The death of my grandfather Thomas, the 5th Marquess of Bath naturally entailed some considerable changes in our whole way of life; and perhaps within that of my parents even more than it did within my own. But let me tell first what I know of the way in which he died.

I am unaware of how long this may have been, but Thomas had been diagnosed as a diabetic, and there were tablets that he was supposed to take if ever he felt that his emotions were rising. His relationship with Henry had always been a distant one, and there had certainly been occasions when he had been most displeased. The general tenor of such displeasure, if I gather rightly, related to the fact that Henry's values were somehow at one stage removed from the traditional values of gentlemanly conduct - which is far from saying that he was no gentleman. Such a concept was still very much at the ethical core which had been integrated into his personality during his upbringing. But the whole concept of gentlemanly behaviour had been undergoing an upheaval in its assessment since Thomas had been a young man, and it just might be said that Henry was more the product of his own times.

There was a great importance in all of our eyes to sustain Thomas in a state of good health - if only for reasons of the family's economic welfare. During the late thirties, the family lawyers had been advising Thomas that the time was at hand when the family interest might best be served by the immediate transfer of most of the estate's capital into my father's ownership - with a view to escaping the requirement of having to pay any death duties on the inevitable ultimate transfer. But as the war clouds gathered, there were different thoughts which came to mind - like which of the two of them had the greatest probability odds of being alive when peace finally returned. So the lawyers' advice shifted towards what then seemed to be the safer ground of waiting until such hostilities had ceased before arranging the capital transfer. So it was only after the war that this was actually put into effect.

Even as a schoolboy, I noted how Henry did not appear to feel respect for my grandfather. It was discernible for example in the way he conversed with Thomas after the Socialist government had altered the law so as to extend the period over which any aged person had to survive before his transfer of capital to a relative could go untaxed. Thomas still regularly read The Times, and he had always been someone of an educated disposition. But I heard Henry chatting to him after the budget which revised the law on this subject, condescending as if to a child that was less well informed than himself - telling him that there was nothing we had to worry about. I could also read from the expression on Thomas' face that it irritated him that his son should thus be treating him as if he was almost senile, and without comprehension of all that was going on in the world.

I have since suspected that Henry may have been doing this deliberately, as some measure of striking back against the condescension which he himself had experienced - from the parental quarter. Having been treated himself when a boy as an idiot, he enjoyed the situation when (he thought) the roles could acceptably be reversed.

It was also known to my aunts for example that Henry had displeased Thomas in the way that he had launched out upon a massive project of cleaning out the lakes in the park at Longleat, just as soon as the transfer had effectively been made. Thomas regarded such cosmetic detail to be unnecessary and a waste of capital: also perhaps as an ostentatious rebuke to himself for not having maintained the same standards of tidiness and orderliness to which his son aspired. It might be argued that Henry's haste in attempting to alter the appearance of the park during his father's last years displayed a lack of tact that amounted to insensitivity, although Henry himself would argue that such a general sprucing up of the place had been long overdue, and that there was no time to lose.

But it was primarily on account of his lack of consultation with Thomas concerning all that was to be done in the park, which gave rise to bad feeling in the old man. And according to my Aunt Kate, what finally made him blow his top was the destruction of Harry Hillier's vegetable patch; harmless enough in itself, and tucked away beside a fence just beyond the stable courtyard at Longleat, where Mr and Mrs Hillier were housed. From another point of view however, it was a bit of an eye-sore, and thoroughly out of keeping with the stately home in its proximity.

Mr Hillier had been Grandpa's chauffeur for a considerable number of years, but was disliked by Henry mainly because he was known to carry tales to his father about all that was going on. There had been one instance while Henry was still a teenager, when Mr Hillier had informed his father that he was secretly garaging a motor- bike down at the Stalls farm. That put an end to such adventurous modes of transport for Longleat's only surviving son and heir. The resentment on that issue still lingered in Henry's heart - although it would clearly have cost Harry his job if he had kept silent upon such an issue and any manner of harm had subsequently befallen Henry as a result of him utilizing such a dangerous mode of transport.

It could be that this was in part responsible for the way in which Henry gave orders for Harry Hillier's vegetable patch to be ploughed up - just as his strawberry plants were coming into fruit. Harry went straight to Thomas to unload his sense of grievance, and it is said by my Aunt Kate that Grandpa blew his top, furious with Henry over his lack of consultation, if not for the whole pettiness of the decision. Strong emotions were not good for an ageing diabetic, and he was found dead next morning, having apparently got up in the night to rummage in a drawer for the tablets which might have saved him. He would have needed to survive for another two years before my father would have escaped having to pay death duties on the capital which had recently been transferred. So we were well and truly caught. The destruction of Harry Hillier's vegetable patch proved a costly business.

The gravity of the financial situation only sank in very gradually. To start with it was more a matter of accustoming ourselves to the novelty of Henry now being the 6th Marquess of Bath, with myself as the 11th Viscount Weymouth. I was the only child to be summoned from school to attend his funeral, which turned out to be quite a jolly affair - after all the solemnities of his interment in the family vault at Longbridge Deverill had been completed. The drink flowed freely afterwards at Sturford, and more freely still after the aunts had taken their leave. I remember feeling mildly shocked at the way Henry was telling his inner circle of drinking companions how he couldn't bring himself to feel any real sorrow at his father's death. Then seeing that I was standing there listening, he said: "And he'll be just the same when it's my turn to go." Then laughing more boisterously he added: "You just mark my words old cock!" I felt sure that he was mistaken.

By the time that I returned to Sturford at the end of the Summer half, I learnt that Mr Hillier had been retired, with the request that he vacate his house in the Stable Yard with what almost amounted to unseemly haste. We were to hear later how he had now joined the Labour party, and had been appointed to one of the prominent posts within the local organisation. I think that Nanny was the only one in the family who maintained a friendly contact with him after this date - because she had always found him to be so polite and gentlemanly in his dealings with herself.

It was during these Summer holidays that the news broke how we would have £6½ million of death duties to pay, which would necessitate the sale of much agricultural land. Our lawyers were advising Henry to sell less of the land, and more of the stocks and shares. But he preferred to take the line that ownership of the land was of less importance nowadays than a steady cash flow. And besides that, he envisaged an inner nucleus of the Longleat estate which still included most of the amenity attractions, while divesting it of all the outlying farm lands, which he regarded as being inessential to the identity of Longleat. So an auction was arranged for all of such land to be sold to the highest bidder, but it changed hands for a pittance, of course - by future standards. And Clay Hill was donated to the National Trust at the same time - which was a mistaken move in my personal judgement. Clay Hill should have been ranked as a valuable asset for future exploitation as a touristic attraction. But Henry neglected to perceive things that way.

The newspapers too took a great interest in all that was going on: particularly the Tory press, who wanted to portray this Labour government as the destructor of all that tradition implied. Henry was widely interviewed on the subject, and was encouraged to pose as the victim of these terrible Socialists who were destroying Britain with their new-fangled theories for an egalitarian society. It was the first time in his life that he had found himself so much in public focus, with an invitation to say what people actually wanted to hear, and he revelled in it. We were on holiday in Cornwall at the time, and I remember him coming back from the local newspaper shop with a bundle of papers for us all to read. And there were jokes afterwards on the subject of him emerging as "a real VIP." I took the epithet literally, of course. It seemed quite evident to me that my father had now indeed become a Very Important Person.

He was also receiving fan mail for the first time, largely in the vein of condolences concerning what these awful Socialists had done to him, or congratulating him on speaking his mind about them. But there were other letters too suggesting that there was little cause to feel sorry for him. He may have lost six million to the Treasury, but how many millions did he still possess? And if he really felt that he was now burdened with an impossible task in life, then why didn't he hand Longleat over to the National Trust?

It's true that his life-style did become a trifle more opulent - to the point at least when the old Packard was finally dumped, and a new Bentley was ordered. Not that Henry was ever pleased with this car, which was continually going back to the works for some fault to be rectified. He invariably attributed this to shoddy British workmanship - which served to strengthen his conviction that no one could match the Germans for sheer efficiency, and that it just went to show that they ought to have won the war.

The whole business of being transformed into a Marchioness made far less of a difference to Daphne. There were no new duties to perform, and there was no particular hullabaloo in the press upon how she regarded her situation. But she slid with great ease into the new image, in that she had always been much liked, locally, even if there were stories in circulation about her wild life during the war years. Nobody doubted however, that she was just the sort of chatelaine that Longleat required.

If the family had lost out on much of its wealth as a result of my grandfather dying before the five year interval which would have saved us from paying death duties had elapsed, we had in fact acquired a new fortune from a different source, just a few years prior to this loss. This came in the form of the reversion of Norton Abbey and its estate to within the Longleat inheritance. And I should offer some words in explanation of how this had come to pass.

When Beriah Botfield bequeathed his estate, and all the treasures that were contained within Norton Abbey, to the second branch of the Thynne family (all on the theory which I personally hold to be erroneous, that the two families were descended from the same Norman stock), it had clearly been his intention to set up an additional branch of this family independently from the rest: a branch which would revere his own name as their creator, so to speak. But it so happened that the second son of the 3rd Marquess, to whom he had bequeathed his estate, died without issue. So in default of precise instructions within the original will and testament, Norton Abbey then passed into the ownership of the eldest daughter of the 4th Marquess, my Great-Aunt Beatrice - who once again died without issue, a little while before her own brother, Thomas, who was of course my grandfather. So the lawyers then had to decide to whom the legacy should rightfully pass. And seeing how all the legitimate claimants were then Henry's own children, who had not yet attained their majority within the eyes of the law, it fell to my father to decide just whom the beneficiary should be.

His entire philosophy of life over this period in time had been how best to serve the interests of Longleat. It wasn't his concern to set up Christopher or Valentine as the independent branch of the Botfield/Thynne clan, which Beriah had originally envisaged. He was only concerned to cannibalise the treasures of Norton Abbey so that they became incorporated within Longleat's own heritage. So his decision was to name myself as the beneficiary, and to initiate the task of transferring the contents of Norton to Longleat. Not a decision which I can now claim to have been morally justified incidentally, but one which I took for granted, without demur. The remainder of that legacy got sold off at this time, as a contribution towards the death duties which still had to be paid.

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