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MALICE IN WONDERLAND

Name: MALICE IN WONDERLAND
Author: Hugo Vickers
ISBN: 978-1-64313-843-5

MY ADVENTURES IN THE WORLD OF CECIL BEATON

by Hugo Vickers ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 5, 2021

An assemblage of star-studded recollections of a faded world.

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Encounters with the rich and famous alongside the noted photographer, painter, and costume designer. In 1979, impressed with Vickers’ recent book, Gladys, Duchess of Marlborough, Cecil Beaton (1904-1980) invited the author to become his biographer. Although Beaton died within weeks, the young author ended up with access to voluminous papers, diaries, and letters as well as to Beaton’s celebrated friends. Beaton, Vickers writes gratefully, “guided me (albeit posthumously) into a PhD in lifestyle, new values, new experiences, new challenges.” Setting to work immediately, he followed Beaton’s footsteps in London, New York, Paris, Monte Carlo, and San Francisco, keeping journals of his interviews, often conducted in grand country houses or sumptuous apartments. Mining those 51 volumes, Vickers has created a lively, gossipy portrait of Beaton’s glittering world. “For Cecil Beaton,” he writes, “every day was a birthday, every afternoon a matinée, the red velvet curtains opening on a new set, every evening a first night, champagne waiting in the wings.” Vickers admits to being occasionally star-struck: Princess Diana, for example, made him feel “as though one had met the girl of one’s dreams, never believing such a thing possible.” Audrey Hepburn, whose costumes Beaton designed when she played Eliza Doolittle in My Fair Lady, was “so sweet and adorable and so nice about Cecil.” Grace Kelly was “very friendly, simple, easy to talk to, open, eager to help.” Vickers can be catty: Princess Margaret “lived up to expectations. She looks like a beautiful monkey, with very pretty eyes, good and unmoving hair and pouches under the eyes.” Her laugh, he adds, was vulgar, “done on purpose.” Sir John Gielgud, less intimidating than Vickers anticipated, “smoked a cigarette almost in the style of one who expected his headmaster to catch him.” For the edification of contemporary readers, Vickers supplies footnotes to identify the many individuals whose fame has dimmed. An assemblage of star-studded recollections of a faded world.

Pub Date: Oct. 5, 2021

ISBN: 978-1-64313-843-5

Page Count: 400

Publisher: Pegasus

Review Posted Online: July 17, 2021

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2021

Categories:

BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | ART & PHOTOGRAPHY | ENTERTAINMENT, SPORTS & CELEBRITY | GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR

- BOOK REVIEW
BEATON IN THE SIXTIES
by Cecil Beaton & edited by Hugo Vickers

- BOOK REVIEW
ALICE
by Hugo Vickers

- BOOK REVIEW
LOVING GARBO
by Hugo Vickers

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107 DAYS

by Kamala Harris ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 23, 2025

A determined if self-regarding portrait of a candidate striving to define herself and her campaign on her own terms.

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An insider’s chronicle of a pivotal presidential campaign.

Several months into the mounting political upheaval of Donald Trump’s second term and following a wave of bestselling political exposés, most notably Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson’s Original Sin on Joe Biden’s health and late decision to step down, former Vice President Harris offers her own account of the consequential months surrounding Biden’s withdrawal and her swift campaign for the presidency. Structured as brief chapters with countdown headers from 107 days to Election Day, the book recounts the campaign’s daily rigors: vetting a running mate, navigating back-to-back rallies, preparing for the convention and the debate with Trump, and deflecting obstacles in the form of both Trump’s camp and Biden’s faltering team. Harris aims to set the record straight on issues that have remained hotly debated. While acknowledging Biden’s advancing decline, she also highlights his foreign-policy steadiness: “His years of experience in foreign policy clearly showed….He was always focused, always commander in chief in that room.” More blame is placed on his inner circle, especially Jill Biden, whom Harris faults for pushing him beyond his limits—“the people who knew him best, should have realized that any campaign was a bridge too far.” Throughout, she highlights her own qualifications and dismisses suggestions that an open contest might have better served the party: “If they thought I was down with a mini primary or some other half-baked procedure, I was quick to disabuse them.” Facing Trump’s increasingly unhinged behavior, Harris never openly doubts her ability to confront him. Yet she doesn’t fully persuade the reader that she had the capacity to counter his dominance, suggesting instead that her defeat stemmed from a lack of time—a theme underscored by the urgency of the book’s title. If not entirely sanguine about the future, she maintains a clear-eyed view of the damage already done: “Perhaps so much damage that we will have to re-create our government…something leaner, swifter, and much more efficient.”

A determined if self-regarding portrait of a candidate striving to define herself and her campaign on her own terms.

Pub Date: Sept. 23, 2025

ISBN: 9781668211656

Page Count: 320

Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Review Posted Online: Sept. 23, 2025

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2025

Categories:

- BOOK REVIEW
SUPERHEROES ARE EVERYWHERE
by Kamala Harris ; illustrated by Mechal Renee Roe

- BOOK REVIEW
THE TRUTHS WE HOLD
by Kamala Harris

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POEMS & PRAYERS

by Matthew McConaughey ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 16, 2025

It’s not Shakespeare, not by a long shot. But at least it’s not James Franco.

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A noted actor turns to verse: “Poems are a Saturday in the middle of the week.”

McConaughey, author of the gracefully written memoir Greenlights, has been writing poems since his teens, closing with one “written in an Australian bathtub” that reads just as a poem by an 18-year-old (Rimbaud excepted) should read: “Ignorant minds of the fortunate man / Blind of the fate shaping every land.” McConaughey is fearless in his commitment to the rhyme, no matter how slight the result (“Oops, took a quick peek at the sky before I got my glasses, / now I can’t see shit, sure hope this passes”). And, sad to say, the slight is what is most on display throughout, punctuated by some odd koanlike aperçus: “Eating all we can / at the all-we-can-eat buffet, / gives us a 3.8 education / and a 4.2 GPA.” “Never give up your right to do the next right thing. This is how we find our way home.” “Memory never forgets. Even though we do.” The prayer portion of the program is deeply felt, but it’s just as sentimental; only when he writes of life-changing events—a court appearance to file a restraining order against a stalker, his decision to quit smoking weed—do we catch a glimpse of the effortlessly fluent, effortlessly charming McConaughey as exemplified by the David Wooderson (“alright, alright, alright”) of Dazed and Confused. The rest is mostly a soufflé in verse. McConaughey’s heart is very clearly in the right place, but on the whole the book suggests an old saw: Don’t give up your day job.

It’s not Shakespeare, not by a long shot. But at least it’s not James Franco.