Cecil Beaton: The Eastbourne Schooldays of a Style Icon

The Eastbourne schoolboy

Cecil Walter Hardy Beaton was born in Hampstead, north London, in 1904, the son of a prosperous timber merchant. After an unhappy start at a Hampstead prep school — where he was famously bullied by a young Evelyn Waugh — he was sent to board at St Cyprian’s School in Eastbourne, where his artistic talent was quickly recognised. Fellow pupils long remembered him: both the writer Cyril Connolly and the golf writer Henry Longhurst recalled being captivated by the beauty of Beaton’s singing at the school concerts.

His love of photography was sparked in childhood by his nanny, who owned a simple camera and taught him the basics of taking and developing pictures. The young Beaton pressed his mother and sisters into service as models, and — showing an early flair for self-promotion — began sending his photographs off to London society magazines. He thus belongs to that astonishing roll call of St Cyprian’s old boys that also includes George Orwell and Cyril Connolly.

A dazzling rise

From Eastbourne, Beaton went on to Harrow and then to Cambridge, which he left in 1925 without a degree but with a burning ambition. His first photograph appeared in British Vogue in 1924, and his career took off through the mid-1920s. He became a favourite chronicler of the “Bright Young Things”, the glittering, rebellious set of 1920s and ’30s high society, and a staff photographer for Vogue and Vanity Fair on both sides of the Atlantic. His theatrical, elegant style — Irving Penn later spoke of “the Beaton woman” — helped define the glamour of the age.

Royal photographer and war photographer

By the late 1930s Beaton had become a favoured photographer of the British Royal Family, producing famous portraits of Queen Elizabeth (later the Queen Mother), who became his favourite royal sitter. He also took the wedding photographs of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor. Then came the war, and a striking change of register: working for the Ministry of Information, Beaton became a leading war photographer, known especially for his images of the Blitz, and travelled as far as the Middle East and China. This work broadened him from a society portraitist into a photographer of real range and depth.

Please note: Beaton’s long career was not without controversy — in 1938 he was dismissed by American Vogue after inserting antisemitic wording into an illustration, an episode that remains a genuine stain on his record. It’s mentioned here in the interest of an honest, rounded picture.

Oscars and the stage

After the war, Beaton conquered a new field: theatre and film design. He created sets, costumes and lighting for Broadway and the West End, and his designs for the stage musical My Fair Lady (1956) led to two triumphant Hollywood films. He won three Academy Awards — for the costumes of Gigi (1958) and both the costumes and art direction of My Fair Lady (1964) — along with several Tony Awards. Across his career his camera captured seemingly everyone who mattered, from Greta Garbo and Audrey Hepburn to Marilyn Monroe, the Rolling Stones and Twiggy. “Be daring, be different, be impractical,” he once urged — advice he followed to the letter.

Legacy

Knighted in 1972, Sir Cecil Beaton died in 1980, leaving behind not only a vast body of photographs and designs but also six celebrated volumes of diaries chronicling the social and cultural life of his times. His influence on fashion and portrait photography is still felt today. And it all began, in part, at a prep school on the edge of the Eastbourne Downs, where a talented, theatrical boy was first encouraged to shine.

Cecil Beaton and Eastbourne: FAQs