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.

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.

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.