Deborah Friedell is a contributing editor at the LRB.
'They laughed over the Harvardian eccentricities all around them. Visiting professors from the University of Oxford speaking with Oxford accents and publishing in the New York Review of Books, and American professors also speaking with Oxford accents but publishing in the London Review of Books.' – E.O. Wilson's Anthill.
Two months before Richard Reid tried to blow up American Airlines 63 with his high-tops, he took a flight to Israel on El Al. The airline's security team questioned him, as they do all passengers, and couldn't find a reason not to let him fly; but his body was searched, his luggage was put through a decompression chamber and hand-checked, and an air marshal was put in the seat next to him. El Al likes to boast that the 9/11 hijackers would never have succeeded on one of their planes: I don't disbelieve them. Last week I flew from London to Tel Aviv and back on El Al.
A selection of recent book dedications, the last two from the same novel: a prize for guessing who it's by. 'I'd like to thank my girlfriend... who travelled with me while I did the field work, and read through the whole manuscript at stages. Admittedly she was paid handsomely in fine Italian wine.' 'In Memoriam Matris' 'To Barack and Michelle Obama, and the future of American art' 'To complainers everywhere' 'to mine enemies, without whom none of this would have been possible' 'Animals possess a purity that exceeds even that of children and they have much to teach us, if only we will cease our arrogance and listen.
Andrew O'Hagan's new novel, The Life and Opinions of Maf the Dog, and of His Friend Marilyn Monroe, will be published in May.
‘Let yourself look into the abyss,’ commands Manage Your Mind: The Mental Fitness Guide. ‘Put into words the catastrophe that you fear . . . Sometimes it seems not too bad when it is brought out into the open.’ So what’s the worst thing that could happen? You lose your kid. Hardly! Try this: one of your kids kills the other one. Or one of your kids...
In 1939, Dorothy Thompson was on the cover of Time, the ‘First Lady of American journalism’ and a major celebrity. By 1945, she’d been widely dismissed as a crank.Deborah Friedell joins Tom to discuss...
Laura Beers and Deborah Friedell talk to Tom about the recent decision by the US Supreme Court in Dobbs v. Jackson, which removed the constitutional right to abortion.
Deborah Friedell talks to Thomas Jones about the Rosenbergs, from their early years on the Lower East Side of New York to their execution for conspiracy to commit espionage in 1953, and the significance...
Deborah Friedell talks to Thomas Jones about the origins, and origin myths, of the National Rifle Association, how it spends its money, and why it's wary of winning.
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