Tina Brown Does Not Want Her Daughter to Be Like Di
Tina Brown does not want her 16-year-old daughter, Izzy, marrying at 19, the tender age of Diana Spencer when she wed Prince Charles in 1981. At the Strand Bookstore last night, before a good-size audience of slightly weird, very white, middle-aged Anglophiles, Brown, 53, chatted with former New York Times London bureau chief Warren Hoge about The Diana Chronicles, her account of the late princess’ life that’s currently No. 1 on the Times nonfiction best-seller list. Looking typically sleek in a black dress and heels before several stacks of the fat book, Brown was on from the get-go, discoursing nearly nonstop in perfect magazine prose — this ain’t the first stop on Tina’s book tour — about Diana’s role as “a prism of British social revolution” and her death as “a festival of national mourning.” In the first few minutes alone, she managed to use nearly every hot buzzword of the past year or so, calling the young Charles a “toxic bachelor” and Diana a Fleet Street dream girl who could “move product.”
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McCourt, Gopnik, Hamill — Plus Other Aging Literati — Celebrate the Strand’s 80th
The Strand Bookstore turned 80 on Saturday, and owners Fred Bass and Nancy Bass Wyden threw a big party in its honor. You may not have been there, but New York’s Party Lines team was. What’d we learn? That Frank McCourt dislikes lettuce and parsley, that Kurt Andersen was inspired to write novels by Don DeLillo, that Adam Gopnik is willing to wear silly hats, and that, at least on special occasions, Nora Ephron will display her neck.
Strand Bookstore Celebrates Its 80th Anniversary [Interactive Party Lines]
Earlier: The Strand Turns 80
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The Strand Turns 80
The Strand Bookstore turns 80 tomorrow, all eighteen miles of it. It was founded by Ben Bass on what was then Book Row — Fourth Avenue, from Astor Place to Union Square, was home to 48 bookstores. Today the Strand is the only survivor, relocated around the corner, to Broadway and 12th Street, and the store is run by the next two generations of Basses, Fred — who took over management in 1956 — and his daughter, Nancy. After the jump, Bass reminisces about famous customers and famous books, and explains why he likes being surrounded by Barnes & Noble stores.
