I was never able to talk to my father about his cancer, or to say goodbye
Losing his father as a child had a big impact on Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen. The interior designer tells GABRIELLE FAGAN how he’s determined those lessons won’t be in vain
IT was “a dark, complicated time”, is how Laurence Llewelyn Bowen describes the trauma of his father’s rapid death from blood cancer.
His mother Patricia, a teacher battling multiple sclerosis and struggling to walk, subsequently had to fight to keep the family – nineyear-old Laurence and his younger brother and sister – together.
“It sounds as though I was brought up in some Dickensian novel, but it wasn’t like that at all,” insists the flamboyant style guru, now 54.
Today, Laurence – who shot to fame on TV’s Changing Rooms in the Nineties and has forged a hugely successful interior design career – is as confident, open and charming in real life as he is on screen.
He was only eight when his father Trevor, an eminent Harley Street orthopaedic surgeon, was diagnosed with leukaemia at Christmas time in 1973. He died seven months later in July, 1974, aged 42.
In his new role as ambassador for the national Make Blood Cancer Visible campaign, Laurence is speaking out about the “huge impact” of his father’s death, to help raise awareness of symptoms and treatment for a cancer which, he points out, claims more lives than breast or prostate cancer.
“I wouldn’t want any other child to go through what me and my family went through,” he says.
He vividly remembers that Christmas 45 years ago, when unbeknown to him, his father’s cancer had taken a hold.
“My father was very successful and worked incredibly hard to create the ‘perfect life’ for his family, but it meant we didn’t see much of him,” he says.
“I’d so looked forward to the holiday to spend time with him, and look back with some guilt now to think how grumpy and sulky I was, and not a very nice son because he wasn’t well. I just felt so disappointed and cheated of rare special time with him.”
He and his siblings only saw their father twice more before he died.
“In those days, there was something almost shameful about being diagnosed with cancer – it was a death sentence and people were expected to shuffle away into a dark corner and that was it,” he explains.
His father spent his time in hospital or a hospice.
“His illness wasn’t discussed, so it was a period of such silence and remoteness. Apart from knowing he was very sick, we children didn’t understand what was going on.
“Not only that, other people around us didn’t understand about blood cancers, nor had they heard of leukaemia.”
On the day of his father’s death, he recalls arriving home elated because he’d won a medal in a Royal Academy national children’s painting competition.
“When I got in, my mother gathered us together and told us he’d died. She’d warned us he was dying two days before. I was never able to talk to my father about what was happening, or to say goodbye. I have a horrible feeling my father didn’t want to burden me with that goodbye.”
He believes the approach was well-intentioned but “quite a Victorian way to minimise our distress by allowing my father, as he dwindled, simply to disappear slowly from our lives and slide into the realms of memory. We children didn’t go to the funeral,” he adds.
The “gap” left by his father was huge, he says, and Laurence compensated by immersing himself in his father’s library.
“He was interested in mythology, heraldry, castles and costume. He had a collection of encyclopaedias from the 1930s, which I still have, and they captured my imagination,” he says, crediting them as formative grounding for his later work in design.
He’s categoric that, although there were moments of great sadness in his childhood, positivity prevailed thanks to the enormous strength and courage of his mother, who died aged 70 in 2002.
“She had to be very strong to keep us together because as a relatively immobile disabled widow, Social Services were concerned she wouldn’t cope with three children. It was a very real threat that we’d be taken away from her.
“She went back to work as a teacher and although we didn’t ever have much money, we survived,” Laurence says proudly.
“It was a complicated period, but I don’t think it damaged me. It showed me very early on that there is a fragility to everything we take for granted.
“You have to appreciate what you’ve got.”
Laurence believes the “turbulence and that difficulty galvanised” him into making the most of his life and forging his design career.
He points out: “You often find children who have faced something big in their childhood can be empowered and energised by it. I think that was the case with us. My sister and brother were successful very early in their careers.
“I think my father’s legacy and my mother’s was giving me a very strong sense of wanting to get on with things, to be decisive, optimistic and to find a creative solution to every difficulty.”
A regular on BBC’s DIY SOS, Laurence is driven to make people more aware of blood cancers so symptoms can be recognised quickly.
“The earlier you catch it, the better are your chances of surviving,” he urges. “If you pick up on symptoms and check it out with a GP, there are hugely improved treatments out there.”
LAURENCE Llewelyn-Bowen is the official celebrity ambassador for the 2019 Make Blood Cancer Visible campaign. For details see makebloodcancervisible.co.uk
In those days cancer was a death sentence. People were expected to shuffle away into a dark corner and that was it.
Laurence says people didn’t understand his father’s illness