I Read the News Today, Oh Boy

by Paul Howard

  ‘“My son went to stay with his mother in Ireland at the beginning of the week . . .”’ Daily Express, 1 February 1956.

  ‘Oonagh had taken Tara out of school for the day . . .’ Tatler, 3 February 1960.

  ‘“I ended up smoking quite a lot . . .”’ Author interview with Michael Steen, Dublin, 2011.

  ‘“Around the time that he boarded . . .”’ Ibid.

  ‘“He was a real ringleader . . .”’ Author interview with Neale Webb, Dublin, 2011.

  ‘“He clearly learned the trick from me . . .”’ Author interview with Garech Browne, Wicklow, 2009.

  ‘“It was in a house called Cludy . . .”’ Author interview with Penny Guinness (nee Cuthbertson), Kildare, 2012.

  ‘. . . though Oonagh chose purple rather than the original blue colour to match the heather in the valley.’ David Mlinaric, the society designer, was very impressed by what he saw when he first visited the house in the 1960s. ‘It was one of the first houses I visited that was “decorated” as they all are now,’ he told Robert O’Byrne, the author of Luggala Days. ‘Nobody then had imaginative wallpapers or colour schemes. People had very plain houses.’

  4: THE TROUBLE WITH MIGUEL

  ‘“He said to me one day, ‘Oh, your hair looks really pretty,’ and I remember being surprised . . .”’ Author interview with Rabea Redpath, by telephone, 2011.

  ‘“He got a grasp on the world pretty quickly . . .”’ Ibid.

  ‘“He was one of the most important adult figures in Tara’s life . . .”’ Author interview with Nicki Browne, by telephone, 2010.

  ‘ . . . who considered him an English Marcel Proust.’ – ‘A work of somber power, or soaring comedy . . . Mr Ellis, a Proust, a Leopardi of the sanatorium.’ As quoted on the jacket of the 1988 reprint of his only novel, written under the pseudonym A. E. Ellis, The Rack (Penguin).

  ‘Deacon had just finished writing The Rack . . .’ The Rack by A. E. Ellis (Heinemann, 1958).

  ‘. . . immediately proclaimed a modern classic.’ Graham Greene said of it: ‘There are certain books which we call great for want of a better term, that rise like monuments above the cemeteries of literature: Clarissa Harlowe, Great Expectations, Ulysses. The Rack, to my mind, is in this company.’ As quoted on the jacket of the 1988 Penguin reprint.

  ‘. . . who once described him as “an expensive limited edition of a curious object”.’ The Life of Kenneth Tynan by Kathleen Tynan (William Morrow and Company Inc, 1987), p. 85.

  ‘ . . . described Deacon as “deeply pessimistic and a recluse” in her biography of her husband, The Life of Kenneth Tynan . . .” Ibid, p. 85.

  ‘“. . . did not extend to himself, nor to life in principle.”’ Ibid, p. 26.

  ‘“He was going to be the great man,” wrote another university friend, the writer Kingsley Amis . . .’ Ibid, p. 85.

  ‘“He was a great raconteur of death . . .”’ In Love and Anger – A View of the Sixties by Andrew Sinclair (Sinclair-Stevenson, 1994), p. 102.

  ‘. . . as a man whose weary pessimism was perfectly suited to “the temper of the times under the mushroom cloud”.’ Ibid, p. 103.

  ‘“I met Tara for the first time in Venice . . .”’ Author interview with Lucinda Lambton, Hedgerley, 2011.

  ‘“He seemed to have no end of money . . .”’ Ibid.

  ‘ . . . Caroline Blackwood, who had tired of Lucian Freud’s serial unfaithfulness and left him for good in 1956 . . .’ An authoritative account of the marriage between Caroline Blackwood and Lucian Freud is contained in the book Dangerous Muse: The Life of Lady Caroline Blackwood by Nancy Schoenberger (Da Capo Press, 2002).

  ‘According to his own account of his life, he was born in Cuba in 1928 . . .’ Miguel appeared to offer several sometimes conflicting accounts of his early life. This, however, was the one he told most consistently. Interview with Nicholas Farrell, Harpers & Queen, September 1997.

  ‘“She was very vulnerable at that point of her life . . .”’ Author interview with Garech Browne, Wicklow, 2010.

  ‘“Oonagh told me her first two husbands did not give her any pleasure . . .”’ Miguel Ferreras quoted in an interview with Nicholas Farrell, Harpers & Queen, September 1997.

  ‘“I think she was trying to wish this image of him as a dashing, Spanish bullfighter figure into reality . . .”’ Author interview with Garech Browne, Wicklow, 2010.

  ‘ . . . uncovered by White & Case, Oonagh’s international lawyers . . .’ Documents seen by the author.

  ‘. . . working odd jobs and supplementing his earnings through looting and petty crime during the years of the Spanish Civil War.’ An alternative account of Miguel’s life was put together by investigators working for Whyte & Case. The documents have been seen by the author.

  ‘In a sworn affidavit obtained by Oonagh’s lawyers . . .’ Seen by the author.

  ‘In 1961, in an interview with the New York Times, James would speak dismiss his former protégé’s ambitions as a couturier . . .’ New York Times, 31 July 1961.

  ‘He bragged, for instance, that he had designed a maternity dress for Elizabeth Taylor . . .’ It was reported widely over a number of years that Miguel had made clothes for Elizabeth Taylor, though this could not be verified.

  ‘In September 1957, it was reported that an outfit he designed for singer Lena Horne for the Broadway opening of the musical Jamaica left her unable to move . . .’ Reported in a number of US newspapers in September 1957.

  ‘After the wedding, he told the New York press that he and his wife would live between London and Paris, where he would be setting up his own couture house.’ Reported in several contemporary newspapers.

  ‘“He was a real bad hat – loathsome, absolutely awful . . .”’ Author interview with Kenneth Rose, by telephone, 2013.

  ‘. . . his mother ought to keep her new man “chained to the bedpost”.’ Flings Over Fences – The Ups and Downs of Gay Kindersley by Gay Kindersley with Robin Rhoderick-Jones (Quiller Press Ltd, 1994), p. 69.

  ‘“The lad who appeared to eat most,” the Daily Mail reported, “and to dance most, was thirteen-year-old Tara Browne, wearing a heavy white homespun suit with a red jumper, clay pipe and clogs.”’ Daily Mail, 5 May 1958.

  ‘“Our mother had lovers from time to time . . .”’ Author interview with Garech Browne, Wicklow, 2010.

  ‘A photograph from the party, taken by Tara, shows him looking almost comically ill at ease in an Aran sweater and flat cap, while, beside him, Oonagh appears brimming with happiness in her black hooded Munster cloak.’ Featured in a number of British and Irish newspapers, May 1958.

  ‘Now, according to the newspapers, he was “one of America’s leading dress designers” and had a salon on Fifth Avenue . . .’ Daily Mail, 12 May 1958.

  ‘“I think Donegal tweed, in particular, should be better known around the world,” he said.’ Ibid.

  ‘“This is a heavenly place . . .”’ Ibid.

  ‘In 1958, she gave an interview to the Daily Mail in which she spoke candidly about the loneliness of living in an empty castle in the wilds of County Mayo.’ Daily Mail, 20 September 1958.

  ‘“She was no more a country girl than I was a Norwegian . . .”’ Author interview with Judith Haslam, by telephone, 2014.

  ‘“My father sent her to London,” he said, “to have electro-shock treatment . . .”’ Author interview with Dominick Browne, Lord Mereworth, London, 2014.

  ‘“Even the town of Claremorris . . .”’ Author interview with Garech Browne, Wicklow, 2015.

  ‘“They were an unusual sight . . .”’ Author interview with Brid Ni Dhonnchadha, by telephone, 2013.

  ‘“Tara helped me with the buttons . . .”’ Author interview with Garech Browne, Wicklow, 2015.

  ‘“He thought he should have been Lord Somebody . . .”’ Author interview with Garech Browne, Wicklow, 2012.

  ‘“I don’t recall us ever once calling him our stepfather . . .”’ Author interview with Garech Browne, Wicklow, 2011.


  ‘“When we were at Luggala, my place in Ireland, he was always running down the Irish, offending both my friends and my servants.”’ Sunday Express, 7 September 1958.

  ‘“He was spending $2,000 each month . . .”’ Daily Sketch, 11 September 1958.

  ‘. . . dubbed by one newspaper as “society’s reputed freest teenage spender”.’ Sunday Dispatch, 28 September, 1958.

  ‘Brendan Behan loved it so much, he wrote about it in the Irish Press.’ – ‘An electric light inside his bow tie, which went on and off to the terror of his slightly nervous elders. I’d say that’s a thing to remember, wouldn’t you? That’s a thing to keep up. No house in the land should be without one.’ Irish Press, 29 December 1958.

  ‘“I remember feeling that there was something indecent about being the lover of your friend’s mother . . .”’ Author interview with Kenneth Rose, by telephone, 2013.

  ‘“ . . . he hated me . . .”’ Ibid.

  ‘“Tara took an enormous amount of baggage with him . . .”’ Ibid.

  ‘“The boat was a great disappointment . . .”’ Ibid.

  ‘“We came very close to capsizing . . .”’ Ibid.

  ‘“She went back to Miguel shortly after that . . .”’ Ibid.

  ‘“I didn’t want to go to Eton . . .”’ Sunday Dispatch, 28 September 1958.

  ‘“Tara doesn’t want to conform to pattern . . .”’ Ibid.

  ‘ . . . Garech was creating newspaper headlines of his own, having reportedly “run away” with one of his mother’s parlour maids . . .’ Reports in several British and Irish newspapers in September 1958.

  ‘“Since then,” he told the Sunday Pictorial, “we have been going really steady.”’ Sunday Pictorial, 7 September 1958.

  ‘“. . . Several respectable British middle-class ladies could not conceal their horror.”’ Daily Express, 20 October 1958.

  ‘“I think she was very much in love with Miguel in the physical sense . . .”’ Author interview with Kenneth Rose, by telephone, 2013.

  ‘“It was well after midnight . . .”’ Author interview with Garech Browne, Wicklow, 2008.

  ‘“Lady Veronica had brought along a friend of hers . . .”’ Author interview with Garech Browne, Wicklow, 2015.

  ‘ . . . the “formidable little bull”, as his old friend the poet John Montague, remembered him . . .’ Company: A Chosen Life by John Montague (Gerald Duckworth & Co Ltd, 2001), p. 51.

  ‘During the months that followed, the period of his greatest success, his life continued to spiral out of control.’ A full account of Brendan Behan’s tragic descent is contained in Brendan Behan: A Life by Michael O’Sullivan (Roberts Rinehart Publishers, 1999) and Behan in the USA: The Rise and Fall of the Most Famous Irishman in New York by Dave Hannigan (Ballpoint Press Limited, 2014).

  ‘“Tara was delighted to see him,” said Garech, “as he always was . . .”’ Author interview with Garech Browne, Wicklow, 2013.

  ‘Thirty carloads of reporters followed him to the airport . . .’ As described in Brendan Behan: A Life by Michael O’Sullivan (Roberts Rinehart Publishers, 1999), p. 254.

  ‘“. . . He told him that the IRA would kill him.”’ Interview with Garech Browne, Wicklow, 2014.

  ‘“Brendan came to dinner . . .”’ Ibid.

  ‘She asked Alan Hope, the architect who oversaw the rebuilding of the house after the fire, to draw up plans for an elegant pavilion . . .’ The architectural plans for the pavilion are reproduced in Luggala Days by Robert O’Byrne (CICO Books, an imprint of Ryland Peters & Small Ltd, 2012), p. 170.

  5: LA VIE EST BELLE

  ‘. . . between leaving second-level education and entering society.’ Two very authoritative accounts of the debutant age are contained in Last Curtsey: The End of the Debutantes by Fiona MacCarthy (Faber and Faber, 2007) and 1939: The Last Season by Anne De Courcy (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2003).

  ‘“I spent a year in Paris . . .”’ Author interview with Lucinda Lambton, Hedgerley, 2011.

  ‘“So we went and I discovered that Lucy hadn’t exaggerated him at all . . .”’ Author interview with Michael Boyle, London, 2011.

  ‘“It was, ‘Come to dinner,’ then it was, ‘Come to lunch,’ a constant flow of invitations . . .”’ Ibid.

  ‘One day, early in 1960, Lucy brought Judith Keppel . . .’ Tara and Judith were distantly related.

  ‘“I remember talking to him once . . .”’ Author interview with Judith Keppel, London, 2009.

  ‘. . . Lady Frances Elliot, the daughter of the ninth Earl of St Germans.’ Tara and Lady Frances Elliot were distantly related.

  ‘“At a time when I was learning about life for the first time, he was very, very influential on my development . . .”’ Author interview with Hugo Williams, London, 2011.

  ‘“Most girls in those days were told that they might as well get a little job until they got married . . .”’ Author interview with Judith Keppel, London, 2009.

  ‘“It was a wonderful moment in our lives between school and reality . . .”’ Author interview with Hugo Williams, London, 2011.

  ‘“Eden Roc was an extremely glamorous place . . .”’ Ibid.

  ‘“He sort of led us in a way because he knew so much more about the world than we did . . .”’ Author interview with Judith Keppel, London, 2009.

  ‘“He had a very developed aesthetic sense . . .”’ Author interview with Hugo Williams, London, 2011.

  ‘“He wasn’t at all macho . . .”’ Ibid.

  ‘“He would look at you very seriously . . .”’ Author interview with Michael Boyle, London, 2011.

  ‘“There was something about him being not quite a gentleman . . .”’ Author interview with Hugo Williams, London, 2011.

  ‘“At the time, nobody knew they existed . . .”’ Letter from Peregrine Eliot, tenth Earl of St Germans, to the author.

  ‘“He took it everywhere . . .”’ Ibid.

  ‘“I thought of him as one of my best friends . . .”’ Author interview with Michael Boyle, London, 2011.

  ‘. . . from his bedroom window overlooking the Rue de l’Université.’ Author interview with Nicki Browne by telephone, 2009.

  ‘“He was always on the wrong side of the road . . .”’ Author interview with Garech Browne, Wicklow, 2010.

  ‘“He tried it on with me . . .”’ Author interview with Hugo Williams, London, 2011.

  ‘“She was very coquettish around him . . .”’ Author interview with Lucinda Lambton, Hedgerley, 2011.

  ‘“Tara would have been completely uninterested in what was going on with Miguel . . .”’ Author interview with Michael Boyle, London, 2011.

  ‘“Miguel was unavoidable really . . .”’ Author interview with Prince Stanislaus Klossowski de Rola, aka Stash de Rola, by telephone, 2009.

  ‘“He got him down quite easily . . .”’ Interview with John Montague, by telephone, 2011.

  ‘“She viewed the entire thing, as she did most things, with a certain detachment . . .”’ Ibid.

  ‘Miguel claimed that Brendan had been “interfering with children”, implying that he had made sexual advances towards Tara . . .’ The story of Brendan Behan’s alleged sexual assault of Tara was related in two previous books: Brendan Behan: A Life by Michael O’Sullivan (Roberts Rinehart Publishers, 1999), p. 139; and Silver Salver: The Story of the Guinness Family by Frederick Mullally (Granada, 1981), p. 148. The latter book gives the story more credence than the former. However, in another book, the author Anthony Cronin mentions a similar ‘misunderstanding’ involving the fourteen-year-old son of a painter and novelist whom Brendan was accused of molesting while he was alone with him during a house party. In that case, according to the book, Brendan’s claim that the boy was upset because they had been having an intense discussion about the existence of God was accepted at face value. Dead as Doornails by Anthony Cronin (Dolmen Press, 1976), pp. 16–17.

  ‘ . . . was the type he had met at borstal – “clean-skinned fresh lads” . . .’ Brendan by
Ulick O’Connor (Hamish Hamilton, 1970), p. 96.

  ‘“The real reason he beat Brendan up was that Brendan had told him to get out of Ireland . . .”’ Author interview with Garech Browne, Wicklow, 2010.

  ‘Paris had ceased to be the style capital of the world . . .’ The story of Christian Dior from Christian Dior: The Biography by Marie-France Pochna (Overlook Duckworth, 2009).

  ‘By 1949, Dior’s international empire was so big that it accounted for 5 per cent of France’s total export revenue.’ Ibid.

  ‘“He saw himself as the head of a major fashion house . . .”’ Author interview with Desmond Guinness, Wicklow, 2012.

  ‘“He tended to steer clear whenever Miguel was around.” according to Garech . . .’ Author interview with Garech Browne, Wicklow, 2013.

  ‘“Oonagh was a patient of my father . . .”’ Author interview with Godfrey Carey, London, 2011.

  ‘“I had agreed a plan with Oonagh . . .”’ Ibid.

  ‘“I cannot remember any day in Paris when the programme was carried out . . .”’ Ibid.

  ‘Mark couldn’t believe his confidence, how nothing appeared to faze him . . .’ Author interview with Mark Palmer, Cheltenham, 2015.

  ‘ . . . friends remember him opening in Paris was Angelique . . .’ Angelique: Marquis of the Angels (Hachette, 1956) was the first of ten Angelique books published under the name Sergeanne Golon, a portmanteau representing the names of Anne Golon, who did the writing, and her husband, Sergeïvich Goloubinoff, who did the historical research.

  ‘“I went to her and I said, quite honestly, ‘You’re wasting your money . . .’” ’ Author interview with Godfrey Carey, London, 2011.

  ‘“The new plan was that we were to take up residence in two adjoining suites in the Drake Hotel . . .”’ Ibid.

  ‘“I stayed, enjoying the New York social scene for two weeks . . .”’ Ibid.