Barbara Skelton - The Outrageous Life of a 20th Century Literary Femme Fatale

In her memoirs, Barbara Skelton described her father Eric as: “A delicate, gentle man with sad brown eyes.” She remembers him as slim but well-built with beautiful hands. “He was honourable and witty, but he had a weak character and no outstanding ability except as a sportsman.” Eric had once played cricket for the Sandhurst 2^nd team. Lieutenant Eric Skelton, was a down-at-heel army officer with a keen and active interest in both cricket - and actresses. He and his brother Dudley had been orphaned at an early age. Eric came into a family inheritance, part of which he spent on visiting Theatres in his youth.  He eventually lost what was left in the Wall Street Crash. Dudley Skelton, like his brother, joined the Army, and was also stationed out in India for a time.

Eric Skelton fell in love with Ada Eveline Williams, a Gaiety Girl in the Theatre, who was said to have possessed eyes that were the same vivid colour as blue hydrangeas.  Eric saw Ada while she was appearing in a production of The Merry Widow in London.  The smitten ‘stage door Johnny’, took a bouquet in for her and they immediately began courting. Barbara described her mother as “Beautiful but not vain” and as someone who “craved admiration but married for money”. 

Eric Skelton and Ada Williams married on 23^rd August 1914 in Twickenham. They first lived in a white clapboard house in Henley upon Thames with a garden that backed onto the river.  The newlyweds spent idyllic days punting – she dressed in a white Edwardian blouse, tight wasted belt, long skirt, and velvet laced up boots, and he in a straw boater, guiding the punt, whilst Ada lay back seductively under her parasol.  

Their daughter, Barbara Olive Skelton was born on 26^th June 1916 in Eton, Buckinghamshire, just before her Mother’s 26^th Birthday. It was a difficult labour with forceps being used as Ada was quite a petite lady. Barbara was given over to a Nanny’s care for most of her early years because Ada was not very maternal. 

The Skelton’s moved around a lot, and leased a succession of houses, before settling in London and producing another daughter, Brenda, in 1922. The family lived in a dark dingy basement flat near Hyde Park. Their dining room looked out onto a yard at the back of the property which was full of dustbins. They could often hear people’s feet jangling on the manhole cover in the street above their sitting room window. 

Their holidays however, were spent at her grandmother’s four-storey semi-detached house in Hythe, Kent which was situated at 42, Marine Parade, directly on the seafront. Her mother’s 4 sisters were often visiting too and the house was usually packed full of people. There was plenty of good home-cooked food, and many picnics, roast dinners, and cream teas. Barbara spent her days playing on the beach or paddling. Her grandparents were simple people without any pretensions.  Her Grandfather Francis had been a postal clerk all his life and enjoyed a game of bowls and growing vegetables in his allotment. Her Grandmother Emily could barely read or write.  In later years their ignorance and questioning irritated Barbara, but as a child she enjoyed staying with them. 

Although she could claim the writer Richard Brinsley Sheridan as one of her distant ancestors, Barbara’s immediate family was very un-literary.  There had been some previous creativity and fame within the family though. Her Grandfather’s sister, Greta Williams was a famous Victorian Opera singer of Danish & Welsh decent, who had studied at the Royal Academy of Music and had sung at the Albert Hall. In her memoirs, Barbara says that Greta had survived the wreckage of the Titanic and kept everyone's spirits up by singing hymns as she was rowed to safety, and was later commended for her bravery. 

My research found that Greta Williams did not feature on the list of survivors of the Titanic - but she CAN be found as survivor of the SS Stella – an equally terrible maritime disaster that happened in 1889, 20 years before the Titanic left on her maiden voyage. The ship sank in just 10 minutes, 15 miles off the coast St Peter Port, Guernsey, when it struck a reef, at full speed, in foggy conditions. Over 77 people drowned and there was lots of press coverage and a public inquiry which Greta gave evidence at. Many years later in 1955, Greta Williams was interviewed by the BBC about her experiences on the SS Stella. 

Barbara Skelton grew up as a headstrong and unruly child. She often screamed for attention when her mother played piano, and even ran at her with a carving knife when she was told she couldn’t have any more roast beef for dinner. Once, when out walking with her father she had to be dragged away by a policeman when she had a tantrum in the street over some baby ducks she had wanted to take home.  When the Irish nursemaid employed by the family, took Barbara and her baby sister Brenda out to the park for picnics, Barbara would take the pram, wander off towards the boating lake, and pinch her baby sister’s legs until she screamed. Barbara and the Nanny would often have physical fights in the Kitchen over her bad behaviour. Her normal punishment was to be locked up in her bedroom for hours, so she could think about her wicked ways.

Her parents thought that Barbara needed some strict discipline, so at the tender age of 4 she was sent away to be a boarder at a local Convent school, even though the family were not catholic. She used to steal the remnants of the Nun’s toast at breakfast time and rub herself up against the wooden tables, pretending she had fallen in a bed of stinging nettles, to get out of lessons.  Barbara developed a crush on another female student, a plain girl called Marjorie. Sometimes Barbara would curl up in Marjorie’s lap in a foetal position or climb into bed with her.  The Nuns saw this behaviour as “precocious Sexuality” and gave her many spankings for it. 

Later she went to Our Lady of Sion Convent School in Chepstow Villas, London. Barbara wore a white silk blouse, a black tunic and sash, with a wide Panama hat.  Barbara excelled at Maths and her father paid extra for her to take piano lessons. She enjoyed drinking the wine at Holy Communion but was never asked to convert to Catholicism. With the money she managed to save, by walking to school instead of taking the bus, she would sometimes play truant and spend the afternoon at the local Cinema watching Greta Garbo films. When her sister Brenda joined the convent, Barbara would make her walk too, then confiscate her sister’s bus fares as well to finance further trips to the flea-pit. 

Sometimes, Barbara’s mother would take the girls to the London Palladium with free tickets she was given by an old admirer, who was The Times Theatre Critic. Every year they would also go to see Barnum’s Circus. Both Brenda and Barbara looked forward to and enjoyed these special outings.

Once she reached puberty, Barbara began to rouge her cheeks and pluck her eyebrows with her mother’s tweezers. She also washed her hair with camomile flowers to lighten it. The nun’s discovered some fake love letters in her desk which she had actually written to herself but signed “Fred”. She was expelled in disgrace. 

Her younger sister Brenda had developed Asthma, so the family moved from the basement into a modern apartment in Baker Street. At the same time, Barbara developed Anorexia and would eat nothing but lettuce leaves and Ryvita crackers. The Doctors recommended exercise as a cure. She would go for long brisk walks, early in the morning, before anyone else was awake, but she still went on starving herself.  In desperation, her father sent her to Ashford High School as a boarder. Like her father, Barbara was good at sports and she enjoyed playing Hockey and netball.  She remained at Ashford until she was fifteen years old. 

During the school holidays she was sent to stay with her Uncle Dudley who was now a Major with the Royal Army Medical Corps. Unlike his weaker brother Eric, her Uncle Dudley was a formidable man and a notorious womanizer, despite having a wife “and young son.  Major Skelton always thought that his brother Eric had married beneath him by choosing a “Gaiety Girl” as his bride. Barbara’s Aunt Nancie on the other hand was a kind, but very puritanical woman who considered even a classic novel like “Jane Eyre” to be immoral for young girls to read.  Unlike her father, Barbara’s Uncle Dudley was rich, and they lived a much more luxurious lifestyle. Every morning, Barbra would be bought a cup of tea and a thin slice of bread and butter by the housemaid. She was allowed to read books in bed until the gong went for breakfast.  Then she would sit down to eat scrambled, poached or fried eggs, with sausage and bacon. In the evenings, everyone dressed for dinner and drank port at the end of the meal.  She would cycle to the local chemist and spent most of her pocket money on Cod Liver Oil, Malt and Beemax which she would mix and secretly drink in her room, to make her vomit. Barbara clearly had an eating disorder before the word Bulima had come into common use. 

Her Uncle tutored Barbara in French and taught her how to play bridge. She also developed a crush on her young cousin Richard, whom she described in her memoirs as being “timid, with twerpy good looks”

Barbara claimed, that sometime during her childhood, another Uncle sexually abused her at her grandmother’s house. Her attractive Aunt Vera had been married to a handsome Armenian called Ivan. Barbara alleged that he came into in to her room one evening and thrust his hand under her nightdress. On another occasion when they were out driving in town, she said that Uncle Ivan asked her to fetch some sweets from inside his pocket, and instead of sticky Bon-Bons, all she could feel was his “warm and slithery” penis. Barbara’s Aunt Vera broke up with Ivan shortly after that, and later became the mistress of a solicitor who was married with children. As he was a catholic, he would not divorce his wife. He and Vera would spend Saturdays illicitly making love in the Imperial Hotel in London and sometimes they would pay a visit the family house at Hythe on Sundays.  Barbara worried about her Aunt’s scandalous situation, but thought she was very glamourous with her sporty cars, heavy make-up, and fashionable clothes. Vera eventually married the Governor of Lagos  - who Barbara says was an argumentative alcoholic - and when he retired, they moved back to live in Hythe.  

Her Father Eric had been stationed out in Barbados when he caught malaria. He was eventually invalided out of the Army after having a heart attack. For the rest of his life he ceased to be very active and was always in delicate health. When he retired, the family moved to Hythe and lived in a house which was next door to Saltwood Vicarage and near a gothic church. He spent his days cursing the Church bells, walking the dog, reading the paper and listening to the news on the radio. The family became virtual hermits and could not go anywhere socially because of Eric’s health.  He always worried about money and her mother, who by now had given up playing the piano, loved talking about her time on the stage, to anyone who would listen. Ada now spent most of her time breeding budgerigars in the aviary. According to Barbara, Ada was also a terrible cook and the family often had sausages and Mash for supper as it was cheap and easy to make. 

Once Barbara left school at fifteen, she was at a loose end and spent most of her time reading books in the woods. She was also acquiring several admirers in the shape of the local post boy and the poultry delivery man. Her father agreed to pay for her accommodation at the YWCA so she could move to London to get a job. 

Her parents had a wealthy friend, a man named Stanley, who had made lots of money in the Margarine Trade, and was a company director at Gooch’s General Department Store in Knightsbridge. He had married another Gaiety Girl that Barbara’s father had once admired. Stanley arranged for Barbara to be taken on in the dress department where she was in charge of folding the garments in tissue paper and putting the prices tags on the clothes in the shop window. Barbara saved her lunch money and would just drink milk in the basement, so she could buy a coat. The head saleslady would sometimes take her to a tea house, and when she realized that the customers preferred to see the clothes on Barbara as opposed to on the hangar, she sent her off to attend a modelling course in Oxford Street.

Barbara felt imprisoned in her small room at the YWCA. She hated the traffic in London, and longed to go home. Sometimes she would take books and go and read in Hyde Park. One afternoon she met a handsome guardsman from the nearby barracks. He approached her and they began talking. He met her there the following day and then invited her to an evening rendezvous. It was at a rather dubious hotel in Leicester Square. Barbara was still a virgin at this point, and despite Champagne being ordered in the room and the constant persistence of the amorous soldier, she did nothing more than ladder her silk stockings on the bed that night. The next day 3 pairs of silk stockings arrived at Gooch’s information desk for her, but Barbara never saw the young man again. 

Her next suitor was a unbelievably handsome Austrian called Peter who claimed to be the secretary to Lady Asquith, and who lived in furnished room in Notting Hill Gate. Again this relationship was only on a platonic level. They would spend time driving in a borrowed car to go riding in Guilford and as his wages were meagre, they only ate cakes. Barbara in an effort to get him into bedroom, lied to him and told him she had been banished from home by her father for getting pregnant after being raped, and having an abortion. This scared him off completely. 

Her only friend in London was a lady named Tina whom she met at the YWCA. Tina taught ballroom dancing at Costalanni’s famous Dancing school in Regent Street and had been bought up in Tientsin where her father had been the Governor. On weekends they would go and clean Tina’s mother’s cottage in Basingstoke to keep busy. Tina introduced Barbara to Mr Costalanni who took her to a greyhound racing track and plied her with “Black Velvet” Champagne and Guinness Cocktails, both of which she hated.

Her father’s best friend - Sidney, the Director who had offered Barbara the job in Gooch’s - would sometimes pick her up in his chauffeur driven car and take her out to dinner at places like Scott’s in Piccadilly, Oddenino’s or The Savoy Grill and afterwards they would watch the cabaret and dance together. She would have to borrow silk evening dresses from her Aunt Vera to wear on these occasions. Sidney was much older – and much smaller - than Barbara but he always dressed impeccably. He owned a house in Grosvenor Square and a Villa in Cannes. His main interests were Golf and business and although he was not promiscuous, he always kept a Mistress as well as a wife and family. On a trip to Brighton with Stanley, Barbara finally lost her virginity at the Albion Hotel, in a move which some said was to spite her father. 

She moved into a new apartment in Crawford Street, which Sidney paid for and furnished with beautiful carpets and velvet curtains. He bought her a piano, and her lessons resumed again. She was given a monthly allowance to spend – half what he gave to his wife – and he bought her expensive furs and ermines to wear. On her birthday he bought her an Avis sports car. They took a chauffeur driven trip around Europe where they stayed in expensive hotel suites and drank Champagne. They saw Josephine Baker at the Folies Bergere, and went to Holland Belgium, France and Italy. They visited Bologna, Rimini and Basle. In Monte Carlo Barbara got a taste for water Skiing. On their way back home to England she became very over-emotional at the Villa D’Este -  and suddenly realized she was pregnant.  

Sidney arranged an abortion for her in a clean and discreet private nursing home and in the company of his ex-mistress, she then went to Reeds Hotel in Madeira to recuperate. While Sidney’s ex-mistress gave Bridge Parties in the Hotel, bored Barbara was out having fun in the countryside with the hotel bandleader.  The ex-mistress urged Barbara to get a life settlement from Sidney but she was as useless in financial matters as her parents had been. Besides, she didn’t want Sidney providing for her future. 

Once back in England, Barbara terminated the affair out of sheer boredom. Sidney, who was a quiet and unemotional man, did not put up a fight. He was a major shareholder at the Wimbledon Tennis Championships and would still send her Centre Court Tickets every year. He also continued to take Barbara out to lunch or dinner occasionally until he married his Irish housekeeper many years later and moved to Ireland to breed horses.  Her father never revealed his thoughts on the affair, but her mother always thought of Sidney as a “swine” for seducing her daughter, and referred to him as “That dirty old man”. 

On 24 Oct 1936 aged just 20, Barbara traveled to India to stay with her Uncle Dudley, who was now a DSO, in charge of the entire Army Medical Service.  She had a 1^st Class ticket on The Viceroy of India. When the ship docked in Marseilles, Prince Farouk, the future King of Egypt, and his mother came on board. When the Ship docked in Alexandria, Prince Farouk was met by crowds of people welcoming his return.  Barbara would meet him again in Cairo a few years’ time and eventually become his lover. 

When she arrived in Bombay, her Uncle Dudley was there to meet her.  After dinner at the air-conditioned restaurant in the Taj Mahal Hotel they went to dance in a nightclub full of sailors. The next morning they had a 4 hour drive to the Hill Station Barracks at Poona. Dudley and Nancie had a White Bungalow covered in Bougainvillea. Barbara had her hair washed by an Ayah who also looked after her clothes and bought her fresh Paw Paws and Limes for breakfast each morning. Every evening Barbara would have to dress for dinner. The first course was always clear soup with croutons and the menu was mostly British food, not Indian. One evening Barbara wore a Red evening dress with a Bolero Jacket which she had bought especially for the trip from a little Boutique in Bond Street before she left England. It closely resembled a Sari and her Aunt was shocked. She held the typical Colonial view that all Indians were inferior and she couldn’t understand why Barbara wanted to dress like them. 

Every night Barbara had to sleep under a mosquito net, and every morning she was woken by the bugle calls from the barracks. Her Uncle Dudley found her a retired racehorse to ride. She would attempt to trot in a lady like manner around the compound but as soon as they left the gate, the horse would suddenly  break into a canter and make a run for the racecourse with Barbara hanging on for dear life, trying not to be thrown off.  For her safety, a riding companion was found for Barbara. Colonel Rice was a fine horseman who taught Barbara how to control the horse better. They would go for long rides into the countryside and villages, returning to the compound at dusk. The horse was still frisky and eventually Barbara gave him up and was presented with a tame leopard as consolation. 

The great social event each week was the Poona Races. Dudley introduced his “beautiful niece from England” to all the Officers. She also spent time down in Bombay with a naval commander whose sister she had met aboard ship. The climate in Bombay was sweltering but Barbara enjoyed cool drinks at the Bombay Yacht Club which was not quite as stuffy and traditional as the “Whites Only” gatherings at Poona. 

One evening, when Dudley had taken his niece to a circus, they had met a young Captain called Charles Langford-Hinde, He was in the Royal Engineers and was backstage admiring the animals. He was invited to lunch in Poona but Barbara’s Aunt disliked him for being “Callow” and for lounging in the chair and talking with a cigarette in his mouth. She also disliked the fact he was clean shaven and that he openly consorted with Indians.  Charles hated the Army and had only joined on a scholarship to please his parents. He loved the poetry of T.S. Eliot and gave his treasured book of poems to Barbara for her 21^st birthday. They would go and have dinner in Poona some evenings, or spend the day picnicking in the countryside with his dog and gramophone.  

When Charles fell ill with dysentery and had to be admitted to hospital, Dudley who was obsessed by cars, decided to take Barbara to Lucknow with him as a co-driver. He was attending a medical conference there. They set off in an open top Citroen and took only one male Sikh servant to help with the luggage. They hardly saw anyone but the occasional holy man. The drive was dusty and hot and if something went wrong with the car, Dudley had to stop and fix it. In the afternoons he would snooze in the back of the car while Barbara drove. Each night they would stay at one of the clean but basic Dak houses that were situated all over India and Barbara would read the letters Charles had sent to her. There were a few frightening moments on the trip. Once Barbara stalled the car in a river, but they were helped by a band of friendly local Indians who pushed the car out again. On another occasion they were driving through the jungle in a rainstorm when a tiger, blinded by the headlights, leapt onto the bonnet of the car. 

Charles eventually came out of hospital and had lost a lot of weight. The Monsoon season was coming and Barbara’s Aunt insisted that she go back to England. They all drove down to Bombay and had a farewell dinner at the Taj Mahal Hotel. Barbara’s Aunt and Charles went down to the docks to see her off the very next morning. Charles accompanied her on board ship and told her they would meet soon, as he was still determined to leave the army. He apparently kissed her before he disembarked. 

The Viceroy of India had left Bombay and was far out to sea when Charles suddenly reappeared in her Cabin. He had decided to become a Stowaway. The cabin steward befriended the couple and secretly bought Charles meals from the kitchen.  They talked about their future plans – they were due to dock at Aden and then hoped to catch a boat to England together. Unfortunately, 3 days into the voyage the Captain received a message from Poona HQ that he had a stowaway on board. Someone on leave had spotted Charles and reported him.  The Captain kindly allowed Charles to stay in Barbara’s cabin until they reached Aden, when he was placed under arrest and taken off the ship. Barbara was ostracised by all the other Anglo -Indian passengers that evening, and had to dine with the steward and the Captain. 

Back in India a court martial was held and Dudley had to give evidence.  Charles thought his recent illness could be used in his defense and he pleaded that he was not altogether responsible for his own actions. He thought he would just be dismissed but he was sent to the North where the British were still fighting the rebels led by the Religious fanatic, the Fakir of Ipi. 

Dudley had already written to his brother Eric back in London. When Barbara finally returned home she was greeted as a total disgrace to the family. She was branded selfish and ungrateful and was told that her Uncle Dudley never wished to set eyes on her again. A few months later Barbara was listening to the radio with her parents when she heard that British troops carrying supplies had been ambushed and killed at the North West Frontier.  There were no survivors. Charles Langford-Hinde was one of the names read out.  After his death, Barbara sadly received the one last letter he had written to her containing photographs of them both on board the ship and a poem he had written for her. 

Back in London she turned her beauty in to profit by modelling for Fortnum and Mason, and Stiebel and Hartnell. She met another model called “Louise” whom she used go out with to the Guinea Pub near Hartnell’s which was frequented by many jockeys and those in the horse racing fraternity.  She met a chap called Beesley who went on to train horses and although she did not sleep with him, she would visit him in Newmarket with her Aunt Vera, and he continued to buy her presents despite the fact that she would not have sex with him. 

Her friend Louise was married to Michael Sevier, a French painter-turned-art-critic for the Evening Standard and they both lived in attic studio in Charlotte Street.  Louise often used to bring home people who amused her for a “pot-luck” meal and consequently their studio was always full of odd bohemian people. One guest, an Austrian called Eugene Ledebur, once gave Barbara his Tyrolean hunting jacket as a present.  Her father loved it, so she gave it to him and he wore it till it fell apart. 

Louise also had a German lover called Olgin who joined the Pioneer Corps at the start of WW2 and owned property in Berlin. One evening when Barbara was out in a bar in London with Olgin and Louise, they were joined by a slightly camp man whom Louise introduced as “Miss Becher” because of his mincing walk. Becher had a brother in the Indian Army and had already heard about the Poona scandal and its sad outcome. 

Becher became Barbara’s first serious suitor and she nicknamed him her “Slave”.  He was good natured and liked to please her. He would take her for dinner in the best restaurants – the Nest in Soho and the 400 in Leicester Square which wasn’t licensed for alcohol after hours. They used to bring their own bottles to the “parties”, which were labelled and marked for use next time they had a reservation. 

She also had a Dutch admirer called Demeester, who wore Pins Nez glasses and flamboyant clothes; He took her to meet his family in Amsterdam. His sister was an artist who was a friend of Herman Goring. Demeester once threatened to jump from the window of Barbara’s flat in a fit of jealousy. 

Barbara also had another admirer who was a traveling salesman who used to visit West Africa. He would often send her postcards. 

The fur stoles which she had kept from her times with Stanley were altered to become fashionable hats and fur collars to compliment Barbara’s coats. For a short while she modelled for the Rahvis Sisters in Berkeley Square but left when they made her wear a wig shaped like earphones. Barbara always considered herself a hopeless model. 

She then worked for the famous Italian designer Schiaparelli, who loved the fact that Barbara’s body conformed to the perfect womanly hourglass figure. Despite sacking Barbara for taking time out to go water skiing in Monte Carlo when she was showing her Autumn Collection, Schiaparelli re-engaged Barbara soon after. Schiaparelli lived with her daughter above her fitting rooms in Upper Grosvenor Street.  All her staff were French apart from one Czechoslovakian tailor and she designed everything herself. When the French designers such as Channel, made wearing all black fashionable, Schiaparelli responded by adding café au lait colours to her black outfits, just to be different. The models were allowed to buy samples cheaply at the end of the season.  Barbara bought a long coat that had been designed for but rejected by Marlene Dietrich.  Schiaparelli’s other models were a tall, chic American called Sally, a tall Danish Girl who was married to Adrian Conan Doyle and fed live mice to her pet snake, and a beautiful Norwegian girl called Gerda who had been a Ziegfield’s Follies Showgirl and reminded Barbara of her own mother. Gerda, like Ada, also thought you should marry for money.

Whilst she was working for Schiaparelli Barbara bought a cottage in Kent for £400. With the outbreak of The Second World War she worked as a truck-driver and secretary.  However, wartime drudgery was not for her and the infamous British spy, Donald Maclean, was the person who sponsored her application to the cipher department of the Foreign Office. 

Posted to the embassy in Cairo, she renewed her acquaintance with, and beguiled King Farouk of Egypt, who told her approvingly that she was "a real minx" and liked to playfully flog her outside the palace, with the cord of his dressing-gown. She said, "I would have preferred a splayed cane." 

For 7 months they had an affair, which they resumed for a 2^nd time in 1950. Barbara described Farouk as a good kisser, but a bad lover. After spanking her, Farouk would “lie on his back like a beached whale”, and, when she got on top of him, it was usually very quickly over. “His penis was tiny, and he adored having it sucked,” she added, “He was the King. He expected service.”

In the later stages of the war, and once again in London, she lived with her new lover, the writer Sir Peter Quennell, who christened her "Baby" and introduced her to their neighbour, Cyril Connolly, founder and editor of Horizon. 

Connolly offered Barbara a compound of qualities. as unusual as it proved attractive. He was corpulent and sexually unappealing, yet a great literary stylist, a one-man show of artistic vanities and unpatriotic aestheticism, a baby tireless in his manipulation of female admirers; and he quickly became the love of her life. They were married in 1950 and spent five turbulent years in "Oak Coffin", the cottage she bought for £400 in Kent.

Instead of a child, they acquired Kupy, a small animal that bit people. It also sat in its hut in the garden eating its tail while, upstairs in his room, a despondent child-like Connolly sucked the sheets on the bed. Other people didn’t often come to the house: for one thing, the Connolly’s couldn’t afford to feed them. The household had a reputation, however, and sometimes Connolly’s friends wanted to see it for themselves.  Ian Fleming's wife Ann, in her malice, arranged for a party of toffs to call in to Barbara’s house for tea: Barbara says in her memoirs:

‘A few days later reports of the visit drifted back. They were all disappointed. They had expected our surroundings to be far more squalid. Kupy had not come out of her hut and bitten someone’s penis and I had not been thoroughly rude to anyone.’

 

In 1952 Connolly was still her husband and on Christmas Day they were invited to lunch by Ian and Anne Fleming. It was not, by her account, a jolly occasion. The company, which included Loelia, Duchess of Westminster, and Peter Quennell, an old flame of hers’, “all appeared smug, confident and spiritless.” The turkey was good, but its sausage meat stuffing was “nasty” and the Brussels sprouts were “soggy”. They listened to the Queen’s speech. “Someone said how middle-class the Royal family were. Cyril told me afterwards that it’s the chic thing to say. The Queen Mother, they said, was the most middle-class of all. The Duchess of W put on a special voice when talking of the lower classes, implying riff-raff or rabble".

 

After the meal, “Ian distributed a collection of sexy mottoes and a dummy Lucky Strike lighter he’d brought from the States; when holding it up to the light and turning a small lever one could see a succession of nude girls.” Conversation at lunch had been about “the inevitable topic… Lucian Freud.” His current girlfriend Caroline, “was severely criticised for looking dirty”. “'She needs a damned good scrub all over,’ Ian said, in his blokey manner."

Presents were distributed. Anne Fleming gave Skelton  Floris soap, talcum powder and eau-de-Cologne. Ian Fleming gave her “a used pencil, a used lighter and a dirty motto”. Connolly and Skelters left as the others settled down to play canasta. 

A couple of days later they went for dinner chez Noel Coward. “The house was like an oven, so that soon people’s eyes began to puff and close. We ate a cold supper of dry chicken, tomato salad tasting of fertilisers, peas like bullets and lettuce with brown edges. Afterwards we played games.”

On an earlier Christmas, they found themselves having dinner with Sir Oswald and Lady Mosley. “The host talking politics without drawing breath; it was like listening to Radio Luxembourg.” Later, “during the fruit course one of the table flaps collapsed and all the port decanters crashed in a heap.” Barbara was accused of kicking it loose because nobody was paying her any attention.

With another year of the four-year marriage to go, people were telling each other that they had already separated. Her former lover, Peter Quennell, eager for bad news, invited her to lunch at the Etoile and asked about her sex life. But that day she didn’t feel like doing Connolly down, so Quennell soon got bored and asked for the bill. While Cyril dined out on their quarrels, his wife, recording the insults day by day in her diary, listed the titles of the books he threw at her in his rage.

The scenes were terrible, yet none of their friends could confidently deny that the Connollys' harsh words did not conceal, or even perversely express, a strong bond of feeling. The marriage ended in 1956 but their love/hate relationship still continued after their divorce. 

Cyril Connelly

‘You must explain to me why Cyril wants still wants Barbara,’ Evelyn Waugh wrote to Ann Fleming in September 1955, a year after Barbara Skelton’s marriage to Cyril Connolly had formally ended. ‘It’s not as though she were rich or a good housekeeper or the mother of his children.’ The following year Edmund Wilson asked Connolly, now two years into his divorce, why he didn’t get someone else. ‘I’m still on the flypaper,’ Connolly replied. ‘I’ve got most of my legs loose, but I haven’t yet quite got off.’ 

A few months later Skelton married her next husband, George Weidenfeld.  Connolly took to his bed, where his ex-wife, according to Wilson, sometimes brought him a bowl of soup. It was very like Connolly to still retain an interest in his wife once he had lost her and very like his ex-wife to keep a man in hand when the one she wanted was still in the bush. 

Everyone had expected their marriage to be a total disaster.  It was and it wasn’t.  

 ‘Saturday was the gayest day of the week. ‘’ In the morning they shopped, then they had lunch, and then they quarreled. After that, they did some more shopping, went to the cinema, had supper and quarreled again. 

Even more than quarreling, they enjoyed making plain their dislike of each other. ‘Seeing some red wine all over his face, I say: “What have you got all over your face?” “Hate,” says Cyril.’ On another occasion he is lying half-naked on the bed. ‘Is there anything you want?’ she asks him. ‘That you will drop down dead - That’s all I wish - that you will drop down dead.’ 

At Christmas she went to Fortnum’s to buy her husband a present and purposely chose something she knew he wouldn’t like.

With preparation for her first novel, A Young Girl's Touch (1956), she became involved with the publisher George Weidenfeld, whose hirsute body she later described to the world and whom she treated somewhat harshly: "There was hardly any pleasure in his company except for the instinctive animal desire to be with one's mate." When the Connolly’s divorced, Weidenfeld was cited as co-respondent and soon afterwards became Barbara's second husband, only again to seek divorce, with her ex-husband Connolly this time cited as the co-respondent.

This amorous carousel was the talk of the drawing-rooms of higher Bohemia, but Barbara's third marriage in 1966 to the Nuclear physicist and Jockey, Derek Jackson, millionaire son of the founder of the News of the World, went largely unremarked, despite her admission that it was "not for love that I married Professor Jackson". Jackson had six wives but was bisexual, or, as he put it, “I ride under both rules”. That union also foundered but alimony brought security and some measure of stability and, apart from an interval in New York, Barbara divided most of the remainder of her life between properties in Paris and Provence.

Her literary works include a volume of short stories, 1966's Born Losers, two volumes of memoirs, 1987's Tears Before Bedtime and 1989's Weep No More, as well as two novels, a Young Girl's Touch (1956) and A Love Match (1969).

Tears Before Bedtime and Weep No More were first published separately in 1987 and 1989; they then appeared in one paperback volume in 1993.

As Jeremy Lewis, her literary executor, puts it these memoirs 'combine waspishness and wit in equal measure. She had a keen eye for the absurd, and a ruthless ability to skewer friends and foes alike with an exact and colourful turn of phrase.

Novelist Anthony Powell described her books as 'Uniquely savage memoirs of rackety highbrow life ... One feels Balzac is the novelist who would best do justice to all this in fictional form.' 

'Provides some of the funniest reading I can remember.' This was Auberon Waugh’s view in the Independent.

'The two volumes together make a memorable portrait. She deserves to have her likeness preserved and by a writer as good as herself.' Frank Kermode, The Guardian 

A Young Girl's Touch was Barbara Skelton's first novel published in 1955. Melinda Paleface, bearing a more than passing resemblance to the author, is a heart-throb: a high official in the Foreign Service, a French sailor, two English captains, an American airman, even the celebrated native King, Yoyo of Jubaland fall under her spell. And yet, among the other girls in the cypher department she is, as the original blurb, said 'as quiet as an Amanita in a basket of mushrooms ...' 

Again to quote from the original blurb, 'Barbara Skelton reveals herself as a buoyant satirist, a mistress of the picaresque, a fresh and original humourist who casts a vivid and haunting life on the problem of men and women.'

A Love Match, Barbara Skelton's second novel published in 1969, had a brief life, falling foul of a libel threat by a former friend, and for a long time was very scarce.

Beneath its surface mood of black double-dealing, what makes this book more diverting than painful is the amused unblinking eye the author brings to bear on an unusually wide range of characters.

Born Losers - published in 1965 - is a collection of short stories.

'Miss Skelton's twelve stories are sharp and stark and have an almost maniacal lucidity. Her Born Losers are mostly orphans of Manhattan ... Miss Skelton takes one from the purple darkness of Harlem to Mexico City, to the London Zoo and the Cote d'Azur, on a wild schizophrenic slide. She describes the meaningless sex battle with zest and accuracy. Her humour is alarming but never malicious. Here are twelve quite shocking little stories, cute as mad midgets, about Gloomsville. Nutty, as they say, as a fruit cake ... Her book cannot be recommended to the frail and fearful.' John Davenport, Observer

Skelton was obviously exceptionally attractive and had numerous lovers in high Bohemia. In her lifetime she also had affairs with English film star Anthony Steel, the artist Feliks Topolski, Charles Addams, Osbert Lancaster, Bernard Frank, John Sutro, and Alan Ross.

Novelist Anthony Powell used her as the basis for Pamela Flitton, a character in his novel sequence A Dance to the Music of Time. Powell also wrote a critical essay on Skelton, included in the collection Miscellaneous Verdicts.

Some women are different things to many men but Barbara Skelton seemed to be the same with all of her lovers. At first sight she was kittenish, amusingly troublesome, and irresistibly attractive. Only later did it emerge what a challenging woman she could be: selfish, sulky, socially unmanageable, agreeable only when she was in the mood - the victim of the incurable boredom which fostered her promiscuity and her notorious rudeness. 

Indeed, although she cited Erich von Stroheim as representing her physical ideal, and although she extended her affections to both a king and a policeman, reflecting all the while that "sex is a great leveller", Skelton was happiest tormenting writers and artists. Alan Ross, editor of the London Magazine, Bob Silvers, founder of the New York Review of Books, the journalist John Raymond, the cinephile John Sutro and the painter Michael Wishart, were all at one stage ensnared. Kenneth Tynan told her, "Sex means smack and beautiful means bottom and always will"; and there was even a lesbian encounter one bored Paris afternoon, but Barbara said "I just saw her as another man with breasts."

Yet, whatever their tastes and accomplishments, these suitors had to take her as they found her. She declined to accommodate and scorned well-bred dissimulation; her rudeness was a function of her honesty and it was this restless candour that imparted vitality and persuasiveness to her other career as a novelist and auto biographer.

Unable to have children, she adopted instead a menagerie of exotic pets and abandoned fiction in favour of memoirs. Tears Before Bedtime (1987) and Weep No More (1989) constitute an engaging literary achievement, not so much as chronicles of their time, but as comic and cruel self-portraits recounted in a random, devil-may-care tone appropriate to their insouciant heroine and her adventures. If she is unsparing of the famous friends and enemies she made, she is no more romantic about herself. And although her books are almost depressing, they are also very funny. Had she done nothing but render Cyril Connolly as a great comic archetype she would still deserve literary recognition.

In 1993, to some consternation, she returned to London and lived in a flat above the King's Road with two Siamese cats. She was interviewed for a book and was a strangely disturbing hostess who complained incessantly about money and resented London, whither she had returned to be near her friends, "although you may think I don't have many left here, either". There seemed to be complicity between herself and her predatory pets, and, like familiars, they shared their mistress's eyes, which were not only the most beautiful, huge, lavender- hued and lozenge-shaped ones, but also seemed to be so penetrating as to reduce everything in their range to translucency.

Jeremy Lewis, biographer of Cyril Connolly knew Barbara Skelton only in the final years before her death in 1996, but he got to know her well. A woman of great beauty and multiple talents, she made quite an impression.

Connolly was her first husband, she his second wife, and their marriage had been both brief and turbulent. They lived together in a tiny cottage in Kent: his morale was at low ebb, and - much to her annoyance - he spent long hours lying in bed sucking the sheets and repeating ‘Poor Cyril, poor Cyril’ over and over again.

Matters were not improved by her pet coatimundi, which dug up his precious shrubs and smashed his Sevres porcelain; and when, in due course, Barbara ran off with his new publisher, George Weidenfeld, his rage and sorrow knew no bounds.

Barbara had conceived an all-consuming passion forthe great publisher, who became her second husband: but their marriage proved a wretched affair, with Weidenfeld urging her, in her capacity as a publisher’s wife, to ‘gush’ over important authors, and objecting strongly when her cat pee’d in the grate of his Belgravia flat and clawed the furniture.

Skelton was a very funny novelist and short story writer, albeit one who - as her publishers soon discovered - was liable to libel friends and enemies alike.  

Barbara retained all her allure, and still had the figure of a woman half her age when in her 70’s. She flirted incessantly, as befitted the best-known literary femme fatale of her day, but if someone gave her a chaste peck on the cheek she went rigid, as though she had been plugged into the mains. She sulked dreadfully if anyone failed to ring her when promised, but the all-important thing was to make her laugh her contagious silvery laugh, after which all would be - momentarily - plain sailing. She was funny, alarming, well-read and disconcertingly sharp and perceptive. 

Decay, when it came, was sudden, with a brain tumour, and in her last days she was nursed by Cyril Connolly's daughter, Cressida. She died in Worcestershire from brain cancer, aged 79 on 27 January 1996.The Daily Mail said in her obituary that "Barbara Skelton was England's most notorious — and certainly most monstrous — grande horizontale femme fatale of her time”