John d Green photographed top model Sandra Paul at his Kensington studios on 3 August 1966. She was 25 at the time.
John recalls the session fondly: “We asked Sandra Paul, one of the most beautiful models in the world, to pose for us. She would not give us an answer on the spot, saying she would have to ask her husband. He flew off the handle, I’m told, raving about the “orgy” stories he’d heard. “You can go, but you are only to pose for normal model photographs” he told her. I never knew about any of this until much later, but as it happened, I had already decided that since Sandra had one of the most classically beautiful faces I had ever seen, I would just photograph her face. She came into the studio one lunchtime and the whole session was over in half an hour – one of the shortest of all the sessions we organised. Sandra went back to her husband that night and reported: “I don’t know what you are talking about. All they wanted to do were head shots.”
Sandra Paul is now Sandra Howard, and is an English novelist, former model and the wife of Michael Howard, a former leader of the Conservative party. In the 1960s Sandra Paul was featured on the cover of American Vogue for two months in a row, was photographed by David Bailey and Norman Parkinson.
She worked as a freelance journalist alongside modelling and went on to become an author. She has written five novels. She made a brief return to her modelling career in the 1990s by posing for Marks & Spencer catalogues. She and her fourth husband, former leader of the Conservative party, Michael Howard Howard were married in 1975.
