From Economist.com
ELIZABETH JANE HOWARD who died on January 2—‘Jane’ to all who knew her—was an English writer of great originality and honesty. Only at the end of her long life did she receive the recognition she deserved. “I feel like I’ve been playing second fiddle my whole life,” she told me a few weeks before her death. “Now I’m playing first violin and I quite like it.”
by Richard Walker
IN its early days the UK edition of GQ Magazine had an outstandingly successful editor called Michael VerMeulen. He was from Chicago, where he had been a close associate of the playwright David Mamet – so, by no means the typical London fashion editor. He was also pretty much the exact opposite of me in every way – thick-set, confrontational, and completely at home in the sexy, spiteful, intrigue-rich world of glossy magazine publishing. Anyway, having nothing better to do I phoned him out of the blue and pitched a couple of feature ideas which he turned down flat. But he added “Come on over, we’ll have a drink and see if we can make sense of you”.