This post was originally published on this site

When John Hay Whitney arrived in Britain in 1957 to take up the post of American ambassador, he and his socialite wife, Betsey, achieved what few other “outsiders” managed: becoming close friends with the royal family—a friendship likely assisted by their mutual love of horse racing.

A year later Whitney—universally known as Jock—and his wife purchased a modernist house 23 miles southwest of central London in Wentworth Park, a private development of houses ranged around a championship golf course. The property was also conveniently…