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Books

Exclamation marks, no; aertex shirts, yes!

A review of A Curious Career, by Lynn Barber, and An Encyclopaedia of Myself, by Jonathan Meades. Two biographies to delight a dandy

10 May 2014

9:00 AM

10 May 2014

9:00 AM

A Curious Career Lynn Barber

Bloomsbury, pp.211, £16.99, ISBN: 9781408837191

An Encyclopaedia of Myself Jonathan Meades

Fourth Estate, pp.341, £18.99, ISBN: 9781857028492

Jonathan Meades, the architectural, food and cultural commentator, appears on television in a pair of retro shades and a trademark Blues Brother suit. He looks like a poseur, and indeed studied drama at Rada. Lynn Barber, the ‘celebrity interviewer’, is the self-acknowledged scourge of pomposity and pretension. (Melvyn Bragg, among others, has felt the lash of her schoolmarm tongue.)

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