New York

Salt-beef delirium

22 July 2017 9:00 am

Katz’s Delicatessen, established 1888, is a theme park of Jewish-American food, with tribute gift shop, on the lower east side…

High life

26 November 2016 9:00 am

New York   If only my wordsmith friend Jeremy Clarke had been with me. What fun he’d have had with…

True or false? The Temple of Bel, Palmyra, before and after its destruction at the hands of Islamic State

The great pretenders

28 May 2016 9:00 am

Can the beauty of Palmyra be reproduced by data-driven robots? Stephen Bayley on copies, fakes and forgeries

Hound of love: Lolabelle gets old and Lolabelle goes blind and keyboards are laid out on the floor so that she can bash them with her paws, and enjoy the sounds

Memories, dreams, reflections

21 May 2016 9:00 am

Heart of a Dog is a film by Laurie Anderson and it’s a meditative, free-associating rumination on life, loss, love…

High life

14 May 2016 9:00 am

New York It was the best of times — downtown — and the worst of times — uptown. Let’s start…

High life

7 May 2016 9:00 am

   New York I went downtown to Katz’s the other day and had a pastrami sandwich that made me want…

High life

9 April 2016 9:00 am

   New York Even after all these years, I’m still at times floored by the scale of the place. And…

‘Like Georgia O’Keefe, Mapplethorpe eroticised flowers — possibly finding them more biddable than his frisky partners in gimp masks and chains.’ Left: Self-portrait, 1982. Right: Calla Lily

‘A good boy trying to be bad’

2 April 2016 9:00 am

Robert Mapplethorpe made his reputation as a photographer in the period between the 1969 gay-bashing raid at the Stonewall Inn…

Greta Garbo in New York in 1955

Fifty shades of blue

12 March 2016 9:00 am

Like a lot of people, Olivia Laing came to New York to join a lover. Like a lot of people,…

Vinyl, Sky Atlantic

Marty’s way

20 February 2016 9:00 am

Vinyl (Sky Atlantic) — the much-anticipated series, co-produced by Martin Scorsese and Mick Jagger, about the 1970s New York record…

Christopher Hitchens (Photo: Getty)

Alive and kicking

30 January 2016 9:00 am

Four years after his death, it is still faintly surprising to recall that Christopher Hitchens is no longer resident on…

Staying put

16 January 2016 9:00 am

Publishing a ‘New York’ novel in the months after 11 September 2001 is a surefire, if accidental, way to make…

High life

7 November 2015 9:00 am

I have finally moved into my new flat, a jewel of a place in a pre-first world war Park Avenue…

Saoirse Ronan as Eilis and Emory Cohen as Tony in ‘Brooklyn’

Lush, lyrical, exquisite

7 November 2015 9:00 am

Brooklyn is a wee slip of a thing compared to the Bond film, Spectre, and cost $12 million, as opposed…

High life

29 October 2015 9:00 am

To Cleveland, Ohio, where middle America’s middle class begins its great Midwest sprawl. I’ve always wanted to visit Cleveland because…

Long life

29 October 2015 9:00 am

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

24 October 2015 9:00 am

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?

17 October 2015 8:00 am

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

10 October 2015 9:00 am

It’s probably blasphemous to admit that I’ve never thought very much of John Lennon’s music. Common sense tells me it…

Transatlantic grandeur: A Cunard liner in 1932

Cruising

3 October 2015 8:00 am

By the end of my ten-day Atlantic crossing to New York, a new wellbeing seemed to radiate from me. Lulled…

Idolising Ida

15 August 2015 9:00 am

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

15 August 2015 9:00 am

Just over a century after Virginia Woolf declared that ‘on or about December 1910 human character changed’, the American novelist…

The eyes have it: Andy Warhol’s gift for second sight was preternatural

I reshot Andy Warhol

15 August 2015 9:00 am

Stephen Smith finally sees the point of Empire, one of the dullest films in cinema history

You can’t keep your eyes off Iris

Dedicated follower of fashion

1 August 2015 9:00 am

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

18 July 2015 9:00 am

The scene: a funeral parlour in New York. Doors clang as a family relative, the ‘black sheep’, saunters in halfway…