Pat Booth (Pat Booth)
Model, Photographer, Author. A pretty blonde, she moved from a career in front of the lens to a position as a respected portrait photographer, then became a best-selling author. Raised in London’s East End, she started with few advantages and as a young child was often a towel-girl at her boxer father’s matches. Pat left school at 15 and worked in a department store, determined to become a model. Despite being thought too short for the runway she soon posed for such top photographers of the day as Norman Parkinson and David Bailey while her image graced the pages and covers of the leading fashion magazines of the 1960s including “Harpers & Queen” and “Vogue”. In the 1970s Pat switched to the other side of the camera, producing images of a number of noted persons including the Queen and the Queen Mother. Her work appeared in “Cosmopolitan”, “The Sunday Times”, and other publications; she has exhibited at the National Portrait Gallery and in 1983 she published a collection entitled “Master Photographers: The World’s Great Photographers on Their Art and Technique”. During the 1980s she once again changed tack, producing a series of racy novels about “sex and shopping” with such forgettable titles as “The Lady and the Champ” (1980), “Palm Beach” (1992), “Malibu” (1993), and “Beverly Hills” (1990), and while she never claimed her books were great literature she did enjoy the money that flowed from good sales. After romantic links with a number of celebrities she married banker-turned-psychiatrist Garth Wood (suicide 2001) in 1976 then in the last year of her life she wed advertising executive Sir Frank Lowe. A devout Catholic, she often worked with unwed mothers and even adopted the child of one girl she helped. Pat kept her age a secret but at her death from metastatic lung cancer her birthdate was revealed. Of her life she said: “I’ve achieved everything I set out to achieve. My expectations are never too high, and I continue till I’ve succeeded”. (bio by: Bob Hufford)
Born
- April, 24, 1943
- England
Died
- May, 05, 2009
- England
Other
- Cremated