Tom Friedrich has had, to put it mildly, an interesting life. He has been a
fighter pilot, an African dictator’s swimming buddy and pilot-in-chief to a
Saudi prince. So, when he decided to buy a British holiday home, it somehow
doesn’t seem surprising that he wound up with the biggest house in the Inner
Hebrides, if not on the west coast of Scotland.
“The painting and scraping and mending has not stopped in all the time I have
been here,” he says with a smile. “I don’t keep count of how much the house
costs to run – save to say that it is a lot. But it has never been daunting,
or seemed like a challenge – you just get on with these things.”
His home, Islay House, named after the 25-mile-long island on which it is
situated, was built on an epic scale. It was constructed in 1677 for the
then Thane of Cawdor, Sir Hugh Campbell, who owned Islay at the time, and an
entire village was cleared to make way for it. It has 365 windows, 24
bedrooms, five reception rooms, nine bathrooms, a flat, a cottage and a
two-storey Scottish baronial-style staff extension so large that it could
serve as a country house in its own right. Dizzying though the proportions
are, it is the location that is truly magnificent.
Islay is famed for the single-malt whiskies it produces, such as Laphroaig,
Ardbeg and Lagavulin; the category-A listed house looks across Loch Indaal
to the Kilchoman peninsula and the distillery towns of Bruichladdich and
Bow-more, three miles away, dot the long stretch of coast over which it
presides.
Friedrich, 72, who was born in Chicago, is an unlikely custodian for such a
pile. His lifelong passion for flying was ignited when he saw aircraft
carriers moored on Lake Michigan during the second world war.
“From that moment on,” he recalls, “I wanted to be a pilot – whatever my
parents said.” He enlisted in the US Navy, qualifying as a jet-fighter pilot
in 1956, and served two tours of duty in Vietnam with Air Group Nineteen, a
navy fighter squadron known as “Satan’s Kittens”, rising to the rank of
lieutenant commander.
“At first, it was amazing to go into action. There is no thrill greater than
flying a fighter aircraft in combat – particularly if you are flying off an
aircraft carrier. But the longer it went on, the more I realised that it was
a worthless, lousy war. I saw that we were killing poor peasants who were
only there because they were chained to their guns. Also, my youngest son
was born when I was away fighting, and I did not see him until he was
several months old, so I decided to get out.”
By 1967, Friedrich had left the navy and was living with his family in
California, but the thirst for adventure remained. After seeing a 10-seater
Grumman Goose seaplane land one day, he moved his wife, Kathy, and their
three young children to the Virgin Islands and started a flying-boat
service. After a couple of years of ferrying millionaires and film stars
around the Caribbean, he decided that the business was not working. But it
had brought him into contact with Leroy Grumman, the aeroplane designer, who
in 1973 asked Friedrich to oversee delivery of a consignment of military
planes to Uganda, then controlled by Idi Amin. The assignment was to have
taken weeks: it lasted three years, during which time Friedrich trained the
dictator’s pilots to fly the aircraft he had delivered.
“At times, I would see Amin several times a week, and when my children came
over to Uganda for the summer, they taught Amin and his children to swim. I
remember having swimming races with Amin myself. He was a formidable
sportsman, but when he thought I was going to pass him, he would swim right
over the top of me to try to win – I still managed to touch the end before
him, though.
“Amin was an extraordinary man – a natural leader. Not too bright, but with
amazing authority. He was also huge – my hand disappeared into his grip when
we shook hands.”
The pilot and the dictator became close enough for Friedrich to gently try to
offer political advice about ditching some of the advisers with whom the
Ugandan leader had surrounded himself. His foray into the political arena
was, however, unsuccessful. “When Amin told me that he thought I should get
out of Uganda, I was not about to argue – a friend of mine had been
imprisoned there because his face did not fit.” There can’t have been too
many bad feelings, however; he still has a hunting trophy Amin gave him
hanging on his wall.
In 1976, Friedrich took charge of a private air fleet based at Heathrow. It
was owned by Prince Khalid bin Sultan bin Abdul Aziz, who, during the first
Gulf war, would jointly command allied forces. Meanwhile, the Friedrichs
also dabbled in property development in Savannah, Georgia, buying and
selling houses in the port’s historic quarter, which was undergoing a
renaissance.
After a few years of living in a mansion block in Kensington, west London,
Friedrich wanted a holiday home with a bit more room. “My parents downsized
throughout their lives. I never wanted to do that. I wanted a place where I
could get the whole family together and really have a ball.”
Three of the family held pilots’ licences (his sons Stephen, now 48, and Tom,
43, work in the private charter sector), so distance wasn’t a problem. “We
were able to cast a wide net, and at that time nobody wanted big houses.”
Islay House was then the holiday home of John Morrison, the first Lord
Margadale and a member of the family that had bought the island in 1853. He
was a Conservative-party grandee, and Islay House had been visited by every
Tory prime minister since 1945.
By 1985, however, he had decided that the house was too big, so he converted a
large farmhouse elsewhere on the island, kept 74,000 acres and, for
£230,000, sold Islay House, much of its antique furniture and 28 acres to
Friedrich, who had heard from a neighbour in London that the property was
available.
Strolling around the mansion, it is easy to imagine the soirées it must have
hosted down the years. The entrance hall is nearly 50ft wide; two dramatic,
curved main staircases are linked by a passage more than 100ft long, off
which are the library, billiards room and living room; and the ballroom is
more than 40ft long.
The details are exquisite. Nearly every fireplace has antique Delft tiles;
many rooms are panelled; the floors are oak; and there are remarkable
cast-iron radiators. The house has more than 40 staff bells and a series of
speaking tubes that still work, and there is even a rudimentary Victorian
sprinkler system: a 600-gallon water tank in the roof is connected by a vast
network of hoses to every room, so if a fire broke out, it could be
instantly doused.
Two phone booths, one in the main hall and one in the servants’ hall, were
installed by Lord Margadale in the 1950s. Head of the 1922 committee for
nine years, he famously derived much of his hold over the Tory back benches
by spending hours on the phone to a network of contacts each Sunday, and
must have preferred not to be overheard.
Friedrich and his late wife – she died in 2001 – devoted themselves to the
house, particularly after moving there full time in 1999. The changes have
not been dramatic, but modern colours have been introduced. The most
significant alteration is the installation of a family kitchen, behind the
library. Centred on the obligatory Aga, it is the kind of bright family room
you might hope to find in a large farmhouse, and a far cry from the
industrial vastness of the main kitchen at the other end of the house, with
its 10 ovens and 25ft-high ceiling.
How Friedrich manages the running of such a vast pile is mystifying. In times
gone by, there was an army of servants; he has just one full-time handyman
and a part-time housekeeper, yet all the rooms are clean, and beds are made
up in every one of the mind-numbing number of bedrooms.
He still shoulders a good deal of the work himself, yet retains enough energy
to water-ski in the sea in front of the house with his grandchildren on
their annual visit. In winter, he concedes, he retreats to the library and
the family kitchen. “When Kathy and I first saw and fell in love with the
house, we agreed that when it came to seem too big, we would just close up
some of the doors, and that is what we do.”
His island neighbours are an interesting collection: Baron Bruno Schroder, 74,
a billionaire banker who owns the nearby Dunlossit estate; the third Lord
Margadale; and George Robertson, the former Nato secretary-general. Now Lord
Robertson of Port Ellen, after the main village, he is an Islay native. The
pair became friendly after Friedrich, who had worked as a test pilot on the
development of Sidewinder missiles, wrote to Robertson with unsolicited
advice about weapons procurement while the latter was Labour defence
secretary. When Robertson’s son married the daughter of John Smith, the late
Labour leader, Friedrich lent the couple his house for the wedding.
Selling up is clearly not something to which Friedrich is altogether
reconciled. “The idea was that the house would always be the centre to which
the family could return, and they still do, but as they have moved around
the world, I have come to think that I might see more of them if I travelled
to see them rather more,” he says.
Just where he will go hasn’t been decided. His son Stephen lives in Bath; Tom
is in America, and daughter Lori, 45, an art historian, is in Monaco. In any
event, using the proceeds of the sale to buy a new home is not his first
priority. “I am going to buy another aeroplane,” he enthuses. “I have been
looking at some small planes that will cruise at nearly 400 miles an hour.
That’s the prospect that is getting me going at the moment.”
Meanwhile, he intends to have a last hurrah at Islay House. His granddaughter
Charlotte turns 21 in September, so he is planning the party to end all
parties. “We can accommodate about 55 in the house, but we have more than
100 guests coming, so I am scouting the island for extra accommodation.”
Given the glint in Friedrich’s eye, there is no reason to suppose that the
next chapter of his life, wherever it may be set, will not be every bit as
outlandish as those that have gone before.
“Life is memories, and you’ve gotta keep making them – and that is what I am
planning,” he says.
Islay House is on sale with Savills, for offers of more than £2.25m; 0131
247 3700, www.savills.co.uk
