A charity close to my heart is the worldwide effort to find an effective treatment and cure for EPILEPSY, a cause which the late Queen held near and dear to Her Majesty. One in twenty-six people will experience seizures during their life. THREE of my immediate family – a sister and two of my three children – are afflicted with this insidious disease.
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I worry continuously that my loved ones may experience an unexpected seizure in public and an untrained emergency responder may use unnecessary, perhaps even lethal force as my darling may lash out in confusion while coming out of a seizure. We must push hard with research, with science, with all the tools at our disposal to find long-term effective treatment, or a cure, fight day after day and harder the next, to relieve the suffering, educate the public, and remove the stigma which surrounds this ailment.
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I believe that the collective efforts of a noble charitable fellowship such as KRO can do great things toward alleviating suffering in our world. Together we can plant the seeds, the acorns if you will, of cures for many of the ills of today’s children. My own emphasis is on finding a cure for epilepsy through the scientific breakthroughs which gene editing tools like CRISPR have provided.

I am a descendant of Sir Compton Reade, 1st Baronet of Barton and Shipton, bestowed by Charles II in the spring of 1661, less than one year after the Restoration, in recognition of his courage under the fire of Cromwell’s Army as a teenaged Compton protected Queen Henrietta and helped in her escape to the Continent. My second cousin Sir Kenneth Ray Reade was the 13th Baronet of that line, who died in Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA in 2012. I am closest in line and presume the Stylings as a Placeholder until the details can be sorted with the King’s College of Arms in The City.
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Sir Compton was marked with an estate exceeding £2000 annually among the original roll of Knights of the Royal Oak.