Philip Larkin famously wrote ‘They fuck you up, your mum and dad’, and I’ve met many who have been fucked up by their parents, but I don’t honestly think I ever was. The journey I have taken, with all its highs and lows, has given me the resolve I needed to get on and make something of my life, and I am eternally grateful to my parents for the part they played in that. There may be times when we don’t see eye to eye, but I’ve never stopped admiring them for standing their ground in the hope of creating a better, kinder and more just society. To them their ideology was their religion, and there was no room for ambiguity. But I like to think I am not that different and have the same goals. Maybe I’ve become a moderate who believes you have to be open-minded to both sides of the argument and be prepared take an alternative path or even compromise to get there.
Today, happily settled back in the Crescent, I find comfort in hearing the sound of my father calling to my mother three gardens away. I can hear my sister arriving for tea with her two girls, followed soon after by my brother and then Alan. From my study I can watch my own daughters making their way along the garden wall, from our house to theirs, to join them, and I realise that many of the good things I cherished most from my childhood are alive and well.
Pulling my own two children up Gloucester Crescent, 2009
Outside, I can hear my children playing, and my parents chatting and laughing with my wife. I now know, without a shadow of a doubt, that my decision to return to Gloucester Crescent was the right one.
WHERE ARE THEY NOW?
My parents, Gloucester Crescent, 1961 … and 2017
My parents have remained in their house in Gloucester Crescent to this day, and very little has changed other than they’ve slowly taken over the rooms that were once the children’s. My old bedroom at the back of the house is now Mum’s study, with the same tranquil view over the gardens that helped me to feel safe all those years before. People still come and go, dropping in for coffee or meals, and for as long as I can remember my parents have hosted a Sunday brunch for the family where an assortment of old friends and regulars, like Alan, drop in.
In the early ’80s Mum fell in love with India and spent the next decade walking each year in the Western Himalayas as a trek doctor. I accompanied her on her first visit in 1983 to the remote Lahaul Valley, near Zanskar. In the late ’80s she took a sabbatical to work as a doctor in the hill town of Manali on the edge of the Himalayas, leaving Dad, for the first time, on his own to fend for himself in London. After three months he found her absence so difficult he flew out to beg her to come home, only to be struck down by a crippling case of dysentery, and he swore he’d never visit India again. In 1992 Mum retired as a GP so she could spend more time travelling with Dad when he worked abroad. She also worked part-time with her close friend Anne McPherson helping her to develop a ground-breaking medical web site.
Me and Mum, Lahaul Valley, Western Himalayas, 1983
Dad continued to direct both theatre and opera for almost every major opera house in the world until he was 79. In spite of having an enormous list of credits to his name, he’s never stopped telling everyone how much he’s hated working in the theatre. Over the last three decades he’s continued to write and present television programmes, which have included a number of landmark projects for both the BBC and Channel 4. In his thirst to educate, entertain and inform he’s tackled subjects ranging from the human brain, in States of Mind, to his pet subject, atheism, in A Brief History of Disbelief. We’ve worked together on several occasions, when he fronted a series of masterclasses for the BBC called Opera Works, then again for a Horizon about Parkinson’s Disease called Ivan, and another about a man with amnesia called Prisoner of Consciousness. These were produced by the company I ran with Patrick Uden, allowing me to work discreetly in the wings cutting the deals and putting the production together while Patrick worked his magic on Dad. In the last five years he has finally started to wind down, occasionally overseeing the revival of an opera, but now spends most of his time in his studio at the top of the house, where he paints, sculpts and creates collages from paper, wood and metal.
In 2002, having been honoured with degrees and fellowships of every kind, he was knighted for his services to music and the arts. When the letter arrived, he spent days locked in his study agonising as to whether he should accept an honour from the establishment he’d spent a lifetime railing against. In the end we coerced him into accepting it, believing it was the recognition he claimed never to have had for his contribution to not just the arts but a whole way of thinking. To this day neither he nor my mother have used their titles for anything.
Tom pursued his passion as a portrait and architectural photographer working over the years for magazines, art galleries and architects. His photograph of Gordon Brown now hangs, along with portraits of every other Prime Minister, on the staircase at Number 10.
Kate has worked in the management of a number of large television production companies, including five years working with me at Uden Associates. She is married, with two daughters, the elder of whom has finally fulfilled Dad’s ambitions for at least one of his children to become a doctor.
Mum in the garden at Gloucester Crescent, 2018
Jeanie lived on and off at Gloucester Crescent throughout her twenties, leaving, at one point, to live with a boyfriend and then again to work in a children’s home. When she was in her late twenties Mum and Dad helped to buy her a flat in Finsbury Park, and for the next thirty years she worked as an adviser in a number of Citizens Advice bureaux, where she helped mostly black kids who’d got into trouble with the police. She often told me her job had brought her face to face with the ugliness of institutional racism and made her question her own background and experiences. At times it was clear that she felt both guilt and anger for becoming what she described as ‘white and middle-class’. Maybe this was the source of the problem, as from about 2005 she started to distance herself from our family, in the end cutting herself off altogether. She died in 2012.
Dad and Alan, Gloucester Crescent, 2015
Alan closed a chapter in the Gloucester Crescent story by putting the house he had owned for fifty years on the market in 2017. This was the house where Miss Shepherd had lived in his driveway and was made famous by the film of Alan’s play The Lady in the Van (2015). Alan now lives on the other side of Primrose Hill with his partner, Rupert Thomas, who’s the editor of the magazine The World of Interiors. Rupert was a friend of my sister’s, and it was she who introduced the two of them; they’ve been together ever since. Alan and Rupert divide their time between Primrose Hill and their house in Yorkshire, but Alan is still a regular feature of our family’s life.
Conrad remained at Bedales for one more term in order to sit the Oxford entrance exams but in the end accepted a place at Edinburgh University. He then took the rest of the year off and joined me in New York. Along with Remy, our friend from Bedales, we lived together in a loft apartment overlooking the Hudson River on the west side of Manhattan. I visited Conrad on a regular basis in Edinburgh, which, in a strange way, afforded me a form of university social life that I might otherwise never have had. It was then, through a close friend of Conrad’s from university, that I’d first meet the woman who would become my second wife, Trine Bell.
Me and Conrad, 2016
After university Conrad spent several years working as a television researcher before going to the United States to study for his MBA at Wharton. He then became a successful management consultant and remains one of my closest friends to this day. He’s done the brilliant job of being my best man, not only for my first marriage but my second as well. He is also godfather to my eldest daughter. Conrad now lives in London with his partner.
After the Roebers’ stepfather, Will Camp, died, their mother, Juliet, sold their house in Gloucester Crescent and moved to their house in Wiltshire, where she lives today with her third husband. The triplets, Bruno, Nicky and James, all live in London.
Dee and Hylan finally mo
ved out of the Chelsea Hotel and into an apartment on New York’s West 22nd Street. Back in London, following a fairly acrimonious divorce from Dee, Freddie finally married Vanessa Lawson. Their wedding was a somewhat odd affair, with their Indian maid acting as a witness and the maid’s boyfriend stepping in as Freddie’s best man. They bought a house on York Street in Marylebone, where they lived with Vanessa’s youngest daughter, Horatia. In spite of the blood-letting that went on over their divorce, Dee and Freddie managed to find a piece of common ground where they could be civil to each other: Nick. A little late in the day, this came from a shared concern for his welfare, although it never went as far as an offer of a home. After years of fending for himself he finally moved to New York, where he did various jobs before going on to university.
After only two years of marriage Vanessa tragically died of cancer, leaving Freddie a broken man. Over in New York things weren’t going well either, as Dee and Hylan’s hopes of a better life, away from the snobbishness of the English, started to look like a pipe dream. As they became more disillusioned, so their relationship began to falter. Then one summer, while Dee was away in France, Hylan packed up his things and went to live in California. Over the next few years, decades of heavy smoking started to take their toll on Dee’s health. To everyone’s amazement, she suggested to Nick that she might come and stay at La Migoua at the same time as his father. Freddie was surprised to find that her declining health had seemingly taken the sting out of her tail.
Freddie’s smoking hadn’t done him any good either, and his health was starting to suffer too. In 1988 he was struck down with pneumonia and admitted to hospital. To everyone’s surprise he made a remarkable recovery, only to then choke, in hospital, on a piece of smoked salmon and pass out. According to the doctors, technically he had died, and a day later he admitted that in his state of death he’d seen a bright white light which he’d forced himself to turn away from before coming round. He also talked about having seen a river, which he claimed to have crossed. This led some to ask if he’d seen the River Styx as well. Had Freddie finally found God and the afterlife, everyone asked? This was certainly a turning point for a man whose entire philosophical belief had been based on there being no God. He later insisted that through this experience he’d become a ‘born-again atheist’. After this life-changing experience Dee wrote to me to announce that ‘Freddie had become a nicer person since he died’.
Later the same year, with Hylan gone and Dee spending summers playing happy families with Nick and Freddie in France, Nick persuaded his parents that maybe they should try living together in London. To everyone else’s surprise Dee sold her apartment in New York, moved back to London and took up residence in York Street with Freddie. As if that wasn’t enough, by the spring of 1989 they had remarried. This time the only people attending their wedding were Iris Murdoch and her husband, John Bayley, along with a woman called Wendy Fairey, a lifelong friend who’d only recently discovered she was in fact Freddie’s daughter. Within months Freddie’s health had started to deteriorate further, and he was again admitted to hospital. On 27 June, Freddie Ayer passed away, with Dee, Nick and Horatia Lawson by his bedside.
Over the coming years Dee divided her time between London and the south of France, but her smoking had affected her circulation, leading to gangrene in one leg. Eventually she had to have it amputated, but she still managed to find humour in the situation. On one of my visits to see her in York Street I found her standing in the hall brandishing a prosthetic leg with painted toenails. This, she proudly announced, was her ‘beach leg’, which she’d ordered specially for the south of France. Nick finally moved into the basement of York Street and, in spite of his continuing anger towards his mother, he looked after her while her health deteriorated further. Around this time Dee struck up a close relationship with the infamous Claus von Bülow, who became her constant companion as she went in and out of hospital. In 2003 she was admitted for another operation, but this time she never came round from the anaesthetic. Dee passed away on 24 June. Her memorial service was held at St Bride’s on Fleet Street and was attended by all her old friends from Gloucester Crescent and Regent’s Park Terrace, along with Hylan and many others. George Melly gave his best rendition of Bessie Smith, and we all sang the American Civil War song ‘The Battle Hymn of the Republic’. Nick returned to New York, where he stayed for more than a decade, but now lives back in London with his American girlfriend.
True to her word, Stella remained at Stanage until Jonathan found a wife and then moved into a small but pretty cottage on the estate, where she lived until her death in 1997. I went to visit her as often as I could and continued, into my adulthood, to seek her worldly advice. Although she never lived to meet my own children, my second daughter was named after her.
Me and Stella Coltman-Rogers, 1984
After leaving my father, Sue ended up working for a literary agency, where she met Michael Bond, the creator and author of Paddington Bear, whom she later married. She now lives in Little Venice in London.
Keith became one of New York’s most celebrated restaurateurs and at one point had nine restaurants in Manhattan. He now divides his time between London, New York and Martha’s Vineyard, and we still speak on the phone most weeks.
Over the years the Haycraft children came and went along with numerous other people. Oli, who now lives with his wife and various children in California, still has the old German army uniform he bought with Nick Ayer from Laurence Corner. It’s now worn by a shop mannequin called Herman the German. After Colin died of a heart attack in 1994, Anna sold their house in Gloucester Crescent and moved to Wales, where she died eleven years later.
The Old Manse, by Nicholas Garland
Matthew Rice and I have remained close friends ever since Bedales. In the mid-1980s Matthew married the potter and entrepreneur Emma Bridgewater and together have built her pottery company, of the same name, into a multi-million-pound business and brand. They have four children and live on a farm in Oxfordshire. Matthew is chairman of the Bedales board of governors and is godfather to my youngest daughter.
At the beginning of the 1980s our gardener Willie Moggach passed away and Mrs Thain decided it was time to retire. Without a gardener or a housekeeper the Old Manse suffered badly from neglect. Our beautiful and much-loved garden quickly turned into an unmanageable jungle, and the house, which constantly needed airing and warmth when empty, started to fall down. My parents made a brief visit in 1983 to find collapsed ceilings, damp floors and the furniture going mouldy. My mother felt Mrs Thain was irreplaceable and that it was her that made having the Old Manse possible. Realising also that it was getting harder to get all of us together for family holidays, my parents decided to put the house on the market. It was sold in 1983 and since then has changed hands several times, but my mother and I, who loved it the most, continue to have dreams that we’ve returned and have been tempted on several occasions to buy it back.
In 1994 Alan’s partner, Rupert Thomas, re-introduced me to Trine Bell, who I’d lost touch with and who was now working with him at The World of Interiors. In 2001, after a seven-year courtship, we were married in a small church on the shores of Loch Fyne on the west coast of Scotland. When I came clean and told the Church of Scotland minister, who’d agreed to marry us, that I was both Jewish and divorced, he quietly informed me that ‘We don’t need to tell anyone about that!’ Seven years later we moved to Gloucester Crescent, where we live to this day with our daughters Daisy and Stella, along with a cat and a dog.
My children, Daisy and Stella, Gloucester Crescent, 2015
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
In writing my first book I went through all the soul-searching, the pain and the pleasure that so many first-time authors go through: the naive enthusiasm that comes with a strange desire to write a book, then the endless self-doubt which finally leads to the knuckling down to write it, followed by even more doubt and then the euphoria of actually finishing. Without the support of so many who saw m
e through this process I would neither have embarked on this endeavour nor followed it through to its conclusion. So, to begin with, I would like to thank those who initially coerced and encouraged me to write a book about my childhood: Anita Land, Reggie Nadelson, Jeremy Lloyd, Kaia Bell, Lizzy Moberly and Philip Norman. Without them I would have never had the courage to do it. In the end the final decision to actually lock myself away for a year and write was down to my wonderful agent, Claire Paterson Conrad, of Janklow & Nesbit. Without her this book would never have happened. She had incredible faith in the idea for this book and then guided me and taught me so much in the process of doing it. I would also like to thank Anna Swan for all her help and hard work with the early drafts as well as my editors at Profile Books, Louisa Dunnigan and Rebecca Gray, along with Penny Daniel and Matthew Taylor. I would especially like to thank Andrew Franklin for being the first to believe this book was one worthy of a publishing company like Profile.
In the end, though, the biggest thank-you has to go to my mother, for giving me her blessing and support and letting me write this book as well as giving me access to all her letters and photographs. I know it wasn’t an easy decision, nor was it easy for her to read certain parts of the book, which we discussed and debated at length. In the end she realised it was a story I wanted to tell and that it needed to be written as I experienced it and not as others had. My thanks must also go to Conrad Roeber and Matthew Rice, who have always been there for me, allowed me to include them in this story and then made sure I didn’t make a total fool of myself in the process.
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