Michael Maclagan Michael Maclagan , CVO , FSA , FRHistS ( born 14 April 1914 , London - died 13 August 2003 , Oxford ) was a British historian , antiquary and herald . He was Fellow and Tutor in Modern History at Trinity College , Oxford for more than forty years , a long - serving officer of arms , and Lord Mayor of Oxford 1970 - 71 . Career . Maclagan was educated at Winchester College and Christ Church , Oxford . He graduated from Christ Church with a first class degree in 1935 , and was awarded the Gladstone Memorial Exhibition . After two years as a lecturer at Christ Church , he was elected a Fellow of Trinity College in 1939 ( the last Fellow to be so elected before the outbreak of World War II ) . At both Winchester and Oxford he was a member of the Officer Training Corps ; and he served as President of the Oxford University Archaeological Society . World War II . In February 1941 , Maclagan was commissioned a second lieutenant in the 16th / 5th Lancers , Royal Armoured Corps . He spent much of the war in staff and intelligence jobs : for a period he was in Cairo , but he was subsequently posted to Military Operations in the War Office in London , where his proficiency in Italian and Serbo - Croat stood him in good stead . He ultimately reached the rank of major . Post - war . In 1946 , Maclagan returned to Trinity College , where he remained as Fellow and Tutor in Modern History until his retirement in 1981 . For many years he shared teaching duties with the early modern scholar John Phillips Cooper ( 1920 - 1978 ) . He held various college offices ( including Dean , Librarian , Senior Tutor , Vice - President , and steward of the Senior Common Room ) ; was Senior Proctor for the University in 1954 - 5 ; and he also served as Senior Librarian ( 1960 – 70 ) and Trustee ( 1970 – 99 ) of the Oxford Union . Outside the University , he served as a university - appointed alderman on Oxford City Council , and held the offices of Sheriff in 1964 - 5 , and Lord Mayor in 1970 - 71 . He served as Chairman of the Oxford Diocesan Advisory Committee , 1961 – 85 ; and as Master of the Scriveners ' Company , 1988 - 9 . He had lifelong interests in heraldry and genealogy , and served both as a private officer of arms and at the College of Arms in London . He began his heraldic career in 1948 with an appointment as Slains Pursuivant of Arms , and held that office until 1970 . This appointment was made by the Chief of the Name and Arms of Hay after the resurgence of private armorial officers following World War II . In 1953 Maclagan was made an Officer Brother of the Venerable Order of Saint John , and served as a Gold Staff Officer at the Coronation and as a Green Staff Officer at the Investiture of the Prince of Wales in 1969 . In 1970 , he was appointed Portcullis Pursuivant of Arms in Ordinary at the College of Arms . He held this post for 10 years until his promotion to the office of Richmond Herald on 14 July 1980 . Maclagan held this last office until his retirement in 1989 , at the age of 75 . On his retirement from Trinity in 1981 , a portrait of Maclagan in his herald ' s tabard by Paul Brason was commissioned by the Trinity Society and presented to the College : it is now hung in the screens passage to the College dining hall . Scholarship . Maclagan was characterised by his obituary - writer in " The Times " as an antiquary ( rather than an historian ) , which describes him well . Patric Dickinson , in the " Independent " , called him " the quintessential Oxford don - a scholar of the old school , erudite , antiquarian and stylish " , who " seemed to have strayed from an earlier age " . He had an eclectic range of historical interests spanning all periods ( particularly , but far from exclusively , in the fields of genealogy , heraldry and bibliography ) ; he was more concerned with arcane detail , for which he had a remarkable memory , than with grand narrative ; and he tended to pursue topics and projects which appealed to him , rather than those which might advance his career . All this meant that , regrettably , he published less than he might have done . He was a proficient linguist , fluent in Greek , Latin , French , German , Italian and Serbo - Croat , and with some knowledge of Arabic . His first book , in 1949 , was a translation of part of the Venerable Bede ' s " Ecclesiastical History of the English Nation " . Many of his core interests were genealogical . He had a longstanding expertise in the history of the medieval Anglo - Norman family of de Clare , although little of this came to print . His principal foray into modern history was a well - received biography of a kinsman ( through his mother ) , the first Earl Canning , who was Governor - General of India during the Indian Rebellion of 1857 and first Viceroy of India . He is best known to students of royal and noble genealogies and royal families as co - author ( with Jiří Louda , who compiled and drew the tables , while Maclagan wrote the text ) of the best - selling " Lines of Succession " , first published in 1981 , and subsequently reprinted and revised on several occasions . He was also interested in Byzantine history , and in 1968 published a history of Constantinople . For many years he spent part of his summer vacation as a popular lecturer on Swan Hellenic cruises in the eastern Mediterranean . He was a keen bibliophile , and built up an extensive collection of rare books . In 1960 he published an edition of Bishop Richard de Bury ' s " Philobiblon " , one of the earliest studies of librarianship . He was a meticulous indexer : his biography of Canning was awarded the Society of Indexers ' Wheatley Medal in 1962 ; and in 1988 he compiled the index for Francis Jones ' s " Catalogue of Welsh Manuscripts in the College of Arms " . Family and royal ancestry . Michael Maclagan was the son of Sir Eric Maclagan ( 1879 - 1951 ) , for many years director of the Victoria and Albert Museum . His mother , Helen Elizabeth Lascelles ( 10 October 1879 – 19 October 1942 ) , who married Eric Maclagan on 8 July 1913 , was a granddaughter of the 4th Earl of Harewood : she was a sister of Sir Alan " Tommy " Lascelles , Private Secretary to King George VI and a second cousin once removed to the 7th Earl of Harewood who married Mary , Princess Royal , only daughter of King George V and sister to King George VI . Maclagan ' s paternal grandfather was the Most Reverend William Dalrymple Maclagan ( 1826 – 1910 ) , Archbishop of York from 1891 to 1908 , and the cleric who had crowned Queen Alexandra in 1902 . His paternal grandmother , second wife of the Archbishop , was the Honourable Augusta Anne Barrington ( 1836 – 1915 ) , daughter of the 6th Viscount Barrington . ( Augusta Maclagan had money settled upon her when she married Maclagan , then Bishop of Lichfield , in 1878 : about half her money was settled on her son Eric when he married in 1913 , giving him and his wife a considerable degree of financial independence . ) Through both his mother and his paternal grandmother , Maclagan thus had connections to several British aristocratic families and through them , royal descent . The Honourable Augusta Maclagan was a great - granddaughter of the 9th Earl of Strathmore and Kinghorne ; thus making her grandson Michael Maclagan a distant kinsman to the Queen . Michael Maclagan is also a son of a 5th cousin of Elizabeth II by William Cavendish - Bentinck , 2nd Duke of Portland and his wife . Personal life . Maclagan was twice married . His first marriage in 1939 to a cousin , Brenda Alexander , was dissolved by divorce in 1946 . His second marriage in 1949 to Jean Elizabeth Brooksbank Garnett lasted almost 54 years ; she died on 3 August 2003 . He died ten days later on the day of her funeral . Maclagan had a son by his first marriage , and a son ( who died , aged 26 , in 1984 ) and two daughters by his second marriage .