By 1988, the businessman Christopher Ondaatje had made a great deal of money as a publisher and stockbroker on the Canadian stock exchange. As he later described it to Sue Lawley on Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs in 2002, while on holiday in Tanzania he decided to give up his business interests and devote himself to “having fun” – travelling, writing, spending time with his family, and giving large chunks of his wealth away.
He had already invested in a home for himself, Glenthorne, a rambling 19th-century house in a remote place next to the sea north of Exmoor, allowing him to turn his attention to British institutions, including the National Portrait Gallery, the Royal Geographical Society, the Royal Society of Literature and the Labour party. He approached philanthropy in the same way as his business transactions, doing research on how the money could transform institutions.
