Ruperts not in it for the flash of Cond Nast or the Mercedes purring outside waiting to take him somewhere, said Mr. Read, his boss. LONDON To be a magazine reader these days is to lament unless you are reading The World of Interiors, published since 1982 by Cond Nast Britain but widely available on American newsstands, where it sells for $9.99 per issue. He worried because he had made the mistake of being an extremely good shot not with a rifle (I would shut my eyes because of the recoil) but with a Bren, a light machine gun. <br><br>Prior to that, spent 10 years on the Waitrose Board, accountable for all elements of the 7bn commercial and customer proposition. In retrospect, it might seem as though it was humanitarian, but the larger part was pure selfishness., He says its exactly the same with a robin that nested this spring in the garden. There was a real mix of kids and no uniform. Thomas, who joined the Conde Nast title in 1991, had been editor-in-chief Min Hogg's deputy since 1997. But we were never like that, he said. Here is the full article below. Every crop of every picture. The Instagram account was introduced well after the social media platform became popular, and only upon careful consideration of how to approach the medium, said Emma Redmayne, the magazines publisher. They did it twice and the first time I slightly messed it up though since the lines were in French hardly anyone knew. Two of you can just about squeeze out there and not bang elbows while you're having lunch. And it makes money as a print object, especially in Britain where there is still a robust newsstand culture and an appreciation for print (In 2019, ad revenue for The World of Interiors outperformed the market, Ms. Redmayne said. With his partner of 23 years, Rupert Thomas. Elfreda Pownall pays tribute to the late antique dealer and decorator Robert Kime, followed by memories from his friends and colleagues, See the worlds first airplane bunk beds in economy, King Charles' coronation 2023: Everything you need to know, The 50 best restaurants in London right now, Inside Clarence House: King Charles and Camilla's official London residence, A designers glorious Highbury abode adorned with family heirlooms, Inside King Charles IIIs property portfolio: From Buckingham Palace to Romanian bed-and-breakfasts, A fashion designer lets his imagination run wild in a 16th-century Italian villa, Robert Kime on his philosophy towards collecting, From the archive: Christopher Gibbs on Robert Kime. As other magazines were forced to cut corners, or cannibalize their print editions to feed the web, The World of Interiors grew lusher and more thoughtful by comparison. Rupert Thomas. The other producer like that, in a different way, was Ned Sherrin: he understood about giving you space and not letting you know there was a row on. document.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value", ( new Date() ).getTime() ); Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window), Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window), Click to email a link to a friend (Opens in new window), Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window), Click to share on WhatsApp (Opens in new window), The Company of Artists: The Origins of the Royal Academy of Arts in London, The Rise of Design: Design and Domestic Interior in Eighteenth-century England. (modern), Alan Bennett photographed at home by Antony Crolla for the Guardian, Alan Bennett: I didnt see the point of coming out'. Country. ), portrait 250 color illustrations ISBN: 978--86565-388-7 Hardcover US $75 / CAN $95 / GBP 60 PUBLISHED: Oct, 2021 His partner is Alan Bennett, the famous playwright and author of The History Boys, making him part of a London power couple, though he is loath to discuss his private life, or much else, with reporters. About Us. Details and Domino folded. It took just one week but also a lifetime of looking and collecting. In Bennetts plays, bookshelves often loom up to intimidate or overwhelm characters. He could summon any number of exceptions and variations with his fluid vocabulary of detail. The notion that they were wanting to choose somebody who would win the election when we are three, four years away from one, regardless of what half the nation wants that seems to me far more risky than what they have done. Alan Bennett, now 81, is as dapper as you like in knitted tie and red-soled grey suede shoes. More or less immediately after I had taken my final picture a huge furniture van turned up and by lunchtime the house was stripped bare even the fireplace was removed still warm from the night before. It would have distressed both of them. Budgets were neither reduced nor increased. Request Code : ZLIBIO822883. 3 Alan seen here with his partner Rupert Thomas Credit: Rex Features What are Alan Bennett's. He still has that schoolboy mop of blond hair, and were it not for a little stiffness as he rises from his chair, and deep veins on his hands, you would take him for a much younger man. Interior Secretary DEB HAALAND testifies before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee. . Let's take a look at their personal lives and find out how it all started. At first, he would give only Fridays over to decoration, but the clamour became insistent. Very often overawed clients would come into the shop and on seeing Robert would declare, are you the great Robert Kime I so admire everything you do, to which Robert would invariably wince, wave them away and say, oh, youll get over it. The magazines readership is small, with a circulation of 55,000, but influential. Im freaking out. Published monthly in print and daily on its website and digital platforms, The World of Interiors is a global title celebrating originality in design, decorating, arts and culture. Another time, after a visit to the British Museum to see a Chinese exhibition, Robert went to the barber and said, can you do me a Chinese warrior?, to which the barber replied, no, but I can do you a Roman emperor! On another occasion he was looking at a chinoiserie decorated tle coal bucket and remarked of the gilded pagoda, Im not sure if thats the La Tour Eiffel or Blackpool Tower!. Guidebooks I first became aware of Pevsner's architectural guides when I was an undergraduate at the Courtauld Institute. They incited me to orchestrate in rooms the old things I found in flea markets and antiques shops, inexpensive echoes of objects I saw in museums and historic houses. And there he was, in Cambridge, and with a bit of money, too. I didnt know how to put work on it., Surely he at least uses an electric typewriter? This is our Jackson Pollock workroom, Mr. Thomas said, a reference to the dried paint splatters on the threadbare carpet. Manage your subscription online 24 hours a day by logging on to www.subscription.co.uk/help/condenast. I feel more than a touch mournful that Rupert Thomas is stepping down from The World of Interiors after a mere 21 years. It makes you sound so pompous if you put it like that.. He always said that selling the furniture his grandmother and his mother, an avid collector, had amassed was how he learnt his trade. All together this acts as a kind of alchemy. Great Britain Birth - Death Occupation. Min Hogg, the founding editor, created the magazine's look of old-world bohemianism, along with its catholic approach ("everything from palaces to pigsties").Rupert Thomas was her protg . The van had been parked at various points along the road, and at length drifted down to his house. 2/9 The study inside Giorgio Armani's Milan residence. No, no, its absolutely true, Bennett says, in that blissfully mournful voice that could have been designed for voicing Eeyore (which, of course, he has done, reading the Winnie the Pooh books for BBC radio). Robert Kime had a (possibly unique) talent for imparting timeless lustre to all his schemes be it an apparently undistinguished bathroom or a fine panelled . To revisit this article, visit My Profile, then View saved stories. One day I asked him how you can tell a fake from a genuine thing. He rarely gives interviews, and The World of Interiors, unlike most magazines, doesnt carry an editors letter or entreaties to follow him on social media. If I could have taken the bird inside, I would, not because of the bird but because of me. They are also useful decrypters of taste, and this famous literary diarist is clearly a connoisseur of other literary diarists. We aim to include authoritative expert opinions and a broad range of perspectives in our reported content, and draw from well-established journalistic, medical, academic, and other sources in our reporting. The refurbishment of an unloved farmhouse on a family estate in Buckinghamshire. Its never settled. It showcases seemingly every facet of the decorative arts and crafts over centuries, from the pop artist Roy Lichtensteins Manhattan studio to an antique dealers 16th-century Shropshire pile to a shepherds hut, while reviewing books like The Peoples Galleries: Art Museums and Exhibitions in Britain 1800-1914. Its intelligent, witty and wide-ranging in its curiosity: a bible. Pigeonholed. You told him what you wanted to do, and he would arrange things without letting you know there was any problem at all. The World of Interiors has been bringing together the widest variety of the most sumptuous houses and architectural projects for over 30 years. He is the editor of The World of Interiors magazine. Curated by Rupert Thomas, former editor of The World of Interiors, the exhibition extends throughout the house and is the largest selection of Simon's work ever shown publicly. . He has announced that he will also be remaining as global-editor-at-large at American Vogue, where he has worked since 1992. . Sought after by the major design organizations, he travels the world photographing people and their homes. Then there was the other one, which came out of the nest too soon and had to be fed by the robin. The image would have been taken from a more sophisticated engraving, but by the time she appears on what remains of our plate she's hilariously boot-faced - Queen Mary via Beavis and Butt-Head. And obviously the National Health and so forth: everything Corbyns said seems to me to ring bells. In the film the author is trapped between the demands of two elderly women: his mother, declining up in Yorkshire, and Miss Shepherd, whose unruly presence tests the liberal principles of the new generation of artists, television people and journalists who, Bennett among them, had moved into Camden Town and done up the big old Victorian villas there (the knockers-through, Bennett has called them). Very few stories are available on its website. His partner of 23 years, Rupert Thomas, is the editor of the World Of Interiors magazine and it shows the room is a comfortable cave of 18th-century pictures, a mantelpiece loaded up with cards (one handmade in the shape of a red-soled grey shoe) and a wall lined with books: fat Pevsner architectural guides, the journals of Anthony Powell, Virginia Woolf and John Cheever, Claire Tomalins Thomas Hardy biography, and volumes on the history of blue-and-white china. For example this, from an 80s fly-on-the-wall documentary he collaborated on, about a hotel in Harrogate: For years, hotels and restaurants were for me theatres of humiliation and the business of eating in public every bit as fraught with risk and shame as taking ones clothes off. The performance of going to a cafe would include his parents ordering a pot of tea, then smuggling bits of bread and butter, brought from home, to the young Bennett and his brother under the table while the waitress wasnt looking enough to turn any boy self-conscious. He still has that schoolboy mop of blond hair, and were it not for a little stiffness as he rises from his chair, and deep veins on his hands, you would take him for a much younger man. Garden Ours is a real London garden: tiny. Im one for being early, and Ruperts one for being last-minute. His tutor would not hear of it and gave Robert the rest of the year to sort things out. Shes a gift. In his 1988 play A Question Of Attribution, about the art historian and spy Anthony Blunt, the Queen was played on stage by Prunella Scales. 192 pages, Paperback. So are Brad Pitt, Cate Blanchett and the photographer Tim Walker. Lord of the light box: Rupert Thomas, the editor in chief of The World of Interiors, at the magazines office in London. Professionally, Hytner gets the mixture of encouragement and criticism exactly right, Bennett says. Right here at FameChain. I had harboured a small and ludicrous fantasy that Bennett might also have ended up spying, but am swiftly disabused. Rupert Thomas, 44, has been the editor of The World of Interiors since June 2000, and is only the second person to edit the design and decoration magazine since it was founded in 1981. The couple's Crooms Hill residence, one of the oldest thoroughfares in London, is the latest chapter in an intriguing narrative of artistic inhabitants. Im sure Corbyn is a risk, but I very much approve of him., Bennett reckons the opposition leader is absolutely right about nationalising the railways. He titled it The Glossy Years. In 2017, the United States arm of Cond Nast lost more than $120 million and, to stem the bleeding, the publisher has closed or sold off several titles and subleased floors in its Lower Manhattan headquarters. The latter is one of two JB Priestley plays he would like to have written himself, he says, the other being When We Are Married. I dont like being imprisoned in an audience now, partly because I often want to go to the loo. Hytner throws two big parties a year, one in the summer and one in winter, which Bennett enjoys, preferring theatre people to literary people, and enjoying catching up with the actors he has worked with. I was so nervous it was painful, really. Having a fragment makes it human. He gets on the tube with his backpack. Robert was always at my elbow patiently explaining everything as he saw it, pointing out the significance of the rooms to him, why things needed to be as they were and constantly referring to his wife Helen whose highly developed taste in interiors was his touchstone. Rupert Thomas, 44, has been the editor of The World of Interiors since June 2000, and is only the second person to edit the design and decoration magazine since it was founded in 1981. The spaces made by Robert are comfortable, delightful and endlessly rewarding. We had already become friends due to his collaboration with my husband Patrick on South Wraxall Manor, an extraordinary house they restored and transformed together, so I knew what a pair of thoughtful perfectionists I needed to satisfy. Robert persuaded her to let him sell it for her, and she set him up in a shop in Oundle. Since 2000, it was edited by Rupert Thomas, who had been the deputy editor since 1997. This sense of doubleness runs through Bennetts writing: in the diaries, there is often a part of him taking critical notice of what he is (or isnt) doing, a kind of extreme self-awareness. He talks about the totalitarian Tories, why he doesnt go to the theatre, and a lifetime of being contrary. It's a rewarding routine and I try to do it rain or shine. In an age when editors of monthlies must compete, seemingly impossibly, with the daily dopamine hits of grams and memes and TikToks, The World of Interiors appears to occupy an earlier, more dignified era. It's an extraordinarily exotic start to the day. Bennett portrays his fellow performers in Beyond The Fringe (Peter Cook, Jonathan Miller and Dudley Moore, with whom he made his breakthrough on Broadway in 1962) as larger, more vivid figures; he, in his own accounts, tends to be waiting in the wings nervously while the audience laughs itself silly at Cooks jokes. This was testament to his enormous memory and capacity for detail. If Simon Upton, one of the magazines star freelance photographers, is dispatched to the United States, he will be assigned two or three projects to make the trip cost-effective. Socialist, royalist, show-off, shy . In fact, the photography is rather moody and in chiaroscuro tones, giving the empty furnished rooms a compelling, dreamlike quality. She had a mass of furniture she wanted to clear, but had fallen out with the two great auction houses. After Oxford, a chance meeting at a student house party at Ashton Wold, the Northamptonshire home of the scientist Miriam Rothschild, led to his first shop. Markets I've been going to London junk markets since I was 14. New York magazine asked, Whats left of Cond Nast, even as it faces an uncertain future under Vox Media, its new owner. Categories: Suggest Category. Like his staff, Mr. Thomas is frugal and workmanlike. Robert Kime photographed at his Pimlico Road flat by Simon Upton, 'I cant explain, said Robert Kime when asked how he had put together his exquisite London flat so quickly. There were so many incidents when she was not actually physically roughed up, but people banged on the side of the van, hoping to get her out and waving her stick, that I always had one eye on her and it stopped me working. Categories. Oddly, few people round here use their gardens, so you can be out all day and not hear anything. I've been going to Portobello on a Friday morning for 30 years - particularly Golborne Road, which is still junky, cheap and cheerful, like markets used to be. Burgess and Blunt wanted a kind of moral solitude, which is a very different thing. Neglecting his Russian in favour of preparing for the scholarship exam (in history), he ended up busted back to private, on standard national service duties. Cond Nast London The Adelphi, 1-11 John Adam Street London, WC2N 6HT, United Kingdom Out now in the current November issue of the magazine. "Eclectic, but not nearly as edgy as Los Angeles," says Rupert Thomas, deputy editor of World of Interiors, a magazine published in London and read worldwide. In a very weird way, by being willfully noncommercial, weve made ourselves more commercial. He giggles. One has only had to stand still to become a radical., He is a royalist as well as a socialist. (LogOut/ My parents were quite shy and, looking back, it felt they had made shy into a virtue and I believed that, he tells me. Is it really true, I ask, that you keep your work-in-progress in the fridge for safekeeping? The World of Interiors is a magazine published by Cond Nast with a total readership of 152,000. It's also a research tool - though my colleagues laugh at me when I use this as an excuse for being late. The same day, I went to a Ravilious exhibition at the Fine Art Society and thought, 'I can't afford a painting by Ravilious but I'm just as happy with this.'. And when I came off that first time, Helen Mirren said, Oh, fuck em, fuck em. Which is really all you want, someone to say that., I wonder what he makes of the fuss surrounding Corbyns not singing the national anthem at the Battle of Britain memorial service in September. We are chatting in what his mam would have called "the parlour" of the Primrose Hill home where he's lived for a decade with his partner Rupert Thomas. Orders on www.subscription.co.uk/woi. Since 1981, The World of Interiors has documented the rich diversity of ways in which we live, showcasing the stylish and the unexpected as well as applauding individuality. A collection she had discussed with Robert before he died is under way. Being interested in clothes, and it being the 1980s, the freedom there gave me an alarming liking for trousers that have a bit of silliness going on. All that remained were the pictures we had taken and the memories of that exquisitely designed and furnished place, which like my memories of him, are indelible. That stems originally from Mrs Thatcher: she did believe that Labour was wicked. In an address he gave last year at Kings College, Cambridge, Bennett raged (quietly, but it was rage none the less) against private education, suggesting that it ought to be phased out: Private education is not fair Those who provide it know it. Two decades after the internet changed everything, magazines mostly have yet to figure out how to thrive in a digital world. They married when he was 23 and moved to a gothic schoolhouse at Mildenhall, near Marlborough, using two wings of the cruciform building as his shop. Many sources report the couple first started dating each other in the year 1992. No. My sneakers are where I left them. They're serious and thorough, but can be off-puttingly dry. Britains hotels are full buy shares in this stock for a piece of the action, New Help to Buy plan would be 'insane' says former government property adviser, Macrons France is trapped in a debt spiral it cannot escape, Vauxhall owner sues tyre maker Continental and car parts maker Bosch over cartel claims, Thousands of middle earners face 100pc-plus tax after Hunts stealth tax raid. The men stood in the center of the office over a white tabletop that, on closer inspection, revealed itself to be a dormant light box for viewing photographic transparencies. Occupations. Longstanding editor Rupert Thomas is stepping down after 22 years at the title. Ms. Prisant described the process: Rupert asks me to provide pictures of the four walls of a room that I might find interesting. I was writing overlooking the garden and it was exactly as it was with Miss Shepherd: half my eye was on this bird because there were jays about, and seagulls. The course, though, was lovely, idyllic. The glamorising of her that has happened has nothing to do with anything, really its just exploiting her. I assume he means Helen Mirrens more recent take in the film The Queen, and on stage in The Audience. You dont feel the hand of advertisers, publicists or digital panic on every page. Youre totally involved in the product. They didnt want to be beholden to country. Rupert Thomas is editor in chief of World of Interiors. Christopher Bailey, the president and former chief creative officer of Burberry, said that while The World of Interiors appeals to the fashion crowd, its not fashionable. Simon Upton is one of the foremost names in interiors photography, with more than 25 years of published work to his credit. Except at The World of Interiors, which has lost none of its gloss and seems utterly unaffected by modern media trends. I cant say I love my country, because I dont know what that means. Does he think patriotism is a necessary virtue? On a recent morning, the magazines editor, Rupert Thomas, was meeting with the art director, Mark Lazenby, to finalize feature layouts for an upcoming issue. By the time he returned to Oxford, he was an experienced dealer, taking the bus every Thursday to the antique and junk shops in the Cotswolds. And those who receive it know it, or should. In the same sermon, he wrote: There has been so little that has happened to England since the 1980s that I have been happy about or felt able to endorse. No one made rooms seem more elegantly inevitable. But Clarence House, the official residence of King Charles III when Prince of Wales, was the most prestigious. His partner of 23 years, Rupert Thomas, is the editor of the World Of Interiors magazine and it shows - the room is a comfortable cave of 18th-century pictures, a mantelpiece loaded up with . . Those who work in magazines read The World of Interiors with a mix of appreciation and envy. Still, the magazine has never come across as snobby, because three pages after Clarence House can come, say, the house-turned-museum that an African-American couple, a poet and her postal-worker husband, built in Lynchburg, Va., in 1903 and decorated with recycled materials and great flair. History The . The couple is together for around 25 years. He is dating Rupert Thomas. Rupert. 3/9 The sitting room of Jean Paul Gaultier's South of France home. If the magazine wasnt given great infusions of cash like its siblings, it was left largely alone by the executives, a trade-off that continues to this day and one Mr. Thomas, like Ms. Hogg before him, seems happy with. The issue took editor Rupert Thomas most of a year to . The December Fashion Issue of The World of Interiors is on sale now. Even now, I find myself going to Vivienne Westwood and buying 'drunken' trousers that are lop-sided. Personally and creatively, Dennis and his house opened a world of possibility for Simon. Part of its magic is that it's just a fragment. At 16 I briefly had a stall in Camden Lock. Bowles steps in following departure of current editor Rupert Thomas, who served the title for 22 years and . . Ive read magazines all my relatively grown-up life. There was nothing on it. A story that really set the scene for the book and was also the first story we shot for it. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/04/style/world-of-interiors.html. Its common for magazines to commission stories only to kill them for one reason or another. From childhood, Robert was fascinated by history. He got into trouble a few years back when he said in an interview that he didnt read contemporary British fiction, which was taken as being an affront to AS Byatt and everybody else but I just read other things. It enjoys a semi-indie status among our titles, said Albert Read, the managing director of Cond Nast Britain. The Cond Nast editor discusses his favourite markets, his favourite restaurant in New York and the treasure lying around his house. She runs the Interior Archive, a London-based picture library and photographic agency. Start a FameChain Add to my FameChain. Few magazines are as resistant to the winds of change as The World of Interiors, which has had only two editors in its 40-year history.Come January, it will get its third. Robert, interior decorator to His Majesty, King Charles III and at least five English dukes, plus pop stars and potentates, died on August 17, aged 76. In the film, there are two Alan Bennetts. So much of Robert was about atmosphere whether perceived in an object, a house, a room, painting or person. To Robert, the lure of textiles was irresistible, and he would always bid on the linen cupboard. Bennett himself is played by Alex Jennings, who is seen at various points stabbing ineffectually with two fingers at a manual typewriter. Print is dead. But then a friend in New York said, thats the first thing that goes up its the real hotspot in a domestic fire, and youd be roasting your manuscripts. He used to know he was getting somewhere with a project when the urge took him to pop his pages in the salad crisper. We still commission on film, said Mr. Thomas, a note of pride in his voice. The World of Interiors is produced in a corner of the second floor of Vogue House, the publisher's drably charming brown-brick building in central London. We can do a major shoot in a day., Mr. Thomas said, Theres something better than throwing money at a situation. The World of Interiors, by contrast, considers its mission to capture a truthful record of how people live, usually under natural light. When, in 1983, he realised that the supply of antique fabrics he had been using for curtains and upholstery was drying up, he turned to fabric expert Gisella Milne-Watson.
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