About this Event
The awarded artist and author of Tales From the Colony Room and Queens of Bohemia, will be presenting his latest biography which chronicles the coruscating life of the woman who became the muse for Francis Bacon and Lucian Freud.
Hen, Mistress of Mayhem will take you to the epicentre of Soho’s Golden Age in the company of a hell-raising companion.
Henrietta Moraes was a key counter-culture figure in the 1950s and 60s London art scene, indefatigable in her efforts to become a bohemian legend. Darren Coffield’s 2026 biography Hen, Mistress of Mayhem chronicles the coruscating life of the woman who became the muse for Francis Bacon and Lucian Freud. Equally capable of outrageous behaviour, at various times she was caretaker for an Irish stately home, imprisoned after an unsuccessful stint as a cat burglar, worked for singer Marianne Faithfull, and lived in a horse-drawn caravan as part of a group of New Age travellers.
The Author
Darren Coffield was born in London in 1969. He studied at Goldsmiths College, Camberwell School of Art and the Slade School of Art in London where he received his Bachelor of Fine Art in 1993. He has exhibited widely in the company of many leading artists including Damien Hirst, Howard Hodgkin, Patrick Caulfield and Gilbert and George at venues ranging from the Courtauld Institute, Somerset House to Voloshin Museum, Crimea. His work can be found in collections around the world. In the early nineties Coffield worked with Joshua Compston on the formation of Factual Nonsense – the centre of the emerging Young British Artists scene and wrote a book about this period in British Art, . Eminent art critic David Sylvester described Darren Coffield as “Another of those magicians who (probably without knowing) knows how to imbue pieces of matter with light”. In 2014, Darren Coffield was specially selected by the jurors of 100 Painters of Tomorrow as an artist who has made a significant contribution to the painting scene today. He is also the author of Tales From the Colony Room and Queens of Bohemia.
N.B. The library is not wheelchair accessible. There are two steps at the entrance and five to the library floor and public toilet (also not accessible). The Music Library, where the talk will take place, is located on the first floor and there is no lift. There are three flights of stairs with a handrail on both sides to reach this floor.
Event Venue & Nearby Stays
Westminster Reference Library, 35 Saint Martin's Street, London, United Kingdom
GBP 0.00
