Slightly Foxed > An Index to Slightly Foxed > Vickers, Hugo

Vickers, Hugo

Behind Closed Doors, [72] 30

Browse articles

20260302113634 Sue Gee on Cecil Beaton's Diaries

A Consummate Professional

Sue Gee on Hugo Vickers, Cecil Beaton: The Authorised Biography

I came to Cecil Beaton through Roy Strong, and Strong’s vastly entertaining diaries owe much to Cecil Beaton. In 1967, five months after he was appointed the youngest ever Director of the National Portrait Gallery, Strong made ‘juvenile jottings’ on some of the remarkable people he was meeting. The jottings became, a year later, something much more substantial. ‘Beaton’s diaries were in the process of being published at the time,’ Strong wrote, ‘and I was hypnotized by his ability to conjure up characters or a scene. His diaries were not daily, but occasional, made up of set pieces describing particular events or people . . . They were concerned, too, with a social panorama . . . It was that type of diary that I resolved to keep.’
20211115125110 Laurie Graham on Hugo Vickers, Behind Closed Doors | Slightly Foxed Issue 72

Death and the Duchess

Laurie Graham on Hugo Vickers, Behind Closed Doors

I’m not usually tempted by biographies of royals, living or not long dead. They tend to be written in deferential tones and I prefer some­thing neutral or, better yet, something with teeth. However, twenty years ago, when I was preparing to write my novel Gone with the Windsors, I read a huge number of books about the Duke and Duchess. Panegyrics, hatchet jobs, you name it. Hugo Vickers’s Behind Closed Doors had yet to be published. When it came out in 2011, I felt compelled to read it. Vickers had no axe to grind. He hadn’t known the Windsors. Could he deliver the sharp-eyed skinny?

Buy related issues of Slightly Foxed


Buy related books or goods

Sign up to our e-newsletter

Sign up for dispatches about new issues, books and podcast episodes, highlights from the archive, events, special offers and giveaways.