Malice in Wonderland – the Life and Work of Cecil Beaton. Cecil Beaton (1904-80) was a man of many parts: photographer, designer of sets and costumes, illustrator, diarist, author of many books, creator of some of the finest images of the Royal Family, a man of style and arbiter of taste and fashion. He was a total self-creation, escaping from the world of his parents, into the very heart of The Bright Young Things in the 1920s, when sometimes the youngsters wore costume twelve nights in a row. Often considered the epitome of an Edwardian, he moved easily in all decades of his life, and having shown his work to Diaghilev as a young man, he went on to photograph the Rolling Stones in the 1960s. There were few distinguished or glamorous people of the Twentieth century who eluded his lens, and he even succeeded in luring Garbo before his camera, and more than that to enjoy a curious romance with her. Beaton was a hard-working man, who will be remembered for his fabulous creations for Gigi and My Fair Lady, as for his portrait photographs of the Queen and Queen Mother and many more. This lecture tells Cecil Beaton’s own story with extracts from his diaries, and is lavishly illustrated with examples of his finest work. * * * * * This is Hugo Vickers’s most popular lecture and in its varied forms, it has been given in London, New York, Los Angeles, Sydney, Canberra, Melbourne and Adelaide as well as on several cruise liners, and at various festivals.