Deborah Friedell

Elon Musk​ bought Twitter because he loved it. He loved tweeting poop emojis at dawn; he loved tweeting masturbation jokes at dusk. He loved that he had more Twitter followers than almost anyone else, though it galled that Barack Obama and Justin Bieber had more. While other celebrity social media accounts were often so sanitised that they smelled of chlorine – ‘Happy Tuesday...

In​ the first pages of Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis (2016), J.D. Vance admits that he’s ‘especially skilful’ at charming older men. His mother has had many boyfriends, as well as five husbands, and Vance spent his childhood ‘navigating various father figures’. He flattered them, ‘pretended to like them’, and would...

Robert F. Kennedy Jr​ was nine years old on 22 November 1963 when his mother told him that ‘a bad man shot Uncle Jack.’ He was fourteen, asleep at boarding school, when his father was assassinated at a hotel in Los Angeles. He became used to the sound of people weeping everywhere he went, no matter what he did. He looked so much like his father that ‘even fifty years after...

In​ 1867, Mark Twain went to Europe aboard the Quaker City, the ‘first luxury cruise in American history’. He was underwhelmed by the Titians in the Doge’s Palace – ‘there is nothing tangible about these imaginary portraits, nothing that I can grasp and take a living interest in’ – but awestruck by his tour guide. The man appeared to be – was...

Virginia Woolf​ wasn’t sure what she felt when she heard that Katherine Mansfield was dead. The cook, ‘in her sensational way’, had broken the news to her at breakfast: ‘Mrs Murry’s dead! It says so in the paper!’

At that one feels – what? A shock of relief? – a rival the less? Then confusion at feeling so little – then, gradually,...