Born in Sri Lanka and educated in England, Christopher Ondaatje (older brother of the novelist Michael) emigrated to Canada in 1956, was a member of Canada’s 1964 Olympic bobsled team, founded a successful publishing house and went on to make a fortune broking corporate share deals. In 1988, ‘disillusioned with finance’, he sold up and returned to England, where he acquired a historic West Country estate, collected art and wrote books about explorers. He became a benefactor of the National Portrait Gallery, the Royal Geographical Society and both the Conservative and Labour parties — the former treated him too arrogantly, so he punished them by giving £2 million to the latter.
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