The Island of Mustique's Mystique

Mustique was first recorded in the 15th Century, when it was seen from afar by Spanish sailors. Two centuries later, pirates used it as a treasure island for hiding ships and spoils. Next came European colonists, planting sugar cane. When the sugar boom ended, Mustique was left to its cows and goats. 

That was until 1958 and the arrival of Colin Tennant, the man who made Mustique. Later the 3rd Baron Glenconner, Tennant was a scion of one of the 20th Century’s foremost bohemian aristocratic families. A restless enthusiast unburdened by self-consciousness or shame, he loved to talk and to stand out from the crowd, exhibited in a taste for vinyl clothes and paper underwear. He was at once the best and worst person to create a new society: relentlessly energetic on the one hand but chaotic, arrogant and extravagant on the other. The point, perhaps, is that no one else would have done it if he hadn’t. 

From “Paradise Found” by James Medd for The Rake; Photo of Colin Tennant from 1985 

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