Described as “the queen of the jazz age” and “a fashionable poor little rich girl and muse”, this heiress to the Cunard shipping fortue took being bohemian to new heights. Variously a muse, patron and mistress of many writers and artists, amongst them Aldous Huxley, Ezra Pound, Louis Aragon, Samuel Beckett, Wyndham Lewis, Constantin Brâncusi and Oskar Kokoschka, Nancy Cunard “smoke and drank dramatically” and was well known for wearing African ivory bracelets from her wrist to her elbow. A campaigner and leading member of the anti-fascist movement, Cunard was committed to a mental asylum at the end of her life after a fight with the police but all that knew her concluded that her “stunning beauty” endured to the end.
Two stories to keep beside you
Nubar Gulbenkian (Armenian: Նուբար Սարգիս Գյուլբենկյան, 1896 – 1972)
This Harrow educated eccentric, Santa Claus lookalike and playboy had two Austin FX4 Hackney carriages converted to his own specifications and considered the best number for a dinner party to be two (himself and “a damn good head waiter”).
Elliot Bssila
London based crimper to the stars Elliot Bssila has styled the hair of people as diverse as Nancy Dell’Olio and Lulu
Readers have their say
2 comments
They don’t make them like that much any more, but you probably wouldn’t like those that are
Plainly that parrot carrying woman from Mayfair (the one in the show you reviewed) models herself on her.