For anyone with an interest in the tumultuous period of social History generally described as ‘The Sixties’ but actually not  beginning for most people outside London until 1968, and then extending well into the 1970s, Richard Perceval Graves has ghost-written the life of beautiful heiress Nicky Samuel (1951-2019) who became part of that world from 1959, and who paints remarkable pictures of many of its leading figures.

Nicky’s first job was with Yoko Ono, and she soon fell in love with the owner of the fashionable hippy boutique ‘Granny Takes a Trip’, Nigel Waymouth, whom she married and with whom she later attended the legendary Isle of Wight Pop Concert. She spent time with celebrities such as Andy Warhol, Jane Fonda, Bob Dylan, Keith Richards, and Robert Mapplethorpe.

At nineteen, Nicky became a fashionable hostess. She was photographed by Norman Parkinson for Vogue; and her friends included Mick and Bianca Jagger, Christopher Gibbs, David Hockney, and the eccentric, reclusive heroin addict John Paul Getty Jr. Her marriage broke up when she became involved in a passionate menage-a-trois involving the film-director Donald Cammell.

In 1974, Nicky married homosexual jewellery designer, New York socialite and fortune-hunter Kenneth Jay Lane. Her social success was such that she was featured as a ‘New Beauty’ by Time Magazine. However, she became so unhappy and drug-addicted that she attempted suicide in the London Ritz. Nicky’s is exactly the kind of  glamorous life to which many star-struck and celebrity-hungry people aspire; this memoir is also a uniquely vivid experience of a vanished world.

Richard Perceval Graves has also produced a website about the Sixties/Seventies that you can find here: