Among Lord Montagu's memories of growing up at Palace House, his historic stately home in the New Forest, are its celebrity guests.
''Mick Jagger came to stay once, and (racing drivers) Jackie Stewart and Stirling Moss were regular visitors,'' he recalls.
''Once, Liberace came and asked if he could bring his friend – a man called Michael Jackson. Liberace was at the piano and Michael hung around in the background, almost unnoticed. He was very shy and quiet.''
Ralph, the 4th Baron Montagu of Beaulieu, shares his extraordinary recollections as he and his wife, Ailsa, invite HELLO! into Palace House – once the gatehouse of the medieval Beaulieu Abbey, which has been the family home since 1538 – for this exclusive interview and photoshoot.
Today, Ralph is Lord of the manor after inheriting the estate – and his title – from his late father, Edward Douglas-Scott-Montagu, the 3rd Baron, ten years ago.
Just as the previous Lord Montagu transformed Beaulieu's fortunes by opening his home to the public as a tourist attraction, so too is his heir leaving his mark, albeit in less flamboyant fashion.
''Once, Liberace came and asked if he could bring his friend – a man called Michael Jackson''
''My father was a great socialite and party animal,'' says Ralph, 64, whose youthful recollections also involve a succession of royals coming to the estate. ''There was nearly always something happening. If my father was away, things would be in quiet mode, but as soon as he was around, the place would become much more alive. He was a ball of energy, and you couldn’t ignore that when he was there.''
© Getty ImagesEdward, who was married twice, hit the headlines in 1954 when he was jailed for a year for homosexuality, which was illegal at the time; it was a charge he always denied. But he bounced back and continued his mission to save Beaulieu from financial ruin as stately homes fought for survival in the economic downturn that followed the Second World War.
''He found it difficult to talk about. He simply wanted, after he came out of prison, to move on, and he did so incredibly successfully,'' Ralph says.
Although Edward loved hosting parties – as did his second wife, the late Lady Fiona, who marked her 70th birthday with an Elvis-themed celebration – his eldest son prefers to live a less starry existence. Ralph looks after the family business while keeping his hand in as a graphic designer, commuting to London one day a week for his part-time job as head of heritage at the Radio Times.
© Peter FludeHis ''best childhood memory'', meanwhile, is of racing around the grounds in a go-kart. ''There are lots of internal roads and paths, so it’s absolutely perfect for that sort of thing,'' he tells us.
Ailsa, who joins her husband in their wood-panelled drawing room, adds: ''My late father-in-law wasn't really somebody to sit in a room and enjoy it, because he was so fidgety. This was a man who, when he had three invitations on the same evening, would have the starter in one house, the main course in another and pudding somewhere else, and somehow managed never to cause offence. But he got the best of all worlds.''
The current Lord Montagu may have a different personality, but he certainly shares his father’s vision when it comes to the estate.
© Peter Flude''When you own a big estate, having a title that's been passed down through the generations does go with it; it's almost like a job title,'' he says. ''It's a very different thing to what it perhaps once was, and anyone who owns an estate has to run it like a business to make ends meet.''
The National Motor Museum, which was opened by Edward in the 1950s and is now a charity, includes the royal caravan in which the King and his sister, the Princess Royal, enjoyed childhood holidays. His Majesty has visited a few times over the years, and the Duke of Edinburgh – whose wife, Sophie, is godmother to Ralph's nephew Ben – is a regular visitor.
Other attractions on the estate include the medieval Beaulieu Abbey and an exhibition dedicated to the estate’s days as a finishing school for agents of the Special Operations Executive during the war.
Meanwhile, at Palace House, some of the rooms in Edward's private quarters have been refurbished and opened to the public, transformed with the help of interior-design students from nearby Solent University. ''The students came up with ideas, and I worked with them to put these ideas into effect,'' says Ralph, whose favourite bedroom is the Motor Room.
A personal tribute to his car-enthusiast father, it features wallpaper with vintage tyre-tread vertical stripes, motoring and other books written by Edward and an art deco Zeppelin-style lantern, plus a pair of lamp stands made from old brass car horns. ''I'm trying to imagine what my father might have had as his bedroom, as a bachelor,'' he says.
Elsewhere, the Heraldry Room commemorates some of Ralph’s ancestors, with pictures of 70 shields of his forebears arranged in a frieze, while the Water Babies bathroom, inspired by the classic children’s novel by Charles Kingsley, has been reimagined as an underwater room with fish, turtles and water babies swimming.
© Peter Flude''He could have spun it out and really made me suffer, but he immediately said: 'Oh, actually, I belong here.' And then he did the cliched thing of taking a photo of me and asking me for my address so he could send it to me.''
The Throne Room features a ''throne'' lavatory and a gold bathtub, while in the corridor, some of Edward’s neck ties and other belongings are on display, to mark the tenth anniversary of his death.
''I think some of Ralph's father's ebullience comes out in those rooms; some of them are really quite off the wall, and they are fun,'' Ailsa says. Beaulieu is one of 11 UK stately homes in a group of Treasure Houses, whose owners stay at each other’s properties once a year; others in the group include Blenheim Castle, Harewood House, Holkham Hall and Woburn Abbey.
© Peter Flude''The first people who stayed in these rooms included the Duchess of Bedford and the Earl of Leicester, and there were all these people running from room to room, saying: 'Have you seen mine?' We can't do what other stately homes with long heritages do, so we do the quirky,'' she says.
Ralph and Ailsa, 63, who used to work as a translator, recently celebrated their 20th wedding anniversary with an eco-cycling trip to Portugal. They met in 2000, when Ailsa visited Beaulieu with the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry, an independent all-female charity structured like a military reserve unit, for an event and was tasked with guarding the gates in her vintage 1930s uniform.
© Peter Flude''Ralph was the first person who tried to get through the barrier, and of course I didn’t know who he was; I told him it was a private event,'' she recalls with a laugh.
In their 40s when they married, the couple decided not to start a family. ''A lot of people assume we couldn't have children, but we made a decision not to, because we both believe that having a child is a vocation and it’s not one we had,'' Ailsa says.
© Peter FludeRalph, who has a younger sister Mary, an interior designer, and a younger half-brother Jonathan in pharmaceuticals, adds: ''The estate, on my death, will go into a family trust, and there are four nephews and nieces who are potentially there to take up the reins as the next generation.''
Until then, Lord and Lady Montagu will focus on continuing his father's legacy while creating their own, with a focus on conservation, in particular the nature reserve on the estate that provides a sanctuary for migrating birds.
© Peter Flude''I was with the family business for many years, so it was a smooth transition. I didn't come in with a dramatically different agenda, but I'm putting my own stamp on it,'' Ralph says. Ailsa adds: ''People who are custodians of great estates are just custodians. And we want to leave Beaulieu a better place than we found it.''
To read the full exclusive interview, pick up the latest issue of HELLO! on sale in the UK on Monday. You can subscribe to HELLO! to get the magazine delivered free to your door every week or purchase the digital edition online via our Apple or Google apps.
