Bernera’s Count Robin leaves £1.3 million will 1/2/13
Count Robin Mirrlees of Great Bernera has left £1.3 million in his will with his
three grandchildren getting the bulk of his estate.
The French-born, Oxford-educated aristocrat died aged 87 years in the Blar Buidhe
nursing home in Stornoway in June.
Count Robin is survived by his son Patrick de la Lanne, 50 , the mayor of the town
of Delmenhort in the north of Germany - from a long-term relationship with a German
duchess, Margarethe of Württemberg, and three adult grandchildren.
Count Robin will showed he had assets worth £1,301,478, it is reported.
The 7,000 acre island of Great Bernera which he purchased in 1962, sight unseen,has
been bequeathed to his grandson Cyran.
Count Robin’s croft house on the island has also been left to him as has a £600,000
chateau in Le Touquet, France, as well as Inchdrewer Castle in Banffshire and farm
in Sicily.
An apartment in Paris goes to his two adult granddaughters, Marie Charlotte and Bereniece.
The 341 acre island of Little Bernera in Loch Roag has been left for the nation to
the National Trust of Scotland. But the conservation body previously said it would
reject the offer as it could not afford the running costs.
The fictional James Bond character in Ian Fleming’s novel On His Majesty’s Secret
Service was modelled on Count Robin who had been deeply involved in helping the author
research the book.
Bond’s cover role was based on Mirrlees who was then the heraldic researcher, appointed
by the British Sovereign, at the College of Arms in London where he served from 1952
until 1967.
The fictional 007 spy was called Sable Basilisk Pursuivant, a play on Mirrlees’ job
title of Rouge Dragon Pursuivant.
Count Robin Mirrlees, the godson of the 11th Duke of Argyll, was the popular laird
of Great Bernera which he bought in 1962. The count had never set eyes on the place
before but soon fell in love with its isolation, rugged stunning scenery, and the
warmth of the people.
Locals grew extremely fond of the likeable, charming fellow they called Count Robin.
He was immensely well liked, supported many local causes and readily released land
for community use.
He was born as Robin Ian Evelyn Grinnell-Milne in January 1925 to Captain Duncan
Grennell-Milne, a highly decorated RAF WW1 pilot, and Countess Frances de la Lanne.
His parents divorced and his mother later married Scots war hero Major General William
Mirrlees.
Incorporating his mother’s married surname, changed his name by deed poll twice,
in 1958 and latterly 20 years ago to Robin Ian Evelyn Milne Stuart le Prince de la
Lanne-Mirrlees.
Count Mirrlees was educated at the English School of Cairo and later in Paris before
studying at Oxford. He became a captain in the Royal Artillery serving in India
during the Second World War. He was a former herald to the Queen and attended her
coronation. The count also held numerous foreign knighthoods.
In 2005 he took up his royal title of Prince of Incoronata, an Adriatic island archipelago
bestowed in the 1960s by the exiled King Peter II of Yugoslavia. Mirrlees was his
adjutant and confidant.
When he was 45 years his only marriage, to a nurse half his age, fizzled out after
a week.
Great Bernera was never put on the market when Count Robin launched a fire sale of
his assets to pay off £2 million of losses he sustained in the Lloyds’ syndicates
crash in the 1990s.
He also refused to sell Inchdrewer Castle in Banffshire and at the behest of islanders
he withdrew from sale a clutch of unoccupied islands off Great Bernera including
Little Bernera.
Crashing prices of farmed salmon due to mass dumping of Norwegian fish also burnt
his finances and he was forced to dispose of a his seven-bedroom mansion in Holland
Park in London and his Swiss apartment.
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