“Somebody told me the other day”: Tommy Nutter to David Nutter, letter, August 14, 1975. DN.
“a Botticelli youth”: Herrenjournal, October 1970.
“living, breathing embodiment of Peter Pan”: Thom O’Dwyer, “The World According to Tommy Nutter,” HeLines, 1991.
known for industry and manufacturing: “Places in Brent: Kilburn,” printed by the Grange Museum of Community History and Brent Archive.
“made such an impact”: Stephen Pile, “Three Faces of Steve,” The Sunday Times, May 29, 1983. The story was elaborated on by David Nutter in our interviews.
“It’s all quite likely”: Tommy Nutter to David Nutter, letter, August 14, 1975. DN.
mass graves and the incineration of bodies: Richard M. Titmuss, Problems of Social Policy (London: H. M. Stationery Office, 1950), 13.
typhoid fever, unchecked civil disorder, and so much material damage: Ibid., 14–15.
150,000 units per week: Ibid., 6.
The first day of evacuations focused solely on schoolchildren: Niko Gartner, Operation Pied Piper: The Wartime Evacuation of Schoolchildren from London and Berlin 1938–1946 (Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publishing, Inc., 2012), 59.
barrage balloons bobbed in the sky: Ibid., 57.
mothers with young children became a priority: Ibid., 59–60.
1.47 million people: Titmuss, Problems of Social Policy, 101.
80 percent of evacuated mothers: Gartner, Operation Pied Piper, 80.
enlisted in the army for DOW: Christopher Nutter’s army service record (No. T/231825), held by the Army Personnel Centre—Historical Disclosures Division. All of Christopher’s postings during the war are drawn from this record.
Tennyson wrote part of “In Memoriam” in Barmouth: Alison Harrison, The Light of Other Days: A Brief History of Friog & Fairbourne (Wales: Y Dydd Press, 1966), 41.
“a polyglot assembly”: Ibid., 47.
Polish Commandos billetted: Ibid., 49–50.
fought in the Great War and Second Boer War: Christopher Nutter’s Military History Sheet, accessed via Ancestry.com, November 21, 2015.
“To have been consigned to the limbo”: Peter Laurie, The Teenage Revolution (London: Anthony Blond, 1965), 41.
“the school for kids that don’t stand much of a chance”: Keith Richards, quoted in Stanley Booth, The True Adventures of the Rolling Stones (Chicago: Chicago Review Press, 2000), 51.
“desperately”: Tommy Nutter, interviewed on My Kind of Music, BBC Radio Brighton, September 20, 1980.
75 to 80 percent of students: Dominic Sandbrook, Never Had It So Good: A History of Britain from Suez to the Beatles (London: Little, Brown, 2005), 395.
“My parents put me on to a council school”: Tommy Nutter, My Kind of Music interview.
“the bright but the unacademic”: George Melly, Revolt into Style: The Pop Arts in Britain (London: Allen Lane, 1970), 131.
“to everybody’s amazement”: Tommy Nutter, My Kind of Music interview.
“Art in those days”: Ibid.
“My parents, bless them”: Tommy Nutter, quoted in O’Dwyer, “The World According to Tommy Nutter.”
“all those butch things I couldn’t bear”: Ibid.
“It leads us to feel”: Virginia Postrel, The Power of Glamour: Longing and the Art of Visual Persuasion (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2013), 6.
skipping classes to make the matinees: Tommy Nutter, My Kind of Music interview.
“a decent job”: “A Nutter Among the Pinstripes,” Cambridge Evening News, March 14, 1973.
“It really wasn’t me”: Tommy Nutter, My Kind of Music interview. Tommy also discusses the toilet bowls in “Tommy Nutter for Cue at Austin Reed,” press release, March 1979. DN. Several of his friends recalled the horror in our interviews.
“My parents”: Tommy Nutter, quoted in Geoffrey Aquilina Ross, “Who Needs Shows When You’re Your Own Shop Window?,” Evening Standard, March 14, 1973.
“Your starting pay”: K. D. Wilcox (Ministry of Works), to Tommy Nutter, letter, February 2, 1960. DN.
“practically insane with boredom”: “There’s Nothing Naff About Nutters,” Evening Standard, November 1, 1969.
staring at the scratched surface of his wooden desk: “The Ministry of Works Was Not for Me,” Men’s Wear, April 16, 1970.
Post Office Tower: Jonathan Glancey, “Why We Love the BT Tower,” The Guardian, November 9, 2001.
“I shall never forget my first suit”: Tommy Nutter, quoted in “Tommy Nutter for Cue at Austin Reed,” press release, March 1979. DN. See also: Aquilina Ross, “Who Needs Shows”; David Taylor, “Pop Goes the Whistle and Flute,” Punch, March 30, 1977; John Hemsley, “The £500 Suit That Made Me Look Fat,” The Reading Chronicle, January 6, 1979; and Janet Buckton, “Nutter’s the Name They’re All Crazy About,” Coventry Evening Telegraph, August 26, 1980.
“dismal”: Tommy Nutter, quoted in O’Dwyer, “The World According to Tommy Nutter.”
“SAVILE ROW TAILORS”: “Situations Vacant,” Evening Standard, November 8, 1960.
“or at least my mother did”: Tommy Nutter, My Kind of Music interview.
“Come on”: Ibid.
“Unfortunately I have no experience”: Tommy Nutter to The Manager (G. Ward & Co.), letter, November 9, 1960. DN.
“their feeling was one of amazement”: quoted in “The Ministry of Works Was Not for Me.”
“I knew from a little boy”: quoted in Hemsley, “The £500 Suit.”
TWO: THE GOLDEN AGE
Interviews with: Angus Cundey, Rupert Lycett Green, Joseph Morgan, Eric Musgrave, John Pearse, Andrew Ramroop, Henry Rose, Edward Sexton, Manny Silverman. Special thanks to Tom Arena and Dominic Sebag-Montefiore.
“packed tight”: Colin MacInnes, Absolute Beginners (London: MacGibbon & Kee, 1959), 66. My description of Soho c. 1960 is derived from interviews with people who remember it (John Pearse, Manny Silverman); and Dan Farson, Soho in the Fifties (London: Michael Joseph Ltd., 1987).
“errand boy-trotter”: Tommy Nutter, quoted in Thom O’Dwyer, “The World According to Tommy Nutter,” HeLines, 1991.
“takes longer than to train a brain surgeon”: Robert Bright, quoted in Geraldine Ranson, “A Stitch in Time,” May 1988. The source and exact date of this article, which I found clipped in Tommy’s scrapbooks, is unclear. Angus Cundey discusses the length of training required to become a cutter in “National Life Stories: An Oral History of British Fashion,” archived in the British Library.
“They used to say”: Robert L. Green, quoted in Prudence Glynn, “Fashion: The Mogul of Menswear Surveys His Territory,” The Times, May 23, 1972.
“get rid of it”: Cundey, “National Life Stories.”
“must be able not only to cut”: The Dictionary of English Trades, 1804, quoted in Richard Walker, The Savile Row Story: An Illustrated History (London: Prion, 1988), 38.
The creation of Cary Grant: Marion Hume, “Perfectly Suited,” W, February 25, 1988; Betty Goodwin, “Savile Row Tailor Re-Creates Cary Grant Look in Miniseries About Heiress,” Los Angeles Times, May 15, 1987.
“A man should look”: Hardy Amies, ABC of Men’s Fashion (London: V&A Publications, 2007), 11.
“I started off picking up pins”: Tommy Nutter, quoted in Robert Colacello, “Tommy Nutter the Tailor,” Interview, August 1973.
docked his pay in penalty: Prudence Glynn, “The Construction Business,” The Times, November 21, 1972.
“I think they were rather desperate”: Tommy Nutter, interviewed on My Kind of Music, BBC Radio Brighton, September 20, 1980. He discusses his duties in Glynn, “The Construction Business,” and Janet Buckton, “Nutter’s the Name They’re All Crazy About,” Coventry Evening Telegraph, August 26, 1980.
“I was so keen”: Tommy Nutter, quoted in O’Dwyer, “The World According to Tommy Nutt
er.”
esteemed clientele: “Tommy, the Natty Nutter,” Financial Times, September 16, 1978.
“rather an old-fashioned company”: Tommy Nutter, quoted in Buckton, “Nutter’s the Name.”
“His clothes seemed to melt”: Virginia Woolf, The Second Common Reader (New York: Harvest Books, 2003), 150.
preach it authoritatively on BBC Radio: Man’s Hour, BBC Radio 4, April 1, 1987. This was an April Fool’s Day edition of the long-running program Woman’s Hour. Archived in the British Library.
“how to actually make a jacket”: Tommy Nutter, quoted in O’Dwyer, “The World According to Tommy Nutter.”
“From Our Estates Correspondent”: “Multi-Storey Car Park Proposal,” The Times, March 14, 1962.
“To see the family inheritance”: Cundey, “National Life Stories.”
“the very end of the Golden Age”: Tommy Nutter, quoted in O’Dwyer, “The World According to Tommy Nutter.”
“mass of rents and patches”: Edward, Duke of Windsor, A Family Album (London: Cassell, 1960), 37.
“Poole”: Ibid.
Gieves had even filled a yacht: “A History of Gieves and Hawkes” (gievesandhawkes.hk/history-article.php). Accessed July 10, 2016.
“even when out shooting”: Edward, Duke of Windsor, Family Album, 30.
forty suits and twenty pairs of shoes: Eric Musgrave, Sharp Suits (London: Pavilion Books, 2013), 62.
“the robes of nine British”: Walker, Savile Row Story, 54.
would one day become known as the dinner jacket: My understanding is based on a discussion with Angus Cundey at Henry Poole & Co. Stephen Howarth also discusses the origin and competing theories about how it came to be called a “tuxedo” in Henry Poole: Founders of Savile Row: The Making of a Legend (London: Bene Factum Publishing, 2003), 58–60.
spinach down his starched front: Edward, Duke of Windsor, Family Album, 39. This book is an excellent source for Edward VII’s innovations, though I also consulted Christopher Hibbert, Edward VII: The Last Victorian King (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2007), 176.
tailors from Paris and Vienna would trail him: Edward, Duke of Windsor, Family Album, 35.
“He was a good friend”: Ibid.
stretched beyond capacity during the conflict: Walker, Savile Row Story, 92.
at least forty: Musgrave, Sharp Suits, 66.
“constrictions of dress”: Edward, Duke of Windsor, Family Album, 105.
“striptease act”: Ibid.
“tyranny of starch”: Ibid., 107.
“I was in fact ‘produced’ ”: Ibid., 114.
vaporized ten entire firms: Walker, Savile Row Story, 104.
“placed her typewriter on some debris”: Ibid.
“sitting in secret”: Ibid., 109.
“as though it came from Chanel”: Nik Cohn, Today There Are No Gentlemen (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1971), 40.
“The exasperating thing”: Rodney Bennett-England, Dress Optional: The Revolution in Menswear (London: Peter Owen, 1967), 51.
“the garb of ghetto rebellion”: Walker, Savile Row Story, 106.
The youths became known as Teddy Boys: I consulted numerous sources on the Teds, the best of which are Richard Barnes, Mods! (London: Eel Pie Publishing, 1979); Stanley Cohen, Folk Devils and Moral Panics (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1972); and Geoffrey Aquilina Ross, The Day of the Peacock: Style for Men 1963–1973 (London: V&A Publishing, 2011), which was particularly good for sartorial pointers as well as being my original source for the idea that Teddy Boys represent the emergence of modern teenagers in Britain (p. 32).
“The lack of parental authority”: George Melly, Revolt into Style: The Pop Arts in Britain (London: Allen Lane, 1970), 34.
“the exquisitely prosaic city suit”: Pearl Binder, The Peacock’s Tail (London: George G. Harrap & Co. Ltd., 1958), 28.
“As far as setting men’s fashion goes”: Judy Innes, “Now What’s New from the LAND OF MOD?” Daily Mail, February 12, 1964.
“It is ridiculous”: Cecil Beaton, quoted in Walker, Savile Row Story, 117–18.
“some deposed Slavic”: Cohn, Today There Are No Gentlemen, 165.
“Although I actually loved”: Tommy Nutter, quoted in O’Dwyer, “The World According to Tommy Nutter.”
bright tie or outrageous pocket handkerchief: Tommy Nutter, undated notes for an autobiography. DN.
“I was moving right away from all the stiffness”: Tommy Nutter, quoted in O’Dwyer, “The World According to Tommy Nutter.”
THREE: YOUNG METEORS
Interviews with: Louise Aron, Christopher Brown, Cheryl De Courcey, Carol Drinkwater, Valerie Garland, Kim Grossman, Stuart Hopps, Chris Hughes, David Nutter, Adrian Rifkin, Geoffrey Aquilina Ross, Christopher Tarling, Vicki Wickham.
Gaumont State: Details including the building’s height and auditorium capacity are drawn from the database of the Theatres Trust (theatrestrust.org.uk). Accessed July 27, 2017.
contributed vocals and harmonica: Stanley Booth, The True Adventures of the Rolling Stones (Chicago: Chicago Review Press, 2000), 69–70.
“The up-to-the-minute”: Mike McGrath, “Casual Column,” Top Boy, 1964.
“no problem”…“as well as all the teenage market magazines”: Mike McGrath, quoted in Paul Anderson, Mods: The New Religion (London: Omnibus Press, 2014), 37.
“Apostle of the Mods”: Geoffrey Aquilina Ross, The Day of the Peacock: Style for Men 1963–1973 (London: V&A Publishing, 2011), 41.
take his white German shepherd: Richard Weight, Mod: A Very British Style (London: The Bodley Head, 2013), 76.
painting the storefront canary yellow: Aquilina Ross, The Day of the Peacock, 42. This book is an excellent source for the particulars of Carnaby Street fashion. See also John Reed, John Stephen: The King of Carnaby Street (London: Haus Publishing, 2010).
a sleek £6,000 Rolls-Royce: “Rolls-Royce” (small news spot), Daily Mirror, June 19, 1964.
“Man is asserting”: “The Fashion Dictators,” Daily Sketch, September 23, 1964.
“There was no fashion”: John Stephen, quoted in Aquilina Ross, The Day of the Peacock, 41.
“new and exciting world”: Mike McGrath, quoted in Anderson, Mods, 36.
“red hot boxer of the Sixties”: Ibid., 37.
a porcelain vase: Barry Miles, London Calling: A Countercultural History of London Since 1945 (New York: Atlantic Books, 2011), 53–54.
Regency wallpaper, leather armchairs, and a large white piano: Matt Houlbrook, Queer London: Perils and Pleasures in the Sexual Metropolis 1918–1957 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006), 84.
their own take on the neo-Edwardian look: Shaun Cole, ‘Don We Now Our Gay Apparel’: Gay Men’s Dress in the Twentieth Century (New York: Berg, 2000), 23.
“piss-elegant and full of queens”: Simon Raven, quoted in Hugh David, On Queer Street: A Social History of British Homosexuality 1895–1995 (London: HarperCollins, 1998), 165.
“Top drawer queers”…“closet of closets”: Barry Miles, London Calling, 54.
aversion therapies: Alkarim Jivani, It’s Not Unusual: A History of Lesbian and Gay Britain in the Twentieth Century (London: Michael O’Mara Books Limited, 1997), 122.
The judge had understood what would happen: Ibid., 123.
“new drive against male vice”: David Maxwell Fyfe, quoted in Peter Wildeblood, Against the Law (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1955), 46.
the first year after Maxwell Fyfe’s appointment: David, On Queer Street, 164.
“In public terms”: “A Social Problem,” The Sunday Times, November 1, 1953.
“wretched business”: Lord Montagu of Beaulieu, Wheels Within Wheels: An Unconventional Life (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2000), 95.
“the same place that Sir Walter Raleigh”: Ibid., 103.
“I felt bemused and helpless”: Ibid., 104.
“than any other since the days of Nero”: Wildeblood, Against the Law, 40.
“I am no more proud of my condition”: Ibid., 2.
“a searing episode”: Lord Montagu of Beaulieu, Wheels Within Wheels, 95.
“caricature of justice”: B. A. Young, quoted in Ibid., 122.
“If two chaps carry on like that”: Unnamed taxi driver, quoted in Wildeblood, Against the Law, 65.
“homosexual behavior between consenting adults”: Report of the Committee on Homosexual Offences and Prostitution (London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1957), 115.
first piece of progressive policy: Jivani, It’s Not Unusual, 115.
“classless spirit”: Mary Quant, Quant by Quant: The Autobiography of Mary Quant (London: V&A Publishing, 2012), 68.
“This three-part, hot-gospelling hymn”: “Exciting Dancers in British Debut,” The Times, October 6, 1964.
“The word ‘charismatic’ ”: Christopher Tarling, quoted in Stuart Husband, “Rock on Tommy,” The Independent on Sunday, March 5, 2006.
“Your weekend at gay Paree”: “Chow” (no other name is given) to Tommy Nutter, letter, May 20, 1964. DN.
“drop sequins”: Ibid.
“I don’t know, really”: Tommy Nutter quoted in “Tommy Nutter,” Style, May 23, 1970.
more than a dozen handwritten missives: Names are withheld, as some of the men are still alive. DN.
“one of life’s flitters”: Christopher Tarling, quoted in Husband, “Rock on Tommy.”
FOUR: THE NEW ARISTOCRATS
Interviews with: Louise Aron, Peter Brown, Angus Cundey, Carol Drinkwater, Catherine Everest (née Butterworth), Tom Gilbey, Rupert Lycett Green, David Grigg, Kim Grossman, Carlo Manzi, David Nutter, John Pearse, Geoffrey Aquilina Ross, Edward Sexton, Joan Sexton, Manny Silverman, Christopher Tarling, James Vallance White, Judith Wright (née Allera).
“In those days it wasn’t all that easy”: Tommy Nutter, quoted in Thom O’Dwyer, “The World According to Tommy Nutter,” HeLines, 1991.
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