TWO GIRLS BY PUBLICAN’S DAUGHTER
BERnaRDInE CovERLEy was 16 when she met Freud in a bar in Soho in 1959. The daughter of Irish Catholic parents who ran a pub in Brixton, she attended boarding school from the age of four. When she was 15 her parents moved back to Ireland but she headed to London where she met Lucian. The artist first painted her aged 17 and pregnant with Bella, in 1961’s Pregnant Girl. He was 37 and had been married twice. They never lived together. at 60, she went to Mexico to work in an orchid nursery, an experience she turned into a book. She died aged 68, four days after Freud’s death. 1. The Fashionista BElla FrEud is owner of the eponymous fashion label and designer of the must-have ‘1970’ jumper — a block-coloured sweater emblazoned with the number 1970, beloved of Kate Moss and alexa Chung. Her london shop sells expensive clothing — and a perfume called Psychoanalysis.
She saw little of her father until she was about 11. at 16, Bella left school and moved in with rose Boyt, her halfsister, in london, and began sitting for her father.
‘i sat nude for two paintings, which was strangely unembarrassing. as soon as you’ve got your clothes off, you forget about them,’ she said. at the age of 21, Bella fell in love with italian playboy dado ruspoli. He was 58. His hedonism inspired the seminal Sixties film la dolce Vita. He was also an opium addict who introduced Bella to his habit. ‘it was lovely,’ she said. ‘opium, for all its faults, was a lovely drug; very gentle.’ Back in london, she launched her fashion label and in 1993 met James Fox. He was the author of white Mischief, a novel about dissolute expats in Kenya’s Happy Valley which was made into a film starring Charles dance. Bella and Fox married in 2001 and have a 16-year-old son. This week, the Mail’s Sebastian Shakespeare diary revealed she dumped Fox and is now dating 34year-old artist toy-boy Taz Fustok, almost 40 years younger than her husband. Just the latest move in this very complicated, and Freudian, family saga. 2. The Novelist BEST-SEllinG novelist Esther Freud, 54, is married to actor david Morrissey, 53, star of the BBC TV series The Missing, and famous for his portrayal of a youthful Gordon Brown in the TV drama The deal.
They have three children aged 22, 19 and 13 and live in Highgate, north london. when aged four, her mother took her and her sister travelling.
Their adventures in Morocco were the basis for her novel Hideous Kinky, which was made into a film starring Kate winslet. Her books include The Sea House, Mr Mac and Me, and the coming-of-age novel love Falls.