Jean Shrimpton

Brigid Keenan was never destined to lead a normal life. From her early beginnings – a colourful childhood in India brought to an abrupt end by independence and partition, then a return to dreary post-war England and on to a finishing school in Paris with daughters of presidents and princes – ordinary didn't seem to be her fate. When, as a ten-year-old, she overheard her mother describe her as 'desperately plain', she decided then and there that she had to rely on something different: glamour, eccentricity, character, a career – anything, so as not to end up at the bottom of the pile. And in classic Brigid style, she somehow ended up with them all.