Tiny Rowland

Roland "Tiny" Rowland (died in 1988) wiki

"Rowland went into business after the war, earning enough within a few years to be crippled by income tax demands. Fed up with what he saw as socialist restrictions and high tax rates, he joined the exodus to the freer ways and higher standards of living available to Europeans in colonial Africa. He became a pillar of the social circuit in Salisbury, southern Rhodesia, - now Harare, the capital of Zimbabwe - earning his living as an upmarket car dealer. He soon discovered that his undoubted charm and dazzling smile worked well on African politicians eager for respectability and access to Western capital and know-how.

"In this milieu he met Angus Ogilvy, later to marry into the Royal Family. Ogilvy had been sent to Africa by Harley Drayton, his City employer, to find someone to run the London and Rhodesian Mining Company. Tiny grabbed the opportunity, using Lonrho's status as a company quoted on the London stock market to open doors and take it from its farming and mining interests to motor franchises and sugar plantations, and then ambitious plans such as building an oil pipeline from Rhodesia to the Mozambique coast...

"Rowland became the outsider who derided the British establishment but always seemed to want its respect. He also found it increasingly difficult to explain to his international business contacts what Lonrho actually did, as it added Brentford Nylons and Metropole Hotels in the UK to its African interests. Buying the Observer in 1981 forced the establishment to listen to him and gave his business an identity."