STUART Carroll, 42, was head of litigation and a senior partner at Nabarro Nathanson, a leading London law firm. He ran major cases of commercial litigation – acting for disputing governments and sports and entertainments personalities. He earned a salary in the hundreds of thousands. ‘More,’ says Stuart, ‘than a chief executive of a publicly quoted company earns.’ And there he was in the glossy corporate brochure – looking serious, professional, highly motivated and dangling his glasses authoritatively. But now he’s ‘taking off’ the rest of his life. He has stopped working – forever. ‘I hated the English winters, going to work in the dark and coming home in the gloom. So I’m living on an island where the climate makes me feel alive.’
STUART Carroll, 42, was head of litigation and a senior partner at Nabarro Nathanson, a leading London law firm. He ran major cases of commercial litigation – acting for disputing governments and sports and entertainments personalities. He earned a salary in the hundreds of thousands. ‘More,’ says Stuart, ‘than a chief executive of a publicly quoted company earns.’ And there he was in the glossy corporate brochure – looking serious, professional, highly motivated and dangling his glasses authoritatively. But now he’s ‘taking off’ the rest of his life. He has stopped working – forever. ‘I hated the English winters, going to work in the dark and coming home in the gloom. So I’m living on an island where the climate makes me feel alive.’
What does he say when people ask him what he does? ‘That I enjoy myself,’ he answers, sitting by his villa poolside on St Bart’s. ‘Then they ask me what I do, and I say that I live on a Caribbean island, snorkel, swim, read and lie in the sun for 12 months of the year.’ Will he never work again? ‘I think there’s a very good chance.’
Before leaving his job in March, he had been working 12-16 hour days, six days a week, jockeying between London and New York.
‘I was wishing my life away by working and being frustrated that I couldn’t do other things because I didn’t have time, or because I used work as an excuse for not doing them. I spent my time saying ‘I can’t do this, I’m too tired and I’ve got busy meetings next week’.’
HE HAS never married and has no dependents. ‘I’ve always been guilty of putting work first – to the detriment of relationships. But I’ve had relationships that have lasted a few years.’ So he decided to up and off. ‘I thought ‘I’ve got to do it when I’m young enough to keep my options open’. This isn’t a mid-life crisis and it’ll be harder to make changes as I get older. I’ve still got time to make mistakes and fall flat on my face.’ He called together the four most senior partners in the firm – with whom he had worked for 12 years – and told them he’d decided to resign. ‘I said ‘I want to live in the place I want to live in and do all the things I want to do while I’m young’.’ The partners were dumbstruck. ‘There was a great deal of shock. They didn’t want me to go and asked me to think about it.’ Stuart didn’t need to think. He sold his three-bedroom Victorian house in Richmond and decided to live off the capital and its interest. He didn’t have a car. And he didn’t mind leaving his friends. In fact, he thought he’d probably see more of them in the Caribbean. So as soon as he had completed his notice period, he jumped on a plane.
He is 6ft and work-out lean. He has the face of a hard-nosed litigator, and one that is also enquiring, intellectual and kind. He wears expensive clothes – Paul Smith, Armani and St Laurent – which now dangle disconsolately in his villa cupboards alongside his new daily clothes – swimming trunks. He’s even-tempered, reserved and solitary.
He was brought up in London’s East End. His mother was a teacher, his father an accountant. Stuart went to a comprehensive. ‘It was awful. I didn’t start learning until I was 19 when I went to Tottenham Technical College for a year to do A-levels.’ Then he did a University of London law degree. He has a first-class mind. ‘I did the Law Society professional exams on my own. I couldn’t see any point in wasting time travelling to and from Lancaster Gate when I was living in Hackney. So I borrowed the course notes off a friend who had attended – and I passed and he failed.’ AGED just 23, he went into the law and became a partner at the unusually young age of 28.
These days he lives in a huge rented villa with a maid and swimming pool overlooking the ocean. Every day he visits the patisserie, then swims, snorkels and lies on a beach with white sand, turquoise water and reefs. Then he’ll sit in a cafe, sip cafe au lait and read Emma, Wuthering Heights, Ivanhoe or Pride and Prejudice. ‘I want to read all the classics I never read at school.’
His arduous morning is followed by a lunch of fresh local fish and an afternoon of sitting under a palm tree dangling his feet in glistening water or snoozing in the gazebo. He also draws, paints, learns French, does a strenuous form of yoga (‘hanging off walls and so on’) sees friends, travels and learns the lambada. When he tires of the island, he’ll move elsewhere. ‘I feel much better about myself,’ he says, ‘I’m living a more worthwhile and rounded life. I don’t have any regrets and I feel I’m going forward.’ But he is unemployed. Does he feel a loss of identity or self worth? ‘Not at all; I’ve never been worried about status.’
