Wild man of publishing leaves £150m to the trees
Felix Dennis fulfils dying wish to fund England’s largest woodland in the heart of Warwickshire
HE WAS the maverick publisher who claimed to have spent £100 million on drugs and women. But Felix Dennis’s fortune will be put to more lasting use after his publishing empire was sold, freeing up more than £150million to fulfil his dying wish: creating England’s largest woodland.
The sale of Dennis Publishing, which is behind titles such as The Week and Viz, comes four years after Dennis died, leaving instructions for the upkeep of his beloved
Heart of England Forest in Warwickshire.
“I’m hoping that long after I’m dead the charity I founded will one day be the proud possessor of 25,000 acres of woodland planted with 10 million native broad-leafed trees, completely open to the public,” he said. Dennis had already planted more than a million trees over 3,500 acres near his home in Dorsington by the time of his death in 2014. His spokesman said at the time: “Everything he owned, bar a few million, will go to the forest.”
Dennis often said he was never happier than when “making money, writing poetry or planting trees”, although the tree-planting got in the way of the moneymaking.
“I am busy planting England’s first broadleaf forest for hundreds of years, so that means I do not make as much money as I should, but I am happier for it,” he once remarked.
His passion for forests began when he was in his 20s and noticed four trees in Soho’s Golden Square. “From that moment on, I was obsessed with trees. Nothing in the world gives me greater pleasure than to lay hands on the bole of a young sapling.”
The publishing business he founded in the Seventies was bought by Exponent, former owner of the Racing Post and Radio Times. Another bidder, Daily Mail General Trust (DMGT) had lodged a bid to buy some of the titles, but Dennis Publishing trustees were keen to sell all the titles together.
The company’s success can largely be attributed to Dennis’s ability to spot gaps in the market. One of its first successful titles was Kung-fu Monthly, and its current stable includes Men’s Fitness, Land Rover Monthly and Cross Stitcher.
The Week has proved to be a cash cow for Dennis Publishing, its circulation having steadily risen, unlike other magazines which have suffered with falling demand. Dennis set up the media group after being thrust into the spotlight during a 1971 Old Bailey court case as one of the “Oz three” defendants who faced trial over the content of counterculture magazine Oz.
Dennis had been jailed with two other Oz editors over a notorious edition of the magazine edited by schoolchildren, which had featured Rupert Bear in flagrante, although they were later acquitted on appeal.
During what he described as his “sex and drugs and rock’n’roll era”, he claimed to have spent at least £100 mil- lion on drugs and women, saying it “was really dumb and I am glad I stopped, but I can’t deny it was wonderful to do it”.
His five homes included a manor in Dorsington, and he owned 18 Rolls Royces and Bentleys despite never having held a driving licence.
In a drink-fuelled interview with The
Times in 2008, Mr Dennis said he once pushed a man off a cliff after he had refused to leave a woman alone, saying it “weren’t hard”. He later claimed he had been on medication at the time and retracted the statement.
‘I hope that after I’m dead the charity I founded will be the proud possessor of 25,000 acres of woodland’