The Glory of Miriam Margolyes: The Larger Than Life Lesbian

[PeterRS]

You may not know the name but no doubt you have seen her, either on television on cinema screens. She was a stalwart in the "Blackadder" tv series, played Professor Sprout in the "Harry Potter" movies, regularly appears in the UK on Graham Norton's show and more recently internationally as one of a group of pensioners visiting india and Japan in a series "The Real Marigold Hotel" based on the movie "The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel" and its sequel about retirees in an Indian hotel. Or in more serious vein in Martin Scorsese's movie "The Age of Innocence" and as the Nurse in Baz Luhrmann's version of "Romeo and Juliet" with Leonardo DiCaprio as Romeo. 

Now aged 80, openly lesbian since her early 20s and an LGBT activist, Miriam Margoyles has written her autobiography. One critic wrote, "Reliably outrageous and entertaining . . . a riotous memoir packed with jaw-dropping anecdotes." Another, "the heartbreaking emotional honesty of the book quite took my breath away."

This is far from the usual rather stilted life story of a public figure. Margolyes lays it all out exactly as it happened, warts (of which there are many) and all. The book is all about sex, religion, money and politics with a little bit of early cock-sucking thrown in. Celebrity means nothing to her. After meeting Leonardo DiCaprio, she remembers the "dank unwashed" smell of his body. At Cambridge University she found the famous Footlights Review, that cradle of so many future professional comedians and actors, did not allow women. She reserves particular scorn for John Cleese who, she claims, "bullied and ridiculed her at 19. I'd not met studied cruelty like that before." Even today, 60  years later, she cannot forgive nor forget.

Introducing herself on set to Stephen Fry, she simply said she was "the fat Jewish lesbian they have to have in this kind of film." Meeting her interviewer in her garden in South London, she calls over to the handsome gardener, "Marcos, do up your flies, there's a young lady here." Margolyes lives close to the daughter of famed actor Dame Judi Dench. During the lockdown, said Dame Judi, "She'd sit on her steps and have a cheering conversation with anyone passing by. I can think of no person that fits the description 'larger than life' as well as Miriam."

The autobiography also gives away a very serious secret. For two years she went to therapy. Her therapist, Margaret Branch, remained a close friend. One day she wanted to talk about another patient, no longer alive. Anyone interested in classical music in the 1960s will know that one of the world's most famous young cellists was the extraordinary Jacqueline du Pré. She was in demand all over the world. Even today her recording of the Elgar Cello Concerto with Sir John Barbirolli is regarded as the gold standard for that work.  Yet this English rose with so much to live for was forced to retire aged only 28 with the onset of multiple sclerosis. Her life then descended rapidly as the disease took hold until she died 14 years later in 1987 after being bedridden for years. In her memoir Margolyes reveals that du Pré had asked Branch to help her die. Unknown to the world until now, she did so. 

Margolyes recalls the conversation, the slow retelling, of how Branch had taken a syringe and “the liquid” and let herself into du Pré’s house when her staff had a day off. “I was trained during the war,” Branch told Margolyes. “If you want to help someone to die, or murder them without a trace, you inject them above their hairline. So, of course, I kissed her and I injected her…… And nobody ever knew it was me.” There is a pause. “A lot of people might ask, ‘Why tell that story? It isn’t yours,’” Margolyes says. “But I felt that it was such an important story about a very great artist it should be known, a kind of a public duty. I think it’s wonderful. Heroic, actually.”

Naturally some of her autobiography concentrates on her partner whom she first met in 1968. Oddly, perhaps, they have never lived together. Heather lived in Australia for much of their relationship and is now based in Amsterdam. But they meet frequently for long periods and are still clearly very much in love. In her long life she has few regrets. As an only child, one was coming out to her mother about her sexuality. 

“Ian McKellen doesn’t agree with me,” she adds. “We often have discussions about this, because he feels that you should tell people who you are and they will eventually adapt. But,” she chuckles darkly, “he doesn’t know Jews.” 

"This Much Is True" by Miriam Margolyes is published in the UK by John Murray Press.

https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2021/sep/19/miriam-margolyes-writing-my-memoir-was-terrifying-its-quite-revealing

[Lonnie]

16 hours ago, PeterRS said:

jaw-dropping anecdotes

I remember her telling this story on a British chat show:

She did “a great deal of sucking off” as a teenager, an early story in the book being set in her second year at Cambridge when, cycling along the cobbles, she turned to the American soldier whose car had stopped at the traffic lights beside her and politely invited him back to her college for a blowjob. Relating their encounter to her friends the next day, she writes, she was surprised at their shock: “I hadn’t let him anywhere near my vagina, after all. He was a pleasant chap. From Texas.”

[bobtpa1614502761]

Her appearances on the Graham Norton Show are some of the funniest interviews I've ever seen.

[PeterRS]

6 hours ago, bobtpa1614502761 said:

Her appearances on the Graham Norton Show are some of the funniest interviews I've ever seen.

She says in the book that she really enjoys them - and let the cat out of the bag by saying guests get £10,000 for each appearance!

[NIrishGuy]

"So, of course, I kissed her and I injected her"

 

Sorry unless I'm missing something re her story ( which knowing Miriam I might take with a pinch of salt anyway) but if not her therapist ( if still alive?  - *quick edit - on checking she's long dead it seems) not just confess to committing murder right there !??   Also it should be noted that the family have totally rejected the claim and said it would have been impossible for Mrs De Pru to ask for ANYTHING as she was totally incapacitated and barely able to move or speak to ask anyone to "put her out of her misery".   Why you'd almost think a publisher had a book to sell or something there for a minute ! 

 

I did love the story Miriam told on one of the Graham Norton shows where on her being presented to HM Queen Elizabeth  at some theatre line up she was asked "So, what do you do" and she came out with some flowery answer about "ohhh Im just the BEST story teller in the whole world" to which the Queen just rolled her eyes and moved on. When the Queen then spoke to the person in the line up who was standing next to Miriam and Miriam interjected in that conversation too the Queen instantly snapped at her 'Be Quiet!" and carried on her original conversation with the next person 🙂  So I love the fact that someone at least ( and no better person than the Queen herself WAS able to put Miriam back in her box, even if only for a short while ! 😉 

 

[PeterRS]

2 hours ago, NIrishGuy said:

Sorry unless I'm missing something re her story ( which knowing Miriam I might take with a pinch of salt anyway) but if not her therapist ( if still alive?  - *quick edit - on checking she's long dead it seems) not just confess to committing murder right there !??   Also it should be noted that the family have totally rejected the claim and said it would have been impossible for Mrs De Pru to ask for ANYTHING as she was totally incapacitated and barely able to move or speak to ask anyone to "put her out of her misery".   Why you'd almost think a publisher had a book to sell or something there for a minute ! 

With respect, that is nonsense!

I'm not sure where you get your information. Is there a website with the detail? I can only comment from what i have read in the reviews and articles regarding the autobiography AND the fact that the story of Ms. du Pré's death not being by natural causes is not new. We have to remember very clearly that her family was not at all caring for her, despite your claim.  That was total fiction. Her sister Hilary and her husband were Jesus worshippers and lived in a pseudo-religious Sixties commune. They never forgave Jackie for converting to Judaism when she married the Argentinian/Jewish piano virtuoso, Daniel Barenboim. In fact, they were horrified. And they never let her forget that God would not forgive her! Hilary wrote a book "A Genius in the Family" in which she portrayed herself as an intense and loving sibling. She virtually portrays herself as a sort of Virgin Mary. Yet musicians who visited Jackie regularly, like the virtuoso Australian guitarist John Williams, totally reject that description, describing Hilary as a "nutty" woman who never cared for her sister, who abandoned her despite claiming that she was with her throughout her illness. Williams stated in a 1999 Observer article that her sister and brother were nowhere near her to support her. He adds

"Two of her great friends, Cynthia Friend and Diana Nupern, who also died young, used to visit her every day." 

Cynthia Friend was actually with her when she died. Williams adds -

"This stuff by Hilary is - well, it's all woohoo."

Cynthia Friend writes -

'I saw her every day, just about. I used to sit and feed her by the end. I rarely saw her brother or sister - once, twice perhaps. I was an only child myself, and I always felt Jackie had no family either.

'They endlessly told her it was God's punishment. She used to ask me if that could be true. It's a bit sick really.

'At the end, the doctor said her death was imminent - it could be two hours, two days, a week. They didn't come. I don't understand that. There were a few of us there, and they didn't come. They came when she was dead.

There was, says Friend, one member of the family who was amazing to Jackie - Barenboim's mother, Aida. 'When Daniel was away, touring or whatever, he would call her in Israel. One phone call and she'd drop everything: teaching commitments, husband, home. She'd come, for a month, six weeks. She always used to say to me, in that Israeli-Argentine accent of hers: "She has all this family, and where are they?" She could never understand it.'

A few days ago, Friend read a magazine report that Hilary said that at the end Du Pré's so-called 'celebrity friends' had abandoned her. 'I felt like vomiting when I read that. We never deserted her. At the end, it got more and more difficult, but we didn't desert her. Her diary was full of people who came to be with her.

Another article makes clear that not one of her family were with her the day she died. One who was was the cellist William Pleeth, the son of her beloved childhood teacher. Although she was by then unconscious, he had heard about people still being able to hear in such a state. So he put on the gramophone her superb recording of the Schumann Cello Concerto. It was during that recording that life slipped from her body.

So I for one take what her family claimed as virtual nonsense. I agree with John Williams. They virtually abandoned her. They would have had no clue who visited and what a visitor might or might not have done. Miriam Margolyes' story had nothing to do with a made-up sensation to help sell a book.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk/1999/jan/24/theobserver.uknews1

 

[NIrishGuy]

26 minutes ago, PeterRS said:

With respect, that is nonsense!

I'm not sure where you get your information. Is there a website with the detail......her family was not at all caring for her, despite your claim... etc etc...

With respect, firstly lets be clear that "I" am not "claiming" anything as I I ( like you I imagine) am merely repeating claims as read on various websites, nothing more then that.  I don't profess to have any more insight into the issue that anyone else who may have clicked on a few internet pages about the story.  Also the bottom line of course is that no one can ever know for sure exactly what happened, so neither of the two versions of history can be described as "nonsense" as we simply cant' know which version is true.

To answer your question though re sources etc and after two ( admittedly very quick and cursory click on a few gogle links) here are just some of the details I found :

"In 2021, actress Miriam Margolyes claimed in her memoir This Much is True that Du Pré died in an assisted suicide. She stated that her therapist, Margaret Branch, told her that she assisted the suicide via lethal injection. Du Pré's former husband, Daniel Barenboim, called the claim "unverifiable" and said it had "absolutely nothing to do with the reality of Jackie's passing".^[11] 

Source : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacqueline_du_Pré 

or

The account was rejected yesterday by one of Miss du Pre's closest companions, Cynthia Friend, 81, who told the Daily Mail: 'I don't believe it for one minute. She was very special to me, and I had been staying there for a few nights with Ruth, her wonderful nurse.  

I don't know when this lady is saying Jackie was well enough to say, 'I'd like to be put out of my misery', because Jackie couldn't speak at the end. 

'There is no way she could have asked anybody. Ruth never left Jackie. There were a number of her close friends there at the end. I cannot imagine what Jackie would say, if she heard these things.  

Miss du Pre's death certificate shows that her cause of death was recorded by her GP as 'bronchopneumonia and multiple sclerosis'.

Yesterday Mr Barenboim said the story had 'absolutely nothing to do with the reality of Jackie's passing', and called it 'unverifiable'.

source : https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9956395/Storm-Miriam-Margolyes-claim-cellist-Jacqueline-du-Pre-helped-taking-life.html

( and yes I do accept that's from the Daily Mail etc but it quote sources and does give a different view so I thought it worth posting also.)

 

I also read the Guardian article from which I assume you're lifting your own detail from re the family and the commune etc and yes theres no doubt, there's clearly two absolutely different stories at play there it seems and two very different agendas at play too it seems. But again unfortunately it seems that this is just one of those stories now that the world will never know about for sure as to who was telling the truth I guess.

 

 

 

[PeterRS]

1 hour ago, NIrishGuy said:

With respect, firstly lets be clear that "I" am not "claiming" anything as I I ( like you I imagine) am merely repeating claims as read on various websites, nothing more then that.  I don't profess to have any more insight into the issue that anyone else who may have clicked on a few internet pages about the story.  Also the bottom line of course is that no one can ever know for sure exactly what happened, so neither of the two versions of history can be described as "nonsense" as we simply cant' know which version is true.

I did know - and still know - friends of John Williams and I did know one friend of William Pleeth's son, one reason I added his father's story. I  admit, though, that I have never quizzed any one of them about the sad death of Jacqueline du Pré. Although I had heard the rumours of her death having been hastened, I just assumed that were they true - and I repeat I have not the faintest idea if it is true or not - it was of no business of mine. The poor lady was clearly close to death and suffering badly. The only fact that concerned me was that one who lit up the world of music for a desperately short time had finally been released from her pain.

What annoyed me about your initial post was your comment about Ms. du Pré's family which was in fact totally inaccurate and that the 'confession' in the autobiography might just have been inserted to help the publisher to sell the book. As if there is not enough controversy and gossip elsewhere in the book without making up a total fiction!

Unfortunately, even her husband comes out of the tale without much credit, apart from getting his mother to come over from Israel for long periods. It is true he moved to Paris to become Chief Conductor of the Orchestre de Paris and therefore to be closer to London. But there he met and had an intense affair with the young Russian pianist Elena Bashkirova with whom he had two sons, both born before du Pré's death. So he had much more reason to be in Paris than looking after his sick wife in London. Only after du Pré died, though, did they marry.

I know precious little about MS and have no idea what condition Ms. du Pré was in in the days immediately prior to her death. From the autobiography, Ms. Branch clearly knew her and was clearly a friend of some description. Equally, she had clearly visited the house. Yet in the Daily Mail article, Cynthia Friend neither confirms nor denies this. She also does not confirm when du Pré might have been able to say a few words. But as Daniel Barenboim points out, a man who more than anyone might perhaps wish her death to be hastened (although I absolutely do not believe this), the story is "unverifiable". Conspiracy theorists might suggest he could perhaps have been more emphatic by saying he absolutely did not believe it and considered it a stupid fiction! "Unverifiable" sounds a somewhat strange response!

This all happened almost 35 years ago. In the death certificate, knowing her condition and that she was going to die in a few weeks, would her doctor have considered that there might  have been a drug in her system which hastened her death? Had he done so, would he not have insisted on an autopsy? We cannot know. So, yes, there are two sides to the story and neither is fully believable. All we can do is listen anew to Jacqueline du Pré's recordings and marvel that such an extraordinary talent was with us if only for the briefest of periods. And that although her family treated her badly, her friends in the world of music adored her - as did the public.

Let's just remember her for her music. The Elgar Concerto is stunning and arguably her greatest achievement but Elgar is not to everyone's taste, so here is a lighter, lusher Haydn Concerto with her husband Daniel Barenboim conducting the English Chamber Orchestra.