The Daily Mail has published a review of the memoirs of singer-songwriter Carly Simon, Boys in the Trees. The article, by Tom Leonard, mentions how her life was affected by the 1980s Granada TV adaptation of Waugh’s novel Brideshead Revisited:
[In 1984], she allegedly began a secret affair with the actor Jeremy Irons, who is not mentioned in the book. According to a 2012 biography by Stephen Davis, an old friend, Simon had fallen for him after watching him in the TV adaptation of the Evelyn Waugh novel Brideshead Revisited…Neither Simon nor Irons has ever commented on the claims.
Ms. Simon is from a literary background, her father having been a co-founder of the publishers Simon & Schuster. The story of the affair or flirtation with Jeremy Irons, if true, may be the only one of many in the Daily Mail’s article that has a literary connection (unless one considers the original 007 actor Sean Connery and British satirical writer William Donaldson to qualify). The book seems to end before the release of the later Channel 4 TV series Sword of Honour, starring Daniel Craig who went on to portray 007. One can only wonder…
