three books giving wholly different versions of even the most basic biographical information. Other accounts of Hamilton's life provide further obfuscation; Robin Maugham's five-part "exposé" in The People was in fact concocted in collusion with Hamilton, while John Symonds's Conversations with Gerald (1974) allowed Hamilton to spin yet more yarns. In 1940, Hamilton became the lover of jazz bandleader Ken "Snakehips" Johnson, who was 20 years his junior. They moved in together at 91 Kinnerton Street in Belgravia and later bought a cottage called "Little Basing" in Vicarage Road, Bray, Berkshire, where Johnson could go sailing, which was one of his hobbies. Hamilton was at that cottage when he received a phone call on 9 March 1941, informing him of Johnson's death in a bombing raid, and asking him to come and identify the body. He later recalled: "Again that awful feeling of nausea which I had felt when France fell, and again that sensation of the ground slipping from beneath my feet." From then on, Hamilton kept a picture of Johnson in a white tuxedo with white satin facings at all time with him, calling him "my husband." In addition, he had a picture of "My wife", Suzanne 'Suzy' Renou, a close friend whom he had wed in a marriage of convenience at Chelsea Register Office on 29 April 1933 for a payment of £20,000. Renou was the daughter of Alphonse Renou, a company director. Hamilton had previously been married and divorced from Diana Parker, daughter of Captain Alfred Parker. This was also a paid marriage of convenience, and took place on 31 August 1929 at St Jude's Church, Kensington. In the post-war period, Hamilton drifted towards the far-Right: he was active on behalf of Oswald Mosley, and in 1948 travelled to the United States, with the intention of procuring a loan for the Franco government from the Knights of Columbus. In 1959, Hamilton accepted South African money to write a travel book, Jacaranda, which is said to have portrayed apartheid in a favourable light. His other books include Emma in Blue, about Lady Emma Hamilton and particularly her friendship with Marie Caroline of Austria while in Naples, and Blood Royal, a history of Queen Victoria's immediate descendants and relatives in Europe, and the haemophilia that afflicted the family. Hamilton's latter days saw him living in a bedsitter at 518A King's Road, London, above a Chinese restaurant called The