Alexandra Hamilton, Duchess of Abercorn and Natalia Grosvenor, Duchess of Westminster.
On 18 October 1975, in Salzburg, Austria, Phillips married Countess Maria Lucia Czernin von und zu Chudenitz, daughter of Count Paul Otto Ernst Diepold Maria Czernin (1904–1955).[2] They had two children, Charlotte Phillips, born 1976, and Edward Paul Phillips, born 1981.[3]
In 1977 Phillips inherited the Luton Hoo estate. In the late 1980s he embarked on developing a business park called 'Capability Green', on land he owned near the access road between the M1 road and Luton Airport. The name was a reference to much of the estate's gardens having been laid out by Capability Brown. The park is now billed by the Bedfordshire and Luton Economic Development Partnership as the "premier business park of the East of England."[4]
Considerable debt was charged against the estate to build the park and during the subsequent property crash he committed suicide at the age of 43, on 1 March 1991.[5]
Phillips's maternal grandmother, known as Lady Zia Wernher, was born Countess Anastasia de Torby, a younger daughter of Grand Duke Michael Mihailovich of Russia, grandson of Emperor Nicholas I of Russia by his morganatic wife Countess Sophie of Merenberg, daughter of Prince Nikolaus Wilhelm of Nassau (himself a brother of Adolphe, Grand Duke of Luxembourg) by his morganatic wife, the younger daughter of the Russian poet Alexander Pushkin.
Lady Zia's sister Countess Nadejda de Torby (Nada) was the wife of George Mountbatten, 2nd Marquess of Milford Haven, elder maternal uncle of Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh. The Torby sisters were third cousins of the Duke through their common ancestor Nicholas I.[5] [6]
Through his Russian grand ducal father Phillips was descended from Sophia, Electress of Hanover, and was thereby in the line of succession to the British throne.[7]
Phillips was also an indirect descendant of the Russian poet Alexander Pushkin[8]. Through Pushkin, he was descended from his African great-grandfather, Abram Petrovich Gannibal (otherwise Ibrahim Hannibal) who was Peter the Great's protégé.[5]