THE funeral of the stepfather of Diana, Princess of Wales, is to take place in a Suffolk church.Peter Shand Kydd, who was the second husband of Frances, the mother of Princess Diana and Earl Spencer, died last Thursday .

THE funeral of the stepfather of Diana, Princess of Wales, is to take place in a Suffolk church.

Peter Shand Kydd, who was the second husband of Frances, the mother of Princess Diana and Earl Spencer, died last Thursday .

A service will be held at St Peter and St Paul Church in Aldeburgh, the seaside town that was his home for a number of years.

The wallpaper heir, who was born in 1925, had lived in Bawdsey before moving to Aldeburgh. Described by locals as a private and quiet man, it is understood he had been suffering from ill health in recent months.

His life was thrust into the limelight when his step-daughter, Lady Diana, married the Prince of Wales in 1981 in St Paul's Cathedral.

While still married to his first wife, Janet, Mr Shand Kydd had an affair with Diana's mother, while she was still married to John Spencer, Viscount Althorp - the father of Diana and Earl Spencer.

So in 1967, when Diana was six, her parents' marriage fell apart. After their divorces came through, her mother and Mr Shand Kydd married on May 2, 1969.

Frances was then known as The Honourable Mrs Shand Kydd. The couple lived in Buckinghamshire and West Sussex before settling on a 1,000-acre farm on the remote Scottish island Seil.

But they separated in 1988 after he left her for a younger woman and they later divorced.

Mrs Shand Kydd continued to live in solitude on the island of Seil and died there in 2004 at the age of 68.

Mr Shand Kydd, who was half-brother to the former champion amateur jockey William Shand Kydd, inherited the wallpaper business built up by his father.

He sold the company in 1962 and moved his family to Australia, where he became a sheep farmer, before returning to England and meeting Frances.

He had three children by his first wife. Their son, Adam, died in Cambodia at the age of 49 in 2004 of a suspected drug overdose.

His younger son, John Shand Kydd, born in 1959, is a photographer, with works in the collection at the National Portrait Gallery.

On April 6, Rev Nigel Hartley will conduct Mr Shand Kydd's funeral at St Peter and St Paul Church, which is renowned for being the final resting place of composer Benjamin Britten and Elizabeth Garrett Anderson, the first woman doctor in England.

His family and friends, who said in a death notice in a national newspaper that he would be much loved and missed, requested no flowers.

Instead they asked that donations be given to Marie Curie Cancer Care c/o Hunnaball of Ipswich, in Norwich Road.