Sir Paul Getty

Tormented by the vast wealth of his American family, he emerged from many difficulties as an eccentric, and hugely generous, English gent

Sir Paul Getty

I n the six-line entry he provided for Who's Who, Sir Paul Getty, who has died aged 70 of a chest infection, gave his profession as philanthropist. He was probably Britain's biggest charitable donor, channelling a reputed £100m to causes ranging from striking miners to London's National Gallery, which received £50m from him.

Though he was born an American, Getty became a British citizen in December 1997, after living here for more than 20 years and gradually transforming himself into a quintessential Englishman. There was a knighthood; a stately home set in 3,000 acres of the Chilterns, where Test touring sides played cricket at his invitation every summer; and the friendship of prime ministers Thatcher and Major, and many in the arts and sports establishments.

But this period of public giving came late in a life tormented by the immense wealth which had flowed to him as a member of his family's oil dynasty. He was the third of five sons of the legendary oil billionaire J Paul Getty, and derived most of his fortune from family trusts set up by his grandmother. His income from these was a reputed £700,000 a week when interest rates peaked in the 1980s. By contrast, he benefited by only $500m from his father's will.

Getty Jr was brought up a Roman Catholic, and taught by Jesuits before attending the University of San Francisco and doing a brief stint in the US army. But his future in the family business ended in 1970, after an 11-year stint with Getty Oil, Italy, by which time he had started to become a hippy playboy, and embarked on a downward spiral of alcohol, drugs and depression that lost him almost two decades and alienated him from his father.

The decline began after Getty divorced his first wife Gail in 1966, and married Talitha Pol, who, within five years, had turned from an envied beauty of the continental jet set - Saint-Laurent and Nureyev were among her bosom pals - to a hopeless addict, who died of a heroin overdose in Italy in 1971.

Fearing arrest, Getty fled to London, and the self-imposed obscurity of a large house in Cheyne Walk, Chelsea. Overcome with remorse at the death of his wife, he deteriorated physically, and, in an attempt to end his own various addictions, he entered the London Clinic in 1984 for a long period of treatment.

It cost him an average of £500 a day for 500 days, but there are limits to what even a billionaire can spend in a top medical establishment, and Getty's bank balances sprouted more noughts - to a total of £300,000,000 - during his treatment. However, he gradually recovered his religious faith and his financial sense, and decided to draw up a strategy for giving away large chunks of his fortune.

Getty turned out to be as generous as his father had been stingy. Some friends maintained that the public gifts represented guilt about his obscene wealth, but whatever the motivation, the British Film Institute was astounded to get a £20m cheque from Getty, a passionate fan of old movies, to restore its deteriorating archive of every film ever made in the UK.

While still in the London clinic, Getty decided to donate £50m towards the rehabilitation of the National Gallery, then being starved of public funds. A grateful Mrs Thatcher, alerted by her then arts minister Lord Gowrie to a gift that would save the government embarrassment, went to Getty's bedside, and allegedly speeded his recovery with the magical cliché: "My dear Mr Getty, we must n't let things get us down, must we? We'll have you out of here as soon as possible."

In fact, Getty chose to remain a patient for several months more. His fears about the tarnished standing of the family name slowed his re-emergence; his father's meanness, while living in Sutton Place, Surrey, had made the gossip columns, as had news of his own blighted years. He was worried, too, lest reports of his generosity be interpreted as opportunistic.

However, happier days lay ahead. In 1986, Getty moved to Wormsley Park, in Buckinghamshire, and though vulnerable for a time, grad-ually restored it - and himself. He emerged as an eccentric gent of the shires.

The restoration of 18th-century Wormsley was completed in 1991, by which time an old hippy friend, Mick Jagger, had introduced Getty to the sedentary joys of watching cricket. Visits by touring sides became a spectacular summer treat; he even built a replica of the Oval cricket ground on the estate.

Getty continued to give generously, and got married for a third time, in 1994, to Victoria, his companion of 20 years and the person he credited with saving him from destruction.

Though the family firm was sold to Texaco several years ago, the money still rolled in. There were other tragedies, such as the kidnapping of his son Paul in 1973 - the boy's ear was cut off and sent to the family with a ransom demand - but Getty was probably less haunted than he had ever been. Essentially, he was living the life of a very grand rentier. The presidency of Surrey cricket club was an extra truffle on his silver plate.

He is survived by his third wife, the two sons and two daughters of his first marriage, and a son from his second marriage.

Matthew Engel writes: The most extraordinary feature of Paul Getty's life was that he found solace from his early torments in simple Englishness. His love of cricket, for instance, was based not on the kind of detail that absorbs most enthusiasts - he was not a great one for discussing the lbw law - but on what it represented. His love of old books was much the same.

After his unhappy childhood, tumultuous youth and reclusive middle years, what he came to appreciate was stability and tradition - everything represented by the country-house cricket which he revived so spectacularly at Wormsley.

T he cricketers he appreciated most were those he only saw play on the grainy old film clips he also loved: men like Denis Compton, Gubby Allen and Bob Wyatt, all of them older than himself but who became firm friends. They had a disconcerting habit of dying regularly, which added a further elegiac quality to the gatherings each new springtime at Wormsley, and in his box at Lord's.

These constituted eclectic salons, where Harold Pinter, John Major and Mick Jagger might all rub shoulders. Paul presided with a benevolence that went way beyond mere generosity with money. One felt that his own gloriously happy third marriage, and the friendships he built up in his last 15 years - especially through cricket - gave him a sense of his own self-worth that transcended the most obvious fact about him: his wealth.

He would have been a kindly man, even in normal circumstances. But he never knew normality, which is perhaps why he craved it so much.

(John) Paul Getty, philanthropist, born September 7 1932; died April 17 2003.