Party-loving Guinness heir left £3.5m in eccentric will

Eccentric, ponytailed Guinness heir Garech Browne was a legendary host at Luggala, his magical, castellated house in county Wicklow, ireland, and counted singers Marianne Faithfull and Bono and actor John Hurt among his close friends.

However, Browne, who died aged 78 in March, was remarkably indifferent to the passage of time — as his newly published will testifies.

the extraordinary document, i can disclose, contains bequests amounting to £3.5 million to many beneficiaries who are dead — because he hadn’t updated it since 1990.

Browne, whose younger brother, tara, was killed at the age of 21 in a car smash in chelsea, which inspired the Beatles to write A Day in the Life, married Princess Harshad Purna Devi Jadeja of Movi in 1981. they had no children of their own.

His will indicates that he left £30,000 to his father, the 4th Lord Oranmore and Browne.

in the event of his father’s death, Browne stipulated that the money should go to his mother — the peer’s second wife, the heiress Oonagh Guinness. Oonagh died in 1995, aged 85, and Lord Oranmore in 2002, aged 100.

Browne also earmarked £30,000 for his half-brother, Gay Kindersley, who died in 2011, aged 80.

the house Luggala, which is owned by a Guinness family trust, is not among the bequests and has been on the market for £24.5 million since last year.

it is not known who are the beneficiaries of the trust.

there is consolation for his widow Princess Harshad, however. Browne bequeathed two-thirds of all his property to her.

the final third was to be divided between his two nephews, Julian and Dorian, to whom he additionally bequeathed a rolls-royce apiece – a 1931 Phantom for Julian and a 1951 Silver Wraith for Dorian.

One guest at Luggala recalled that, if invited for lunch, you would re-emerge days later, ‘blinking into the sunlight, not sure what [had] happened to you, but knowing you had a good time’.

Browne clearly had too good a time to update his will.