Nicky Samuel: My Life and Loves

When beautiful heiress Nicky Samuel (1951-2019) left school at the age of 16, she was caught up in the world of Sixties London.

Her 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, Roger Vadim, Bob Dylan, Keith Richards, and Robert Mapplethorpe.

At nineteen, Nicky became a fashionable hostess. She was photographed by Norman Parkinson for Vogue; and her close friends included Mick and Bianca Jagger, Christopher Gibbs, David Hockney, Anita Pallenberg 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 superficially glamorous life to which many star-struck and celebrity-hungry people aspire; this memoir is also a uniquely vivid experience of a vanished world.