110. In his witness statement, Mr Sulmoni says this about Bane’s attitude towards the Conservative Party: “When I first knew him, he made numerous donations to the Conservative Party. These donations ranged from £10,000 to £30,000 a year and began in the early 1980s. The payments were made until shortly before the Conservative election defeat in 1997. He felt that he had a special connection to Margaret Thatcher as she was eight days older than him. It would not be wrong to say that Bane was “obsessed” in the sense that his personal attachment to the Conservative Party under her leadership did not appear rational or proportionate, and went far beyond mere (or even strong) political affiliation. In 2000, the Ealing branch of the Conservative Party offered Bane the honorary presidency of their association. He refused, as he believed they were only after his money. In later years, he came to dislike the Conservative Party at least as intensely as he had previously been drawn to it, although he did not replace it in his affections with any other political party.” 111. In cross-examination, Mr Sulmoni at first sought to explain Bane’s substantial donations to the Party in the 1980s on the basis that he was a very lonely man, who always said that he needed the help of people in the establishment; the Conservatives were in power at the time, so he considered them to represent the establishment. However, he also agreed that Bane’s allegiance to the Conservative Party was based on the fact that it stood for values in which he very strongly believed. He also agreed that the values of love, truth and freedom were ones that had always been important to Bane, and remained so until the end of his life. Indeed, in his funeral address Mr Sulmoni said “What was important to him was love, truth and freedom”. Those are of course the very three qualities which Bane singled out in the 1989 Will as being the “Christian democratic values and virtues” which his projected cultural institution was to promote. 112. Mr Sulmoni accepted in cross-examination that he was disappointed that Bane had not left him anything in his will, especially since he had visited him almost daily during a period of three months in 2001 when he was in hospital. This disappointment may, I think, have contributed to the very jaundiced view that Mr Sulmoni expresses in his witness statement about Bane’s attitude towards the Conservative Party. It would have been entirely characteristic of Bane to speak in derogatory terms of the Party from time to time, as he did of almost everybody. However, I am very doubtful whether Bane really refused the honorary presidency of the Ealing branch of the Party in 2000, even though Mr Sulmoni claimed to remember typing out a letter from Bane’s dictation declining the honour. I say this because no such letter has ever been produced, whereas the bundles do include a letter from Bane to the Ealing association in February 2001 applying to be a vice president and enclosing a curriculum vitae, a subsequent letter in March from the association expressing delight that Bane had agreed to be one of the association’s vice presidents, and a further letter from the association a year later in May 2002 informing him of his unanimous election as an honorary life vice president. These documents were put to Mr Sulmoni in cross-