David Greville, 8th Earl of Warwick

David Robin Francis Guy Greville, 8th Earl of Warwick (15 May 1934 – 20 January 1996) was a British peer and landowner, the last private owner of the Greville family seat at Warwick Castle.

Known as Earl Brooke before he succeeded his father, he was a member of the House of Lords from 1984 until his death.

Warwick was the only child of Fulke Greville, 7th Earl of Warwick, by his first marriage in 1933 to Rose Bingham, daughter of David Cecil Bingham and granddaughter of General Sir Cecil Bingham.^[1] He was born at Warwick Castle.^[2] His parents divorced in 1938, when he was a small child, and custody was awarded to his father.^[3]

The young Lord Brooke was educated at Summerfields, St Leonards-on-Sea, and Eton College. He served his National Service as a Second Lieutenant in the Life Guards, after a period of training at the Mons Officer Cadet School, and then joined the part-time Warwickshire Yeomanry and trained as an accountant.^[2]

Widely known as "Brookie", through the later 1960s and the 1970s Warwick was prominent in London society, a lover of books, horses and parties, and an amateur artist.^[2]

In 1967, the 7th Earl of Warwick transferred Warwick Castle and other estates to his son and heir,^[4] who in 1978 sold the castle to the Tussauds Group for £1.3 million. It had been in the Greville family for 374 years, and its sale caused a public confrontation between father and son.^[5]

Warwick said he had acted as he had because he believed a Labour Government would confiscate the castle. To avoid future death duties, he also sold the family art collection, including the Warwick Vase. He also sold several tons of family papers to Warwickshire County Council and went into tax exile, with homes at Pelican Point in the Turks and Caicos Islands, New York City, Paris, Gstaad and Spain.^[2]

In 1956, as Lord Brooke, Warwick married Sarah Anne Chester Beatty, a daughter of Alfred Chester Beatty, an American-British mining magnate known as "the King of Copper".^[6][2] They divorced in 1967 and she married, secondly, racehorse trainer Harry Thomson Jones.

By his wife Warwick had a son and heir, Guy David, Lord Brooke (born 1957) and a daughter, Lady Charlotte. In 1979, she married Andrew Fraser, a younger son of Simon Fraser, 15th Lord Lovat, and had two daughters, Daisy Rosamond (born 1985) and Laura Alfreda (1987).^[7] In March 1994 Andrew Fraser was killed in Tanzania by a charging buffalo, a few days before the death of his brother Simon while hunting.^[2]

In 1987 Warwick's children shared in the £22.5 million from the sale of Vincent van Gogh's Sunflowers, formerly the property of his father-in-law, Alfred Chester Beatty.^[8]

Warwick died of pneumonia in 1996, aged 61. He was succeeded by his son Guy, who by then was living in Australia. The next heir is his grandson Charles Greville, Lord Brooke.^[2]