"The Conran Collection; They Are London's Ruling Design Dynasty Who Decide How We Live, Eat and Dress. Yet Their Family Story Is One of Bitter Feuding, Betrayal and Mental Instability. and No Member of the Clan Is More Combative Than Sir Terence's Score-Settling Second Wife, Shirley. Here She Talks to William Cash about Life Behind the Immaculate Walls of the Conran Empire" - The Evening Standard (London, England), July 23, 2004 | Online Research Library: Questia
Article excerpt
Byline: WILLIAM CASH
There is something about being married to Sir Terence Conran that encourages his wives and ex-wives to rush into print.
Whether their motive is revenge or simply profit, one side effect of cohabiting with the 72-year-old founder of the Conran dynasty seems to be a desire to lock oneself away with a typewriter.
Even while the current Lady Conran, Vicki, who has been with Sir Terence for 11 years, is putting the finishing touches to her personal memoir about daily life with her husband, Shirley Conran, one of his ex-wives, is going on the attack.
Sir Terence is the complicated and enigmatic genius who is also the patriarch of Britain's premier 'style' family which includes four wives and five children, four of whom work in the design or 'lifestyle' business, and a retail and restaurant empire. He and his children furnish our homes, fill our wardrobes and dictate our dinner-party menus and yet the Conran family story is one of bitter fighting, betrayal and emotional dysfunction. Welcome to the bizarre world of the Conran dynasty, where the word 'closure' does not exist, loyalties are forever being tested, and the family's psychological wounds are rarely allowed to heal. As Jasper Conran, the fashion designer who is one of two sons from Sir Terence's second marriage to Shirley, has said to friends: 'In our family, you don't so much swim as drown.' Shirley Conran, author of Superwoman (the bestselling self-help book of 1978 that told women 'life is too short to stuff a mushroom') and such racy novels as Lace and The Revenge of Mimi Quinn (a thinly veiled account of her break-up with Conran) is one who swam away. I meet the spirited Shirley at her Art Deco-style Edwardian apartment in Putney, where she appears to be in a score-settling mood.
The daughter of a violent alcoholic father, Shirley Pearce was educatedin the Forties at St Paul's Girls' School in Hammersmith. A leading crusader for women's rights, she has had to cope with skin cancer and 30 years of ME (she fights the disease by getting up at 3am when she is most energised). Her recently awarded OBE, she says, adds 'gravitas' to her work - setting up the Work-Life Balance Trust, an organisation that aims to educate mothers about 'Domestic Democracy'. As yet she has not had any note of congratulation from Sir Terence, although she says she wouldn't be surprised if he took some of the credit.
'Terence has taken credit for pretty much everything that has ever happened to me. Caroline [his third wife] and I left him for exactly the same reasons. This drip, drip, drip of negativity.' Ouch. And yet, I am assured, Shirley and Terence remain on good terms. She likes to describe her ex-husband as a 'lovable bastard'.
Sir Terence (he was knighted by Margaret Thatcher in 1983) has a reputation for being a super-controlling workaholic with impossibly demanding standards of perfection. Over 40 years ago, he began his career serving 'exotic' French baguettes and onion soup at the Soup Kitchen cafe off the Strand.
Since then, Conran has built up a design and food empire that boasts 32 restaurants, 56 cafes, various design shops and profits last year of over [pounds sterling]100 million. When he published his 'sort of' autobiography in 2001, his desire for control was such that he insisted the book had a Q&A format.
Absent was any
mention of his well-chronicled philandering.
This was a major reason why Shirley and Terence's marriage broke down - because Terence refused to sit down and talk about his infidelities. 'In the end I said, "Unless you can talk about this truthfully, within six months you're going to lose your wife and your children." [Her other son with Conran is Sebastian, the talented product designer.] When the six months came up he still wouldn't talk to me. So I picked up my handbag and walked out. I would have liked to have had a truthful conversation about how and why our marriage ended. …
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