1. Career
     Private members' clubs    Birley Sandwiches  

2. Environmentalism

3. Political donor

4. Private life

5. References

6. External links

Robin Marcus Birley (born 19 February 1958) is an English businessman, entrepreneur and political donor. He is the son of Lady Annabel Goldsmith and the night club owner Mark Birley. He had a brother, Rupert, who disappeared and is presumed deceased, and has a sister, India Jane Birley.

Career

Private members' clubs

Birley owns and runs 5 Hertford Street ("5HS"), a private members' club in Mayfair.^[1][2] Having found a dilapidated block of buildings in Shepherd Market, Mayfair, he raised £30 million to refurbish them lavishly – fashion designer Rifat Özbek was commissioned to design the interiors – and duly opened 5 Hertford Street in June 2012 with a spectacular launch party attended by Mick Jagger, Kate Moss, and Daphne Guinness.^[3][1][4][5] The basement nightclub was named Loulou's after Birley’s late cousin, Loulou de la Falaise. Over the following five years, 5HS became a staple of London’s social scene,^[6] and is where Prince Harry and his fiancée Meghan Markle had their first date.^[7] The success of 5HS emboldened Birley to launch new membership-based venues.

Oswald’s, a club for wealthy oenophiles in a townhouse on Albemarle Street, is due to open in February 2018.^[8] It has also been reported that Birley has secured an option on two adjoining townhouses in Berkeley Square – almost next door to Annabel’s – to launch a business-focussed club.^[9] Meanwhile, in November 2017, Avenue reported that Birley is close to finalising a deal to commence work on a major new club, akin to 5HS but with bedrooms for members as well, near Union Square, Manhattan.^[10]

Birley Sandwiches

Birley’s first entrepreneurial success came with the foundation of Birley Sandwiches in the early 1980s. Over the following 30 years, he has gradually expanded the concept – sandwiches made in front of the customer from fresh ingredients – into a successful chain which now comprises 14 outlets in the City of London and Canary Wharf.^[11][12]

Environmentalism

Heavily influenced by Edward Goldsmith, his step-father’s brother and the founder of The Ecologist, Birley has always maintained a keen interest in environmental matters. In 2002, he set up Envirotrade,^[13] a project assisting small farmers in Mozambique through reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD) and agroforestry by generating carbon credits through which they could earn a better living wage.^[14] The Sofala Project, in Mozambique, remains the only carbon project to have been awarded gold in all three categories of the Climate Community and Biodiversity Standard.^[15] The Sofala Community Carbon Project project earned $3,453,228 from carbon offset sales between 2004 and 2013, and the participating communities earned $2,136,744 from agroforestry and avoided deforestation activities directly from the project.^[16]

However, the crash in the international carbon trading market meant that Birley increasingly had to fund the projects out of his own pocket. Having spent several million, he handed the projects back to the community in 2012, but continued making donations until 2015.

In April 2010, the BBC admitted that a documentary about Birley titled Taking The Credit, should not have been shown because of conflicts of interest.^[17] The BBC trust stated in its final report in 2011 that "there was no suggestion that the ACLT, Envirotrade or any personnel connected to the organisations had acted improperly".^[18]

Birley is a trustee of the Howletts and Port Lympne Animal Park which is committed to returning rare and endangered animals back to their natural habitats. Working with the two Parks, Howletts Wild Animal Park opened in 1975 and the Port Lympne Reserve opened in 1976, the Foundation runs its own projects overseas and support other reintroduction programmes across Asia and Africa.^[19]

Political donor

Birley has long been associated with a string of free market and Eurosceptic causes. In the mid-1990s, he assisted his stepfather, Sir James Goldsmith, in the founding of the Referendum Party, a movement aimed at driving for a referendum on the UK’s membership of the European Union. He stood as a parliamentary candidate in the 1997 General Election, and went on to lead the Referendum Movement (subsequently the Democracy Movement) after Sir James’ death until 2004. The key policy priorities of the Movement under Birley were to resist the UK’s entry into the single European currency (the Euro) and to continue pushing for a countrywide referendum on membership of the EU. The Movement is widely regarded as being a forefather of Nigel Farage’s UK Independence Party; indeed, Birley subsequently became a donor to Farage and UKIP.

In 1998, Birley was one of the many prominent English right-wingers to oppose the arrest and attempts to extradite General Augusto Pinochet, during a visit by the ageing former Chilean dictator to the UK.^[20] Birley was quoted as saying: “It’s an abuse of hospitality to ambush an old man when he has visited this country year after year. He has done an immense amount for Chile. No-one is supporting him and I have sympathy for the underdog.”^[20] Birley was also briefly president of the Mozambique Institute, an organisation supporting the right-wing group Renamo in its battles against the communist Frelimo government.^[21]

In the 2005 Conservative leadership election, Birley helped finance the ultimately failed candidature of David Davis, whom he described as “the most conservative of the candidates”.^[22] Although David Cameron subsequently won, Birley’s half-brother Zac Goldsmith, by now an MP, was awarded an influential position advising he party on environmental affairs. Birley was also involved behind the scenes during the 2016 Referendum on the UK’s membership of the European Union, holding events and donating money to both the official Vote Leave group and the Farage-led Leave.EU campaign.

Private life

Birley grew up in London with his siblings, Rupert and India Jane. He was educated at St Aubyns School in Rottingdean, East Sussex and Eton College. His parents were divorced after his mother had two children with his father's friend Sir James Goldsmith. His mother eventually married Goldsmith. Birley has three half-siblings through his mother's second marriage, Zac Goldsmith, Jemima Goldsmith and Ben Goldsmith.^[23]

During his adolescence, Birley was mauled by a tiger at Howletts Zoo, the private zoo of family friend John Aspinall. The bones on one side of his face were crushed. He has endured years of cosmetic surgery but the accident left him with permanent scarring.^[23]

In the late 1990s, with his father Mark unable to direct his Mayfair Private Members Clubs on a day-to-day basis, Robin and his sister India-Jane took on an increasing role in the management of the clubs,^[24] which comprised Annabel's (named after his mother), Harry’s Bar, Mark’s Club, George and the Bath and Racquets Club.

However, in 2006 Birley was dismissed from his position by his father, after a family row following his hiring of a private investigator to do a background check on his sister’s new boyfriend. Birley and India Jane later reconciled at her wedding.^[25] Mark Birley, by now unwell (he died in August 2007) and without his son to run the group of clubs, sold them to the clothing tycoon Richard Caring, who continues to operate them under the ‘Birley Clubs’ brand (with the exception of Mark’s Club, that was sold on).^[26]

In 1986, his brother Rupert was presumed drowned in mysterious circumstances whilst working in Togo, but his body was never recovered.^[27]

Birley has a daughter, Maud, by a former girlfriend. He married Lucy Ferry, the ex-wife of Bryan Ferry, in October 2006.^[28] Lucy Birley committed suicide on July 23, 2018 at the age of 58. ^[29]

References

External links

• Democracy Movement's official website
• Remember-Chile – Pinochet's apologists in Britain
• ZoomInfo – Robin Birley
• [https://web.archive.org/web/20061104231825/http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/this_britain/article1873767.ece Annabel's: A tale of love, snobbery, revenge... and some jolly good cocktails, by Liz Hoggard, The Independent, 7 November 2006]
• Davis bid is boosted by high-flyer
• Africa, the adventure playground for British upper class, by George Monbiot
• Lady Annabel, the ghost of Jimmy Goldsmith and two society clans, 17 October 2006
• The Cruel Truth About Surly Birley, by Natalie Clark, Daily Mail, 8 November 2006
• The nightclub heir and the storm over his sister's love-child

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