To the MANOR BORN

With his mop of blond hair and lofty build, Louis Spencer looks every inch Diana’s nephew – he is also heir to Althorp House. Meet Britain’s most eligible man.

- WILLIAM LANGLEY

There is something intriguingly familiar about the tall young man with the slender frame, fine, blondish hair and faintly shy expression loping through a fashionable square in West London. Louis Spencer moves easily through the world of the wealthy and titled, but he leaves few traces behind, and for every headline calling him Britain’s most eligible man, there’s another asking: “Who is he?”

The 27-year-old Viscount Althorp, only son of Earl Spencer, brother of Diana, Princess of Wales, is the sole heir to Diana’s childhood home, Althorp House, a 500-year-old stately pile surrounded by 6000 hectares of immaculate parkland.

Louis’s striking resemblance to his late aunt has been winning him a lot of attention, but a more bothersome spotlight has fallen on the question of why – with three older sisters – he alone will inherit his family’s title, ancestral home, and the fabulous treasures acquired throughout the Spencers’ long history.

His father, Charles, the 9th Earl – who himself had two older sisters – claims that passing the estate down the male line is a matter of tradition.

“I get the problems with it as a concept,” he says. “I also get the strengths of it having worked to date. Althorp is still intact. If you go around the châteaux of the Loire or whatever, they are all empty.