Life
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.
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). They had two children, Charlotte Phillips, born 1976, and Edward Paul Phillips, born 1981.
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."
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.
Read more about this topic: Nicholas Harold Phillips
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