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John Hervey, 7th Marquess of Bristol, ‘John Bristol’

‘My mother’s husband was a wonderful stepfather to me…he used to take me hunting.’

‘It was normal, during the high days of the late 1980s and early 1990s, that John should feast on cocaine, grab a shotgun and repeatedly fire it into the air whilst howling abuse at those members of the public who had paid to visit Ickworth’s gardens (“****ING PEASANTS, ****ING NATIONAL TRUST”), and just as normal that those lunching with him should scarcely stir (“we just carried on: it was routine”). It soon seemed normal that his movements should become jerkier, “his appearance sinister, his hair longer and oilier”; normal that he should have “five suits made each week in materials more suited to soft furnishings”; that he should entertain “frantically, seven days a week, as though he could not bear his own company”. It was normal that disdain for the fuel gauge should send the Hughes 500 plummeting from the sky into a ploughed field, as it did with Angela Barry onboard (“Where’s the ****ing telephone?” shrieked John, on reaching the nearest farmhouse, through which he stamped mud, oblivious of its owners); normal that a visitor (George Milford Haven) should be greeted by the news that John had blown the door off the fridge the night before (courtesy of the shotgun once more); normal that he should shatter furniture at Ickworth, much of it of little consequence…though some of it precious if not priceless’

→ Edward Fitzgerald
→ Victor Hervey
→ Angus Montagu