It was his drive, initiative and passion for racing that secured the future of the home of National Hunt racing and paved the way for RHT to develop and become the home of the Grand National and the Derby as well.Henderson was a keen owner/ breeder, enjoying success on a modest scale. Before he made his considerable impact on horseracing, Henderson served in the 12th Royal Lancers during the Second World War and in 1942 joined Field Marshal Montgomery's staff in Africa He left the Army in 1946, joining the stockbrokers Cazenove. Thirty-eight years later he left to run Henderson Administration.Henderson's active role as a Jockey Club member was steadfast, and he had attended a Jockey Club meeting the day before his death. "He was the most charming and kind man and a great servant to both the Jockey Club and racing in general," says the current senior steward Julian Richmond-Watson: The current status and success of Cheltenham and RHT is a fitting legacy to Johnny.

It now has a portfolio of 13 racecourses that also features Epsom, which stages the Derby, and Newmarket, where the first Classic races of the Flat season, the 1,000 and 2,000 Guineas, are run.Henderson was born in 1920 and was educated at Eton and Trinity College, Cambridge, where he read History. He sold his shares in the Marbella Club, moved to the Andalusian village of Ronda and successfully turned his efforts to wine-making.Elizabeth Nash. Such is the manic prosperity that is created by the annual Cheltenham Festival, it is hard to imagine that the future of British jump racing's premier racecourse could ever have been under threat. John Ronald Henderson, banker and racehorse owner: born Guilsborough, Northamptonshire 6 May 1920; MBE 1945, OBE 1985; chairman, Racecourse Holdings Trust 1964-91; chairman, Henderson Administration 1983-90; Lord-Lieutenant of Berkshire 1989-95; married 1949 Sarah Beckwith-Smith (died 1972; two sons, one daughter), 1976 Catherine Christian (one stepson, two stepdaughters); died West Woodhay, Berkshire 16 December 2003. Johnny Henderson, a former amateur and point-to-point rider who had joined his family's investment trust company after the Second World War, was one of the first to realise the need to preserve Cheltenham's racecourse status.He did so through a fund- raising scheme that secured £240,000 to buy Cheltenham, a staggeringly small sum when you consider the financial behemoth that the racecourse has become.

Cheltenham was run from 1964 by a non-profit-making body known as the Racecourse Holdings Trust that had Henderson as its first chairman, succeeded only in 1991 by Miles Gosling.By the time he stepped down, the RHT - and Henderson's influence - had grown significantly, taking over other struggling tracks including Aintree, the home of the Grand National. Further liaisons followed, then in 1991 he married the Briton Marilys Haynes. But his much-loved last wife died in unexplained circumstances in 2000, the year he learned he had prostate cancer.When the flamboyant property speculator and president of Atletico de Madrid football club, Jesus Gil y Gil, became mayor of Marbella in the 1990s and launched a construction free-for-all, Hohenlohe pulled out. The golden mile became associated with Arab arms traffickers and Russian mafia whose conspicuous consumption was peppered with violent clan shootouts. They had two sons, then the princess abandoned him for the playboy Francisco Pignatari. "One day I returned home and Ira had left," her husband said.Alfonso took up with Ava Gardner in Mexico, then with Kim Novak, and married the actress Jackie Lane in 1970 This too was a stormy partnership, and ended in divorce. At 31 he fell for the beautiful Princess Ira von F?enberg, who was just 15 Their marriage in Venice was the event of the 1953 season.

Many of the family's Spanish possessions suffered damage during the Civil War.His business acumen was revealed early, along with personal charm and talent as a bon viveur: he was praised in the German press as "one of the men who best knows how to live". He went to New York at 23, and made money in Mexico by introducing production of the Volkswagen Beetle. I have watched the sun rise over the beaches of five continents and I have looked into the eyes of the most beautiful women of the universe.He built luxury tourist developments in the Arabian Gulf, the Bahamas, the Philippines, Mexico and Miami, as well as in Spain But his personal life was less successful. Late in life, he recalled, I have lived in castles, in Venetian palaces and the world's finest hotels.