If there is anyone who indirectly deserves credit for attracting me to Britain, it is surely the society photographer Dafydd Jones.

One Sunday afternoon in the early 1980s, I was browsing the magazines at the international newsstand near where I lived and saw a copy of Tatler, a publication about which I read in my English Lit anthology in high school. Richard Steele founded it in 1709 as a high society gossip magazine. Columns went under the pseudonym byline of Isaac Bickerstaff, which is still in use today. The magazine ceased publication for some years before it was resurrected in 1901, a timely year as Edward VII was crowned in 1902, so there was a lot of society news to cover.

I thumbed through the society photos of young Britons at outrageous parties and had never seen anything like them. Having purchased a copy, Tatler became a monthly event for me, if only for the society pages. I had to be part of this party action. By the end of the decade, my prayers were answered and my dream came true.

When I moved to the UK, one of the first things I did once getting a permanent address was to subscribe to Tatler. Gradually, the society photos became less spontaneous and more staid. My focus turned to the articles, and it is still a pleasure to read 40 years later.

It was only in 2023 that I discovered the name of the photographer who captured that wonderful world of the 1980s: Dafydd Jones.

Langan Brasserie’s unofficial photographer Richard Young, whom I referenced yesterday in my piece about the restaurant, was of that world but not in it. So it was with Dafydd Jones, Oxford resident albeit not a university student.

On April 23, The Sunday Times Magazine gave us a sneak preview of Jones’s new book, England: The Last Hurrah, published by ACC Art Books (£30).

The article features some of his most outrageous classics. I would call readers’ attention to have a look, especially at the ones with the following captions:

Suspected under-the-table drinking at a ball at Grosvenor House, London, November 1982

The chocolate heir Cosmo Fry at a party for the Pirates of Penzance theatre production, London, May 1982 [with Annabel Harris, Tatler, May 2023, p. 39]

Champagne flowed, countless cigarettes were smoked, black ties and shoes came off in the early hours of the morning after.

I did go to a few parties like that in the early 1990s — nothing debauched. My far better half and I got back to our hotel in Cambridge no earlier than 3 a.m. on those occasions. Great fun they were, too, featuring amusing people with amusing stories to tell. We still meet up most years, but marriage, children and sometimes illness intervened. Things aren’t what they once were in our late 20s and early 30s.

The Sunday Times Magazine article says:

In 1981 Dafydd Jones’s pictures of decadence and debauchery at Oxford University won him second place in a photography competition run by this magazine. A job offer from Tina Brown — then the editor of Tatler magazine — soon followed, and Jones gained access to the riotous and rigidly exclusive social calendar of Britain’s upper crust.

Throughout the 1980s he attended debutantes’ dances and May balls, birthday parties and Eton picnics, capturing the “absurdities of upper-class English life”, as he writes in the introduction to a new book. Even at the time, Jones notes, the high-society revelry he witnessed felt out of date — like an “imaginary version of England which no longer really existed.”

Yet, it really existed — week after week, month after month, year after year — for one blissful decade. And Dafydd Jones was part of it all.

And so were Tatler readers, among them myself, living an ocean away, dreaming of parties galore.

At a rather auspicious time, in post-lockdown October 2020, the lowkey photographer wrote an article for Tatler, ‘Oxford: The Last Hurrah Special Edition by photographer Dafydd Jones’, for his book about his amazing candid shots from then-University students, some of which the magazine featured. One of them is of Boris Johnson on a night out with Allegra Mostyn-Owen, the woman who would become his first wife.

Jones explained how he got his start as a society photographer (emphases mine):

After the drab seventies, things were changing in Oxford, and students – some with well-known establishment names – were dressing up for extravagant parties. In 1980, I was living there too. I had a degree in fine art and wanted to be a photographer – my chance came with a competition run by The Sunday Times Magazine. My assignment: to cover ‘The Return of the Bright Young Things’. I badgered my way into the parties and tried my best to simply capture what was actually happening. There was this wonderful youthful excitement thrumming through the colleges. I would feel high from the general euphoria, even without drinking much. When the pictures were published, the issue caused a small sensation, and soon invitations to photograph other Oxford parties came flooding in.

I loved Oxford: the light, the buildings, the early morning mist. (For May balls I would usually skip the all-night partying and arrive at dawn to catch the dreamy-eyed survivors.) I photographed the May Morning celebrations, tea parties, balls and Eights Week. But Oxford had a dark side, too. Tragically, two of the people in my images, Olivia Channon and Gottfried von Bismarck, died from drug overdoses. My shots caught the attention of Tina Brown, then editor of Tatler. She hired me as the Bystander photographer and I moved to London.

Jones had already published a book of his incomparable photographs:

Now, after the success of the first, I have had a second edition printed, and from the new edition, I am releasing a special collectors’ set of 60 copies. I normally make a few test strips of the most important area in the image. When I have it right I then make the final print. Often a few hours work in the darkroom will only result in one or two final prints. The book was made from an edit of the prints I made for the Bodleian Library.

The book is — or was — available from ACC Art Books for £100, including shipping. All funds received (excluding shipping) went to the Trussell Trust, a charity that supports a network of food banks in the UK to provide emergency food and support to people in crisis.

Oxford University has a few elite private ‘societies’, one of which is named after the alleged ‘favourite’ of England’s Edward II, Piers Gaveston, the 1st Earl of Cornwall. As the Piers Gaveston Society was founded in 1977, it appears the name could be for shock value only, as their events after 1990 appear to be rather staid. That said, whatever goes on there, stays there — much like in Las Vegas. Membership is still limited to ten undergraduates who have to sign non-disclosure agreements. No phones of any kind are allowed.

The Piers Gaveston Society rose to national prominence in 1983, probably thanks to Dafydd Jones, who wrote a brief explanation for Country & Town House in 2020, around the time his photographic memoir about Oxford University appeared. He explains the photograph that was published and appears in the article:

My career began with some pictures I did of the Piers Gaveston club in Oxford. I lived around the corner from where several members lived in Norreys Avenue. I covered informal meetings, dinners, drinks parties. This … was a Piers Gaveston Ball I photographed, held in London at the Park Lane Hotel. The dress code was ‘Garden of Earthly Delights’ after the painting by Hieronymus Bosch. It went on from about 10 pm until 3 am. Many men were dressed as women. The women were mostly scantily dressed. Many friends were there and I spent a lot of time chatting, but also there was a lot to photograph. Memorably, I used up 24 rolls of film – a record for me. I was an early fan of Hugh Grant. At the time he’d only appeared in an undergraduate film set in Oxford. Marina Killery was a hat maker and artist. Lulu was already married to Valentine Guinness, one of the founders of the club. Lord Neidpath is wearing a dress and on his other side is Catherine Guinness, who’d returned from a spell in New York where she was part of the Warhol circle.

The excitement of the decade can be corroborated by Petronella Wyatt who also penned a brief piece for the article. She was up at Oxford University for a brief spell before she got fed up. Her father was the late, famous Woodrow ‘Voice of Reason’ Wyatt, the most conservative Labour MP ever elected and, later, political columnist for the now-defunct News of the World. He was made a Knight in 1983 and a life peer in 1987, Baron Wyatt of Weeford, the place in Staffordshire where his family lived in the 17th century. Wyatt died in 1997 at the age of 79. Petronella was the issue of his fourth marriage to a Hungarian lady, Verushka Banszky von Ambroz (née Racz).

Petronella, following up in her father’s footsteps, was also a journalist, and, when she was at The Spectator, had a close friendship with the aforementioned Boris Johnson, the magazine’s editor, later Prime Minister.

Petronella told Country & Town House of her time at West Wycombe Park in the Home Counties, just outside London. Again, this was in the 1980s:

When I was 18 I was invited to a costume ball at West Wycombe Park by its wonderfully eccentric and charming owner, Sir Francis Dashwood. Like his 18th century ancestor, a founding member of the Hellfire Club, Francis was adept at the art of hedonism. The gathering was large but select: royals, politicians, grandees, writers and other luminaries. Oriental tents were erected on the grounds, overlooking lakes with temples on which ballerinas and singers performed. As the stars got brighter a gondola glided into the central lake. Its occupant was Pavarotti, who sang to us. Afterwards there was a great firework display accompanied by a full orchestra. I was drunk on beauty. I will never forget it as long as I live and I shall never see its like again.

What few people mention is that West Wycombe Park has a magnificent family chapel, featured in Tatler‘s April 2023 issue as being the best of its kind in the UK. Victoria Dashwood got married there recently to the heir of Tyrell’s crisps, James Chase. As with the Piers Gaveston Society, the Hellfire Club is probably not all it is cracked up to be.

But I digress.

Returning to Dafydd Jones, in brief autobiographical excerpts from a 2007 interview for the Centre for British Photography, he charted his rise from being a local Oxford photographer to one of high society.

In the beginning:

I went to art school. After leaving I managed to get a job at Butlins holiday camp as a ‘colour walkie’ photographer. When I finished the season it was impossible to get any sort of job – I’d saved up enough at Butlins to buy some camera equipment. Some art school friends were setting up a cheap shared studio space in Jericho in Oxford. I took a space planning on doing photographic black and white portraits. At the same time I was shortlisted for a photography competition for photojournalists the Sunday Times were running.– One of the subjects for a photo essay was – The Return of the Bright Young Things’- Living in Oxford already I was in the right place.

As I mentioned earlier, Britain was undergoing social change — a bright one for the time:

After I began this project I decided that I wasn’t sure if the ‘Bright Young Things’ actually existed but that there was definitely a change going on at Oxford. It was the first time I’d photographed parties. – I tried to take photographs that recorded the memorable moments and described what was happening. I tried doing a few colour pictures but black and white spoke much more strongly. Also my budget was low. I bought a bulk roll of black and white film. Developed and printed them in my darkroom. – I didn’t win the competition I was a runner-up. The judges described my pictures as being more ‘pointed than the winners.’ The magazine issue caused a small sensation at the time. – My work attracted the attention of Tina Brown who at the time was an up an coming editor on the Tatler.

I thought it was a fantastic opportunity to photograph these parties. I had access to what felt like a secret world. It was a subject that had been written about and dramatised but I don’t think any photographers had ever tackled before. There was a change going on. Someone described it as a ‘last hurrah’ of the upper classes.

It was only a ‘last hurrah’ in the sense that Jones was the first and last photographer of the upper classes’ kind. He was truly remarkable in capturing the moment. A photo speaks a thousand words. Jones’s were proof of that.

Jones worked under two of Tatler‘s most famous editors, Tina Brown, who went to edit The New Yorker, and Mark Boxer, who died before his time. Later on, Jones photographed for another of Tatler‘s editors, Jane Proctor. In between, he moved his wife and two children to New York so that he could work for Vanity Fair, when Graydon Carter edited the magazine:

I have been very lucky to work with editors, art directors and picture editors that have encouraged me and used the pictures well. Tina Brown, Mark Boxer, Graydon Carter, Jane Procter, etc.

He discussed Tina Brown, one of the toughest editors in the business:

The first time we met Tina Brown I was surprised at her bluntness. She would speak her mind. She was always on the lookout for new talent. – She gave the impression she’d drop you if she found someone whose work she preferred.

Brown catapulted Tatler to a new-found success outside the high society world. Readers were captivated, as they were with her successor Mark Boxer. The society pages were still known by their original name, Bystander, at the time:

When Mark Boxer became editor at the Tatler the magazine had a golden period. It was the best magazine I’ve worked for – with fashion by Joe Mckenna, Isabella Blow and Michael Roberts. – Spoofs by Craig Brown and brilliant writing and photography. But Mark tragically died. Emma Soames became editor but she had a difficult job following Mark. I wasn’t sure how much she ‘got’ my pictures. The party coverage could be cruel if the pictures were used in the wrong way. Then there was a recession on the horizon. Someone mentioned introducing colour photography to Bystander and having more flattering pictures of smiling faces. At that point I decided to go to New York ask Tina about an offer she’d made a few years earlier.

On May 3, 2023, Tina Brown wrote an article for The New Yorker about Jones, including more of his iconic photos, including:

Blizzard Ball. London, 1986.

Prince Charles and Queen Elizabeth II at a Guards Polo Club match. Windsor, 1985.

Margaret Thatcher arriving at the Winter Ball. Grosvenor House, London, 1984.

Feathers Ball. Hammersmith Palais, London, 1981.

Lady Diana Spencer at Sandown Park. Esher, 1981.

Feathers Ball. Hammersmith Palais, London, 1981.

David Kirke, Tim Hunt, Nicky Slade, and Lord Xan Rufus-Isaacs ride a dining table in the Dangerous Sports Club ski race. St. Moritz, Switzerland, 1983.

In ‘The Photographer Who Captured England’s Last Hurrah’, Brown tells us:

When I took over the editorship of Tatler (the old social flagship of the British upper classes that once had loitered on every coffee table of every stately home in England) in June, 1979, it had declined into a threadbare shiny sheet with staples through it trying to masquerade as an upmarket magazine …

Then again, it had been a weekly, not a glossy monthly.

At that time, Langan’s Brasserie photographer Richard Young was getting his restaurant photos published in RITZ magazine:

The Tatler photos were the polar opposite of what had begun to make a splash in RITZ, the raffish social newspaper of the late nineteen-seventies that was modelled on Andy Warhol’s Interview magazine. Edited by the late David Litchfield, a former filmmaker, RITZ offered a parallel social world of louche café society, specializing in “candids”…

Let’s not forget television shows, either:

By the early eighties, the ruling class had its confidence back, but there was also—as the harshness of the Thatcher years played out—a nostalgia for the “Brideshead Revisited” era of aristocratic whimsy and frolicky romance. (The BBC TV adaptation of “Brideshead” ruled the airwaves in 1981.) The pages of Tatler needed to reflect all these crosscurrents, the emerging social edge, the high-low social mix, the secret excesses that still existed behind the closed doors of the great houses of England, and it needed to be chronicled with a cleverly irreverent point of view.

Brown says that Tatler‘s photos of aristocratic parties were staid, as the ageing photographers relied on invitations to various events. As such, spontaneity was lacking. Enter one Dafydd Jones, who was of a similar age to the Bright Young Things he was photographing for The Sunday Times contest:

The series by the runner-up, one Dafydd Jones, immediately caught my eye with its stark black-and-white definition and the sheer effervescent brio of its depiction of oblivious aristocratic bad behavior—photographic moments as memorable as Evelyn Waugh’s sentences.

In 1981, Lady Diana Spencer was increasingly sought before her marriage to the then-Prince of Wales. The future princess was often snapped walking alone. Tina Brown sent Dafydd Jones out to photograph Britain’s biggest media sensation until her death at the end of August 1997.

In a May 16, 2023 Country & Town House podcast interview with Oxford grads Ed Vaizey — former Conservative MP, now Lord Vaizey — and Charlotte Metcalf, who was a friend of the University’s Dangerous Sports Club, Jones explained how he was able to get the now-famous photo of Lady Diana at the Sandown Races in Esher, Surrey. The page also has a recent photo of Jones today.

Jones says that he felt dissuaded because he did not have a press pass to enter Sandown. A seasoned veteran told him that he needed only to buy a ticket to the day’s racing and he would be admitted, no questions asked. Jones always travelled lightly, with only his camera and its small case. As such, nothing gave him away. By contrast, press photographers stood outside Sandown’s gates with long lenses. Jones described them as getting a ‘bird’s eye view’, whereas he got a close up.

Amazingly, he was able to snap Diana walking alone against a backdrop of hundreds of spectators waiting for the race to begin. Tina Brown’s article says:

I assigned Dafydd to follow the then Lady Diana Spencer when she attended the race meet at Sandown Park in March, 1981. He shot her in black and white, eyes down, running the gantlet of hungry paparazzi whose lenses were all trained in her direction. We used it as a double-page spread beneath the headline “Di, Di, over Here Di, Di . . .” It became the classic, early image of a hunted future princess.

It was reprinted many times in the years that followed, including into a double-page spread.

The fulfillment of that assignment signed the deal for Jones and Tatler. Tina Brown fills us in on his origins and his demeanour:

I asked Dafydd to bring his portfolio into Tatler’s old headquarters on Bruton Street, and resolved there and then to make him our party photographer. He was a strikingly elfin presence, so young, so hesitant, so unassuming. His own humble origins, including attending a state-run school in Oxford and making extra money as a campus cleaner, were the perfect townie vantage point from which to view the privileged antics of the Oxford jeunesse dorée. Throughout the next eight years, his pictures became the defining images of the new Tatler, reflecting more pointedly than all our glossy competitors the inimitable look and feel of a strata of society at play. Because he was so understated, he was able to be invisible. Because he always knew what he was looking for, he was usually the last to leave, producing wonderful motifs of sleeping young beauties with their long, lissome legs sprawled on padded banquettes with their entwined dance partners, or lolling with a friend on a summer lawn at the end of the revelry. Unusually for an outsider who penetrates the inner circles, Dafydd was never co-opted by the world he covered.

Jones has a collection of photographs of sleeping beauties on his website. He took these between 1980 and 1987, noting his mixed emotions about them:

Sometimes the party just goes on too long … After doing these pictures I worked in the U.S. and travelled around Europe photographing social events for several years. I didn’t ever see anyone falling asleep at a party anywhere else. Some perhaps are passed out rather than sleeping. There is something more peaceful about just sleeping at a party. These were the pictures I really liked. It takes confidence to go to sleep at a party but seen together the pictures give an impression of a society in decline …

He referenced these in his podcast with Lord Vaizey and Charlotte Metcalf, again musing that they are perhaps a sign of a declining society. Then again, he and his family moved to the United States afterwards. Lord Vaizey said that Americans drink much less that Britons do, hence their ability to stay awake.

Metcalf says that she was friends with members of Oxford University’s Dangerous Sports Club and described their bungee jumping off the Severn Bridge, which links England and Wales. Even Jones found that a daunting tale, especially when Metcalf talked about the police arriving just when the participating members were suspended over the water, with no escape. She was in charge of the getaway car.

Speaking of the Dangerous Sports Club, a photo of which is in The New Yorker, Jones said he was deeply disappointed to see it ripped off for something else. He consulted his lawyer, who said there was nothing that could be done. There was no protection for his original intellectual property which had been recreated.

When photographing big events, Jones had to dress up in a dinner jacket and black tie. Upon returning home to his wife and two children, he reeked of cigarette smoke. He regularly took off his DJ and draped it over a chair in the back garden to air out for the next event. In his podcast with Vaizey and Metcalf, he says that it was one of his son’s enduring memories.

Also in the podcast, Jones says that he thought he was going to get punched out by a young Scottish party host who asked him why he hadn’t been photographed. Jones managed to smooth everything over, but it was a tense moment nonetheless.

Jones had more stories to tell, including another of his first assignments at the Aspinall nature reserve at Port Lympne in Kent. John Aspinall was throwing a 21st birthday part for his daughter Amanda. At the time, Tatler was not invited to cover those private parties. Jones went by himself and stood in the rain, photographing cars arriving and leaving several hours later. He told Vaizey and Metcalf that he liked the raindrops on the camera lens and on the cars. He hadn’t arrived by car himself, so he was stranded. Early in the morning after the party, a car stopped and the driver asked him if he needed a lift. The offer came from a member of the Cecil family, one of the oldest and best known in England. Jones duly accepted. From there, more party invitations followed.

In May 2023’s Tatler, Jones wrote about his experiences in ‘”Mind if I crash?” My 40 years as Tatler‘s party snapper’ (pp 36-38). His more recent photographs can be found in ‘Screen Time’, a collection of celebs looking into their mobile phones. Not a patch on the 1980s, but still relevant.

He says that he had help once he joined the magazine. To begin with, Tina Brown’s assistant spread the word (p. 36):

Gabé Doppelt tirelessly sent out requests, describing me as ‘almost invisible’. Initially, only one positive reply came back, for a 21st birthday near Bristol. My future father-in-law was a retired brigadier, so I asked him how I could photogaph a Sandhurst ball. ‘Write to the adjutant,’ he instructed, so we did. ‘Oh, yes, came back the reply, adding: ‘The Tatler last photographed one of our balls in 1966. We have some pictures up in the mess’ …

Among the smattering of young Etonians at Tatler there was an older figure: Peter Townend. He was well versed in the debutante season and lived for socialising. He asked mothers if I could photograph their parties, and some agreed. That’s how I got a picture of a debutante being pushed into a lily pond. Now there’s something almost revolutionary about it — out with the old.

The Season revolved around the Royal Family, who (p. 38):

would follow the same routine every year … The clubs and enclosures were designed to keep people out. To be admitted to the Royal Enclosure at Ascot, you needed two letters of recommendation from members who had themselves attended for at least five years.

After a while, he says:

It was a bizarre job … But readers were noticing the party pictures, and partygoers had the confidence to laugh at themselves … I was eventually given a company Mini.

Even though he still experiences a bit of conflict about his photographic subject matter, Jones says:

People might think I’d tire of the endless parties, but the social whirl is a circus — and that still excites me to this day.

His most recent collection of photographs, England: The Last Hurrah, is avalable from ACC Art Books for £30.

Dafydd Jones’s wife and two children have all pursued occupations in the visual arts.

In closing, I am delighted to finally find out who took all the marvellous photographs chronicling Britain’s high society in the 1980s.

For his innate art for capturing spontaneity, there is no better photographer than Dafydd Jones. We will never see his like again.