As the work of Bloomsbury artist Duncan Grant features in a major exhibition, Cordelia Roche reflects on her father’s decades-long relationship with the painter – as friend, muse, but never lover
After Duncan Grant died in our house, in Aldermaston in Berkshire, at the age of 93, I remember my father’s knees buckling and him falling to the ground. It was 1978, the end of their 32-year relationship, and the end of an era.
My father Paul Roche, a poet, writer and translator of Greek plays, seemed to crumble before my eyes. He was 61, a father of five, and I was the youngest. Duncan, the painter, designer and a key figure of the Bloomsbury group, had been his beloved friend for more than half his life.