Larry David agreed to this authorised biography with a five-word email: “Oh Jesus. If we must.” As Blake J Harris tells it, the comedy writer has always been adept at finding reasons not... Read more »
When she was seven years old, Bayo Randle’s great-great-grandmother Sarah Forbes Bonetta was presented to Queen Victoria at Windsor Castle as a “diplomatic gift” from an African king. Victoria would go on... Read more »
The late actor Diana Rigg declined to call herself a feminist, noting: “Why would I burn my bra? I need my bra.” Nonetheless, her ideas on womanhood were ahead of their time.... Read more »
When I wrote an unadoring review of Stephen Hawking’s final book, a collection of essays published posthumously in 2018, New Scientist suppressed some of my criticisms on the grounds that it was... Read more »
The Great Dictator by Matthew Sweet review – the fabulous life of Barbara Cartland | Biography books
Barbara Cartland was famous for dictating her novels. With a pekingese clamped to her hot pink bosom she would lie back on a library couch and exhale a story about virginal girls... Read more »
A friend’s mother once told me that for a couple of years in the 1980s – as the Conservatives were waging war on the miners and she spent late nights at Marxist-feminist... Read more »
Andy Warhol sent Paul a Brillo box. Fran Lebowitz called Peter “a genius about sex”. The ending of Susan Sontag’s second novel was inspired by a bunch of Peter’s photographs. Sontag dedicated... Read more »
Jan Morris had two stipulations before she would agree to sit for a painting for the National Portrait Gallery in London. Ibsen, her Norwegian forest cat, should feature. And so should one... Read more »
Every day I meet strangers who share intimate details with me. It’s called reading. In a newspaper piece a former sex addict recalls her need for BDSM (“when a sexual partner hurt... Read more »