Anthony Haden-Guest — the legendary British journalist and bon vivant who inspired the cynical Peter Fallow character in Tom Wolfe‘s “The Bonfire of the Vanities” — has been cleaned out.
The writer is distraught over the loss of a lifetime’s worth of valuables he put into storage when he moved back to London a couple of years ago.
In January, when he returned to New York, Haden-Guest learned that Public Storage, an international chain with facilities in Long Island City, Queens, had sold everything he owned to a single buyer. “Papers, books, art, furniture, clothes, 30 years of everything,” he told Page Six.
His art collection of more than 100 works — including pieces by David Salle, Ashley Bickerton and Donald Baechler — was said to be worth more than $1 million.
“I owed them $1,350 dollars. A couple of months before, my lawyer had asked them to give me details so I could wire them monthly payments. They refused. I called them to say I would settle when I got back to New York,” said Haden-Guest, the son of an English baron and the brother-in-law of Jamie Lee Curtis.
“They made no attempt to contact my lawyer . . . They e-mailed me my invoices and they knew I was in London, but didn’t mail a warning and clearly made no effort to contact me there,” he said.
“I have been kidnapped in Lebanon. I have been stabbed 50 times in my apartment. But this is the worst thing that has happened to me. And there is an aroma here that isn’t lilies of the valley. But I’ve got a terrific lawyer, Donald Bernstein, and this is just the beginning.”
Calls to Public Storage’s Glendale, Calif., offices were not returned.