The Sunday Times Magazine • 25

More than 20 years

after the death of

George Harrison,

his wife, Olivia,

is publishing a

poetic memoir. At

the stately home

where they escaped

Beatlemania, she

remembers their

life together

INTERVIEW BY

CHRISTINA

PATTERSON

O

livia Harrison was going to

live in an ashram when she

got the call that changed

her life. “I actually gave my

notice on a Friday,” she tells

me, “and somebody said,

‘Would you like to come

to work for this record

label?’ ” The record label

was Dark Horse, founded

by George Harrison, who,

four years on from the

Beatles’ split, was

continuing his solo career.

Olivia, who had been

working in the marketing department

at A&M Records in LA, took the job. In

autumn 1974 he flew over to do an

American tour. They met. They fell in

love. She was 26. He was 31. By the end

of the tour they were inseparable. Olivia

left LA and moved into the house we’re

sitting in now in Henley-on-Thames.

Nearly half a century on, she’s still here.

When I say “the house we’re sitting in”,

I mean the house I can just about glimpse

from the glass building in which we’re

drinking coffee. The glass building is

huge. It feels like a loft apartment. It has

big elegant sofas and a long wooden table,

with interesting artefacts and antiquarian

books propped up on stands. “Was it a

palm house?” I ask “Yes,” she says,

“Frank Crisp [the original owner] had,

I think, over ten greenhouses that started

down at the bottom on that south-facing

wall. All of them fell down.” After George

died she was tempted to let this one

collapse too, but decided to renovate it

AND ME

instead. “I’m really glad I did,” she adds.

I was hoping to meet her in the main

house here at Friar Park, the Victorian

neogothic mansion built in 1889 by the

eccentric lawyer Sir Frank Crisp.

A fanatical gardener, he commissioned

caves, grottoes, underground passages,

a replica of the Blue Grotto in Capri, an

Elizabethan garden, a Japanese garden,

a granite model of the Matterhorn made

of 20,000 tons of granite, and a maze.

Inside the house there is, apparently, a

marble vestibule, a 20ft-high fireplace,

a minstrel gallery, a ballroom with cherubs

on the ceiling and light switches that are

monks’ faces. There’s also the home studio

known as FPSHOT (Friar Park Studio,

Henley-on-Thames), installed by George

Harrison in 1972, which later became the

recording headquarters for Dark Horse

Records. It was here he recorded most of

his solo albums and here that he jammed

with musicians such as Tom Petty, Roy

Orbison, Jeff Lynne and Bob Dylan, first

just for the fun of it and later as part of the

Traveling Wilburys supergroup. Friar Park

is the place he bought to escape fame.

On this sunny day it certainly feels like

a sanctuary. Or more like a secret

kingdom, with Olivia Harrison as its

presiding queen. Tiny, slender and

chic,she’s wearing a white T-shirt,

lime-green cardigan and black skinny

jeans. She’s still beautiful, with

cheekbones as clearly defined as in the

photos when she and George first met.

Though warm and polite, she’s also

nervous because, at 74, she’s publishing

her first book of poems. ➤

George Harrison and

Olivia Arias in 1976,

two years before

they married