Vanessa Branson on family, her new memoir and why her brother Richard is no ‘wizened tycoon’ – Evening Standard

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"I could so easily have written a jolly romp of a book without putting the real bits in it, says Vanessa Branson, talking on FaceTime from her garden in Sussex.

They may not all be jolly, but the rollercoaster revelations that Richard Bransons 60-year-old baby sister has chosen to include about her own life in this family memoir, One Hundred Summers, are nothing if not juicy.

The first part focuses on the lives of Bransons grandparents and parents. She paints touching portraits of her late, shy barrister father, and impish extrovert mother, now 96 and suffering from dementia, who raised Richard, Vanessa and their sister Lindy to be stoical, risk-taking and hard-working.

I was going to stop writing when we were born because that felt too scary and indulgent, Branson says, but then friends told me sharing my story was a generous thing to do and the memories just bubbled up.

Her brother has already written several volumes of autobiography, and her mother published Mums the Word in 2013, so you could say writing about the family runs in the family.

(Getty Images)

After an idyllic-sounding outdoorsy childhood, Branson writes about being bullied at primary school, failing her 11-plus she was dyslexic and being packed off to board at Box Hill School in Surrey at 10.

I thought Id stop there, but I really enjoyed writing about my own life and then I got to 16 and had that abortion, she says. I asked a friend if I should put it in, and she said, If you dont, then whats the point of writing a memoir, if its not for other people to empathise with you? So I thought, F**k it, and once Id written that down, there was no shame. I love that feeling of not carrying any shame about anything.

Branson has laid herself bare, literally, detailing everything from how she lost her virginity at school, My God, it hurt, to the story of her abortion after a fling with a racing car driver and having to pay for it using her childhood savings. I didnt need counselling and I certainly didnt want sympathy, she writes.

(Richard Young/Shutterstock)

In the mid-Seventies, she went to live in London with Richard, who had started Virgin Records, and felt utterly out of her depth among a seething mass of rock-and-roll eccentricity at a party until Mike Tubular Bells Oldfield, rescued her and they embarked on a brief affair, with Oldfield driving her around in his embarrassingly loud red Ferrari.

Attempts at self-improvement included a fruitless bilingual secretarial course, a Cordon Bleu cookery diploma, a course in interior design, and an immersion in art history in Florence that inspired her lifelong passion for the arts.

In 1986 she opened the Vanessa Devereux Gallery in London, and almost two decades later, restored the crumbling El Fenn palace in Marrakech into a beautiful boutique hotel, and founded the Marrakech Biennale arts festival. Tracey Emin has written poems for her. Grayson Perry has made an urn for her funeral ashes.

A terrible moment in the book came on her wedding day to the dazzling Robert Devereux, when he caught her smoking and threatened to divorce her if she ever did it again.

The culture of our marriage had been set, she writes. Sure enough, in spite of having four children, trouble lay ahead. She is remarkably candid about their problems, him leaving her for his 26-year-old assistant on his 40th birthday, and their subsequent marriage bust-up.

A year later, she got a boob job. It was such a folly. I call myself a feminist and then I go and do something like that! But at the time having beautiful perfect breasts had the most ridiculous effect of empowerment. Within two weeks, men were like bees round a honeypot, she says, explaining her insecurity at being left for someone so much younger.

But Im completely free of that now and its a very good feeling. Sixty is a great stage in life to be at. She is currently single, though various liaisons are woven through the book.

Remarkably, 20 years on, just as she was finishing writing it, Devereux emailed her an unequivocal apology, taking full responsibility for their failed marriage, having seen himself in a documentary made by their son Louis.

It took courage; it was a gift, she says, and has included it at the end. Everyone in her family was supportive. I asked Richard about writing the book and he said, Go for it, its really good.

Today, she is make-up free, her long grey hair in braids. She spends her days planting trees and is working on a novel featuring a female protagonist in the arts world, living in lockdown.

Shes no longer commercially involved in art, apart from running workshops on her Scottish island, Eilean Shona, where she operates a superior B&B.

(Mark Large/Daily Mail/Shuttersto)

Artists will respond to the crisis positively, she thinks. Theyre visionaries and this reset is no bad thing for the art world. Everything was going so fast before which wasnt good for creativity. Now theres going to be more connection with nature. Being able to see the skies and the clarity of the light is just extraordinary. Not having the persistent noise of aeroplanes in the background is such a joy, even in Sussex.

That doesnt stop Branson, who sits on the board of Virgin Unite (Virgins social responsibility arm), from defending her brother after his recent pasting in the media for asking for a government bailout for Virgin Atlantic. One journalist called him a wizened tycoon worth 4billion begging for 500million of taxpayers cash.

She says: It was mean and misplaced. The wizened tycoon has been incredibly loyal to his family and friends and more. But he was such an easy target. Hes put himself in front of the press a lot and when people are down, its easy to kick them. He acknowledges his communication wasnt right. But he wasnt asking for a personal loan. It was just to keep [Virgin] going, because it employs a lot of people and is expensive to mothball. His companies have all paid tax in the countries they do business from. Hes got extraordinary spirit and hell push on.

As will she, clearly. Her children, their partners and her two-year-old grandson have all just gone back to London having been in splendid isolation with her. She believes the young are being made to suffer at the expense of the elderly and favours the Swedish model.

We cant just all wait around for a vaccine, weve got to get going again. A lot of people whove been dying would have died by the end of the year, so the number of deaths is not the relevant figure. Whats more important is that more people should have it. Young people are being severely damaged and sacrificed for our generation. They should all be out working, not locked up.

For all the glitz, I say, she seems to have suffered a lot, but the stoical Branson will have none of it.

Ive had a fabulous life and I dont want anyone to feel sorry for me, she laughs. And theres still lots more ahead!

One Hundred Summers: A Family Story by Vanessa Branson (Mensch, 22.70) is published on May 21

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Vanessa Branson on family, her new memoir and why her brother Richard is no 'wizened tycoon' - Evening Standard