Is marquess of bath still alive

Apparently Lord Bath is writing an online autobiography, ‘an oeuvre of some seven million words’. For those without a computer, a broadband connection or any better way of spending a few years, Nesta Wyn Ellis’s The Marquess of Bath: Lord of Love (Dynasty Press, £13.99) will make an adequate substitute. It is a repetitive and incoherent book, not obviously reliable – the author thinks that fellatio is performed on women and that Guy Burgess was heterosexual – or even strictly literate, but oddly appropriate to its subject.

Apparently Lord Bath is writing an online autobiography, ‘an oeuvre of some seven million words’. For those without a computer, a broadband connection or any better way of spending a few years, Nesta Wyn Ellis’s The Marquess of Bath: Lord of Love (Dynasty Press, £13.99) will make an adequate substitute.

I first met Lord Bath twenty five years ago at an art gallery. He swept in, magnificent cape enveloping him, surrounding by a bevy of exotic women who were clearly in his thrall. Somehow we were introduced, he said he painted murals. I didn’t know him or his reputation as the ‘Loins of Longleat’. I just knew that he was very striking. He made a huge impact when you met him, tall, swashbuckling, flamboyant, with a twinkle in his eye, and not a trace of arrogance.

I asked if the murals could be detached from the walls, a journalist told me ‘no, murals are painted onto walls’. Alexander then contradicted him, saying actually his murals were, indeed, detachable from the walls. And so began a conversation about art. He was passionate about art and his own work in particular. I found him fascinating. He was truly knowledgeable.

An invitation to Longleat followed and I was given the guided tour, along with his other guests and then-girlfriend, to look around the murals he had painted in the house. They were striking, bold, impasto. Dark, rich

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