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November 16, 2024
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No. 279
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In This Week’s Issue
SLIPPERY BUSINESS

How did Thames Water, Britain’s biggest water company, manage to fall $20 billion in debt—despite their monopoly over the most in-demand product in the world? Jonathan Margolis investigates …

THE VOICE OF REASON

In an interview with Jim Kelly, veteran political columnist Peggy Noonan talks all things Trump, from the note he sent her in his signature Sharpie to the conditions that led to his victory …

DEVIL OF THE NIGHT

Just when you thought the trial of Dominique Pelicot—a Frenchman who drugged his wife so other men could rape her—couldn’t get more abhorrent, his daughter reveals he may have done the same to her …

BADFELLAS

As allegations of sexual abuse against rapper Sean “Diddy” Combs continue to mount, Legs McNeil dives into the little-known association between his father, Melvin, and the Gambino crime family …

ROYAL FLUSH

At St. Andrews, where Prince William and Kate Middleton’s romance first blossomed, King Charles’s youngest niece has taken up with the son of a solicitor—who looks a lot like Prince Harry …

BEYOND THE ALGONQUIN ROUND TABLE

Who was Dorothy Parker, really? A biographer chronicles the rabbit holes she went down in search of clues about the eminently scathing, utterly elusive 20th-century wit …

THE NEWARK OF ITALY NO LONGER

How Genoa became a peaceable alternative to Milan or Rome, with views, food, lodgings, and history that are as yet undisturbed by the masses …

BUT, WAIT, THERE’S MORE!

Candice Bergen’s favorite things … Beth Garrabrant, Taylor Swift’s album photographer, turns her lens to John Hughes’s America … Nicky Haslam on the things (and people) he finds “common” … this month’s most compelling mysteries … Who’s the biggest Attention Whore of the moment?

But First …
Issue No. 279

The View from Here How did Thames Water, the U.K.’s largest water company, turn a foolproof monopoly into a $20 billion money pit, leaving the country short on the very commodity it was responsible for supplying?

By Jonathan Margolis
Read On
Barry Blitt’s Sketchbook
4
Real-Life Horror Story

The Sins of the Father The rape trial of Dominique Pelicot has shocked France. But the story has gotten even darker with the revelation that Pelicot may have drugged and abused his own daughter

By Kim Willsher
Photo Illustration by Chop Choppish Shop
Read On
Royal Romance

A Blue-Blooded Highland Fling The 21-year-old niece of King Charles—Lady Louise Mountbatten-Windsor—has got the rumor mill churning at the same university where Prince William first met Kate Middleton

By Marianka Swain
Read On
Eight Questions

High Noonan The Pulitzer Prize–winning political columnist Peggy Noonan discusses her note from Trump, the surprising reason why he is not a Neanderthal, and writing in Edmund Burke for president

By Jim Kelly
Read On
Air Supply

Hit the Holiday Road

Going home for the holidays? Or perhaps you’re going anywhere but there. If planes, trains, and automobiles are on your festive season agenda, AIR SUPPLY has nifty travel accoutrements galore to get you on your merry way
Shop
Photo: Anthony Barboza/Getty Images (LaBelle)
Guest Edit

Anthony Hopenhajm’s Favorite Things The owner and artistic director of American heritage-jewelry house Seaman Schepps (Wallis Simpson and Jackie Onassis were clients) and Trianon keeps a Filson duffel, Faber-Castell pencils, and Huberd’s Shoe Grease at the ready

Shop
An Enduring Mystery

The Shooting of Pretty Boy Melvin Was Sean “Diddy” Combs’s father murdered by the Gambino crime family?

By Legs McNeil
Read On
T.G.I.S.

The Attention-Whore Index Elon Musk’s wealth becomes engorged, Prince Andrew receives a mysterious handout, and Anthony Weiner exposes himself (to ridicule) yet again

Read On
Best
SHOP Louis Vuitton Louis Vuitton has had a presence in Manhattan for the past 120 years, and now the French fashion house is kicking things up a notch… WEAR Carolina Herrera x Frame If you don’t have a ball-gown skirt made entirely of ice-blue denim in your closet, are you really even… WATCH Starring Jerry as Himself A Taiwanese immigrant, Jerry Hsu became a well-to-do engineer in the decades following his move to… READ Godzilla Monsterpiece Theatre King Kong, Mothra, the Japan Self-Defense Forces, the Avengers—… SPARKLE Sidney Garber It may feel as if goddesses are in short supply lately, but there’s hope if you’re a jewelry lover. Carey Lowell, the ceramist and actor… CUT Allday Goods English chef Hugo Worsley goes through a lot of knives. When friends asked him where to find high-quality knives… SHOP Louis Vuitton Louis Vuitton has had a presence in Manhattan for the past 120 years, and now the French fashion house is kicking things up a notch… WEAR Carolina Herrera x Frame If you don’t have a ball-gown skirt made entirely of ice-blue denim in your closet, are you really even… WATCH Starring Jerry as Himself A Taiwanese immigrant, Jerry Hsu became a well-to-do engineer in the decades following his move to… READ Godzilla Monsterpiece Theatre King Kong, Mothra, the Japan Self-Defense Forces, the Avengers—… SPARKLE Sidney Garber It may feel as if goddesses are in short supply lately, but there’s hope if you’re a jewelry lover. Carey Lowell, the ceramist and actor… CUT Allday Goods English chef Hugo Worsley goes through a lot of knives. When friends asked him where to find high-quality knives…
Small Talk

Let Them Drink Vodka The statewide water shortage is driving New Yorkers to desperate measures

By John Ficarra
Read On
Rules for Living

How to Know if You’re Common Decorator, bon vivant—and still enjoying cocaine at 85—Nicky Haslam releases his annual list of the tacky and unsophisticated

By Laura Pullman
Read On
Inside Story

The Dorothy Parker Tapes A biographer of the great 20th-century wit goes in search of 12 hours’ worth of lost recordings made by Gloria Vanderbilt’s husband Wyatt Cooper

By Gail Crowther
Read On
Listen

Lunch with Amy Sedaris On this week’s episode of Table for Two, the comedian and Mandalorian actress comes clean about her tanorexia, the Girl Scout badges she didn’t get, and her obsession with high heels

Read On
Every Trick in the Book

The Mysteries Continue The gift that even Scrooge can’t resist? A subscription to the best spy novels of all time, curated by the London bookseller Heywood Hill

By Stuart Heritage
Read On
Books
Christian Lorentzen On

Stranger Than Fiction: Lives of the Twentieth-Century Novel

by Edwin Frank
Read On
Abhrajyoti Chakraborty On

V13: Chronicle of a Trial

by Emmanuel Carrère,
translated by John Lambert
Read On
Hollywood Lives

The High Priestess of Grind House Stephanie Rothman was a rare female director in 1970s Hollywood. What kept her from following in the footsteps of Francis Ford Coppola and Martin Scorsese?

By Spike Carter
Read On
Travel

Discovering Genoa Formerly known as one of Europe’s grungiest port cities, Genoa is now welcoming travelers who seek an authentically Italian vacation

By Marcia DeSanctis
Read On
Small Talk
“On this very sad occasion—and on all occasions—I’d like to remind everyone that I graduated from Harvard.”
“On this very sad occasion—and on all occasions—I’d like to remind everyone that I graduated from Harvard.”
Listen

Inside the Mysterious Murder of Sean Combs’s Father On this week’s podcast, Legs McNeil details how the death of the rapper’s father may have influenced him

Read On
Photography

Teenage Wasteland A new book of photographs by Beth Garrabrant—the artist behind Taylor Swift’s recent album covers—documents youth in the American suburbs

10
Photographs by Beth Garrabrant, taken between 2001 and 2017.
Read On
Murder, They Wrote

Deadly Pleasures to Read and Watch Distract yourself from real-life nightmares with this month’s best mystery book and TV series

By Lisa Henricksson
Read On
Close-up

Mekki Leeper The Emmy-nominated Jury Duty and Sex Lives of College Girls actor stars in the new mockumentary sitcom St. Denis Medical

By Jack Sullivan
Read On
Small Talk
“You’re in luck—it’s bobblehead day.”
“You’re in luck—it’s bobblehead day.”
Highlight
The West Conservatory, a centerpiece of Longwood Reimagined, designed by the architects Weiss/Manfredi.

Paradise Found

Recently listed in Time Out as the world’s most beautiful botanic display, Longwood Gardens, in Pennsylvania’s Brandywine Valley, might be thought of as a thousand-acre gallery of gardens. An international roster of designers has shaped its evolution, and next Friday brings the unveiling of another transformation: Longwood Reimagined, a magnificent, 17-acre addition to its collection of gardens and conservatories. The cost: $250 million. READ ON

Read On
Small Talk
The Perfect Ending

Candice Bergen

The five-time Emmy Award winner answers 24 of life’s most pressing questions
Read On
Paul Davis’s Sketchbook
In 1954, a band of recent Cooper Union graduates founded a graphic-design-and-illustration firm called Push Pin Studios. The Push Pin pioneers were a talented lot: among them were notable artists Reynold Ruffins, Seymour Chwast, Edward Sorel, and Milton Glaser (creator of the “I ❤️ NY” logo). With a style that hearkened back to 19th-century advertising—outdated methods such as crosshatching and woodcutting were early Push Pin signatures—the studio turned heads quickly. Seven decades later, their distinctive, sometimes eccentric book jackets, posters, vinyl covers, and typefaces remain eye-catching. An exhibition highlighting six Push Pin artists—the aforementioned founders, plus Paul Davis (above, his 2006 painting How Bad Do You Want to Be Good?) and James McMullan—is currently on view at the Church in Sag Harbor, New York. —Jack Sullivan
Is Edited By

Graydon Carter and Alessandra Stanley

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Angela Panichi

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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. 279
November 16, 2024
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Issue No. 279
November 16, 2024
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