Tamara Beckwith Veroni’s six-storey house in London’s Belgravia is filled with photos. From a smiling wedding portrait on the mantelpiece to the framed snaps of her three children on the glass coffee table – and a shot of Elizabeth II beaming from the deck of the Royal Yacht Britannia – each one tells a story.
"I love photographs; they speak to me," Tamara says, inviting HELLO! into her eclectically furnished home for an exclusive interview and photoshoot. "I find them very interesting to look at and I enjoy having them around me. It’s like collecting people."
Crowning glory
An ardent royalist, Tamara’s sitting room has a distinctly regal theme, with oversized cushions decorated with crown motifs plumped up on the comfy red velvet sofa and a monochrome rug bearing Elizabeth II’s profile.
Downstairs, a replica of St Edward’s Crown, which she acquired while on Channel 4’s Four Rooms, takes pride of place in a cabinet.
Royal support
But Tamara has her royal supporters, too. Her friend Sarah, Duchess of York and her daughters, Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie, all champion the Lady Garden Foundation, the charity she co-founded ten years ago with the aim of saving women’s lives, following her mother Paula's death from endometrial cancer at the age of 68 in 2011.
In fact, she tells us, Sarah credits the charity with her own early breast cancer diagnosis last year. "Sarah told me that her breast cancer was diagnosed because she went for a check-up after coming to one of our events.
"She said we shouldn’t underestimate the importance of our events. They aren’t just fun fundraisers; they actually make us females sit and think and realise that we need to be vigilant and aware of our bodies, and that it’s our responsibility to go and get ourselves checked, whether that’s for breast cancer or gynaecological cancer.
"Sarah said it was as a result of attending one of our events, where we reminded everybody in a gentle but firm way that it’s down to us," she adds. "She was very grateful – but she was the one who took the action."
Star support
The Princesses have also been regulars at the charity’s events, which raise money for the Royal Marsden Cancer Charity and awareness about the five gynaecological cancers, with Beatrice joining hundreds of women at a fundraising run.
"All of us know them socially and Beatrice is very close to our co-founder Astrid Harbord," Tamara says. "She and Eugenie have their own charities but as females, they want to support us. They feel very strongly that they’d like to be part of it and we’re very grateful for that."
Next week, Tamara and her co-founders – Astrid, Chloe Delevingne, Jenny Halpern Prince, Josephine Daniel and Mika Simmons – are holding their star-studded Lady Garden Gala at the plush Raffles London at The OWO hotel.
Presenter Alexander Armstrong will be hosting, a role previously filled by Dame Joanna Lumley, Dame Joan Collins and Trinny Woodall. Guests have included Elizabeth Hurley, Yasmin Le Bon, James and Sofia Blunt and Ronan and Storm Keating – the former Boyzone star has even provided impromptu entertainment, as has Melanie Chisholm, a Lady Garden ambassador.
"We’re very happy and proud of what we’ve accomplished, but we’re quite flabbergasted that it’s been a decade," Tamara says. "My mum would be shocked at what we’ve managed to create.
"If only she’d had more knowledge and gone to the doctor sooner, things might have turned out differently. Losing your mother is the worst thing in the world and this makes us feel like it wasn’t for nothing.”
As an It-girl in the 1990s, Tamara travelled the world to report from celebrity parties and society events. She is now a 53-year-old grandmother, but remains as glamorous as ever.
Her daughter Anouska, 35, has a child of her own, five-year-old Luna, and Tamara has daughter Violet, 15, and son Vero, nine, with Formula E executive Giorgio Veroni, whom she married in Venice in 2007. "We’d met at an anniversary party years earlier and became friends," she says. "Giorgio was fun and super happy, but he always had a girlfriend or I had a boyfriend. Eventually, we were both single and it happened very organically."
Family happiness
Tamara was proud to watch Anouska marry breathwork therapist Luke McSwiney last year in a register office in Bath, where the couple live, followed by a blessing in a forest outside Paris.
"It was magical, with music and drums and singing and children running around,” she says. "Anouska and Luke are very spiritual and choose to be around people who care about the planet and nature. The wedding in Bath also turned out to be really special because Luke’s daddy, who died soon afterwards, was there.
"Luke thinks everything we do is in full Technicolor. We do everything on a grand scale – that’s how we operate.”
Photographer Anouska visits her regularly with Luna and Tamara loves having her granddaughter for sleepovers. "She is super smart and she loves trying on all my shoes and sparkly clothes. She thinks I live in a tower because there are so many stairs," she tells us with a laugh.
Having given birth to Anouska at the age of 17, Tamara says motherhood in her 50s is different. "I’m a very present mother. I do the school run and go to all of Vero’s football matches.
"People say it’s better to have quality time with your children than quantity, but I disagree. You don’t need to be constantly entertaining them or taking them to the theatre. Sometimes we’re doing nothing special, but children just want to know mummy is there.”
Tamara spends more time at home than she did when she was a party-loving girl about town. She has filled the elegant 19th-century house she and Giorgio bought three years ago with items collected over the years, from ornate mirrors and quirky lamps to an Italian resin table that sits on top of a leopard-print rug.
House of delights
Her friend, interior designer Alison Henry, helped her design the curtains and co-ordinate the soft furnishings, while on every floor, the walls are covered with photographs.
They include a large black-and-white Steve Schapiro image of Andy Warhol and Edie Sedgwick partying in New York in the 1960s – a gift from gallery owner Tim Jefferies – and a Norman Parkinson picture that was a wedding present from Sir Elton John and his husband David Furnish.
There is also work by Anouska, together with Terry O’Neill and Lord Lichfield, and images include stars such as Sir Mick Jagger, Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin – some from Tamara’s own Little Black Picture Gallery, which stages exhibitions worldwide.
As elegant as ever, she still likes to go out when the occasion arises. "I enjoy getting dressed up, but these days I go out to support my friends’ events, or to work dinners with my husband," she says. "But I don’t go to a nightclub and I don’t want to go to a big crowded place for the sake of it. I’ve done enough of that."
PHOTOS: Kate Martin
STYLIST: Caroline Sciamma assisted by Jessica Fox
HAIR: John MacPherson using Davines
MAKEUP: Barrie Griffith using Herrera beauty