House of Nutter

Tommy Nutter brought decadent glamour to stuffy Savile Row, giving it a wicked and much-needed kick up the bum. Lance Richardson tells the tale of Tommy’s rise and fall with meticulous detail and great panache

Simon Doonan, author of Saturday Night Fever Pitch: The Madness and Magic of Footballer Style

An exposé of the underrated designer who helped shape 20th-century European aesthetics... It’s as if Nutter had his pulse on nearly every significant moment of the era ... Refreshingly, Richardson has created a work that is surprisingly unpretentious; the author looks at Nutter’s life with impressive objectivity, zeroing in on significant episodes and leaving the rest on the cutting-room floor ... An exciting addition to fashion history

Kirkus Reviews

An enjoyable and absorbing read about sartorial rigor and queer life that also happens to be a moving social history of mid-century London and New York

Adam Haslett, author of Imagine Me Gone

Tommy Nutter, the Rebel Tailor of Savile Row, dressed the Beatles and Elton John. Cheeky, aloof, camp, Nutter was drawn to glamour like a moth to a flame. Lance Richardson has restored his fame and gripping story in all its detail and pathos

Edmund White, author of Our Young Man and A Boy’s Own Story

In the fabulous Nutter brothers, Lance Richardson has found a magical wormhole to Swinging London, Beatlemania, and Studio 54—destinations of the mind that feel both familiar and, through Tommy and David’s eyes, sparklingly new. An effervescent tale, told with the pizzazz of a checked suit, perfectly tailored

Michael Schulman, author of Her Again: Becoming Meryl Streep

Tommy and David Nutter were gay British brothers whose lives intersected with everyone from the Beatles, Mick Jagger, and Cilla Black to Steve Rubell and Elton John, just as the gay revolution was beginning to explode on both sides of the Atlantic. Lance Richardson’s astute portraits of Swinging London in the ‘60's and swaggering Manhattan in the ‘70's blend backstage gossip with compelling social history. The result is an irresistible narrative

Charles Kaiser, author of The Gay Metropolis

Tommy and David Nutter, both driven creative artists, led fast-paced lives that were emblematic of their times. This vivid and enthralling book perfectly captures their relentless spirits and the carefree, high-flying days of the ‘60s and beyond

Fred Hersch, author of Good Things Happen Slowly: A Life In and Out of Jazz

Through the lens of fashion, Lance Richardson superbly chronicles the greatest societal and cultural upheaval of the last century. House of Nutter potently underscores the inextricable relationship between the world we live in and the clothes we wear. I couldn’t put it down

Tim Gunn, author of The Natty Professor

Richardson transports readers to the colorful days of postwar London in this dual portrait of brothers Tommy and David Nutter ... eloquent and vivid ... Richardson’s affection for his subjects is touching and [...] his enthusiasm is contagious.

Publishers Weekly

In House of Nutter, Lance Richardson brings back Tommy in all his cheeky, sexy, wicked glory

Simon Callow

Reads with all the seamless splendour of a beautiful bespoke suit. Enchanting, irreverent and entertaining

attitude

Lance Richardson’s lively, affectionate, occasionally breathless book is a double narrative, the story of two brothers who rose from modest north London origins to the fringes of international stardom ... Compelling

Anthony Quinn, The Guardian

Captivating ... an engaging analysis of the British class system and the fashion industry, gay liberation and the Aids crisis, which plays out like a binge-worthy Netflix series

Mark C O'Flaherty, Financial Times

House of Nutter is a tale that is quintessential of its era, told by a biographer who combines pace and exhaustiveness

Anna Murphy, The Times

[A]s a gay man living through an era of liberation, [Nutter’s] personal life was no less exciting and is covered in detail in the book.

Mansel Fletcher, Mr Porter

- This feels comprehensive and very well researched by Lance Richardson

The Chic Geek

Vivid and tragic

Dominic Green, Spectator

Splendidly readable and gossipy ... a gripping read that is as much social history as it is biography ... House of Nutter, Richardson's first book, is a fine match of author and subject. He writes with flair and erudition, making extensive use of interviews with David, and bringing something new to the evocation of an era that might seem overfamiliar ... it's hard to find fault with this thoroughly enjoyably glimpse into high fashion and low life

Alexander Larman, The Observer

Richardson susses out their [David and Tommy Nutter's] story lovingly, and with great panache. With all the ink that's been spilled on Beatlemania, Studio 54, sixties counterculture, and the rest, it's remarkable to find a new story to tell, with characters who were there all along, as if waiting for someone to notice

Michael Schulman, New Yorker

What makes Lance Richardson's biography so much more than a humdrum story of rags to riches -- or rather rags to bespoke -- is its illuminating and vividly drawn account of the milieu, both social and sartorial, in which Nutter moved, and the intriguing parallel history of his elder brother, David

Mick Brown, Sunday Telegraph

Richardson draws of recollection of Nutter’s brother… The result is an engaging, affecting story of class, fashion and gay liberation

The Week

Richardson reveals how Nutter…more than lived up to his name

Tom Leonard, Daily Mail

Absorbing... There is a lot to celebrate in House of Nutter: the history of gay liberation, which Richardson neatly weaves into the narrative; and two brothers, fated for a blue-collar life, who "pulled themselves up by the force of their own imagination".

Mika Ross-Southall, The Times Literary Supplement

Savile Row tailor Tommy Nutter dressed rock stars – it’s his suits three of the Beatles are wearing on the cover of Abbey Road – and his brother David photographed them. An evocative portrait of two extraordinary careers

Daily Mail

Richardson has created a pattern-perfect double-breasted biography of two gay brothers, who, in an unlikely rags to riches story, were brought up in north London and went on to shape the social and sartorial side of life in the 1960s

Helen Davies, Sunday Times, **Books of the Year**