I always enjoy the CULTURE section of the SUNDAY TIMES for its reviews. There were two cracking book reviews in it on July 22.
The first, by Lynn Barber, was of “The Reluctant Billionaire” – “The Tragic Life of Gerald Grosvenor, 6th Duke of Westminster” by Tom Quinn.
Quinn quoted “many school contemporaries, Territorial Army comrades, estate workers and escort girls as saying the only distinguished thing about the Duke was that he was stinking rich – the Grosvenor Estate was worth £9.35 Billion on his death in 2016 and he left a personal estate of £743.4 Million.”
“Other than that he was dim. He left Harrow with two O-levels, never read a book, never went to the theatre or art galleries and never took any interest in politics. He turned up at the House of Lords once, to attend a debate on leasehold reform (which would have made a slight dent in the Grosvenor fortune) but was sent away with a fine because he had never taken the oath of allegiance to the Queen.”
He was patron of over 100 charities but was mean, never giving his staff a bonus, and quibbling over his escort girls’ bills. He did however give a million pounds to the “Countryside Alliance” which attempted to overturn a Labour Government with a huge majority in the Commons.
His family owned three hundred acres of swamp that became Mayfair and Belgravia and acquired much of County Fermanagh and Cheshire. Gerald himself, who considered himself a countryman had no interest in “non-shootable features of the countryside” and himself bought an 18,000 acre of grouse moor, and leased a sporting estate in Spain to shoot partridge and boar.
He habitually drove fast and was prosecuted eight times, but got off on the plea that he was going to a charity event.
He had joined the Territorial Army as a trooper and was quickly made a Major General. He chain-smoked and drank champagne for breakfast.
He had a nervous breakdown in 1998 aged 47 and claimed to have cured himself. It was then that he took up with escort girls, whom he would pay by cash – in envelopes marked “Eaton Estate” which rather gave the game away. Soon the paparazzi were staking out his flat and taking pictures of the comings and goings of the girls and the Duke blowing them kisses. Omag.
A desperately sad story, but with parents like his, what would you expect?
The 5th Duke of Westminster, then merely Lt. Col. Robert George Grosvenor was , in the May 1955 General Election the Unionist candidate for the Fermanagh/South Tyrone Constituency. Standing against him was Philip Clarke, an IRA man imprisoned for his part in an attack on the British Army Barracks in Omagh.
Clarke won the election, but was deemed ineligible and the shameless loser, was awarded the seat, which he occupied for some years.
The Dowager Duchess of Westminster (the 6th Duke’s Mother) had a letter in either THE TIMES or THE DAILY TELEGRAPH, in the 1980s deploring how “the MINORITY in Fermanagh/South Tyrone!!” were ungrateful for all that was done for them.
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