by Paul Howard
‘“He was this charming, very young-looking, rather frail-looking child . . .”’ Author interview with Christopher Gibbs, London, 2010.
‘. . . That summer, she was trying her hand at modelling.’ She was photographed by Cecil Beaton. Charmian, who would go on to make her name as a children’s portraitist, drew a sketch of Tara in profile on Claridge’s notepaper while they had tea one afternoon.
‘. . . when the IRA had seriously considered murdering him for being a spy.’ In April 2000, a Channel 4 documentary, The Real John Betjeman, revealed that, in 1967, Diarmuid Brennan, the IRA council’s head of civilian intelligence, wrote to the poet to tell him how his life had been spared. In 1941, he said, he was approached by two gunmen from the second battalion of the Dublin IRA – known within the organization as the Edward Gees, after the actor Edward G. Robinson, who was famous for his gangster roles – and asked to provide a photograph of Betjeman. ‘I got communications describing you as “dangerous” and a person of menace to us all,’ he wrote to the intended victim. ‘In short, you were depicted in the blackest of colours.’ However, having read some of Betjeman’s poetry, he decided to let him off the hook. ‘I came to the conclusion that a man who could give such pleasure with his pen couldn’t be much of a secret agent. I could be wrong.’
‘“Tara and I immediately clicked . . .”’ Author interview with Candida Betjeman, Uffington, 2011.
‘“I don’t remember him having any what we called liaisons around that time . . .”’ Ibid.
‘“My mother used to embarrass me incredibly . . .”’ Ibid.
‘“They were being mobbed by fans . . .”’ Author interview with Lucinda Lambton, Hedgerley, 2011.
‘. . . who wanted her son to enjoy some of the experiences she had when she sailed around the world with her father and sisters as a thirteen-year-old girl.’ In 1923, Ernest took his daughters on a year-long, round the world trip on Fantôme II, a luxury yacht he had recently purchased from the Duke of Westminster. Belem, as it was originally known, was a three-masted barque that first saw service as a cargo ship, transporting sugar, cocoa and coffee from the West Indies, Brazil and French Guiana to France. The Duke of Westminster bought it and had it converted into a pleasure yacht, before selling it to Oonagh’s father in 1921. A keen sailor all his life, Ernest had the ship’s interior reshaped and its six state rooms redecorated, then installed a bar and an upright piano, to create a new home for his family during the twelve months they would spend circumnavigating a world still recovering from the ravages of the First World War. On 29 March 1923, they sailed from Southampton to Seville. From there, the journey took them to the Canary Islands, then across the Atlantic to St Vincent and Trinidad in the Caribbean and to Venezuela. They travelled on through the Panama Canal to see the Galapagos Islands, with their abundant and exotic wildlife, then spent several months exploring the tropical paradises of the South Pacific, from the Marquesas Islands, to Tahiti, Tonga and Fiji, then on to the Caroline and Solomon Islands. From there, they sailed to Japan, whose main island, they discovered on their arrival, had been hit by a catastrophic earthquake just weeks earlier. The Great Kanto Earthquake of September 1923 was the most powerful ever to hit the region at that time, killing an estimated 150,000 people and devastating the cities of Tokyo and Yokohama. They left for Hong Kong and China, then sailed on to Singapore, Malaysia and Sarawak, where they stayed as guests of Charles Vyner Brook, the last White Rajah of Sarawak, and where Oonagh had her first teenage romance. ‘My mother was found hugging a sailor on the beach at the age of fourteen,’ Garech says, ‘and was confined to the palace for the rest of her stay.’ From Sarawak, they sailed homeward via Sri Lanka, Yemen and the Suez Canal to Egypt, Crete and Gibraltar, before arriving – 360 days and 31,129 miles later – back in England.
‘“He got a nail on the door – a writ to pay a bill . . .”’ Author interview with Garech Browne, Wicklow, 2010.
‘“. . . to once again announce Miguel’s coming-out as a couturier.”’ Reported in the New York Sunday Mirror, 17 July 1960.
‘. . . planned to open a maison de couture in the centre of Paris in September.’ Ibid.
‘“The de Ribes is one of those slinky, sloe-eyed, beautifully-boned types who is forever in a Dior . . .”’ Ibid.
‘. . . for what the social commentator Nigel Dempster called “a wild, Rabelaisian week of total drunkenness”.’ Last Curtsey: The End of the Debutantes by Fiona MacCarthy (Faber and Faber, 2007), p. 167.
‘Desmond Guinness and his then German princess wife, Mariga, regularly threw open the doors of their home, Leixlip Castle, to more than one hundred guests . . .’ Author interview with Desmond Guinness, Kildare, 2012.
‘“My guests can come and go as they wish . . .”’ Daily Mail, August 1960.
‘“From the moment she heard that I’d become friends with Tara . . .”’ Author interview with Candida Betjeman, Uffington, 2011.
‘The guests included Brendan Behan, who appeared in Oonagh’s photographs smoking a large cigar, with a pink carnation in his button hole . . .’ From Oonagh, Lady Oranmore and Browne’s personal photograph collection, viewed by the author with kind permission of Garech and Dorian Browne.
‘Brendan was temporarily on the wagon, having determined to stay sober ahead of the opening of The Hostage in New York later in the year . . .’ Brendan Behan: A Life by Michael O’Sullivan (Roberts Rinehart Publishers, 1999), pp. 260–2.
‘“We all sat on the floor of the drawing room listening to him telling stories . . .”’ Author interview with Candida Betjeman, Uffington, 2011.
‘“He kept walking around,” remembered Desmond Guinness, who was also on the trip . . .”’ Author interview with Desmond Guinness, Kildare, 2012.
‘“I remember one day,” he recalled, “my father said . . .”’ Author interview with Hugo Williams, London, 2011.
6: ALL THAT JAZZ
‘“I was with them and we were walking down the rue Saint-Dominique . . .”’ Author interview with John Montague, by telephone, 2011. The shop, according to Garech Browne, was most likely Petrossian, on the Rue de l’Université.
‘Mark remembered Glen as being withdrawn . . .’ Interview with Mark Palmer, Cheltenham, 2015.
‘Glen’s first impression of Tara was . . .’ Author interview with Glen Kidston, by telephone, 2015.
‘“He was like a king in his own terrain . . .”’ Ibid.
‘“Glen was the essence of cool . . .”’ Author interview with Hugo Williams, London, 2011.
‘“He always slouched around school . . .”’ Author interview with Rupert Lycett-Green, Uffington, 2011.
‘“They could be freer here . . .”’ Author interview with Glen Kidston, by telephone, 2015.
‘Clubs sprouted up everywhere . . .’ A highly illuminating account of the post-war jazz scene in Paris is offered in Dance of the Infidels: A Portrait of Bud Powell by Francis Paudras (Da Capo Press, 1998).
‘“I saw Lionel Hampton’s Big Band at the Olympia in Paris . . .”’ Author interview with Glen Kidston, by telephone, 2015.
‘“Glen became a kind of guru to him . . .”’ Interview with Serena Connell (nee Gillilan), by telephone, 2011.
‘“He started off with Dave Brubeck . . .”’ Author interview with Glen Kidston, by telephone, 2015.
‘“It was the most exotic thing I’d ever seen in my life . . .”’ Author interview with Melissa North, London, 2011.
‘“He never proposed having sex with me . . .”’ Ibid.
‘“He liked a lot of black musicians that I didn’t know . . .”’ Ibid.
‘. . . kept him locked up in a drugged-out state of dependence in the home they’d made for themselves in the Hotel La Louisiane.’ Dance of the Infidels: A Portrait of Bud Powell by Francis Paudras (Da Capo Press, 1998).
‘“He’d be playing the most wonderful piano any of us had ever heard . . .”’ Author interview with Melissa North, London, 2011.
‘“One is a baronet and page
to the Queen and the other is the son of a member of the House of Lords . . .”’ Ibid.
‘“Oonagh would take us out for dinner at the George V . . .”’ Ibid.
‘“In his own way, he thought it was funny, too . . .”’ Ibid.
‘“One just felt that because you had to spend hours admiring his clothes . . .”’ Ibid.
‘“He takes my body with him everywhere he goes . . .”’ Daily Mirror, 22 June 1961.
‘“I couldn’t say whether she was in love with him . . .”’ Author interview with Melissa North, London, 2011.
‘ . . . Miguel outlined his ambitious plans to Women’s Wear Daily . . .’ Women’s Wear Daily, October 1960.
‘At around the same time, he told the Sunday Express that his wife was “not involved in the new venture, either financially or in any other way”.’ Sunday Express, 2 October 1960.
‘. . . in which his wife had a five-million-dollar holding.’ Author interview with Garech Browne, Wicklow, 2010.
‘She stood beside him, beaming proudly, while he announced to the American press that Maison Ferreras would present its first collection in the spring of 1961.’ From contemporary newspaper reports.
‘He had fallen off the wagon in spectacular fashion in New York . . .’ A full account of Brendan Behan’s time in New York is featured in Behan in the USA: The Rise and Fall of the Most Famous Irishman in New York by Dave Hannigan (Ballpoint Press Limited, 2014).
‘“At Luggala, you had a very straightforward formal dinner with his mother and everybody sitting down in dinner jackets . . .”’ Author interview with Nicholas Gormanston, London, 2010.
‘“He introduced me to Durban Poison . . .”’ Ibid.
‘“The movie started and very quickly he discovered that he didn’t like it very much . . .”’ Author interview with Dorian Browne, Surrey, 2011.
‘. . . advice he would continue to ignore for another four years.’ Gay had already reached the high-point of his career when he won the amateur jockeys’ championship in 1959–60, riding 22 winners from 100 rides, almost all on his own horses. The fall at Hurst Park was the second time he broke his back, after an earlier fall at Stratford in 1955. He ignored medical advice to quit racing and fulfilled his lifetime ambition of riding in the Aintree Grand National in 1965, although his horse, the 100-1 shot Ronald’s Boy, fell at the third fence. He continued to ride in Flat races until 1969.
‘“It was referred to as being sacked . . .”’ Author interview with Melissa North, London, 2011.
‘At the back of the salon, she installed an indoor tropical garden, behind whose fronds – according to a New York Times article – “women sew to music”.’ New York Times, 31 July 1961.
‘A photographer from the weekly magazine Paris Match captured several images of Tara . . .’ Photographs from the private collection of Oonagh, Lady Oranmore and Browne, seen by the author by kind permission of Garech Browne and Dorian Browne.
‘Miguel was on hand to remind them . . .’ New York Herald Tribune, 6 July 1961.
‘“Society women who spend several hundred dollars on a ready-made dress . . .”’ New York Times, 31 July 1961.
‘A girl should not expect a boy to court her when she’s wearing blue jeans.’ Quoted in Canada’s Victoria Colonist, BC, 27 September 1961.
‘. . . a gesture to the woman who was, after all, paying for all of this.’ – ‘Brown and green will be the colours,’ Miguel said, ‘with Irish interest well emphasized.’ Quoted in the Sunday Independent, 23 July 1961.
‘“In those days, the general opinion was that the Bateaux Mouches destroyed the Seine . . .”’ Author interview with Garech Browne, Wicklow, 2009.
‘“For which she got no benefit or pleasure,” he added.’ Ibid.
‘“The thing about Tara was that you never thought about how old he was . . .”’ Author interview with Glen Kidston, by telephone, 2015.
‘“He used to cross the bay in the dark . . .”’ Author interview with Serena Connell (née Gillilan), by telephone, 2011.
‘“We saw Ray Charles play . . .”’ Author interview with Nicholas Gormanston, London, 2014.
‘. . . dancing the Walls of Limerick.’ Dublin Evening Mail, 8 August 1961.
‘“. . . resplendent in tight trousers, an electric blue shirt and a maroon tie . . .”’ Ibid.
‘. . . Camilla Wigan, an English aristocrat and debbie girl.’ Camilla’s older sister, Lola, had been the cult star of the debs circuit in 1958, the final year of presentations at court, when she was photographed by Anthony Armstrong-Jones – the future husband of Princess Margaret – for the cover of Harpers & Queen. The photograph, featuring a suggestive flash of bare shoulder, defined the image of the reluctant debutante and was a sort of precursor to the waif look that would be popularised by models like Jean Shrimpton in the coming years. Last Curtsey: The End of the Debutantes by Fiona MacCarthy (Faber and Faber, 2007), pp. 39–40.
‘“I’m not particularly worried,” Tara told London’s Evening Standard, before the three headed off into the night . . .’ London Evening Standard, 8 August 1961.
‘“It was always this mix of people . . .”’ Author interview with David Mlinaric, London, 2009.
‘“We smoked a joint . . .”’ Author interview with Candida Betjeman, Uffington, 2011.
‘The suite that Oonagh booked for the event was so full . . .’ Contemporary newspaper reports.
‘“He came around one day to see someone else . . .”’ Author interview with Jacquetta Lampson, London, 2011.
‘“He just said, ‘Oh, you like it? You can have it,’ and he just gave it to me . . .”’ Ibid.
‘“Which was absolutely not allowed . . .”’ Ibid.
‘“They would have these tremendously passionate rows . . .”’ Ibid.
‘“A bottle of Haig Dimple whisky a day . . .”’ Author interview with John Montague, by telephone, 2011.
“There was also the problem that she couldn’t prove adultery . . .”’ Author interview with Garech Browne, Wicklow, 2009.
‘“Oonagh clearly adored Tara,” she said . . .’ Author interview with Jacquetta Lampson, London, 2011.
‘“It was in cloud cuckoo land they lived . . .”’ Author interview with Nicki Browne, by telephone, 2010.
7: VENUS IN BLUE JEANS
‘“You’d see houses that were blown wide open . . .”’ Author interview with David Mlinaric, London, 2009.
‘“I remember buses being abandoned on Oxford Street . . .”’ Author interview with Michael Rainey, by telephone, 2011.
‘ . . . economically frozen out of the Europe it helped to liberate . . .’ Britain was still not a member of the European Economic Community, which was founded in 1957 with the stated aim of bringing about a common European market. French President Charles de Gaulle would twice block the country’s application for membership, in 1963 and in 1967.
‘“It was the whole end of empire thing . . .”’ Author interview with David Mlinaric, London, 2009.
‘The economic roots of Swinging London . . .’ Never Had it So Good: A History of Britain from Suez to The Beatles by Dominic Sandbrook (Abacus, 2005) offers a fascinating insight into the post-war era in Britain.
‘“ . . . horizontal city with a skyline dominated by Mary Poppins chimney pots . . .”’ From a feature in Time magazine, 15 April 1966, by Piri Halasz, entitled ‘Great Britain: You Can Walk on It Across the Grass’.
‘“At the start of the Sixties, London had this cloak of dullness about it . . .”’ Author interview with Michael Rainey, by telephone, 2011.
‘. . . After the war, the Italian government allowed young men to defer their military service until the age of thirty-six, on condition that they could find work abroad.’ An interesting account of the change in the military culture in post-war Italy and how it helped shape London’s coffee-bar scene is featured in Ready, Steady, Go! by Shawn Levy (Fourth Estate, 2002), p. 52.
‘“We hired a pastry chef,” remembered Dominick .
. .’ Author interview with Dominick Browne, London, 2014.
‘They despised the drinkers . . .’ Author interview with Mark Palmer, Cheltenham, 2015.
‘John Stephen, a gay, former welder’s apprentice from Glasgow . . .’ The definitive account of John Stephen’s life and times is contained in The King of Carnaby Street: A Life of John Stephen by Jeremy Reed (Haus Publishing, 2010).
‘. . . Mohair sweaters, fashioned from a rug – when they sold one to Cliff Richard, they couldn’t deal with the sudden demand.’ A fascinating and highly authoritative insight into the fashion of the era is offered by The Look: Adventures in Rock and Pop Fashion by Paul Gorman (Adelita Limited, 2006).
‘At twenty-eight, the career and reputation of the woman . . .’ The story of Mary Quant, Bazaar and the miniskirt is related, in her own words, in Quant by Quant by Mary Quant (Cassell, 1966).
‘While they were there, they watched a young man from Cheltenham. . .’ Life by Keith Richards (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2010), pp. 89–90.
‘Dick Rowe, the head of A&R at the label, reportedly told Brian Epstein . . .’ This is the most popular account of the band’s Decca audition and its aftermath. While Dick Rowe has gone down in history as the man who turned down The Beatles, some accounts have suggested that his role may have been exaggerated by Brian Epstein. Author Paul Trynka has claimed that the decision to pass on The Beatles was actually taken by Rowe’s assistant, Mike Smith. As it happened, The Beatles never held a grudge. In fact, it was George Harrison who suggested to Rowe that he check out The Rolling Stones, which he did, before signing them to his label. Brian Jones: The Making of a Rolling Stone by Paul Trynka (Viking, 2014), pp. 99–100.
‘The music newspaper Melody Maker had carried a feature about the new American dance . . .’ Melody Maker, 16 December 1962.
‘“She flew this chap over from New York . . .”’ Author interview with Nicholas Gormanston, London, 2011.
‘“He was a frightful man . . .”’ Ibid.
‘“There was a club called the Roaring Twenties . . .”’ Ibid.
‘“He was a mix of French and American cool . . .”’ Ibid.