1% own 70%

Kevin Cahill's book Who Owns Britain sets out the figures pretty starkly:

The UK is 60m acres in extent, and two-thirds of it is owned by 0.36% of the population, or 158,000 families.

A staggering 24m families live on the 3m acres of the nation's "urban plot".

The average Briton living in a privately owned property has to exist on 340 square yards.

The 24 million dwellings, 11% owned by private landlords and 65% privately owned. 10.9 million carry a mortgage of some kind.

Leon Max, a Russian-born fashion retailer, bought the 600 acres of Easton Neston in Northamptonshire for £15m in 2008 from the formula one boss Lord Hesketh, commented that "I like the idea of being a country gentleman…"

Stefan Persson, of H&M, who owns an 8,500-acre shooting estate in Wiltshire and the 1,500-acre Linkenholt estate near Andover in Hampshire. The steel magnate Vladimir Lisin paid £6.8m for the 3,300-acre Aberuchill Castle estate in Perthshire. Boris Berezovsky bought 172-acre Hascombe Court, near Godalming in Surrey, for £10m. Roman Abramovich paid £12m for Fyning Hill, near Midhurst in West Sussex.

Duke of Buccleuch, has his 240,000 acres; the Duke of Northumberland, owns 131,000 acres; and the Duke of Westminster, with 129,000 acres taking in much of Belgravia, as well as the centre of Liverpool. The Royal Family now own or control the equivalent of an average-sized county in England