Lady Victoria Leatham
noblewoman; British antiques expert
Lady Victoria Diana Leatham MBE (née Cecil; born 28 June 1947) is an antiques expert and television personality. She was the chatelaine of Burghley House from 1982 to 2007.
Career
Leatham began working for Sotheby's in Bond Street, concentrating on the East of England. She joined the BBC Antiques Roadshow and was a regular contributor to the programme for 20 years. On the death of her father in 1981, with the marquessate passing to a Canadian uncle, she and her husband became the custodians of Burghley House for 25 years, increasing annual visitor numbers from 48,000 to 97,000 by 2007, before handing it over to their daughter, Miranda Rock.
In the 2018 Queen's Birthday Honours, she was appointed Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) for services to the community in Northamptonshire and Cambridgeshire.
Positions
Honorary colonel of 158 Royal Anglian Regiment (1996–2002)
Deputy Lieutenant of Cambridgeshire
Worshipful Company of Drapers (first female Master)
Public Governor, Peterborough and Stamford Hospital Trust
Fundraiser, Ron Pickering Memorial Fund, which supports many of Britain's most talented athletes aged 15–23
Founder, Fishing for Forces, which provides free fishing in private lakes and rivers to disabled veterans
Patron of Westmorland of Apethorpe Archive Appeal 2012
Trustee of Sue Ryder Hospice at Thorpe Hall in Peterborough
President of Friends of Fotheringhay Church
Personal life
Leatham is the daughter of David Cecil, 6th Marquess of Exeter, then known as Lord Burghley, and his second wife, Hon. Diana Henderson, granddaughter of Alexander Henderson, 1st Baron Faringdon.
She married Simon Patrick Leatham, son of Major Patrick Magor Leatham, on 25 April 1967. They have two children.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Lady Victoria Leatham” is noblewoman; British antiques expert. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Lady, Victoria and Leatham, not as a finished interpretation.
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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 Jun 11, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q6470585. VIAF identifies the subject as 55804590. The Library of Congress control number is n92033608. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1947, 1982, 2007 and 1981.
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This entry incorporates text from “Lady Victoria Leatham” 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.