May 11, 2024
The Best
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from
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No. 252
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In This Week’s Issue
A VERY BRITISH SCANDAL

How one man brought down the highest-profile members of the U.K. Establishment with explosive accusations of pedophilia …

THE NEW COLLEGE TRY

Community pantries, gym showers, peer-support tents … a Columbia Journalism School student reports from inside the protests rocking the university …

CLUB WARS

A landmark vote to admit women into London’s opulent, exclusive, and historically men-only Garrick Club sends its members—and the British media—into a tizzy …

MOTHER’S DAY ELEGY

Terry McDonell’s ode to his widowed mother, Irma, evokes the special bond between single mothers and fatherless sons …

DEUS SEX MACHINA

Flora Gill dives into the brave new world of A.I. dating, where users hungry for intimacy are turning to digitized personas—spouses notwithstanding …

NEPO-LEONIC COMPLEX

Hide your mothers! Elizabeth Hurley’s son is the latest nepo-baby filmmaker to come out with an appallingly bad movie—an erotic thriller starring his own mom …

THE PRICE IS RIGHT-WING

Great Elm—the 9,000-square-foot Connecticut home where the conservative ideologue William F. Buckley Jr. was raised—is up for grabs for $5.5 million …

BUT, WAIT, THERE’S MORE!

Sebastian Junger’s dispatch from the brink of death … Withnail and I, from cult movie to stage play … the new war for America’s classrooms … Honor Levy, online It Girl turned Gen Z book whisperer … the beginning of a CD renaissance … Dubai’s most stylish new hotel … Who was this week’s biggest Attention Whore? …

But First …
Issue No. 252

The View from Here Scenes from the Gaza Solidarity Encampment at Columbia University

By Alyssa Choiniere
Read On
Barry Blitt’s Sketchbook
Fifty Shades of Nepotism

Oedipus Flex Elizabeth Hurley’s erotic thriller—written and directed by her 22-year-old son—is one for the Freudians

By Stuart Heritage
Read On
Air Supply

Best in Show

Let this weekend’s Westminster Dog Show serve as a welcome reminder that our four-legged friends—and most loyal companions, at that—deserve nothing less than the royal treatment. Herewith, tail-wagging treats for pets of all shapes and sizes—and their doting owners too
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Photo: Jack Garofalo/Paris Match/Getty Images (Bardot)
Anatomy of a Scandal

A Conspiracy of One When high-profile members of the British Establishment—including a former prime minister—were accused of being pedophiles, the country tore itself apart trying to find the truth

By John Arlidge
Photo illustration by Chop Choppish Shop
Read On
A Son’s Tribute

Single-Mother’s Day World War II left my mother a widow. But I didn’t have to go looking for a father figure. I had Irma

By Terry McDonell
Read On
Landing Gear

A CD-Player Odyssey A stereo setup that even Stanley Kubrick could appreciate! Earbuds that will shock you! A gadget that will suck the air, but not the flavor, out of your food! And more …

By Jonathan Margolis
Read On
Gentlemen’s Disagreement

Hello, Ladies! The Garrick Club—the preferred snoozing, dining, and watering hole of King Charles, Benedict Cumberbatch, and Sting—has finally voted to accept female members. Not everyone is happy

By Joseph Bullmore
Read On
T.G.I.S.

The Attention-Whore Index Kristi Noem is in the doghouse, the Met Gala is a deranged dystopia, and Donald Trump is getting down and dirty. Plus, the strangest news from around the world

Read On
Best
DINE Cycle Mauro Colagreco, the chef behind the Michelin-starred Le Mirazur, on the French Riviera, has opened a new restaurant… READ The Summer We Crossed Europe in the Rain Before publishing his first novel, A Pale View of Hills, in 1982, Kazuo Ishiguro wrote lyrics instead… VISIT The Lowell Stylish afternoon teas are all the rage in London, and now—thanks to a new collaboration between the Lowell’s Majorelle restaurant… WEAR Turnbull & Asser Suspenders—or braces, as they’re known across the pond—tend to be associated with the likes of Gordon Gekko, from 1987’s Wall Street,… LOOK Fila Timelapse Italian brothers Ettore and Giansevero Fila established their own textile operation in 1911. A little more than a decade later… DECORATE Nickey Kehoe Mesmerized by California’s golden light, interior designers Todd Nickey and Amy Kehoe set up shop in Los Angeles in 2008… DINE Cycle Mauro Colagreco, the chef behind the Michelin-starred Le Mirazur, on the French Riviera, has opened a new restaurant… READ The Summer We Crossed Europe in the Rain Before publishing his first novel, A Pale View of Hills, in 1982, Kazuo Ishiguro wrote lyrics instead… VISIT The Lowell Stylish afternoon teas are all the rage in London, and now—thanks to a new collaboration between the Lowell’s Majorelle restaurant… WEAR Turnbull & Asser Suspenders—or braces, as they’re known across the pond—tend to be associated with the likes of Gordon Gekko, from 1987’s Wall Street,… LOOK Fila Timelapse Italian brothers Ettore and Giansevero Fila established their own textile operation in 1911. A little more than a decade later… DECORATE Nickey Kehoe Mesmerized by California’s golden light, interior designers Todd Nickey and Amy Kehoe set up shop in Los Angeles in 2008…
Modern Times

No Strings Attached People are increasingly turning to “A.I. companion” sites for physical and emotional intimacy—whether they’re single in real life or not

By Flora Gill
Read On
Comedic Relief

Soaringly Sozzled Onstage Withnail and I is one of the most beloved—and bibulous—British films of all time. But can this bucolic Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas be properly adapted into a play?

By Dominic Maxwell
Read On
Guest Edit

Plum Sykes’s Favorite Things The Gloucestershire-based author of Bergdorf Blondes, The Debutante Divorcée, and the newly released Wives Like Us shares her favorite trappings of the upper class, including the perfect pumps, luxury nail polish, and cheap Bordeaux

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Photo: Oliver Holmes (Chanel)
Small Talk
“My kids keep me young.”
“My kids keep me young.”
Real-Estate Rarities

Last House on the Trad Right William F. Buckley Jr. learned his brand of conservative radicalism at his family’s sprawling Connecticut home, now up for sale

By Carrie Monahan
Read On
Books
Michael Hainey On

In My Time of Dying: How I Came Face-to-Face with the Idea of an Afterlife

by Sebastian Junger
Read On
Tom Scocca On

How to Become Famous: Lost Einsteins, Forgotten Superstars, and How the Beatles Came to Be

by Cass R. Sunstein
Read On
Lisa Henricksson On

This Month’s Best Mystery Books

Read On
Inside Story

O.K., Groomer A reporter’s dispatch from the trenches of the gender-and-sexuality wars in schools across the U.S. portends a perilous future for L.G.B.T.Q. teens

By Mike Hixenbaugh
Read On
Close-up

Honor Levy With My First Book, the very online It Girl is defining the Gen Z novel

By Natasha Stagg
Read On
Small Talk
Listen

Sex and the A.I. Girl On this week’s podcast, Flora Gill reveals why so many people are having affairs with digital companions

Read On
Open Book

Station Havens A new book offers a dazzling tour of 20th- and 21st-century railway architecture, from Berlin’s Hauptbahnhof to Chengdu’s Line 9

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Top, the Réseau Express Régional (R.E.R.) in Paris, built in 1970 to connect the city to the suburbs; above, Line 9, a new station in the Chengdu Metro, in China.
One of Doha’s new metro stations, built for the 2022 FIFA World Cup.
Top, Tren Maya, a 620-mile railway on Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula; above, the new Haymarket station, part of England’s Tyne and Wear Metro system.
Hauptbahnhof, Berlin’s main railway station, located on the site of the historic Lehrter Bahnhof.
Top, the 1930s Ivanovo Station, in Russia, which was restored during the coronavirus pandemic; above, a bus shelter outside the Kohta Station, in Finland, designed by students of Aalto University’s Wood Program.
Read On
View With a Room

Dubai’s Softer Side In a city known for excess, what does “luxury” even mean? The Lana, the Dorchester Collection’s stylish new hotel, has a few suggestions

By Alexander Lobrano
Read On
Highlight
Gelmeroda, VIII, a painting by the Bauhaus-school professor Lyonel Feininger, 1921.

The Afterlife of the Bauhaus

The events are generally described the same way. On January 30, 1933, Adolf Hitler was appointed chancellor of Germany and the Third Reich assumed power. In April, the Gestapo padlocked the doors of the Bauhaus school, in Berlin, a renowned institution for art and design. Having closed the Bauhaus, the propaganda minister of the Reich said it could reopen if it embraced a nationalistic style. The faculty members refused, and the school’s doors never opened again. Some of the Bauhaus geniuses had already fled to other countries; many of the rest now followed. There was no other version of the history. End of story. READ ON

Gelmeroda, VIII, a painting by the Bauhaus-school professor Lyonel Feininger, 1921. Read On
Great Lives

C. J. Sansom The Scottish author created a new genre of literature—historical crime—and sold more than two million copies of his captivating Shardlake series

By Antonia Senior
Read On
Small Talk
“You’re breaking up with me? During crumbs?”
“You’re breaking up with me? During crumbs?”
The Imperfect Ending

Robert Plunket

The cult comic writer, who is undergoing a revival at the age of 79, reveals a few of his least favorite things
Read On
Ruby Wright’s Sketchbook
Introducing my son to Pellicci’s, the East London café that has been in the same family for more than a century. It’s where Maria, who has cooked here since 1966, sends chocolate roly-polies and affogatos through a serving hatch to her son, Nev, who dashes around the café chatting to the customers as if we were all regulars. We are supposedly sitting in the seats of former gangsters Ronnie and Reggie Kray, but it doesn’t feel polite to ask about them. For more stories about this historic spot, we’ll have to listen to Down the Caff, the podcast the Pellicci family is launching on May 19.
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Graydon Carter and Alessandra Stanley

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Contributing Artists

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OUR CHIEF OPERATING OFFICER AND CHIEF MARKETING OFFICER ARE

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In Memoriam

Peter Bogdanovich Duncan Hannah Douglas McGrath Richard David Story André Leon Talley

Issue No. 252
May 11, 2024
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Issue No. 252
May 11, 2024
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