Lucian Freud's Bentleys?

[Paul Bennett]

There was a Radio 4 programme at 9.00 this morning; "The Gamble," the subject of this episode being the late painter Lucian Freud.

Apparently, "he always had Bentleys because he wanted the biggest and fastest cars on the road."

He was a high stakes gambler and had been known to lose all his cash at the gaming table, to then jump in his Bentley, drive to a dealer, sell it for what cash he could obtain on the spot and return straight to the game he had left, (and lose that!)

I wondered what period this was and what cars he had had?

If he had been a BDC member perhaps the club has some history, or someone else may have known of him through the London dealers.

Out of curiosity, I looked up a biography (obituary) of him. The only mention of cars was that he had met a Belfast bookie through "The Bentley Owners Club" who died a multi-millionaire because Freud would owe him, say, £2 million-odd and pay him off with some of his paintings.

Perhaps the biographer did not know that there was more than one Bentley club, and just used a generic term.

It would be interesting if someone could throw any light on this.