Before Cecil Beaton died, he chose Hugo Vickers to write his authorised biography and consigned to him all his personal and business letters and his 145 volumes of manuscript diaries.
Using this wealth of wholly unpublished material, travelling extensively in Europe and America, and interviewing friends from every aspect and age of Beaton's life - including Audrey Hepburn, Truman Capote, Lady Diana Cooper, Princess Grace of Monaco, Diana Vreeland, Sir John Gielgud, the Countess of Avon and many others - he has written a fascinating book which throws a completely new light on the man and his career.
For not only are the public events of Beaton's glittering life fully chronicled, but his very private character emerges for the first time from the mass of his unpublished diaries, so very different from those edi