‘Don’t tell anyone… it’ll ruin my image
Come in, dear. Come in,’ said Michael Winner, opening the door to his sumptuous Kensington mansion where a King of England once sat for his portrait and some of Hollywood’s biggest stars have enjoyed lavish hospitality.
‘I’m trying to give my house to the nation,’ he said somewhat irritably, having just got off the phone to Kensington and Chelsea Council, who was offered it. ‘It’s worth £50m. They can have it for nothing. It’s full of wonderful original art. They can have that as well. But they won’t take it. Incredible, darling. Incredible.’
Perhaps they were put off by Winner’s suggestion that if it was turned into a museum in homage to Pre- Raphaelite artist Sir Luke Fildes, whose studio was Woodland House, the public would be welcomed in the hall by a speaking waxwork of himself.
‘I thought I’d record a tape of greeting before I popped my clogs,’ he said. ‘The Council has turned me down because it wants me to buy the lease out, which would cost £15m and then promise to leave them millions more to support it. And I’ve already put millions into restoring the house.’
The public image of film director Michael Winner was of a flamboyant and nearly always vulgar populist with a genius for publicity. To those who knew him well, however, much of this, and his boasts that he bedded 130 women, was playful acting and obscured his greatest indulgence – period architecture. He didn’t want people to know he was culturally sensitive. And few knew that he was a leading member of several societies dedicated to saving historic homes from the bulldozers.
‘What’s happening is death by a thousand cuts,’ he said. ‘The developers are allowed to get away with what seems like small changes to a building, which eventually impeaches its integrity and eventually wrecks the neighbourhood. And the councils allow it.
‘For years as a film director, I travelled the country and it gave me a love of England; its houses, cathedrals and landscape. I cherish this heritage because it is of an Arcadian England that will be tarmacked over unless we fight for it. When I travel around today I see two sights: the way things are now and the way they used to look.’
I asked him what his favourite place in Britain was, thinking it might be Pinewood Studios where he shot so many films. But the answer was surprising.
‘The bridge at Ecton in Derbyshire where I filmed The Wicked Lady,’ he said. ‘It’s set in perfect English countryside that looks like a painting by Constable.’
His favourite building, however, remained Woodland House where he first arrived as a boy of 11. The walls were pockmarked with bomb blasts, the garden a jungle.
‘Heaven for a boy,’ he said.
‘My father bought the house cheaply because after the war nobody wanted anything old. He split the house into three flats, erected walls, installed false ceilings. I’ve put it back the way it was designed. When bricks above the studio began to crumble, I even hunted down identical well-worn bricks from an old school in Richmond, Surrey, which had just been demolished.’
Woodland House boasts every contemporary luxury inside. It has 49 rooms, a Hollywood-style cinema, filmset stairs and a one-acre garden filled with tropical plants that is floodlit every night.
‘You could probably see it from space,’ he always said. Sadly it will now be sold. His widow, Geraldine, who he knew all his life but only married two years ago when he was 75, says it’s too big for her and she’ll probably relocate to Paris where her two sons live with her grandchildren. It was in Woodland House that Sir Luke Fildes painted Edward VII in what the king said was the finest room in London. Winner reinstated the studio, with its windows spanning two storeys, to its original glory. It was to become his astonishing bedroom, decorated with pink-tinged wallpaper and his collection of teddy bears.
I asked him who was his hero – and it wasn’t Marlon Brando or any other of the great and the good who he entertained here.
‘A woman called Gay Christiansen,’ he said. ‘She was the leader of the Kensington Society that fought so hard to preserve our historic architectural heritage.’
And then he winked and added, ‘But Roddy, please don’t tell anyone. It will ruin my image.’
‘I’m trying to give my house to the nation,’ he said somewhat irritably, having just got off the phone to Kensington and Chelsea Council, who was offered it. ‘It’s worth £50m. They can have it for nothing. It’s full of wonderful original art. They can have that as well. But they won’t take it. Incredible, darling. Incredible.’
Perhaps they were put off by Winner’s suggestion that if it was turned into a museum in homage to Pre- Raphaelite artist Sir Luke Fildes, whose studio was Woodland House, the public would be welcomed in the hall by a speaking waxwork of himself.
‘I thought I’d record a tape of greeting before I popped my clogs,’ he said. ‘The Council has turned me down because it wants me to buy the lease out, which would cost £15m and then promise to leave them millions more to support it. And I’ve already put millions into restoring the house.’
The public image of film director Michael Winner was of a flamboyant and nearly always vulgar populist with a genius for publicity. To those who knew him well, however, much of this, and his boasts that he bedded 130 women, was playful acting and obscured his greatest indulgence – period architecture. He didn’t want people to know he was culturally sensitive. And few knew that he was a leading member of several societies dedicated to saving historic homes from the bulldozers.
‘What’s happening is death by a thousand cuts,’ he said. ‘The developers are allowed to get away with what seems like small changes to a building, which eventually impeaches its integrity and eventually wrecks the neighbourhood. And the councils allow it.
‘For years as a film director, I travelled the country and it gave me a love of England; its houses, cathedrals and landscape. I cherish this heritage because it is of an Arcadian England that will be tarmacked over unless we fight for it. When I travel around today I see two sights: the way things are now and the way they used to look.’
I asked him what his favourite place in Britain was, thinking it might be Pinewood Studios where he shot so many films. But the answer was surprising.
‘The bridge at Ecton in Derbyshire where I filmed The Wicked Lady,’ he said. ‘It’s set in perfect English countryside that looks like a painting by Constable.’
His favourite building, however, remained Woodland House where he first arrived as a boy of 11. The walls were pockmarked with bomb blasts, the garden a jungle.
‘Heaven for a boy,’ he said.
‘My father bought the house cheaply because after the war nobody wanted anything old. He split the house into three flats, erected walls, installed false ceilings. I’ve put it back the way it was designed. When bricks above the studio began to crumble, I even hunted down identical well-worn bricks from an old school in Richmond, Surrey, which had just been demolished.’
Woodland House boasts every contemporary luxury inside. It has 49 rooms, a Hollywood-style cinema, filmset stairs and a one-acre garden filled with tropical plants that is floodlit every night.
‘You could probably see it from space,’ he always said. Sadly it will now be sold. His widow, Geraldine, who he knew all his life but only married two years ago when he was 75, says it’s too big for her and she’ll probably relocate to Paris where her two sons live with her grandchildren. It was in Woodland House that Sir Luke Fildes painted Edward VII in what the king said was the finest room in London. Winner reinstated the studio, with its windows spanning two storeys, to its original glory. It was to become his astonishing bedroom, decorated with pink-tinged wallpaper and his collection of teddy bears.
I asked him who was his hero – and it wasn’t Marlon Brando or any other of the great and the good who he entertained here.
‘A woman called Gay Christiansen,’ he said. ‘She was the leader of the Kensington Society that fought so hard to preserve our historic architectural heritage.’
And then he winked and added, ‘But Roddy, please don’t tell anyone. It will ruin my image.’