Does one flare or cling?

Alice Spawls, 5 May 2016

‘Vogue’ 100: A Century of Style 
by Robin Muir.
National Portrait Gallery, 304 pp., £40, February 2016, 978 1 85514 561 0
Show More
‘Vogue’ 100: A Century of Style 
National Portrait GalleryShow More
Show More
... likes photography, but not fashion photography.’ Robin Muir, the curator, and the set designer, Patrick Kinmonth, have no doubt done their best but the Portrait Gallery is an awkward space. From the main corridor and the rooms that usually host the modern part of the NPG’s collection, they’ve created 15 chamberlets, sprouting from two ...

The Best Stuff

Ian Jack: David Astor, 2 June 2016

David Astor: A Life in Print 
by Jeremy Lewis.
Cape, 400 pp., £25, March 2016, 978 0 224 09090 2
Show More
Show More
... he didn’t find gifted or amusing enough. Among the first of the non-plumbers to arrive was Patrick O’Donovan, a red-faced, hard-living Irishman (Ampleforth, Christ Church and war service with the Irish Guards) who came on the recommendation of the diplomat Nico Henderson. He had never published a word in his life, but within a few years had acquired ...

Criminal Justice

Ronan Bennett, 24 June 1993

... reports. Among the documents, a detective inspector discovered something of interest in Patrick Armstrong’s ‘personal file’: a set of typed notes containing many handwritten amendments. In their amended form, the typed notes were an almost word-for-word match with manuscript notes of three interviews with Armstrong on 4, 5 and 6 December ...