New York
Snobbery, sneering and secret sniggers: the sad truth about the so-called 'special relationship'
To the grand Herrera house on the upper east side of Manhattan for lunch in honour of Lord and Lady…
The genius of Cecil Beaton’s interiors
The odds were a hundred to one against him. Brought up in bourgeois Bayswater by genteel parents, Cecil Beaton was…
Thomas Ades’s Polaris at Sadler’s Wells: the dance premiere of the year
This has been an extraordinarily exciting fortnight, on and off stage. Premieres in anything from ice-skating to classical ballet, charismatic…
To call this offering a book is an abuse of language
I picked up this book with real enthusiasm. Who cannot be entranced by those 20 years after the second world…
How Rothko become the mythic superman of mystical abstraction
Mark Rothko was an abstract artist who didn’t see himself as an abstract artist — or at least not in…
The battle for decency has been lost
An intelligent letter from a reader, Stanislas Yassukovich CBE, warms my heart. It’s nice to know there are others as…
Is New York ready for Cydney the spaniel (and her Facebook friends)?
As the maître d’ ushered me into the packed restaurant, I leaned in close and intoned softly, so as not…
Who cleans skyscrapers?
Tough at the top The clocks on Big Ben were cleaned by abseiling window-cleaners. Some other big cleaning/painting jobs: —…
Dylan Thomas: boozer, womaniser, sponger, charlatan — or master craftsman?
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
Governments have failed — mayors are the future
The power to effect real change may lie with dynamic city halls rather than ossified national governments
My New York is gone forever. The internet has seen to that
New York Back to the mythic city, dreamed into existence by the movies long ago and instantly memorable, a visually…
Lessons from Tina Brown on the art of failing upwards
Shortly after I started working at Vanity Fair in the mid-1990s, I suggested to my boss Graydon Carter that I…
Caught between a New Age rock and a theory junkie hard place
Siri Hustvedt’s new novel isn’t exactly an easy read — but the casual bookshop browser should be reassured that it’s…
Dear Bill de Blasio: there are better reasons to boycott the St Patrick's Day parade
The new mayor of New York, who despite his name (Bill de Blasio) claims Irish ancestry, is boycotting this month’s…
The man who gave the world (but not London) the glass skyscraper
Modern Architecture, capitalised thus, is now securely and uncontroversially compartmentalised into art history, its bombast muted, its hard-edge revolutions blurred…
Where artists went to drink and die
Once below a time (to quote the man himself) the bloated poet Dylan Thomas slouched back to New York’s Chelsea…
Taki: the wisdom of 12-year-olds
New York I’m in an extremely happy state as I write this because a young Englishman flew over the ocean…
Taki: The joke that made me like Mike Tyson
New York Nature is at her best right now, the leaves still holding, Central Park awash in golden browns…
Taki: Ugly people build ugly things — look at New York and London
New York Hot money from China, India, Russia and Singapore is pouring into London; hotter money from the same countries…
Taki: Mayor Bloomberg has sold New York out to the highest bidder
New York The trouble with driving into the city is nostalgia. Manhattan Island looms into view and it still has…
