Keith Schellenberg

Clifford Keith Wain Schellenberg (13 March 1929 – 28 October 2019) was a British businessman and Winter Olympian. He was known for his legal disputes related to his ownership of the Scottish island of Eigg. He also stood in several general elections as a Liberal Party candidate.

Personal life and business career Clifford Keith Wain Schellenberg was the son of Clifford Robertshaw Schellenberg (1898–1971), of Woodlands, The Grove, Marton-in-Cleveland, Yorkshire. His distant forebears, who hailed from Wurttemberg in Germany, settled in Britain in the 1860s. His grandfather, Alan Schellenberg, had founded Cleveland Products in Middlesbrough, which produced glue and ossein gelatin – used, among other things, in the development of reconnaissance photography during World War II, thus enhancing the family's prosperity. He was also the proprietor of a Middlesbrough-based Ford dealership network after purchasing the parent company, Nesham's, in 1961.

Schellenberg attended Oundle School in Northamptonshire. and was married four times; firstly, in 1957, to Jan Hagenbach, with whom he had two daughters; secondly, in 1964, to Margaret de Hauteville Hamilton, daughter of Robert Hamilton-Udny, 11th Lord Belhaven and Stenton, by whom he had a son and two daughters; thirdly, to garden designer Susan "Suki" Minette Urquhart (1944–2014), daughter of Major-General Robert Urquhart, General officer commanding the 1st Airborne Division at the Battle of Arnhem during Operation Market Garden in 1944; and lastly to Jilly Miller, who survived him. His daughter Serena is a film producer associated with Extinction Rebellion.

Schellenberg previously lived at Davidstone House, near Keith, Aberdeenshire, and at Old Mayen on the River Deveron. He moved to St Nicholas, a house in Richmond, North Yorkshire, in 2000, and restored the property. He died in the town in October 2019 at the age of 90.

Lairdship of Eigg Schellenberg bought the Hebridean island of Eigg in 1975 from its owner Bernard Farnham-Smith for £274,000, outbidding the £200,000 offered by the Highlands and Islands Development Board. He saw this as a triumph for free enterprise over state capitalism, but his motives were not purely personal: keen to preserve the island's natural state, in the first years of his lairdship he invested in conservation projects, signing an agreement with the Scottish Wildlife Trust in 1978 which gave it the right to manage three nature reserves for 25 years. Wishing to encourage young families to relocate to Eigg, he made efforts to revitalise the island's economy by encouraging tourism, restoring derelict properties and establishing a daily ferry service to the mainland using his boat, Eilean Ban Mora. By 1979, the island's population was said to have doubled from 39 in 1974 to 82, including 21 children.

However, although Schellenberg was genuine in his desire to improve the island's welfare, his activities were often autocratic and somewhat Luddite in nature, dedicated to preserving what he saw as an isolated and unspoiled idyll. As he admitted in 1988:

His aversion to the modern world extended to elements of the past, as demonstrated by his decision to ban shooting and hunting (he later described conserving wildlife as "the most important of his objectives").

Having been left short of capital following a costly divorce from his second wife, Schellenberg was forced by her (through the courts) to sell the island in 1992. A heritage trust had earlier been established to launch a buyout, backed by three-quarters of Eigg's population, By now the press had started to pay closer attention, and a flurry of lurid news reports soon followed documenting the behaviour of a laird who started bonfires atop An Sgùrr and held ostentatious parties and games for his rich friends. Matters came to a head in January 1994 when two sheds on Eigg pier were set ablaze by persons unknown, destroying canoes, dinghies and, crucially, Schellenberg's 1927 ten-seater Mark I Rolls-Royce Phantom. During cross-examination by Nicholas Stadlen QC, Schellenberg had to deny dressing up as a Nazi for a spoof Christmas card but admitted sending another card to tenants which implied that they were to be evicted from their homes. The prosecution also brought evidence from islanders describing their squalid living conditions; one witness memorably recalled having to drown rats in her sink. Although there was also testimony in favour of Schellenberg, he eventually abandoned his libel action and agreed to pay £300,000 in costs, protesting that a combination of rising total costs and the length of court proceedings had forced him to admit defeat.

Politics Schellenberg was an individualist classical liberal with an "unpredictable"

In the run up to the 1964 general election, having hitherto shown little active interest in politics, Schellenberg applied to be the Liberal candidate for Richmond, a rural Yorkshire constituency in close proximity to his birthplace in Middlesbrough. The future Liberal MP Michael Meadowcroft, then a young activist at party headquarters in London, remembers him arriving there without invitation and declaring that he was going to be Richmond's next candidate. Although he had not been interviewed beforehand by the local constituency association, he was soon "fast-tracked through the processes" and fought an energetic campaign, making numerous personal appearances with his mobile office, a caravan pulled by a 1930 eight-litre Bentley, in tow. During the campaign, Schellenberg claimed that he was short of money and could not find a committee room in Northallerton because "the owners are frightened that to let one to me would hurt their businesses." Although popular on the stump, he was unable to sufficiently swim against the tide (only nine Liberals were elected that year) and came third behind the sitting Conservative MP, Timothy Kitson.

Returning to challenge for the seat in 1966, Schellenberg once more faced Kitson, an "old chum" who apparently believed that Schellenberg was only standing "to annoy him". (Gordon Porteous retired mid-way through the competition after suffering from a "heavy cold", while Kazimierz Kay-Skrzypecki died following a training accident before the Games began.)

Schellenberg also played rugby union for Middlesbrough RUFC and captained the Yorkshire first XV, at a time when the squad included Phil Horrocks-Taylor and Jeff Butterfield. In 1968 he competed in the London to Sydney Marathon in his vintage Bentley, retiring when the car – having nearly reached Erzincan, in Turkey – toppled off the edge of the road, which had subsided under the car's heavy weight.

Powerboat Racing Keith Schellenberg’s love for motor racing and speed spilled over to offshore racing in 1963 when he entered a Bertram hull, ‘Glass Moppie’, in the Cowes-Torquay race for the first time, where he finished in second place behind the more experienced Sonny Levi.

Schellenberg continued racing throughout the sixties without further success on board ‘Blue Moppie’ and ‘Thunderstreak’. In 1969 he entered the Round Britain race with ‘Botany Bay Express’; however, he was disqualified for having difficulty obtaining radio crystals. He had asked and been given permission for late arrival to find the crystals, but when he turned up for a scrutineering test he was disqualified out of hand without discussion by the Race Committee.

Schellenberg competed in another Round Britain race in 1984 and came out of retirement for the 2008 Cowes-Torquay-Cowes race at the age of 78. This proved to be a successful race, as he finished second in Class and 17th overall in a Cougar US-1 monohull, ‘Yellow Drama’.