Obituary: The Duke of Devonshire

The Duke of Devonshire: Landowner, politician and soldier

The Duke of Devonshire was one of Britain's greatest landowners, with estates in Derbyshire, Yorkshire, Sussex and Ireland.

He was born Andrew Robert Buxton Cavendish, second son of the 10th Duke, in 1920.

He was serving in the Coldstream Guards in World War II - winning a Military Cross - when his elder brother was killed in action, leaving him as heir to the title.

Then when his father died in 1950, he succeeded him. With the title came Chatsworth House, estates of over 80,000 acres in Derbyshire, Yorkshire, Sussex and Ireland and a bill for £2.5m in death duties.

It was paid by selling land and many of Chatsworth's magnificent collection of old master drawings, including works by Rembrandt, Raphael, Rubens, Van Dyck and Holbein, most of which went to foreign buyers.

The Duke's ancestral home, Chatsworth in Derbyshire

The Duke and Duchess - Deborah, youngest of the famed Mitford sisters, whom he married in 1941 - opened Chatsworth to the public, attracting around 300,000 visitors every summer.

The Duke had a brief career in politics. Before his elevation he contested Chesterfield for the Conservatives in the 1945 and 1950 general elections.

In the Lords he served as a junior minister in the Commonwealth Office in the government of his uncle by marriage, Harold Macmillan.

But in 1982 he left the Conservative Party for the newly-formed SDP, before moving in his later years on to the cross-benches in the Lords.

The Duke's heir is his son, the Marquess of Hartington. He also had two daughters.