(Features: Angelina Jolie, Celebrities in their dream-role...)
Features: Angelina Jolie, Celebrities in their dream-roles including Gwyneth Paltrow & Drew Barrymore, George W. Bush, Iraq, JFK Jr. as a boy, and much more!
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Named one of the best books of 2017 by Time, People, Am...)
Named one of the best books of 2017 by Time, People, Amazon.com, The Guardian, Paste Magazine, The Economist, Entertainment Weekly, & Vogue
Tina Brown kept delicious daily diaries throughout her eight spectacular years as editor-in-chief of Vanity Fair. Today they provide an incendiary portrait of the flash and dash and power brokering of the Excessive Eighties in New York and Hollywood.
The Vanity Fair Diaries is the story of an Englishwoman barely out of her twenties who arrives in New York City with a dream. Summoned from London in hopes that she can save Condé Nast's troubled new flagship Vanity Fair, Tina Brown is immediately plunged into the maelstrom of the competitive New York media world and the backstabbing rivalries at the court of the planet's slickest, most glamour-focused magazine company. She survives the politics, the intrigue, and the attempts to derail her by a simple stratagem: succeeding. In the face of rampant skepticism, she triumphantly reinvents a failing magazine.
Here are the inside stories of Vanity Fair scoops and covers that sold millions?the Reagan kiss, the meltdown of Princess Diana's marriage to Prince Charles, the sensational Annie Leibovitz cover of a gloriously pregnant, naked Demi Moore. In the diary's cinematic pages, the drama, the comedy, and the struggle of running an "it" magazine come to life. Brown's Vanity Fair Diaries is also a woman's journey, of making a home in a new country and of the deep bonds with her husband, their prematurely born son, and their daughter.
Astute, open-hearted, often riotously funny, Tina Brown's The Vanity Fair Diaries is a compulsively fascinating and intimate chronicle of a woman's life in a glittering era.
Newsweek Queen Elizabeth II The Diamond Queen 60th Diamond Jubilee 60 Special Commemorative Issue (Softcover, 96 Pages)
(Many photo's - 24 pages. Article on the Media Monarch tha...)
Many photo's - 24 pages. Article on the Media Monarch that took 60 yrs and her astonishing reign of change. Article on the Real Elizabeth. Article on the Culture Queen. And much more
(Twenty years after her death, this dazzling photography c...)
Twenty years after her death, this dazzling photography collection with a foreword by bestselling author Tina Brown celebrates Princess Dianas poignant life in more than 100 iconic images.
For the millions who adored the People's Princess, this lavish book presents Diana Spencer's life in glorious color. Page after page of inside photos document the royal's most memorable moments in the spotlight; a luminous, personal remembrance by friend and biographer Tina Brown adds context and nuance to a poignant life twenty years after her tragic death. Float down memory lane through more than 100 remarkable images of Diana, from her days as a schoolgirl to her engagement to Prince Charles, the birth of Princes William and Harry, and her life in the media as an outspoken advocate for the poor, the sick, and the downtrodden. This elegant book features reflections from those who knew her best, recollections from journalists, dignitaries and celebrities like Bill Clinton, Mother Teresa, and Elton John, and personal insight through the princess's own words. The tie-in companion to Diana: The Lost Tapes, airing on the National Geographic Channel, this richly illustrated book is a beautiful ode to one of the world's most beloved women.
Vanity Fair Magazine - April 1984: Keith Richards, Helmut Newton Photographs Blondes, & More!
(This issue features a photo interview with Keith Richards...)
This issue features a photo interview with Keith Richards, Dominick Dunne, Helmut Newton on blondes (including Darryl Hannah and Kim Basinger), Annie Leibovitz photos of comics like Pee-Wee Herman and Gilbert Gottfried, fiction by E.L. Doctorow, the women of photographer Jacques-Henri Lartigue, and much more!
(Ten years after her death, Princess Diana remains a myste...)
Ten years after her death, Princess Diana remains a mystery. Was she â??the peopleâ??s princess,â? who electrified the world with her beauty and humanitarian missions? Or was she a manipulative, media-savvy neurotic who nearly brought down the monarchy? Only Tina Brown, former editor-in-chief of Tatler, Englandâ??s glossiest gossip magazine; Vanity Fair; and The New Yorker could possibly give us the truth.
Tina Brown is a journalist, magazine editor, columnist, talk-show host and author of The Diana Chronicles, a biography of Diana, Princess of Wales.
Background
Tina was born on 21 January in 1953 in Maidenhead, England. Christina Hambly Brown and her brother, Christopher, were raised by George Hambly Brown and Bettina (Kohr) Brown in Little Marlow, Buckinghamshire. Her film-producer father and her mother (once a press agent for Sir Laurence Olivier) gave Tina not only a loving, comfortable, upper-middle-class home, but the inevitable excitement deriving from close association with the film community.
Education
Brown later enjoyed the full range of experience provided by a boarding school education.
While yet in college, Brown won the 1973 drama award given by the (London) Sunday Times for her play Under the Bamboo Tree.
In 1974 she graduated from St. Anne's, Oxford, and soon thereafter landed various assignments with the Times, Punch, the Sunday Telegraph, and the New Statesman on numerous topics focusing on the United States.
Career
Her editorial rabbit punches knocked all three magazines into top-seller realm by boosting circulation, ad revenues, and reader interest. Assuming the post of editor-in-chief of Vanity Fair magazine in 1984, Tina Brown, formerly with Britain's Tatler, delighted both skeptics and devotees.
Vanity Fair, an art and literary magazine popular before World War II, had been reintroduced in 1983 by publisher S. I. Newhouse, Jr. , but suffered from weak editorial focus and limp enthusiasm among media critics.
As editor, Brown employed a saucy cleverness to both tighten that focus and rouse apathetic critics.
Her film-producer father and her mother (once a press agent for Sir Laurence Olivier) gave Tina not only a loving, comfortable, upper-middle-class home, but the inevitable excitement deriving from close association with the film community. Brown later enjoyed the full range of experience provided by a boarding school education.
While yet in college, Brown won the 1973 drama award given by the (London) Sunday Times for her play Under the Bamboo Tree.
In 1974 she graduated from St. Anne's, Oxford, and soon thereafter landed various assignments with the Times, Punch, the Sunday Telegraph, and the New Statesman on numerous topics focusing on the United States. Brown's sharp, witty prose garnered her the Young Journalist of the Year Award given in 1978 by Punch, where she was for several years a columnist.
Her choice as editor was a gamble on the part of Gary Bogard, the moribund magazine's new owner. Interjecting new life into Tatler was a challenge to which Brown was more than equal; as she noted at the time, one of her goals was to achieve "irreverence" in treating certain topics, including the British monarchy, formerly sacred among readers.
That this was just the approach needed to expand Tatler's readership was only a hunch, but one that paid off handsomely.
In 1979 Brown took the reins of the Tatler, a venerable British publication founded in 1709. Her choice as editor was a gamble on the part of Gary Bogard, the moribund magazine's new owner. Interjecting new life into Tatler was a challenge to which Brown was more than equal; as she noted at the time, one of her goals was to achieve "irreverence" in treating certain topics, including the British monarchy, formerly sacred among readers.
That this was just the approach needed to expand Tatler's readership was only a hunch, but one that paid off handsomely. Brown's adroit blend of elegant sass, tongue-in-cheek primness, and cutting-edge intelligence saw Tatler quadruple its circulation in four years. More important, it ensured the magazine's appeal. Millionaire publisher S. I. Newhouse, Jr. , decided to buy the wildly successful Tatler in 1982.
The following year Brown left as editor, but returned to Newhouse several months later as an editorial adviser to the faltering Vanity Fair. Asked to enhance the flavor of a magazine others had failed to make palatable, Brown served forth a publication that not only bespoke good taste, but whetted the reader's appetite for more.
As a result, in January 1984 Brown was named Vanity Fair's editor-in-chief, replacing Leo Lerman. It took over a year for her influence to take effect, but money eventually poured in from advertisers and subscribers alike.
In 1986 the magazine was cited as "hottest" by the trade journal Adweek; in 1988 Brown was named Editor of the Year by Advertising Age. Thanks to Brown, Vanity Fair threw off its stodgy image by covering, courting, and occasionally excoriating celebrities, in much the same way that Tatler had done earlier. Some decisions, such as the 1991 cover choice of nude and pregnant actress Demi Moore, were predictably controversial.
But it was Brown's use of the unexpected and the titillating that boosted Vanity Fair's readership to one million, reversed drooping ad sales, and promoted Brown to virtual celebrity stardom. Precisely because of their profitability, her strategies were destined to leave Vanity Fair; another Newhouse publication, The New Yorker, was ailing and needed assistance. Despite the editorial expertise of Robert Gottlieb, whom S. I. Newhouse had put in charge in 1987, The New Yorker was in trouble.
To salvage a $147 million investment, Newhouse switched editors again. In an outrageous gamble, in July 1992 he announced Gottlieb's resignation and named Tina Brown as The New Yorker editor.
He later shifted Graydon Carter (founder of Spy, another Newhouse publication) into place as head of Vanity Fair. These announcements scandalized and angered The New Yorker faithful. Although Brown won admiration for reviving flagging sales of once-healthy magazines, few believed she had the skills to succeed as The New Yorker editor, and many felt her previous triumphs were due to lack of discrimination among Tatler and Vanity Fair readers.
The transition from Vanity Fair to The New Yorker was not an easy one for Brown, which was evident in her emotional good-bye to Vanity Fair staff. Also, some said she worried about being unwelcome at The New Yorker. Commenting with scrupulous care about editorial changes, Brown used such terms as "irreverent" and "more timely" to signal her intentions.
She denied, though, any desire to promulgate a wholesale transformation of what remained (despite the previously unheard-of use of color on editorial pages) America's most exalted, highly respected literary magazine. The New Yorker continued to draw attention, mainly due to Brown's pannache.
In 1995 Brown shocked the writing world by inviting Roseanne, the controversial television star, to contribute to the issue on American women.
In mid 1998 Brown ended her six year reign as editor of The New Yorker, though she was offered to stay another five years. She planned on running a new media company for Miramax Films.
Attractive, articulate, and intelligent, she was also a known cut-up and quite mischievous on occasion.
Quotes from others about the person
It was received well. John Lanchester in The New Yorker wrote: “ [Tina Brown] tells the story fluently, with engrossing detail on every page, and with the mastery of tone that made her Tatler famous for being popular with the people it was laughing at. ”
The New York Times: “Tina Brown knows this world better than many who inhabit it . .. This book resembles the Queen in its calm, credible, quietly chattering view of life inside the Royal hothouse. ”
The Wall Street Journal: “The book's greatest attraction . .. is its sheer wealth of detail, by turns salacious, vinegary, depressing, and hilarious . .. a psychodrama, a morality play, a pageant of recklessness and revenge, of passion and pity, of loneliness and looniness. "
Connections
Tina married to Harold Evans on 20 August in 1981. They had two children, a son born in 1986 and a daughter born in 1990.