Book Review – Outrageous fortune

Biography’s  mostly seem to run to a formula; happy/sad childhood, good/bad  school experience, luck/lack of in chosen life’s direction etc. This book does not follow the formula, every page tells of growing up in the 1950s but in surroundings more akin to a century earlier. Anthony Russell grew up in a working castle.

Leeds castle was built in the 1440s with the owners over the years serving kings, queens and  governments. It is described as England’s most beautiful castle.  It was owned by his grandmother an American lady  with a huge fortune of her own who had married into the family in the 1920s and subsequently spent millions of pounds on a total restoration of the castle. 

He and his brothers, and later a sister, lived in the  top floor of the castle where they each had a nanny. They never saw their father the Hon. Geoffrey Russell, an inner circle member of the Tory party, who totally ignored his children. Their mother popped up to the nursery to see them from time to time. The family did not join together for meals and the children grew up without  any experience of adults except for their nannies until at the age of nine or ten when they were gradually introduced to the adult world at afternoon society gatherings.

His mother’s day began at 10 AM when she was served breakfast in bed, her day being taken up by society activities. Tea, as in tea, sandwiches and cakes, was served at 5 PM and a four course dinner at 8 PM. 

The grandmother was an astute business women who ran her affairs very well. She employed fifty people including a close financial adviser and a lawyer, other staff ranged from the very efficient head butler and castle staff through  tradespeople like a carpenter and electrician to a farm manager and various farm workers.

There was considerable  other property owned by the grandmother, this included a villa in the south of France, a property on the Mediterranean coast and most of an island in Nassau where she spent the three English winter months.   

Anthony’s’ other grandmother  lived in an Irish castle in Limerick, which, when he was older, he visited from time to time. This  grandmother was quite a contrast, not nearly so well off and not a society person being much more interested in her stable of fine horses.

Being hustled off to boarding school at the age of eight was a huge shock. With nil life experience, he  had never so much as changed a light bulb, having to make his own way in a group of self sufficient boys was not easy.      He was not much of a scholar but fortunately turned out to be  exceptionally good at cricket, a game on which the school set much score. His cricket prowess earned him a place at Eton however his father decreed that he had to go to his father’s old college. 

His father also  decreed that he go into banking, which also didn’t work out. And so his life unfolded until he escaped to America to make his own way. A very interesting read.

Mike Beckett