Amanda Eliasch

Amanda Eliasch was born in 1960 in Beirut, Lebanon, where her father Anthony Cave Brown worked as a foreign correspondent for the Daily Mail, and later wrote several books on espionage and World War II.

[2] She returned to England when she was six weeks old, and was brought up by her grandfather, film director Sidney Gilliat, who encouraged her with artistic pursuits.

[14] From this book Eliasch started her own collection through photographing and entertaining many artists including Tracey Emin and Polly Morgan in her St Tropez home.

[32] The same year, Eliasch worked as a film director and writer, making a "jarringly frank" documentary drama The Gun, the Cake and the Butterfly, which contained the line: "When a woman confronts her loneliness she is free.

[46] She was named Best Female Director at the Burbank Film Festival and won the most exceptional documentary award at the La Jolla Indie Fest.

[54] That year the writer Katie Glass from the Sunday Times said she looked "like Marilyn Monroe dressed as a gothic Japanese schoolgirl".

London residence and studio is in Cheyne Walk, where her art collection is on display, including pieces by Michael Ayrton and Oriel Harwood, a white elephant by Marc Quinn[56] and Jake and Dinos Chapman.

[47][59] Eliasch sponsors the British Film Institute as part of the Directors Cut programme,[60] and The Elephant Family.

[61] Eliasch decided to sell some of her belongings for charity in 2020, among them some Tally Ho chairs by artist Mark Brazier-Jones.