Hen, Mistress of Mayhem (A Portrait of Henrietta Moraes)

Henrietta Moraes first discovered Soho when she was eighteen—or so she liked to say. Her favorite sport was social climbing (and she enjoyed the exercise), and she excelled at it: attending all the right parties and gate-crashing the rest. From the heights of the 1950s bohemian scene, she observed—and shaped—the lives of rule-breakers such as Lucian Freud and Francis Bacon, for whom she became a muse. But that was only the beginning. As a central figure in the 1960s Chelsea Set, no one worked harder—or more joyfully—to become a bohemian legend.

Through Hen, you’ll learn how to steal your best friend’s boyfriend; enchant and ensnare a husband; bloom into a magnificent muse; dress like a comic-book superhero; sample every illicit substance known to medical science (and allegedly dose a Rolling Stones concert with them); join the caravan set and follow the gypsy trail in search of the Holy Grail—before reappearing as the minder to a mind-blowing pop icon.

Along the way, you’ll master the gentle art of cadging drinks, the feline felony of cat burglary, the crafty chaos of charity-shop shoplifting, and the unpredictable thrills of steamy encounters in secondhand bookshops.

Hen, Mistress of Mayhem transports readers to the epicenter of Soho’s Golden Age. Stage by stage, it becomes the ultimate guide to a hell-raising companion—and a riotous portrait of a woman who lived life entirely on her own terms.