My grandfather was born in 1862 as Jacob Ostrofsky. He was probably born in Poland, and moved to England before 1885. He lived at 16 Great Alie Street in Whitechapel, with his wife, Fanny (my grandmother), their children (my father, uncles and aunt), and Fanny's brother, Isidore Schaffer.

My grandfather worked as a boot riveter, and some time after 1885 he changed his name to Nathan Ostrer. He may have changed his first name from Jacob in memory of his son, Nathan, who died aged two in 1885.

After 1918 he moved to Brighton, where he died in 1932.

My father, Maurice, born in London in 1896, was the youngest in the family. His sister, Sadie, was eleven years older, and had married and moved to New York. After leaving school, Maurice moved to New York, where he was looked after by his sister. He worked in an automat restaurant, restocking the food windows.

In 1918, his brother Isidore had struck gold, and sent him the money to return to England first class.

Isidore's success was shrouded in mystery, and I never did find out exactly how he made it. Those in the family who knew, like my father, were reluctant to reveal the full details. My father said Isidore was working as a junior clerk in a stockbroker's office. The wealthiest client was Rothschild, who dropped in one day, when all of the senior partners were out. Isidore, the junior clerk, was brought forward because he was the only person in the office who knew anything about the Rothschild account. Rothschild was so impressed with the service he received from Isidore, thereafter he insisted that he was always served by Isidore and not by the senior partners.

Apart from my father, no one else seemed to know how Isidore made it. My mother didn't know. She once told me: Isidore is God, and my father is the High Priest protecting God. Isidore's secretary, who worked for him for 52 years, didn't know either.

At that time insider-trading was not illegal, there was no capital gains tax, and it was inexpensive to buy stock options, so I presume it was relatively easy for an astute person with reliable information to make a lot of money without any capital.

I suspect his sudden success involved the supply of uniforms in the 1914-18 war, because Isidore struck gold during the war, and later bought control of a small woollen textile company, Illingworth Morris. He once told me that wool will always be in demand, especially in wartime, because soldiers uniforms and greatcoats are wool. Needless to add, he formulated this view before synthetic fibres came in.

After the war Isidore started the Ostrer Brothers Bank, a commercial bank. And in 1922 bought Leon Gaumont's control of his film production company, which became the Gaumont British Picture Corporation Limited. A few years later Isidore added Gainsborough Pictures (1928) Limited, and backed Logie Baird starting Baird Television and Bush Radio. In 1942 he sold his controlling share in Gaumont British to Rank, and concentrated on Illingworth Morris, which expanded by taking over other textile companies.

The official reason why Isidore sold out in 1942 was because his second wife suffered from TB and he moved to Arizona where the climate was more suitable for her condition. However, it looked like England might lose the war, so it seemed like an auspicious time to get out and abandon ship before it sank. Gaumont British was being investigated by the government as a monopoly, which was put on hold during the war. So for all of these reasons 1942 was an opportune moment to move abroad.

In 1970 the then managing director of Illingworth Morris told me that though Isidore had owned control of the company for 50 years, he had never visited Yorkshire or any of the mills. To Isidore running his textile empire was a matter of juggling bits and pieces around on a balance sheet. He didn't need physical contact with the production facility. And when necessary, executives would visit him at Hills End for instruction.

Isidore wrote three books. The Conquest of Gold, Modern Money and Unemployment (an update of the first book), and his poems. He also collected paintings, Canelleto; Reubens, Constable, etc., and did some portraits and still-life paintings himself.

In the late 1950s Isidore had a suite at Claridges, and on couple of occasions I had dinner with him and Maurice. Isidore always sat at the same round table in an alcove, and always arranged to have the bulb removed from the light fitting above the table. I was very impressed, having the lighting in a restaurant adjusted and subdued to suit his requirement, even though one had to squint a bit to read the menue.

In 1962 I had lunch with Isidore and Maurice in the Plaza Hotel in New York, and I remember being fascinated by Isidore's hair. Nowadays people with grey hair who want to look younger have various concoctions they can use to effectively disguise the grey, but back then it was a blue rinse. And on this occasion he must have used too many packets of the stuff, the only hair I had seen that colour was on Dame Edna.

Isidore was somewhat reclusive, in fact in all the years when my brothers, sister and myself visited our father at Hills End, Isidore would be hiding in his room. And, we only caught a fleeting glimpse of him on no more than two or three occasions. Of course his presence was felt as we were told: "you cannot sit there, that is uncle's chair".

Maurice was born in the 1890s so he was a bit straight-laced and Victorian at times. I remember in the late 1960s my younger brother was staying at my father's flat in Grosvenor Square, and they met on the doorstep, one entering the other leaving the building. My brother was wearing blue denim jeans, and my father, absolutely horrified said "no one dresses like that in town". Chauffeured about with blinkers on I do not believe he noticed that the 1960s had ever happened.

Isidore and Maurice shared a rented flat in Cannes in the south of France, on the sea front one or two buildings along from the Carlton Hotel. They would seasonally migrate to winter in the sun.

Though Maurice was Isidore's biggest fan, he did not always agree with everything. I remember in the early 1970s Isidore suffered from an illness that resulted in his ankles swelling up, and as expected he refused to consult a doctor but instead set about treating the ailment himself by starving himself to remove toxins and only eating selected healthy food. It took 18 months before the swollen ankles shrank to their normal size. A year of two later, Maurice had the same complaint, swollen ankles, his doctor gave him some medication and he was cured in a week or so. Isidore's way was do-it-yourself and suffer for 18 months, and Maurice's way was let the doctor sort it out and enjoy the 18 months without discomfort.

Isidore's eldest daughter, Pamela, born in 1918 and died in 1996, was in a handful of films. She married James Mason (her second husband) and moved to Beverley Hills. She wrote a book about cats.

I only met Pamela once, in 1976 at her father's funeral. She and Maurice were the two executors in Isidore's will, and in the will Maurice was entitled to remain at Hills End for the rest of his life, after all, he had shared this home with his brother since the early 1950s. However, Pamela had other plans, and so she arranged for Maurice to be driven up to London after his brother's funeral, instead of returning to the house he had lived in for over 20 years. She did not inform him in advance of her plan, but just shipped him off in the clothes he stood up in and dumped him in a flat in Grosvenor House. Very stressful for Maurice, aged 79, to lose his home as well as his closest brother. He died within three months, and Pamela became sole executor of her father's estate.

Wealthy in her own right, Pamela was not a beneficiary in her father's will, so there was no immediate urgency to throw Maurice out and sell the house. The beneficiary was Isabella, an adopted daughter, then in her twenties, and no match for someone as ruthless as Pamela seemed to be. Isidore's wealth was predominantly in the block of shares through which he controlled Illingworth Morris, the textile empire he had built. Pamela, the executor, was entitled to sell these shares on behalf of Isabella, and she did so at below their market value to an off-shore company, which seemed strange to me.

Isidore's secretary worked for him for 52 years starting in the Ostrer Brothers Bank, continuing through the Gaumont British and Illingworth Morris years, and then moved into Hills End as caretaker/housekeeper until Isidore's death. When Isidore died he had left her no provision whatsoever, which seems rather remiss of someone so wealthy to such a long-serving loyal employee. Pamela provided her with a pension.

Another daughter, Diana, an opera singer, was apparently also a secret agent during the war giving song recitals in the neutral parts of Europe as a cover. She wrote a couple of books, one about James Mason, the other about her work as a spy.

Another of the Ostrer brothers, Uncle Mark, lived in a large country house, King's Beeches, in Berkshire. I remember the long driveway, which seemed like miles. And the set of lovely Great Dane dogs.

Uncle David was the eldest of the Ostrer brothers. In the late 1940s, when I was a young teenager, he wasn't my favourite uncle because at the time I was too sensitive to handle his biting sarcastic remarks. Years later, he became my favoured uncle because he and his second wife, Inga (Ingeborg), were so fascinating.

They loved art and artists, and the impressionist paintings in their flat at 37 Grosvenor Square were not bought from art dealers but acquired years earlier from the artists themselves, before they became well known. One small picture, beautifully framed behind glass, was a Rouault painted on a piece of toilet paper.

Aunt Inga was from Germany, and spoke English with a German accent. I was convinced she had modelled herself to look like Marlene Dietrich, because the resemblance was uncanny. Yet, she was so fashionable and up-to-date.

In 1968, shortly before she died I remember going shopping with her to Liberties when she was 68 years old. She was wearing a navy blue PVC plastic mini-skirt, and had a long cigarette holder that would have burnt out your eye if you got in the way. A shop assistant approached and said: "Excuse me Madam, smoking is not permitted". Inga replied: "Don't be rediculous" and walked off puffing smoke around the shop for the remainder of her visit.

One year before David died I spent a few weeks holiday with him and Inga in southern Spain, where they used to go every summer. The three of us were walking by the beach one evening when David said to me that this was the last year he would be vacationing in Spain. Instinctively I knew he was telling me that he was dying, and it felt a bit freaky and surreal because no one had ever told me anything like that before, I was suddenly confronted with the stark reality that life is terminal. I asked what happens to Inga because I could not imagine them apart or her surviving alone. He said she would be following him, which I immediately interpreted as a suicide pact. And I was deeply touched and moved that they had chosen to share this confidence with me. A few months after David died my mother invited Inga to stay the week-end so she would not be alone on her birthday, she declined the invitation and died on her birthday from an overdose. Though incredibly sad, I remember thinking how beautiful this was, ending her life to rejoin her soul-mate.

I was also convinced that Aunt Sadie, my father's sister, had modelled herself on Mae West. Not only was the resemblance of her appearance (clothes and hair) and voice uncanny, but also the furniture and decoration in her sea-front flat in Hove was almost identical to photos I'd seen of Mae West at home in her flat.

To throw in a morsel of home-brewed philosophy: maybe in taking on board a star of one's choice, one becomes a celebrity by default in one's own mind, with a facade to live up to. And why not.

Another of the Ostrer brothers, Uncle Harry, had been a school teacher and later worked with scripts at Gaumont British. His step-daughter, my cousin Glynis Lorrimer, was the Gainsborough lady, who nodded her head at the beginning of each film. She was an actress and appeared in several films

Cousin Bertie, uncle David's son from his first marriage, produced ten films after the demise of Gaumont-British. These included: Captain Nemo and the Underwater City (1969).