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“... In 1950 the great American fashion photographer Irving Penn wrote to Cecil Beaton, for whom he had recently sat, praising his ‘vague clairvoyance, the gentleness of not meeting the subject too head-on’. Beaton himself put it more vividly: ‘I coo like a bloody dove.’ It required a particular quality of cooing to coax from his royal clientele the florid, uptight, boring, outlandish and occasionally wonderful images in the V&A’s exhibition of his royal portraits (until 22 April ...”

“... suitcase. I’d certainly like to have a nervous tic so I can purse my lips up all the time like Cecil Beaton. Can I be completely bald, please? I love the smell of old pee. Why can’t I smell like that? When I grow up I want a thin piece of steel inserted into my penis for some reason. Nobody’s to tell me why it’s there. I want to guess! Tell ...”

“... her public silence to the grave and Diana Souhami is not playing ghost to her shade. Greta and Cecil is not a biography of either Garbo or Beaton, but an account of their bizarre relationship, which, at its best, manages, improbably, to turn even the ineffably shallow ...”

“... out. Then, for the pool of Narcissus, need we look further than the lens of his lifelong friend, Cecil Beaton? Their friendship, from its earliest days, positively throve on the camera, and Tennant’s tributes to his own camera image are so whole-hearted, so zestful, that one cannot help, sneakingly, admiring him for his nerve. ‘I’m nearly crazy at ...”

“... contributed by themselves (if alive) like the entries in Who’s Who. There are some known names: Cecil Beaton, Jasper Johns, James Jones, John Mortimer, Patricia Neal, William Styron, Andy Warhol. Among the rest are antique dealers, decorators, magazine editors, a ‘freelance music co-ordinator for fashion shows’, a princess ‘internationally ...”

“... photographers use the control they have during a session to mark the image with their own style. Cecil Beaton, whose portrait photographs are on show at the National Portrait Gallery until 31 May, instead made images which show the style of his sitters – or at least find a suitable one for them. Beaton, who also ...”

“... stared at me: as did the man in the white Stetson, who, when Connolly introduced me to him – Cecil Beaton – turned away with a frown of, who is this presumptuous young man? Well, I thought, I’ve made a fool of myself, and so there goes Cecil Beaton. Later in life, he sees that they are not his ...”

“... masculinity. Hujar’s portrait Cockette John Rothermel in Fashion Pose, from 1971, has aspects of Cecil Beaton and Irving Penn – feathers, rouge and diamante – but it’s Rothermel’s haze of chest hair that really makes it. ‘I like people who dare,’ Hujar said.That’s not to say his portraits lack vulnerability. In September 1973 he ...”

“... Catholic and literary family and was a friend of many of his most interesting contemporaries, Cecil Beaton and James Lees-Milne among them. He loved female company, was ‘much sought after by hostesses for his sparkling conversation’ and by 1953 had established a reputation as a biographer. Two volumes on the life of Richard Monckton-Milnes, the ...”

“... of them here. Marc occasionally offers little emblematic hints on interpretation, a camera for Cecil Beaton, and, for Margaret Thatcher, a ‘No Milk Today’ tag hanging from her nipple. Bernard Levin, who alone appears twice in the book, is once parked under the bosom of Arianna Stassinopoulos. Marcia Falkender holds the PM, a ventriloquist’s ...”

“... the past on the photographic history of World War One, and on the war work of Miller’s nemesis Cecil Beaton. Roberts has assembled a collection to prove her contention that most of Miller’s subjects were women, and in doing so has admirably avoided the obvious. She doesn’t include the pictures of troops directing mortar fire or badly mangled ...”

“... a fag hag, comfortable with homosexuals, who were not going to jump her, and who made her laugh. Cecil Beaton proposed to her. Turning him down, she said: ‘You wouldn’t like to see me in the mornings in an old man’s pyjamas.’ He replied: ‘I would be wearing old man’s pyjamas too.’ She remained unpersuaded, unmarried, childless. The ...”

“... arrangements that brought passers-by to a halt. Spry’s reputation was made. She worked with Cecil Beaton and Oliver Messel and began to acquire her own celebrity clients. When Beaton photographed Wallis Simpson in 1937 wearing the notorious ‘lobster’ dress by Elsa Schiaparelli and Salvador Dalí, she posed ...”

“... for the sharp English upper-class voice, you’d say she looks like a Maltese landlady.’ Cecil Beaton described her as vulgar and later as ‘a poor midgety brute’ who had ‘gone to pot … her complexion now a dirty negligee pink satin’. Only matched by Alan Clark’s diary entry: ‘fat, ugly, dwarflike, lecherous and revoltingly ...”

“... at Brogue seems to come alive. Settle let her photographers build sets and create dramas. Cecil Beaton, Todd’s greatest gift to Vogue, broke new ground, photographing three socialites en fête and en champagne: Baba Beaton, Wanda Baillie-Hamilton and Lady Bridget Poulett in a grotto of cellophane-wrapped ...”