Essex boy whose homes are his castles

Born in June 1944 in Burnhamon-Crouch, Essex, during a bombing raid, Peter de Savary has gone far for a man who passed just one O-level, in Scripture, before being removed from his school for sleeping with the headmaster's maid.

At one point in the 1980s, he owned John O'Groats and Land's End, and suggested his next step would be "to buy the bit in the middle". It is something he has blessedly not quite achieved. After starting his working life as a carpenter, Mr de Savary - known as PDS to his employees - now owns a string of prime properties across the globe.

Skibo Castle and its 7,500-acre estate in Dornoch was bought by Mr de Savary in 1990 for £5.5 million, and reopened as the Carnegie Club after a £10 million refurbishment.

In 1996, he added the Leicestershire stately home Stapleford Park - bought for £4million from the estate of a pizza tycoon - to his portfolio as an "English outpost" of the Carnegie Club. Mr de Savary also owns a members' club in Cadogan Gardens, Knightsbridge.

In America, his empire extends to Rhode Island, where his Carnegie Abbey Club offers a Scottish-style links golf course, a spa and sailing. Then there is the Cherokee Plantation, a 4,000-acre development with golf, carriage trails and duck shooting in South Carolina, home state of his wife Lana Paton.