Jeremy Mainwaring-Burton LVO

Jeremy Mainwaring-Burton’s talks are skilfully and beautifully illustrated.  They include his recollections of staying at the Castle of Mey as a guest of The Queen Mother and his subsequent work preparing the Castle for public opening.  Jeremy’s other speech is about the Queen Mother’s love of jewellery.  Both speeches provide fascinating insights into the life of one of the 20th Century’s most famous personalities.

Jeremy Mainwaring-Burton graduated from Durham University with a degree in geology, and was offered a job as a mining geologist in Zambia. But rather than eke out the remainder of his youth down a copper mine, he thought it would be more fun to join the Army. And indeed it was. On leaving Sandhurst he spent five years in the Irish Guards, the last two and a half of which were on secondment to Clarence House as the Queen Mother’s equerry.

The Queen Mother would spend every August at the Castle of Mey, her property near John O’Groats on the north coast of Scotland. Jeremy first stayed there when serving as Her Majesty’s equerry and on numerous occasions thereafter as one of her guests. When she died in 2002 he was asked to help open the castle to the public and what was supposed to be a six week appointment lasted six years. As a result, he has spent more time at the Castle of Mey over the years than its royal owner ever did.

Being a geologist Jeremy couldn’t help but notice the magnificent gemstones in the jewellery the Queen Mother used to wear. In fact, if he admired a certain item she would sometimes take it off and give it to him to have a closer look. This inspired him to study gemmology and when he left the Army he qualified as a Fellow of the Gemmological Association of Great Britain. Although this resulted in him spending many years as a precious stone dealer in London’s Hatton Garden he has also worked as an exploration geologist in South Africa, a gold and diamond prospector in South America and a gold-miner in California.

He now lives quietly in rural Oxfordshire where he continues to prospect for gold using a metal detector rather than a gold pan.