Donald Sinclair

Wartime career

Before the Second World War, Donald Sinclair was in the Merchant Navy.

In July 1941, Sinclair joined the crew of the infantry landing ship HMS Karanja.

From February 1943 to July 1945, Sinclair served on the escort carrier HMS Trumpeter, whose duties included escorting convoys to the Soviet Union. With the end of the war in Europe, the ship was reassigned to the Far East and arrived in Colombo in July 1945. Trumpeter was one of the ships assigned to take part in Operation Zipper, the recapture of British Malaya, but the ending of the war meant only a small part of the planned attack was carried out.

Sinclair left the navy in April 1946 with the rank of paymaster lieutenant commander. The business was a success and she bought a private house that she transformed into a second hotel. She named this Gleneagles after her favourite part of her native Scotland. By this time, her husband was assisting her in running the business.

Donald Sinclair died at his home, Compass South, in Ilsham Marine Drive in Torquay, on 5 September 1981, at the age of 72. The workmen in question were later sentenced to four months in jail for property damage. Beatrice died 29 years later in September 2010; they are survived by their two daughters.

The Gleneagles Hotel became a part of the Best Western hotel chain. It closed in February 2015 and the building was later demolished. Sinclair's actions included criticising American Terry Gilliam's table etiquette and taking Eric Idle's briefcase out to the back of the hotel car park, because he thought it contained a bomb. The cast, with the exception of John Cleese and his wife Connie Booth, left the hotel for other accommodation. Cleese later used Sinclair's mannerisms as an inspiration for Basil Fawlty in Fawlty Towers. The Gleneagles Hotel is referenced in the show's second episode, "The Builders".

Cleese later played eccentric hotel owners in the 1999 remake film The Out-of-Towners and the 2001 movie Rat Race; in the latter film, his character was called Donald Sinclair.

Accuracy Opinions are divided on how closely Fawlty resembled Sinclair. Former staff and visitors at the Gleneagles Hotel recall actual events there that were as ludicrous as those depicted in the series. Beatrice later described her husband as a "gentleman and a very brave man" and not "the neurotic eccentric that John Cleese made him out to be". An accuracy she did acknowledge was that she was very much in charge of the business, just as Basil Fawlty was usually subordinate to his wife Sybil. Rosemary Harrison, a waitress at the Gleneagles under Sinclair, stated: