So goodbye, Liz Taylor, I did not know you well

Elizabeth Taylor, dead. For my generation she was the glamorous backdrop to our childhood. She was the stuff of fantasy – sex, wealth, Hollywood, cinema, waywardness. And the more she married, the bigger the diamonds, the bigger the fantasy. In our mythic worlds, she travelled with Monty, the Duke of Edinburgh, Edmund Hilary, Everest, and all things heroic.

She also introduced us to grubby tabloid journalism. Journalism that sought to destroy the world of our myths..and strangely in our innocence and naivety, we knew whose side we were on…hers.

So her passing is a passing of Second World War over hang, of swishing pearls, swinging pleats, and unforgivable mink.

Liz Taylor pre-dated ‘the pill’, predated the Beatles. She was Sinatra, we were Lennon. But we needed the backdrop of her time to set about our own cultural revolution.
Elizabeth Taylor’s death is the closing of a chapter of a time that is now gone for all time. Pre-dope, pre-coke, when stars got drunk. Our generation got stoned and Stones, hers drove gold plated rollers, ours wouldn’t have been seen dead in one.

SEE CULTURE EDITOR MATTHEW CAIN’S FULL OBITUARY ON HIS BLOG

Her passing represents a watershed. Black and white television has finally been switched off. The grainy child movie star is no more. The furs smell of anti-moth. The coffin is closed. We are now free to wallow in what is ours – rock, shock-jock, cruise missiles, tyrants and different sorts of Oscars.