A man on a mission
Michael (Lord) Ashcroft, 74, is a British born entrepreneur/businessman estimated in March 2020 to be worth £1.7 billion and a man of many parts.
He officially lives ‘off shore’, retains dual citizenship with Britain and Belize, and his tax status has been a source of controversy most particularly during the period he was deputy chairman of the Tory Party.
His interests include charity, philanthropy, the environment, crime prevention (he remains chairman of the Crimestoppers organisation which he founded), education (amongst other things he has been chairman of Anglian Ruskin University since 2001 and donated £5 million to create a business school in Cambridge).
Be all this as it may, the springboard for my post today – and perhaps the subject for which he is most well-known – is his decades-long obsession with the lives and deeds of those who have won the Victoria Cross, the highest medal for gallantry that anyone connected with the British military can be awarded.
Ashcroft is one of many thousands around the world fond of military history, particularly that of First and Second World Wars, and he is nothing but a committed researcher.
In 2008 he donated £5 million to the Imperial War Museum to establish a permanent gallery which now houses both the IWM’s collection of 50 VCs and his own, which currently stands at 162.
Overnight I came across this article by him, saluting the last British winner of a VC before VE-Day – which the country will be marking this Friday (8th May) to celebrate the 75th anniversary of unconditional surrender of Germany’s military forces and the end of WW2 in Europe – on the website of the – DAILY MAIL
