A Knight in London
A life in sound bites and superlatives; there’s no hiatus in the hyperbole. Friday evening. Thomas Heneage Art Books is back to back with aristos and aficionados. It’s the launch of Robert O’Byrne’s brilliant biography of Desmond Fitzgerald, the late last Knight of Glin aka the Black Knight. We’re on Duke Street St James (even the road has a double-barrelled name). Names, names, Madam Olda Fitzgerald and her daughters, son-in-law Dominic West, Min Hogg, Johnny Lowry-Corry 8th Earl Belmore, James Peill, Lindy Marchioness of Dufferin and Ava and more Guinnesses than last orders at the bar from Desmond downwards. My Goodness! My Guinness!
John O’Connell: “Easton Neston today; Chatsworth tomorrow.”
Robert O’Byrne: “You must do Curraghmore.”
Susan Crewe: “We’re really quite eclectic at House and Garden.”
William Laffan: “I seem to remember a lively lunch at St Pancras Hotel.”
Desmond Guinness: “Is Maurice Craig’s book Classic Irish Houses of the Middle Size or Middle Class?”
Hugo Vickers: “I’m on a break between biographies.”
