' Vickers allows Beaton to come alive in his own era; and forces us to conclude that, for all his snobbery and insecurity, here was a man determined to savour his life, and satisfy his ever quizzical eye' Philip Hoare, TLSCecil Beaton was at the very heart of the Swinging Sixties - contributing to VOGUE and surrounded by the rich, the famous and the beautiful. He travelled aboard Cécile de Rothschild's yacht with Garbo, his former lover. He visited Picasso at his home, the Rolling Stones in Marrakech and Andy Warhol in New York. He met Peter Sellers, Paul Getty and the young David Hockney. Filled with his characteristic waspish wit, the diaries Beaton wrote during these years reveal his fascination with the younger generation as they broke down boundaries just as he and his friends had done in the 1920s.