Hello Goodbye Hello: A Circle of 101 Remarkable Meetings
Read Hello Goodbye Hello: A Circle of 101 Remarkable Meetings Online
Authors: Craig Brown
Tags: #Humor, #Form, #General, #Biography & Autobiography, #Anecdotes & Quotations, #Cultural Heritage, #Rich & Famous, #History
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CONTENTS
Adolf Hitler + John Scott-Ellis
John Scott-Ellis + Rudyard Kipling
Michael Jackson + Nancy Reagan
Jackie Kennedy + HM Queen Elizabeth II
HM Queen Elizabeth II + The Duke of Windsor
The Duke of Windsor + Elizabeth Taylor
Evelyn Waugh + Igor Stravinsky
P.L. Travers + George Ivanovich Gurdjieff
George Ivanovich Gurdjieff + Frank Lloyd Wright
Frank Lloyd Wright + Marilyn Monroe
Marilyn Monroe + Nikita Khrushchev
Nikita Khrushchev + George Brown
Frank Sinatra + Dominick Dunne
Allen Ginsberg + Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon + HRH Princess Margaret
HRH Princess Margaret + Kenneth Tynan
Peggy Lee + President Richard M. Nixon
President Richard M. Nixon + Elvis Presley
Elvis Presley + Paul McCartney
Noël Coward + Prince Felix Youssoupoff
Prince Felix Youssoupoff + Grigori Rasputin
Grigori Rasputin + Tsar Nicholas II
Tsar Nicholas II + Harry Houdini
Harry Houdini + President Theodore Roosevelt
President Theodore Roosevelt + H.G. Wells
Leo Tolstoy + Pyotr Il’ich Tchaikovsky
Pyotr Il’ich Tchaikovsky + Sergei Rachmaninoff
Sergei Rachmaninoff + Harpo Marx
Harpo Marx + George Bernard Shaw
George Bernard Shaw + Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell + Sarah Miles
Walter Sickert + Winston Churchill
Winston Churchill + Laurence Olivier
Laurence Olivier + J.D. Salinger
J.D. Salinger + Ernest Hemingway
Ernest Hemingway + Ford Madox Ford
Harold Nicolson + Cecil Beaton
Tom Driberg + Christopher Hitchens
Christopher Hitchens + George Galloway
George Galloway + Michael Barrymore
Michael Barrymore + Diana, Princess of Wales
Diana, Princess of Wales + Princess Grace
Princess Grace + Alfred Hitchcock
Alfred Hitchcock + Raymond Chandler
Raymond Chandler + Howard Hawks
Howard Hughes + Cubby Broccoli
Cubby Broccoli + George Lazenby
Michael Ramsey + Geoffrey Fisher
Kingsley Amis + Anthony Armstrong-Jones
Lord Snowdon + Barry Humphries
Barry Humphries + Salvador Dalí
Auguste Rodin + Isadora Duncan
Jean Cocteau + Charlie Chaplin
Charlie Chaplin + Groucho Marx
T.S. Eliot + Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother
Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother + The Duchess of Windsor
The Duchess of Windsor + Adolf Hitler
For Mosh and Don
Tossed upon ocean waters,
Two wooden logs meet;
Soon a wave will part them,
And never again will they touch.
Just so are we; our meetings
Are momentary, my child.
Another force directs us,
So blame no fault of man.
Ga Di Madgulkar
We have as many personalities
as there are people who know us.
William James
The earth keeps turning round and gets nowhere.
The moment is the only thing that counts.
Jean Cocteau
When Arthur Miller shook my hand I could only think
that this was the hand that had once cupped
the breasts of Marilyn Monroe.
Barry Humphries
George Brown
(1914–1985) was the Deputy Leader of the British Labour Party from 1960 to 1970. He is now chiefly remembered for his prodigious consumption of alcohol, which led to frequent mishaps, often at major diplomatic events. At the end of a banquet laid on by the Belgian government in his honour in 1967, Brown stood in the doorway, barring his fellow guests from exiting. He then bellowed at the top of his voice that, while the British army were busy defending Europe, the Belgian army were making merry “in the brothels of Brussels.” He was Foreign Secretary at the time.
Sarah Miles
(1941– ) went straight from the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts to star opposite Laurence Olivier in
Term of Trial
(1962) and Dirk Bogarde in
The Servant
(1963). “Sarah Miles was originally typed as slut material—a husky, wide-eyed nymphet” writes David Thomson in
The New Biographical Dictionary of Film
. “But in
The Servant
... she shattered the stereotype and thrust sexual appetite into British films.” Her two volumes of autobiography reveal further sexual dalliances with, among others, Steven Spielberg, Robert Mitchum, and James Fox. Often regarded as unconventional, she drinks regular doses of her own urine, apparently for health reasons.
As an aspirant actor,
Terence Stamp
(1939– ) shared a flat with Michael Caine. Their names became synonymous with London in the Swinging Sixties. Stamp first rose to fame opposite Peter Ustinov in
Billy Budd
(1962) and then starred in seminal Sixties movies such as
The Collector
(1965),
Modesty Blaise
(1966), and
Far from the Madding Crowd
(1967). More recently, he has appeared in
Star Wars: The Phantom Menace
(1999),
Bowfinger
(1999), and as the transsexual Bernadette in
The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert
(1994). He now owns a company that produces food for those with dairy and wheat allergies.
When Terence Stamp was the most fashionable man in London,
Edward Heath
(1916–2005), a frosty bachelor, was possibly the least. Heath’s period as Prime Minister (1970–74) was particularly troubled. He exhibited a talent for the piano but none for sociability. Once, after dinner at the White House, President Nixon pointed to the grand piano and suggested they play a duet. Heath simply shrugged his shoulders, said nothing, and walked on. He never recovered from Margaret Thatcher seizing leadership of the Conservative Party and spent the rest of his life nursing grievances against her. His nickname was The Incredible Sulk.
Walter Sickert
(1860–1942) was a prolific painter, particularly gifted at conveying the thrill of the Victorian music hall. He also specialized in drab interiors, invariably populated by gloomy couples. “The more our art is serious, the more it will tend to avoid the drawing-room and stick to the kitchen,” he once said. A friend of Oscar Wilde and Rodin, he remains far more celebrated in Britain than in America, where he is perhaps best known as the unlucky man identified by the excitable crime novelist Patricia Cornwell, for no comprehensible reason, as having been the serial killer Jack the Ripper.
The political career of
Tom Driberg
(1905–1976) was wholly reliant on the discretion of the press. A Labour MP, he was also a promiscuous homosexual, regularly picking up young men in public lavatories. He was suspected by many of his friends and enemies of being a Russian spy, though this was never satisfactorily proved either way. He was an inveterate and unapologetic social snob. “My dear Richard,” he once complained to the editor of the satirical magazine
Private Eye
, “I am astonished that you don’t appear to know the correct way to refer to the younger daughter of a Marquess.”
George Galloway
(1954– ) was expelled from the Labour Party in 2003 after describing the government as “Tony Blair’s lie machine” and calling
on British troops in Iraq to refuse to obey orders. He remains on the extreme left: in 2008, he described the disappearance of the Soviet Union as “the biggest catastrophe of my life.” He combines radical politics and fiery rhetoric with a touch of showbiz: in 2010, he was reported to have completed a musical about the singer Dusty Springfield. The
Times
once noted his “gift of the Glasgow gab, love of the stage and inexhaustible fund of self-belief.”
In the UK,
Michael Barrymore
(1952– ) is the living embodiment of the showbiz fall from grace. During the 1980s and 1990s he was the highest-earning family entertainer in Britain. In 1993, he topped the bill of the Royal Variety Show, singing “Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow?” The answer, when it finally came, was a definite no: following a series of mishaps, including the discovery of a male corpse in his swimming pool, Barrymore’s television career came to an end. After his car hit a kerb in November 2011, he was convicted of possession of cocaine and fined $1,240.