Lord Brooke sold Warwick Castle to Madame Tussauds for £1.3 million in 1978, ending 374 years of Greville ownership

Charles Greville, 7th Earl of Warwick, was the first British aristocrat offered a Hollywood contract. MGM signed him in 1936 as Michael Brooke and dropped him after six months. His one mainstream film was The Dawn Patrol in 1938. In 1967 he handed control of Warwick Castle and the family estates to his only son David, Lord Brooke. In 1969 he left England to avoid British income tax. In 1978 Lord Brooke sold the castle to the Tussauds Group for £1.3 million. The Grevilles had held it for 374 years. The sale led to a public confrontation between father and son. Lord Brooke also sold the family art collection and several tons of family papers, the papers to Warwickshire County Council. The Warwick Vase, a Roman marble bought in Rome in the 1780s, was declared of national importance and its export licence was delayed; it went to the Burrell Collection in Glasgow. Two of Canaletto's views of the castle entered public collections in 1978, one at Birmingham Museums and one in the Thyssen-Bornemisza collection^†. The 7th Earl died in Rome on 20 January 1984. His son, the 8th Earl, died in Torremolinos, Spain, on 20 January 1996. In 2007 the castle passed to Blackstone's Merlin Entertainments and its freehold was sold to Nick Leslau's Prestbury Group and leased back. In 2026 Merlin runs it as a ticketed attraction, and Guy Greville, 9th Earl, holds the title.