Cecil Beaton books

Brian Sewell Art Directory
CECIL BEATON

Books

Loving Garbo: Story of Greta Garbo, Cecil Beaton and Mercedes De Acosta Hugo Vickers Mercedes de Acosta was a notorious figure. She had been brought up as a boy and had taken a girlfriend on her honeymoon. Her conquests included Isadora Duncan and Marlene Dietrich. Cecil Beaton first met Garbo at a party in 1932, but it was more than a decade before they became lovers. Despite her possessive friends and the presence of an increasingly sinister Mercedes, Garbo and Beaton spent many passionate months together in New York and California. For the rest of their lives, Mercedes and Beaton remained enthralled by a star who gave them little in return. Through his reading of the papers of Mercedes de Acosta and his access to Beaton's estate, Hugo Vickers has produced an account which throws light on many of the mysteries surrounding Garbo and her admirers.
Beaton Portraits Roy Strong (Foreword), Terence Pepper
The Unexpurgated Beaton Cecil Beaton, Hugo Vickers (Introduction) Cecil Beaton's revealing account of twentieth-century high society - for the first time, with nothing taken out! Although in his lifetime Cecil Beaton - royal photographer and theatrical designer - published six short volumes of his diaries, he was shy of hurting the feelings of those he wrote about. Hugo Vickers has gone back to the originals to produce the Beaton diaries as they were written. Beaton records a vigorous social life among hostesses such as Emerald Cunard and Sybil Colefax, performers including Audrey Hepburn, Katharine Hepburn and Marlene Dietrich, as well as artists from Cocteau and Picasso to Bacon and the young Hockney. Running through the diaries are his friendships with the Queen Mother, with Diana Cooper and Greta Garbo. In the unexpurgated edition, Vickers shows what Beaton really had to say about those with whom he worked. He could be waspish, even brutal. His diaries are frank and uninhibited.