The phrase "a personal fief" is correct and usable in written English.
It can be used to describe a situation where someone treats a position of power or responsibility as if it were their own private domain.
Example: "The manager ran the department like a personal fief, making decisions without consulting anyone else."
Alternatives: "a private domain" or "a personal domain".
Energetic slum clearance and background gun battles turned his marginal constituency into a personal fief.
His Sandinista Front is a personal fief from which he has expelled those who challenge his leadership.
For many years he has run his company as though it were a personal fief financed with shareholder money.
With oversight institutions neutered, the president now runs the country as a personal fief: expropriating businesses on a whim and deciding who goes to jail.
He owed much of his success to Murtaza G. Rakhimov, who for two decades ran the region like a personal fief. 1 2 3 Next Page ».
About 40 minutes outside Melbourne sits the bluestone hulk of Pentridge Prison, which Mr. Read ruled like a personal fief for almost 20 years.
And though it went public in 1995, he still runs it as if it were his own personal fief; he owns a 14% stake and his family owns another 27%.
Less than a decade ago, Ajaria, a verdant south-western corner of Georgia of which Batumi is the regional capital, was the personal fief of Aslan Abashidze, a strongman who seemed to own the place more than run it.
The other man's voice is well known to millions of Afghans as that of Ismail Khan, the old warlord who long controlled Herat as his personal fief and is now a member of President Hamid Karzai's cabinet.
Louise Erdrich is an industrious writer who has built herself a formidable career over the past 20 years, carving out what amounts to a personal literary fief in her native region, the prairie lands of the upper Midwest.
On the other, said his detractors — several were members of his own family — he was an autocrat who turned the festival into his personal fief.
