New York
High life
New York I went downtown to Katz’s the other day and had a pastrami sandwich that made me want…
High life
New York Even after all these years, I’m still at times floored by the scale of the place. And…
‘A good boy trying to be bad’
Robert Mapplethorpe made his reputation as a photographer in the period between the 1969 gay-bashing raid at the Stonewall Inn…
Fifty shades of blue
Like a lot of people, Olivia Laing came to New York to join a lover. Like a lot of people,…
Marty’s way
Vinyl (Sky Atlantic) — the much-anticipated series, co-produced by Martin Scorsese and Mick Jagger, about the 1970s New York record…
Alive and kicking
Four years after his death, it is still faintly surprising to recall that Christopher Hitchens is no longer resident on…
Staying put
Publishing a ‘New York’ novel in the months after 11 September 2001 is a surefire, if accidental, way to make…
High life
I have finally moved into my new flat, a jewel of a place in a pre-first world war Park Avenue…
Lush, lyrical, exquisite
Brooklyn is a wee slip of a thing compared to the Bond film, Spectre, and cost $12 million, as opposed…
High life
To Cleveland, Ohio, where middle America’s middle class begins its great Midwest sprawl. I’ve always wanted to visit Cleveland because…
Long life
The Metropolitan Club in Washington is so close to the White House that President Obama chose to walk there for…
To tip or not to tip
As I grow older, I find myself increasingly reluctant to travel, which is why it’s been a few years now…
Is City on Fire just a box set masquerading as a novel?
Ninety pages into the juggernaut that is City on Fire, I begin to think that this is really a box…
I’ve never thought much of John Lennon’s music – until now
It’s probably blasphemous to admit that I’ve never thought very much of John Lennon’s music. Common sense tells me it…
Cruising
By the end of my ten-day Atlantic crossing to New York, a new wellbeing seemed to radiate from me. Lulled…
Idolising Ida
Jonathan Galassi is an American publisher, poet and translator. In his debut novel Muse, his passion for the ‘good old…
The lonely struggle of Jude the obscure
Just over a century after Virginia Woolf declared that ‘on or about December 1910 human character changed’, the American novelist…
I reshot Andy Warhol
Stephen Smith finally sees the point of Empire, one of the dullest films in cinema history
Dedicated follower of fashion
Iris is a documentary portrait of Iris Apfel, the nonagenarian New York fashion icon. Nope, me neither, but that’s irrelevant,…
The rich are a different species
The scene: a funeral parlour in New York. Doors clang as a family relative, the ‘black sheep’, saunters in halfway…
The London ear
It’s easy to tag the city’s terrain by writer. But what, wonders Philip Clark, might a map of its music look like?
The man who wrecked New York
John R. MacArthur on the bureaucratic titan who gratuitously bulldozed a great city and displaced and demoralised half a million of its inhabitants
Thinking inside the box
Someone once asked Joseph Cornell who was his favourite abstract artist of his time. It was a perfectly reasonable question…
High life
The last week in Gotham was exceptional fun. I saw a Broadway play, Finding Neverland, compliments of the producer, my…
High life
This is as good as it gets. A light rain is falling on a soft May evening and I’m walking…
