I had the happy chance to meet William Kuhn through his bookshelves before I met him in person. In 2015 my husband was working on a film in Boston, and after subletting the author’s apartment, he wrote to me, “Come here and stay, you will love it.” On a humid…
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There are some people whose soul you can see in an instant. You can see it captured in an image or in a passage from a book. After I read this description of a former nanny to two princes in William Kuhn’s novel, Prince Harry Boy to Man, I asked…
I was reading the other day about Englishmen on secret missions in Afghanistan, and to my surprise, T. E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia) may have been there in the late 1920s, possibly working behind the scenes to bring down King Amanullah. Where did I find this intriguing bit of history?…
Ellen Terry (1847-1928) appeared on stage for seventy years. During that time she married twice, managed a theater, toured the United States, taught and lectured, corresponded with George Bernard Shaw, was painted by John Singer Sargent, and wrote a very interesting memoir. Most of the letters written to me I…
Marilyn Monroe — seen here being presented to Queen Elizabeth II — was very savvy about appearances; about what made people tick, and how fame blurred the picture. She struggled to balance her inner life against a manufactured persona. Everyone’s childhood plays itself out… I think to love bravely is…
In language gender is particularly peculiar. Why, please, should a table be male in German, female in French, and castrated in English? French children, for instance, are male even if they are girls, in English there seems to be considerable doubt, in German they are definitely neuter. Even more startling…
“Danny La Rue…the most professional, the most witty and the most utterly charming man in the business.” Noel Coward. “London is a man’s town… London is an even worse town to find a man in than Hollywood…A couple of weeks ago I was in London and I was out to…
This photo was taken in 1922 at the Los Angeles Orthopedic Hospital, as a young polio victim received physical therapy in warm spring waters… This is the kind of tender care that will be impossible, for so very many, if “repeal and replace” goes through, and often it will be…
I just received a beacon from the past. Last night I opened a trove of photos and came across a letter to my grandmother, from her best friend, dated October 13, 1944…when the world was at war…and her children and her friends’ children were fighting overseas. It seems…