Darren Coffield in conversation with James Cahill
Hen, Mistress of Mayhem: A Portrait of Henrietta Moraes

Sunday 28 June 2026, 4.00pm
The Gibberd Garden, Marsh Lane, Harlow, Essex, CM17 0NA

Darren Coffield will be exploring his book, Hen Mistress of Mayhem: A Portrait of Henrietta Moraes, providing  a unique insight into 1950-60s Bohemia and the key players of the fashion, music and art scene.

Hen, Mistress of Mayhem takes you to the epicentre of Soho’s Golden Age; stage by stage it forms a complete guide to a hell-raising companion.

Uniquely told from the viewpoint of the women who knew her, including Maggi Hambling, not the famous male artists who painted her.

Tickets:
£15 / £12 concessions (students, under 27s and unwaged)
or both events for £25 / £18 concessions

Box Office: essexbookfestival.org.uk or Mercury Theatre 01206 573948

Event Information

💬 The event will include an audience Q&A session.
📚 Copies of the book will be available to purchase on the day.
🖊️ After the event there will be an opportunity to get the book signed by the author.
🪑 Seats are unallocated.
📸 We will be filming and taking photos at this event.

Ticket Deal

Make an afternoon of it with our Gibberd Garden ticket deal – Tickets £15 per event or both events for £25 (Concessions £12 per event or both events for £18).
Discount automatically applied at checkout when tickets for both events are booked:

2.00pm – Maggi Hambling in conversation with James Cahill
4.00pm – Darren Coffield, Hen, Mistress of Mayhem

Darren Coffield

Photo of Darren Coffield © Darren Coffield

Darren Coffield studied at Goldsmiths College, Camberwell School of Art, and the Slade School of Art in London, where he received his Bachelor of Fine Art in 1993. He has exhibited widely in the company of many leading artists, including Damien Hirst, Howard Hodgkin, Patrick Caulfield and Gilbert and George.

In 2014, his contributions were recognised by ‘100 Painters of Tomorrow’. He is the author of Tales from the Colony Room: Soho’s Lost Bohemia (2021) and Queens of Bohemia (2024).

Hen, Mistress of Mayhem
A Portrait of Henrietta Moraes
Darren Coffield, foreword by Sarah Lucas

Paints a vivid portrait of a Bohemian legend.

Henrietta Moraes first discovered Soho when she was eighteen – or so she tells us. Her favourite sport was social climbing (heaven knows she enjoyed the exercise) and she was good at it, going to all the right parties and simply gate-crashing others.

From the summit of the 1950s bohemian scene she surveyed the life and times of those who broke all the rules, such as the artists Lucian Freud and Francis Bacon (for whom she became a muse).

But that’s not all she did – as a key counter-culture figure in the 1960s Chelsea Set, no other woman was more indefatigable in becoming a bohemian legend.

Through Hen, you’ll learn how to steal your best friend’s boyfriend; enchant and ensnare a husband; blossom into a magnificent muse; dress like a comic book superhero; become a connoisseur of every illicit drug known to medical science and dose a Rolling Stones concert with them; join the caravan set and head along the gypsy trail in search of the Holy Grail, before rematerialising as the minder for a mind-blowing pop icon…

Along the way you’ll indulge in the gentle art of cadging drinks; the feline felony of cat burglary; the canny craft of charity shop shoplifting and the haphazardness of steamy sex in second-hand bookshops.

Hen, Mistress of Mayhem takes you to the epicentre of Soho’s Golden Age; stage by stage it forms a complete guide to a hell-raising companion.

Buy a copy of the book from bookshop.org. – released 02 April 2026