New York
Jonathan Galassi’s fictional poet made me doubt my knowledge of American literature
Jonathan Galassi is an American publisher, poet and translator. In his debut novel Muse, his passion for the ‘good old…
An epic study of trauma and friendship in the age of self-invention
Just over a century after Virginia Woolf declared that ‘on or about December 1910 human character changed’, the American novelist…
What I learned from reshooting the dullest film ever made
Stephen Smith finally sees the point of Empire, one of the dullest films in cinema history
Fashion tips - and replacement hips - from a nonagenarian style icon: Iris reviewed
Iris is a documentary portrait of Iris Apfel, the nonagenarian New York fashion icon. Nope, me neither, but that’s irrelevant,…
Rich, thin and selfish in Manhattan
The scene: a funeral parlour in New York. Doors clang as a family relative, the ‘black sheep’, saunters in halfway…
Why plotting a sound map of London is impossible
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 sadist who wrecked New York, and the last of the great biographers
John R. MacArthur on the bureaucratic titan who gratuitously bulldozed a great city and displaced and demoralised half a million of its inhabitants
Poetic or pretentious? Joseph Cornell: Wanderlust at the Royal Academy reviewed
Someone once asked Joseph Cornell who was his favourite abstract artist of his time. It was a perfectly reasonable question…
Take it from Taki — Hillary Clinton will be the next US president
The last week in Gotham was exceptional fun. I saw a Broadway play, Finding Neverland, compliments of the producer, my…
I once tried to buy coke from the head of Manhattan detectives
This is as good as it gets. A light rain is falling on a soft May evening and I’m walking…
I’d move to Kosovo if Ed Miliband became prime minister
If any of you sees Graydon Carter, the editor of Vanity Fair, walking around with a begging bowl in his…
Nigel Lawson’s diary: Escaping election tedium in la France profonde
I have escaped this rather depressing election campaign by retreating to my home in la France profonde — to be…
The fraught business of seat surrender
I remember the first time that someone stood up and offered me a seat on the London Underground. It was…
Neither London nor New York will be livable in ten years’ time
A recent column in the FT made me mad as hell. The writer, Simon Kuper, calls Vienna a backwater, which…
Bad Jews at the Arts Theatre reviewed: strange, raw, obsessive and brilliant
Bad Jews has completed its long trek from a smallish out-of-town venue to a full-scale West End berth. Billed as…
An Episcopalian vicar made me warm to the principle of women joining gentlemen’s clubs
In 1993, when I was living in Manhattan working for the New Yorker magazine, I was chosen as ‘distinguished visitor’…
‘Another terrible thing...’: a novel of pain and grief with courage and style
Nobody Is Ever Missing takes its title from John Berryman’s ‘Dream Song 29’, a poem which I’d always thought related…
Love Is Strange review: subtle and nuanced in ways which, I’m assuming, Fifty Shades is not
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…
A Most Violent Year, review: mesmerising performances - and coats
A Most Violent Year is a riveting drama even though I can’t tell you what it’s about, or even what…
What unites Churchill, Dali and T.S. Eliot? They all worshipped the Marx Brothers
Ian Thomson celebrates the anarchic genius of Groucho and his brothers
Another New York institution bites the dust
Except for sickness in one’s family or the loss of a life, is there anything sadder than to see a…
Once upon a time, when a poor farmer came to the big city he put on his only suit
The leaves are falling non-stop, like names dropped in Hollywood, and it has suddenly turned colder than the look I…
Stefan Zweig: the tragedy of a great bad writer
Stefan Zweig wasn’t, to be honest, a very good writer. This delicious fact was hugged to themselves by most of…
Norman Mailer’s wife comes out of the shadows
‘It’s not as bad as I thought it would be,’ said Norman Mailer to his wife, Norris Church, after reading…
