Identical twins David and Frederick Barclay rose from poverty to build a British business empire including London’s Ritz Hotel and the Daily Telegraph newspaper, before falling out in a spectacular and public way.
On Sunday David Barclay, the elder twin by 10 minutes, died at the age of 86, bringing a public reconciliation from his once-inseparable brother. “It was a great journey in everything that we did, the good, the bad, the ugly,” Frederick Barclay said.
A spokesman for David Barclay’s family confirmed the death but declined to comment further.
The smartly dressed twins became a symbol of the Britain of former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, self-made entrepreneurs who supported lower taxes, light regulation and less integration with the European Union, causes their media properties played a key role in championing. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who previously worked as a columnist at the Daily Telegraph, expressed his condolences Wednesday on Twitter.
The Barclay twins, whose combined net worth was estimated at $10 billion by the Sunday Times, took their vacations together and for many years lived in a turreted castle they had built on a small island in the English Channel. Their businesses were run from offshore locales by a cadre of long-serving lieutenants.
