by Paul Howard
Crampton, David, and Neligan, David. St Stephen’s School: 1946–1963. An Anthology (2010)
Creasy, Martin. Beatlemania: The Real Story of the Beatles’ UK Tours 1963–1965 (Omnibus Press, 2011)
Cronin, Anthony. Dead as Doornails (Dolmen Press, 1976)
Davies, Hunter. I Read the News Today Oh Boy. The Beatles Lyrics: The Stories Behind the Music (Little, Brown and Company, 2014)
Davies, Hunter. The Beatles (W. N. Norton, 2010)
Decharne, Max. King’s Road (Phoenix, 2006)
De Courcy, Anne. 1939: The Last Season (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2012)
DiLello, Richard. The Longest Cocktail Party: An Insider Account of The Beatles & the Wild Rise and Fall of Their Multi-Million Dollar Apple Empire (Alfred Publishing, 2014)
Diski, Jenny. The Sixties (Profile Books, 2010)
Doggett, Peter. There is a Riot Going On: Revolutionaries, Rock Stars and the Rise and Fall of the 60s (Canongate US, 2000)
Ellis, A. E. The Rack (Penguin, 1958)
Emerick, Geoff. Here, There and Everywhere: My Life Recording the Music of The Beatles (Avery, 2007)
Espaillat, General Arturo. Trujillo: The Last Great Caesar (Henry Regnery, 1963)
Etherington-Smith, Meredith. Persistence of Memory: A Biography of Dali (Da Capo Press, 1995)
Everett, Walter. The Beatles as Musicians (Oxford University Press, 1999)
Faithfull, Marianne. Memories, Dreams and Reflections (Harper Perennial, 2008)
Gardiner, Juliet. The Thirties (Harper Press, 2011)
Gioia, Ted. The History of Jazz (Oxford University Press, 2011)
Godfrey, John, Lord Kilbracken. Living Like a Lord (Victor Gollancz, 1955)
Golon, Sergeanne. Angelique in Love (Opera Mundi, 1962)
Gorman, Paul. The Look: Adventures in Rock and Pop Fashion (Adelita, 2006)
Gould, Jonathan. Can’t Buy Me Love: The Beatles, Britain and America (Three Rivers Press, 2008)
Granados, Stefan. Those Were the Days: An Unofficial History of The Beatles’ Apple Organization 1967–2002 (Cherry Red Books, 2002)
Green, Jonathon. All Dressed Up: The Sixties and the Counterculture (Pimlico, 1999)
Green, Shirley. Rachman (Littlehampton Book Services, 1981)
Greig, Geordie. Breakfast with Lucian (Jonathan Cape, 2013)
Hannigan, Dave. Behan in the USA (Ballpoint Press, 2014)
Hattersley, Roy. Borrowed Time: The Story of Britain Between the Wars (Abacus, 2008)
Helvik, James, aka Claud Cockburn. Beat the Devil (JB Lippincott, 1951)
Heylin, Clinton. The Act You’ve Known For All These Years (Canongate UK, 2008)
Hollingshead, Michael. The Man Who Turned On the World (Abelard-Schuman, 1974)
Huston, John. An Open Book (Knopf, 1980)
Jackson, Laura. Brian Jones: The Untold Life and Mysterious Death of a Rock Legend (Piatkus Books, 2009)
Joyce, James. Ulysses (Shakespeare and Company, 1922)
Joyce, Joe. The Guinnesses (Poolbeg Press, 2009)
Kee, Robert. A Sign of the Times (Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1955)
Kindersley, Gay. Flings Over Fences (Quiller Press, 1994)
Kindersley, Philip. For You the War is Over (Baton Press, 1982)
Lear, Amanda. My Life with Dali (Virgin Books, 1985)
Levy, Shawn. Ready, Steady, Go! (Fourth Estate, 2002)
Lowell, Ivana. Why Not Say What Happened? (Bloomsbury, 2011)
MacCarthy, Fiona. Last Curtsey: The End of the Debutantes (Faber & Faber, 2006)
MacDonnell, Randal. The Lost Houses of Ireland (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2002)
McDonald, Ian. Revolution in the Head: The Beatles’ Records and the Sixties (Chicago Review Press, 2007)
Miles, Barry. London Calling: A Countercultural History of London Since 1945 (Atlantic Books, 2010)
Miles, Barry, with McCartney, Paul. Many Years from Now (Vintage, 1998)
Montague, John. Company (Gerald Duckworth, 2001)
Montague, John. The Pear is Ripe (Liberties Press, 2007)
Mosley, Charlotte, ed. The Letters of Nancy Mitford and Evelyn Waugh (Hodder & Stoughton, 1996)
Mosley, Max. Formula One and Beyond (Simon & Schuster, 2015)
Mount, Ferdinand. Cold Cream (Bloomsbury, 2009)
Mullally, Frederick. Silver Salver: The Story of the Guinness Family (Granada, 1981)
Norman, Philip. John Lennon (Ecco, 2009)
Norman, Philip. Mick Jagger (Ecco Press, 2012)
O’Byrne, Robert. Luggala Days (CICO Books, 2012)
Ó Faoláin, Seán. Eamon de Valera (Penguin, 1939)
Oldham, Andrew Loog. Stoned (Vintage, 2001)
O’Sullivan, Michael. Brendan Behan (Roberts Rinehart Publishers, 2000)
Patterson, R. Gary. The Walrus Was Paul: The Great Beatle Death Clues (Prentice Hall & IBD, 1998)
Paudras, Francis. Dance of the Infidels: A Portrait of Bud Powell (Da Capo Press, 1998)
Perez, Lois A. On Becoming Cuban: Identity, Nationality and Culture (The University of North Carolina Press, 2009)
Pochna, Marie-France. Christian Dior (Gerald Duckworth, 2010)
Pugh, Martin. We Danced All Night: A Social History of Britain Between the Wars (Vintage, 2009)
Quant, Mary. Quant by Quant (Cassell, 1966)
Ramsey, Guthrie P. Amazing Bud Powell (University of California Press, 2013)
Rawlings, Terry. Who Killed Christopher Robin? (Helter Skelter Publishing, 2004)
Reed, Jeremy. The King of Carnaby Street: A Life of John Stephen (Haus Publishing, 2010)
Reising, Russell. Every Sound There Is (Ashgate Popular and Folk Music Series, 2002)
Richards, Keith. Life (Back Bay Books, 2011)
Rolling Stones, The. According to The Rolling Stones (Chronicle Books, 2009)
Sandbrook, Dominic. Never Had It So Good: A History of Britain from Suez to The Beatles (Little, Brown, 2006)
Sandbrook, Dominic. White Heat: A History of Britain in the Swinging Sixties (Abacus, 2007)
Saunders, James. Nightmare: The Ernest Saunders Story (Hutchinson, 1989)
Savage, Jon. 1966: The Year the Decade Exploded (Faber & Faber, 2016)
Sheff, David. Last Interview: John Lennon and Yoko Ono (Sidgwick & Jackson, 2000)
Schoenberger, Nancy. Dangerous Muse: A Life of Caroline Blackwood (Da Capo Press, 2002)
Schreuders, Piet; Lewisohn, Mark; and Smith, Adam. The Beatles’ London (Interlink Books, 2008)
Sinclair, Andrew. A View of the Sixties (Sinclair-Stevenson, 1994)
Sperber, A. M., and Lax, Eric. Bogart (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1997)
Taylor, D. J. Bright Young People: The Rise and Fall of a Generation, 1918–1940 (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2010)
Trynka, Paul. Brian Jones: The Making of a Rolling Stone (Plume, 2015)
Turner, Steve. A Hard Day’s Write – the Stories Behind Every Beatles Song. (It Books, 2005)
Turner, Steve. The Gospel According to The Beatles (Westminster John Knox Press, 2006)
Tynan, Kathleen. The Life of Kenneth Tynan (Methuen, 1988)
Vyner, Harriet. Groovy Bob: The Life and Times of Robert Fraser (Faber and Faber, 2001)
Waugh, Evelyn. Brideshead Revisited (Chapman and Hall, 1945)
Waugh, Evelyn. Vile Bodies (Chapman and Hall, 1930)
Wells, Simon. The Great Rolling Stones Drug Bust (Omnibus Press, 2012)
Unpublished sources
Visitors’ book, Luggala
Oonagh, Lady Oranmore and Browne’s photograph albums
Newspapers
Autosport
The Bystander
Daily Express
Daily Mail
Daily Mirror
Daily Telegraph
Dublin Evening Mail
Fortune
Gentleman’s Quarterly
Guardian
Harpers & Queen
House Beautiful
Independent
Irish Independent
Irish Press
>
Irish Times
London Evening Standard
London Life
London Magazine
Melody Maker
New York Herald Tribune
New York Sunday Mirror
New York Times
Observer
Paris Match
The Pilot
Rolling Stone
Sketch
Sunday Dispatch
Sunday Express
Sunday Independent
Sunday Pictorial
Tatler
Time
The Times
Victoria Colonist
Women’s Wear Daily
Other sources
www.autosport.com
www.britishpathe.com
www.historicalracing.com
www.thelotusforums.com
www.thepeerage.com
Films and movies
Art on Wheels, British Pathé News, 1966
Beatles Anthology, 1995
Blow Up, 1966
Cheer Up, 1936
Dangerous Moonlight, 1941
It Was 20 Years Ago Today, BBC, 1987
The Real John Betjeman, Channel 4, 2000
Performance, 1970
Une Journée Avec L’Honorable Tara Browne, 1966
Sources and Notes
PROLOGUE
‘ . . . paid $10,000 to fly them to Ireland from New York . . .’ Figure confirmed by Bob Cavallo, manager of The Lovin’ Spoonful.
‘ . . . said her husband never expected to live for long . . .’ Author interview with Nicki Browne, by telephone, 2010.
‘“He appeared in our lives almost fully formed, as if from an egg . . .”’ Author interview with Martin Wilkinson, Newport, 2011.
‘“If you asked me to sum up the Sixties in a single moment . . .”’ Author interview with Joe Butler, by telephone, 2011.
‘. . . while a young Mick Jagger shares a large, pink armchair with his soon-to-be ex-girlfriend on the night when, she later remembered, their relationship began to go off the rails . . .’ Chrissie Shrimpton’s account as quoted in Mick Jagger by Philip Norman (Harper Collins, 2012) p. 202.
‘“While he was alive,” said his friend the poet Hugo Williams, “it was the miniskirt and the Twist . . .”’ Author interview with Hugo Williams, London, 2011.
1: GUINNESS FOR STRENGTH
‘“What do you expect? I’m an Edwardian!”’ Author interview with Dominick Browne, Lord Mereworth, London, 2014.
‘“Our father,” recalled Judith Haslam, a daughter from his first marriage, “was what they called NSIT . . .”’ Author interview with Judith Haslam, by telephone, 2014.
‘“The country never wanted men of your constitutional principles more than it does at present.”’ Extract from a letter written by Daniel O’Connell to Dominick Browne, 1830, reproduced in Burke’s Guide to Country Houses, Volume 1 – Ireland by Mark Bence-Jones (Burke’s Peerage/Pergamon, 1978), p. 50. The letter includes the line: ‘I do assure you that it gave me most sincere pleasure to have any opportunity, however trivial . . . of showing you how anxious I am to evince to you my strong sense of the manly independence of your Parliamentary conduct.’
‘According to family legend, Dom’s father had shown great kindness to a young footman who became an IRA commander . . .’ Author interview with Garech Browne, Wicklow, 2006.
‘He wrote in his diary: “I don’t think it will ever be possible to go back and live at home.”’ Letter quoted in Luggala Days by Robert O’Byrne (CICO Books, an imprint of Ryland Peters & Small Ltd, 2012), p. 93. ‘“He was thrown out for having too good a time . . .”’ Author interview with Dominick Browne, Lord Mereworth, London, 2014.
‘“He was what they call bowler-hatted out . . .”’ Ibid.
‘Their chauffeur-driven Daimler was involved in a collision with a bus . . .’ Account of crash from contemporary newspaper reports. The crash occurred on 8 June 1927. Harry Vine, the couple’s chauffeur, who survived the accident, told the subsequent inquest that he braked to avoid road works, which he saw too late, because of ‘Scotch mist’. The greasy road surface caused the car to swerve into an oncoming bus. Dr Noel Martin, who conducted the post-mortem on Lady Oranmore and Browne’s body, noted that one of her lungs had been punctured by a rib and that she was dead by the time he arrived on the scene, approximately ten minutes after the accident. Lord Oranmore and Browne was injured ‘about the legs’, according to contemporary reports in The Times. He died from his injuries on 30 June. For Dom, the tragedy of his parents’ death was compounded by the series of bizarre accidents that attended their two, separate funerals. First, the motor hearse carrying his mother’s body caught fire. ‘They had to take her coffin out of the hearse on the side of the road and send for another one,’ according to Garech, whose father told him the story shortly before he died. ‘Then, before my grandfather’s funeral, the undertaker told my father that it was traditional for members of the House of Lords to be buried in lead coffins. Which wasn’t actually true. It’s kings and queens who are buried in lead. Father agreed. They put my grandfather’s body in the lead coffin and discovered that it was too heavy to carry down the stairs. So they put it in the service lift. The ropes broke and the coffin came crashing down.’
‘“He didn’t fancy spending his life hanging about with other Old Etonians . . .”’ Author interview with Dominick Browne, Lord Mereworth, London, 2014.
‘Cosgrave gave him the assurance he sought . . .’ Author interview with Garech Browne, Wicklow, 2014.
‘ . . . the big house and all it represented was “rather in the lurch”’ . . . ‘The Stately Homes of England’ was a song written by Noel Coward in 1932 and was a particular favourite among the dispossessed upper classes.
‘“There were huge greenhouses . . .”’ Author interview with Philomena Flatley, Mayo, 2010.
‘“There were horses here as well . . .”’ Ibid.
‘“With contemptuous pity, I dismiss the Guinnesses.”’ From The Pilot, 7 August, 1837.
‘“The Guinnesses,” he said, summing up an age-old paradox, “are the only English aristocrats who have remained truly Irish.”’ Brendan Behan, quoted in the Daily Mail, 12 September, 1958.
‘Porter was first produced in Shoreditch in the East End of London in 1722 . . .’ The Guinnesses, by Joe Joyce (Poolbeg, 2009) pp. 9–10.
‘The second was to brew it so well that porter and Guinness would come to mean one and the same thing . . .’ Ibid, p. 52.
‘. . . immortalized as the Cunning Brothers in James Joyce’s Ulysses . . .’ Ulysses by James Joyce (Shakespeare and Company, 1922).
‘ . . . earning somewhere in the region of £100,000 per year at a time when only 4,000 people in Britain had an annual income of over £5,000 . . .’ From The Guinnesses, by Joe Joyce (Poolbeg, 2009), p. 147. Sir Edward had investments worth approximately £2.5m, including a stretch of Fifth Avenue in New York. He also purchased Farmleigh, a spectacular Georgian mansion on the west side of Dublin’s Phoenix Park, to complement Iveagh House, the residence he inherited on St Stephen’s Green in Dublin. He later gifted both houses to the Irish state – the latter is now occupied by the Department of Foreign Affairs.
‘. . . the KLG spark plug, which he had invented.’ Ibid, pp. 246–7.
‘“The sisters are all witches . . .”’ Quote from An Open Book by John Huston (New York: Knopf, 1980), p. 218.
‘Homework, Oonagh would later tell Tara’s eldest son, Dorian . . .’ Author interview with Dorian Browne, Surrey, 2011.
‘“My mother told me that if she was sick . . .”’ Author interview with Garech Browne, Wicklow, 2009.
‘In 1922, however, while holidaying in Ireland, they were witnesses to one of the defining moments of the Irish Civil War . . .’ Ibid.
‘. . . she was the model for Osbert Lancaster’s Maudie Littlehampton cartoons.’ Obituary, Independent, 22 May 1998.
‘“Oonagh . . . was a strange mixture of very spoiled and very swee
t and very fucked-up . . .’” Author interview with Martin Wilkinson, Newport, 2011.
‘“My father and mother weren’t suited at all . . .”’ Author interview with Gay Kindersley, East Garston, 2011.
‘“ . . . idle young men living in Mayfair mewses . . .”’ From Bright Young People – The Rise and Fall of a Generation: 1918–1940 by D. J. Taylor (Vintage, 2007), p. 2.
‘In his 1930 satirical novel, Vile Bodies . . .’ Vile Bodies by Evelyn Waugh (Chapman & Hall, 1930).
‘. . . Stanley Baldwin, the Prime Minster, whose daughter Betty was a member of the set.’ Betty Baldwin, a friend of Evelyn Waugh, appears in Vile Bodies as Miss Brown, the daughter of the Prime Minister, who invites members of the Bright Young People back to 10 Downing Street for supper. Bright Young People – The Rise and Fall of a Generation: 1918–1940 by D. J. Taylor (Vintage, 2007), p. 28.
‘“I don’t understand them and I don’t want to . . .”’ Vile Bodies by Evelyn Waugh (Chapman & Hall, 1930).
‘. . . surrounded by fellow revellers wearing pyjamas, false beards, public school blazers, top hats, shorts with garters and Harrow caps.’ Tatler, 21 June, 1933.
‘It was the Guinnesses, Fortune, the global business magazine reported, who started the fashion of driving to Cuckoo Weir . . . and Kenelm Lee Guinness – the brewery director and racing driver – who drove a steamroller over an enormous pile of tin cans to find out how it would sound.’ Fortune, December 1930.
‘According to Gay, his father remained faithful to his mother for barely a year of their married life . . .’ Author interview with Gay Kindersley, East Garston, 2011.
‘In her divorce petition, Dom’s first wife, Mildred, suggested that it started early in 1934.’ From Luggala Days by Robert O’Byrne (CICO Books, an imprint of Ryland Peters & Small Ltd, 2012), p. 104.
‘By then, Valsie had already divorced her husband, who was in serious financial difficulty as a result of his gambling debts.’ In 1934, he was forced to sell his home, Brougham Hall, to pay off his debts, many of which were as a result of his love of gambling. In 1952, he was declared bankrupt.
‘“It suited everyone . . .”’ Author interview with Garech Browne, Wicklow, 2013.
‘The Bystander began to refer to Valsie rather pointedly as Oonagh’s “erstwhile friend.’” The Bystander, 30 March 1935.
