Francis Grosvenor, 8th Earl of Wilton
British aristocrat, financier, and academic (born 1934)

Francis Egerton Grosvenor, 8th Earl of Wilton (8 February 1934 – 4 September 2026), was an English and Australian aristocrat and academic.
Early life
Wilton was the eldest son of Robert Egerton Grosvenor, 5th Baron Ebury, and his first wife, Anne Acland-Troyte. He succeeded his father as 6th Baron Ebury in 1957 and his fourth cousin, Seymour Egerton, as 8th Earl of Wilton in 1999.
As the great-great-great-grandson of Robert Grosvenor, 1st Marquess of Westminster, Lord Wilton was also heir presumptive to the title of Marquess of Westminster currently held by Hugh Grosvenor, 7th Duke of Westminster, Lord Wilton's fourth cousin-once-removed. His stepfather from 1941 to 1947 was Henry Peregrine Hoare (1901–1981), son of Lady Geraldine Mariana Hoare (née Hervey, 1869–1955) and great great-uncle of Olivia Grosvenor, Duchess of Westminster.
Career
Educated at Eton College, he pursued a career in the financial services industry in London, Melbourne and Hong Kong, before taking a doctorate in philosophy and arts at Melbourne University (2001), where he also taught as Dr Francis Ebury.
Wilton served on the board of directors of the Victorian Opera (Melbourne) from 2012 to 2017.
Marriages and children
Wilton married four times. He was married firstly on 10 December 1957 to Gillian Elfrida Astley Soames (marriage dissolved 1962). They had one son:
Julian Francis Martin Grosvenor, 9th Earl of Wilton (born 8 June 1959), married in 1987 to Danielle Rossi (divorced 1989).
“Francis Grosvenor, 8th Earl of Wilton” enters the record as british aristocrat, financier, and academic (born 1934). Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Francis, Grosvenor and Earl can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 8, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q22004678. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1934, 2026, 1957 and 1999.
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This entry incorporates text from “Francis Grosvenor, 8th Earl of Wilton” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.