Valet of the Dolls 
Andrew O’Hagan
- Mr S.: The Last Word on Frank Sinatra by George Jacobs and William Stadiem
There was only one other person in the life of Samuel Johnson who stood a chance of writing a biography as entertaining as Boswell’s. Francis Barber was overqualified by modern standards, and too loyal for the job in any era, but for more than thirty years he was Johnson’s (black) manservant. There in the small hours – peeling oranges, brewing tea, mending stockings, lifting papers – Barber was considered to be all the disciples other than Judas, though one now wonders, naturally, what the servant could have offered the great moralist in the way of a horrific posthumous disservice.
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Andrew O’Hagan’s The Atlantic Ocean, a collection of essays on Britain and America, will be published in June. Be Near Me, his last novel, has been shortlisted for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize.
Other articles by this contributor:
Good Fibs · Truman Capote
The Nominee · With the Democrats
Seventy Years in a Filthy Trade · Andrew O’Hagan meets E.S. Turner
The Things We Throw Away · The Garbage of England
Everything Must Go! · American Beauties
The God Squad · Andrew O’Hagan in Bushland
Cartwheels over Broken Glass · worshipping Morrissey
Iraq, 2 May 2005 · Two Soldiers
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