Celebrity
‘Genius’ is a dangerously misused word
It is best applied not to individuals but to teams or milieux, says Helen Lewis. The idea that a few special people are fundamentally more gifted than their peers is not only corrosive but inaccurate
A right old song and dance
All the questions around Britney Spears can be condensed into this one: who should we blame? For a long time,…
The bogus business of stigma-busting
Our society is bristling with social stigmas, we’re told, even in the progressive West, even in London. Life is so…
Not my type
Who needs role models anyway?
So damned French
For the past few weeks I have been binge-watching the Netflix series Call My Agent! (or Dix pour cent, as…
The reluctant style guru
Alexandra Shulman says that she had ‘no desire to write an autobiography’ — so instead she has written about her…
Lautrec often made the stars in his posters look appalling – but they kept coming back
You don’t need to be much of a psychologist to understand the trajectory of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. Born to aristocratic…
Diary
Not only are today’s young girls having to work hard on their abs, butts and glutes, now the likes of…
Pride, prejudice, celebrity…
Curtis Sittenfeld’s novel Eligible is a page-turning romantic comedy which is very funny and entirely ridiculous: each of the short…
Prince and me
The untold story
Marco Pierre, why?
Wheeler’s is such a dreadful restaurant that I wonder if Marco Pierre White even knows his name is on it.…
Your problems solved
Q. My niece, who came to stay with me in the country for the weekend, arrived without cash and asked…
Past Caring
Le Caprice is a monochrome patch of the 1980s behind the Ritz Hotel, in the part of St James’s that…
Diary
I’m counting ‘Wows!’ Suddenly everyone is using this irritating expletive expressing incredulity, amazement and nothing at all. I’ve heard it…
John Lennon’s desert island luxury
Beatlebone is an account of a journey, a psychedelic odyssey, its protagonist — at times its narrator — John Lennon,…
The breast test
New mothers who can’t keep to the breast-feeding orthodoxy face needless misery and shame
Diary
My husband says I only write books in order to have a launch party. Not so. I also write books…
Your problems solved
Q. My partner, a leading political commentator on a national newspaper, recently agreed to shave off his hair at the…
Myths and legends
The Ivy is a Playmobil-style faux-medieval restaurant in a triangular building opposite The Mousetrap; of the two, The Ivy is…
Kultural icon
The almond eyes that rise towards their outer edges. The cheekbones that curve down to the corners of those upholstered…
The roots of the matter
British people buy £43 million worth of human hair a year. So who’s selling?
Palace Notebook
The day of my investiture at Buckingham Palace dawned bringing freezing rain and fierce winds, which lashed at the windows…
Diary
To the dentist. And for an extraction. I hadn’t had a tooth out in decades. But the twinges when I…
Saint Joan and the treacherous phone
My time with Joan Collins was wonderful – except for one mortifying moment
The horrors of the ‘Upskirt Decade’
Lynn Barber 25 November 2023 9:00 am
The century began as a monstrous time to be famous and female – epitomised by the Tulsa judge who, in 2006, seemed to rule that no woman had a right to privacy in public