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2024: A Year in Books
Marilyn Monroe reads Walt Whitman (Photo by John Florea) For me, 2024 was a nebulous year when literary favourites returned but the best novels came from unexpected quarters. It was perhaps a stronger...
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2023: A Year in Books
Set in her beloved West London, Zadie Smith’s The Fraud focuses on two forgotten figures: William Harrison Ainsworth, once a bestselling author – and a doorway into literary celebrity,...
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Sixty Years Later: Scandal ’63 Revisited
“In Britain at the start of the 1960s, Victorian values are still mainstream. There is a rich ruling class who are better than everybody else, women are mostly thought of as the property of the men...
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61 Years Ago: Retracing Marilyn’s Moment in Time
Marilyn Monroe died 61 years ago; after passing into eternal rest, her body was found in the early hours of August 5th, 1962. This ‘moment in time’ is noted in the latest issue of the British...
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‘Public, Private, Secret’: From Jackie to Marilyn – and Back Again
J. Randy Taraborrelli is a prolific celebrity biographer whose many bestsellers include The Secret Life of Marilyn Monroe (2009), later dramatised in a TV mini-series of the same name (see here.) And...
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Scandal ’63 Revisited: Symposium in Leicester
A symposium for Scandal ’63 Revisited will be held at Leicester Gallery on Friday, April 14th, ahead of the exhibition’s last day on Saturday. Tickets are free but must be reserved in advance here....
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‘Scandal’ Revisited as New Exhibition Opens in Leicester
Scandal, the 1989 movie dramatising the Profumo Affair, is showing at the Phoenix Leicester at 7:30 pm this Friday, March 3rd, introduced by producer Stephen Woolley with an onstage Q&A. Whatever...
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2022: A Year in Books
I read Kate Atkinson’s first novel, Behind the Scenes at the Museum, back in the late 1990s; and finally returned to her this year with Shrines of Gaiety, a Roaring Twenties romp loosely inspired by...
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‘I Told You I Was Trouble’: Amy Winehouse, 10 Years Gone
This photo, taken by Roger Sargent, shows Amy Winehouse on Brighton Beach in July 2004, before that night’s show at Concorde 2. She was 20 years old, promoting her debut album, Frank, and wowing the...
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At 95, Marilyn is Still in Bloom
Today, June 1st, marks what would be Marilyn’s 95th birthday. As the sun shines over Brighton for what seems like the first time since lockdown, this latest artwork from The Postman (based on a 1958...
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Marilyn and Me: The Starlet and the Spy
Ji-min Lee is a Korean novelist and screenwriter. Her first novel published in English is set in the aftermath of the Korean War. “This book was inspired by two photographs,” Lee explains. “One was of...
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A Birthday Wish for Marilyn
Today marks what would be Marilyn Monroe’s 94th birthday. It’s also ten years since I started my sister blog, ES Updates (affiliated to Everlasting Star, the longest-running online forum about...
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‘Keeler, Profumo, Ward and Me’
“The story that defined a decade of great change in Great Britain was my big break in Fleet Street, and I covered and loved every moment of it, from the ridiculous to the tragic …” Tom Mangold,...
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2019: A Year in Books
First published in 2015 as Zuleikha Opens Her Eyes and now available in English, Zuleikha tells the story of a Tatar woman whose brutish husband and vindictive mother-in-law treat her as a slave. This...
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The ‘Rain Girl’ in November
As noted in the Playbill Vault, Jeanne Eagels began her legendary Broadway run as Sadie Thompson, “a prostitute at odds with a jungle missionary in Rain, primarily based on a W. Somerset Maugham quick...
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Marilyn, the Morning Star and Me
I’m proud to have a letter published in the British newspaper, The Morning Star, today. I have written to newspapers three times in my life, and all were about Marilyn Monroe (she is, perhaps, the...
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Christine Keeler’s ‘Secrets and Lies’ Redux
“I never met Christine Keeler,” Seymour Platt writes in his foreword to the latest edition of her memoirs, Secrets and Lies: The Trials of Christine Keeler. (This is a paperback reissue of her 2012...
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The Ladies of Rockhaven
Nestled among the hills and mountain ranges just beyond Los Angeles, Crescenta Valley was home to the indigenous Tongva people for thousands of years. During the Spanish colonial period it became part...
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Marilyn in Hollywood: The ‘Confidential’ Years
Samantha Barbas is a professor of law at the University of Buffalo, specialising in the history of America’s mass media. Her previous publications include Movie Crazy: Fans, Stars, and the Cult of...
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Turning a New Page With Jeanne
I’m glad to tell you all that Jeanne Eagels: A Life Revealed (Revised and Updated) is now available in hardcover and paperback. A full 90 pages longer than the first edition, and with new photos, it...
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