DUBAI // The Duke of Westminster is, according to Forbes, the top-ranked billionaire in Britain and “the UK’s richest landlord”.

He is known formally as the 6th Duke of Westminster and, according to Forbes, owns 190 acres in Belgravia, an area adjacent to Buckingham Palace and one of London’s most expensive locations. His family has 96,000 acres of land in Scotland, 32,000 acres in Spain and thousands elsewhere in England. Altogether, the private Grosvenor Group owns real estate on five continents and reports just under US$20 billion (Dh73bn) in assets under management.

In addition to his property, the duke is a decorated military man with 43 years’ service in the Territorial Army. He joined as a trooper in 1970 and went on to command his regiment, the Queen’s Own Yeomanry, in the mid-1990s.

Since then, he has held a variety of staff appointments and became a major general in 2003, when he was appointed assistant chief of the defence staff for reserves and cadets in the Ministry of Defence. He was the first such reserve officer to hold the rank since before the Second World War.

The duke supports various charities. He chairs the Nuffield Trust for the Armed Forces and his own charitable trust, the Westminster Foundation, supports many UK-registered charities, including a number of military charities.

mswan@thenational.ae