The peer Colin Tennant, Lord Glenconner, died on August 27th. His obituary appeared in the Grauniad yesterday, and provoked some comment at the breakfast table. He once owned the Caribbean island of Mustique, and gave a house there to Princess Margaret. His life is the epitome of loucheness: his title and money came from hereditary stakes in the chemical industry, but his interests varied from landownership to Scottish National politics to where he seems to have ended up, as the owner of a restaurant and rum shop in the rain forests of St. Lucia in the Caribbean. The Independent obituary is even more illustrative of his native eccentricity.
The comment was provoked by the accompanying picture. As it’s copyrighted and owned by Getty Images, I don’t believe I should try to download or use it. However, I suppose a link is sufficient to give a flavour of what the man seems to have been like. The noble lord is sitting in a wicker chair, shaded by an ornate umbrella held by a nearly bare-chested and barefoot man of colour. The noble lord’s left arm is supported on the knees of a man of colour who is sitting to his side. I cannot begin to describe how wrong this is.
I was interested and disappointed that this picture that was printed in the dead-tree version of the Grauniad was not included in the online version. I presume that Getty Images wasn’t keen on it being reproduced online in that way. That’s why I’m friends-locking this post, in case their sniffers are looking around, like St. Peter’s devil-lion, for someone to devour.
Was he gay?
He was married, and had three sons and two daughters. As with all that “Margaret Set”, it is doubtful that he was not personally acquainted with the other side of the bed. His son Henry was gay, and died of AIDS in the early 1990’s. But I would say that he was not gay.
Being married with children is no proof that anyone is not gay.
I like that picture. He looked like he has a nice body under the long white cotton shirt. So did the 2 young black men. (how do you know one is a woman?) Do you think there’s a XXX version?
Being married with children is no proof that anyone is not gay.
No shit, Sherlock.
I think that if he were gay, or bisexual even, the fact would have been noted in his obituary. There wasn’t a hint of it. These people’s lives were an open book to the members of their “set”. If he were gay they would all have known about it.
I have changed my opinion and the text in the post. From the description of the photo on the site, I agree that the second person is a man or a teenager. So, point taken.
I do not think there is an “XXX” version. Again, as members of the aristocracy (remember, he was a particular friend of Princess Margaret) these people were quite careful in how they were photographed in public. I don’t included being “papped” in this but all the pictures I’ve seen of him while looking for that particular one in the archives were relatively dignified. That is why he disinherited his eldest son—he was a heroin addict and a notorious one, and being notorious for heroin use wasn’t done in that particular stratum of people.
Actually I think both his colored companions are males, one older and the other a boy.
To me, the picture looks more like a staged photoshoot than one that captured ‘a-day-in-the-life-of’ the man. None of his servants look like they were made to stand at attention or the result of an ongoing slave trade.
I wouldn’t find it terribly offensive, although the indication of a master-servant concept in any picture would be somewhat questionable no matter the race. Yet if you were to treat it as an artistic or fashion shot, it’s absolutely fine. Dunhill and Chanel has also previously featured their caucasian models posing in the midst of african tribes.
Although like you said, to use this as an obituary picture… I’m not sure it’s appropriate. The bigger question is who was the one who selected this shot, and who from the publication okay-ed it. What kind of story were they trying to tell about this man, and is it actually accurate of who he was?
I have changed the post to reflect that the other person is probably a boy.
I do not deny that it’s a staged photoshoot. However, the flavour of master/slave that the photo exudes is just not on, in my opinion.
If you read the Independent obituary that I linked to above, written by his biographer, you probably get more of the English eccentricity that seems to have characterised this gentieman.
I think I know why you find the photo so objectionable. I doubt it carries similar connotation, or that heavy a burden in UK. Does it? I find it simply picturesque. All 3 men were/are beautiful in their own ways.
It’s all speculations how people of that strata conduct their lives and/or want to be seen. I don’t think anyone outside that class will know.
It looks like a master with two of his slaves. That’s objectionable in and of itself, whether they were slaves or not.
There is enough literature and reporting about people like that so that hoi polloi like me know approximately what their lives are like.
That image is so impossibly homoerotic, I don’t know where to begin!