Cecil Beaton (1904-1980) was a man of dazzling charm and style, and his talents were many. In his twenties, he recorded London and New York society in needle-sharp words and drawings, and then, at Conde Nasts insistence, in photographs. This book introduces articles, drawings and photographs by Beaton dating from the 1920s to the 1970s.



Cecil Beaton (1904–1980) was a man of dazzling charm and style, and his talents were many. In his twenties he recorded London and New York society in needle-sharp words and drawings, and then, at Condé Nast’s insistence, in photographs. The resulting work earned him a place among the great chroniclers of fashion. In this classic book, now in a sumptuous paperback edition after many years out of print, Josephine Ross selects and introduces articles, drawings and photographs by Beaton dating from the 1920s to the 1970s. It includes Beaton’s essays and vignettes on high society and its denizens, as well as such stars of the arts as Greta Garbo, Ralph Richardson, Pablo Picasso and David Hockney. It also reproduces Beaton’s war photographs, drawings and writings, from bombed London to China and the North Africa Desert. Beaton loved Vogue, and his contributions testify to the wit, imagination and professionalism that the man and the magazine always had in common.