GEORGE HARRISON, the former Beatle who died a year ago yesterday, was not half as rich as was thought.

The guitarist, who succumbed to lung cancer at the age of 58, left £99 million, according to High Court probate records made available yesterday. At the time of his death it was widely speculated that he had left £214 million, a significant portion of which would go to the Hare Krishna movement, of which Harrison was a confirmed disciple.

But the shy Beatle confounded everyone, including the taxman. He left his fortune in trust to his wife Olivia, and to his son Dhani, so depriving the Inland Revenue of their potential pound and a half of flesh, which under current inheritance tax rules could have been as much as £40 million.

The records show that Harrison left estate in Britain worth £99,226,780, reduced to £98,916,464 after expenses. His will stipulated that all income from the trust should go to his second wife Olivia, who was with him when he died, and to their son Dhani, aged 25, on her death.

Harrison’s will gave his address as Montagnola, Switzerland, where he owned a villa, but specified that he was a British subject and that his affairs should be dealt with under English law.

His English estate includes a mansion near Henley-on-Thames, Oxfordshire, estimated to be worth £15 million, where he and his wife were disturbed in 1999 by an intruder who stabbed Harrison, inflicting serious wounds.

By far the most valuable part of the estate is believed to be the royalties from Harrison’s global bestselling song My Sweet Lord, from his triple album All Things Must Pass, and from the hugely successful Monty Python film Life of Brian, which he financed when the project was on the verge of collapse.

In the last year of his life Harrison’s fortune is said to have been boosted by as much as a quarter, after the belated release of a Beatles Greatest Hits compilation album, which sold in huge quantities to a generation whose parents were fans of the Fab Four. He left property in other countries, including his Swiss villa.

There is no mention in Harrison’s will of any gift to the Hare Krishna movement, despite rumours that he intended to give it a tenth of his fortune. In his last years he helped to fund the building of a temple in the Indian holy city of Varanasi, and at the time of his death followers of the movement promised to create a memorial garden to him in the city of Mayapur, north of Calcutta.

Harrison is thought to have made donations to a number of favourite causes well before his death, conveniently and quite legitimately sidestepping Inland Revenue rules on inheritance tax.

Other clauses in the will allow the trustees of Harrison’s estate to transfer capital from the trust to his wife and son “as they shall think fit”, and to use the capital to buy homes anywhere in the world for the use of his two beneficiaries.

There is no mention in the will of his elder sister Louise, 70, who emigrated to the US in 1963 just as the Beatles were becoming famous. The pair were said to have fallen out in 1995 when Louise turned her home in Benton, Illinois, into a bed-and-breakfast establishment under the name “A Hard Day’s Night”.

It was said that Harrison, who stayed in the house briefly in the 1960s, never forgave his sister for attempting to cash in on his fame, despite a last-minute attempt at a reconciliation between the two made by Harrison’s wife in a New York hospital two weeks before his death.

Harrison had a number of strange relationships in his life, including with his friend and rival guitarist Eric Clapton, for whom Harrison’s first wife Patti Boyd left him in the 1970s. Clapton joined forces with Harrison’s widow, Olivia, at the Albert Hall in London last night to stage a fundraising concert on the first anniversary of the former Beatle’s death. Profits were due to go to the Material World Charitable Foundation, founded by Harrison in 1973 to support a variety of arts and educational causes.

One of the performers at the concert last night was Sir Paul McCartney, whose estimated £700 million fortune far outstrips that left by the quiet member of the Beatles, the one with the hidden depths — and the hidden fortune.

• The 1991 rock album Nevermind by Nirvana has been ranked the best yet by readers of Q magazine. The Beatles, who normally dominate such lists, came third with Revolver. Radiohead were second with OK Computer and fourth with The Bends.

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