The Southern Heroine
Charismatic, witty, and determined, Marguerite Littman was a moving force in the early fight against AIDS and counted David Hockney, Bianca Jagger, and Princess Diana among her closest friends
Into Thin Air
Buddhist and bon vivant Ang Rita Sherpa—known as “the Snow Leopard”—led first-class expeditions (and an elusive life)
California Girl
Ann Getty was a stunning bi-coastal socialite who rescued Grove Press, the radically chic publisher of D. H. Lawrence, Henry Miller, and Samuel Beckett, because she loved to read
“The Best Eyes in the Business”
During the Swinging 60s, Valerie Askew ran the largest modeling agency in Europe and partied with the Beatles
The Woman in Black
Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s unanswerable power of argument
The Way We Live Now
How Sir Terence Conran Turned Bauhaus into Your House
She Changed the Rhythm of American Life
Part of an all-female, mixed-race swing band in 1940s America, Helen Jones Woods dodged the Klan to make a joyful—and powerful—noise
The World’s Most Amusing Naughty Person
As Sotheby’s prepares to auction the treasures of John Richardson, his friend remembers the art historian’s intense, inspiring, high-low life
A Writer’s Editor
A longtime editor for Time magazine, Ray Cave brought ambition, wisdom, and wit to the job
La Chanteuse des Rues
Inspired by Edith Piaf, Lily Lian sang for the pedestrians of Paris
Leading Lady
Olivia de Havilland’s soft power on-screen blew away even the likes of Clark Gable and Vivien Leigh
I ❤️ MG
A longtime collaborator recalls Milton Glaser, a giant of midcentury graphic design
The Fall Guy
Bronx nebbish Herb Stempel revealed that America’s best-rated quiz show was a fraud—and so was its beloved champion, Charles Van Doren
The Real Benjamin Braddock
Charles Webb rebelled against his privileged upbringing by writing The Graduate—then renounced his own phenomenal success
Live at the Front
Vera Lynn’s torch songs were not high art, but they kept up morale among the rank-and-file British soldiers fighting W.W. II
James Sherwood
In 1982, he boldly resurrected the fabled Orient Express. It became the cornerstone of Belmond, the billion-dollar hotel group
The Robespierre of Lafayette Street
The director who first staged The Normal Heart remembers the many-sided activist-playwright Larry Kramer
Siegfried Meir
Taken to Auschwitz at eight, he turned his awful experience into a source of inspiration for others
Natale Rusconi
A master at tending to V.I.P.’s from Princess Margaret to Maria Callas, he transformed the Hotel Cipriani into one of the jet set’s premier destinations
Miranda, Countess of Stockton
When she married Peter Sellers, at 23, her two Pekingese dogs (Tabitha and Tomasina) served as bridesmaids
Mort Drucker
For 55 years, the Mad-magazine illustrator was, as George Lucas said, the “Leonardo da Vinci of comic satire”
“Nipper” Read
In the 1960s, he took down the Kray twins, Swinging London’s most ruthless gangsters—and helped solve the Great Train Robbery
Wait, That Was True?
An American veteran confirms a British W.W. II soldier’s outlandish account of being the first to liberate Paris from the Nazis
Harry Hamilton
The British soldier who claimed he got lost and liberated Paris by accident
