EDEN CONFIDENTIAL: Daughter of renowned artist Lucian Freud recalls her battle with booze

When asked how he managed to father daughters with three different women in the same year, Lucian Freud replied dismissively, “Don’t you realize I had a bicycle?”

But perhaps only now are the consequences of the artist’s total disregard for convention becoming fully apparent.

Two of his fourteen recognized children suffered blows in 2022 when, as I revealed, Paul McAdam Freud – one of his two sons by Katherine McAdam – punched Alex Boyt – Freud’s only son by Suzy Boyt – in a London pub.

Paul, like his brother David, and both his sisters, Jane and Lucy, had been left out of Freud’s £42 million will – unlike all ten of their half-siblings.

Now, in the rarefied confines of Hatchards, London’s oldest bookshop, it is left to Annie Freud – the eldest of Freud’s two daughters by his first wife Kitty Garman – to speak of her own psychological bruises and how at 76- age she is finally at peace.

After reading from Hiddensee, her latest collection of poems, Annie, who at the age of 14 posed nude for her father for a brutally graphic portrait, revealed how ‘childhood trauma’ led to her spending years in psychoanalysis – the treatment her great master had been developed. -grandfather, Sigmund Freud.

But it hadn’t stopped her sinking into a pit of alcoholism as she lived a seemingly idyllic life in Dorset with her late husband Dave.

“I drank at least two bottles of wine a day,” recalls Annie, who was devastated at the age of 27 when she met one of her half-brothers over lunch with her father in Soho. She had no idea he – nor anyone else – existed.

Annie, who never received her father’s phone number, subsequently suffered a nervous breakdown.

Her husband’s death, at age 73 from lung cancer, was heartbreaking. But maybe it saved her. ‘I had to give up alcohol – otherwise I would be dead,’ says Annie, who has moved to Suffolk and is now, she says, finally ‘in good mental health’.

She has played a series of icy mothers in TV dramas such as Lady Caroline Collingwood, mother of Logan Roy’s children in Succession, and Dame Harriet Walter, 74, has a theory why: ‘Many writers have come to an age when their mothers have died, and they can say nasty things about them.”

Dominic’s birthday delight

When Dominic West was photographed hugging co-star Lily James during a private outing in Rome, he admitted the situation was “very stressful for my wife and children.”

However, West, who played Prince Charles in The Crown, appears to be firmly back in the family, with daughter Martha, 26, sharing a video of his 55th birthday online.

The actor, married to aristocrat Catherine FitzGerald, is pictured with Martha and youngest daughter Dora, 18.

“Cake and candles,” Martha captioned the video, which shows the actor smiling from ear to ear before planting a kiss on Martha’s cheek.

Wyman’s tears over Blitz poverty

Bill Wyman, known as ‘The Quiet One’ in the Rolling Stones, reduced guests at The Oldie magazine’s literary luncheon to stunned silence yesterday when he burst into tears.

The bassist, 87, was giving a speech about his memoirs, Billy In The Wars, at the National Liberal Club near Whitehall as he recalled the severe poverty he suffered as a London schoolboy during the Blitz. “I was so hungry that Mom sent me to a bomb site to get dandelions to eat with bread,” he said, breaking down.

“You should look for something edible. It was fucking awful and I was so cold.”

He apologized to the guests and said, “I’m sorry, I’m getting so emotional.”

I feel safe now that I’m in my 40s, says Natalie

Natalie Portman, who shot to fame at the age of 13 in the film Leon: The Professional, said last year that she believed children should ‘play and go to school’, not work on film sets.

Now the Oscar winner (left) has said it took her until she was 40 to come to terms with the fact she was sexualised as a child. The 43-year-old actress, who divorced her husband this year, said: ‘It’s liberating to be in my 40s now because I don’t feel that threat anymore. I don’t feel like I’ve been sexualized by other people, I feel safe in my own maturity and my ability to handle situations.”

Vanessa: single life is ‘horrible’

Vanessa Feltz was left devastated after splitting from her fiancé, Phats & Small singer Ben Ofoedu, after 17 years together following his infidelity.

Now the 62-year-old broadcaster admits she struggles with loneliness. “I live alone in Feltz Towers, which is my biggest fear in life, and I can’t bear it,” she told me at the Wimbledon BookFest, where she was promoting her memoir, Vanessa Bares All.

“I have this huge fear of being stuck at the bachelor’s table during bar mitzvahs or weddings. It’s the worst thing that can happen.

“I found myself going to a wedding by myself in June and when I walked in I thought, ‘I’m going to end up at the bachelor’s table.'”

She adds: ‘I felt absolutely horrible. All I could do was count the minutes until I could get out of there. Why do I need a really awful, unresponsive, awful, parasitic boyfriend to make me feel normal?’

Socialite Alice Naylor-Leyland, whose friends include Princess Beatrice and Oscar winner Reese Witherspoon, felt the need to apologize to friends after spending much of a recent trip to New York in the hospital.

Alice, 38, whose husband Tom Naylor-Leyland is heir to a baronetcy and Fitzwilliam’s £176 million landowning fortune, has a popular ‘Mrs Alice’ business that makes themed dinnerware.

She says, “Sometimes your body behaves wrongly. I’m doing fine – it was just a minor infection – but I’m so sorry for those I missed.”