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Issue No. 27

The View from Here

Meghanfreude is the glee we feel watching a royal by marriage roil the royal family, and let’s face it, we all have a bad case of it. But let’s not be too hard on ourselves…

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Goopelgänger Inside Gwyneth’s No. 2 (not that!)

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Goops! The marketing of Gwyneth’s genitalia

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What Fresh Hell Harry and Meghan’s week gets complicated as Dad steps into the picture and the Canadians act very un-Canadianly

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The Trouble with Harry The Duke of Sussex signaled his and Meghan’s discontent at a dinner party and almost ruined the meal

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Opera Buffa

Now, here’s a unicorn for you: a production of Il Barbiere di Siviglia a half-century old, Italianate and balletic, still as fresh as on its first night. And to think it originated deep in the Cold War, behind the Wall in East Berlin. The director, long deceased, was Ruth Berghaus, a Marxist and torch-bearing Brechtian who started out as a choreographer. The sets and costumes are by the theatrical polymath Achim Freyer, his first for an opera. Now well into his 80s, Freyer is still very much with us, and best known for his later head trips on a Promethean scale. READ ON

On January 24, Ruth Berghaus’s production of Il Barbiere di Siviglia returns to Berlin’s Staatsoper Unter den Linden for a run of six performances (through April 24).

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Discover

All the Leaves Are Burned, and the Sky Is Gray With Australia ablaze, our writer recounts her escape from L.A.’s fires—and wonders what’s next

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Small Talk
“Ew! This couch is still warm from the last guy.”

Rebel with More than a Clue Lee Child, the immoderate, rebellious, gazillion-copies-selling author and creator of Jack Reacher, is now … a Booker Prize judge

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Must-See Events

How to Charm the Chinese They are “natural capitalists” who like people who are appreciative of them. Everything our president doesn’t do

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Design for Assisted Living Sweden’s Queen Silvia and Ikea team up to create pre-fab, low-cost apartments for older people, including those with dementia

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A World of Hurt Young people are increasingly seeking help for anxiety over the climate crisis

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Small Talk
“What if we promise to spend our money at Trump properties?”

Material Girls

Almost 50 years ago, art historian Linda Nochlin’s 1971 seminal essay, “Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?,” became an electrifying feminist rallying cry that called out male-dominated art institutions. Fittingly, Alice Neel’s vibrant portrait of Nochlin with her young daughter—depicting the fierce scholar as a tender mother—is a centerpiece of “Women Take the Floor,” currently on view at Boston’s Museum of Fine Art. READ ON

Alice Neel’s 1973 portrait of Linda Nochlin and her daughter Daisy is part of a major exhibition of work by female artists on display in Boston through next year.

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Discover

Guido Conti Caponi On balancing ready-to-wear with his family bottega’s long-standing commitment to custom clothes and linens

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Style
Small Talk
“O.K., Mr. Free Range—now we’re lost.”

Something’s Coming The West Side Story story is a complicated one, and the new Broadway production has a lot of history to reckon with

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Open Book

Face Value A new book considers the fate of our most human aspects—the mystery of the brain, the expressiveness of the face—in our tech-bent future


Max Hastings On the best work of Sir Michael Howard, the British historian who dealt high intellect and common sense in equal measure

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Books

Bubble in the Sun: The Florida Boom of the 1920s and How It Brought on the Great Depression

by Christopher Knowlton
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Life in a Cold Climate: Nancy MitfordThe Biography

by Laura Thompson
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The Less People Know About Us

by Axton Betz-Hamilton
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Small Talk
“I know, but my mom knitted it for me.”

Bad Romance The author of a new book on the Borgias’ infamous personal lives uncovers the facts behind the Italian family’s long-standing myths

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Bordeaux Is Getting Crushed Shifting tastes drive a drastic plummet in sales

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Best
Small Talk
“Take us to your leader in industrial design.”

Don’t Go There Some of the world’s most overrated travel experiences, as described by the people who endured them

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Baby Steps

Artists’ early works can be fascinating for how they hint at their later, mature styles. Years ago, for instance, I saw a landscape Piet Mondrian had painted in his teens or twenties in which the stylized, angular rendering of a tree trunk and branches felt like an arrow pointing toward the grid-like geometry of his signature abstractions. Foreshadowing! But how much more revealing—or at least fun—might it be when the early work is literal juvenilia and the artists are illustrators whose primary audience is kids? READ ON

Artists featured in “Now & Then: Contemporary Illustrators and Their Childhood Art,” at Amherst’s Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art through May 10, include Barbara Lehman, the author and illustrator behind the Red Book and Red Again picture books.

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Discover
View With a Room

The Not-So-Secret Garden Luxury lovers and horticultural types will find plenty of reasons to flock to the Newt in Somerset


Nancy Lewis A charming, tenacious music-biz publicist who established Monty Python in the United States

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Paul Davis’s Sketchbook
Is Edited By

Graydon Carter and Alessandra Stanley

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Chris Garrett Michael Hainey George Kalogerakis Nathan King

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Copy Editor

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Brand Partnerships

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Financial & Business Operations

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Madeline Spates

Issue No. 27
January 18, 2020
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Issue No. 27
January 18, 2020

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