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2 months ago | 
thespectator.com | Ross Anderson |Aidan Hartley |James Delingpole |Anne De Courcy
Last Friday afternoon, amid the menswear shows for Paris Fashion Week, a crowd of influencers, shoppers, celebrities and fashion journalists waited for Dior’s latest collection. Attendees, however, weren’t chatting about what they expected from the clothes, or the staging, or the state of the brand, or what they were hoping to see. Instead, it was all about the fate of its designer.
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Jan 8, 2025 | 
spectator.com.au | Anne De Courcy
Life in the Viking Great Army: Raiders, Traders and Settlers OUP, pp.416, 25 For many people, the mental picture of a Viking is of a blond giant in a horned helmet leaping out of a sharp-prowed longboat to pillage and slaughter the terrified inhabitants of the nearest village or monastery.
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Jan 7, 2025 | 
spectator.co.uk | Anne De Courcy
Text size Small Medium Large Line Spacing Compact Normal Spacious Comments For many people, the mental picture of a Viking is of a blond giant in a horned helmet leaping out of a sharp-prowed longboat to pillage and slaughter the terrified inhabitants of the nearest village or monastery. The horned helmet is a myth, but the Vikings were, in general, red-haired or blond and taller than the Anglo-Saxons (Scandinavians are still, on average, an inch or so taller than Britons) and for almost 100...
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Dec 7, 2024 | 
dailymail.co.uk | Anne De Courcy
Up the great staircase trooped the 2,500 guests, resplendent in tiaras and jewels or white tie and tails, to be greeted by their hostess, the Marchioness of Londonderry, glamorous in a clinging black satin Paris dress. Either side of her impressive cleavage gleamed great swathes of diamonds. Round her neck hung a heavy row of pearls that fell below her waist. On her head was the largest of the Londonderry tiaras, so big it was known in the family as ‘the fender’.
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Nov 13, 2024 | 
spectator.com.au | Anne De Courcy
Traitor’s Odyssey: The Untold Story of Martha Dodd and a Strange Saga of Soviet Espionage Icon Books, pp.384, 25 In June 1933, the 24-year-old Martha Dodd, the daughter of the newly appointed American ambassador to Berlin, arrived in the German capital with her parents and older brother. She knew little and cared less about politics. To her, Adolf Hitler, who had just seized supreme power in Germany, was merely ‘a clown who looked like Charlie Chaplin’.
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Nov 12, 2024 | 
spectator.co.uk | Anne De Courcy
In June 1933, the 24-year-old Martha Dodd, the daughter of the newly appointed American ambassador to Berlin, arrived in the German capital with her parents and older brother. She knew little and cared less about politics. To her, Adolf Hitler, who had just seized supreme power in Germany, was merely ‘a clown who looked like Charlie Chaplin’. The Berlin in which the Dodds found themselves was a ferment of intrigue, uncertainty, plots, counterplots, sudden disappearances and febrile gaiety.
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Oct 30, 2024 | 
spectator.com.au | Anne De Courcy
Jewish Country Houses Profile, pp.352, 25 The words ‘country houses’ immediately make one think of England, yet only five of the 15 featured in this hefty, impressively illustrated book are in Britain. It is a compilation of essays: part histories of various Jewish families, part architectural descriptions and part stories of the chateaux, mansions, villas and, of course, country houses all over Europe, owned and sometimes built by these families.
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Oct 29, 2024 | 
spectator.co.uk | Anne De Courcy
The words ‘country houses’ immediately make one think of England, yet only five of the 15 featured in this hefty, impressively illustrated book are in Britain. It is a compilation of essays: part histories of various Jewish families, part architectural descriptions and part stories of the chateaux, mansions, villas and, of course, country houses all over Europe, owned and sometimes built by these families. Each chapter is by a different author. These homes had different functions.
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Sep 27, 2024 | 
thespectator.com | Claire Lowdon |Boris Johnson |Christopher Harding |Anne De Courcy
An earworm from the time of Covid: the sound of Connell and Marianne having breathless sex, bedsprings squeaking. I’m talking not about 2020’s hit TV adaptation of Sally Rooney’s bestselling second novel, Normal People but about the relentless piss-take featured on BBC Radio 4’s Dead Ringers. After every few skits the show would cut to an audio clip of the two undergraduates going hard at it.
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Sep 27, 2024 | 
thespectator.com | Deborah Ross |Thunderdome Kamala |Ben Domenech |Anne De Courcy
“Brooklyn is the Istanbul of America,” now-Mayor Eric Adams told a pair of Turks on camera after they asked him for political favors in a cameo he made in a Turkish romcom. Now, in real life, Adams is accused of doing just that, following a sweeping indictment unsealed by prosecutors in Manhattan who allege that he fraudulently obtained $10 million in public campaign funds and accepted over $100,000 in bribes in order to facilitate a new Turkish consulate.
