Who Owns Britain?

Country Life have published a piece on who owns Britain and appear to be surprised that things have changed quite a bit since 1872! They should get out more often.

The piece was puffed up in the Telegraph [link broken May 2024] and the Daily Mail.

What is interesting about the Mail article in particular is that much of it is inaccurate. The Duke of Buccleuch, for example, does not own any of the 250,000 acre Bucleuch Estate as far as I can tell. It is owned by a company whose ultimate owners are four lawyers in Edinburgh who head up Anderson Strathern Nominees Ltd., a company with total assets of £4, which has been dormant since 1992 and which owns 100% of Buccleuch Estates Ltd., a company with assets of £275 million and a turnover of £64 million (see Chapter 29, The Poor Had No Lawyers)

Now that is a story worth pursuing!

Radio Scotland asked me to do an interview for Newsdrive with the editor of Country Life which can be heard here.

Weird. There are dozens of issues raised in my book and the first oportunity to appear on our national Radio Station is in response to a Country Life article which is essentially about England.