Redeeming Features

The fascinating childhood memoirs of Britain's best-known interior designer.

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Nicky Haslam grew up in Buckinghamshire in a house called Great Hundridge Manor with his parents and two older brothers. Aged seven, he went to Scotland to visit his uncle Oliver, where he contracted polio and was paralysed down one side as a result. With time, he recovered and went to Eton, where he was to make quite a splash. On a visit to New York to see his half-sister he met fading Hollywood legend Tallulah Bankhead, who took a shine to him. When his parents moved to London, and despite being still a schoolboy, he made some of the most important friendships of his life, with the flamboyant Simon Fleet, Cecil Beaton, John Gielgud, Chips Channon and many other luminaries. This vividly written memoir is as colourful and arresting as the designs that have made Haslam his international reputation.