Hailing from the country of bronzed Anzacs, she was a rare sight. Anna was unusual. She had that fringe that just made her slightly alluring, like a silent-film star. She was almost mute, but she had an entrancing quality.”
It also didn’t hurt, Neville freely acknowledges, that her father was the editor of the
Evening Standard
. The newspaper published the first stories about his arrival in London and his publishing plans, and later supported
Oz
and its founder when they got into trouble with the authorities.
When they met at that party, Anna, twenty, was on the arm of a friend, the older, more traditional journalist Anthony Haden-Guest, a member of Nigel Dempster’s dazzling, hard-drinking crowd. “Anthony was one of those people with a great sense of social curiosity,” observes Neville. “He would turn up at upper-class things, but he loved to slum it with the counterculture.”
Anna and Neville met a few times by chance after their introduction. “She would arrive at various parties, where there were the more trendy, groovy journalists, the ones always at the right soirees,” says Neville. Unlike other women he knew, Anna acted and looked different, always chic and elegant. “She didn’t dress like radical counterculture people,” he notes, “and she didn’t dress like Mrs. Main Street, either. She wore high heels, stockings, smart little jackets. I wasn’t at all interested or knowledgeable about fashion, but she always had a look.”
Like the other men she’d been involved with, Neville found Anna shy, and he noted that she had few friends, most of them men.
“I think of her as in the singular. She wasn’t a powerful, gregariouswoman by any means,” he observes. “She was more introverted. I’m a very noisy person and she was a very quiet person, and often noisy people think that quiet people have more going on inside—you get attracted to what you imagine might be depth.” However, he soon discovered, “she didn’t have great depth but was kind of street sharp.” And he couldn’t get a take on her values. “She was still cruising around, unformed. A lot of what happened to her later on [with her career] took me by surprise.”
They became fast friends and then lovers, he says, using the bedroom of her flat at Phillimore Gardens, sometimes after having dined with the Win-tour family upstairs. There was a hitch, however, to going public with their relationship, a big hitch. Neville was living with his beautiful longtime girlfriend in a basement flat with a double mattress in the corner of the front room, in a funky section of Notting Hill, within walking distance of Anna’s. As Neville acknowledged, “My girlfriend and I loved each other, [but] I was more in love with making a splash than with trying to make a relationship work.”
He says Anna was aware of his live-in relationship but was most willing to share the spoils.
“We had a very clandestine, discreet affair,” reveals Neville. “Looking back it was just a strange relationship, going back to her house because I couldn’t really have her in my house for obvious reasons. Anna’s place was a safe abode.”
Occasionally, when his live-in girlfriend wasn’t around, Anna arrived at the sometimes cannabis-beclouded
Oz
office late at night in her trendy Mini with darkly tinted windows to watch Neville and his cohorts put together the next issue. Besides sleeping with Neville, Anna had a burgeoning love affair with what she saw as the creativity of the underground press. “I’m not sure whether Anna knew what her media destiny was going to be, or even what her ambitions were, but anybody with a bit of curiosity about what youth was saying gravitated towards the underground press, and Anna did that,” says Neville. “She had a curiosity about the direction of youth culture.” At the
Oz
office, she flipped through stories and sometimes played editor, making astute critical comments about overdramatic writing or finding a
It also didn’t hurt, Neville freely acknowledges, that her father was the editor of the
Evening Standard
. The newspaper published the first stories about his arrival in London and his publishing plans, and later supported
Oz
and its founder when they got into trouble with the authorities.
When they met at that party, Anna, twenty, was on the arm of a friend, the older, more traditional journalist Anthony Haden-Guest, a member of Nigel Dempster’s dazzling, hard-drinking crowd. “Anthony was one of those people with a great sense of social curiosity,” observes Neville. “He would turn up at upper-class things, but he loved to slum it with the counterculture.”
Anna and Neville met a few times by chance after their introduction. “She would arrive at various parties, where there were the more trendy, groovy journalists, the ones always at the right soirees,” says Neville. Unlike other women he knew, Anna acted and looked different, always chic and elegant. “She didn’t dress like radical counterculture people,” he notes, “and she didn’t dress like Mrs. Main Street, either. She wore high heels, stockings, smart little jackets. I wasn’t at all interested or knowledgeable about fashion, but she always had a look.”
Like the other men she’d been involved with, Neville found Anna shy, and he noted that she had few friends, most of them men.
“I think of her as in the singular. She wasn’t a powerful, gregariouswoman by any means,” he observes. “She was more introverted. I’m a very noisy person and she was a very quiet person, and often noisy people think that quiet people have more going on inside—you get attracted to what you imagine might be depth.” However, he soon discovered, “she didn’t have great depth but was kind of street sharp.” And he couldn’t get a take on her values. “She was still cruising around, unformed. A lot of what happened to her later on [with her career] took me by surprise.”
They became fast friends and then lovers, he says, using the bedroom of her flat at Phillimore Gardens, sometimes after having dined with the Win-tour family upstairs. There was a hitch, however, to going public with their relationship, a big hitch. Neville was living with his beautiful longtime girlfriend in a basement flat with a double mattress in the corner of the front room, in a funky section of Notting Hill, within walking distance of Anna’s. As Neville acknowledged, “My girlfriend and I loved each other, [but] I was more in love with making a splash than with trying to make a relationship work.”
He says Anna was aware of his live-in relationship but was most willing to share the spoils.
“We had a very clandestine, discreet affair,” reveals Neville. “Looking back it was just a strange relationship, going back to her house because I couldn’t really have her in my house for obvious reasons. Anna’s place was a safe abode.”
Occasionally, when his live-in girlfriend wasn’t around, Anna arrived at the sometimes cannabis-beclouded
Oz
office late at night in her trendy Mini with darkly tinted windows to watch Neville and his cohorts put together the next issue. Besides sleeping with Neville, Anna had a burgeoning love affair with what she saw as the creativity of the underground press. “I’m not sure whether Anna knew what her media destiny was going to be, or even what her ambitions were, but anybody with a bit of curiosity about what youth was saying gravitated towards the underground press, and Anna did that,” says Neville. “She had a curiosity about the direction of youth culture.” At the
Oz
office, she flipped through stories and sometimes played editor, making astute critical comments about overdramatic writing or finding a
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