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‘Most eligible bachelor’ Duke of Westminster to marry – but all eyes are on William and Harry

Wedding of Hugh Grosvenor, godfather to the princes’ sons, is ‘society wedding of the year’. Yet why will Harry not attend?

When Hugh Grosvenor, the seventh Duke of Westminster, marries at Chester Cathedral next week the 33-year-old will relinquish the status bestowed on him by society bibles of Britain’s “richest, most eligible bachelor”.

It is not just his £10bn inherited wealth and pole position in the Sunday Times list of 40 richest people under 40 in the UK that means his marriage to Olivia Henson, 31, is being billed as the society wedding of the year.

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© Photograph: Grosvenor2023/PA

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© Photograph: Grosvenor2023/PA

Billionaire non-dom quit UK on day Hunt scrapped tax breaks, says adviser

Super-rich have left country to avoid being subjected to UK taxes on overseas income, conference hears

A London-based billionaire non-dom left the UK for good on the day that the chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, announced the scrapping of the 225-year-old tax scheme in the spring budget, his tax adviser has revealed.

“We did have one billionaire client who literally on the day of the budget, 6 March, got on his private jet with his wife, with his children, with the private tutor, and flew to one of his other 17 houses in the world – and said ‘I’m not coming back’,” said John Barnett, a partner at the law firm Burges Salmon, which specialises in advising the super-rich on how to legally reduce their tax bills.

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© Photograph: sharply_done/Getty Images/iStockphoto

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© Photograph: sharply_done/Getty Images/iStockphoto

£161,000 for 20 days? Nick Candy bemoans One Hyde Park service charge

Billionaire developer jokes he in fact spends no time at penthouse with record-breaking £175m asking price

The billionaire British property developer Nick Candy has said he only spends about 20 days a year in his £175m penthouse flat at One Hyde Park in London.

Candy, 51, who developed the “superluxe” Knightsbridge apartment building overlooking the royal park and acquired one of the flats for himself, said it irritated him that he was paying service charges of up to £161,000 a year (or £3,000 a week) when he was rarely there. The development has a private cinema, 21-metre lap pool, as well as sauna, gym, golf simulator, wine cellar, valet service and room service from the five-star Mandarin Oriental hotel next door.

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© Photograph: Bloomberg/Getty Images

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© Photograph: Bloomberg/Getty Images

‘Sorry, no one is in’: few are at home for Margaret Hodge’s ‘kleptocracy walking tour’

Campaigning Labour MP knocks on doors of wealthy London homes bought by foreign leaders who are subject to sanctions

Margaret Hodge, the veteran Labour MP and former minister, is on a mission to knock on the doors of multimillion-pound London properties.

The luxury homes she is calling on are linked to the Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, and the Azerbaijani president, Ilham Aliyev, in gated communities in Kensington, west London, and closely guarded by private security.

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© Photograph: @margarethodge

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© Photograph: @margarethodge

Buying London is grotesque TV – but it shows the capital’s property market for what it is | Elle Hunt

Netflix’s distasteful ‘reality’ series holds up a gilded mirror to the people making the city harder for the rest of us to live in

When I first arrived in London, seven years ago, I used to enjoy stopping outside estate agents’ offices and browsing the listings in the window. Though they were almost always ludicrously out of reach, there was idle pleasure to be had in seeing what you could get for £5m v £10m, and debating with yourself the merits of a home spa v home cinema.

These days, however, I find it hard to indulge in fantasy real-estate without being reminded of London’s housing crisis, and where it has landed me and many others my age: shut out of home ownership. Now a flashy new reality TV series from Netflix is seeking to take us the other side of the glass with a view into on London’s “super-prime” property market.

Elle Hunt is a freelance journalist

Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.

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© Photograph: Zoe McConnell/Netflix

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© Photograph: Zoe McConnell/Netflix

At a festival for the super-rich, the argument for higher taxes couldn’t have been clearer | Polly Toynbee

Britain’s jet set insist they will flee if they lose their benefits – but Labour should not be daunted at a time of such inequality

The Elite London, described as the city’s “most exclusive jet-set lifestyle event”, filled Wycombe Air Park with row after row of gleaming private jets, seaplanes, hovercrafts (with one for kids), helicopters, and supercars either the size of tanks, or flat on the ground like giant skateboards.

In hangar after hangar, the wares on sale last weekend were designed and priced for the super-rich, though possibly not quite for the cadres in this year’s Sunday Times rich list, which bills itself as “a celebration of aspiration”. A “truly bespoke” £30,000 safe had six permanently revolving wheels that keep your watches synchronised; they recently sold one to protect a household’s £1.3m collection of watches. A writing service offered an illustrated memoir of your life’s successes for £28,000. A monster Land Rover Defender, with its boot open to display champagne and a magnificent picnic basket, promoted educational advice: “Opening the door to the best boarding schools and universities.”

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© Photograph: Graeme Robertson/The Guardian

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© Photograph: Graeme Robertson/The Guardian

‘Everyone wants a plane for summer’: luxury trade fair woos super-rich

Elite London billed as ‘unique platform for luxury lifestyle brands’, with entry level helicopters costing upwards of £3.2m

“There are enough people, with enough money to buy them,” Sharmaine Guelas says as she shows off the specifications of a €3.7m (£3.2m) forest green five-passenger helicopter at Elite London, a “luxury” trade fair.

Billed as a “unique platform for luxury lifestyle brands to showcase themselves in front of a select and discerning audience”, it is largely frequented by members of global super-wealthy.

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© Photograph: Graeme Robertson/The Guardian

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© Photograph: Graeme Robertson/The Guardian

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