Edward James: A Surrealist Life by John Lowe

That fabled eccentric, Edward James, who inherited two fortunes at the age of 25, and was rumoured to be Edward VII's son (the king was a frequent visitor, as was George V), is the stuff of legend, much of it of his own making. In this colourful book, published in 1991 and long out of print (there is, however, method to our madness), the frequently exasperated author, who knew James well in his dotage, struggled mightily to separate fact from fiction and, miraculously, largely succeeded.

Born into the lap of Edwardian luxury in 1907, James grew up, as the only boy amid three sisters, in a quite extraordinary setting. West Dean Park, a palatial house originally built for a son of the Duke of Norfolk in 1603, lies just outside Chichester, in Sussex. It is surrounded by 6,000 acres of lush, and very beautiful, parkland and gardens, all of which, with no heirs apparent, was left (hugely successfully, of which more anon) to the Edward James Foundation, along with a rich endowment.

In between, however, James lived a life that was as "capricious, undisciplined and eccentric as his wayward character." Neither a collector nor a writer, and at best a second-rate poet, he was nonetheless socially connected at the highest levels and could get away with murder. He supported the arts in general, patronising the equally capricious Salvador Dali, and other surrealists such as Magritte; and published the first collection of John Betjeman's poems through one of his many indulgences, the James Press. His main claim to fame, however, was to have given 100,000 pounds (at least 2,000,000 in today's terms) to Georges Balanchine, which effectively launched the latter's career and proved transformative.

After a brief, nightmarish marriage to the gold-digging dancer, Tilly Losch, which ended in a lurid divorce that made international headlines, he effectively abandoned England and became progressively more eccentric, leading a peripatetic existence abroad, with extended stints in France, Italy, the homosexual demi-monde of Hollywood, and finally Mexico, where he built a spectacular garden across a mountainside in the middle of nowhere, six hours from Mexico City.

Meanwhile, his unfortunate biographer, faced with having to cull trunkloads of disorganised records, diaries and letters (many vituperative and mercifully unmailed, often running 50 to 130 pages long), drawn from all over the globe, acknowledges his book could have easily run to 1,000 pages. Nonetheless, his self-indulgent subject, who grew up under the iron grasp of a fiercely controlling mother, only to thumb his nose at her for the rest of his life, shines through the pages we do have as the last British eccentric on the grand scale.

West Dean itself is next up. Stay tuned.

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