What’s a hero? There are probably at least two answers to that. One is that heroism is a moral quality: to do with courage above all but, in its wider connotations, to do with altruism or protectiveness and self-sacrifice. The answer that probably precedes that one, though, is a more technical, narratological one: the hero
It’s easy to forget that until the late 1980s the notion of an autistic person being able to write a compelling autobiography was dismissed by the psychiatric establishment as highly unlikely. Though the term ‘autism’ was originally derived from the Greek word for self, autos, people with ‘self-ism’ — who were routinely described by non-autistic
It’s a slippery word, ‘other’. Taken in one light, it throws up barriers and insists on divisions. It is fearful and finger-pointing: them, not us. But looked at in another way, it is rangy, open and expansive. It suggests horizons, not walls. That first meaning has done much heavy lifting in discussions of Bernardine Evaristo’s
There may never have been a murder on the real Orient Express, but otherwise Agatha Christie’s depiction of luxury train travel was pretty accurate. Cordon Bleu cooking, accompanied by fine vintage wines and served by immaculately turned out waiters, was offered to the first class passengers, who often included members of the aristocracy and senior
In the spring of 2008 I spent a fine day in the company of Samantha Power. She had come to the Hay Festival to talk about Chasing the Flame, her book about Sergio Vieira de Mello, the UN Special Representative to Iraq who was murdered in the August 2003 bombing of UN offices in Baghdad,
Have you heard the story about the time that Andrew Ridgeley, the 1980s heart-throb, refused to answer the door to Andy Warhol after John Lennon hissed at him: ‘Do you want him coming in here taking photos when you’ve got icicles of coke hanging out of your nose?’? How about Ridgeley’s fondness for orgies, during
Trained from a young age to be self-effacing, never liking to be the centre of attention, having been traumatised for life by being made to wear a bright green dress sewn from old parachute material at her own coming out dance in 1950, Anne Glenconner must be wincing at being thrust into the limelight by
There was a dinner in Soho to celebrate the publication of John Humphrys’s book, A Day Like Today. John was asked by his publishers to select guests — an interesting mix from the left and right — and organise the seating, a small piece of administration that made him fretful and therefore resentful. The room
My own love for this memoir may be all to do with snobbery and self-identification. Moreover, I’ve always thought a life downstairs is an underrated career opportunity, offering access to all the aesthetic pleasures of the big house while bypassing the nuisance of admin and the financial burdens of its upkeep. On another level, here
Janis Joplin hated the word ‘star’, but she loved the trappings. As soon as she made serious money she bought a Porsche convertible and had it painted with psychedelic images to make it the most recognisable car in San Francisco. She also rejoiced in her lynx fur coat, courtesy of Southern Comfort. She sent them
You may not know the name of Reynolds Stone, but it is almost impossible that you haven’t come across his designs. If you’re familiar with the masthead of the Economist or remember the clock on the top of the front page of the Times; if you’ve seen the colophon on a book published by the
General Jim Mattis ended his remarkable career as a four-star US marine general, and finally as US secretary of defense. His book Call Sign Chaos is co-authored with Bing West, also an ex-marine and one-time assistant secretary of defense. It is partly an autobiography and partly a treatise on leadership. The autobiography relates his career
Patrick O’Brian, born Richard Patrick Russ, never wanted his life written, and this passionate wish presents the first hurdle to someone as fond of him as was Nikolai Tolstoy, the son of O’Brian’s second wife, Mary, by her first husband. Why pry further? Why deploy papers and diaries which O’Brian expressly instructed should be destroyed?
I can imagine a quiz question along the lines of ‘What do Shylock, Lady Bracknell, Sigmund Freud and Hercule Poirot have in common?’ The answer, of course, would be David Suchet, who has impersonated all these characters on stage or television during an acting career spanning half a century. In Behind the Lens, Suchet offers
