Duke who transformed glorious Alnwick Castle gives the Mail a private tour of blood-soaked secrets

The Percy family of Alnwick Castle — that splendid, 150-room, heavily crenellated, many-towered magnificence perched on a rocky outcrop above the River Aln in Northumberland — have not, traditionally, lived long or quiet lives. The great Sir Henry ‘Hotspur’ Percy, who led endless rebellions against Henry IV of England and was slain at the Battle of Shrewsbury, was immortalised in Shakespeare’s Henry IV, Part I. Jane Fryer meets Duke of Northumberland Ralph Percy, 62, at his home at Alnwick Castle, Alnwick, Northumberland The 6th Earl was secretly engaged to Anne Boleyn before she became Henry VIII’s second wife, the 7th was beheaded, the 8th was shot dead in the Tower and the 9th was thought to be involved in the Guy Fawkes Gunpowder Plot and was incarcerated for 16 years. The Duke and Duchess of Northumberland, Ralph and Jane Percy, pictured at their home, Alnwick Castle, in Northumberland The latter is courtesy of Ralph Percy, the 12th Duke, who, with the help of his energetic Duchess, Jane, has transformed Alnwick into one of Britain’s most visited attractions. Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone filmed at Alnwick Castle He was happily married to Jane, a stockbroker’s daughter from Edinburgh, whom he’d met at a party when she was 16, and lived happily in a pretty Georgian farmhouse on the family estate with their four children and dogs. ‘He liked the castle, but he was a bit depressive, and I think he found the whole thing — living in this goldfish bowl and being responsible for so much — difficult.’ And then, in 1995, Harry died of an accidental amphetamine overdose and Ralph, who had been working on the Northumberland estate for two years, inherited the lot: title, Alnwick, Syon House in London, vast swathes of land in the north and south of the country, plus a £350 million fortune.