New York
Long life
In 1993, when I was living in Manhattan working for the New Yorker magazine, I was chosen as ‘distinguished visitor’…
Suffering in style
Nobody Is Ever Missing takes its title from John Berryman’s ‘Dream Song 29’, a poem which I’d always thought related…
Home truths
You will be wondering why I haven’t seen Fifty Shades of Grey as this is very much Fifty Shades of…
Portrait of the week
Home Party leaders mercilessly launched 100 days of campaigning before the general election on 7 May. David Cameron, the Conservative…
Great coat
A Most Violent Year is a riveting drama even though I can’t tell you what it’s about, or even what…
Marx men
Ian Thomson celebrates the anarchic genius of Groucho and his brothers
High life
Except for sickness in one’s family or the loss of a life, is there anything sadder than to see a…
High Life
The leaves are falling non-stop, like names dropped in Hollywood, and it has suddenly turned colder than the look I…
The wandering Jew
Stefan Zweig wasn’t, to be honest, a very good writer. This delicious fact was hugged to themselves by most of…
Tales from a strip joint
‘It’s not as bad as I thought it would be,’ said Norman Mailer to his wife, Norris Church, after reading…
High life
To the grand Herrera house on the upper east side of Manhattan for lunch in honour of Lord and Lady…
Un-Beaton
The odds were a hundred to one against him. Brought up in bourgeois Bayswater by genteel parents, Cecil Beaton was…
Autumn round-up
This has been an extraordinarily exciting fortnight, on and off stage. Premieres in anything from ice-skating to classical ballet, charismatic…
It was a wonderful town
I picked up this book with real enthusiasm. Who cannot be entranced by those 20 years after the second world…
Becoming Rothko
Mark Rothko was an abstract artist who didn’t see himself as an abstract artist — or at least not in…
High life
An intelligent letter from a reader, Stanislas Yassukovich CBE, warms my heart. It’s nice to know there are others as…
Real life
As the maître d’ ushered me into the packed restaurant, I leaned in close and intoned softly, so as not…
Barometer
Tough at the top The clocks on Big Ben were cleaned by abseiling window-cleaners. Some other big cleaning/painting jobs: —…
Portrait of the artist
In Dylan Thomas’s centenary year, Hilly Janes recalls her father’s friendship with the poet and his visits to the Boat House at Laugharne
Rise of the mayors
The power to effect real change may lie with dynamic city halls rather than ossified national governments
High life
New York Back to the mythic city, dreamed into existence by the movies long ago and instantly memorable, a visually…
Keeping up appearances
Shortly after I started working at Vanity Fair in the mid-1990s, I suggested to my boss Graydon Carter that I…
The mask of truth
Siri Hustvedt’s new novel isn’t exactly an easy read — but the casual bookshop browser should be reassured that it’s…
Long life
The new mayor of New York, who despite his name (Bill de Blasio) claims Irish ancestry, is boycotting this month’s…
