HUGO VICKERS Biographer & Historian
In December 1985, the distinguished novelist, Anthony Powell, recommended Cecil Beaton as one of his books of the year: 'Cecil Beaton - for whom smart society was the breath of life. Reviewers, apt to be sanctimonious in the field, gave an interesting biography rather shabby notices'

– Sunday Times
8 December 1985




'An enormous, unsparing, inch-by-inch trench-warfare chronicle of an English snob's progress through the twentieth century … A book as rich, dense, thick and tasty as a fruitcake … Nobody is expected to consume a fruitcake in one gulp. Lovers of plutography - and there must be millions of them - will take their time and swallow every last crumb'

– Tom Wolfe - New York Times
15 June 1986




'Mr Vickers has done an outstanding job on Beaton'

– Anthony Powell - Daily Telegraph
2 August 1985




'Entertaining and very thorough'

– Chris Gray - Oxford Mail
3 September 1985




'Beaton's was a glittering and theatrical life and Vickers has successfully captured its essence'

– M L Hewitt - Cape Times, South Africa
18 December 1985




'Mr Vickers's biography, which, with its bibliography, index and source references, runs to more than 650 pages, is an extremely candid and, if it were not evidently inspired by affection and admiration, might seem perhaps a rather cruel portrait'

– Peter Quennell - Sunday Telegraph
28 July 1985




'Vickers has made a terrific stab at portraying this relentless yet oddly endearing egotist'

- Sir Roy Strong - Vogue
August 1985




'Hugo Vickers has written a captivating account of the man who remained a dominant influence for five decades in a notoriously fickle profession'

- Daily Mail
25 July 1985




'This excellent and moving biography'

- Emma Tennant - the Guardian
25 July 1985




'Vickers has done a terrific job in sponging off the retouching which has hitherto obscured the real Beaton from the world … [Beaton] could have written a masterly book about himself if he had taken time and trouble: but he left Hugo Vickers the materials to do it for him'

- Richard Buckle - Sunday Times
28 July 1985




'Mr Vickers is to be congratulated on completing, with such verve and shrewdness, a task which must have been pretty difficult'

- Kay Dick - Punch
21 August 1985




'Undoubtedly the portrait penned by Mr Vickers is warts-and-all: it makes for utterly compelling reading'

- Gay Times
September 1985




'Naughtily candid'

- Peter Grosvenor - Daily Express
8 May 1986




'Anything anyone wants to know about Beaton is here'

- Peter Lewis - Mail on Sunday
28 July 1985




'A smashing biography'

- Andrew Lumsden - New Statesman
16 August 1985




'It is Hugo Vickers's perception of Beaton as "that very rare creature - a total self-creation" that holds this long, detailed and perhaps unavoidably lush biography together'

- The Economist
10 August 1985




'With Garbo Mr Vickers has his scoop'

- Nicholas Shakespeare - Literary Review
July 1985




'What more could a biographer want? [Beaton] moved easily through the worlds of high-fashion photography, Hollywood and the theatre, and became a member of the glamorous world of money and celebrity that he flattered with his camera … Hugo Vickers dutifully steers Cecil Beaton through these worlds … most penetrating'

- Chicago Tribune
1986




'With thoroughness and grace, Hugo Vickers, a British critic and journalist, traces the answer back to Beaton's obscure beginnings and follows it to a precipitous summit'

- Stefan Kramer - Time
14 July 1986




'A fascinating portrait of a social climber'

- The Good Book Guide
July/August 1986




'Vickers … brings new sensitivity to this new outing'

- Richmond Times-Dispatch
1986




'So many names are dropped in Hugo Vickers's life of Cecil Beaton that the book has to be held with a catcher's mitt … There is little likelihood that another [biography] will succeed Vickers's soon

- Washington Post
1986




'Comprehensive'

- Philadelphia Inquirer
1986




Hugo Vickers has written a fascinating, detailed, and impartial assessment of Cecil Beaton's life'

- New York Native
1986




'Vickers reveals it all, compassionately, from the sexually ambivalent Beaton's curious romance with Greta Garbo to his private boredom with such glamorous assignments as his Oscar-winning costuming of My Fair Lady'

- David Foll - Sun Magazine, Los Angeles
17 August 1986




'A substantial addition … painstakingly researched'

- Library Journal
15 September 1986




'If Cecil Beaton didn't exist, all the combined talents of Marcel Proust, Noël Coward, the editors of Vogue and Life, Judith Krantz, Truman Capote and P.G. Wodehouse still couldn't have invented him … In exhaustively detailing Beaton's long and crowded days - with echoes of all the literary sensibilities of all the above imaginations - Hugo Vickers has created artful life our of what was often lifeless art'

- Meredith Brody - Herald Examiner, Los Angeles
6 July 1986




'Best of all Vickers does not apologise for his subject'

- Otis Stuart - Dance Magazine
December 1986




'The five and a half years Vickers spent working on this biography have not been ill-spent: it is a brilliant work and a landmark in the art of biography'

- Ellen Pilon - Seranton, PA Monthly
October 1986




'Meticulously researched … a fascinating record'

- Alan Smith - Outrage [Australia]
1987




'A wonderfully juicy, utterly delicious biography'

- David Bourdon - Art in America
January 1987




'Epic Portrait'

- Independent Magazine
24 August 2002




'Hugo Vickers perfectly captures his mercurial personality'

- Daily Express
17 August 2002



Cecil Beaton (1985)
Hardback (UK) 1985
Paperback (UK) 1986
Hardback (US) 1986
Paperback (US) 1987
Paperback (UK) 1993
Paperback (UK) 2002
Paperback (UK) 2003