When David Albert Charles Armstrong-Jones, Viscount Linley, and his sister, Lady Sarah Frances Elizabeth Chatto, realized they'd have to sell some of their late mom's wares to help pay down Britain's steep inheritance levy, the 44-year-old viscount knew just who to call for help: Brett Sherlock, Canadian.
Sherlock had known Linley's mom, Princess Margaret, for more than eight years prior to her death in 2002. They'd met through the former Princess Salimah Aga Khan, who, following her divorce from the Aga Khan in the mid-1990s, had called upon Sherlock, a director of Sotheby's auctioneers, to organize a tour, then a sale, of her jewellery. The auction grossed more than $40-million, and its success enabled Aga Khan -- who before her marriage had been a London model called Sally Croker Poole -- to assume what she called "a more balanced life."
Now, at 41, Sherlock finds himself on the tour-and-sale route once more, this time as the personal rep of Viscount Linley, whom he describes as "a very close friend." A native of St. Catharines, Ont., Sherlock flew to the U.K. from Toronto last weekend to oversee the itinerary of 192 pieces of jewellery and whatnots. They're being displayed over the next five weeks in Edinburgh, Leeds, Wiltshire, Geneva, Moscow, New York and, finally, London, where, on June 13 and 14, they'll be joined by more than 600 other effects from Margaret's estate for an auction at Christie's.
The sale is expected to gross more than $5-million. Among the most-coveted lots are a Fabergé egg, said to be worth almost $2-million, and the Poltimore tiara Margaret wore at her glamorous wedding, in 1960, to Anthony Armstrong-Jones, Lord Snowdon. Its presale estimate: about $450,000.
After the auction, Sherlock expects to return to his home in Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ont., "where I just want to regroup and consider what my options are." Actually, Sherlock hasn't been a resident in Canada for 20 years, having left in his early 20s for an internship at Sotheby's London, a company for which he eventually worked for 14 years, followed by a four-year stint with Christie's.
Last year he was named East Coast (U.S.) manager of Harry Winston Inc., but "I resigned from that just 10 days ago," he said this week. "I moved myself back to Canada quite happily. I lost my dad in September. The family's been at Niagara-on-the-Lake 170 years and I just wanted to be closer to my family. . . . Canada has so much to offer and you don't realize that when you leave it."
Meanwhile, one wonders if John Turner might bid on some of the effects. Lest we forget: Our once so brief and former PM famously danced with Maggie in 1958 when both were single, and rumours abounded that they were an item.Speaking of rumours: It's long been suggested that Kenneth Whyte , publisher-editor of Maclean's, is a member of Opus Dei, the secretive Catholic society started by the controversial Josemaria Escriva in 1928. But it's just not true. As Whyte declares in the latest Ryerson Review of Journalism: "I can barely claim to be a Catholic" -- a position a Whyte confidant confirmed for me this week. Still, it's been interesting to see how this bit of folklore has gained traction, not least as a result of Whyte's fondness for inscrutability, and the interpretive (paranoiac?) tendencies of some Whyte watchers.
I remember one anonymous caller telling me, in 2002, that Whyte hadn't been at work on such-and-such a day at the National Post, where he was then editor-in-chief, because he had been in Rome attending Escriva's canonization. Last November Whyte himself added fuel to the pyre when he invited Msgr. Fred Dolan, Opus Dei's Canadian head, to attend the Maclean's 100th anniversary bash, then got Opus Dei booster Cardinal Marc Ouellette of Quebec City to give the last speech of the evening. Happy birthday, Sigmund Freud, 150 today! Where would the Doors, Alfred Hitchcock, Bernardo Bertolucci and Philip Roth be without you? Pleasant dreams, Herr Doktor, und, please, cut back on the cigars.