Truman Capote
Why did Truman Capote betray his ‘swans’ so cruelly?
In an effort to arrest his slide into middle-aged bloat, he attempted a ‘Proustian’ novel, but spilling the secrets of the women he claimed to love was social suicide
I was the next Truman Capote
It’s nice to be back in London, and Glebe Place is a delight. Mind you, it’s not the mansion I…
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…
My letter from Harper Lee
Avoiding publicity doesn’t stop her being sharp-eyed, curious and impeccably well-mannered. I have the evidence
The Mad Boy, Peter Watson, Cecil Beaton and the limo — by Sofka Zinovieff
It would not have surprised their friends in the 1930s when Peter Watson had a fling with my grandfather, Robert…
Lesley Blanch: a true original on the wilder shores of exoticism
Lesley Blanch (1904–2007) will be remembered chiefly for her gloriously extravagant The Wilder Shores of Love, the story of four…
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
Critics can be creative - look at Malcolm Cowley
Even Spectator book reviewers have to concede that their craft is inferior to the creative travail of authors. Henry James…
The views that inspire writers
Do writers really need inspiring landscapes? Or the opposite?
Tangier, by Josh Shoemake - review
This may sound a little orientalist, but Tangier has some claim to being the most foreign city in the world.…
