The Duke of Buccleuch, Scotland's grandest aristocrat and the largest private landowner in Europe, died yesterday aged 83. Daily Telegraph

Laid end to end, the boundaries of his 280,000 acres would have stretched from Drumlanrig, his castle in Dumfriesshire, to San Francisco.

The management of such a demesne was, as the Duke maintained, ‘every bit as much a business as running a chocolate factory or a chain of shops’.