Now naughty Naim sparks bids for ladies in the buff...
HE HIRED a young Nigella Lawson and was one of the most flamboyant and fascinating figures in the literary world. Now, the spectacular £400,000 treasures of the late Naim Attallah are to go under the hammer at Sotheby’s. The Quartet Books publishing tycoon, who died in February aged 89, was known for his love of beautiful women, so it’s no surprise the collection includes 13 nude paintings.
Young women employed by him, often encouraged to wear miniskirts and stilettos, remember the imposing sight of the naked paintings. Writer Anna Pasternak, who worked for him in her first job aged 21, reminisces about ‘his paintings of nudes — which I remember hanging in his office’. Other lots at next week’s sale include a (clothed) portrait of Attallah and much of the dazzling jewellery he was often spotted wearing as he paraded around the Groucho Club. He was the driving force behind Asprey, the Queen’s jewellers.
Attallah’s ‘harem’ of aristocratic girls included well-bred figures such as Winston Churchill’s granddaughter Emma Soames, Lady Cosima Fry and Virginia Bonham-Carter. Some were encouraged to wear rubber dresses for launches.
‘No one had a contract at Quartet,’ Pasternak tells me. ‘We were paid a pittance to turn up to parties in mandatory miniskirts.
‘One of Attallah’s most scandalous publications was Naked London, published in 1987, which featured aristocratic beauties such as Sabrina Guinness, Andrea von Stumm and Sophia Sackville-West.
But he also took a chance on more weighty periodicals, including The Oldie and Literary Review.