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Friday 5 December 2008

Snowdon

Work and sex

Philip Ziegler reviews Anne de Courcy's biography of Lord Snowdon

There are plenty of excuses to be made for Snowdon’s character. His mother was a chilly snob who largely ignored him except when his marriage temporarily earned him some attention. The polio which he contracted when still at Eton left him with a withered left leg an inch shorter than the right one. As a young man he was despised by the hearties as being effete, probably homosexual and certainly a photographer — emphatically not at that time a career for gentlemen. ‘Jennifer’, the social columnist of the Tatler, who saw herself as guarding the portals of polite society, once hissed angrily at him: ‘Don’t ever dare speak to me! I never speak to photographers!’ Snowdon was debagged, thrown into goldfish ponds and generally maltreated. ‘It may have been funny to some,’ he said later, ‘but to me it was unforgivable.’

He also had a well-developed social conscience and lavished on the afflicted of Aberfan or Biafra the sympathy and affection which he denied his wife. His work for the disabled was sustained and successful; he did as much as anyone to improve their lot and used his celebrity and royal connections with a resourcefulness which would have been distasteful in other circumstances but here was wholly admirable.

In her Acknowledgements de Courcy describes Snowdon as

the perfect biographical subject, not only because of his brilliant talent, campaigning work for others, colourful life, complex and interesting personality, and kindness giving up hours of his time to lengthy taped interviews but because he never once attempted to influence what I wrote.

He has indeed been courageous in authorising this portrait in which the warts sometimes threaten to obscure any redeeming features. One must hope that, when he surveys the final picture, he does not regret his liberality.

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