Suffering a sea change into something. . .
Alan Clark
THE SUNDAY TIMES BOOK OF THE RICH by Philip Beresford
Weidenfeld, £18.95, pp. 336
Some Sundays ago, crouched against the Aga, being barged into by wet-coated and assertive dogs, I saw in a newspaper that I was worth [sic] £20m. Uh? Later the ,book arrived. Theatre of embarrassment. I read that I am a cousin of the 4th Earl of Seafield. The 'team of researchers' (most of them, I would guess. pressed for time and skilled principally in the use of scissors) had picked its way through Debrett and transposed the note against my wife's name — see E Seafield coils — into a personal attribute. I read on. Oddities abound. Is Colin Tennant dead? Surely we would have heard? And yet I see Lord Glenconner described as Charles. Can Elton John really be twice as rich as Henry Keswick? Terence Conran's assets double those of Lord Carnarvon? And while I suppose it is some consolation to learn that the Earl is 'rich and aristocratic' and that Mr Michael Heseltine has `. . . a £2.5m 18th-century estate in Oxfordshire, with 400 acres, a lake [cor!] and a swimming pool' it is soon apparent that these 'pen portraits' have not been written for the amusement and edi- fication of other rich people, as would have been the case if Taki had consented, or Dempster had been paid, to compose them. I mean you've got to be pretty unsophisticated to catch your breath on reading that George Walker `. . . has a large yacht which is often seen on the Thames.'
The sheer banality of the text gives it a certain cult status, I suppose, and one mustn't be beastly, because the idea of a directory of the filthy rich is pleasing. And there are some nice surprises. I was de- lighted to learn that Harold Macmillan if he were still alive (which he jolly nearly is) and who I remember sitting fully muffled — hat, overcoat, scarf, gloves, everything — and cross as two sticks, in the unheated hall at Birch Grove complaining of penury. would have £100m. But I do have two serious objections and they go to the root of the project. First, the basis of selection. What on earth (for example) am I doing there? I live humbly, have given away practically every- thing to trustees or offspring, not infre- quently have to borrow small cash sums from my employees or, even, civil ser- vants. And yet people whom I know to be far richer than me have been left out. Fred Barker? Alexander Hesketh? The Earl of Durham, or 'Tony Lambton' as he likes to be called? Harold Lever? (He certainly took a lot off me at backgammon during the bad old days of the Labour Govern- ment when we used to play through all- night sessions in his room at the Commons, to the considerable epatement of various other members of the Cabinet who would look in from time to time.) Conversely, there are quite a few people listed above me whose personal cheque I wouldn't cash, even for a tenner.
I see that the authors couldn't encourage self-nomination. Thus Jeffrey Archer is omitted. Nor risk submitting proof entries, as is done with other books of reference. But one forms the impression that they have simply taken various categories — industry, show business, politics, 'finance' (usually means little more than going public on the USM) and 'the aristocracy' — and allocated a quota to each, giving preference to those who have been in the news.
The second objection concerns the basis of assessment. No allowance appears to have been made for 'gearing' (and if you don't know what 'gearing' is don't bother to buy this book). The figures quoted are in many cases very — very — far from being net. Nor does the most rudimentary deference seem to have been paid to the verities of precision. For example, Lord Bath is shown at a figure of £200m. This is precisely the same as that shown against his name in the original list which was pub- lished last year. What strange concatena- tion of circumstances, what disparities of fluctuating sectoral value have caused the overall figure to remain unchanged? • I suppose one must try not to draw general inferences from personal and sub- jective knowledge. But when I read that Saltwood, referred to by Conrad Ritblat in the preface on property values as Saltley castle — shurely 'Colliery'? Ed — . • contains many of Lord Clark's papers', my heart did sink a bit.
It so happens that among a confused mish-mash of dead Bentleys, foxed and flaking artefacts and discarded mowing machines of every size and configuration
my father's 'papers' are practically the only things which are not there, having been very graciously accepted by the Office of Arts and Libraries along with a Bellini, 11
Henry Moores and some other oddments towards partial settlement of the tax liabil- ity which arose on his death in 1984. This sort of error arises simply from a hasty diagonal scan of a scrap from the cuttings library, and shakes confidence.
In the United States anyone, as far as I can make out, can get at anyone else's tax return on some pretext or other. And from this an accurate profile of their net worth can be drawn. This is not (yet) possible here, but a serious attempt to compile a reputable directory of wealth should have at least a stab at showing how the total is composed — real property (urban, res- idential, commercial, agricultural etc), chattels, equity holdings, cash and so on.
And a table for each entrant, setting out these categories would be greatly prefer- able to a few sentences of trashy gossip. Very high incomes, dependent on the whim of colleagues on the Board, are the least reliable of such indicators. And I'm also pretty suspicious of single-holding wealth. The quotation 'Price and Size?' (old boy) can lead all too soon to the damning annotation 'Offered not Bid' (old boy).
Some reviewers have made much of the fact that most of the great industrialists of the 1890s are gone. Rags to Riches to Rags in four generations, you know. But what has happened to the heavy movers of the Twenties? Gordon Selfridge, SoIly Joel, Albert Cahn, Woolf Barnato? I can just remember Philip Sassoon, our neighbour in Kent, whose exotic lifestyle noted in impressionable early childhood in contrast to my own parents' ceaseless complaining about how poor they were, couldn't 'afford' things and so on, made him appear really rich. So when I saw the name Gubay in the index I thought of Hannah, his sister, whose ritual duels with Queen Mary in old Mr Partridge's Gift Shoppe are the stuff of much legend. But no, it was a worthy character in a donkey-jacket who . personally supervised work on his own building sites'.
Even so, and in spite of the errors and omissions, one does keep leafing through the pages. Because, of course, it is an absorbing topic (In This Life there being only three subjects — cars, sex, and money; and the greatest of these is money). I suppose that the book's princip- al failing derives from the angle from which the subject has been approached. Are the staff of a business management magazine, or even of a 'society' magazine, the most suitable authors? In my experience the only people who really know how rich other rich people are, are other rich people.
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