Sir Benjamin Slade, known for his colorful life of collecting “old masters and young mistresses,” has embarked on what seems to be a final effort to secure an heir. The aim is to find someone who can help manage his vast 1,300-acre estate in Somerset.

This unconventional nobleman, who is approaching his 80th birthday next May, is offering an annual sum of £50,000 to attract a potential bride. The catch? She must be a “good breeder” to ensure the continuation of the Slade baronet legacy.

However, his search comes with a peculiar and stringent set of criteria.

Sir Benjamin insists that candidates must be at least 20 years younger and skilled in handling a shotgun.

In terms of interests, he desires a partner who shares his passion for ballroom dancing, as well as playing bridge and backgammon, reflecting his lineage back to Charles II.

She must also have a flair for administration to enable her to ‘run two castles’, with ‘legal and accountancy training’ a preference.

The successful candidate will also need a driving licence while a helicopter licence ‘would be beneficial’, says Sir Benjamin.

He narrows the field down further by ruling out ‘Guardian readers, Scorpios, drug users, alcoholics, Scots, and anyone under 5’6”.

And there’s no point applying if you come from a country beginning with ‘I’ that has green in their flag – ruling out residents of Ireland, India, Italy, Ivory Coast and Iran.

The same applies to citizens of countries where ‘they don’t wear overcoats in the winter’.

Sir Benjamin said: ‘I don’t mind Canadians, Americans, Germans and Northern Europeans – what I like to call similar people. I don’t think marrying an Eskimo is for me.’

In summary he says: ‘What I just need is a nice, ordinary country girl who knows and understands things.’

Sir Benjamin spells out that his bride would be expected to provide at least ‘an heir and a spare’.

He says: ‘I can have two sons, three would be better, but if I get two sons that saves the situation.

‘You always have a lady of the house, women run houses. People think that it is sexist. Jane Austen said if you got a big house, you need a wife.

‘The ladies run the house. They run the staff, they have an eye for it.’

Sir Benjamin also explains that marrying a younger woman is necessary for tax reasons and promises ‘a financial percentage’ after he dies so his inheritance can be passed on to ‘distant relatives’.

The nobleman’s onerous list of criteria may go some way to explaining why he has left it so late to find the right person to provide him with a son.

Yet the Daily Mail can reveal Sir Benjamin has had no shortage of romantic adventures during his colourful life although many have, unsurprisingly, ended in bitter acrimony.

Sir Benjamin is the seventh Slade baronet, a title created in 1831 for General Sir John Slade, a Peninsular War veteran.

The title was held by a series of distinguished noblemen. The second Baronet was a lawyer while the third served as Receiver-General of the Inland Revenue.

Sir Benjamin inherited the title aged 15 in 1962 following the death of his father, Sir Michael Nial Slade.

It came with the stately home Maunsel House, a 13-bedroom Grade II-listed Manor House and a 2,000 acre estate in Bridgwater, Somerset.

The 13th-century house, which previously hosted Alfred the Great, is said to be where Geoffrey Chaucer wrote The Canterbury Tales and was purchased by the family in the 1770s.

Thoughts of his line of succession seemed to be far from his mind when Sir Benjamin bought a one-way ticket to Australia aged 21 but he returned five years later and became a stockbroker before he launched a successful international container transport company.

He seemed to be settling down for a conventional life when he married Pauline Myburgh, the daughter of gentleman cricketer and British Army officer major Claude Myburgh, in 1977.

But after 14 childless years the couple divorced in 1991, after Sir Benjamin is said to have become frustrated sharing a home with her 17 cats.

He later claimed their divorce, which is said to have cost him £1.5million, made legal history as the only case where a cat was named as a co-respondent.

He went on to have a six-year relationship with London-born Fiona Aitken but their relationship also ended in a High Court battle – this time over custody of their dog Jasper.

The pet, which had originally been owned by Sir Benjamin’s mother-in-law, had been bequeathed its own trust fund on her death.

Fiona Aitken went on to marry the late Queen’s godson George Herbert, the eighth Earl of Carnarvon, in 1999.

Now Lady Carnarvon, the couple live at Highclere Castle in Hampshire – best known as the iconic filming location of beloved TV series Downton Abbey.

Sir Benjamin said of the split: ‘I rescued her from the back of a car, set her up in business and made her a millionaire in 18 months.

‘She was very difficult to live with. Good riddance to her.’

The aristocrat moved on with actress Kirsten Hughes, who was best known for her role as the eponymous heroine in the 1987 film Jane And The Lost City, based on the World War Two newspaper strip Jane.

The pair met at a London dinner party in 1995 and lived together at Maunsel House where they set up a successful wedding venue business.

But it all ended in 2011 when Kirsten left Sir Benjamin, in his words, in ‘Lady Chatterley-style’.

Sir Benjamin said: ‘She ran off in the middle of the night with my handyman. I was more upset that I’d lost a good handyman to be honest.’

Tragically Kirsten died aged 59 following a stroke in 2022.

Sir Benjamin began courting glamorous businesswoman Bridget Convey and friends hoped at the time he had finally found the woman of his dreams.

He was said to have taken to referring to her as ‘my fiancee’ and the couple were a fixture at the most select soirees.

But when the relationship ended in 2017, Sir Benjamin callously remarked: ‘She is 50, so too old to have children.’

It was around this time he first launched a public mission for a new bride when he went on ITV’s This Morning programme and issued an appeal.

He said at the time: ‘I am interviewing hard. I have had a few proposals, but sometimes the women are past their sell-by date and have been over the guns a few times.’

As he stepped up the campaign a member of his staff introduced him to Tinder and set up a profile for him – shaving a few years off his age to present him as 56 – and his efforts were documented in the 2020 Channel 5 reality series Millionaire Age Gap Love.

In 2020 Sir Benjamin, then aged 75, finally appeared to have succeeded in his mission after he met American poet and composer Sahara Sunday Spain via an exclusive co-parenting agency.

Sahara, who was just 30 at the time, became pregnant via IVF using sperm frozen by Sir Benjamin more than 20 years previously.

She moved down to Somerset before the outbreak of the Covid pandemic and the couple organised two weddings before Sir Benjamin halted both ceremonies at the 11th hour.

Sahara told the Daily Mail how she quit the property following accusations from Sir Benjamin’s relatives that she was ‘a gold digger’ and she went to live with her mother in France.

It was there in October 2021 that she gave birth to the couple’s daughter Violet, now four.

Sahara, the daughter of a former Black Panther civil rights activist and convicted murderer, told how Sir Benjamin appeared to want little to do with his daughter – who he is unable to pass his baronetcy onto.

She told the Daily Mail in 2022: ‘The way that my daughter and I have been treated by Sir Ben is utterly shameful.

‘I know Ben wanted a boy but he didn’t know the sex of the baby when he cancelled our second wedding.

‘Would he have had a change of heart if I’d had a son? Only Ben knows that. But he has shown no interest in meeting Violet. His behaviour is devastating.’

She was bringing up her daughter at a 16th Century chateau in Normandy where she moved in with her mother, US photographer and anthropologist Elisabeth Sunday.

She said of claims she was after Sir Benjamin’s money: ‘It’s laughable that his relatives accused me of wanting to marry Ben for his castle and his money.

‘Ben doesn’t have any money. I knew that from the start. He’s land-rich and cash poor. And if all I wanted was a castle, well, I already had that right here.’

She added: ‘What I regret is that he ended it the way he did. It was cowardly. There is no honour in what he has done. I thought we’d be a family. He’s turned his back on all that.’

Sahara went on to claim that Sir Benjamin, who has legally acknowledged paternity, asked her to return as his companion and wanted to try for another child – this time a son.

Shaking her head in despair she said Sir Benjamin told her: ‘You might want another baby and I still need a son.’

Meanwhile it would appear Sir Benjamin’s prospective bride might not have quite so much work on their hands after it was revealed that he had indeed fallen on hard times and put his family home on the market.

The property was placed in receivership in June 2024, with a view to be sold to cover Sir Benjamin’s debts and has been listed with a guide price of £3.5million.