Meet Garech Browne, the Guinness heir whose father raised pigs in their drawing room. And Gavin Pretor-Pinney, founder of the Cloud Appreciation Society. Tim Walker captures a cross section of proud standard-bearers in Britain’s long tradition of eccentricity. Related article: In “England Made Them,” Christopher Hitchens explains why his native land often seems like one big Monty Python skit.
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Otis Ferry poses, in pinks, with foxhounds at the keeper’s cottage in the village of Eaton Mascott. He is master of the hounds for the village, and a critic of Britain’s ban on foxhunting.
Model, artist, and former trapeze performer Iris Palmer at Mill Hill Farm, in Upper Slaughter, Gloucestershire.
Actor John Hurt—known for his eccentric roles, such as Quentin Crisp in The Naked Civil Servant—in Bloomsbury.
The members of Clinic, a Liverpool band, who never reveal their faces, at Eglingham Hall Farm, in Northumberland.
Lady Isabella Cawdor with three of her four children, Eleanor, Jean, and James, at Carnoch, Invernesshire, in the Scottish Highlands.
Vivienne Westwood, unconventional fashion designer, in the old Camden Palace, in London
Guinness heir Garech Browne at Luggala, the family estate in County Wicklow, Ireland, where he has put white sand around his black lake so that it resembles a glass of Guinness.
Nomadic Jaguars in the Cheviot Walk, Northumberland.
Artist Peter Armstrong at his Brixton flat, which is wallpapered with clippings from newspapers and magazines.
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And I am nothing of a builder, but here I dreamt I was an architect
And I built this balustrade to keep you home, to keep you safe from the outside world
Model and Devonshire descendant Stella Tennant poses in homage to her great-uncle Stephen Tennant (a lover of poet Siegfried Sassoon’s).
The Marquis of Bath, with crocodile, at his estate, in Longleat, Wiltshire.
Snowfall in the summer at Eglingham Hall, in Northumberland, owned by the Bewicke family.
An homage to Banksy, the political graffiti artist whose face remains unknown, in Chipping Norton, Oxon.
Charlie the Penguin stands among portraits of the Marquis of Bath at Longleat, his Wiltshire estate.
Artist Grayson Perry—here in West London—wore a crinoline dress to accept the 2003 Turner Prize, which he won for his pottery; he and his wife, psychotherapist Philippa Fairclough, have one daughter.
Three Guinness heirs (seated) in the Blue Room of Leixlip Castle, their ancestral home, in County Kildare, Ireland—Tom Guinness, Jasmine Guinness, and Violet Ogden—flanked by family friends and neighbors Georgina O’Hagan and Poppy Lloyd.
Patrick Wolf, surrounded by the cygnets of the Ballet West in the Stag Ballroom of the Mar Lodge Estate, in Braemar, Scotland.
Gavin Pretor-Pinney, founder of the Cloud Appreciation Society and author of The Cloudspotter’s Guide, on a Bloomsbury rooftop, London.
__________________
And I am nothing of a builder, but here I dreamt I was an architect
And I built this balustrade to keep you home, to keep you safe from the outside world