When Frederick William John Augustus Hervey became the seventh marquess on the death of his father in 1985 he inherited a useful pile of possessions, including a 57, 000-acre sheep station in Australia and four oil wells in Louisiana.

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Aneurin Bevan, Augustus John, Emlyn Williams and Stanley Baker are among those he had painted.

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He could even limn the 20th century, illicitly expanding the oeuvres of Augustus John and David Hockney.

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One of her sisters marries Henry Lamb (a painter friend of Augustus John), and another becomes the wife of Anthony Powell.

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Among them is a recent portrait of the late Kyffin Williams while others include Dylan Thomas, Augustus John, Frank Sinatra and Pavarotti.

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Pope Gregory VII may have humiliated the Emperor Henry IV, as Innocent III later humiliated Philip Augustus of France and King John of England.

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