EDEN CONFIDENTIAL: Maggi Hambling, the original 'bad girl of British art', mourns lover who left horse racing commentator Lord Oaksey for her By Richard Eden for The Daily Mail Published: 18:03 EST, 5 November 2024 | Updated: 18:42 EST, 5 November 2024 e-mail 2 View comments The intensity of their first encounter has remained an indelible memory. ‘People thought I was ill..
.I was so smitten I couldn’t say anything,’ recalled Maggi Hambling, the ebullient artist most popularly known for her giant scallop shell sculpture – a tribute to composer Benjamin Britten – on the shingle coast at Aldeburgh, Suffolk. But today Hambling is in mourning.
Victoria ‘ Tory ’ Lawrence, who inspired such feelings of longing in her – and with whom she would share four decades of her life – has died, aged 86. The couple’s romance was a cause of joy to their many friends, as well as, in time, to Victoria’s two children, Patrick and Sara. But, given that Tory Lawrence was married when Hambling met her – and given, also, that her husband was Lord Oaksey, known to millions as acclaimed racing commentator John Oaksey – the early days of their love affair inevitably attracted widespread attention.
Indeed, even after her marriage to Oaksey had ended in what was described as ‘unhappily public fashion’, there were after-shocks which neither Hambling nor Tory could have envisaged. While Tory moved to Hambling’s farmhouse near Saxmundham in Suffolk, Oaksey turned to friends for.