House of Nutter

From an early age, there was something different about Tommy and David Nutter. Growing up above an Edgware café, the boys seemed destined to lead humble lives in post-war London yet the strength of their imagination transformed them instead into unlikely protagonists of a swinging cultural revolution. In 1969, at the age of twenty-six, Tommy opened an unusual new boutique on the ‘golden mile’ of bespoke tailoring. While shocking a haughty establishment resistant to change, ‘Nutters of Savile Row’ became an immediate sensation among the young, rich, and beautiful, beguiling everyone from Bianca Jagger to the Beatles – who immortalised Tommy’s designs on the album cover of Abbey Road. Meanwhile, David’s talent with a camera vaulted him across the Atlantic to New York City, where he found himself amongst a parallel constellation of stars (including Freddie Mercury and Elton John) who enjoyed his dry wit almost as much as his photography.

House of Nutter tells the glamorous true story of two gay men who influenced some of the most iconic styles and pop images of the twentieth century. Drawing on interviews with more than seventy people – and taking advantage of unparalleled access to never-before-seen pictures, letters, sketches, and diaries – Lance Richardson presents a dual portrait of brothers improvising their way through five decades of extraordinary events, their personal struggles playing out against vivid backdrops of the Blitz, the birth of disco and the devastation of the AIDS crisis. A propulsive, deftly-plotted narrative filled with surprising details and near-operatic twists, House of Nutter takes readers on a wild ride into the minds and times of two brilliant dreamers.