Two Sevgali School Girls

1922–1974

Diaries, 1922–1974

Six volumes of his diaries, spanning the years 1922–1974, are published in his lifetime. According to Hugo Vickers, who edited a fuller edition, opinions in the published volumes are softened, whereas in the originals Beaton can be truly venomous.

1924

First photograph in British Vogue

A portrait of the academic George “Dadie” Rylands as Webster’s Duchess of Malfi, taken at Cambridge, appears in British Vogue; it earns a modest fee and marks the start of his professional life in photography. As a boy he had learned the basics of shooting and developing film from his nanny, who owned a Kodak 3A, and he would send his pictures to society magazines under a pen name, “recommending” the work of Beaton.

after 1925

Book jackets, costumes and Paul Tanqueray’s studio

After leaving university he briefly works on book-jacket designs and theatrical costumes and learns photography in Paul Tanqueray’s studio. A short spell in the family timber business and then with a cement merchant in Holborn came down to weekend bouts of photography, and he decided to strike out on his own.

1925

Leaves Cambridge without a degree

He studied history, art and architecture at St John’s College with little or no interest in academic work, and leaves without taking a degree; before that he had attended Heath Mount School (where Evelyn Waugh bullied him), St Cyprian’s School in Eastbourne, where his artistic talent was quickly noticed, and Harrow.