Society

The Face, launched in London in 1980 by Nick Logan, was one of my first portals into subcultures that were far from my reach growing up in suburban Atlanta. The magazine introduced me to the photography of Corinne Day, Juergen Teller and David Sims. The original iteration stopped publishing in 2004 and then restarted, under new leadership, in 2019. The new version had some high points, especially an Olivia Rodrigo cover photographed by Jim Goldberg. Still, it could never capture the true spirit of the original and ownership unceremoniously pulled the plug last month. I knew the business was for sale, for a very affordable price, but they couldn’t find

Prince Harry used to be fun. It is easy to forget this given the Meghan-Montecito-highly litigious incarnation of the Duke of Sussex, but there was a reason why, for many years, he was the most popular and accessible member of “the Firm.” Less stiff than his brother and considerably less cerebral than his father, he conveyed a sense that he was Harry Wales, the royal you’d want to go for a pint with. Or, as we now know, to have “movie snuggles” with journalists, with whom he could complain about being “hungover again for the third day running.” The messages between Harry and the journalist Charlotte Griffiths are quite the

I am glad that BBC Radio 4 is producing a series called How Reading Made Us, presented by the subtle, super-literate Times of London columnist James Marriott. I must declare an interest. Roughly 98 percent of my earnings over 45 years have depended on the fact that plenty of people like reading. Now we are thinking harder, however, about the fact that form affects substance. The idea of an encyclopedia, for example, as developed (from classical roots) in the 18th century, was that all needful knowledge on a particular subject could be assembled and consulted in a book or series of books. With AI, there is little need for this