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Private Notes
Offering an exclusive insight into one of the most famous - and historically one of the bitterest - father and son relationships in Britain, this film follows a story of reconciliation and redemption.
'Sunny', 11th Duke of Marlborough, a former Guards officer, is 86 years old, courteous and fastidious. His 56-year-old son is formally known as the Marquess of Blandford, and less formally as Jamie Blandford. Jamie's excessive lifestyle and battles with drug addiction have been widely covered British media for most of his life.
This is the first time he has appeared in a documentary. At stake is the inheritance of the biggest palace in Britain, Blenheim. The Duke, John 'Sunny' Spencer-Churchill, has dedicated his life to maintaining and safeguarding it.
Bigger than Buckingham and Windsor, with 187 rooms and measuring 200,000 square feet, the palace was given to the Marlboroughs as a gift from a grateful nation after the first Duke fought the Battle of Blenheim in 1704.
But after the Duke fell out with Queen Anne, he was saddled with paying for the rest of the construction, and the family joke that they have been fighting the 'Battle of Blenheim' ever since.
Sunny's solution was to open it up to mass tourism, and every year Blenheim receives 500,000 visitors.
Worried about the potential repercussions for Blenheim of his son's addiction, Sunny went to court in 1994 to disinherit his son: the first time an aristocrat had done so for 100 years.
Jamie contested the case and eventually the two men reached a compromise: when his father died Jamie would inherit the title and the right to live in the palace, but a group of trustees would control the place and decide how much influence any Duke has.
Now clean, and reconciled with his father, Jamie is back living on the estate, hoping to prove to Sunny and the all-powerful trustees that he is fit and able to take on the 'Battle of Blenheim'.
The cameras are there during the peak tourist season, often th
Charles Gordon-Lennox is the Earl of March and Kinrara, heir to the Dukedom of Richmond, and owner of Goodwood.
Good looking, charming and with a maniacal attention to detail, Charles Gordon-Lennox has gone from being Stanley Kubrick's set photographer to hosting a playground for the world's rich and famous, drawn to his estate's famous racecourse and high-profile car events: the Festival of Speed, for the world's fastest cars, and Revival, which in 2011 saw the most valuable collection of cars ever assembled, worth $3 billion.
In the space of a year, Goodwood has been host to everybody from Jenson Button to Courtney Love, who stomped off stage at the Glorious Goodwood race ball when the crowd requested a Nirvana track by her late husband Kurt Cobain.
The estate has it all - the only top-class privately owned racecourse, an aerodrome, a hotel, a golf course, an organic farm and a Grand Prix circuit.
But behind the glamour and the celebrities, there is a harsher reality.
In the 21st century, the British aristocracy are no longer rich enough to simply enjoy their estates. They need their assets to make money to sustain the huge sums needed for investment and restoration.
Charles Gordon-Lennox is practically unique in having made Goodwood self-sufficient. It has been a huge struggle, which continues.
In the 1930s his family had to sell off their huge Scottish estates. Charles decided that, whatever happened, he would not give up on Goodwood, and so far, despite a worrying million-pound loss in 2010, he has succeeded by attracting hundreds of thousands of us to his events.
This success has been achieved at immense personal cost. Far from feeling privileged, Charles admits to occasionally hating being there and of being driven by a fear of failure.
Many aristocrats call this 'mortmain' - the dead hand of the past. Where most people might see a life of privilege and wealth, they see obligation.
The pressure of having to hand on an inheritance
