More from: Stuart Husband
Icons February 2023
The Five Acts of Marilyn Monroe
Her old drama coach hoped Marilyn Monroe would live long enough to ‘free the talent that was wandering through her like a jailed spirit’. It wasn’t to be. So what can we take from Norma Jeane’s life?
Icons February 2023
Birds of Play
J.F.K., Sinatra, Hemingway and Monroe were just some of the names that turned the Stork Club into America’s most famous night spot. And while they partied and paired off, writes Stuart Husband, a former bootlegger from Oklahoma was pioneering the art of celebrity marketing…
Icons December 2022
Man of the West
Gary Cooper did more than most to shape Hollywood’s all-American archetype. But offscreen, he was as comfortable in sharp tailoring and behind the wheel of a fabulous car as he was in the company of the beautiful and famous.
Icons October 2022
Life was shit. everybody was horrible. but wasn't he wonderful!
Jacques Brel sang of sex, death and bruised romance with the kind of mordant humour that’s to die for. ‘It is the intensity of life,’ the Belgian chanson decided, ‘not the duration.’
Icons August 2022
Song of a Deathless Life
Sir Philip Sassoon indicted himself as ‘a thing of naught, a worthless loon’. But this interwar politician, fixer, aesthete and man of mystery was anything but.
Style June 2022
THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN PEN
6 Minute Read Ian Fleming, the author who created James Bond, could never have lived a life like James Bond, could he? Could he?
Style June 2022
The Magic Down There
5 Minute Read It inspired Elvis and the Four Tops, among others, and became the gilded playground of Sinatra, Disney, Bardot and Tarzan (yes, you read that right). Stuart Husband mixes a coco loco and dreams of Acapulco…
Icons May 2022
Michelangelo and the yearning for tragedy
8 Minute Read ‘We lived in silence… He has only one way of expressing himself: his work.” So said Michelangelo Antonioni’s first wife, Letizia Balboni. It’s true, the Italian director was notorious for taking existential inquiry — and his own artistic purity — to another level. But what a legacy of film he left behind…
Icons May 2022
The Ballad of Justin and Twiggy
7 Minute Read Great rake and sixties face Justin de Villeneuve recounts how he met, invented, loved and lost the world’s first supermodel, Twiggy.
Style April 2022
THE OLD ROMANTICS
It took them a while — and certainly longer than they’d have liked — but 40 years after the release of the classic album Rio, Duran Duran have forged a legacy that bears comparison with some of their eighties brothers.
Icons March 2022
The Last Samouraï
Alain Delon’s broodingly fragile allure, stellar performances and effortlessly louche ensembles have enshrined him as an enduring emblem of style.
Style March 2022
‘THERE WAS THE POPE AND THEN THERE WAS ENZO’
Enzo Ferrari built the legend of il Cavallino Rampante — the Prancing Horse — with obsessive devotion and gargantuan will, and motor racing was never the same again. In fact, it’s a surprise, even in Italy, that he had to share top billing with the Vatican City’s finest.
