The 6th Duke of Westminster, who died this month, was living support of the claim that wealth doesn’t make you happy. He was as rich as can be, but said he wished he hadn’t been. The dukedom, and the billions of pounds it brought with it, came to him unexpectedly. He had been brought up on a farm in Northern Ireland and wished he had stayed there and become a beef farmer. Instead, he inherited a great property empire in England and around the world, as well as various estates that allowed him the pleasure of game shooting, but otherwise gave him little but grief.
He was overwhelmed by the onerous duties that great riches imposed on him, and he succumbed to depression. ‘Given the choice I would rather not have been wealthy, but I never think of giving up,’ he once said. ‘I can’t sell it. It doesn’t belong to me.’
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