Palmer Luckey is the kind of guy who buys decommissioned nuclear missile silos buried 200ft underground “just because he can”, says Larisa Brown in The Times. The American defence tech whizz kid has six helicopters, “a couple of diesel submarines”, and a boat designed for inserting Navy Seals into enemy territory. Inside his waterfront home, south of Los Angeles, there is a 30,000-litre saltwater aquarium built into his living room. His pet shark, “Bonk”, used to live there, but it was eventually killed by his lobster, “Mr Lobster”. In another living room are 14 motorbikes. It’s the kind of “uniquely bizarre lifestyle” you can afford when you’re 32 and have an estimated fortune of $2.5bn.

Luckey’s defence firm, Anduril Industries, specialises in lethal autonomous robots like drones and unmanned submarines. But he made his money selling the Oculus virtual reality headset he invented to Facebook for $2bn in 2014, when he was just 22. (Facebook sacked him two years later over a $10,000 donation he’d made to a pro-Trump troll group.) Home-schooled by his mother because he was a “bad kid”, Luckey spent his youth experimenting with electronics in an old camper van on the driveway of his family home in Long Beach, California, where he gave himself so many accidental electric shocks he says it’s a miracle he’s still alive. He built an electromagnetic coil gun and once, while experimenting with lasers, accidentally burnt a blind spot into one of his retinas. Now a father, Luckey believes children should shun school, live in their own apartments and move out as teenagers – a parenting vision his wife calls “highly questionable”.

THE CHAPEL HOUSE This freshly renovated 19th-century cottage is in the Old Baptist Chapel Court in the town of Tewkesbury, Gloucestershire. On the ground floor is a “fabulous” kitchen, says The Guardian, which has been decorated in various off-whites with “handmade cabinets and marble countertops”. There’s also a dining room and a living room with a glass-fronted marble fireplace. Upstairs are two double bedrooms, one of which has a built-in wardrobe, and a bathroom. Outside, a yew hedge wraps around the courtyard garden. Cheltenham is a 20-minute drive. £395,000.

You’re missing out…

The rest of today’s newsletter – including the “aristocratic Elton John” of the Victorian age, and why the US right gets Ukraine so wrong – is for paying subscribers only. To sign up, please click the button below.