One on One

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.