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Books

The Mad Boy, Peter Watson, Cecil Beaton and the limo — by Sofka Zinovieff

Peter Watson, the 1930s playboy who wafts in and out of other biographies, at last takes centre stage

23 May 2015

9:00 AM

23 May 2015

9:00 AM

Queer Saint: The Cultured Life of Peter Watson, Who Shook Twentieth-Century Art and Shocked High Society Adrian Clark and Jeremy Dronfield

John Blake Publishing, pp.288, £25

It would not have surprised their friends in the 1930s when Peter Watson had a fling with my grandfather, Robert ‘the Mad Boy’ Heber-Percy. Both gorgeous young men were known for their risky sexual escapades. What did ruffle feathers, however, was when Watson subsequently gave the Mad Boy a car.

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