governs the estate to this day. The first beneficiary of the Act was the 7th Earl, who died in 1967, following which the Board of Trustees launched a major programme of restoration of the house, gardens and parklands funded partly by his endowment and partly through their own management of the estate. In 1974 Charles, Prince of Wales, accepted the prospect of living on the estate. According to his biographer, Jonathan Dimbleby (for whom Prince Charles arranged access to unpublished royal diaries and family correspondence), at that time he was contemplating an eventual marriage to Hon. Amanda Knatchbull, granddaughter of his great-uncle the 1st Earl Mountbatten of Burma: "[I]n 1974, following his correspondence with Mountbatten on the subject, the Prince had tentatively raised the question of marriage to Amanda with her mother (and his godmother), Lady Brabourne. She was sympathetic, but counselled delaying mention of the matter to her daughter, who had yet to celebrate her seventeenth birthday." Amanda's paternal great-aunt had been Lady Eileen Browne, daughter of the 6th Marquess of Sligo, whose childless marriage to the last Earl Stanhope led to Chevening's being designated by law as a potential home for a member of Britain's royal family. If Amanda were to become Princess of Wales by marriage, the Prince's acceptance of Chevening would make some familial sense. But this was not to be, although the Prince did visit the house several times. In a note of 24 April 1978 to his private secretary, Sir David Checketts, Prince Charles observed, "I know there are advantages — particularly financial ones — in the Chevening set up, but I regret to say I am rapidly coming to the conclusion that they are the only advantages." In June 1980 Prince Charles wrote to the prime minister, Margaret Thatcher, to renounce residency at Chevening (without actually having resided there). Weeks later, he purchased Highgrove in Gloucestershire. By then, according to Dimbleby, Amanda Knatchbull, several of whose close family members had been recently murdered, had declined the Prince's proposal of marriage, and he would soon begin courtship of Lady Diana Spencer. Current use Under the terms of the Chevening Act, the prime minister has the responsibility of nominating a person to occupy the house privately as a furnished country residence. This person can be the prime minister, a minister who is a member of the Cabinet, a lineal descendant of King George VI or