London, where he had been offered a job by his godfather David Robertson, one of the directors. "He struggled with the property for 10 years before deciding it could never pay for itself" and decided to sell. Although by then very successful and the youngest senior manager at the firm, he "realized that he would have to leave Kleinwort and go to live in Sicily until the sale was completed", and obtained employment in a bank in Rome. In 1976 he first advertised the estate for sale by tender (i.e. to the highest bidder, without specifying a price), and in 1980 sold the agricultural land to a business based in Catania for 3 billion lire (£1.3 million). On 4 September 1981 he sold the remaining parkland and the Castello for further proceeds of Lire 1.75 billion (about £800,000). The sum was allocated as follows: 1,187 for real estate (950 for castle and grounds, 237 for other buildings) and 570 for the furniture, relics, pictures and other chattels. It was then considered "the last fiefdom in Sicily", and the purchaser was the Commune of Bronte, for whom the centuries-old struggle against its perceived "feudal masters" was thus brought to an end. 90% was financed by the Assessorato ai Beni Culturali della Regione Siciliana. The website "bronte insieme" (bronte together), established in 2001 by several prominent citizens states: "Today the "hated" English Dukedom of the "boia di Caracciolo" (executioner of Caracciolo) became property of the brontese citizens". He retained as a proprietor only the small ducal cemetery next to the Castello, where his father was buried, and which "landholding qualification", no matter how tiny and symbolic, preserves to some extent his legal and moral right to the feudal title (i.e. one dependent on land ownership) of "Duke of Bronte", as certainly the letters patent granted by the king in 1799 were interpreted by the 5th Duke to have a feudal nature, signifying (in his words) that "the proprietors of this land would have the title of 'Duke of Bronte', in consequence all the proprietors of the duchy would become ipso facto Dukes of Bronte". The title, as with all ancient Italian titles of nobility (excepting Papal titles), has no legal status in republican Italy, and the issue has not been challenged in any court of law or heraldry. He has never returned and commented many years later in 1999: "I will go