catherine.austen@futurenet.com
@cfausten123
“SOME hunts have very good relationships with their Pony Club branches and riding schools – others don’t. Let’s build our links with the community – on the whole, we are really good at that but there’s always room for improvement…” Viscount Astor is compelling when he’s warming to a theme and few themes exercise him as much as hunting. He calls me on Zoom from the Isle of Jura, to a backdrop of crashing waves, where he’s fishing and stalking.
William Waldorf Astor (the name given to every Viscount Astor, it seems) has field sports and politics running through his veins and, at the age of 70, has an undiminished appetite for both. Lord Astor&s grandmother, Nancy Astor, was the first woman to sit in Parliament, having come to Britain from Virginia in the USA to hunt in Leicestershire, and never left. His father served as a naval intelligence officer in the
