Murder, They Wrote
This month’s best mystery books, podcasts, and TV series
Satch Is Back!
Five spectacular and previously unheard Louis Armstrong recordings from 1968 are finally being released by the BBC, showing him to be a great entertainer to the last
Lunch with Sam Taylor-Johnson
On this week’s episode of Table for Two, the Fifty Shades of Grey director talks about making Paul Newman cry, the inspiration behind her new Amy Winehouse biopic, and more …
The Daumier of La Dolce Vita
Ava Gardner kicked him in the groin, Peter O’Toole socked him in the ear, and this month Gérard Depardieu pounded him to a pulp. But 79-year-old Rino Barillari isn’t slowing down
Along Came Polly
Polly Jean Harvey, the fearless singer and two-time Mercury Prize winner known as PJ Harvey, blends her recent work with 90s classics on her European summer tour
Lola Peploe
For the actor’s directorial debut, she’s revisiting her grandmother’s legendary life and painting career
Man Ray’s Halo Effect
A new book surveys the life and work of the prolific 20th-century artist who revolutionized photography and pioneered the Surrealist movement
The Remains of the Day
How an intrepid director and a truly star-studded cast came together to make the 1962 war epic The Longest Day, against odds that almost rivaled the real event
Infinity Times Four
From the Donmar Warehouse in London, Nick Payne’s Constellations
Editor’s Picks
This week, don’t miss a beloved historian’s memoir; a look at early American life; and an author’s ode to his cat
All Jazzed Up
How three great jazz musicians—Louis Armstrong, Count Basie, and Duke Ellington—created their own lexicons
Angelica Hicks’s Guide to Brooklyn
The British illustrator and Internet personality shares her go-to restaurants, shops, and bars near her home in Carroll Gardens
The Way Things Were
Morris Engel’s 1980s telephone-booth photos—published for the first time in AIR MAIL—harken back to a bygone New York City
What You Don’t Know About Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy
On this week’s podcast, the author of a new biography of J.F.K. Jr.’s wife takes us inside the story
The Nanny Diaries
A solo show in New York honors Vivian Maier, the 20th-century nanny and amateur photographer whose richly nuanced work is only now getting its due
Owen Teague
The young star of Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes discusses acting with C.G.I. and making it in Hollywood
The 40-Year-Old Virgin
As Virgin Atlantic celebrates its 40th anniversary, Richard Branson pauses from ruling his empire to reveal a few of his favorite things
Portrait of the Artist as a Monster
A searing new memoir recounts a daughter’s toxic and chaotic relationship with her father, the artist Lucian Freud
Tom Lehrer Doesn’t Want to Talk to You
How did one of the world’s greatest satirists nearly fade into obscurity?
The Bloomsbury Group’s Dark Horse
A new exhibition in London pays homage to Virginia Woolf’s sister Vanessa Bell, a long-overlooked pioneer of modern art in Britain
