Meet the new Duke, the richest young man on Earth
The 25-year-old has inherited a vast property empire along with his title. He has a lot to live up to, says
In the cathedral city of Chester on Monday, shop windows glinted bright with Christmas decorations. Incongruous among the fairy lights in several instances were photographs of a grey-haired man with heavy eyebrows and a gentle smile: Gerald Cavendish Grosvenor, 6th Duke of Westminster. The Duke died in August, after a heart attack at the age of 64. After a quiet funeral for close family, Monday’s memorial service offered friends, associates and employees the chance to celebrate the life of Britain’s third richest man.
Gerald Westminster once described his princely inheritance of 133,100 acres of the British Isles, including extensive tracts of Mayfair and Belgravia, as “the longest silver spoon anyone can have”. It was a boon he recognised as double-edged. Talking to Sue Lawley on in 1995, he said: “Wealth on any scale can seduce you into a world where you don’t really think that anybody else exists in it except yourself.” It was a trap he determinedly avoided. Matterof-fact, unstuffy, with the sort of oldfashioned good manners that extend equal courtesy to all and everyone, he stood in high esteem in the pretty north-western city of medieval shop fronts and Tudor half-timberings – as those photographs propped among the tinsel by several local shopkeepers proved. Such grassroots affection may well have been his greatest tribute.
It was not only fondness and respect that drew the crowds. Under steel-grey late-autumn skies, streets surrounding Chester Cathedral were lined with spectators eager to catch a glimpse of a gaggle of black-clad royals. The Prince of Wales and Duchess of Cornwall were there. So were the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, Princess Eugenie and, for the older generation, Princess Alexandra, the Duke of Kent and Prince Michael. And for locals there were the Duke’s own family, including his babyfaced successor, 25-year-old Hugh Richard Louis Grosvenor, 7th Duke of Westminster, who, for the foreseeable future, can battle it out with Prince Harry for the title of