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2 months ago | 
thespectator.com | Clarissa Sebag-Montefiore |Toby Young |Ido Vock |Samuel Gregg
From 2008 to 2016, Edward Wong reported on China for the New York Times, heading up its Beijing bureau. Last year, the veteran journalist, now the Times’s diplomatic correspondent, published his first book: a blend of family memoir, narrative history, political observation and personal reckoning. At the Edge of Empire tracks Wong’s father, Yook Kearn Wong, as he moves from fervent support of the Chinese Communist Party and its ideological goals to disillusionment and disappointment.
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Oct 21, 2024 | 
thespectator.com | Clarissa Sebag-Montefiore |Olivia Potts |Ben Domenech |Jane Stannus
For first-time restaurateur Bolun Yao, New York is a city to experiment in: “I feel like New York is the city that is always exploring new things. If you have a new idea, you put it here.”The Chinese-born entrepreneur — who has also spent significant time in New Zealand — came to NYU to complete a master’s degree in food studies. He quickly fell in love with the fine-dining Korean scene, including the two-Michelin-starred Atomix and COTE, America’s only Michelin-starred Korean steakhouse.
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Jul 18, 2024 | 
thespectator.com | Clarissa Sebag-Montefiore |Freddy Gray |Ian O’Doherty |Ben Domenech
In F. Scott Fitzgerald’s classic 1925 novel The Great Gatsby, Daisy Fay is a mercurial character. The popular rich girl from Louisiana — married to Tom Buchanan, an adulterous brute — is ravishing and entrancing and, at times, cruel. It is her voice that most draws Jay Gatsby to her years after their initial fling when he was a poor officer, as he longs for her across the bay.
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Jun 28, 2024 | 
kanebridgenews.com | Clarissa Sebag-Montefiore
Dana Cohen witnessed the meteoric, and frightening, rise of fast fashion working for apparel companies in New York City for over a decade. “We went from designing unique, thoughtful products to chasing trends and everything started to look the same,” recalls Cohen, 41, who was born and raised in Florida but now lives in Brooklyn with her family. “I watched fabrics get ordered and never be used and garments piling up on sales racks.
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Jun 17, 2024 | 
thespectator.com | Timothy Clark Jacobson |Olivia Potts |Roger Kimball |Clarissa Sebag-Montefiore
Miles Coverdale’s translation of Psalm 105 in the Book of Common Prayer elevated iron from metallurgical to literary significance. The story of Joseph being sold unjustly as a bondservant — “Whose feet they hurt in the stocks: the iron entered into his soul” — shames flaccid times like ours. And iron’s virtues excel not least of all in cooking, where it can enter literally into our bodies and, who knows, maybe our souls too. Joseph just got things started.
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May 15, 2024 | 
thespectator.com | Clarissa Sebag-Montefiore |Place Lisbon |Amy Everett |Fergus Butler-Gallie
When The Wiz first graced Broadway in 1975 it positioned itself as a gutsy ode to black culture. The adaptation of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, with a book by William F. Brown and music and lyrics by Charlie Smalls, not only featured songs infused with R&B, gospel and soul but a fully black cast.It became a long-running hit, won seven Tony Awards, including Best Musical, and inspired a 1978 movie of the same name, starring Michael Jackson and Diana Ross.
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Apr 16, 2024 | 
thespectator.com | Clarissa Sebag-Montefiore |Liz Truss |Roger Kimball |Spencer Klavan
As I entered the lobby of Circle in the Square Theatre, now showing Broadway’s hottest ticket, An Enemy of the People, staff were upselling booze. “Do you want to buy a shot?” offered one enthusiastic barman, waving a bottle of bracing Linie aquavit. He added, grinning: “It’s what the actors drink on stage.”Sam Gold’s revival of Henrik Ibsen’s didactic and stuffy morality play aims to draw direct comparisons between past and present, including what alcohol we consume (more on that later).
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Feb 15, 2024 | 
thespectator.com | Clarissa Sebag-Montefiore |Isabel Hardman |Trump’s Pick |Kate Andrews
For Eric Ripert, cooking is like jazz. Ad-libbing, balance, motion. “One day the garlic is very pungent, one day it is not pungent. One day the onion is very juicy and sweet, one day it’s less, so you have to adapt all the time,” says the celebrated chef, who is the co-owner of Manhattan’s Le Bernardin, a close friend of the late Anthony Bourdain and a TV personality in his own right. “So, it’s very similar to music — I do not play the same notes all the time, I take a lot of freedom and liberties.
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Oct 20, 2023 | 
thespectator.com | Ben Domenech |Grace Curley |Roger Kimball |Clarissa Sebag-Montefiore
The first test was the audacious cockroach that sidled into our apartment about three days after we moved in. Hardly enough of a native Manhattanite to calmly swat it and flush it and go on eating my pizza, I pollyannaish-ly sprinted downstairs instead. “Excuse me,” I breathlessly announced to the crossword-solving bald guy manning the front desk — I hadn’t even had the courtesy of introducing myself to him yet.
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Jul 24, 2023 | 
thespectator.com | Clarissa Sebag-Montefiore |Grace Curley |Peter Jones |Matt Ridley
A few minutes into celebrated Harvard geneticist Dr. George Church’s appearance on The Colbert Report, Stephen Colbert motioned towards him conspiratorially. “How do you think your work will eventually destroy all mankind?” asked the comedian, peering meaningfully over his glasses and tapping the table. “It’s a couple of options. Do you think it’s going to be like a killer virus?
