Girls like Diana Spencer, armed with nothing more than a guinea-pig-rearing certificate, proud to say in that old Sloane way that she was 'as thick as two short planks,' became the exception as girls from Benenden and Downe House started to fast-trac...
I think the Bush Administration had basically inherited a policy toward Iraq from the Reagan/Bush Administration that saw Iraq as a kind of fire wall against Iranian fundamentalism. And as it developed over the 1980s, it became a real political run-a...
Sometimes you have to censor books. When I read 'Peter Rabbit,' I skip the part about Peter's father ending up in one of Mrs. McGregor's pies. I also hid the book of 'Grimm Fairy Tales.' They're just too grim for my grandkids. Reality will come soon ...
Ballet in September used to be dead as a dodo. Now, with City Ballet's ingenious decision to give us four weeks of repertory in the early fall, having cut down on the relentlessly long spring season when dancers, critics and audiences droop on the vi...
Melissa Barak, an ex-City Ballet dancer and sometime choreographer, has put together an unspeakably dopey and incompetent mess called 'Call Me Ben,' combining ultra-generic dance, terrible dialogue and disastrous storytelling, about the founding of L...
I am still in touch with my Secret Service agents, most of whom are retired now. They really get to be your friends. They watched me grow up, and most of them had little kids, so I was kind of giving them a warm-up of what was coming.
Long ago I used to mutter (as you probably do), "Very interesting," and cast a desperate glance around for the punch-bowl. This banal comment fools no one, least of all the artist, and you quickly find you have lost a friend and alienated a roomful o...
I am a huge fan of using social media to connect with people because I think there was this 'ivory tower' aspect of journalism where people might read a byline for years but have no idea about the person who was behind it and never get to communicate...
I think there's a sort of agony with all intelligent and very creative designers that it's only fashion, that in the end it's only the decorative arts. I had a feeling towards the end that Saint Laurent and Berge were very keen to attain that immorta...
I always have separated myself from my critiques of collections. My judgment is not about whether I would wear it - but how the collection stands in the lexicon of an established designer. As I am a maximalist, not a minimalist, I don't wear Armani o...
As a journalist, I cannot help imagining with excitement a new era with a face-off between Hedi Slimane at YSL and Raf Simons at Dior - a magnificent battle of style and wills to echo the Armani/Versace, Gucci/Prada or even Chanel/Schiaparelli face-o...
There are 316 million people in the United States of America. About six million of them watch 'Homeland,' Showtime's thriller about world terror, paranoia, and bipolar disorder. That's about 2 percent of the population; roughly what the guy with the ...
Matt Leinart's L.A. duplex looks more like a Chuck E. Cheese safe house than a millionaire jock's crash pad. There's the requisite leather couch and flat-screen television, but the rest of the ground floor is bare except for a pile of Nick Jr. DVDs, ...
Practices such as arranged marriages and restrictions on girls attending school have deep roots, and changing them is a gradual process. Sometimes these problems seem very far away from us here in the United States. But let's remember that even into ...
You know you're getting older when - well, first off, when you read almost any story that begins 'You know you're getting older when.' But you also know it when you not only never heard of the musical guest on a given 'Saturday Night Live' but never ...
One of the most important things I'm glad we did and am proud of is that we don't have any real grass on our property. It might not be realistic to ask people to pull out their grass, but we'll never have to think about it. We used Smart Grass, and I...
When I am back in old Blighty, I am surrounded by the old and familiar concerns: New Labour, Europe, the Middle East and the rest. If you live in Britain, you will know what I mean - except you won't, because you will take it for granted that this is...
If you can sell yourself as someone who knows how Washington works, someone who has these relationships, that's a very marketable commodity. If you're seen as someone who knows how this town works, someone who is a usual suspect in this town, you can...
I have been a print reporter my whole career. It's all I ever wanted to be. I specialize in political profiles. I have probably profiled hundreds of people over the years, people in very powerful positions. People don't always like what I write, but ...
So, your kids must love the iPad?” I asked Mr. [Steve] Jobs, trying to change the subject. The company’s first tablet was just hitting the shelves. “They haven’t used it,” he told me. “We limit how much technology our kids use at home.”...
Critics say Internet advertising suffers from limitless inventory, which depresses prices. These exclusive front-page sponsorships are not limitless. If HBO doesn't move quickly enough, Showtime can buy out Gawker and Jezebel for the key fall TV seas...
