Personality profile


cocktail parties Not all


and white uniforms


After three wars and powerful jobs during a 36-year career in the Royal Navy, Sir David Steel took up a very different career challenge – running the “loveliest castle in the world”. Simon Finlay went to meet him at work…


S


ir David Steel remembers vividly the moment he decided on a career in the Royal Navy. Aged about nine, his parents took the family to Calais from Dover on a Townsend Toresen car ferry, when the sights and sounds of the open seas suddenly captivated him. From that point, the lad from Cheshire’s path to the near pinnacle of his profession across 36 “wonderful, wonderful” years had more or less begun. Along the way, three major conflicts – the Falklands, Kosovo and Iraq – helped to


shape the career which ultimately saw him knighted, promoted to Second Sea Lord and, aſter the Navy, land a job as chief executive of Leeds Castle. Surely, the two lives cannot compare. Well, he says, they can.


Siting in the small but spotless office in the treasure house’s admin block, Sir David, 58, explains: “Te people who work here are equal to any ship’s company I have encountered in my Naval career.


“Te difference is that at the end of the day they go home to their other lives, while sailors


Mid Kent Living 7


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