One of the publishing sensations of the year' Daily Telegraph..'Packed with scandal and salacious anecdotes about his famous friends and, believe me, it is premier-cru gossip' Tatler

"The memoirs of a celebrity costume designer describe her upbringing in the fashionable celebrity circles of her literary parents, her family's artistic but traumatizing approaches to shopping and how the fashion-savvy perspectives of her early years shaped her relationships and career, "--NoveList.

The only collection of Tynan's star-studded profiles. Selected and edited by his widow and biographer, Kathleen Tynan, with a foreword by Simon Callow. Kenneth Tynan – the 20th century's most influential writer on theatre and performance – wrote profiles of many of the most significant performers and writers of his day. Amongst the fifty assembled here are profiles of actors such as Garbo, Bogart, Cagney, Olivier and Gielgud; the directors George Cukor, Peter Brook and Joan Littlewood; writers such as Bertolt Brecht, Arthur Miller and Tennessee Williams; and comedians as diverse as Mel Brooks, Eric Morecambe, W.C. Fields and Lenny Bruce. 'We had thought to have seen the last of Tynan. Now, suddenly, a new volume appears: a collection of fifty profiles of the famous... More than a third of the pieces are new - at least in book form - which in itself is cause enough for dancing... One does not have to like theatre to cherish these pieces... It is a book to savour in small doses, the better to postpone the sadness of reaching its end' Hugh Leonard 'Tynan was unique in that he combined the soul of an artist with the descriptive skill of a journalist... He was an ideal profile writer, as this book eloquently testifies' Michael Billington, Guardian

Kathleen Tynan traces her husband's life from his illegitimate birth, through his rebellious years at Oxford, to his career as the first post-war British myth - actor, director, writer, flamboyant personality and provocateur of the establishment on both sides of the Atlantic.

The best of Tynan's theatre criticism, selected and edited by his biographer Dominic Shellard - with a foreword by Tom Stoppard.Kenneth Tynan was the 20th century's most influential theatre critic. Famous above all for championing the Angry Young Men at the Royal Court and for heralding Brecht, Beckett and Pinter, his writing was itself a 'high-definition performance' - stylish, discerning and scintillatingly witty.This volume collects over 100 of his reviews, including his astonishingly accurate assessments of the first ever performances of Waiting for Godot; Cat on a Hot Tin Roof; A View from the Bridge; The Entertainer; A Taste of Honey; and Beyond the Fringe. Also included are articles on such topics as Broadway musicals, censorship, Bertolt Brecht and, his pet hobby-horse, the need for a National Theatre, where he was to be Olivier's right-hand man.

A NEW YORK TIMES CRITICS' TOP BOOK OF THE YEAR • One of our most brilliant biographers takes on one of our greatest living playwrights, drawing on a wealth of new materials and on many conversations with him. “An extraordinary record of a vital and evolving artistic life, replete with textured illuminations of the plays and their performances, and shaped by the arc of Stoppard’s exhilarating engagement with the world around him, and of his eventual awakening to his own past.” —Harper's Tom Stoppard is a towering and beloved literary figure. Known for his dizzying narrative inventiveness and intense attention to language, he deftly deploys art, science, history, politics, and philosophy in works that span a remarkable spectrum of literary genres: theater, radio, film, TV, journalism, and fiction. His most acclaimed creations—Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, The Real Thing, Arcadia, The Coast of Utopia, Shakespeare in Love—remain as fresh and moving as when they entranced their first audiences. Born in Czechoslovakia, Stoppard escaped the Nazis with his mother and spent his early years in Singapore and India before arriving in England at age eight. Skipping university, he embarked on a brilliant career, becoming close friends over the years with an astonishing array of writers, actors, directors, musicians, and political figures, from Peter O'Toole, Harold Pinter, and Stephen Spielberg to Mick Jagger and Václav Havel. Having long described himself as a "bounced Czech," Stoppard only learned late in life of his mother's Jewish family and of the relatives he lost to the Holocaust. Lee's absorbing biography seamlessly weaves Stoppard's life and work together into a vivid, insightful, and always riveting portrait of a remarkable man.

Soon to be a feature film from the creators of Downton Abbey starring Elizabeth McGovern, The Chaperone is a New York Times-bestselling novel about the woman who chaperoned an irreverent Louise Brooks to New York City in the 1920s and the summer that would change them both. Only a few years before becoming a famous silent-film star and an icon of her generation, a fifteen-year-old Louise Brooks leaves Wichita, Kansas, to study with the prestigious Denishawn School of Dancing in New York. Much to her annoyance, she is accompanied by a thirty-six-year-old chaperone, who is neither mother nor friend. Cora Carlisle, a complicated but traditional woman with her own reasons for making the trip, has no idea what she’s in for. Young Louise, already stunningly beautiful and sporting her famous black bob with blunt bangs, is known for her arrogance and her lack of respect for convention. Ultimately, the five weeks they spend together will transform their lives forever. For Cora, the city holds the promise of discovery that might answer the question at the core of her being, and even as she does her best to watch over Louise in this strange and bustling place she embarks on a mission of her own. And while what she finds isn’t what she anticipated, she is liberated in a way she could not have imagined. Over the course of Cora’s relationship with Louise, her eyes are opened to the promise of the twentieth century and a new understanding of the possibilities for being fully alive. Drawing on the rich history of the 1920s, ’30s, and beyond—from the orphan trains to Prohibition, flappers, and the onset of the Great Depression to the burgeoning movement for equal rights and new opportunities for women—Laura Moriarty’s The Chaperone illustrates how rapidly everything, from fashion and hemlines to values and attitudes, was changing at this time and what a vast difference it all made for Louise Brooks, Cora Carlisle, and others like them.