Philip Lever, the third and last Viscount Leverhulme, who has died aged 85, was a successful racehorse owner and pillar of the Jockey Club. If millionaire Arabs' racehorses were said to "run on oil", Lever's ran on soap - the £30m fortune amassed by his Bolton grandfather, William Lever, from the production of Sunlight soap. This, with Lifebuoy and Lux, financed the Port Sunlight garden city, and eventually became the multinational Unilever.
William Lever became Baron Leverhulme in 1917, during Lloyd George's peerage-selling period, and Viscount Leverhulme in 1922. His son, the second viscount, showed a filial interest in the business, becoming governor of Lever Brothers and Uni-Lever. Philip, however, served only as advisory director in the firm, in which he had £5m in shares. With the rest of the family, he also owned a third of Unilever's share through the Leverhulme Trust.
Lever was brought up near the Wirral, on the 11,000- acre family estate, Thornton Manor, which he later inherited. After Eton, he attended Trinity College, Cambridge, where he rode some point- to-point winners. During the second world war he joined the Cheshire Yeomanry, where he made some firm friends, including the father of the future trainer of his flat racers.
He inherited the title, and a tax-diminished fortune of £500,000, when his father died in 1949. Undeterred by the loss of his dairy herd from foot-and-mouth, in 1954 he bought the 22,000 acre Badanloch estate in Sutherland, with its grouse moors and deer forests - he was always a keen shot.
Horses became his consuming interest. He began by buying jumpers trained at George Owen's stables at nearby Malpas, Cheshire. His success with Royal Stuart in 1949 was followed by Fascinating Forties. Further success came in flat racing, winning with Minipal, ridden by Lester Piggott, and Hot Grove in 1977.
Lever played his role in the racing establishment, rising from deputy senior steward in the Jockey Club to senior steward, 1973-76, during which time he helped settle the 1975 stableman's strike. For 25 years, he served on the executive of the Animal Health Trust, retiring as chairman in 1989, after having been made a knight of the garter by the Queen the previous year.
Although a staunch Conservative, it took him 27 years to make his maiden speech in the Lords, predictably about the problems of financing racing. After this, Tory whips were only able to drag him in about once a year.
His wife of 36 years, Margaret Moon, died in 1973. He leaves his three daughters. With no son, the viscountcy dies with him.
Andrew Roth
Philip William Bryce Lever, Viscount Leverhulme, racehorse owner, born July 1 1915; died July 4 2000