Sir Cecil Walter Beaton was an English fashion and portrait photographer, diarist, style icon, interior designer and an Academy Award-winning stage and costume designer for films and the theatre.

He was born on January 14, 1904 in Hampstead the son of Ernest Walter Hardy Beaton (1867-1936), a prosperous timber merchant, and his wife Etty Sissons (1872-1962). His grandfather, Walter Hardy Beaton (1841-1904) had founded the family business of Beaton Brothers Timber Merchants and Agents, and his father followed into the business. Ernest Beaton was also an amateur actor and had met his wife, Cecil's mother, when playing the lead in a play. She was the daughter of a Cumbrian blacksmith who had come to London t...