BIOGRAPHY
John Walsh
Terence The Man Who
Invented Design by Stephen
Bayley and Roger Mavity
Constable £25 pp328Terence Conran, who gave the
world Habitat, the Conran
Shop, Bibendum, Le Pont de la
Tour, the Bluebird and the
Design Museum, was,
according to this book, “the
biggest benefactor of material
life in postwar Britain”. He was
also, it seems, a prize shit. The
most famous British designer
of the late 20th century, a retail
visionary turned mega-
restaurateur, he was also aConran the
barbarian
The designer Terence Conran was
certainly a visionary — but this furious
biography by two former colleagues
and ‘friends’ shows the Habitat founder
to have also been a prize shit
Dead
certs
Joan Smith makes
her pick of the
best crime books
for November
28
▶Twitter @TheTimesBooks l Instagram @thetimesbooks l Facebook First Editionsavage bully, a casual plagiarist
and a “borderline swindler”.
A multimillionaire with rich
tastes in wine, cars, cigars and
women, he was also a penny-
pinching tightwad who wrote
rude memos on the back of
scrunched-up paper from
wastebins, told his chauffeur
to take detours to avoid the
congestion charge and asked
staff to pay for using the lifts.
A spotter of hidden talents,
he left in his wake a multitude
of damaged, singed or ruined
victims. Such as Oliver
Gregory, Terence’s closest
design collaborator for
decades, who ended up in
dire financial straits; soon
after Conran refused to help,
he was said to have shot
himself accidentally — with a12-bore — while fending off a
bird of prey. “Habitat tycoon
in gun tragedy” read the Daily
Mail headline.
Stephen Bayley and Roger
Mavity tell the story of their
former boss and close friend
in overlapping chapters.
They’re well placed to identify
Conran’s salient features,
good and bad. The latter
preponderate. In the index,
entries include “ambitious”,
“bully”, “callous”,
“capricious”, “charming”,
“childlike”, “competitive”,
“controlling nature” and
“cruelty”; and later
“psychopathic trait”, “rude”,
“ruthless”, “self-love”,SION TOUHIG/GETTY IMAGES
Natural habitat Terence
Conran in Coq d’Argent