Years later the Duke met Ropner’s son Robert and recounted this hair-raising journey when he discovered he was a relation.
Above all, Ropner liked to have fun and was given to unusual and spontaneous acts. At the 21st birthday party of Jeremy’s son, Clive, he filled a lavatory in a derelict washroom block on his Camp Hill estate with explosives and sent it 200 feet up in the air.
His friendship with Schellenberg led to summer games on Eigg and winter games in diverse snowbound places such as Les Avantes and Bergün in Switzerland, as well as Romania. Keen participants included Gunter and Rolf Sachs, Robin Guinness, and “Burghie”, the Earl of Westmorland.
Ropner was addicted to Laurel and Hardy and held regular screenings for guests at weekends; those were about the only occasions when he sat still. He once assembled a large group of enthusiastic children with spades, a couple of metal detectors and a JCB digger to unearth the engine of a crashed Spitfire which had been lying under the ground on his land since the Second World War.
Ropner is survived by his wife, Willow Hare, a debutante whom he met on holiday in the south of France. Their son runs a glamping centre at the Camp Hill estate, where their daughter also lives.
Bruce Ropner, born April 13 1933, died April 15 2022
