Tom Wolfe
The tyranny of 1970s self-help gurus
Clients pursuing ’true self’ were expected to wear identical clothes, shave their heads, self-flagellate and be ‘given hell’, while paying through the nose for it
High life
Gstaad Joan Didion, who died last December, took herself extremely seriously. American writers tend to do that, especially those…
Stars in their eyes
‘The dominant narrative of space,’ I was told, in that strange language curators employ, ‘is America.’ Quite so. Kennedy stared…
Bursting the bubble
The conventional history of modern art was written on the busy Paris-New York axis, as if nowhere else existed. For…
High life
The last week in Gotham was exceptional fun. I saw a Broadway play, Finding Neverland, compliments of the producer, my…
Cathedrals on wheels
Stephen Bayley hails the automobile – a miracle of technical and artistic collaboration – and mourns its demise
The price test
If you wanted to find a middle-aged man in a bright orange suit, matching tie and sneakers, Frieze is a…
24 hours in a Qatari jail cell
This column nearly didn’t appear. Another 24 hours and I would have trumped the late Jeffrey Bernard with the single…
