Philip de László

Philip Alexius de László, MVO (30 April 1869 Budapest - 22 November 1937 London) was a Hungarian painter known particularly for his portraits of royal and aristocratic personages.

László was born in Budapest as Laub Fülöp Elek (Hungarian style with the surname first), the eldest son of a Jewish tailor. The family changed its name to László in 1891.

As a young man, László apprenticed to a photographer while studying art, eventually earning a place at the National Academy of Art, where he studied under Bertalan Székely and Károly Lotz. He followed this with studies in Munich and Paris. László's portrait of Pope Leo XIII earned him a Grand Gold Medal at the Paris International Exhibition in 1900.

In 1903 László moved from Budapest to Vienna. In 1907 he moved to England. He remained based in London for the rest of his life while traveling the world to fulfill commissions.

László's patrons awarded him numerous honors and medals. In 1909 he was named an honorary Member of the Royal Victorian Order by King Edward VII of the United Kingdom. In 1912 he was ennobled by King Franz Joseph of Hungary; his surname became "László de Lombos". The family later shortened the name to "de László".

László became a British citizen in 1914 but was interned for over twelve months in 1917 and 1918 during the First World War.

László suffered a heart attack in 1936. The following year he had another heart attack and died at his home in Hampstead, near London. In 1939, the book Portrait of a Painter. The Authorized Life of Philip de László by Owen Rutter, written in conjunction with de László, was published.

In 1900 László married Lucy Madeleine Guinness, a member of the wealthy and well-connected Guinness family. They had first met in Munich in 1892, but for some years had been forbidden to see each other. Lucy de László's connections almost certainly brought her husband new commissions. They had six children (Photograph of László with his wife and sons):

Eva de László (born and died 1903, Budapest).

Henry de László (died 1967); married Julianne Fischer

Stephen Ernest de László; married Heather J Jones

Saragh Mary de László (born 1988)

Christian Henry Paul de László (born 1990)

Pauline de László

Stephen Philip de László (died 7 January 1939); married Edith Alexandra Diana von Versen (died 30 December 1938)

Paul de László; married Josephine

Christopher Paul de László; married April 1967 Helen Genia Arntzen (born Gerling)

Jane Marie de László; married 1966 William Haywood Ruffin

(fourth son) Patrick David de László (died October 1980); married 1stly Deborah Greenwood (died 11 November 1980; daughter of Hamar Greenwood, 1st Viscount Greenwood); married 2ndly 1977 Pamela Newall, Baroness Sharples (born 1923) as her second husband; married (div by 1975) Penelope Anne Kitson as her third husband. Patrick and Deborah had issue:

Damon Patrick de László married 1972 Sandra Daphne Hacking (daughter of Douglas Eric Hacking, 2nd Baron Hacking)

Lucy Deborah de László (born 1975)

Stephanie Gay de László married 1978 Roger Stanley Williams

Clemency Lucy Williams (born 1979)

Aidan Paul Hammar Williams (born 1981)

Octavia Julian Williams (born 1983)

Charmian de László

Meriel de László

John Kitson married Victoria Hyde

Philip Kitson

Robert Kitson

(fifth son) John Adolphus de László (died 1990) married 1stly Peggy Hennessy, by whom 1 son and possibly more children. He married ca. 1954 (divorced ca. 1977) Rosemary Townsend, née Pawle (died 2004), former wife of Group Captain Peter Townsend, as her second husband, and had issue one son and one daughter with her (plus two stepsons Giles and Hugo Townsend by her first marriage).

Martin Richard de László (son of Peggy Hennessy); married 7 February 1967[6] Mary Gwendolen Freeman, daughter of Lady Winefride Freeman, née Fitzalan-Howard(1914–2006), youngest daughter of Henry Fitzalan-Howard, 15th Duke of Norfolk). and had three children, who are in remainder to the Barony Herries of Terregles:

Rupert de Laszlo (b. 1968), a company director.

Oliver de Laszlo (b. 1971)

Lydia de Laszlo (b. 1980)

(by Peggy Hennessy?) Lavinia de Laszlo

(by Rosemary Townsend, later Marchioness Camden) Piers de László, an artist, currently setting up a de Laszlo museum in Portugal.

(by Rosemary Townsend, later Marchioness Camden) Charlotte de László; married Jezza Saucisson-Salmon.

László had seventeen grandchildren.

The Queen at the races

The Jockey Club de Paris

The Jockey Club de Paris is best remembered as a gathering of the elite of nineteenth-century French society. The club still exists at 2 rue Rabelais

 The Jockey Club was originally organized as the "Society for the Encouragement of the Improvement of Horse Breeding in France," to provide a single authority for horse-racing in the nation, beginning at Chantilly in 1834. It swiftly became the center for the most sportifs gentlemen of tout-Paris. At the same time, when aristocrats and men of the haute bourgeoisie still formed the governing class, its Anglo-Gallic membership could not fail to give it some political colour: Napoleon III, who had passed some early exile in England, asserted that he had learned to govern an empire through "his intercourse with the calm, self-possessed men of the English turf".
Between 1833 and 1860 the Jockey Club transformed the Champ de Mars into a racecourse, which has been transferred to Longchamp. One front of the Café de la Paix is in rue Scribe, which ends at the façade of the Opéra Garnier. On the wall a memorial plaque on the Hotel Scribe, at number 1, records the former premises of the Jockey Club, which occupied luxurious quarters on the first floor from 1863 to 1913.
During the Second Empire and the Third Republic, the gentlemen of the Jockey Club held numerous boxes at the Opera, "many little suspended salons" in Marcel Proust's phrase, where the required ballet expected in every opera was never in the first act, when the Jockey Club would habitually still be at dinner. One result was the famous fiasco of the "Paris Tannhäuser" of 1861, when Wagner insisted on inserting the requisite ballet into the first act, and the second act, with the members of the Jockey Club arriving to view their favourites in the corps de ballet, was all but hissed off the stage: Wagner never permitted another production in Paris. Proust's Charles Swann was a member, a fact that Proust more than once noted as a signal honour, given his Jewish background.
On the ground floor beneath the Jockey Club was the fashionable Grand Café. There, on 28 December 1895, a stylish crowd in the Salon Indien attended the public début of the Lumière brothers' invention, the Cinematograph.
The Jockey-Club is directed by an annually-elected committee of a president, four vice-presidents and twenty-five members. New members are sponsored by two current members and must receive five-sixths of the members' votes, unfavourable votes annulling five favourable ones.


Lord Henry Seymour-Conway (1805–1859)[2] : 1834-1835
M. Anne-Édouard de Normandie : 1835-1836
Napoléon-Joseph Ney, prince de la Moskova (1803-1857)[3] : 1836-1849
Comte Achille Delamarre  : 1849-1853
Armand de Gontaut-Biron, marquis de Saint Blancard (1839-1884): 1853-1884
Sosthènes de La Rochefoucauld, duc de Doudeauville (1825-1908) : 1884-1908
Aymeri, duc de Montesquiou-Fezensac (1843-1912) : 1908-1914
Comte Elie d’Avaray : 1914-1919
Armand de la Rochefoucauld, duc de Doudeauville, son of Sosthènes de La Rochefoucauld : 1919-1962
Philippe, duc de Luynes : 1962-1977
Charles de Cossé, duc de Brissac : 1977-1985
Alexandre de La Rochefoucauld, duc d'Estissac : 1985-1997
François de Cossé, duc de Brissac : 1997

«Le Jockey, c'est une grande famille. Ici, la règle est de ne jamais se présenter entre membres. Tout le monde est supposé se connaître», explique le président de cette vénérable institution, le duc de Brissac, qui confie toutefois, avec un clin d'oeil, recourir parfois à la mémoire «infaillible» du maître d'hôtel ! Rares sont les heureux élus (1 200 membres) autorisés à franchir, le pas assuré et le sourire entendu, la lourde porte en chêne du 2, rue Rabelais, l'une des adresses les plus secrètes de France. De tous les cercles parisiens, le Jockey Club, créé en 1834 par la Société d'encouragement pour l'amélioration des races de chevaux, est l'un des plus sélects. Sans doute parce qu'il ne suffit pas, pour y entrer, d'avoir réussi dans les affaires ou d'occuper le devant de la scène médiatique. Ici, seuls le pedigree généalogique (les deux tiers des membres appartiennent à la noblesse française) et la réputation comptent. Mais il faut aussi être coopté par ses pairs, au terme d'un vote qui laisse peu de chances aux cas limites : un vote négatif annule cinq votes positifs ! «Mieux vaut présenter sa candidature quand on est encore jeune : on a alors moins de chances de compter des ennemis !», remarque un membre.
Les jeunes, justement, se pressent à l'entrée, appréciant de pouvoir croiser un Henri de Castries venu en voisin (le président d'Axa a ses bureaux à deux pas), discutant en toute camaraderie avec le baron Albert Frère ou Edouard de Rothschild ! «Une cinquantaine de nos membres ont moins de 35 ans, précise le duc de Brissac. Ils nous apportent beaucoup. Ils sont vraiment charmants, bien élevés, très détendus. Et pas du tout coincés !» En entrant au Jockey, ils savent aussi qu'ils auront accès à de nombreux cercles équivalents à l'étranger, comme le Knickerbocker Club à New York, ou le Turf Club et le Boodle's à Londres. Sans parler de la possibilité de piquer une tête quand bon leur semble dans la piscine de l'Automobile Club, et de déjeuner l'été dans les jardins de l'Interallié.

Ghislain de Montalembert et Jean-René Van der Plaetsen Mis à jour le 30/04/2010 in Le Figaro

Under the patronage of the Jockey Club, the Prix du Jockey Club (1,500,000 euros) has been run at the racecourse of Chantilly at the foot of the Château de Chantilly, the first Sunday in June, since 1836. The race at the Hippodrome de Chantilly is the proving-ground of the best of the three-year-olds, the French equivalent of the Epsom Derby run at Epsom Downs or in the U.S. of the Kentucky Derby.
Until 2004 the course was 2400 meters; since then it has been run at 2100 meters. In France, only the Prix de l'Arc du Triomphe has a richer purse (1,600,000 euros); that race was inaugurated by the Jockey Club in 1863 as the Grand Prix de Paris, and run at the Hippodrome de Longchamp. The racecourse was painted by Édouard Manet, Edgar Degas, and Pablo Picasso, among others.

Jockey

 A jockey is an athlete who rides horses in horse racing or steeplechase racing, primarily as a profession. The word also applies to camel riders in camel racing.

 The word is by origin a diminutive of "jock", the Northern English or Scots colloquial equivalent of the first name "John," which is also used generically for "boy, or fellow" (compare "Jack", "Dick"), at least since 1529. A familiar instance of the use of the word as a name is in "Jockey of Norfolk" in Shakespeare's Richard III. v. 3, 304.
In the 16th and 17th centuries the word was applied to horse-dealers, postilions, itinerant minstrels and vagabonds, and thus frequently bore the meaning of a cunning trickster, a "sharp", whence the verb to jockey, "to outwit", or "to do" a person out of something. The current usage which means a person who rides a horse in races was first seen in 1670.

Jockeys must be light to ride at the weights which are assigned to their mounts. There are horse carrying weight limits, that are set by racing authorities. The Kentucky Derby, for example, has a weight limit of 126 lb (57 kg) including the jockey's equipment. The average weight for a jockey is around 115 lb (52 kg). Despite their light weight, they must be able to control a horse that is moving at 40 mph (64 km/h) and weighs 1,200 lb (540 kg).

Jockeys are normally self employed, nominated by horse trainers to ride their horses in races, for a fee (which is paid regardless of the prize money the horse earns for a race) and a cut of the purse winnings. In Australia, employment of apprentice jockeys is in terms of indenture to a master (a trainer); and there is a clear employee/employer relationship. When an apprentice jockey finishes his apprenticeship and becomes a "fully fledged jockey", the nature of their employment and insurance requirements change because they are regarded as "freelance", like contractors. Jockeys often cease their riding careers to take up other employment in racing, usually as trainers. In this way the apprenticeship system serves to induct young people into racing employment.
Jockeys usually start out when they are young, riding work in the morning for trainers, and entering the riding profession as an apprentice jockey. It is normally necessary for an apprentice jockey to ride a minimum of about 20 barrier trials successfully before being permitted to commence riding in races. An apprentice jockey is known as a "bug boy" because the asterisk that follows the name in the program looks like a bug. All jockeys must be licensed and usually are not permitted to bet on a race. An apprentice jockey has a master, who is a horse trainer, and also is allowed to "claim" weight off the horse's back (if a horse were to carry 58 kg, and the apprentice was able to claim 3 kg, the horse would only have to carry 55 kg on its back) in some races.[clarification needed] This allowance is adjusted according to the number of winners that the apprentice has ridden. After a 4 year indentured apprenticeship, the apprentice becomes a senior jockey and would usually develop relationships with trainers and individual horses. Sometimes senior jockeys are paid a retainer by an owner which gives the owner the right to insist the jockey rides their horses in races.
Racing modeled on the English Jockey Club spread throughout the world with colonial expansion.

The colours worn by jockeys in races are the registered "colours" of the owner or trainer who employs them. The practice of horsemen wearing colours probably stems from medieval times when jousts were held between knights. However, the origins of racing colours of various patterns may have been influenced by racing held in Italian city communities since medieval times. Such traditional events are still held on town streets and are remarkable for furious riding and the colourful spectacle they offer.
Getting white breeches and bib, stock or cravat known as "silks" is a rite of passage when a jockey is first able to don silken pants and colours in their first race ride, and it has a parallel in how lawyers are spoken of as "taking silk". At one time silks were invariably made of silk, though now synthetics are sometimes used instead. Nevertheless, the silks and their colours are important symbols evoking emotions of loyalty and festivity.


Horse racing is a sport where jockeys may incur permanent, debilitating, and even life-threatening injuries. Chief among them include concussion, bone fractures, arthritis, trampling, and paralysis. Jockey insurance premiums remain among the highest of all professional sports. Between 1993 and 1996, 6,545 injuries occurred during official races for an injury rate of 606 per 1,000 jockey years. In Australia race riding is regarded as being the second most deadly job, after offshore fishing. From 2002 to 2006 five deaths and 861 serious injuries were recorded.
Eating disorders (such as anorexia) are also very common among jockeys, as the athletes face extreme pressure to maintain unusually low (and specific) weights for men, sometimes within a five pound (2.3 kg) margin. The bestselling historical novel Seabiscuit: An American Legend chronicled the eating disorders of jockeys living in the first half of the Twentieth century. As in the cases of champion jockey Kieren Fallon and Robert Winston, the pressure to stay light has been blamed in part for jockeys suffering agonies of thirst from dehydration while racing. Sports Dietitians Australia warns:"Dehydration and energy depletion may compromise concentration and coordination."

We’ll Take Manhattan. BBC Four

 We’ll Take Manhattan explores the explosive love affair between Sixties supermodel, Jean Shrimpton, and photographer, David Bailey.
Focusing on a wild and unpredictable 1962 Vogue photo shoot in New York, the drama brings to life the story of two young people falling in love, misbehaving and inadvertently defining the style of the Sixties along the way.
Set predominantly in 1962 but also exploring the story of how Bailey and Shrimpton first met, this one-off drama reveals how a young, visionary photographer refused to conform. He insisted on using the unconventional model Jean Shrimpton on an important photo shoot for British Vogue and, over the course of a freezing week in Manhattan, went against the wishes of fashion editor, Lady Clare Rendlesham, and made startling, original photographs.
We’ll Take Manhattan is the story of that wild week, of Bailey and Jean’s love affair, and of how two young people accidentally changed the world for ever.
Jean Shrimpton is played by Karen Gillan, David Bailey by Aneurin Barnard and Lady Clare Rendlesham by Helen McCrory.

A dramatisation of how David Bailey and his girl-next-door muse Jean Shrimpton click-started the 60s had a lot going for it but tried a little too hard

Lucy Mangan in The Guardian

guardian.co.uk, Thursday 26 January 2012


 We'll Take Manhattan (BBC4) told the story of a baby David Bailey and his muse and mistress Jean Shrimpton – still very much the raw prawn herself – jetting off to New York in 1962 to do the rule-shattering Young Idea Goes West photoshoot for Vogue, all battered teddy bears, gritty streetscapes and the extraordinarily ordinary gangly girl next door, that would establish them for ever as icons of the 60s' cultural revolution.

Expectations of Mad Men – or indeed Mad magazine – levels of subtlety and nuance were dispelled in the opening seconds when we were greeted with the informative full-screen captions: "In 1962 no one had heard of the Beatles. No one expected to be famous who was not born rich or titled. And," – I hope you're listening at the back there – "there was no such thing as youth culture."

We then cut to 1960, where a Beatles-less Bailey was taking his consolations where he could find them, which was up the chiffon skirt of a déshabillée debutante while reading an art magazine. Picasso in one hand, penis in the other – some would think he was already living the dream.

But baby Bailey had even bigger ambitions and the rest of the drama was a quick trot through some simplistic but stylish set pieces towards their realisation. Discovery by Vogue. Discovery of Jean. A few years of kicking against the system before his talent was universally recognised and even the old guard came to kneel in awe before him and, as the final caption had it: "David Bailey became the foremost photographer of his generation." If you weren't still listening at the back there by then you would have missed some fine performances – Aneurin Barnard capturing and blending the arrogance and charm of the man in perfect proportions, Karen Gillan managing to portray a naïf (Shrimpton was barely 18 when she started out) in his thrall with enough energy and edge to prevent her from lapsing into ditsiness or dumbwittedness. And there were some funny moments (Bailey, on hearing his brief for the shoot from Vogue fashion editor Lady Clare Rendlesham, pauses and replies: "So, it ain't young, and it ain't got an idea?").

But there wasn't much else. Fine, it wasn't aiming to be Heimat, but did all those terribly posh people heff to be seh fratefully, unremittingly creshing snobs? And it would have been both kinder and simpler to put Barnard in a little fez and bolero and send him capering round the set chattering: "Oim a plucky li'l monkey, oi am" than ask him to deliver some of the speeches he was landed with ("There's a new world where everyone will be applauded and be beautiful not because of who their daddy was but because of who they are!") with a straight face.

We'll Take Manhattan - Preview Clip (Full HD)

The Real Thing ... David Bailey/Jean Shrimpton