Elliot Wilson

Gallantry is a finite resource

Some medal collectors are fascinated by courage, others want a hedge against soggy house prices, says Elliot Wilson

Few individuals better personify the eccentric, combative and rarefied world of medal collecting than Michael Ashcroft, the businessman and controversially deep-pocketed Tory party eminence grise. A self-made man whose fortune is estimated by the Sunday Times at £1.1 billion — more than the entire net worth of Belize, the tiny Central American state he calls home — Lord Ashcroft has also carved out a near-monopoly of a very finite resource: the Victoria Cross.

Since being introduced in 1856 at the tail end of the Crimean War, just 1,356 VCs have been awarded. Most are in public collections, notably that of London’s Imperial War Museum. Those that are not are most likely to be in the hands of Lord Ashcroft. The Tory peer owns no fewer than 160 VCs, by far the largest private collection, including one awarded to John Chard during the defence of Rorke’s Drift in 1879. That heroic rearguard action, immortalised in the 1964 film Zulu, made Chard a household name in the highest circles: in the 1880s he was a regular guest of Queen Victoria at Balmoral.

Ashcroft started assembling his hoard in the late 1980s, but his obsession with military bravery dates back to his childhood. Listening to his father — who survived the trauma of the 1944 Normandy landings as a young officer — Ashcroft heard tales of the rough sea, the pinging of machine guns, the smell of fear and vomit. A teenaged desire to own Britain’s highest military decorations never wore off. When he made his first fortune in the late 1980s, he started collecting them.

‘As soon as I could afford to, I found out when the next VC was coming up for auction and bought it,’ says Ashcroft. ‘When my cheque cleared, I was in my office reading and re-reading the story of this extraordinary man and a frisson went through me — one that only a collector can ever have.

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