CECIL BEATON
MICK JAGGER
TOM DRIBERG
CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS
GEORGE GALLOWAY
MICHAEL BARRYMORE
DIANA, PRINCESS OF WALES
PRINCESS GRACE
ALFRED HITCHCOCK
RAYMOND CHANDLER
HOWARD HAWKS
HOWARD HUGHES
CUBBY BROCCOLI
GEORGE LAZENBY
SIMON DEE
MICHAEL RAMSEY
GEOFFREY FISHER
ROALD DAHL
KINGSLEY AMIS
LORD SNOWDON
BARRY HUMPHRIES
SALVADOR DALÍ
SIGMUND FREUD
GUSTAV MAHLER
AUGUSTE RODIN
ISADORA DUNCAN
JEAN COCTEAU
CHARLIE CHAPLIN
GROUCHO MARX
T.S. ELIOT
QUEEN ELIZABETH THE QUEEN MOTHER
THE DUCHESS OF WINDSOR
Author’s Note
Bibliography
Acknowledgements
Other Books by Craig Brown
Copyright
About the Publisher
ADOLF HITLER
IS KNOCKED DOWN BY
JOHN SCOTT-ELLIS
Briennerstrasse, Munich
August 22nd 1931
Earlier this year, the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei – the second largest political party in Germany – moved into new offices at Briennerstrasse 45, near Königsplatz. As he approaches his forty-third birthday, its leader, Adolf Hitler, is enjoying success as a best-selling author: Mein Kampf has already sold 50,000 copies. He now has all the trappings of wealth and power: chauffeur, aides, bodyguards, a nine-room apartment at no. 16 Prinzregentenplatz.
His stature grows with each passing day. When strangers spot him in the street or in a café, they often accost him for an autograph.
His new-found sense of self-confidence has made him less sheepish around women. A pretty nineteen-year-old shop assistant named Eva Braun has caught his eye; she works in the shop owned by his personal photographer, Heinrich Hoffmann. He has even begun dating her. Walking along Ludwigstrasse on this bright, sunny day in Munich, what can possibly go wrong?
A few hundred yards away, young John Scott-Ellis is taking his new car for a spin. He failed to distinguish himself as a pupil at Eton College. ‘I had advantages in that I wasn’t stupid and was quite good at most games,’ he remembers, ‘yet I squandered all this because of an ingrained laziness or lack of will … I was a mess … I cheated and felt no remorse and when threatened with the sack – “You have come to the end of your tether,” is what Dr Alington once greeted me with – I always managed to put on a tearful act and wriggle out.’
He has emerged with few achievements to his name. A letter from his father to his mother, written in John’s second year at Eton, reads:
Dear Margot,
I enclose John’s reports. As you will see they are uniformly deplorable from beginning to end … I’m afraid he seems to have all his father’s failings and none of his very few virtues.