The tragic Sainsbury's heir who gave away his millions...just like his mother 20 years before

12 April 2012
"I have never regretted giving away my inheritance - and when Jason was told he was dying of cancer at just 30 I knew that he would do the same..."

For Annabel Sainsbury, scion of one of Britain's wealthiest dynasties and sister of the former Labour Cabinet minister Lord Sainsbury, the 30th birthday of her eldest son Jason should have been a proud milestone.

It was the day when Jason inherited a £2.5 million fortune from his grandfather, the late supermarket baron Sir Robert Sainsbury, and an occasion that had prompted much speculation at the family's 400-acre estate in Horsham, West Sussex.

Annabel had famously chosen her own 30th birthday to announce an act of staggering generosity - the donation of her entire £3 million fortune to charity.

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'Money can't buy happiness': Annabel with husband Peter and Jason's brother Adrian. Annabel famously announced on her 30th birthday she was donating her entire fortune of £3m to charity

The question on everyone's lips at the family estate, where Jason farmed with his father Peter Kanabus and younger brother Adrian, was what would he do with his new-found wealth?

Sadly, the celebrations in June last year were clouded with uncertainty. Jason had been diagnosed with cancer two years earlier and a series of operations and chemotherapy had apparently failed to prevent the spread of the disease.

Just three weeks after claiming his inheritance, Jason was told by doctors that he was terminally ill and had weeks to live.

The very next day, as the family struggled to come to terms with the news, he walked into the farmhouse sitting room, announced that he felt hungry, then he collapsed and died.

It was a shocking end to a young life; little wonder that a year on, it haunts his parents still.

But for all their distress, they have found an unexpected source of strength, not just in the happy memories of a much-loved son, but in his spirit of generosity that lives on in the rolling countryside around them.

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Loved the outdoor life: Jason aged 13 at home in Sussex in 1989

Speaking publicly for the first time since his death, Annabel, 59, and Peter, 57, have revealed that Jason decided, like his mother, to donate his entire legacy to charity.

The Jason Kanabus Fund, to be launched later this month, will be administered through The Prince's Trust and will help young people from farming communities to learn new skills and find employment.

"Jason was a countryside boy at heart," Annabel says.

"He felt strongly about what he felt was the disintegration of the country way of life. He had so many friends - other farmers, people who worked the land - who he knew were very poor and yet struggled to make a living in rural areas.

"Before he died he researched which organisations he felt gave the most help to the countryside and young people and that was why he left his money to the Prince's Trust.

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Jason, left, with younger brother Adrian in 1981

"He wanted his money to set up a charity that would help not only young people, but those living in rural areas, where life can be so hard.

"He knew that I'd never regretted giving my inheritance away. I felt it had enriched all our lives.

"Sometimes it has been tough on the family. We had to forgo treats and holidays because we could not afford them, but then we always had something to work for."

The contrast with her previous life could not have been starker.

Annabel's father, Robert, the famous philanthropist and patron of the arts, was already a director of Sainsbury's by the time she was born - he spent his life working alongside his more flamboyant brother Alan at the head of the family supermarket business, which grew into a nationwide empire during the post-war years.

"I had a privileged upbringing," Annabel admits.

"We had wonderful Christmases and family parties," - although even the festivities were marked by the famous Sainsbury work ethic.

There was little fun to be had in the family home until her father had seen and approved the Christmas Eve sales figures, she recalls.

"I was the youngest of four and Father was always entertaining well-known and influential people. The artists Henry Moore and Francis Bacon were regular dinner guests.

"Once, the former editor of The Times William Rees-Mogg (now a Mail on Sunday columnist) had to nip out between the main course and pudding to finish the front page.

"We had staff and nannies. My childhood was spent in a huge country mansion with a six-acre garden in Berkshire with corridors lined with Picasso, Degas and Giacometti drawings."

The wider Sainsbury family remains fabulously wealthy with a combined worth of more than £2 billion, according to the Sunday Times Rich List.

Annabel's brother owns 11 houses, woodland in Scotland and a vineyard in Burgundy as well as a seven per cent stake in the supermarket chain.

But Annabel was always something of a rebel, holding what she describes as Socialist views. She met her future husband Peter, a miner's son, through a youth club for disabled children where they were both volunteers.

He was brought up in a two-up, two-down house in Sheffield and for months he had no idea that the woman he was in love with came from such a privileged world. They have subsequently enjoyed 33 years together.

Annabel stunned her family in the mid-Eighties when she decided to use the £3 million inheritance left to her by her father before he died to set up the Aids charity Avert. She still works for the charity as a volunteer.

"People think only money will bring them happiness," she says.

"But wealth always embarrassed me. Wealth is pointless if you don't have the most precious thing: health.

"Pete and I would have given up everything -lived on the streets if need be - if it meant saving Jason's life, but the irony is that all the money in the world could never have saved him."

She recalls how Jason first complained of a tiny but painful ulcer on his tongue in April 2004. Jason was in the prime of his life.

He lived in a converted stable block on the farm and enjoyed the outdoor life. When standard ulcer remedies failed to help, Jason was sent by his local NHS surgery for a biopsy at a hospital in nearby Haywards Heath.

Annabel recalls: "A week or so later, he went back for the results and rang me from the hospital. He simply said, 'Mum, I've got cancer'.

"The diagnosis was so unexpected. Looking back, we never expected such news and we certainly didn't imagine he would be given such a diagnosis while he was on his own.

"I remember I managed to say, 'Don't worry, I'm coming,' but inside my world was already falling apart.

"Jason was in pieces. The doctor had told him he would need an operation to remove half his tongue. He was devastated."

Spurred into action, Annabel did everything in her power to help. Working with their GP, they got an NHS referral to the specialist Royal Marsden Hospital in West London, where a few weeks later Jason had a seven-hour operation to remove the lump.

Thanks to the surgeons' skill, he kept the power of speech and with no family history of cancer, there was every reason to hope that his worries were behind them.

But in June 2005, Jason found a lump between his neck and his shoulder. At first chemotherapy and radiotherapy seemed to be successful, but in May last year the illness returned, this time as a lump deep in his chest.

"Nothing could have prepared us for this news," says Annabel.

"The worse thing turned out to be trying to get a straight answer from his doctors. Jason desperately wanted to know the truth.

"He asked many times if it was terminal and if so, how long he had to live. If he didn't have much time left, we wanted to know so we could enjoy the last weeks or months together.

"We would have respected the doctors more if they'd simply said they didn't know. But they seemed reluctant to tell us anything."

So, for all the significance of the anniversary, the family celebrated Jason's 30th birthday in mid-June without fanfare, quietly at home.

Hanging over them was the dread thought that this would be Jason's final birthday. Then on July 5, the consultants finally told them that the lump in his chest was inoperable and the cancer had spread to his lymph nodes. Jason had weeks rather than months left to live.

"The shocking reality was that we were now on our own," Annabel says.

"As doctors said they could no longer do anything, he wasn't even under the care of any doctor. We felt so abandoned by the NHS."

Yet they finally knew the worst and could prepare.

Jason's father had talked to staff at a local hospice, and Annabel found that Jason had already arranged for his springer spaniel, Skip, to be looked after by his 29-year-old brother Adrian.

"We discussed how Jason would tell his friends he was dying, and the fact he wanted to die at home. But no one imagined that in fact he would have only hours to live."

Annabel was out the following day seeing their GP when she received the phone call.

"Jason had clutched his stomach and collapsed in front of his father and brother in the sitting room. Frantic, I raced home to find an ambulance already there.

"Pete had already desperately tried to revive him and the paramedics were working to resuscitate him.

"After some time the paramedics said they had done all they could. It was a terribly emotional moment. They unplugged all the medical equipment and Pete, Adrian and myself hugged him. I cradled him in my arms for the last time.

"His death was so sudden, we all felt angry. Because the doctors hadn't told us sooner that Jason's prognosis was so bad, we hadn't said goodbye properly.

"It is something I don't think any of us will ever come to terms with."

Annabel has now published a web page entitled Am I Going To Die? in memory of her son, hoping it will help others going through the same trauma. She consoles herself with the knowledge that Jason had enjoyed a loving family life and had lived it to the full.

Annabel is convinced that her own rejection of wealth 30 years ago had helped to make it that way. Jason, it seems, had agreed with her.

She says: "When the time came, we discussed what Jason would do with his inheritance - I always knew he wanted to donate it to a good cause."

It must be some comfort that Jason's values and his legacy will live on to help others, even if he is not around to see it.

• For more information visit www.avert.org/die.

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