TA K I dren, who chose to live with them after their father, the infamous 7th Earl of Lucan, had mistakenly murdered their nanny, Sandra Rivett, instead of their mother. Needless to say, Veronica Lucan’s theory of blaming the Shand Kydds for alienating her children did not have many adherents, if any, except for herself. Brought up middle-class with army officers as grandfather and father, she begins her opus by listing the aristocratic connections and history of the man she married, a strange way of framing one’s life. She goes tiresomely on with teddies and dolls and their various names, until we finally get to the meat of the story. Which turns out to be how horrid life with Lucky Lucan was, rather than the murder. In this she is correct, because much too much has been written about that accidental killing of an innocent nanny, whom a drunken Lucan mistook for his wife and bludgeoned to death. After a detailed account of the night of the murder, she sums up her complaints about various doctors, judges, and relations, as well as her three children, who have chosen to live with their aunt or by themselves, away from her. She does it like an accountant listing one’s debts, without using adjectives. For example: “I think I have shown that my son decided he wanted to live as part of another family.” Proper middle-class anal retention to the last. Now here comes me, the reviewer: Three days before November 7, 1974, I was packing to fly to Athens when Lucky Lucan dropped in. I had known Lucky—he was given that name by John Aspinall for being so unlucky in games of chance—since 1962, when we met during the Cowes powerboat race. I was crewing on Agnelli’s boat when a cartoonlike mustachioed Englishman put-putted by and greeted us by saying, “See you in Tor—blub blub...” and sank right in front of us. We pulled him on board and he introduced himself as John Bingham. That evening, at a Max Aitken bash for drivers and crews, I began a
Veronica Lucan’s sister, Christina Shand Kydd, with her husband, Bill Shand Kydd. Lady Lucan blames the Shand Kydds in A Moment in Time for alienating her children after the murder.
long friendship with the future 7th Earl of Lucan. Lucan became a close friend— in fact, so much so that when I came back from Vietnam the second time, I brought back a jade ring for Veronica, a Greek custom. (One gifted the wife, not the man.) She used to stick her ringed finger in my face and go, “zzzzz...” Lucky may have looked like a cartoon character of an Englishman, but he knew his history. He lamented the loss of empire and predicted that England was going to hell. But always with a wintry smile and always with humor. When the marriage began to go bad, he told me how Veronica was able to sound perfectly normal when in court while he was trying to get custody of the kids, as she was “obviously crazy, and I’m very worried that she might harm the children.” That Veronica was strange was obvious. According to Lucky, she got worse following the birth of each child, and there were three. In her book Veronica lists the countless pills she was on: sleeping pills, uppers, downers, you name it. That night Lucky asked for 7,000 pounds, and I gave him 3,000—he needed cash—and guaranteed another four borrowed from my friend John Zographos. He hinted that he was going to kidnap the kids and take them to France. Veronica has a lot to say about the so-called “Aspinall set.” Most of what I read at the time and from the utter crap depicted in the various documentaries and films made of the tragedy proves that hell hath no fury like an excluded press. Veronica never got along with any of Lucan’s friends. She was mousy and
unpleasant, and people put up with her solely because they liked Lucky. She writes that she had a crush on Greville Howard, now Lord Howard, a cousin of the Earl of Suffolk, a fact that Veronica mentions ad nauseam. This must be news to Greville, who I think did a dry run with Lucky the night before the murder under the impression that Lucan would take the children to France. Speaking with friends, I surmise that Lucan got very drunk that fateful night, because only he knew what he was about to do. He felt let down by the courts and by the doctors who refused to commit her. Was she a danger to the children? I don’t think so. Was she a pain? Definitely. Was she jealous of her sister? One hundred percent. Was she a terrible mother? Yes. Had Lucky lied to her that he was a professional gambler before she married him? NO. She whined, badmouthed his friends, and complained nonstop, and does so in her book. All three of her children have grown up not only to be useful citizens but very nice people, although I know none of them. Did the Aspinall group plot to save Lucan if he ever showed up? A thousand times no; in fact, Aspers and Jimmy Goldsmith rang me in Athens and told me that if he appeared, to make sure I told him to “fall on his sword.” I liked the pictures that came with the book, but the whole thing made me sad—too many memories of very good times with Lucky and Aspinall, and Jimmy Goldsmith and Greville Howard. The author proved that her husband and the rest of us who thought she was a nutcase were right. She killed herself soon after she finished writing it because she thought she had Parkinson’s disease. She did not. u For more Taki, visit takimag.com. MARCH 2018 71