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October 5, 2024
The Best
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No. 273
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In This Week’s Issue
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With Giorgia Meloni’s right-wing government stumbling, the Italian prime minister has brought in her sister and lifelong co-conspirator, Arianna, to help batten down the hatches …

BLOWING THE WHISTLE

Is Mohammed bin Salman’s purchase of the Newcastle United soccer team a bid to rescue a working-class city in northern England or just another attempt to launder Saudi Arabia’s reputation?

MAYBE YOU CAN JUDGE A CROOK BY ITS COVER

What do Olivia Nuzzi, Sam Bankman-Fried, and Ezra Miller have in common? For one thing, each was featured on Forbes’s 30 Under 30 list before torpedoing their careers …

HORSEPLAY!

More than 2,000 athletes from nearly 90 countries descended on Kazakhstan for this year’s World Nomad Games, where politics clash with goat-carcass polo and mare-milk ice cream …

BUTTING HEADPHONES

If Elliot Grainge’s rise at Atlantic Music Group is just another nepo-baby by-product, his ascent has taken an unusual turn that puts him in direct competition with his father, Lucian, at Universal Music …

COTSWOLDS CONFIDENTIAL

A quaint English village is up in arms over Soho House owner Ron Burkle’s plans to build a massive, grotesque home there …

NOT SO PEACHY

In one of his best performances yet, John Lithgow stars as an anguished Roald Dahl—grappling with age and the repercussions of his unabashed anti-Semitism—in the Royal Court Theatre’s Giant …

BUT, WAIT, THERE’S MORE!

The Toyota Land Cruiser returns with a vengeance … Britain’s morning shows are a feast of fun … Why does France own Italy’s Spanish Steps? … the speedboat fit for a king … a history of gay life in postwar Britain … women Egyptologists on the Nile … Who was this week’s biggest Attention Whore?

But First …
Issue No. 273

The View from Here When Saudi Arabia bought a storied English soccer team, its fortunes on the pitch were transformed. But at what cost to its soul?

By Andrew Hankinson
Read On
Barry Blitt’s Sketchbook
3
Blacklist

Curse of the Forbes 30 Under 30! Twentysomethings scrabble and fight to appear on the business magazine’s list of bright young things—but many of them quickly crash and burn

By George Pendle and Jack Sullivan
Photo illustration by Chop Choppish Shop
Read On
Politics, Italian-Style

Sister Act Giorgia Meloni, Italy’s embattled right-wing prime minister, has promoted her older sister, Arianna, to help her navigate government scandals

By Mattia Ferraresi
Read On
Air Supply

The Social Season

Galas galore? Constant cocktail receptions? The fall social season is in full swing, and AIR SUPPLY’s style guide is designed to make you more popular than a tray of Perrier-Jouët
Shop
Photo: Sante Forlano/Condé Nast/Getty Images (Randall and model)
Guest Edit

Eduardo González and David Carballido’s Favorite Things Known for their minimalist aesthetic and purist approach to tequila blanco, the founders of Lalo share their taste for the finer things

Shop
T.G.I.S.

The Attention-Whore Index Melania Trump breaks her silence, Boris Johnson justifies his past, and Prince Harry disappoints his backers

Read On
Countryside Kerfuffle

Eyesore of the Cotswolds A California billionaire wants to build a hideous hybrid manor house in a picturesque English village—the locals are revolting

By Lara Wildenberg
PHOTO ILLUSTRATION BY CHOP CHOPPISH SHOP
Read On
Cars

Roughing It Today’s drivers are hungry for vehicles that look like they’re ready to play in the mud. Our car columnist asks, Can Toyota’s re-released Land Cruiser actually off-road?

By Jamie Kitman
Read On
Best
CARRY MZ Wallace Whether they’re aspiring or professional, dancers have to lug a lot of stuff around. They could just cram it into one messy carryall… SHOP Petit H The motto of Petit h, Hermès’s sustainable sister line, is “Nothing is lost, everything is transformed and an object is created… SPARKLE Chopard Chopard’s Ice Cube Collection is for fine-jewelry lovers who always keep their cool. (Case in point: the maison’s new spokesperson… WATCH Carville: Winning Is Everything, Stupid A new CNN documentary, Carville: Winning Is Everything, Stupid, by Matt Tyrnauer, goes deep into… DRINK Elvis New Yorkers, your prayers have been answered. Well, at least mine have. Paradise Projects and the team behind Le Dive, the Nines, and Acme just opened… SLEEP Beata Heuman A few decades ago, Swedes Beata Heuman and Catherine Wehtje Hustad went to boarding school together. Today, the former… CARRY MZ Wallace Whether they’re aspiring or professional, dancers have to lug a lot of stuff around. They could just cram it into one messy carryall… SHOP Petit H The motto of Petit h, Hermès’s sustainable sister line, is “Nothing is lost, everything is transformed and an object is created… SPARKLE Chopard Chopard’s Ice Cube Collection is for fine-jewelry lovers who always keep their cool. (Case in point: the maison’s new spokesperson… WATCH Carville: Winning Is Everything, Stupid A new CNN documentary, Carville: Winning Is Everything, Stupid, by Matt Tyrnauer, goes deep into… DRINK Elvis New Yorkers, your prayers have been answered. Well, at least mine have. Paradise Projects and the team behind Le Dive, the Nines, and Acme just opened… SLEEP Beata Heuman A few decades ago, Swedes Beata Heuman and Catherine Wehtje Hustad went to boarding school together. Today, the former…
West End Story

Dirty Beast Roald Dahl’s sadistic brilliance and disturbing anti-Semitism are the centerpiece of a dazzling new play at London’s Royal Court Theatre

By John Lahr
Read On
Music Men

We Are Family (for Now … ) Elliot Grainge is about to join his father, Sir Lucian Grainge, atop the global music industry. Is he a nepo baby? Or a patricide in the making?

By William Turvill
Read On
Contact Sports

Goat Carcasses, Realpolitik, and Horse-Milk Ice Cream In Kazakhstan, the Nomad Games provide sporting cover for political maneuvering

By Miles Ellingham
Read On
Listen

Lunch with Lee Daniels On this week’s episode of Table for Two, Lee Daniels reveals how Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor inspired him to become a director

Read On
Old Rivalries, New Tricks

Watch Your Steps! In a growing international spat, the French government has claimed ownership of the Spanish Steps in Rome—and the Italians are furiosi!

By Richard Assheton
Read On
Little Britain

The Breakfast Clubs America’s morning television brightens the day but deadens the soul. Not the case in the U.K., where the shows are so bizarre, they can’t help but delight

By Joel Golby
Read On
The Boats That Rock

Longships of Luxury With their mix of sleek Scandinavian design and Nordic ruggedness, J Craft’s Torpedo boats offer elegance, power—and a seal of approval from the King of Sweden

By Gemma Billington
Read On
After Hours

A Night Celebrating Jonathan Becker On Wednesday night, Juliana Canfield, Bob Colacello, Tom Freston, and others gathered at the Waverly Inn to toast the photographer’s new book, Lost Time

By Jack Sullivan
Photographs by Daniel Paik
10
Top, Jonathan Becker and Graydon Carter; above, Becker’s new book, Lost Time.
Top, Pepe Fanjul; above, Jonathan Becker, Alexandra Kotur, and Digby Becker.
Top, Mark Rozzo, Dana Brown, and Michael Hainey; above, Juliana Canfield.
Top, James Hornstein, Victoria Diamantidis, and Françoise Kirkland; above, Steven Aronson, Shawn McCreesh, and Chad Fleming Conway.
Top, Suydam Lansing.
Top, Steven Aronson and Chad Fleming Conway; above, Noni Pratt and Rex Farr.
Top, Jonathan Becker, Bob Colacello, and James Kirchick; above, Anu Duggal and Tom Freston.
Top, Nadine Johnson; above, Ray Dowd.
Top, Morgan Entrekin and Ricky Clifton; above, Anu Duggal.
Top, Carolina de Armas and Elena Clavarino; above, Sadie Stein and Ash Carter.
Read On
Small Talk
Listen

James Carville on What Kamala Needs to Do to Win On this week’s podcast, the brains behind Bill Clinton’s upset victory looks at the current race

Read On
Books
James Kirchick On

Some Men in London: Queer Life, Volumes 1 and 2

by Peter Parker
Read On
Tom Scocca On

AI Snake Oil: What Artificial Intelligence Can Do, What It Can’t, and How to Tell the Difference

by Arvind Narayanan and
Sayash Kapoor
Read On
Inside Story

Theft on the Nile How a pair of intrepid, 19th-century British women smuggled an ancient coffin right out from under the noses of Egyptian site guards

By Kathleen Sheppard
PHOTO ILLUSTRATION BY CHOP CHOPPISH SHOP
Read On
Photography

The Invisible Man Accompanying a retrospective in Barcelona, a new book collects more than 150 photographs by Louis Stettner, who captured the trials and triumphs of the 20th century’s working class while remaining virtually unknown

13
A self-portrait by Louis Stettner, Santiago, Chile, 2000–1.
Commuters at Penn Station, New York, 1958.
A woman on the subway, New York, 1946.
A train station near Málaga, Spain, 1951.
A woman at Penn Station, New York, 1958.
Texan tourists on Fifth Avenue, New York, 1975.
Locals in Aubervilliers, France, 1947.
A woman in Greenwich Village, New York, 1958.
An aluminum-foundry worker in the Soviet Union, 1975.
Protesters at a march for the United Farm Workers of America, New York, mid-1970s.
A fisherman in Ibiza, 1956.
Top, observing a construction site in New York, 1952; above, taking a break on the Brooklyn Heights Promenade, 1954.
A man in the Jardin du Luxembourg, Paris, 1997.
Read On
Small Talk
Close-up

Ariella Glaser The 19-year-old actress discusses her first starring role, in White Bird, alongside Helen Mirren

By Paulina Prosnitz
Read On
Highlight
Philosoph, Jacob Burckhardt, a 1988 sculpture by Jean Tinguely.

Dream Machines

“Believe in change. Do not hold anything fast,” said Jean Tinguely, a rebellious artist who was anti-museum yet has an entire museum devoted to his pioneering audio-kinetic work, in Basel, Switzerland. For all that, Tinguely is not as well remembered as he should be. Next Thursday, Pirelli HangarBicocca, in Milan—a city that once welcomed one of his most flamboyant creations—opens an exhibition that revisits his singular practice, affirms his contemporary relevance, and launches a year of centenary celebrations. READ ON

Read On
Small Talk
“This is the best part—the hero is still hopeful for something good, before he realizes it’s all bills.”
“This is the best part—the hero is still hopeful for something good, before he realizes it’s all bills.”
The Perfect Ending

Mellody Hobson

The businesswoman and newly minted children’s-book author answers 29 of life’s most pressing questions
Read On
Joe McKendry’s Sketchbook
Jimmy Carter turned 100 on October 1. The onetime peanut farmer, navy officer, governor of Georgia, 39th president, Nobel Peace Prize–winner, and humanitarian is the longest-lived president in U.S. history. Carter has said he wants to hold on until he can vote in the upcoming election. “I’m only trying to make it to vote for Kamala Harris,” Carter told his grandson.
Is Edited By

Graydon Carter and Alessandra Stanley

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Angela Panichi

Deputy Editors

Ashley Baker Ash Carter Chris Garrett Nathan King Julia Vitale

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John Tornow

Editor at Large

George Pendle

Books Editor

Jim Kelly

Arts Intel Report Editor

Laura Jacobs

Senior Editors

Elena Clavarino Jensen Davis Clara Molot

Photo Director

Ann Schneider

Copy Editor

Adam Nadler

Research & Legal Editor

Matt Kapp

Production Editor

H. Scott Jolley

Associate Editors

Carolina de Armas Lucy Horowitz Jeanne Malle Paulina Prosnitz Jack Sullivan

Art Director

Paloma Huerre

Senior Photo Editor

Emine Gözde Sevim

Designer

Zoé Gillette

International Editor

Isabelle Harvie-Watt

Communications Director

Harrison Vail

Columnists

Dana Brown Cazzie David Lisa Henricksson
Walter Isaacson Pico Iyer Rachel Johnson
John Lahr Jonathan Margolis Linda Wells
James Wolcott

Writers at Large

Lili Anolik Bridget Arsenault Johanna Berkman Joseph Bullmore Vassi Chamberlain William D. Cohan Rich Cohen Michael Hainey Stuart Heritage George Kalogerakis Sam Kashner James Kirchick Alexander Lobrano Alexandra Marshall Daphne Merkin Sam Wasson

Contributing Artists

Monica Ahanonu Barry Blitt André Carrilho Pip Carter Paul Davis David Downton Andrea Ferolla Josh Gosfield Cathy Graham Eric Hanson Angelica Hicks Hilary Knight Danielle Kosann Michael Lindsay-Hogg Ross MacDonald Joe McKendry James McMullan Donald Robertson Charles Dare Scheips Grant Shaffer Ed Sorel Ralph Steadman

Contributing Photographers

Jonathan Becker Justin Bishop Alex Board James Emmerman Marcos Fecchino Daniel Paik Art Streiber Sharon Suh Justin Weiner

Architectural Consultant

Basil Walter

Head of Audience Development

Rachel LeSage

Audience Growth Manager

Merritt Johnson

Cartoon Editor

Bob Mankoff

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Randall Poster

Technology

Brooks Oakley Justin Rubaloff

OUR CHIEF OPERATING OFFICER AND CHIEF MARKETING OFFICER ARE

Bill Keenan and Emily Davis

Air Supply General Manager and Brand Partnerships

Anjali Lewis

Business Development Director

Catherine Scott

European Sales Director

Selim Mataraci

Financial & Business Operations

Marc Leyer

Chief Strategy Adviser

Adam Mendelsohn

Chief Merchant

Jennifer Noyes

Shop Editor

Jessica Iredale

E-Commerce Manager

Isaac Metlitsky

E-commerce Associate

Lilly Schoenbaum

In Memoriam

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

Issue No. 273
October 5, 2024
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Issue No. 273
October 5, 2024
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