The Screenwriters Hollywood Forgot
Dalton Trumbo, one of the Hollywood Ten blacklisted during the McCarthy era, continued writing screenplays throughout the 1950s under pseudonyms and front names.
2024-10-15
WA
William Ashford
114 articles
Showing 81–100 of 114 articles
Three Conversations with a Rare Bookseller
The first conversation took place at Peter Harrington in Mayfair, London's oldest rare bookshop, where a first edition of The Great Gatsby — Scribner's 1925 printing, dark green cloth boards with gilt lettering — sat in a vitrine priced at two hundred and seventy-five thousand pounds.
2024-10-11
How Chet Baker's Voice Defied Every Expectation of Masculinity
Chet Baker's singing voice — a barely-there whisper, intimate as a confession, with no vibrato and no attempt at projection — violated every convention of mid-century male vocal performance.
2024-10-11
What the Ancient Greeks Knew About Leisure That We've Forgotten
Aristotle considered leisure — scholē in Greek, the etymological root of 'school' — not as the absence of work but as its purpose.
2024-10-10
The Influence of Japanese Woodblock Prints on Western Design
When Commodore Matthew Perry forced open Japanese ports in 1853, the cargo that flowed westward included not only silk and porcelain but ukiyo-e woodblock prints — mass-produced images that Japanese merchants used as wrapping paper.
2024-10-10
On the Unlikely Friendship Between Picasso and Matisse
Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse first met in 1906 at the Paris salon of Gertrude Stein, where both artists were regulars.
2024-10-03
Yukio Mishima's Impossible Pursuit of Perfection
Yukio Mishima's final act — the attempted coup and ritual suicide at the Ichigaya military headquarters on November 25, 1970 — has so dominated his legacy that his literary achievements are often treated as prologue to spectacle.
2024-09-28
The Graphic Novels That Deserve Literary Recognition
Art Spiegelman's Maus, which received a special Pulitzer Prize in 1992, remains the graphic novel most frequently cited in arguments for the form's literary legitimacy — and for good reason.
2024-09-23
Why Every Man Should Keep a Journal
Marcus Aurelius never intended his Meditations for publication.
2024-09-15
Why Travel Photography Matters More Than Travel Selfies
Steve McCurry's 1984 portrait of Sharbat Gula, the Afghan girl whose green eyes became the most recognisable photograph in National Geographic's history, succeeded because McCurry was looking outward.
2024-09-11
How Architecture Shapes the Way We Think
Winston Churchill observed that we shape our buildings and thereafter our buildings shape us.
2024-09-08
What Miles Davis Understood About Sartorial Risk
Miles Davis changed the direction of music at least five times across a career that spanned five decades.
2024-09-04
What The Remains of the Day Teaches About Living Well
Kazuo Ishiguro's 1989 novel follows Stevens, an English butler who has devoted his entire life to serving Lord Darlington at a great country house.
2024-08-31
Why Phantom Thread Deserves a Second Look
Paul Thomas Anderson's 2017 film announced itself as Daniel Day-Lewis's final screen performance and delivered a work that is simultaneously a portrait of artistic obsession, a horror film about control, and a love story in which vulnerability is the most terrifying act of all.
2024-08-25
Why the Camp Collar Shirt Became a Modern Staple
The camp collar shirt, with its open, notched collar that lies flat against the chest, was once confined to Hawaiian vacations and 1950s bowling alleys.
2024-08-22
The Geometry of a Good Lapel
Lapels are the first architectural element the eye encounters on a jacket.
2024-08-21
The Quiet Authority of a Perfectly Pressed Collar
Before anyone registers your suit, your watch, or your shoes, they see your collar.
2024-08-18
The Sartorial Logic of the Three-Piece Suit in Summer
The three-piece suit in summer sounds like a contradiction.
2024-08-12
Why the Best-Dressed Men Own Fewer Shoes Than You Think
The common assumption is that a well-dressed man needs a large shoe collection.
2024-08-12
The Pocket Square Is Not Dead. You're Just Folding It Wrong.
Somewhere between the rigid presidential fold of your grandfather's era and the overwrought multi-point arrangements favored by menswear blogs, the pocket square lost its way.
2024-08-10