A pioneer who successfully turned his ancestral home of Woburn Abbey into a tourist attraction

The restoration of Woburn Abbey became the lifework of ''Ian'' Bedford, a pioneer in the business of turning stately homes into tourist attractions. When he succeeded to the dukedom in 1953, after his father died in a shooting accident, he was faced with death duties of (pounds) 4.5m and a near derelict family seat. He seriously considered remaining in South Africa where he was happily settled with his second wife and family.

Bedford overcame his innate shyness to promote Woburn Abbey, in Bedfordshire, and its 16,000-acre estate. Once the site of a Cistercian abbey, it had belonged to the Russell family since King Henry VIII dissolved the monasteries in the sixteenth century. He was one of the first members of the aristo-cracy to capitalise on the historic value of his home, turning it into a modern tourist attraction - complete with a fun fair and safari park - in order to keep it in his family.

Recognising that the tourists wanted to meet the duke as much as they wanted to see the lions in the safari park, he offered dinner with the family to paying guests, and even allowed a nudist film to be shot in the grounds.

''I do not relish the scorn of the peerage, but it is better to be looked down on than overlooked,'' he once remarked. The gambit paid off, allowing the family to keep and restore the house, which currently receives more than 1.5 million visitors a year.

Bedford once mused that his family ''thought themselves slightly grander than God''.

His father, known as ''Spinach'', was a colourful character but not given to

generosity; Bedford recalled that, as a child, he was kept short of chocolates and had

to eat those put out for the family parrots.

For many years, he was unaware that he was to inherit a title. ''I remember reading

in the newspaper of the duchess of Bedford breaking the record for a flight to South Africa,'' he recalled. ''I said to a maid who was working in our house, 'That sounds a very brave woman'.

''She said: 'Don't you know, that's your grandmother?'

That was the first time I had ever heard of the dukes and duchesses of Bedford.''

His father, then the Marquess of Tavistock, and grandfather, the eleventh duke, were estranged for many years as a result of the duke's disapproval of his only child's pacifism during the 1914-18 war.

He was tutored at home and at the age of 18, as he studied in London in an attempt to get into college, his father gave him an allowance of less than (pounds) 98 a year. Friends bought him an overcoat after finding he did not possess one.

In 1939, Spinach Tavistock disinherited his son because he disapproved of his marriage to Clare Hollway, a divorcee. She died in 1945, by which time they had two sons. In 1947, he married Lydia, and father and son were reconciled.

Bedford signed up with the Coldstream Guards in the

Second World War, but suffered poor health and was soon discharged. He worked as

a reporter on Lord Beaverbrook's Sunday Express newspaper and later took his young family to live in South Africa.

He returned after inheriting the title in 1953 and with Lydia, he set about restoring Woburn. The couple cleaned many of the valuable contents themselves, including an 800-piece Sevres dinner service presented by King Louis XV to the wife of the fourth duke on the conclusion of his peace negotiations in Paris at the end of the Seven Years' War.

The estate's trustees sold part of the estate to meet (pounds) 4.5m death duties, but the duke resisted their requests to sell Woburn itself. ''I have learned the most important lesson of my life from opening Woburn. It is that the pleasure you give to other people is

the most rewarding thing in the world. I regard it as the main purpose of my life to keep Woburn Abbey for my family, and I am convinced that my way is the best way of doing this.''

He married his third wife, Nicole, in 1960, and in 1974 suddenly handed over the running of the estate to his eldest son, Robin, and the couple moved abroad. He died in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

He is survived by his

wife, two sons from his first marriage, and one from his

second marriage.

John Robert Russell,13th

Duke of Bedford; born May 24,1917, died October 25, 2002.