Jackie kennedy

Thursday

Madeline Grant

Is Grey Gardens the greatest documentary ever made?

A middle-aged woman wearing what looks like Princess Diana’s infamous ‘revenge dress’ and a balaclava from an IRA funeral approaches the hole in the floor. The raccoon that lives there, clearly used to her presence, looks up expectantly. Sure enough, the woman empties a bag of dry food into the hole. The scene is framed by the intricate fluted wainscotting of the room’s door frame. I am not exaggerating when I say I believe it to be one of the great scenes of modern cinema. The vignette comes from Grey Gardens, the Maysles brothers’ cult documentary, which turns 50 this autumn. Like many great documentaries – from Tiger King to 

Thursday

Jasper Rees

‘What do you think the English will say?’ Pablo Larrain on his pop horror Diana film

It all looks ever so Sandringham. Formal evening garb, dining table the length of a cricket pitch, royalty nibbling in silence. As a tableau vivant it might be lit by Lichfield and styled by Hartnell. And yet something is awry. The beautiful princess feels stifled. She grabs at the tourniquet of pearls roped round her neck, whereupon it snaps. Huge gems plop into her gloopy green soup. Dauntlessly she dips a spoon in, feeds a pearl into her mouth and takes a pulverising bite. This royal Christmas is not normal for Norfolk. Spencer is the latest entertainment seeking to decrypt the myth of Diana, Princess of Wales. Its opening credits

Thursday

Taki

I can finally spill the beans about Halston and Princess Margaret

New York Already on your idiot box via Netflix is a mini-series about a man who also used one name, but burned out rather early due to an outsized ego and too much coke. His name was Halston, and his fame was based on the fact that he designed a pillbox hat that Jackie Kennedy Onassis wore at her hubby’s inauguration. Yes, fame is tricky, especially in America, where self-creation was invented and where superciliousness and sleekness pass for gravity and depth. I knew Halston, he was a friend of my then sister-in-law, but we had zero in common. In fact, he thought I wasn’t important enough to greet in