I REMEMBER... Pattie Boyd

Pattie Boyd (78) came to fame as a top model in the 1960s, when she also became the wife of George Harrison. She looks back at her childhood in Kenya, hanging out with Jean Shrimpton and The Beatles, and being a muse for Eric Clapton

- Simon Button

MY EARLIEST MEMORY IS OF SITTING IN A HIGH CHAIR when I was nearly three and my mother feeding me spinach. It was so disgusting that I remember spitting it out. My mother was in the ATS [Auxiliary Territorial Service] during the Second World War, met my father at a dance and married very early at age 18. We moved around a lot when I was young—from Somerset to Scotland for some reason, then Guildford for another reason. But it seemed normal because I didn’t know any different.

MY FATHER WAS A BOMBER PILOT DURING THE WAR, and he was badly injured when the plane he was flying crashed into another plane during take-off in Malta. He suffered severe burns on his hands and his face, and he later had to have plastic surgery at the famous McIndoe Centre in East Grinstead.

WHEN I WAS FOUR WE MOVED TO KENYA AND I LOVED IT THERE. It always seemed to be sunny and we all stayed with my grandparents, who had a glorious house in Lang’ata and who were wealthy, so there were servants and nannies to look after us. The house had beautiful gardens that flowed into the wilderness where wild animals would sometimes get lost and come up to the house.