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Hugo Vickers Hodder & Stoughton £25
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At the age of 28 in 1979, Hugo Vickers was commissioned to write the biography of the flamboyant photographer, designer and aesthete Sir Cecil Beaton.
Vickers paid two brief visits to the 76-year-old Beaton, and had just finished writing him a thank-you letter when the news came through that he had died. So Vickers’ first act as biographer was to attend his subject’s funeral.
Over the next five years, Vickers buzzed around the world interviewing Beaton’s friends and enemies – two categories that came with a large overlap. These frenemies were, for the most part, camp, wealthy, waspish, posh, arty and elderly: many of them had been born in the 19th Century.