Description
About Hen Mistress of Mayhem
Henrietta Moraes first discovered Soho when she was eighteen – or so she tells us. Her favourite sport was social climbing (heaven knows she enjoyed the exercise) and she was good at it, going to all the right parties and simply gate-crashing others. From the summit of the 1950s bohemian scene she surveyed the life and times of those who broke all the rules, such as the artists Lucian Freud and Francis Bacon (for whom she became a muse). But that’s not all she did – as a key counter-culture figure in the 1960s Chelsea Set, no other woman was more indefatigable in becoming a bohemian legend.
Through Hen, you’ll learn how to steal your best friend’s boyfriend; enchant and ensnare a husband; blossom into a magnificent muse; dress like a comic book superhero; become a connoisseur of every illicit drug known to medical science and dose a Rolling Stones concert with them; join the caravan set and head along the gypsy trail in search of the Holy Grail, before rematerialising as the minder for a mind-blowing pop icon…
Along the way you’ll indulge in the gentle art of cadging drinks; the feline felony of cat burglary; the canny craft of charity shop shoplifting and the haphazardness of steamy sex in second-hand bookshops. Hen, Mistress of Mayhem takes you to the epicentre of Soho’s Golden Age; stage by stage it forms a complete guide to a hell-raising companion.
Reviews
“Moraes lived like a flame: vividly, destructively, and ultimately self-destructively. There are people of whom it is impossible to approve, yet impossible not to be glad they lived.”
— Matthew Parris“Henrietta was a delightfully disturbing mixture of the devil and the divine. Her force of nature lives in this book.”
— Maggi Hambling
Product Details
- Format: Hardback
- Author: Darren Coffield
- Publisher: The History Press
- Language: English
- ISBN: 9781837051090
- Publication date: 2 April 2026
- Release date: 10 April 2026
- Illustrations: 44 images
- Condition: New
About the Author
Darren Coffield has exhibited widely in the company of many leading artists including Damien Hirst, Howard Hodgkin, Patrick Caulfield and Gilbert and George at venues ranging from the Courtauld Institute, Somerset House to Voloshin Museum, Crimea. In the early nineties Coffield worked with Joshua Compston on the formation of Factual Nonsense, the centre of the emerging Young British Artists scene. A book by Coffield about this period in British art, Factual Nonsense: The Art and Death of Joshua Compston, was accompanied by an exhibition at Paul Stolper Gallery. He lives and works in London.
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