His Very Lon Ely Lordship ; Estranged From His Family.Shunned Bythe Royals. And Reduced to Selling Off His Caribbean Playground to Paythe Bills.Where Did It All Go Wrong for Princess Margaret's Favourite Playboy?

Summary

---

ALONE with his pin-sharp memories - which many biographers would dearly love to chronicle - an old man sits on the verandah of his halfbuilt house. He gazes, rheumy-eyed, at the far horizon, where a crimson sun is setting over the shimmering Caribbean Sea.

He is wearing the same, hippy-style outfit that set him apart in the days when he played host to the titled and famous at wild West Indian shindigs: a battered straw Panama hat, a billowing, white cheesecloth smock and matching trousers, and open-toed Jesus sandals.

See the full content of this document

Extract

---

His Very Lon Ely Lordship ; Estranged From His Family.Shunned Bythe Royals. And Reduced to Selling Off His Caribbean Playground to Paythe Bills.Where Did It All Go Wrong for Princess Margaret's Favourite Playboy?

The rooms behind him are filled with mementoes from that era: a silver, four-poster bed where Raquel Welch, among others, reposed; an etching of the Mustique house cherished by his lifelong best- friend, Princess Margaret; trinkets of appreciation from Mick Jagger, and so many others.

Once almost pathologically gregarious - for him no day was complete without canapes and drinks with influential friends - the frail figure before me is none other than Lord Glenconner, the fabled society party-giver, whose 80th birthday is approaching.

'I don't see anybody for months and months on end,' he admits forlornly, after a day spent trying desperately to convince me that his life is just as fulfilling as it was 30 years ago, when he was both king and jester at his own, self-created Caribbean c...

See the full content of this document

---