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- JOHN, Baron Bonde was the Fife laird whose ancestry romantically included both the builders of Rosslyn Chapel and a Swedish monarch. His namADVERTISEMENTe, styles and titles virtually state his lineage: John Anstruther Carl Knutsson Bonde of Charleton, Baron Bonde in the peerage of Sweden; and 21st Lord St Clair (but for a doubtful attainder), heir of line of the Earls of Orkney.
He was born in Washington DC, where his father had a diplomatic posting, and his godfather was the future king of Sweden, Gustaf VI Adolf (who was to marry two British princesses). He grew up in London before attending Eton and then following his father to study law at the University of Uppsala, senior seat of learning in Sweden. Called up by Britain and the United States when war was declared, he had already joined the Swedish cavalry.
From 1945 until 1947 he worked for the Swedish government commission charged with resettling Polish refugees. A man of considerable charm, tact and diplomacy, Bonde had an unassuming manner that readily put at ease people from any kind of background, and his work for Poland was recognised by the award to him of the Polish Cross of Merit.
In 1955 John Bonde inherited Charleton, the Fife estate by St Andrews where his forebears had been lairds since 1713. Despite a flourishing career with Esso Petroleum in Stockholm, he undertook his landed responsibilities, only the fifth proprietor since Waterloo, becoming a gentleman farmer for the next 30 years. He was greatly supported at Charleton by his stylish wife, Brita, a Finn whom he had married in 1944, and who imbued in him her love of sailing.
The Charleton inheritance came maternally following the death of the heir at Ypres in 1914. The majestic Georgian mansion was built in the 1740s and remodelled to Edwardian tastes under the eye of Robert Lorimer. It included a rare addition of a Japanese garden, allowing wartime pandas in London Zoo to maintain their diet of bamboo, albeit Fife-grown.
His dual lineage vied for Bonde's loyalties. Paternally, through his father, Knut, he held a Swedish peerage through which his antecedents ran back to medieval times and the Swedish throne. His politician grandfather Carl Carlsson, speaker in the Swedish parliament, played a leading part in achieving independence for Norway in 1905.
By his mother, Grizel Anstruther, he was heir-of-line of the Sinclair Lords St Clair. But for the effect of a debatable attainder against a Jacobite ancestor in 1716, he would have been de jure and de facto 21st Lord St Clair. His direct forebear William St Clair built Rosslyn Chapel in 1446, long held by some to be the location of the Holy Grail.
Bonde's Anstruther relations emerged through the marriage of Margaret St Clair to John Thomson of Charleton in 1744. Their daughter Grizel married John Anstruther and by the beginning of the 20th century, the family had become Anstruther of Charleton. With the death of John Anstruther of Charleton Ygr in the Great War, his father Charles Anstruther of Charleton passed the estate on his death in 1925 to Grizel ? who 14 years earlier had married the Swedish diplomat Knut, Baron Bonde. John Bonde succeeded his mother in 1970.
For all his quiet ways, Bonde took delight in playing by ear on the piano, particularly comic songs and show tunes. His interest in heraldry came through in his accomplishment of needlepoint, sewing on to cushion covers his coat-of-arms ? which in the Swedish version includes a longship surmounted stem and stern with peacock feathers. By contrast, his Scottish matriculation includes the black engrailed Sinclair cross on a white field.
Brita Bonde died in 1989, and in recent years his companion at home and on the golf course had been Lall Tham.
Baron Bonde is survived by his son and two daughters. His son St Clair Knut Harald J?ns Bonde of Charleton succeeds in the barony. As heir-apparent, his son would have been known as Master of St Clair but for the debatable attainder.
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1918 - 2009 (90 years)
