Sathnam Sanghera: The Marquess of Bath

The Marquess of Bath

The Marquess of Bath and Boudicca, his hyperactive golden Labrador, come bounding into the drawing room. “Who’s a lovely woof?!” gushes the 71-year-old aristocrat, ruffling his pet’s fur. “Whooo’s a lovely wooofie woof? Whooo’s a lovely Booody?”

Hello Lord Bath, I say, reluctant to break up the love-in between man and dog – it’s nice to meet you. “Come here, Boody!” continues the hippy peer, oblivious to my muttering and the photographer’s shuffling, as the dog bounces around frantically. “Whooo’s a lovely woof?”

The efficient PR, sitting-in on the interview, leans forward and whispers into my ear: “You might need to shout – he’s a bit deaf.”

Right. LORD BATH. HELLO. IT’S A PLEASURE TO MEET YOU. “Aha!” he mumbles back warmly, if not a little vaguely, taking a seat in the pre-designated position between the photographer and me (his personal assistant has explained that he only likes to be photographed from the right).

We are sitting in his favourite room in his private apartments at Longleat, home to his family for more than 450 years and probably the best example of high Elizabethan architecture in Britain. Decorated, like many of the rooms in the west wing of the house, with Lord Bath’s famous, swirling, brightly-coloured murals, the room is quite a sight.

Lord Bath himself (a.k.a. Alexander Thynn, the seventh Marquess of Bath, the Loins at Longleat and, to some of his staff, just simple LB) is quite a sight too. Tall and broad, he has the physical stature of a Viking warrior, but, frankly, the cotton slippers, purple cords and ethnic quilted jacket give him the air of a vagrant.

The oddness is accentuated by his very gentle voice (which sounds like something from a Disney cartoon) and his uneven manner of speaking. Sometimes he talksveryfastindeed but at. Other. Times. He. Is. Almost. Monosyllabic. He rarely answers in more than two or three sentences. This, combined with his general eccentricity, makes conversation with him a stilted affair.

Could he perhaps begin by describing a typical week in his life? “What?” he barks. “Sorry, I’m a bit deaf.” COULD YOU DESCRIBE A TYPICAL WEEK IN YOUR LIFE? “Well,” he says eventually, with a finger in his ear, adjusting his hearing aid. “I divide the week between Longleat and my flat in London – so a typical week would be going up to London on the Tuesday and driving back here on a Friday.”

And what does he do with his days? “Well, when in London there might be some invitations that don’t occur in Wiltshire.” And when at Longleat one assumes he’s busy painting his murals? “Over my life I have painted a lot but normally when I’m here I don’t. I’ve done 10 rooms like this, and I’m not racing to do more.” He rolls his big eyes madly. “I’m usually trying to write my autobiography.”

Ah, the autobiography. Apparently he has already written more than 6m words, and has only got up to 1994. “I shall complete it before I die!” he proclaims loudly, adding that three volumes, which take us as far as prep school, have already been published, and that another three volumes are in the process of being published.

But why on earth does he want to write such a big book? By the time he completes it, it may even rival the longest biography in history – that of Winston Churchill, begun by his son Randolph and continued by Martin Gilbert, which stands at some 10m words. “I think that by the time the total life is there, analysed in the depth that I do it, it will be a literary feature of our culture! I can’t think of another autobiography that long.”

If you think about it, Bath’s entire life has been marked by doing things on a large scale. There are the large number of murals. The large number of odd beliefs (Pantheism, regionalism for Wessex, the apparent loathing of the class system, despite his title). The large house (1,996 windows, 99 chimneys, 283 doors). The large wealth (estimated at Pounds 187m by the Sunday Times). And then, of course, there’s the large number of sexual partners, or “wifelets”, as he calls them.

His actual wife, the actress and journalist Anna Gael, by whom he has two grown-up children, lives in Paris and returns to Longleat once a month. But at any one time he has three or four women with whom he has sexual relationships. The lifelong total of “wifelets” stands at about 74.

I ask him if he has ever encountered problems with jealousy between his “wifelets”? “I have encountered jealousy, and I have always tried to subdue it in myself even,” he replies with characteristic brevity. How long do the relationships last, generally? “There’s a relationship I started in 1960 that is still going on.” Blimey, that’s longer than many marriages – what’s his secret? “I’m as nice as possible to everyone!” And he’s never been sued? “No.” Or been the subject of a tabloid kiss ‘n’ tell? “Well, yes, there was one of those, but one out of all the possibilities is remarkably few.” And would he say that his sexual appetite is as voracious as before? “Oh, it’s diminishing!” he replies without embarrassment. “Which is probably something I am thankful about.”

We are rattling through the questions quicker than he gets through wifelets, but I have to take a deep breath before summoning up the courage for the next one: has Lord Bath discovered the joys of, ahem, Viagra yet? “Oh, I’ve tried Viagra but I didn’t find it as, erm . . . as useful as I might have hoped.” I nod along sympathetically, trying very hard not to visualise what he’s talking about. “By that I don’t mean that I can’t do things, it’s just that erm . . .”A little pause. “I just rely on myself to get my own steam.”

It’s remarkable how open Bath is about such intensely private matters (“I’m candid, yes. It’s part of my philosophy.”). He even rattles on about his fondness for drugs without hesitation. “I will take a cannabis cigarette that’s being passed around, I will take cocaine if it’s going around, and if people are passing around something stronger, I might think it was high time I took it.”

However, such frankness must be terribly embarrassing for his family – especially his children, Lenka, a 34-year-old TV producer, Ceawlin, a 29-year-old businessman, and an anonymous five-year daughter by an anonymous wifelet. “They have told me that they are embarrassed sometimes,” he admits. “Especially Lenka – she would criticise me for my polygamy. And when she was younger she would ask me not to wear handbags,” He giggles gently. “But I think I’ve been a good father with them.”

Which brings us, very rapidly, to the subject of his own difficult relationship with his own father, Henry, the 6th Marquess – the man who first opened Longleat to the public and made it the first place outside Africa with a Safari Park. Henry, an avid collector of Hitler’s paintings, had serious authoritarian tendencies. On one occasion he beat Alexander, as Lord Bath was known then, with a riding crop for spilling some water while washing his dog, and later in life he humiliated Alexander by appointing his younger brother, Christopher, to run the house.

When his father died, 12 years ago, at the age of 87, and he inherited the house, the first thing Alexander did was tell his brother Christopher to leave. I ask if Lord Bath now talks to his brother, with whom he has passed a lifetime of enmity. “It’s not that I don’t talk to him. I invite him to everything, but he just doesn’t tend to attend.” A mischievous smile. “I don’t think I’ll go any further.”

Finally, one topic that Bath is not so open about. It must be, I suggest, a huge source of family tension that Lord Christopher’s son, a “lovechild” as Bath describes him, has been working for Bath for a decade to complete a mosaic project in his apartments. Things must have got particularly difficult when his nephew was recently the centre of a drugs scandal after police found cannabis plants growing in the loft of his Longleat home?

“Oh, you must ask my nephew or my brother about that,” says the Marquess, reluctantly. “My nephew doesn’t live here by the way. He’s got a cottage in the village. He will complete the mosaics quite soon and he probably wants to do other things. But if he asked me if there was anything else to do at Longleat, I’d come up with something.”

At this point Lord Bath suddenly glances at the PR and, like a schoolboy asking to be excused from a lesson, asks if he can break off for a pee. “I won’t be long!” he trills as he scampers out of the room. “Now Boody, you stay there. Be a good doggy.” While he’s gone, the PR and I make small talk about the decor. It turns out that some of the items in the room are not as old as they look. They are replacements for the 430 items that Bath recently sold to raise a maintenance fund to help preserve the 16th century house.

“Actually, I think the modern ones look better than the old ones!” says Bath as he waddles back in. “It’s amazing how, once the things went, we didn’t actually notice the difference. Yet how much did it raise? Pounds 27m? Or something like that.” He mentions the Pounds 27m sum in the casual manner that most of us would mention a fiver.

I ask if he has ever wondered what it would be like to be poor. “No, I accept what is on my plate and try to do as well as I can. I tend to be on the left of centre in political arguments so I’m not proud of having it all. But there’s so much to change before you can have an ideal world, so I will pass it without comment.”

If he wasn’t so fabulously wealthy, what does he think he would have done for a living? “I would have been a lorry driver,” he replies, very definitely and very quickly. A lorry driver? “Yes!” he exclaims, offering little elaboration. Looking at Boudicca lovingly, he adds: “And there’s something else I would do too.” What’s that? “I would breed dogs! Through Boody I would produce a Wessex breed, a new breed to take the imagination of everyone! Get the breeding wonderfully done so that they were the most interesting and lovable dogs ever!” He ruffles the dog’s fur and starts cooing at it again. “Whooo’s a lovely woof? Oh Boody, you haven’t been interviewed! Would you like to say something woofy?”