The Sunday Times December 19, 2021 33COMMENT
It takes two terrible parents to
perfect a broken soul like Ghislaine
Camilla Long
I
t is funny how the rich perceive
themselves, and how, conversely,
we see them. Earlier this month the
Duchess of York claimed she was
the “most persecuted woman in the
history of the royal family” — what a
gobsmacking lack of insight into
history that showed, and indeed
into herself.
Another deluded rich girl is Ghislaine
Maxwell. If you caught a single sentence
of her brother’s steamingly hagiographic
defence of her in The Spectator on
Thursday, you’d struggle to see why she
was on trial for sex crimes at all.
It wasn’t Robert — her tricksy,
mendacious father — who shaped her,
said Ian; it was Betty, their witty,
intelligent, lovely, cosy, honest,
gorgeous and underrated mother who
gave her daughter the gifts of “energy,
tenacity, determination” and, weirdly,
“promptness”. It was Betty who insisted
on calling her Ghislaine — not, as is
generally claimed, the odious Robert.
Betty chose a chic French name in
revenge for Robert calling their son
Kevin. And it’s not pronounced — sharp
intake of breath — Jizlaine, he said, but
Giilen. Yeah, me neither.
Reading the piece, you couldn’t help
but think: how utterly broken and
battered by their rich, ambitious parents
can two sad little children be? Ian says
Jizlaine was “born to tragedy” but seems
to think that tragedy was the death of
their older brother, and not being
Robert Maxwell’s child.
Even years after both parents died,
neither Ian nor Ghislaine can apparently
face the fact that the two people who
should have loved them exposed them
to damage for their own selfish,
showboating ends. Betty may not have
been as bad as Maxwell, but she
indulged his every whim, turning a blind
eye to his schemes and obsessions —
later with secretaries — while pumping
out nine children.
“All of us were scared of his anger,”
said Ian. “He would beat us with a belt —
girls as well as boys.” Afterwards “you
would have to write him a letter saying
how you were going to be different in
future”. We despise lowlifes who make
the news for abusing their children, butthe upper classes do it on a far grander
scale, with a bigger budget.
Ghislaine’s childhood was by no
means unusual for people of the
Maxwells’ social standing and fortune. It
was and is perfectly normal for rich
parents to abandon their children: why
have money if you can’t show it off? The
Queen herself would dump the young
Prince Charles for as long as six months
— just look how that turned out. For
many of that generation it was normal to
send your child to a paedophile-infested
prep school — if you want to know what
most defines the British upper classes, it
is paying to have your child molested.
The TV show Succession is, of course,
a fiction — but in the final episode last
week we saw this whole scenario played
out. We saw a place where vast riches
and searing ambition can reduce the
children of the super-wealthy to basket
cases. It was a striking finale, ending
with three of the billionaire Logan Roy’s
children cowering on the floor,
destroyed by their parents. I couldn’t
help but think of Ghislaine, and for that
matter Prince Andrew, and other
unlikeable rich children who never
stood a chance.
The sons of Lady Anne Glenconner,
for example: abandoned while Anne,
Princess Margaret’s best friend, toured
the world in “support” of her awful
playboy husband. Glenconner explained
in her memoirs that mothers were kept
on a “pedestal” and taken out only for
“special occasions” — sometimes she
wouldn’t see her sons for “weeks on
end”, but she still seems surprised when
her oldest son becomes a heroin addict
and dies from drugs.
In Succession we have Harriet Walter
as the mother of the Roy children, and
what a chilling turn it is. She will do
almost anything to curry favour with her
bullying ex-husband Logan, even if it is
“cutting the throats” of her own
daughter and sons.
During the preparations for her
wedding to a pathetic social climber who
has “bought all his own furniture” she
coldly tells her own son to skip half the
event because Logan will be there and
he doesn’t want to be in the same room
as him. In another scene she tells herSo Ben Affleck’s a serious
charmer — truly, he is the
thinking woman’s Robin
Thicke. Last week the
permanently in-crisis star of
Daredevil went on The
Howard Stern Show to reveal
he was drinking while
married to Jennifer Garner
“because I was trapped”.
“I was like, ‘I can’t leave
because of my kids, but I’m
not happy — what do I do?’”
he drawled on the show.
“And what I did was I drank a
bottle of scotch and fell
asleep on the couch, whichThis is my last column before
Christmas, so I thought I’d
hand out a few gongs. It’s
been an extraordinary year
and, while I don’t think
anyone could say we have
witnessed many heroics, we
have seen Olympic displays
of conniving, snivelling,
lying, groping, illegal
partying and, in the case of
Matt Hancock, the wettest
bum-fondle in history.
My first award, for the
most telling use of a mask,
goes to Boris Johnson. Have
you noticed it goes on only
when he’s being forced to
say sorry? For months we’ve
been watching as he
breathes over everyone, but
as soon as he has to
apologise on national
television for North
Shropshire, it’s clamped right
up over his face.
Most unwelcome polo
neck is obviously Hancock,
who appeared at last
weekend’s Capital FM Jingle
Bell Ball wearing Dapper
Laughs’ Newsnight contrition
outfit. Why is a Truffaut
turtleneck the clothing
choice of all douches?
Finally, the award for most
wilfully blind civil servant
goes to Simon Case,
Johnson’s cabinet secretary.
Just minutes after this wilting
moose knuckle was chosen
to investigate Downing
Street’s many Covid parties,
it turned out he had attended
one himself. What I want to
know is why he agreed to
head the inquiry.turned out not to be the
solution.”
I’m all very well for
celebrities “sharing”, as long
as real-time disclaimers can
be run alongside these
dreadful interviews
decoding all the porkie pies.
Namely that, far from
being “trapped”, Affleck was
allegedly shagging the
nanny, while Garner behaved
with extraordinary tolerance
and poise. More recently
she’s been seen driving him,
bloated and in tears, to rehab
in Malibu.Don’t mock the Affleck: it’s
tough on a diet of porkie pies
My end of
year gongs
for the three
weaselly men
We despise
lowlifes for
abusing their
children but
the upper
classes do
it on a far
grander scale
The seven surviving Maxwells. Last week Ian, right, wrote in defence of Ghislaine, front, lauding her ‘energy’ and ‘promptness’daughter Shiv she is a “shitty daughter”.
Only, as Shiv points out, what makes a
shitty daughter? Shitty parents, that’s
what.
Logan’s approach is more subtle: he
tries to separate one weakling from the
others. In the final scene, when
Siobhan’s betrayal by her husband
becomes evident, he tries to get Roman,
his youngest son, on his own. I don’t
think Logan is entirely like Robert
Maxwell — you never quite understand
his motives, whereas Maxwell’s were
crystal clear. But both men are terrified
of failure and inevitably do horrible
things to protect their position and
image — even sacrificing their own kids.
It gets to the point, for some families,
after generation upon generation of self-
interest, where it almost seems normal
to end up on charges of sex trafficking,
or, in Kendall Roy’s case, killing a waiter.PRIVATE MAXWELL FAMILY ARCHIVEBlackpool has come to my
street — so bourgeois!
The pictures of OTT
Christmas decorations do
the rounds on social media
but once a year. Flashing
polar bears, programmable
LED lights and singing
Santas shared with just a
smidge of class snobbery
(“CLASSY! Wouldn’t fancy
the electricity bill!”). And it
is usually presented as
something the middle
classes turn their noses up —
all those lights! The fun!
None of that!
Yet I grew up on a council
estate, and there’s no way
we’d have spent all that
money (on decorations or
the electricity to run them)or been comfortable with
such visible, gaudy
extravagance. We had foil
ceiling garlands (it was the
1980s), tinsel and that was
that. And it hasn’t escaped
my attention this Christmas
— my first in a decidedly
middle-class Manchester
suburb — that our street is lit
up like the Blackpool
illuminations. Houses,
hedges, entire front gardens
flashing like Studio 54.
At night, as we turn in,
our bedroom is lit up by
the soft white bulbs flashing
on a house across the road
and, well, I wouldn’t fancy
their lecky bill.sensation you get when you
and a pal have a long-
standing arrangement to
meet and simply let it slide (is
there a German word for this?
There should be). They know
you’re meant to meet; you
know you’re meant to meet;
you know that they know
(etc), but you both somehow
psychically agree to not
mention it. As the clock ticks
towards 5pm (the cut-off
point surely for the “Hey, are
we still on for tonight?” text),
you send a prayer of thanks
over to this good, good pal for
giving you the out that you
were gifting them.
I’ll still be supporting our
friends in hospitality solo, but
the gift of no socialising?
Merry Christmas to me.Is there anything your
typically awkward British
person (or just typical British
person, actually) knows how
to handle less than a fit-to-
burst diary? Every December
is the same: day after night
after day of drinks, dinners,
lunches and parties,
squashed in between the
Christmas fairs and markets
and even carols (hey, don’t
judge me. It’s delightfully
wholesome). Round after
round of one last get-
together, with family and
friends and, yes, sometimes
people you don’t even
particularly like, before one
year gives way to another.
Actually, I should say that
every December was the
same. Last year, as Londonheaded from tier 3 into tier 4,
everything, including our
social lives, ground to an
abrupt halt. This year it
appeared for a while that
things were heading towards
a normality of kinds. And by
normality I mean not a free
night for weeks, babysitters
booked, trade-offs argued
with my co-parent (one night
with the lads = one trip to see
It’s a Wonderful Life), small
talk obsessed over, credible
excuses to leave early logged.
Last week saw the beginning
of the end of this socialising
spurt, plans falling out of my
diary — first one by one, then
two by two — with a clang.
And, my God, the sudden
release from socialising was
... liberating. It was the sameHaving an excuse to flake out of
socialising is my Christmas dream
lAs a film journalist, I take
the matter of what films I
show my son incredibly
seriously. It’s not just
helping him to develop his
taste; it’s about his
cinematic, cultural
education. About what
these films can teach him
about life and love.
I should confess that we
didn’t necessarily get off on
the right foot: his first film,
24 hours after we were
discharged from the
hospital, was The Wolf of
Wall Street. It’s not that it
isn’t one of Scorsese’s finest
(it undoubtedly is); it’s more
that I fear it has set him on
the wrong moral path. Since
then, our carefully curated
movie club has included the
more baby (and morality)-
friendly Shrek and
Paddington and — as suits
the season — the film that I
think will undo all the
damage done by a drug-
addled Leonardo DiCaprio.
Yes, Elf.
As Will Ferrell shouts,
“You sit on a throne of lies!”
and my child beams at the
screen, I know he’s learning
all the right things about life
and, yes, undoubtedly, love.Can we have a
pocket or two?
I’m going to make a plea,
from the bottom of my heart
and the depths of my belly.
It’s a plea echoed by women
everywhere through the
generations. Please, please,
for the love of womankind,
please give us pockets.
Men, who are gifted them
willy-nilly, on coats, trousers,
jackets, waistcoats, know
their worth: somewhere to
put your keys, your wallet,
your mask, your hands. Do
you think women always
want to be carrying around
those bags? Spoiler: we often
don’t. I’ve taken to buying
trousers meant for teenage
boys (I’m 5ft 1in) just so I can
experience the dizzying joy
of plunging my hands into
deep, welcoming envelopes
of fabric.
Here’s a deal: give us
pockets and we’ll take over
the world. What do you mean
“no”?NEWMAN’S
VIEWTerri White
Week ending