Longstanding editor Rupert Thomas is stepping down after 22 years at the title. Print is dead. 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. The couple's Crooms Hill residence, one of the oldest thoroughfares in London, is the latest chapter in an intriguing narrative of artistic inhabitants. I tell him I still dont understand why Miss Shepherd ended up in his driveway; for years, visitors to the house were obliged to sidle past her parked van. Ms. Smith went on: He just showed up by himself with a tiny bag. His new film, The Lady In The Van, is about the extraordinary figure of Miss Shepherd, who for 15 years, from 1974-89, made her home in a van parked in the driveway of the house where he used to live, a few streets from his current home in Camden Town. Of Hughes and Plaths poetry, he says: I slightly felt with the pair of them that if anyone had cracked a joke the whole thing would have split wide open. It's better to write by hand rather than just send an email or return pictures with a compliments slip. I used to go to the National when Nick [Hytner] was the boss because I could go in and sit in the producers box and watch an act, and then you could go home, if you wanted. Rupert Thomas. 1/9 Inside Nicolas Ghesquire's flat in Paris. The production of his projects, which ran from first site visit and client meeting to the backing out for final occupation, was enormously complicated and involved a cast of thousands. When Frances Lincoln asked Robert Kime to make a book about his work in 2014, naturally I was both delighted and daunted when he rang and said that after much thought he had settled on me as his first choice for the new photography. Recently, its been The Shepherds Life, a memoir of farming in the Lake District by James Rebanks (a very good book). His huge artistic and historical knowledge, well-travelled curiosity, and passion for early furniture and antique fabrics was at the root of his skill of bringing rooms to life. He never made a room plan and was very clear he was not an interior designer. Change). 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. One day I asked him how you can tell a fake from a genuine thing. It was the mindless, repetitive and demeaning nature of that work that put the iron into my soul, he says. Everyone at his school knew there was a possible get-out clause that could be invoked by bright boys: the Russian course, an intensive language training aimed at providing interpreters, translators and sometimes intelligence officers. I see that poems like [Hughes] The Pike are wonderful, but they arent about the life I lead.. The Lady In The Van began as a series of diary entries. Every crop of every picture. The organization was fiendish. Part of its magic is that it's just a fragment. Then as I got older I realised its an affliction, really, and if youre shy you are just as self-centred as anyone who is outgoing and the life and soul of the party. But perhaps also more watchful; the one more likely to be making pungent little notes in the days journal, or transforming his close observations into works of art such as the Talking Heads monologues of the 1980s and 90s, or The Madness Of George III. Interior Secretary DEB HAALAND testifies before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee. 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. 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. 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 sitting room. The Queen comes upon herself, comes upon having a private life that she has never really thought about, he explains now. You told him what you wanted to do, and he would arrange things without letting you know there was any problem at all. With an incredibly low circulation but very high advertising spend, WoI is unique to the publishing world. For every project we worked on together I was focused on the reveal through the construction process and Robert was ten steps ahead planting the landscape, which he adored doing, and performing the magic trick of finishing the project in a settled and recovered terroir. She had a mass of furniture she wanted to clear, but had fallen out with the two great auction houses. It wasnt, at the time, a humanitarian gesture, Bennett says. He loved the Irish furniture he found whilst driving through West Cork. The World of Interiors, by contrast, considers its mission to capture a truthful record of how people live, usually under natural light. Thomas began as a sub-editor on the glossy, after studying at the Courtauld . Garden Ours is a real London garden: tiny. 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. 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. 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. Im sure thats not goodness, really.. The gold-standard shelter magazine runs on a brass-tacks budget and refuses to kowtow to the internet.Lord of the light box: Rupert Thomas, the editor in chief of The World of Interiors, at the magazine's office in London.Credit.Tom Jamieson for The New York TimesPublished Dec. 4, 2019Updated Dec. 5, 2019LONDON To be a magazine reader 5/9 Jessica Hayns, a 26-year veteran who as creative director oversees the fabric and furniture shoots, was formerly a textile designer. . The editorial team of The World of Interiors works to ensure the accuracy and integrity of everything we publish, and we carefully report, edit, and fact check every story we produce. Its just such a beautiful thing, Mr. Read said, biased but not wrong. 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. No-one was more aware of this than Robert, who never read any of the paperwork but would fire questions that unerringly found the one weak spot and brought it back in line with the whole. And World of Interiors is the only magazine that Ive kept and trooped around the world wherever Ive lived, he said. Other subscription queries can be directed tocondenast@subscription.co.uk. He lives in north London with his partner, the writer Alan Bennett. No, but he is a strong supporter. He obviously thought I was a bit showbiz and corrupt. Though I prefer shine. Because where today are you going to read, Dried whippet over dusty silverware?. I was so nervous it was painful, really. In Bennetts very funny story The Uncommon Reader, the Queen discovers a taste for novels and thereby an inner existence. I didnt want to be in anybodys pocket, thats why I didnt want to be thought to be gay, particularly. It's also a research tool - though my colleagues laugh at me when I use this as an excuse for being late. His collaborations with supremely talented and skilled practitioners were built up across decades, with all bringing their best work to the projects. Urbane and characterful, New York Interiors unveils the photographer's favorite interior projects from the city, among them the homes of . Bowles succeeds Rupert Thomas who has been at the Cond Nast title for 22 years. 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. 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. It enjoys a semi-indie status among our titles, said Albert Read, the managing director of Cond Nast Britain. He is not a celebrity editor in the Anna Wintour mold. 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. Karen Howes is an interior design writer whose books include Private Ireland and Vacation Homes and Perfect Weekend Hideaways. Treasured artwork This 1940s picture by James Tarr of an urban back garden (pictured) was in an auction full of lots of big names about 15 years ago. He had very green fingers. in the London Review Of Books each January, he gave last year at Kings College, Cambridge. When Ms. Hogg died at age 80 this past June, the staff decorated the church where her memorial was held with 10-foot lavender gingham bows running to the altar. The refurbishment of an unloved farmhouse on a family estate in Buckinghamshire. Weve always been done on a shoestring.. 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. Or a mobile home. It started off just as a fling, really, but we became very fond of each other. To my lasting regret, I never got to know Robert very well. But it's indecipherable. 4.0 / 5.0 0 comments. Nothing was happening I might be gay but I didnt have a partner or anything, so there was no point. There was also, anyway, a decade-long relationship with a woman, Anne Davies, who died in 2009. The party also brought him his wife, Helen Nicoll. Paintings line the walls and the furnishings are antique yet the room feels lived-in rather than fancy, despite the fact Thomas edits World of Interiors . And then the next night I did it properly and it was all right, but oh, I wouldnt want to do it again. 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. The magazines readership is small, with a circulation of 55,000, but influential. (As a student, Harty invited Vivien Leigh round to his rooms for drinks, a most unBennett-like act.) Change), You are commenting using your Facebook account. The cover was a simple, enticing photo of the shaded veranda of a house in the Canary Islands, a Spanish archipelago off the coast of northwest Africa, with barely any typeface to muck it up. I visit on the day Jeremy Corbyn gives his first speech as Labour leader to the party conference; I ask Bennett if he caught any of it. The office is one largish room with deeply scuffed wood floors, a drop ceiling and windows overlooking green Hanover Square. The restaurant is what I like to think of New York as being: glamorous, bustling, relentlessly social. The action of the film takes place in the 1970s and 80s, so I assume that he has long since moved on into the digital world. Categories: Suggest Category. Together they began to create a range of fabrics including one inspired by the pea pods. Its common for magazines to commission stories only to kill them for one reason or another. Please log in using one of these methods to post your comment: You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. So much of Robert was about atmosphere whether perceived in an object, a house, a room, painting or person. A story that really set the scene for the book and was also the first story we shot for it. Two decades after the internet changed everything, magazines mostly have yet to figure out how to thrive in a digital world. For the Nationals 50th anniversary gala in 2013, he performed an excerpt from The History Boys, in which he took on the part of the wayward teacher Hector, originally played by the late Richard Griffiths. And inventive: Though product pages typically consist of clip art on a white background, The World of Interiors will collect the latest fabrics and drape them across a farm field in the Cotswolds. THE WORLD OF INTERIORS von HOGG, Min / THOMAS, Rupert(ed) und eine groe Auswahl hnlicher Bcher, Kunst und Sammlerstcke erhltlich auf AbeBooks.de. 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 . MAY WE SUGGEST: From the archive: Christopher Gibbs on Robert Kime. The WorldCat Identities data has positively impacted OCLC's work to build the WorldCat Entities application and the 150 million Person and Work descriptions accessible . Sources of domestic tension, meantime, are few. I mean, if the World of Interiors circulation suddenly jumped to 150,000, Id almost be worried.. in life and in his fiction, Alan Bennett is a bundle of contradictions. Those who have to sacrifice in order to purchase it know it. They would never have asked me to be a spy I am the wrong class, you see, he says. 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. My feeling is that probably hed been doing imitations of me for years and when he did Cocktail Sticks he was simply going public, Bennett says. 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.'. All together this acts as a kind of alchemy. Its beloved by those in the creative and visual arts especially. The Cond Nast editor discusses his favourite markets, his favourite restaurant in New York and the treasure lying around his house. The best stories from The World of Interiors, delivered to your inbox. Titles once so culturally influential they created mythologies around them Time, Sports Illustrated, Rolling Stone have been supplanted by social media and blogs, and are sometimes so thin with advertising and editorial pages as to look like brochures. 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. He became editor in 2000, only the second in the magazines 38-year history. Glamour, Seventeen, Vibe, Self and Playboy have either retreated from print altogether or appear on newsstands infrequently. WOW! Hogg decided not to return to the editor's chair after a sabbatical last year. The adjacent room held a worktable strewn with fabric swatches, a sewing machine, back issues of the magazine, clothes on hangars, rolls of wallpaper stuffed into a closet. Its a much kinder world, is the theatre, than literature. I am deeply honoured to illustrate the December issue of The World of Interiors which also celebrates the 40th anniversary of this unique magazine. 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. His predecessor and the founding editor, Min Hogg, was a formidable figure whose father was the ear, nose and throat physician to the Queen Mother, and who ran with a bohemian London in crowd, including the actor Rupert Everett and the social gadfly and decorator Nicky Haslam. Is it really true, I ask, that you keep your work-in-progress in the fridge for safekeeping? Binders of rooms: Mr. Thompson looks over layouts for an upcoming issue. The wonderful thing about them - they are written by people such as John Betjeman and John Piper - is that they show you the interesting oddities: a bus stop as well as a Baroque building. Every object was classified and labelled, every single task scheduled and coordinated with exquisite orchestration and terrifying pace. 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. 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. I didnt know how to put work on it., Surely he at least uses an electric typewriter? He leaves a huge void but also a wonderful legacy which lives on. His own work continues slowly: he goes to his desk each morning at 10.30am; and Hytner has an old screenplay of his, once written for John Schlesinger but never made, that might turn into something. Start a FameChain Add to my FameChain. Its so successful as a business, and so solid, that Im very wary of pushing them in directions they feel uncomfortable going in, said Mr. Read. In typically self-deprecating fashion, hea dmitted to making quite a few mistakes in those early days, but he learned to be decisive. Im one for being early, and Ruperts one for being last-minute. The pair live in Primrose Hill in London. Rupert Thomas. The World of Interiors is produced in a corner of the second floor of Vogue House, the publishers drably charming brown-brick building in central London. Mr. Thomas drank a cup of tea at the messy worktable and reflected on the industrys golden, halcyon days, as he put it, when 25 models and 15 hair-and-makeup stylists would be flown to a glamorous and remote location for a shoot. Clearly theres no stylist, no flowers, Ms. Smith recalled, referring to the practice of primping a home before its photographed. Twenty-five-year Vogue veteran Hamish Bowles has been tapped to lead the editorial team at The World of Interiors, and will become the magazine's third editor in its 40-year history when he assumes the role in January, Curbed reports. If that makes sense., Inside The World of Interiors, Cond Nasts Secret Weapon, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/04/style/world-of-interiors.html. As he drove his car they would ring him as something he had spotted came up and he would bid as he went along, always clear as to exactly what he was prepared to pay. Carol Prisant, the New York editor, was an antique dealer whod never written for magazines before she penned a query letter to Ms. Hogg and was hired, in 1989. Their first meeting was in a restaurant in Primrose Hill, and Bennett spent much of the dinner explaining the area to him. (When quizzed last summer he knew exactly the colour of the watered silk covering four chairs he had sold to my parents in 1972.). Once, on a Turkish bus, he bought the headscarf of the lady in front of him a kandili print with a pattern of pea pods. Its never settled. My parents were quite shy and, looking back, it felt they had made shy into a virtue and I believed that, he tells me. Download The World of Interiors - August 2011 book for free from Z-Library . 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. It seems so recent that he took on what seemed an impossible task taking over from Min Hogg, the queen of the unknown country house, forgotten, but full of wonders. It remains firmly acknowledged as the most . I have always loved exploring buildings with Robert, each of us trying to unravel the puzzle of the sequence of periods and with this understanding making the new work legible. Find out about Rupert Thomas's family tree, family history, ancestry, ancestors, genealogy, relationships and affairs! And the very thought of it becoming popular is anathema to those who . Mr. Thomas grew up in public housing in north London (his mother was a costumer) and joined the staff of The World of Interiors as a junior editor in 1992, after working for the art-book . 1 February 2022 Charles Saumarez Smith Leave a comment. Wednesday: The Fed meets to decide whether to raise interest rates, with a .25-point hike . 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. The whole thing was just so poetic, in inverted commas. I'm interested in things that are outmoded and forgotten. I had to we needed the money, he explained. But Clarence House, the official residence of King Charles III when Prince of Wales, was the most prestigious. Who expects to one day live in the Queen Mothers former residence? His tutor would not hear of it and gave Robert the rest of the year to sort things out. I don't listen to music. I dont mean Helen Mirren herself isnt good its just that its such a construction, really., Mirren was a good egg, he says, last time he performed on stage. In time, he built up a prestigious worldwide clientele, about whom he remained discreet. with tremendous sensitivity and elegance by Rupert Thomas for 22 years," Bowles . To fund our efforts, The World of Interiors runs advertisements and occasionally partners with advertisers to produce sponsored content, videos, events, and other collaborations. Assembled into a single narrative, they were first published in the LRB after Miss Shepherds death. 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. Once he screeched to a halt, having spied a gorgeous wreck of a serpentine fronted chest of drawers in a hedgerow. It wasnt started by Cond Nast, but rather bought by the company back when it was published independently as Interiors and headquartered above a florists shop on Fulham Road. I feel more than a touch mournful that Rupert Thomas is stepping down from The World of Interiors after a mere 21 years. 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). Budgets were neither reduced nor increased. He said, Dont move anything. Do you want me to remove the remote control? I was relieved, really. (235 x 305 mm. He collected coins from the age of five and, later, was happiest when rearranging the furniture in a shed in his mothers garden. Then there was the other one, which came out of the nest too soon and had to be fed by the robin. 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. This fragment of a tin-glazed pottery plate (pictured) from about 1690 commemorates William and Mary. At 16 I briefly had a stall in Camden Lock. His work appears regularly in The World of Interiors, Elle Dcor, Vogue, AD, and House & Garden.. Karen Howes is an interior design writer whose . He was sent to train with an infantry platoon in Pontefract that was going to be sent to the war in Korea; not unreasonably, he didnt want to go. Rupert is an editor of The World Of Interiors magazine. So are Brad Pitt, Cate Blanchett and the photographer Tim Walker. Nick chose me, rather than the other way round, he says of Hytner. The director approached him in 1989 to write an adaptation of The Wind In The Willows for the National Theatre, then run by Richard Eyre. 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. 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. The spaces made by Robert are comfortable, delightful and endlessly rewarding. Both those things make you want to go on with it both the praise and the criticism. As a subscriber, you have 10 gift articles to give each month. The World of Interiors has a tiny staff of 13, many of whom have worked there for years, aging happily in place, after arriving in roundabout ways. Hamish BowlesEditor in ChiefMaggie GledhillPA to Editor in Chief, Marie-France BoyerAssociate Editor, Paris. Tarr is a minor British inter-war painter and no one wanted it. Queen Anne Grace. In the film, there are two Alan Bennetts. He and Thomas use the east coast mainline regularly to visit their house in Yorkshire; the line was renationalised after the financial crisis in 2009, but privatised again early in 2015, which he says was pure ideology on the part of the Conservative-led coalition. The van had been parked at various points along the road, and at length drifted down to his house. But in the initial phase of their relationship, the duo . These days he doesnt go out all that much, certainly not to the theatre. 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. Editor, World of Interiors magazine. Robert was frequently asked by his customers to decorate their houses. Details and Domino folded. It was making a profit and there was no reason to sell it back again.
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