Craig Brown - One on One

For Frances

Tossed upon ocean waters,

Two wooden logs meet;

Soon a wave will part them,

And never again will they touch.

Just so are we; our meetings

Are momentary, my child.

Another force directs us,

So blame no fault of man.

Ga Di Madgulkar

We have as many personalities

as there are people who know us.

William James

The earth keeps turning round and gets nowhere.

The moment is the only thing that counts.

Jean Cocteau

When Arthur Miller shook my hand I could only think

that this was the hand that had once cupped

the breasts of Marilyn Monroe.

Barry Humphries

Title Page

Dedication

Epigraph

ADOLF HITLER

JOHN SCOTT-ELLIS

RUDYARD KIPLING

MARK TWAIN

HELEN KELLER

MARTHA GRAHAM

MADONNA

MICHAEL JACKSON

NANCY REAGAN

ANDY WARHOL

JACKIE KENNEDY

HRH QUEEN ELIZABETH II

THE DUKE OF WINDSOR

ELIZABETH TAYLOR

JAMES DEAN

ALEC GUINNESS

EVELYN WAUGH

IGOR STRAVINSKY

WALT DISNEY

P.L. TRAVERS

GEORGE IVANOVICH GURDJIEFF

FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT

MARILYN MONROE

NIKITA KHRUSHCHEV

GEORGE BROWN

ELI WALLACH

FRANK SINATRA

DOMINICK DUNNE

PHIL SPECTOR

LEONARD COHEN

JANIS JOPLIN

PATTI SMITH

ALLEN GINSBERG

FRANCIS BACON

HRH PRINCESS MARGARET

KENNETH TYNAN

TRUMAN CAPOTE

PEGGY LEE

PRESIDENT RICHARD M. NIXON

ELVIS PRESLEY

PAUL McCARTNEY

NOËL COWARD

PRINCE FELIX YOUSSOUPOFF

GRIGORI RASPUTIN

TSAR NICHOLAS II

HARRY HOUDINI

PRESIDENT THEODORE ROOSEVELT

H.G. WELLS

JOSEF STALIN

MAXIM GORKY

LEO TOLSTOY

PYOTR IL’ICH TCHAIKOVSKY

SERGEI RACHMANINOFF

HARPO MARX

GEORGE BERNARD SHAW

BERTRAND RUSSELL

SARAH MILES

TERENCE STAMP

EDWARD HEATH

WALTER SICKERT

WINSTON CHURCHILL

LAURENCE OLIVIER

J.D. SALINGER

ERNEST HEMINGWAY

FORD MADOX FORD

OSCAR WILDE

MARCEL PROUST

JAMES JOYCE

HAROLD NICOLSON

CECIL BEATON

MICK JAGGER

TOM DRIBERG

CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS

GEORGE GALLOWAY

MICHAEL BARRYMORE

DIANA, PRINCESS OF WALES

PRINCESS GRACE

ALFRED HITCHCOCK

RAYMOND CHANDLER

HOWARD HAWKS

HOWARD HUGHES

CUBBY BROCCOLI

GEORGE LAZENBY

SIMON DEE

MICHAEL RAMSEY

GEOFFREY FISHER

ROALD DAHL

KINGSLEY AMIS

LORD SNOWDON

BARRY HUMPHRIES

SALVADOR DALÍ

SIGMUND FREUD

GUSTAV MAHLER

AUGUSTE RODIN

ISADORA DUNCAN

JEAN COCTEAU

CHARLIE CHAPLIN

GROUCHO MARX

T.S. ELIOT

QUEEN ELIZABETH THE QUEEN MOTHER

THE DUCHESS OF WINDSOR

Author’s Note

Bibliography

Acknowledgements

Other Books by Craig Brown

Copyright

About the Publisher

IS KNOCKED DOWN BY

Briennerstrasse, Munich

August 22nd 1931

Earlier this year, the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei – the second largest political party in Germany – moved into new offices at Briennerstrasse 45, near Königsplatz. As he approaches his forty-third birthday, its leader, Adolf Hitler, is enjoying success as a best-selling author: Mein Kampf has already sold 50,000 copies. He now has all the trappings of wealth and power: chauffeur, aides, bodyguards, a nine-room apartment at no. 16 Prinzregentenplatz. *His stature grows with each passing day. When strangers spot him in the street or in a café, they often accost him for an autograph.

His new-found sense of self-confidence has made him less sheepish around women. A pretty nineteen-year-old shop assistant named Eva Braun has caught his eye; she works in the shop owned by his personal photographer, Heinrich Hoffmann. He has even begun dating her. Walking along Ludwigstrasse on this bright, sunny day in Munich, what can possibly go wrong?

A few hundred yards away, young John Scott-Ellis is taking his new car for a spin. He failed to distinguish himself as a pupil at Eton College. ‘I had advantages in that I wasn’t stupid and was quite good at most games,’ he remembers, ‘yet I squandered all this because of an ingrained laziness or lack of will … I was a mess … I cheated and felt no remorse and when threatened with the sack – “You have come to the end of your tether,” is what Dr Alington once greeted me with – I always managed to put on a tearful act and wriggle out.’

He has emerged with few achievements to his name. A letter from his father to his mother, written in John’s second year at Eton, reads:

Dear Margot,

I enclose John’s reports. As you will see they are uniformly deplorable from beginning to end … I’m afraid he seems to have all his father’s failings and none of his very few virtues.

Of course we may have overrated him and he is really only a rather stupid and untidy boy but it may be he is upset by the beginning of the age of puberty. But I must say the lack of ambition and general wooliness of character is profoundly disappointing.

Try and shake the little brute up.

Yours

T.

After leaving Eton last year, John went to stay on one of his family’s farms in Kenya (they own many farms there, as well as a hundred acres of central London between Oxford Street and the Marylebone Road, 8,000-odd acres in Ayrshire, the island of Shona and a fair bit of North America too).

It was then decided that he should spend some time in Germany in order to learn a language. In 1931, aged eighteen, he has come to Munich to stay with a family called Pappenheim. He has been in the city for barely a week before he decides to buy himself a small car. He plumps for a red Fiat, which his friends (‘very rudely’) refer to as ‘the Commercial Traveller’. On his first day behind the wheel, he invites Haupt. Pappenheim, a genial sixty-year-old, to join him. Thus, he hopes to find his way around Munich, and to avoid any traffic misdemeanours.

They set off. John drives safely up the Luitpoldstrasse, past the Siegestor. The Fiat is handling well. The test run is a breeze. On this bright, sunny day in Munich, what can possibly go wrong?

While Adolf Hitler is striding along the pavement, John is driving his Fiat up Ludwigstrasse. He takes a right turn into Briennerstrasse. Crossing the road, Hitler fails to look left. There is a sudden crunch.

‘Although I was going very slowly, a man walked off the pavement, more or less straight into my car,’ recalls John. Many drivers, before and since, have used those very same words, often to magistrates.

The pedestrian – in his early forties, with a small square moustache – is down on one knee. John is alarmed, but the man heaves himself to his feet. ‘He was soon up and I knew that he wasn’t hurt. I opened the window and naturally, as I hadn’t a word of German, let Haupt Pappenheim do the talking. I was more anxious about whether a policeman, who was directing the traffic, had seen the incident.’

All is well. The policeman has not noticed, or if he has, he is unconcerned. The man with the little moustache brushes himself down, and shakes hands with John and Haupt. Pappenheim, who both wish him well.

‘I don’t suppose you know who that was?’ says Haupt. Pappenheim as they drive away.

‘Of course I don’t, who is he?’

‘Well, he is a politician with a party and he talks a lot. His name is Adolf Hitler.’