Human tragedy

F Scott Fitzgerald famously wrote that ‘there are no second acts in American lives’. In his particular case, poor Scott was right. He died broke and forgotten in his early forties, but at least he expired in the arms of his lover, the beautiful Miss Graham, who went on to become a powerful gossip columnist in Hollywood’s heyday. I thought of second acts the other day when reading an interview with Kimberly Quinn, our very own ex-publisher who scandalised London a few years ago when it was revealed that, alongside selling ads for the most elegant and best British weekly, she was offering rest and relaxation to the Home Secretary of the time, David Blunkett.

As everyone knows by now, Mrs Quinn was and remains married to the British Vogue publisher, who — as the sleaze oozed out — stood by his woman like no self-respecting macho man would. I remember at the time offering to write an apologia for cheating on one’s husband with a blind man, but friends in the editorial department advised against it.