THE people of Hohentengen am Hochrhein woke yesterday to the realisation that the well-spoken English aristocrat who lived among them had not been all that he claimed.

The man, who purports to be Lord Buckingham, but is known to have stolen an extinct title and the identity of a baby who died in 1963, made his home in this small town in Germany two years ago.

It is an address that Buckingham kept from police who interviewed him several times since his arrest for passport offences in January. But yesterday The Times traced the European home of the man, who still insists that he is Christopher Edward Buckingham, to a quiet street in this small town just north of the Swiss-German border.

Buckingham has rented a two-bedroom second-floor flat on Sonnenrain, with a balcony and garage, since May 2003, when he signed a contract for £470 a month rent. The name Buckingham is on the door buzzer and the letterbox.

After being told that the tenant was in jail, was not an English lord, and indeed was not Christopher Buckingham, his landlady went to her bank to check on this month’s rent.

Ruth Pommerening confirmed that November’s rent had been paid from an account in the name of “Lord Buckingham, Christopher”.

“Herr Buckingham is not a lord?” she said, clearly shocked, as the story of the unmasking of her tenant was explained to her.

“He told us he was Lord Buckingham and we have the papers with that name on it. This is all a great surprise to us.

“He was a very pleasant man, no trouble at all. He was often away, working in Zürich and in England. We haven’t seen him for months and months and he told one of his neighbours that he would be away for a time because he was repairing his castle in England.

“I remember when he moved in. Herr Buckingham said he needed a big apartment because he had big furniture from the castle.”

Far from renovating a stately home, Buckingham is in a British jail after being sentenced to 21 months this week for making a false passport application.

Police are trying to discover his real identity and have asked intelligence agencies if he may have been an East German spy.

Buckingham’s blue Audi 80 is thought to be in the garage in Hohentengen. The plants in his window boxes are dead and there are storage boxes piled against a window but someone visits the flat regularly and collects his post.

His next-door neighbour, Helga Karasek, identified one of the visitors as Anita Keller, the Swiss nurse whom Buckingham has said is his fiancée.

She said: “I often saw her here with him. They would arrive together in the car. Sometimes he had visits from a pretty blonde lady as well, and there was a man who delivered a lot of packages.” British police, who have appealed to the German authorities, did not know that Buckingham had an address in Germany. Detective Constable David Sprigg, of Kent police, said:

“We had no idea that this man had a flat in Germany and we are extremely grateful to The Times for bringing this information to our attention.”

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