Tommy Nutter: the rebel tailor of Savile Row

Lance Richardson’s biography of avant-garde British tailor Tommy Nutter is twice the story you expect it to be

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They say that writing is a solitary pursuit, and no doubt Lance Richardson had anticipated a more sequestered existence while researching the life of Tommy Nutter for his new book, House Of Nutter: The Rebel Tailor OfSavile Row. But what began as
 a straightforward biography about the audacious designer, who died in 1992, developed into a story that reads more like a work of fiction, pieced together by the personal accounts of more than 70 people, among them The Beatles’ business manager Peter Brown and the venerable lyricist Sir Tim Rice.

The research process also led the author to forge an unlikely friendship with Tommy’s 81-year-old photographer brother, David Nutter, who unwittingly became the second protagonist in this tale of two siblings who burned bright through tumultuous shifts in social history, from the idealism of the Swinging ’60s to the heartbreak
of the Aids crisis in the 80s.

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