Gallantry is a finite resource

Few individuals better personify the eccentric, combative and rarefied world of medal collecting than Michael Ashcroft, the businessman and controversially deep-pocketed Tory party eminence grise. A self-made man whose fortune is estimated by the Sunday Times at £1.1 billion — more than the entire net worth of Belize, the tiny Central American state he calls home — Lord Ashcroft has also carved out a near-monopoly of a very finite resource: the Victoria Cross.

Since being introduced in 1856 at the tail end of the Crimean War, just 1,356 VCs have been awarded. Most are in public collections, notably that of London’s Imperial War Museum. Those that are not are most likely to be in the hands of Lord Ashcroft. The Tory peer owns no fewer than 160 VCs, by far the largest private collection, including one awarded to John Chard during the defence of Rorke’s Drift in 1879. That heroic rearguard action, immortalised in the 1964 film Zulu, made Chard a household name in the highest circles: in the 1880s he was a regular guest of Queen Victoria at Balmoral.