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The superyacht version of a 'French palace' is being put up for sale for $23 million by the Barclay family
- The UK's billionaire Barclay family is looking to sell the "Lady Beatrice," a 197-foot-long superyacht.
- The family is selling the vessel to retain ownership of The Telegraph, The Times reported Thursday.
- The luxury yacht's running cost is $3 million a year, according to SuperYachtFan.com.
A billionaire family in the UK has put their superyacht up for sale.
The Barclay family, which owns The Telegraph media group, has put up the "Lady Beatrice" for sale for 22 million euros, or $23.2 million, according to a listing by its broker, Edmiston.
The Telegraph newspaper group is set to be auctioned later this month.
Lloyds Banking Group had seized the company in June over a 1 billion pound — or $1.2 billion — debt, and the Barclay family is selling the "Lady Beatrice" yacht to retain the media group, The Times reported on Thursday.
The yacht was delivered in 1993 and named after Beatrice Cecelia Taylor, the late mother of identical twins Frederick and David Barclay. David died in 2021, while 88-year-old Frederick and his family are estimated to be worth 6.5 billion pounds, according to the UK Sunday Times Rich List published in May.
Built by Dutch shipyard Feadship, "Lady Beatrice" is a 197-foot vessel with eight cabins. It can accommodate 16 guests and 17 crew members.
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One writer on autoevolution, a car and transportation site, was so impressed that they called the superyacht "the floating version of a French palace."
The yacht's main deck has two master staterooms with ensuite bathrooms, walk-in dressing rooms, and private studies. The other six cabins are all on the lower deck.
The yacht features an alfresco dining area on the lower deck, a pool, and a grand piano in its main salon.
Maintaining the yacht costs $3 million a year, according to the SuperYachtFan website, which described the vessel as a "testament to opulence, offering a visually striking environment that exudes comfort and sophistication."
The Barclay family is known to be very private. In 2020, Forbes called the Barclay brothers "the UK's most infamous reclusive billionaires."
However, a bitter divorce row between Frederick and his ex-wife thrust the yacht into the public eye. In July 2022, Hiroko, Frederick's former wife, said in court that the Barclay twin brothers had fought over their business empire on the vessel, Bloomberg reported at the time.
Edmiston and the Barclay family did not immediately respond to requests for comment from Insider outside regular business hours.
Watch: WATCH: Here's where the royal family gets its money
- Main content
Billionaire twin brothers brawled on a luxury yacht over the control of their U.K. business empire, a London court hears
Highly secretive and extremely rich and powerful, the identical twins known as the Barclay brothers managed to keep a very tight lid over how they amassed and maintained their 7-billion-pound ($8.4 billion) fortune.
But as Frederick Barclay faces jail time for refusing to pay a dime to his ex-wife after their divorce, details of the fallout between the twins—which led to a handoff of the U.K. business from Frederick to his brother David—are emerging.
On the first day of the hearing, a London court was told that the two brothers had a fist fight on their co-owned luxury yacht over who got control of their U.K. business empire. “They were punching each other,” Hiroko Barclay, Frederick’s ex-wife, said in court.
Hiroko Barclay is attempting to send Frederick Barclay to prison over his nonpayment of the 100 million pounds ($120 million) she is due in their divorce settlement. “Frederick says he cannot pay. He says he has no money. I do not believe him. It is not that he cannot pay, but that he will not pay,” she said.
Frederick Barclay, who was knighted alongside his brother in 2000 for their philanthropic support of medical research, was also accused by Hiroko of transferring all his wealth to their daughter and to a complex series of trusts “in order to avoid paying any tax.”
“He’s not allowed to have a bank account because he’s not paying tax in the U.K.,” Hiroko, who was married to Frederick for 34 years, told the court. “He’s not allowed to have assets…all not to pay tax in the U.K.”
An acrimonious divorce
The divorce offers a rare glimpse into the lives of the two brothers, who built up a vast business empire by buying and selling off breweries, hotels, shipping lines, and oil and gas fields. The two brothers at one point owned the Daily Telegraph and the London Ritz Hotel.
The twins once lived happily together in a castle in the Channel Islands, known for its tax-haven status—at least until 2014, when it was reported the two brothers fell out. At the time, Frederick agreed to hand control of the family business to David, a move he called “the greatest mistake I’ve ever made.”
While previously little was known about how much Frederick was raking in from legacy dividends from the business, lawyers of Hiroko Barclay claim he is the principal beneficiary of a trust, controlled by relatives, that receives funds from loan notes worth 545 million pounds ($653 million).
After their divorce last year in May 2021, Judge Jonathan Cohen ordered Frederick to pay 50 million pounds of the 100-million-pound settlement in 2021, and the remaining 50 million pounds in April 2022. The settlement was one of the biggest divorce awards in English legal history.
At the time, Cohen called Barclay’s behavior “reprehensible” after the tycoon “completely ignored” court orders and sold a luxury yacht.
After he failed to pay any of the settlement, Hiroko brought Frederick back to court, now seeking jail time. On Monday, Hiroko accused the tycoon of trying “to string things out” and hide “behind a web of complex structures,” to get out of paying the settlement until either she or Frederick dies.
Meanwhile, lawyers representing Frederick say that he cannot pay the 100 million pounds, or the half-million pounds of legal fees owed to his ex-wife’s lawyers, due to a lack of liquidity in his assets.
Barclay’s lawyers told the court that “he has struggled desperately to get hold of money to settle the divorce bill, but does not have control of the funds.”
Lawyers for Frederick say this time he “is highly motivated to comply with the orders because of his abject fear of prison.” Barclay himself was quoted as saying, “I’ve never had as much stress as this divorce since I was a young boy.”
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Billionaire twin brothers brawled on a luxury yacht over the control of their u.k. business empire, a london court hears.
Highly secretive and extremely rich and powerful, the identical twins known as the Barclay brothers managed to keep a very tight lid over how they amassed and maintained their 7-billion-pound ($8.4 billion) fortune.
But as Frederick Barclay faces jail time for refusing to pay a dime to his ex-wife after their divorce, details of the fallout between the twins—which led to a handoff of the U.K. business from Frederick to his brother David—are emerging.
On the first day of the hearing, a London court was told that the two brothers had a fist fight on their co-owned luxury yacht over who got control of their U.K. business empire. “They were punching each other,” Hiroko Barclay, Frederick’s ex-wife, said in court.
Hiroko Barclay is attempting to send Frederick Barclay to prison over his nonpayment of the 100 million pounds ($120 million) she is due in their divorce settlement. “Frederick says he cannot pay. He says he has no money. I do not believe him. It is not that he cannot pay, but that he will not pay,” she said.
Frederick Barclay, who was knighted alongside his brother in 2000 for their philanthropic support of medical research, was also accused by Hiroko of transferring all his wealth to their daughter and to a complex series of trusts “in order to avoid paying any tax.”
“He’s not allowed to have a bank account because he’s not paying tax in the U.K.,” Hiroko, who was married to Frederick for 34 years, told the court. “He’s not allowed to have assets…all not to pay tax in the U.K.”
An acrimonious divorce
The divorce offers a rare glimpse into the lives of the two brothers, who built up a vast business empire by buying and selling off breweries, hotels, shipping lines, and oil and gas fields. The two brothers at one point owned the Daily Telegraph and the London Ritz Hotel.
The twins once lived happily together in a castle in the Channel Islands, known for its tax-haven status—at least until 2014, when it was reported the two brothers fell out. At the time, Frederick agreed to hand control of the family business to David, a move he called “the greatest mistake I’ve ever made.”
While previously little was known about how much Frederick was raking in from legacy dividends from the business, lawyers of Hiroko Barclay claim he is the principal beneficiary of a trust, controlled by relatives, that receives funds from loan notes worth 545 million pounds ($653 million).
After their divorce last year in May 2021, Judge Jonathan Cohen ordered Frederick to pay 50 million pounds of the 100-million-pound settlement in 2021, and the remaining 50 million pounds in April 2022. The settlement was one of the biggest divorce awards in English legal history.
At the time, Cohen called Barclay’s behavior “reprehensible” after the tycoon “completely ignored” court orders and sold a luxury yacht.
After he failed to pay any of the settlement, Hiroko brought Frederick back to court, now seeking jail time. On Monday, Hiroko accused the tycoon of trying “to string things out” and hide “behind a web of complex structures,” to get out of paying the settlement until either she or Frederick dies.
Meanwhile, lawyers representing Frederick say that he cannot pay the 100 million pounds, or the half-million pounds of legal fees owed to his ex-wife’s lawyers, due to a lack of liquidity in his assets.
Barclay’s lawyers told the court that “he has struggled desperately to get hold of money to settle the divorce bill, but does not have control of the funds.”
Lawyers for Frederick say this time he “is highly motivated to comply with the orders because of his abject fear of prison.” Barclay himself was quoted as saying, “I’ve never had as much stress as this divorce since I was a young boy.”
This story was originally featured on Fortune.com
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Inside the (very) secret world of the Barclays and an oh-so tangled web
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A few years ago, I was at a fashion retailer’s collection launch in London. The crowd was packed, full of media types. In the corner, a DJ pumped out the music. The canapes were going round.
Suddenly, the throng had to part. This short figure, with what appeared to be minders either side of him, had come into the room. He was wearing a chalk pinstripe suit with slicked hair. He looked important — or rather he wanted us to think he was important. It was Howard Barclay, joint owner of the Telegraph newspaper group.
What was striking was just how much like his father and uncle he was. Sir David and Sir Frederick Barclay , on their rare appearances in public, would make similar entrances. Always dressed in pinstripes, their hair neatly parted, shoes highly polished, ties knotted just so, they were identical twins. They conveyed superiority, detachment and yes, a certain disdain.
David and Frederick were born in 1934 and grew up in Hammersmith and Kensington. The Barclays’ parents were Beatrice and Frederick, a travelling salesman. David and young Frederick had six other siblings. Frederick snr died when the brothers were 12. They left school as soon as they could and plied a variety of trades.
They clearly had some sort of aura back then. They liked ballroom dancing and in 1955 David, then only 21, married Zoe Newton, who went on to become the highest-paid model of the day. What’s extraordinary about their origins is not only did it give them their style but that they should go on to own the Ritz and Telegraph, two icons of the establishment, as well as both receiving knighthoods.
That sense of being different was always with them. It was something they cultivated, not just in their choice of dapper clothes and manner, but in the way they led their lives. They eschewed publicity. They lived in Monaco in a shared residence and they had another built in another tax haven, in the Channel Islands. This was a 60-room, gothic fortress on the island of Brecqhou. There they repelled nosy visitors.
Their businesses were shrouded in secrecy. For people who owned a hotel and newspaper beloved of the ruling class, and were knighted in 2000, they went to extraordinary lengths to avoid paying tax, creating a complex structure of offshore trusts. It made them seem, well, odd and mysterious. Together with a predilection for using lawyers and litigating, it gave them a threatening, to-be-feared air.
As well as the Ritz and Telegraph, they owned much more, including an online retailer, delivery service, casinos, shipping lines and properties, tons of properties. Because of their unwillingness to divulge virtually anything about themselves and because of their convoluted ownership arrangements, no one was ever sure what, exactly.
The Barclays approach to life was to invite questions but provide no answers. It was never really known, for instance, how they got started. Frederick was declared bankrupt in 1960 after a sweet and tobacconist shop he ran with his brother Douglas, called Candy Corner in Kensington, fell behind with its rental payments. For a period, Frederick was prevented from taking official positions as an undischarged bankrupt. As well as Candy Corner, he was involved in painting and decorating, doing up boarding houses for flats to rent or for hotels. David became a director of estate agents and property firms. He paid off his brother’s creditors and they were in partnership.
Even early on, they made their affairs secret. Their main estate agency, Hillgate, was registered as an unlimited company which meant they didn’t have to file publicly available accounts.
It was a mystery as to how they fell in with the Crown Agents. A government agency set up to help the colonies and developing countries do business in Britain, strangely it lent money to the Barclays. This enabled them in 1970 to buy Londonderry Hotel in Park Lane. They continued to borrow and by 1974, David and Frederick owed the Crown Agents £9.5 million — a substantial amount back then. The Crown Agents had been exceeding its brief, extending loans to property developers, not just the Barclays.
The property crash caught up with the agency and it collapsed with debts of £212 million or well over £1 billion today. They were on their way, and acquisitions followed. Always, though, there were distance and privacy. David and Frederick did not sit on the boards of British businesses they owned, their addresses were not disclosed.
Aidan, David’s oldest son, acted as a representative of his father and uncle. With Howard, he ran the Telegraph group. It was never clear how good they were at running businesses. The Telegraph changed course repeatedly and appeared to be in a state of constant flux.
Behind the scenes there were suggestions that all was not well. A court case in the US contained a reference to David suffering from an unspecified neurological complaint (their knighthoods were for services to medical research). The gravestone of Frederick snr was replaced with a new one that made no reference to Frederick jnr. David died in 2021. By then, the family had fractured to the extent that Sir Frederick and his daughter, Amanda, pursued a legal action against Aidan, Howard and Aidan’s son, Alistair, for bugging their conversations in the conservatory of the Ritz. The case was subsequently settled.
When he got divorced from his wife, Hiroko, Sir Frederick refused to pay her the £100 million he owed as part of the settlement. He claimed not to have the cash. Hiroko took him to court. In her evidence in 2022, Hiroko said how the twins fell out in 2014 and she once witnessed David and Frederick brawling with each other on board their yacht the Beatrice, named after their mother. Frederick was barred from going to Brecqhou because he would not contribute to the island’s maintenance.
At the heart of the dispute was the decision, which he said he regretted, by Sir Frederick to divide the family’s holdings four ways, between his daughter and Sir David’s three sons, Aidan, Howard and Duncan. Amanda held sway over only 25 per cent of the business. That, plus the fact the group was run entirely by Aidan and Howard, meant that Sir Frederick was cut off and seemingly cut out.
A loan from Lloyds Bank, made during the time of the financial crisis in 2008, was not repaid. It’s not clear why — whether it was simply forgotten or ignored, or if the beneficiary was Sir Frederick and the others decided not to settle it and he chose not to or couldn’t. In any event, it’s that loan which has led to Lloyds foreclosing and putting the Telegraph’s owner into administration.
As ever, where the Barclays are concerned there are more questions than answers.
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Two billionaire brothers, a bitter divorce, and a brawl on a luxury yacht! Barclay twins-owned luxury vessel $30 million Lady Beatrice has seen more controversy than camaraderie. Here’s the lowdown-
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Barclay brothers: From humble beginnings to a billion-pound fortune
The recent high-profile resignation of a Daily Telegraph journalist has sent shockwaves through the Barclay brothers' business empire.
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Ordinarily, the resignation of an aggrieved journalist from a newspaper wouldn't cause much of a splash beyond themedia pages, says Press Gazette. ButPeter Oborne's outspoken departure from The Daily Telegraph , and his attack on the newspaper's integrity (see below), is a blow for its proprietors, the Barclay brothers. If nothing else, they must submit to having their business affairs raked over again.
The billionaire brothers, 80, are often called reclusive a term they are said to dislike. But it is easy to see how the public might come away with a different view. The brothers have bases in Monaco and, famously, Brecqhou a rocky outcrop off Sark, where they built a mock gothic castle only accessible by boat or helicopter.
"They live like Bond villains," noted The Guardian when the pair bought The Daily Telegraph in 2004. The castle "is not merely a watery tax haven but a means to protect their personal security".
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The brothers "rarely venture even to Guernsey, except incognito", because they fear kidnapping. When a reporter scaled the cliffs, they "rained down a small blizzard of innovative writs" a frequently deployed tactic.
The brothers' relationship with the islanders of Sark, with whom they have clashed over constitutional and business affairs, is indicative of this combative streak. Yet acquaintances insist they are "warm and friendly".
Baroness Thatcher,who lived at the Ritz in the last months of her life, would doubtless agree. Certainly, as far asSir David is concerned, theirs is a straightforward working-class Tory fairy story: "A great example of what can be achieved in this country from humble beginnings."
Born in 1934 in Hammersmith to Scottish parents with eight other children, the twins were brought up in straitened circumstances, says The Observer. After leaving school at 16, they worked briefly in the accounts department of General Electric, before getting into the property game.
Their first big purchase, in 1975, was the Howard Hotel in London's West End a venture that led to many more hotel deals, culminating, in 1995, with the trophy purchase of the London Ritz.
By this time, they had also moved into media, buying The European newspaper from Robert Maxwell in 1992, The Scotsman in 1995 and The Daily Telegraph in 2004. A simultaneous move into retail saw them snap up Littlewoods, the mail order firm, in 2002 for £750m.
But controversy surrounds the offshore trusts that control many of their businesses. In 2012, Panorama claimed the Ritz hadn't paid corporation tax for 17 years. The Barclays are also embroiled in a £1.2bn dispute with HMRC over interest on a VAT rebate.
If they win, a ten-figure sum could be heading their way. If that happens, it might back up Sir David's 2004 assertion: "I don't think I've done anything dirty in my life."
A shameful shambles at The Daily Telegraph
When the Barclays bought The Daily Telegraph, the paper's long-standing writer Bill Deedes described the new regime in a memo to friends as "a stinking mob", says Tom de Castella in BBC News Magazine. "It struck me that what the Barclays saw in the Telegraph," Deedes wrote, "was an asset that in the right hands could be turned into a more profitable business."
The recent row has brought renewed focus to those words. Reportedly, editorial staff had long suspected that the paper was censoring articles about HSBC , a key advertiser. But Peter Oborne's denunciation of the failure to cover a high-profile story about HSBC facilitating tax avoidance proved explosive.
The paper had committed "a fraud on its readers", with dire implications for the future of a free press, claimed Oborne.
Why would a profitable newspaper owned by two billionaires "compromise its editorial integrity for a couple of million pounds in advertising money", ask Henry Mance and Claer Barrett in the FT. Perhaps more was at stake.
HSBC was pivotal in propping up Yodel a loss-making delivery business in the Barclays' empire. Yodel refinanced its £240m debt with HSBC in December 2012. According to Oborne, negative stories about the bank were discouraged "from the start of 2013 onwards".
The problem at the heart of the shambles is the role of the editor the "stalwart soul who's supposed to stand on the frontline defending journalism's values", said Peter Preston in The Observer. The damning fact at The Daily Telegraph is that, "lost in the melee of digital change", the paper doesn't have one.
The "editor-in-chief", Jason Seiken, doesn't sit on the editorial floor. "He's upstairs, alongside the CFO, trying to make more clicks and more bucks for the brothers." If serious newspapers are to survive, they have a duty of trust. "What the Telegraph lacks is a journalist who looks at the likes of HSBC and tells them to get stuffed as and when necessary."
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The ultimate luxury
True privacy is something only serious money can buy
This article is taken from the March 2021 issue of The Critic. To get the full magazine why not subscribe? Right now we’re offering three issue for just £5 .
W hen one of the Barclay family bought a 241ft super yacht in 2004, he called it Enigma . This itself allowed a rare glimmer of personality to escape from the curtain wall of anonymity behind which the Barclays — and particularly the billionaire twins, Sir David and Sir Frederick Barclay — sheltered.
For here, it seemed, was a tease aimed at the journalists and gossip-mongers who wanted to penetrate the defences and put their private lives on parade — secrecy that seemed all the more infuriating to their critics, since they had used some of their immense fortune, made from property, to buy newspapers such as the Daily Telegraph , which aren’t shy of airing other people’s dirty laundry in public.
But the Barclays remained hidden from view, rarely glimpsed by most of their own employees. Like Wotan in The Ring , they called into being a castle on a Wagnerian scale — “the largest house built in Britain for at least two centuries”, as the late Professor David Watkin described it in his book on its architect Quinlan Terry, Radical Classicism , in 2006.
Like a real fortress that was converted into a country house during the Regency period, Fort Brecqhou hugs a crown of rock on a tiny island next to Sark in the Channel Islands, symbolising both the Barclays’ great wealth and their desire to avoid the merest flicker of limelight. With the death of Sir David Barclay in January, Fort Brecqhou has fallen silent.
Sir David was the marginally more exuberant of the two brothers, who were said to do everything together, even taking their overcoats off in what could have been mistaken for a synchronised routine. Highly focused, they were not, according to Sir David’s obituary in The Times , “easily distracted into casual conversation”. But as is so often the way with country houses, Brecqhou says much about them — a rare and extravagant public act, built at hectic speed during the 1990s by workmen who laboured throughout the night, each having signed a non-disclosure agreement.
The result is not merely a very large dwelling, in an unlikely location, but a monument, built of load-bearing masonry that could last 1,000 years. You can’t hide a building like that from Google Maps. It’s even obvious from the sea. The inhabitants of Sark, which enjoys a feudal suzerainty over Brecqhou that nobody, before the Barclays, had bothered to repeal, know all about it, because of the constant lawsuits. It was for the Barclays — as the towering folly of Fonthill Abbey had been to the Regency recluse William Beckford — a very visible place in which to be alone.
At the time of building, Brecqhou seemed even more extraordinary than it does now — billionaires were rarer in 1990s Britain than they have since become — but it would be wrong to think of it as eccentric. In a reminiscence of Sir David in the Guardian , Tim Walker revealed that one title considered for the memoirs he had at one point been engaged to ghost was The Man who Built a Castle . This somewhat left Sir Frederick out of the equation and may have been an early indication of the family feud that erupted into the High Court last year when Sir David’s sons planted bugs to overhear business conversations at the Barclay-owned Ritz Hotel in London.
However, it reveals the importance that castle-building can have for a man of Sir David’s stamp. He came to Terry with a sketch plan of what he wanted: a castle for him and his brother to inhabit, built around the four sides of an internal court. “The design was, of course, developed in a number of ways,” comments Terry, “but the general principles remain exactly as were made clear to me at our first meeting.” Charles Kane, another newspaper mogul, built Xanadu but that was in a film; this would be the real thing.
Castles capture the imagination of the very rich. They always have. In the Middle Ages great castles, built over many generations, were practically beyond human computation. In a world in which every stone had to be quarried, chiselled and put in place by human muscle, they seemed not merely to be buildings but phenomena — infinitely old, they could only have been built by fabulous figures such as King Arthur, Julius Caesar or giants.
For the elite, they provided the backdrop to the romance of chivalry, that grand game of tournaments, symbolism and courtly love. Medieval battles traditionally ended when a charge of knights swept the losing side from the field. Like a well-defended castle, a man in plate armour was proof against most forms of attack — until gunpowder made him as vulnerable as the meanest foot soldier. Castle walls could be blown up.
Historians will see Brecqhou as a prime example of the revival of country house building that took place at the end of the twentieth century
Chivalry ought to have died; instead, it was brought back to life by Henry VIII. The cavaliers at the court of Charles I also loved it, building castles incuding Lulworth and Bolsover that evoke a fabled past. They lost the English Civil War but at the Restoration, grandees like the Duke of Lauderdale in Scotland built palaces with towers clearly intended to recall castles. In the next century, Horace Walpole praised a sham ruin recently built in Warwickshire as possessing “the true rust of the barons’ war”. A revival of castle architecture was under way. Its greatest twentieth-century expression is Castle Drogo in Devon, built of granite for the founder of a chain of grocery stores, Julius Drewe. Lutyens, his architect, did it under protest: he would have preferred to design something cosier. It was the client who insisted. Unfortunately, due to the innovative reliance on asphalt to stop water penetration, it leaked. But oh my, how sublime.
Quinlan Terry might have sympathised with Lutyens. He would much rather have given Sir David a nice Classical country house, I suspect — although he had already built a Regency Gothick house in Regent’s Park, which Sir David had admired. But details, details. Country houses are not only about style. The people who build them are invariably very rich and some, over the centuries, have had no qualms about showing off.
In the Tudor period, they were expected to. There was a word for it: magnificence. Sumptuous clothes made of expensive fabrics sewn with jewels and sideboards groaning with gold and silver vessels, splendid horses in rich caparisons and extravagant building projects were good things. They spread money around, stimulated trade, promoted a stable society by demonstrating the unbridgeable gulf between rich and poor, so vast that there was no point in trying to cross it.
Strange though it seems in the twenty-first century, when many rich people like to keep below the radar, grandees were applauded for their displays of spectacle, fantasy, luxury and novelty; with magnificence went benevolence and generosity — or so it was said. The Barclay brothers were knighted for their philanthropy. Plus ça change, perhaps.
Historians of the future will see Brecqhou as a prime example of the revival of country house building that took place at the end of the twentieth century. It is particularly noticeable in Britain, with its long and tenacious tradition of the country house, because so few large houses had been built in the second two quarters of the century. In the 1920s, people like the Prince of Wales, the future Edward VIII, didn’t want the stuffiness, formality and sense of feudal responsibility that went with the immense piles of a previous generation.
Old country houses, following the agricultural depression that set in during the 1870s and lasted until the Second World War, were a struggle to maintain. In Scotland, the once princely Hamilton Palace — undermined in the family’s greed to extract coal — was demolished. So the Prince of Wales chose Fort Belvedere, a folly in Windsor Great Park, for what his father George V called “those damn weekends”. It was a pleasure dome, like the houses he had seen on Long Island, with a tennis court, swimming pool and stable for polo ponies.
The Second World War did not put an end to the country house, as Evelyn Waugh predicted in Brideshead Revisited . But the story of the decades afterwards was one of retreat. Country houses were demolished, turned into institutions or replaced with smaller, undistinguished modern dwellings that were more convenient to run. Taxes on investment income in the 1970s reached 98 per cent. All that changed with the advent of the Thatcher government. The Barclays were part of that movement. It was in a suite at the Ritz that Lady Thatcher died.
This wasn’t, though, a national story. Whopping great country houses or ranches have been built all over the world. There had always been the money in America for palatial dwellings in suburbs, resorts and seaside places outside the big cities. But the ambition to rival the Gatsby era took off in the 1980s. They often looked back to the golden age of resort construction at the turn of the twentieth century, associated with the great Beaux-Arts firms of McKim, Mead and White, Carrère and Hastings, and Delano & Aldrich. There was a revival of the Shingle Style, alongside numerous daring, assertively Modern homes.
In a crowded world, privacy has become the ultimate luxury
In 1986, the engineer and inventor Dean Kamen, whose father had worked as an illustrator for the magazine Mad , Weird Science among other publications, went further than most by, like the Barclays, buying an island. The endearingly named North Dumpling Island is smaller than Brecqhou — a mere three acres — and its owner has not shielded himself from the world’s eyes; in fact he has courted publicity by declaring his domain independent from the United States, as well as building a model of Stonehenge.
Kamen may have an impish streak not universally shared by the super-rich, but he speaks for many, one suspects, when justifying his project: “To me Dumpling is the manifestation of a lot of peoples’ hopes and dreams. ‘If I got to do it my way how would I do it?’”
We know how Michael Jackson did it on his Neverland ranch, in California, with its private funfair for the adult who never grew up. Vladimir Putin’s activities at Cape Idokopas on the Black Sea, the Ceausescu-like dacha known inevitably as Putin’s Palace, are more opaque; indeed Putin denies owning it. It took the suicidally brave opposition leader Alexei Navalny to reveal the scale and unseemly extravagance of the project, producing a receipt for, among other things, a $28,000 leather sofa. The footprint runs to 200,000 square feet, which is only a third of Versailles or the Viceroy’s House in New Delhi and looks like a pimple beside the Royal Palace of Caserta.
But two of those other palaces are no longer occupied and the Viceroy’s House — now Rashtrapati Bhavan, is the official residence of the President of India — was built to house courts and bureaucracies. Like Fort Belvedere and Brecqhou, Putin’s Palace has been built for his own occupation and pleasure, with a theatre, casino, gigantic swimming pool and a stage with a retractable pole for strippers. Whims of a dictator? The stripper’s pole is not a requirement of every new country house, but in other respects, this outrageous dwelling does share characteristics of other homes of the global elite. It is very large and very private.
E xtravagance in domestic architecture is as old as Nero’s Domus Aurea on the Palatine Hill in Rome; the nearby Colosseum takes its name from the 35.5m-high statue of the Emperor that stood outside. But scale was generally kept within bounds during the twentieth century from a shared idea of good taste; only rhinoceros-hided wide boys like Nicholas van Hoogstraten risked the social stigma of being thought too flash.
Today, size matters. The super-rich need garages for the classic cars, a wing for contemporary art, a basement gym and bar, a master bedroom suite that could occupy a whole floor. Recently I saw a glamorous 1930s house, occupied at one time by John Hay Whitney, then ambassador to the United Kingdom. Following a luxurious makeover by a property developer, it is now twice the size and far more luxurious in materials and finishes. This is a general trend. Expect more post- Covid, as people reassess their personal space after lockdown.
These days privacy for men like Putin is one of the main goals of domestic life. Ordinary mortals expect it as standard. Who wants to share a bathroom in a hotel? When Consuelo Vanderbilt married the ninth Duke of Marlborough in 1895, she entered a world in which ladies’ maids would wait in line outside the bathrooms in a country house, to keep a place for their mistresses. We’re now as jealous of our own space as we are of personal data on the internet. Could it be that the pandemic will make us permanently anxious to keep other people at arm’s length? Shall we ever go back to the pre-Covid way of kiss- kissing and bear-hugging when we greet each other? Or shall we return to the puritanism of my childhood when social kissing was considered French?
But the richer you get, the more difficult privacy is to achieve. Celebrities loathe the cameras on other peoples’ mobile phones. Hence places like Brecqhou, for in a crowded world, privacy has become the ultimate luxury. How odd that would have seemed in country houses where most people had to live in close, sweaty proximity with other people of different classes. Servants routinely slept outside their masters’ doors. Mistresses shared their beds with servant girls, not from reasons of sexual desire but to keep warm.
Reports of Georgian adultery trials reveal housemaids, laundry maids, porters and stewards who had made it their business to spy through keyholes, snoop around bedrooms and notice when a lady was at home, and to whom. Several nineteenth-century country-house owners, particularly in Ireland, built tunnels to avoid seeing servants or being themselves seen. These days few people have live-in staff and sexual misconduct doesn’t turn many hairs. But a row between a prime minister and his girlfriend, so easily overheard in the city, can become front-page news. The answer is to buy a country house. Or better, an island.
Successful men like to leave a mark on the world. Fort Brecqhou is practically indestructible, having been built of two types of Spanish granite. It is, as Watkin excitedly wrote, the real deal: “At any castle, visitors look forward to emerging from dark and winding staircases on to a dramatic roofscape where they will walk along perilous platforms behind crenelated parapets, gazing out on a wild world of sky and sea, their lungs expanding in the strong winds.” In one sense, it is sustainable, in that unlike Modernist architecture it will stand for aeons.
But Sir David, who was 86 when he died, was not a member of the eco generation. For today’s High Net Worths, privacy is often associated with something else in sharp decline: wilderness. So wildlands philanthropy is on the rise. Kristine and the late Doug Tompkins used a fortune built from the Esprit clothing brand to buy more than 2 million acres in Patagonia, some of which will be restored and farmed sustainably, creating jobs for the community. There are many other examples. The San Francisco businessman Richard Goldman has saved the forest on Yakobi Island from the pulp mills that have received so much of the timber from the rest of Alaska. Gordon Moore, co-founder of the silicon chip maker Intel, has funded land acquisitions by the Amazon Conservation Association.
It’s not only about saving the planet though. Larry Ellison, founder of Oracle, has bought Lanai Island in Hawaii, intending to make it a wellness utopia. Other Silicon Valley billionaires have looked even further afield. New Zealand has become a destination for the likes of Peter Thiel, co-founder of PayPal, as a hedge against the predicted climate apocalypse; Thiel has even taken New Zealand citizenship. Sir David Barclay may have seemed peculiar in his privacy fetish; really, he was on trend.
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10 Superyachts Owned By The British Elite In 2017
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Though many of us associate Superyachts with Russian and Middle Eastern owners, it is actually a reported fact that Britain own the second largest share of the world’s Superyachts… We’ve put together a list of just some of the Superyachts owned by Britians elite, along with their owners.
1. The Hinduja family and Param Jamuna IV
Prakash Hinduja is one of the richest people in the world. Together with his brothers, he owns the Hinduja Group and has a net worth of $16.2 billion! Th e Hinduja family business gained it’s elite status through banking, telecom, energy, media and technologies. Param Jamuna IV is the name of one of their rumoured Superyachts. She’s a 48.31m motor yacht and was custom built in 2013 by Rossinavi in Viareggio, Italy. Her beautiful interior and exterior design were forefronted by Team 4 Design.
2. Kirsty & Ernesto Bertarelliand Vava II
These two are probably the UK’s power couple in when it comes to Superyachts owned by Britians elite. They have a net worth of $16.9 billion. Former Miss UK and songwriter Kirsty Bertarelli and Biotech tycoon turned Capital giant Ernesto Bertarelli are the proud owners of the 97m Superyacht Vava II. It’s rumored to cost £250,000 to just fill the tanks of this beast!
3. Philip Green and Lionheart
Now, Sir Philip Green is the owner of the £100 million, 90m Benetti Superyacht named ‘Lionheart’. Despite his other yachts being available for charter, Lionhart remains off of the market.
4. Leonard Blavatnik and Odessa II
Despite his Russian/American origin, Blatnavik now resides in London. And with an estimated net worth of $18.5 billion, he is one of the city’s wealthiest elite residents. He is also an active philanthropist through his Blavatnik Family Foundation. Leonard Baltnavik is the owner of the Nobiskrug 37.8m Odessa II.
5. James “Jim” Ratcliffe and Hampshire II
Ratcliffe has made his living in the chemical industry and now boasts a net worth of $5.5 billion. Not only does he own the 78.5m Hampshire II, he also previously owned a 56m Feadship motor yacht, by the same name.
6. Joe Lewis and Aviva
Joe has a tidy net worth of $5.3 billion and runs the Tavistock group. The group have their fingers in many pies, including UK football club, Tottenham Hotspur. Joe Lewis is a man after our own heart who chooses to reside in Lyford Cay, Bahamas. He is the owner of the Abeking & Rasmussen, 98m Superyacht Aviva.
7. Richard Branson and Necker Belle
You may well have heard of Necker Island, and you will certainly have heard of Britain’s 9th richest man, Richard Branson. But have you heard of his Superyacht, Necker Belle? Necker Belle is one of the few elite luxury sailing catamarans in the world and has been dubbed as the “floating version” of Necker Island.
8. James Dyson and Nahlin
We all know how James Dyson made his fortune. But, just in case you don’t, let us tell you that if you’ve ever used a Dyson vacuum, you have a lot to thank him for! His 91m Superyacht Nahlin is a real thing of class. This is one of the largest classic yachts in the world.
9. The Barclay Brothers and Lady Beatrice
Sir David and Sir Frederick Barclay are twin brothers who are most famous for owning the Telegraph Media Group. They also own stakes in the London Ritz hotel, and the beautiful 60m custom motor yacht, Superyacht Lady Beatrice – Which was named after their mother.
10. Charles Dunstone and Shemara
Last, but most certainly not least, we have Sir Charles Dunston and his Superyacht Shemara. The businessman is worth $2.1 billion, and his yacht has a kind of legendary history. It was rescued from turning into a rotting mess by Dunstone about five years ago and brought back to its former glory. Talking about its glory days, this yacht was notorious for holding some of the most scandalous political parties of the early 20th century.
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The raiders of the lost Sark
E ven by the standards of the rich and powerful, who often get away with behaviour the rest of us might struggle to justify, it looks like a spectacular display of petulance. David and Frederick Barclay, the billionaire brothers whose business empire includes the Daily Telegraph , Littlewoods and the Ritz Hotel, announced last week they will no longer invest in Sark, the tiny Channel Island that sits across the water from their fortress home on nearby Brecqhou, apparently incensed by its inhabitants' refusal to change its arcane system of government.
The island is still run on feudal principles, and it would be tempting to compare the Barclays to medieval rulers raging against the insolence of their ungrateful subjects were it not for the fact that the brothers are no tyrants. Ironically, perhaps, it is they who want to introduce democracy to Sark and the islanders who are opposed to it.
The 74-year-old twins have lived on Brecqhou, described by one Channel Islander as 'a rock with a helipad on it', for more than a decade, buying it from a cosmetics millionaire in 1993 and building a spectacular castle. Since then, they have bought up many of the local businesses on neighbouring Sark, including hotels and restaurants, but the intransigence of its 600 or so inhabitants means the good times may be over. On Thursday, after the first election in the island's history, voters pointedly failed to thank the brothers for their generosity, refusing to back the candidates championing the cause of constitutional reform and choosing instead to elect representatives intent on preserving the status quo on an island where cars are banned.
The Barclays response was as swift as it was brutal. A spokesman for the brothers announced their investment in Sark, of around £5m a year, would cease immediately, with the loss of 100 jobs. While the brothers themselves have remained characteristically silent, earlier threats that they would leave Brecqhou completely if the election went against them are still hanging in the air.
It could be a fit of pique from men who are accustomed to getting their own way or a ploy designed to force the island's rulers to the negotiating table. Barclay representatives who stood in last week's election on a reforming ticket have said the door remains open for talks and there are suggestions a compromise could be reached, perhaps by appointing a representative to the Chief Pleas, the legislative body which runs Sark's affairs.
But whatever their motivation, the spat has ensured the Barclays are once again in the public eye, an experience they are unlikely to relish. Most newspaper proprietors are happy to rub shoulders with the wealthy and influential, often enjoying the status and celebrity it brings, but the Barclays studiously avoid the limelight, preferring to conduct their business dealings in relative anonymity.
Often described as reclusive, that is a label the brothers are said to dislike. 'David once told me, "We are not secretive or reclusive, just private,"' says one acquaintance. But that privacy is jealousy guarded, sometimes with farcical effects. When journalist BBC John Sweeney was filmed landing on Brecqhou in an attempt to gain an interview, he was escorted off the island, an episode which caused much hilarity on Fleet Street, but one which the brothers found distinctly unamusing. They sued the BBC for breach of privacy - and won.
Their determination to keep their personal affairs under wraps, and the zeal with which they pursue those who offend them in print, means they are not written about as much as they otherwise might be, and even those who are paid to represent them are reluctant to talk on the record, fearful of reprisals from their clients. Perhaps their circumspection is understandable, but the Barclays' willingness to resort to the courts in an attempt to gag critics has won them few friends in the media. A few years ago, they even began legal proceeding against the Times, and Rupert Murdoch, in a French court, only dropping the action last year when the paper apologised for calling them 'asset strippers'.
Despite that combative streak, acquaintances insist the brothers are warm and friendly, even if they also concede that visiting their craggy outpost in the English Channel can be a surreal experience. 'Most castles are falling down,' says one. 'You expect to see a few holes in the walls left by cannonballs.'
The Barclay residence, however, is as pristine as a show home, built from scratch by a small army of imported labourers using materials shipped from a Sark port that was also purpose-built by the brothers. A fleet of small boats ferries supplies to their home.
Despite investing huge sums in their Channel Island retreat, David and Frederick don't live in Brecqhou all year, partly because it is often freezing in winter. David, who suffers from ME, spends time in Switzerland because the fresh air in the Alps helps alleviate his condition. They also have a home in Monaco, where residents have tax-free status. The brother's super-yacht, Lady Beatrice,, is moored in the principality.
The yachts and lavish property portfolio are a world away from the brothers' impoverished childhood in west London. Born to Scottish parents who had eight other children, their father died when they were 12, and after leaving school the twins worked briefly in the accounts department at General Electric before turning their hand to restoring and selling dilapidated houses, eventually making enough money to move into the hotel trade.
They bought the Howard Hotel in London's West End in 1975, and sold it 25 years later, but which time they had moved even further upmarket, acquiring the Ritz, one of the capital's most famous landmarks.
Both men are married but are believed to be separated from their spouses.
David's petite wife Zoe Newton was a well-known model in the 1950s, when she fronted a long-running marketing campaign for milk, with the memorable slogan 'drinka pinta milka day', and she was often followed by photographers, which might explain David's aversion to the press.
Frederick married a Japanese heiress whose family opened some of the first Japanese restaurants in London.
After buying the Howard, they diversified their business interests, entering new industries including shipping and retailing, and becoming newspaper proprietors when they bought the European, a struggling title launched by Robert Maxwell in the early 1990s, and following it with the purchase of Scotsman Publications, embarking on a new career that would bring them to greater public prominence.
They became major figures in the newspaper industry four years ago after paying £665m for the Telegraph stable of titles, which include the Spectator, the influential political weekly run by former Sunday Times editor Andrew Neil, a loyal Barclays executive. But media commentators have struggled to understand why such private men would choose to enter such a high-profile world.
One source who knows them well describes them as 'working-class Tories' and they are said to admire Margaret Thatcher, which may explain why they wanted to buy a right-wing title, but although they are not believed to be fans of Conservative leader David Cameron, editors past and present insist they rarely, if ever, interfere in editorial matters.
Their tenureship of the Telegraph has been controversial, partly because they have cut jobs, but their earlier stewardship of the Scotsman, a revered institution, was positively incendiary, as readers abandoned the title in droves.
Allies deny suggestions that they are uninterested Telegraph owners, pointing out the British 'dailies' are delivered to them each morning, even when they are on board David's yacht.
'They have always been very enthusiastic about newspapers and find them extraordinarily informative. They base their business decisions, in part, on information gleaned from the financial pages,' says one adviser, and they have also been known to phone editors in search of the latest gossip.
Like many wealthy men, the brothers give huge sums to charity, donating £11m to Great Ormond Street Hospital last year, and handing £3m to Alder Hey children's hospital in Liverpool last year. The brothers were knighted for services to charity in 2000, marking the occasion by giving a rare, if brief, interview to journalists. Typically, they used it to emphasise how much they valued their privacy.
Despite threats to quit Brecqhou, the twins seem likely to remain safely hidden from public view on their secluded island home for the foreseeable future. Bringing democracy to Sark and Brecqhou has become a pet project for David Barclay, who is said to spend many evenings wading through piles of faded documents on the subject. After last week's vote, that battle may occupy him for some time to come.
The Barclay brothers
Born: West London, 27 October 1934, within 10 minutes of each other to Scottish parents. Their mother, Beatrice, ran a sweet shop.
Best of times: Bagging the Telegraph titles in 2004 after protracted negotiations, finally fulfilling an ambition to own a national newspaper group.
Worst of times: Arguably their decision to acquire a 10 per cent stake in InterContinental Hotels Group for nearly £350m shortly before its share price plummeted. They are believed to be sitting on losses in excess of £150m.
What they say: Very little, although Gordon Dawes, their Guernsey lawyer, said last week: 'Sark will go back to what it was before the Barclays came and invested. The people of Sark have sent the Barclays a clear message and they feel they cannot continue investing at the rate of £5m per annum. I find it very hard, particularly at this time of year, not to wonder about the old saying to do with turkeys and whether or not they would vote for Christmas; well it seems we have our answer. I am genuinely saddened. The people of Sark have spoken.'
What others say: '[They] have thrown all their toys out of the pram.' Sark hotelier and local politician Paul Armorgie .
'We've managed for 400 years. Life goes on.' John Michael Beaumont (born 1927), OBE, the 22nd Seigneur of Sark.
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The yacht's interior is designed by Bannenberg Designs, while its naval architecture is by Voogd Naval Architects. Owned by David and Frederick Barclay, the yacht was named in honor of their mother, Beatrice Cecelia Taylor. The yacht is valued at an estimated $25 million, with annual running costs of around $3 million.
The net worth of the Barclay Brothers is estimated to be around $4.2 billion. A fascinating glimpse into their family's holdings can be gleaned from various documents, including this statement by David's son Aidan. Notably, David Barclay once owned the motor yacht Enigma, a testament to their taste for luxury, before selling it in 2016.
Sir David Rowat Barclay (27 October 1934 - 10 January 2021) and Sir Frederick Hugh Barclay (born 27 October 1934), [1] commonly referred to as the "Barclay Brothers" or "Barclay Twins", were British billionaire brothers, of whom Frederick Barclay is now the sole survivor.They were identical twin brothers and, until the death of David in 2021, had joint business interests primarily in media ...
The Barclay brothers brawled on a luxury yacht over the control of their UK business empire, a London court was told, on the first day of a hearing where Frederick Barclay faces jail for failing ...
In 2020, Forbes called the Barclay brothers "the UK's most infamous reclusive billionaires." However, a bitter divorce row between Frederick and his ex-wife thrust the yacht into the public eye.
Highly secretive and extremely rich and powerful, the identical twins known as the Barclay brothers managed to keep a very tight lid over how they amassed and maintained their 7-billion-pound ($8. ...
The Rise Of The Brothers Barclay. ... The source tells Forbes that the arrangement traces back to a decision made on a yacht, The Lady Beatrice, somewhere in the Mediterranean Sea 30 years ago. It ...
Highly secretive and extremely rich and powerful, the identical twins known as the Barclay brothers managed to keep a very tight lid over how they amassed and maintained their 7-billion-pound ($8. ...
David and young Frederick had six other siblings. Frederick snr died when the brothers were 12. They left school as soon as they could and plied a variety of trades. They clearly had some sort of ...
The Barclay Brothers' superyacht is asking for €22 million ($23.2 million), and it probably won't have to wait too long. By next year, we might see Lady Beatrice as one of the most sumptuous ...
The yacht's interior is designed by Bannenberg Designs, while its naval architecture is by Voogd Naval Architects. ਦੀ ਮਲਕੀਅਤ David and Frederick Barclay, the yacht was named in honor of their mother, Beatrice Cecelia Taylor. The yacht is valued at an estimated $25 million, with annual running costs of around $3 million.
https://www.superyachtfan.com/superyacht/superyacht_lady_beatrice.html Superyacht Lady Beatrice is owned by Sir David and Sir Frederick Barclay, known as the...
Major fallout between the billionaire brothers took place on Lady Beatrice yacht - Forbes published that a source loyal to the Frederick camp revealed that the once inseparable twins decided on a yacht, The Lady Beatrice, somewhere in the Mediterranean Sea nearly 30 years ago to allegedly combine their four heirs by equally splitting ownership of the family's assets.
The brothers have bases in Monaco and, famously, Brecqhou a rocky outcrop off Sark, where they built a mock gothic castle only accessible by boat or helicopter.
W hen one of the Barclay family bought a 241ft super yacht in 2004, ... The Barclay brothers were knighted for their philanthropy. Plus ça change, perhaps. Historians of the future will see Brecqhou as a prime example of the revival of country house building that took place at the end of the twentieth century. It is particularly noticeable in ...
David Barclay once owned the motor yacht Enigma, which he sold in 2016.. Telegraph Media Group: A Powerhouse in Publishing. The Barclay brothers have perhaps become most recognizable through their ownership of the Telegraph Media Group, which encompasses the highly influential Daily Telegraph and the Sunday Telegraph. These publications, owing ...
The Barclay Brothers and Lady Beatrice Lady Beatrice. Image sourced from: G-Yachts. Sir David and Sir Frederick Barclay are twin brothers who are most famous for owning the Telegraph Media Group. They also own stakes in the London Ritz hotel, and the beautiful 60m custom motor yacht, Superyacht Lady Beatrice - Which was named after their ...
David and Frederick Barclay, the billionaire brothers whose business empire includes the Daily Telegraph, Littlewoods and the Ritz Hotel, announced last week they will no longer invest in Sark ...
We are close by the St. Petersburg Municipal Marina where we have some of our many brokerage boats on display. Here are the advantages of listing your yacht or boat with St. Petersburg Yacht Sales & Service>>> 85 Azimut 2001: 81 Broward 1977: 48' Island Packet 2005: 47 Catalina 2000: 46 Beneteau 2007:
The Harborage Marina, St. Petersburg, Florida, 33701, United States. Welcome to Preferred Yacht Sales With extensive experience as a sailor, boat builder, yacht broker, businessman and a proven negotiator, I will provide you with sound advice and representation. You will find my practical experience and broad product knowledge insightful in ...
Dive into the lives of David and Frederick Barclay, the renowned UK billionaire twins, and uncover the impressive business empire they've built, from Telegraph Media Group to luxury hotels. ... David & Frederick Barclay • Net Worth $4 Billion • House • Yacht • Private Jet • The Telegraph Media. David & Frederick Barclay.
Prices for yachts in Saint Petersburg start at $15,718 for the lowest priced boats, up to $2,857,127 for the most expensive listings, with an average overall yacht value of $212,205. When exploring what type of boat or yacht to buy on YachtWorld, remember to consider carefully a number of important key factors including the vessel's age ...
Ultimate YachtLife Charters is a premier boat rental and yacht charter experience in the Tampa Bay Area. Welcome aboard! We offer many luxury charters, including birthday yacht parties, yacht weddings, as well as accommodations to suit your needs. Equipped to provide the smoothest cruising, undisturbed vacation, and breathtaking sunsets from St ...