Truth behind Tory donor in honours row: Why multi-millionaire hedge fund baron was pushed through to be knighted



His name on the Queen’s Birthday Honours list triggered a storm of protest.



But the nomination of multi-millionaire hedge fund baron Michael Hintze, who has donated millions to the Tory Party, did not enjoy whole-hearted support from Downing Street.

Indeed I can reveal Hintze’s knighthood was pushed through by the many charities he has backed, despite the opposition of No 10 who feared the political embarrassment.

Their brief visit to billionaire hedge fund baron Sir Michael Hintze (pictured, right) was kept a secret leading up to the tour

His close involvement with Prince Charles also played a part.

Sir Michael, 59, who was yesterday at Royal Ascot with his wife Dorothy, received his honour for ‘services to the arts’ after gifting over £30 million to good causes.

As a long-time supporter of the Conservatives, many thought the Australian-born financier’s link to the PM would have led to a ringing endorsement from David Cameron.

In fact, Hintze is said to have fallen out of favour after his savage criticism of George Osborne.

Keen to avoid rewarding such a powerful critic, Number 10 is said to have pushed back on his recommendation by the Main Honours Committee.

However, an insider on the committee says: ‘It was quite clear that the man amply deserved the honour after all his philanthropy. We pushed back and made it clear a political veto would be unwelcome.’

The billionaire has suffered a rash of adverse publicity in recent times.

In 2011 it was revealed that he had indirectly funded Liam Fox’s unofficial adviser, Adam Werritty.



Sir Michael has donated £1.4 million to the Tories and provided a further £2.5 million in loans to the party since 2005.

But he also occupies a key role in Prince Charles’s life as chairman of the Prince’s Foundation for the Built Environment.



The Prince’s former aide Michael Fawcett organised Sir Michael’s lavish 55th birthday party at Wrotham Park, Herts.

‘Although Charles made no direct personal intervention on behalf of the honour, his gratitude for the work Sir Michael has done for him is widely known,’ I am told.

Celebrity girls steal the show

You might suppose the offspring of supermodels, rock stars and celebrity chefs would find it hard living in their parents’ shadows.

Not so Tallulah Le Bon and Billie-Lara Worrall Thompson, who are fast emerging as future stars of the art world, despite their tender years.

Indeed Jo Heywood, head of £26,000-a-year Heathfield St Mary’s in Ascot, has singled out the 18-year-old daughter of Simon and Yasmin Le Bon and Billie-Lara, 16, whose father is chef Antony Worrall Thompson, as being among ‘the finest’ talent at the school.

Talented offspring: Billie-Lara Worrall Thompson, left, daughter of celebrity chef Antony Worrall Thompson, and Tallulah Le Bon, daughter of Simon and Yasmin Le Bon have been praised for their artistic talents

‘Tallulah has developed a strong flair for fashion design and photography and it would not surprise me if she followed a career in the fashion industry,’ says Ms Heywood.

Now both girls’ work is to go on show at the Southbank early next year.



Adds Heywood: ‘Billie has an incredible raw talent for such a young artist. Everyone who sees her paintings really does take a step back to look again.’

Some regard it as the most sacred royal and religious artefact in the land. To deface it would, in theory, be an act of blasphemy and treachery.



Yet one of the Queen’s most senior representatives has just confessed that his family was responsible for vandalising Westminster Abbey’s Coronation Chair.

Moved by the 60th anniversary of the coronation, Sir Sam Whitbread — who recently stepped down after 21 years as Lord Lieutenant of Bedfordshire — has gone public over the behaviour of his great-grandfather, Edward Bourke, while a pupil at Westminster School.



According to a private family memoir, Bourke ‘distinguished himself by hiding in Westminster Abbey one night and carving his name in deep large letters on the seat of the throne of England’.

Sir Sam, a member of the Whitbread brewing clan, tells Country Life: ‘Much as I disapprove of people leaving their names carved anywhere, I am (and I think, justly so) proud that all the monarchs of England must sit on my great-grandfather’s name at their coronation.’

Self-important warbler Bono scored a coup during Michelle Obama’s whistlestop tour of Dublin on Tuesday, persuading the First Lady and her daughters to join his family for fish and chips at his local, Finnegan’s.



As a crowd waited nearly two hours outside for the VIPs to emerge, one Dubliner quipped: ‘Are they arguing over the bill?’



Chef Paul Finnegan declines to say if Bono, who keeps most of his U2 earnings in the Netherlands, paid for the lunch. ‘Ah, that would be telling,’ he says.

The secret life of Princess Margaret

Stories unveiled: The late Princess Margaret

The late Princess Margaret’s novelist friend Angela Huth is putting the finishing touches to her memoirs.

But readers should desist from holding their breath in anticipation of indiscreet revelations about the Queen’s younger sister, who died in 2002.

Angela, author of Land Girls, says that the autobiography, Not The Whole Story, will live up to its title and be a gossip-free zone.

‘I don’t believe in telling stories about friends,’ she tells me from the Warwickshire home she shares with her husband of 35 years, Oxford don James Howard- Johnston.

‘There will only be a page-and-a-half about my friendship with Princess Margaret. I honestly believe the details of close friendships should remain private,’ she adds.

Meanwhile Angela, who was formerly married to the writer Quentin Crewe and is preparing for the opening night of the re-staging of her 1995 play The Trouble With Old Lovers, has received some unexpected good news.

Thirteen years after its first publication, Wives Of The Fishermen has become a bestseller in France, meeting with rave reviews.

‘I am off to Paris on the Eurostar and have been promised the red-carpet treatment,’ Angela says.

‘The French treat authors so much better than the English.’

He may have been one of the stars of Men’s Fashion Week, but British designer Oliver Spencer was left smuggling people into his own after-party.

The bespectacled tailor hired the basement of Liberty to entertain the likes of actor Jesse Metcalfe, and models David Gandy and Oliver Cheshire, but over-zealous party planners invited too many people — leaving a trail of disgruntled guests queuing outside.



To make matters worse, several famous faces were turned away.

‘Poor Oliver had to meet friends as they were being refused entry — then negotiate with door staff to get them in,’ I am told. ‘It wasn’t a good look.’

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Two months short of his 96th birthday, former Chancellor Denis Healey has dumped plans for a final volume of autobiography, saying he has run out of steam.

Lord Healey — one of the last survivors from Harold Wilson’s Labour Cabinet of the Sixties — has written more than half a dozen books and published a volume of photos since retiring to Sussex.



Frankly admitting that he still misses his wife Edna, who died two years ago, Healey says: ‘I don’t go out very much these days.