Anon writes: "Oooh, Madame - may I humbly suggest an alternative interpretation for Conde Nast's corporate hailing of 1986 as a high point in Tatler's creativity? The fact is that it WAS a high point, given that this was the period of the late, great Mark Boxer's editorship. If anything, focussing on that period is not so much a criticism of his predecessor, Tina Brown, as of his successor, Emma Soames. She was the first editor to be fired by Nicholas Coleridge, then Editorial Director and now MD of Conde Nast, and who presumably still wishes to justify her termination."
Dear Anon,
Thank you - yes, all that's possible. But I favour my anti-Brown theory because the Vanity Fair piece on Murdoch is so sniffy about its former editor - failing to so describe her and implying some aspersion on her journalistic virtue. I also understand that Graydon Carter cares little for his predecessor, and I believe Coleridge didn't have a happy time at Tatler under Brown. And while he's on my mind, and if you're in a happy position at Vogue House, please do the world a favour and ask Coleridge to desist from writing novels. He's a gifted journalist, and a titan of editorial management, and his worship of India is almost Forsterian, but he has no voice for fiction beyond attaching recalled dialogue to what I may politely term a wafer thin interest in the complex topic of human motivation. Like his friend William Cash, and distant acquaintance Tina Brown, his preoccupations are cash and cachet - and who's made it - topics well covered by his gooooooooooooooorgeous magazines.
No comments:
Post a Comment