The Duchess of Gloucester is honoured with a prestigious award as she braves the heatwave for two royal engagements

Born in Odense to lawyer Asger Preben Wissing Henriksen and his wife, Vivian van Deurs in 1946, Birgitte Eva van Deurs Henriksen was no stranger to the ways of high society, studying at a Swiss finishing school and the Scandinavian Academy of International Fashion and Design in Copenhagen. After her parents divorced on 15 January 1966, she would go on to take her mother’s ancestral name, van Deurs.

It was while completing further education in Cambridge that Birgitte’s fairytale began….