Was Cat Stevens the inspiration for Carly Simon’s ‘You’re So Vain’?
Essentially this is a book of two halves –before and after Cat’s conversion to Islam in 1977 – and the first half is immeasurably the more engaging. He was born Steven Georgiou in 1948, the youngest of three children, to a Greek-Cypriot father and a Swedish mother, with a much older brother and sister. His parents ran a café, Moulin Rouge, on Shaftesbury Avenue, in the heart of London’s West End, and the family lived above it. He went to a Catholic primary school near Drury Lane and then, having failed the 11 plus exam, to a secondary modern in the City. But he left school at 16 with only
