Female Supremacy Articles - Page 28

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And far from being a passing phase she is said to hope that it continues indefinitely. "All I can tell you," said a London associate of the actress, "is that Tilda is delightfully, extremely happy."

Sandro is her man when she travels - he is an artist and claims to have bases in New York, Paris, Germany, Rome and New Zealand.

He accompanies her when she is filming - indeed he's thought to have been with her when she shot the sequel to The Chronicles Of Narnia in Prague last summer.

He has painted her more than once, and seems quite devoted to this unconventional, highly intelligent woman, who read English at Cambridge and was the head girl of her school, West Heath no less, where she was also an exact contemporary of one Lady Diana Spencer.

But when Tilda goes home, she goes home to Byrne.

Which brings us back to Nairn, which, despite its reputation as the "Brighton of the North", is a small seaside resort town, the kind of place where, as Swinton once said: "Everybody kens yer faither."

North of Inverness, it's a place which has a reputation as a lovely spot for well-heeled folk to retire - rather than a bohemian paradise of free love.

Swinton was this week, though, doing her best to pretend that her living arrangements are absolutely nothing out of the ordinary.

"What arrangement?" she said, exiting a scruffy Land Rover.

"There is nothing to be cleared up.