Los Angeles

Her weird name was the least of Moon Unit Zappa’s problems

17 August 2024 9:00 am

Frank and Gail Zappa’s eldest child describes how the endless battles between her manipulative mother and misogynist father in the 1970s blight the family to this day

An insight into the American Dream: Table for Two, by Amor Towles, reviewed

22 June 2024 9:00 am

Recent short stories and a novella all feature protagonists in pursuit of an ambition that puts them in varying degrees of peril

Startlingly sadistic: Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, by Quentin Tarantino, reviewed

7 August 2021 9:00 am

There’s no doubt that Quentin Tarantino is a movie director of brilliance, if not genius. But can he write? Well…

Life’s a bitch: Animal, by Lisa Taddeo, reviewed

10 July 2021 9:00 am

Lisa Taddeo’s debut Three Women was touted as groundbreaking. In reality it was a limp, occasionally overwritten account of the…

school

In Los Angeles, school’s out…forever?

16 July 2020 9:15 am

Americans have mixed feelings about opening schools this fall. Some — like the Trump administration’s Department of Education — want…

mayor pete LA

Meow! Claws out for Mayor Pete at LA Democratic debate

20 December 2019 4:57 pm

It may be only the third time in American history the president has been impeached but it’s the first time…

cities

In 2020, Trump must save the cities

3 December 2019 6:04 am

This article is in The Spectator’s December 2019 US edition. Subscribe here. In 2014, America’s progressives got a wake-up call. That year,…

Washed-up in LA: This Storm, by James Ellroy, reviewed

8 June 2019 9:00 am

When James Ellroy’s L.A. Confidential appeared in 1990, it introduced us to a world of blatant corruption, casual racism and…

Philip Marlowe’s last case? Only to Sleep, by Lawrence Osborne, reviewed

15 September 2018 9:00 am

Only to Sleep is the third Philip Marlowe novel written by someone other than Raymond Chandler and while the authors…

LA used to be fun – dope has just made it dull

25 November 2017 9:00 am

Los Angeles stinks. Not just of the usual things: sex, money, suntan oil, hipster food, surfer wax — odours that…

‘Wanna come to Prince’s house?’

30 April 2016 9:00 am

The untold story

Is this LA?: Dilapidated deco in Downtown

The heart of Los Angeles feels like somewhere else entirely

9 April 2016 9:00 am

There’s a certain kind of Englishman who falls hard for Los Angeles. Men such as Graham Nash, who swapped the…

Hitting rock bottom in LA

19 March 2016 9:00 am

The title of this book tells you a lot. Jack Sutherland, who grew up in London and Los Angeles, worked…

The gangs of LA are caught in an unending bloody vendetta

1 August 2015 9:00 am

Ryan Gattis’s novel All Involved is set in South Central Los Angeles in 1992, during the riots that began after…

Richard Diebenkorn at the Royal Academy reviewed: among the best visual evocations of LA there are

21 March 2015 9:00 am

It is true that, like wine, certain artists don’t travel. Richard Diebenkorn, subject of the spring exhibition in the Royal…

Joan Collins’s diary: The joy of fake Christmas trees

13 December 2014 9:00 am

Every year Christmas comes earlier and earlier in America. Cards, baubles and imitation trees were being sold in the big…

David Hockney at work in his studio, c.1967

David Hockney interview: ‘The avant-garde have lost their authority’

22 November 2014 9:00 am

David Hockney talks to Martin Gayford about 60 years of ignoring art fashion

James Ellroy’s latest attempt to unseat the Great American Novel

11 October 2014 9:00 am

Aficionados of detective fiction have long known that the differences between the soft- and hard-boiled school are so profound that,…

Joan Collins’s Diary: Springtime in the City of Angels

26 April 2014 9:00 am

Ahh! Spring has sprung at last! Or has it? Leaving a warm and sunlit London last month we expected balmy…

Celia Walden's diary: Have I finally caught my husband in an affair?

16 November 2013 9:00 am

For a minute I just stood there with my back against the wall, staring at the credit card receipt. Then…