Hunter Davies relives the time Paul McCartney arrived to stay at his rental villa.
As a huge Beatles fan, I was very excited when the author of the only authorised biography of the legendary group agreed to appear on our podcast, Talk About Tomorrow.
The phrase ‘they don’t make them like this any more’ instantly enters your mind when you meet Hunter. He is a force to be reckoned with: outrageous, witty, clever, fun, and with more energy at 88 than most people half his age. For the podcast, we met in his beautiful villa in Porto do Mós, which has stunning panoramic views of the ocean. Even this acquisition was made in his typically impulsive way. He climbed over the fence on the way back to the airport and decided to buy it without ever seeing inside.
During 1967 and 1968, Hunter spent eighteen months with the Beatles and had unique access to their lives, family and friends. You will have to listen to the podcast for all the gossip on the Fab Four which he shared with us, but what most fascinated me was his story about staying in Praia da Luz in the 1960s when, out of the blue, Paul McCartney turned up in the middle of the night with his new girlfriend Linda and stayed in their spare room for three weeks.
I wanted Hunter to show me where this property is so I could visualise Paul and Linda there. So Hunter and his partner Miranda Amapola jumped into my car and we headed off. Incidentally, Miranda, a former model, has also written a memoir called. My Name is not Matilda, which included her adventure of sailing across the Atlantic in a trimaran she built with her then husband. She rolls her eyes as she tells me she lived a quiet life on the Isle of Wight before she met Hunter, “Now I am involved in all this madness,” she laughs.
Hunter and his wife Margaret Forster came to the Algarve in 1968 after a successful year at work. Hunter had finished The Beatles: The Authorised Biography, and Margaret had just had her second novel turned into a feature film. The copyright deals encouraged them to splash out on a year in Portugal with their two children and they fell in love with the Algarve.
The property they rented is now a condominium of four apartments located behind A Concha restaurant. Still, the original archway into the old property remains with a sign saying Apart Das Redes. Back in the 1960s, it was called Quinta das Redes, and the arch contained an enormous wooden gate. “Then it was just one larger property that looked like a farmhouse, which had been converted from an old sardine factory and had an open view onto the beach. It had a beautiful enclosed garden behind and it came with a housekeeper and a gardener who tended vegetables,” Hunter told me.
We peer through the iron gates to what is now the pool area. A pool cleaner arrives and Hunter accosts him to tell the story of Paul’s arrival in November 1968. Slightly taken aback, the cleaner removes his ear-pods, admits he has heard of Paul McCartney and looks mildly interested. “This is where Paul’s taxi pulled up at 2 am,” announces Hunter to his audience. “He had been to London and decided at the last minute to go on holiday and stay with us. But he didn’t tell us [beforehand] as in those days we had no phones. I remember it took a while to wake us, and the taxi driver got very impatient.” At the time, Paul had just met Linda and they arrived with Linda´s daughter Heather. Hunter told me in the podcast that he thinks Paul´s motivation was that he knew Hunter had a daughter of a similar age.
Looking through the iron grill and into the garden, Hunter explains how they sat outside and had a meal in the corner of the garden. He has a video of all three children climbing over Paul, who he says was amazing with kids and knew how to entertain them.
By the time Hunter and Margaret´s third child, Flora, was born in the mid-1970s, they’d bought a place on the cliffs above Porto de Mós, and the family came every summer. Flora is an artist and writes the Tomorrow Homes and Interiors column. Her elder sister, Caitlin Davies, is a novelist and her brother, Josh, is a barrister. Tragically, Margaret passed away in 2016.
I am so pleased and grateful that I got to record and be part of this amazing history. After all this excitement, we retire to a neighbouring cafe for lunch and a bottle of wine. We chat over lunch about Hunter´s next project. He has had a property in the Isle of Wight for many years but has now sold it to purchase a three-bedroom Dutch barge, which has been converted into a houseboat in St Helen´s harbour. And to prove that age is just a number, he will renovate it as a weekend pad for himself and Miranda. Although as he confesses, he may have to incorporate a chair lift to get onto the deck. The Sunday Times has commissioned him to write an article about this new adventure.
You can hear more about this and Paul´s time in the Algarve in the new episode of Talk About Tomorrow on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and YouTube.
