Book Review: Redeeming Features by Nicky Haslam: Joy of being souffléed alive

Seasoned Arcatistes will know that I am not given to incontinent praise. So when I say that Nicky Haslam's memoir Redeeming Features is the most brilliantly trivial book I have ever read (since the Andy Warhol Diaries) you may need to pause and take a deep breath. Yes, you have my permission not to work for the rest of the day. By all means have sex. At least buy a good champagne.

Redeeming Features is the book Proust might have written had he not literary talent - his curse I'm afraid - or the book Duncan Fallowell might have penned had he not a brain or Oscar Wilde might have dashed off had he not a sense of humour. This is not to say that Nicky lacks literary talent or brains. Or a sense of humour. It is that he has neither (nor the sense of humour) in sufficient quantity to get in the way. His naked magnetism to society and celebrity figures is pure, romantic, child-like: nothing takes priority over his natal desire to nurture intimacies that are worth it.

A reader of average intelligence, and with an above average interest in names (obscure upper class aristo satellites, especially) will find their own delight unchallenged by artistic soul delving, behavioural over-noticing or mere satire. Many a memoir is utterly ruined by the simple inability of the author to maintain the consistency of a soufflé in matters entirely inconsequential. Nicky avoids this. He rises to the occasion all puffed up like a pillow, his named crowns golden, and with a yielding middle bit: yes, he did have a romance with Tony Armstrong-Jones. Redeeming Features is that scrummy.

In keeping with the frothy nature of the book it would be unseemly then to try to paraphrase his tale: it matters only that he is here and the book is there. To say more would be to ruin the effect, to puncture the soufflé. Light things, such as a joke, cannot bear to be named or explained. To write a book which is just there is a high accomplishment: it is an act of witting or unwitting humility. I can't say better than that.

Like all good books, Redeeming Features hosts a mystery. On p283, Nicky writes of Margaret, Duchess of Argyll "meeting a supposed sex-change relative." Of this encounter he recalls once writing in the defunct magazine Ritz: "With a song in her heart, Marg beheld an adorable face. It may be a her to you and me, but it sure is a him to Her Grace." I can't imagine why the "supposed sex-change" is not named but if he means who I think he means he should know she's highly litigious. And she's no sex-change.

Susan Hill gets it all wrong on Katie Price and the lower orders

Susan Hill

Former Arcatiste Susan Hill (famed novelist, publisher, playwright, opinionist spewer of words) now writes a blog for The Spectator, the magazine that's hosting an Aids-denialist movie screening on Oct 28 - and my thanks to the loyal, all-weather Arcastiste who brought the blog to my attention. I did say elsewhere that I would not bother to read it, but being a double Gemini I succumbed to curiosity and had a look. Oh dear.

Susan's latest post is a nattery onslaught on ghost written celebrity novels such as those by Katie Price (aka Jordan). In Mail-style fulminant mode she writes of these books: "To pretend to pen a novel, to appear and sign the book for long queues of people and never to acknowledge the ‘real’ author, is simple deceit and the many people who buy a novel believing that it really was written by Jordan or Katie Price, are being cynically manipulated."

I don't think so, dearie. If Susan did her homework, instead of wallowing in upper middleclass oblivion of lower-order cultural realities - a condition encouraged by the infantile, belle epoque mindset of the Spectator - she would know it's no secret that Katie is not the author of the novels that bear her name. As Katie herself said in a Mail interview - among others! - last year to push Angel Uncovered: "I'm not going to sit here and say I write it word by word because I'd be lying. I actually say how I want the story and that's how it happens." Her non-authorship is a truth universally acknowledged. Her books are brand-stamped productions and promoted as such.

I bet Susan a modest £50 - to be donated to an Aids charity - that she will not find one Katie Price fan chosen at random who imagines Katie has written any of her books. Susan would do better to get back to writing a properly earthed indie blog and not try to pander to the delusional and out-of-touch soaks of the Spectator readership.

On other matters, I've always been fascinated by spiders ...

Nicky Haslam: Cock-cocking with Tony and Roddy

Nicky Haslam's Redeeming Features autobio is out on Nov 5 and one of its delights is his revelation that the old party-goer and name-dropper cock-cocked with Tony Armstrong-Jones (now Lord Snowdon) in the 1950s, before Tony married Princess Margaret, and later with Roddy Llewellyn, before Roddy became her boyfriend. I had never thought of Nicky till now as the late Queen sister's unwitting bedtime taster.

James Delingpole: Muslims, Farah and Chippy Drivel-gate

Comments are welcome. But highly insulting or plainly defamatory remarks will not be posted. In particular, comments of a personal or insulting nature about Farah Damji and Toby Young will be ignored.

So, where were we? Ah yes, James Delingpole. The writer, novelist and rightwing joker whose work appears often in the Telegraph and Spectator. Last month he started a curious conversation on Facebook about Muslims: he invited people to name a Muslim peer who had got his or her job on merit. Naturally this precipitated quite a row with fellow Facebook writer Farah Damji (what do you mean you've never heard of her!). The exchanges also feature the novelist Susan Hill. I make no comment. Oh, and do read Delingpole's book Welcome to Obamaland: I Have Seen Your Future and It Doesn't Work, click here. After you've read Farah's Try Me, click here.

James Delingpole
Can anyone name me a single Muslim peer who got the job on merit?
14:20 · via Twitter ·

Farah Damji at 14:23 on 03 May
Karan Bilamoria

Susan Hill at 14:26 on 03 May
How many peers of any faith or none got the position on merit ? 20%

Susan Hill at 14:26 on 03 May
That should have been 20% ?

James Delingpole at 14:30 on 03 May
You just made that one up didn't you Farah?

Farah Damji at 14:32 on 03 May
*drops her Mail on Sunday in shock *
Baron Bilamoria to the likes of you Mr D

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karan_Bilimoria,_Baron_Bilimoria

James Delingpole at 14:35 on 03 May
Point taken Susan, but let's pick one target at a time. Baroness Uddin: £100,000 claimed from the taxpayer for a flat she didn't use; Lord Ahmed - killer, rabblerouser; Baroness Warsi - the Tories' chocolate fireguard on "Social Cohesion".

Farah Damji at 14:35 on 03 May
oh sorry, take it all back. But he is a Parsi, and they were kinda sorta one of "us Mossies," back in the day. Anyway he is brown. Isn't that your point?

James Delingpole at 14:46 on 03 May
Stop being so chippy Farah. And misleading for that matter.

Malcolm Hugh Delingpole at 07:52 on 04 May
Zoroastrianism = Islam ? Stretching it a bit!

Farah Damji at 09:44 on 04 May
Ah! Someone who knows the difference. Intelligent debate as opposed to rabble-rousing racism?

James Delingpole at 10:29 on 04 May
For FUCK'S SAKE Farah Damji. You really do have some gall. It was you who proposed Karan Bilamoria as your favourite Muslim peer. And now you have the bloody cheek to make out like I can't tell the difference. And since when was Islam a race?

Farah Damji at 10:43 on 04 May
I did. I made a mistake. I am not always right. And your initial comment was racist. Because I said so, learn Macpherson. "The definition of 'racist incident' should be: 'any incident which is perceived to be racist by the victim or any other person'." After I realised Karan was a Parsi, I added three more Muslim Peers you haven't refuted. This is like the Sunny Hundial school of debate. Pointless.

James Delingpole at 10:57 on 04 May
Farah, are you stupid as well as annoying? I don't believe in the Macpherson report. No one with even half a brain believes in the Macpherson report. It set back the cause of race relations in this country by decades. If you want to talk chippy drivel go somewhere else.

Farah Damji at 11:05 on 04 May
As in Paki go home? I think you have lost this one. The Macpherson report is not a religion for you to believe in, unlike Islam. The Macpherson report remains the most important historical document YOUR country has produced since the Magna Carta. Chippy Drivel sounds like a character invented by you to cover up your "intelligence" which has as many holes as a hooker's fishnets. I'm bored with arguing with someone who can't hold an argument, can only lob insults. And not very good ones at that...later.

James Delingpole
All right, apart from Karan Bilamoria - inventor of that marvellous thing Cobra beer - name one other Muslim peer who got the job on merit

14:38 · via Twitter · Farah Damji at 14:43 on 03 May
GOTCHA. Wait calling my Jihadist friends for some back-up.

Farah Damji at 14:48 on 03 May
what is chippy? something to do with fishy? Off to the park, enjoy your snit.

Rob Stevely at 15:14 on 03 May
Jobs? Mostly I see muslims on the streets burning things in effigy and throwing stones at tanks

Jim Mellon at 19:49 on 03 May
and waht non Muslim peers got the job on merit?

James Delingpole at 20:25 on 03 May
entirely agree with you Jim. But that's a separate point.

Farah Damji at 20:37 on 03 May
Baroness Shreela Flather.

Josie Charlotte Jackson at 22:10 on 03 May
Easy: ÕÈÇÑ, ÔÌÑÉ ÇáÊíä ÇáÔæßí (Babylon English Arabic) or Êíä Ôæßì (plain ol' Arabic, Arabic) or "prickly pears" (English, English). Grown in Saudi Arabia and Morocco, prickly pears got the job of being used, most deliciously, in prickly pear juice.
Have a very, very nice week ( is it Monday over there yet?).
xxxxxxxxx

Farah Damji at 22:12 on 03 May
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usha_Prashar,_Baroness_Prashar

Farah Damji at 07:13 on 04 May
Oh and Lord Ali.

Nirpal Dhaliwal at 3:04pm May 4
can anyone name me one single right-wing privately-educated white-boy hack who got his job on merit?

To listen to libertarian conservative Delingpole click here. There's no (unnatural) climate change, global recession is all Blair's fault (but he was right on the Iraq War), and other simplistic crap. Bush W's fault was that he "was a compassionate conservative". Is that a joke?

Michael Gross and the furious Social Empress of New York

Is it the case that the uncrowned "Social Empress of New York" has waved her sceptre and decreed that a book she finds either embarrassing or inaccurate or both should be ignored by Anyone Who Cares What She Thinks? That it should in effect be allowed to die by ordained silence? Who knows?

The Empress in question is Annette de la Renta, the book, Rogues' Gallery: The Secret History of the Moguls and the Money That Made the Metropolitan Museum, and its author the legendary, the inescapable, Michael Gross. His oeuvre includes non-fiction bestsellers Model and 740 Park.

Mrs de la Renta is the wife of the - omg!, gimme the grandest-sounding adjectival phrase, please - multiversal fashion designer Oscar. They are among the society Caesars and Cleos of America (NY in particular) - with the tragic ends missing, respectively. Apparently. They're so huuuuuge that even American Vogue editor Anna Wintour over-arches her back into an ageing stoop as she scrapes about in their presence. Not even the newly refurbished Hubble telescope can fully capture their social enormity. There isn't a lens big enough!

So, when this goddam writer Gross produced his sensational NY museum history book, which does not portray Annette (the sometime guardian of the late Social Empress of New York Brooke Astor's estate, and a trustees board member of the Metropolitan Museum of Art) in an entirely approved light, all hell broke loose. Museum types raged for and against Gross' book: indisputably, Gross had hit a raw nerve about a national institution. And Annette threatened legal action - she could sue yet in the US or turn libel tourist.

Suddenly, promised book reviews did not run, scheduled interviews did not appear. All this in the Land of the Free. No writ has been served as I write.

Was she offended by the stories about her and her late, wealthy philanthropist mother Jane Engelhard or was she aggrieved by Gross' impertinence in delving into Oscar's well-known sexual past? Or all of the above?

Annette de la Renta is rich enough and powerful enough to hire the best lawyers to speak on her behalf. I spoke with Michael Gross about the affair. (If you want more background, read Jesse Kornbluth's excellent report, click here)

Michael, my dear. You're imagining that sections of the US media have banned coverage of your book, aren't you? You've got sensitive?

"No. I did a fascinating interview with Daphne Merkin, a celebrated writer, for a publication-day story on The Daily Beast, Tina Brown's web site, that has still never appeared. I also know of at least one reporter who has received a warning letter from Mrs de la Renta's lawyers saying the book is 'full of misinformation' and another, at another newspaper, whose story on the book was killed by an editor who said that they would cause the book to be withdrawn and/or corrected and the newspaper would be left 'holding the bag.' I also know of several reviews that were scheduled and then mysteriously postponed. I hesitate to be more specific since I fear that the reporters and editors who have filled me and my publisher in on what's been happening (or more precisely, not happening) might themselves be at risk of retaliation."

You're saying the New York elite have closed ranks against you in defence of their Empress?

"I know that the New York elite - call them the 4,000 - love to know and discuss things no one else (ie, the public, the great unwashed, the NOCD types) knows. Much of what is in my book is no surprise to them. Many of them were my sources.

"That said, I suspect that the core issue here is not this or that nugget of revealing information but rather something larger and perhaps more threatening, my exposure of two things: the way things really work behind-the-scenes in a great American cultural institution - which no one involved wants revealed - and the picaresque saga of Jane Engelhard, whose riveting life story still has holes in it, despite my attempts to fill them, but which is nonetheless told in full for the first time in Rogues' Gallery. Both she and her daughter have battled every attempt to shed light on this saga - battles referred to in the book."

Is this just about the de la Rentas - or have you also upset the cultural snobs by telling the unauthorised and all-too-human story behind a national treasure, the Metropolitan Museum of Art?

"The sad fact is that the sort of people who create and sustain historical repositories like the Metropolitan do not want their own histories, or those of the institutions, revealed. Otherwise, why would they repeatedly obstruct researchers and make a mere book like mine into an object lesson, a warning to any who might think of following a similar path of crumbs?"

I understand the de la Rentas' friend Anna Wintour made her feelings known ....

"I ran into Anna Wintour at Graydon Carter's Monkey Bar shortly before the book came out. We have 'crossed swords' before, beginning when she was the editor of British Vogue and began an interview by instructing me in no uncertain terms that I was not to refer to her as Nuclear Wintour, so I was not surprised when she gave me a look I can only describe (by paraphrasing a designer) as 'standing in a strapless dress next to an open icebox.'"

As Kornbluth writes of the matter: "A rich woman has used a two-ton gorilla to threaten a writer, and, for whatever reason, silence has descended." If Annette de la Renta's legal threats are intended to chill interest in Gross' book, then they may well have succeeded for now.

But would it not make more sense, and be more in keeping with the freedom-loving spirit of the US, if she published a statement of rebuttal for all to see? What is unacceptable is the suspected exercise of informal social power to, in effect, banish a book to obscurity, and with the acquiescence of a generally gutless American media. Tina Brown - when will you become the mouse that roared?

For a great read, order a copy here.
Michael Gross website