As you might imagine, it was a revelation this morning to realize that Nicky Haslam's memoir matches the chandelier.  But this is also why I wish you wouldn't insist upon my illustrating every post, since in this instance it required standing on a rather frail Second Empire side chair on a deeply overcast day and consequently waking the downstairs neighbors when I lost my balance.  And to add a somewhat bittersweet note to it all, my efforts sadly didn't quite pay off, as you can see. 

I must urge you, however, to go out and pick up Redeeming Features by Nicholas Haslam, (Knopf, New York, 2009), because I can barely get through a single page without wanting to reach for the phone to call and share an especially good bit with you.  Practically everyone we've ever cared about or read or giggled about or sighed over is in here.  To name just a few, who have also appeared in these pages:

Cecil Beaton, Francis Wyndham, Margaret Duchess of Argyll, Auden, Lord Berners, Princess Margaret, Noel Coward, Nancy Mitford, Nancy Cunard, Daisy Fellowes, Tony Duquette, the Dolly sisters, Elsie de Wolfe, the Duchess of Devonshire, Sigfried Sassoon, and Stephen Tennant. 

I promise, it'll get you through the holidays, no matter how challenging they may be.  Also recommended (and included in the shot):

Francois-Marie Banier, Les femmes du metro Pompe, Gallimard 2006.  One of the few people not mentioned in Redeeming Features, and because there's an exhibition of his photography through the 17th, in Lille [Here]

Carol Mavor, Reading Boyishly Roland Barthes, J.M. Barrie, Jacques Henri Lartigue, Marcel Proust, and D.W. Winnicott, Duke University Press 2007.  Profusely illustrated and something vaguely in the vein of W.G. Sebald, at least in method but more fun.  

and (not illustrated): Lawrence Rinder's Revenge of the Decorated Pigs, a novel, Publication Studio (publicationstudio.biz) 2009 which just arrived.  It was the review in The Economist [Here] that piqued my interest.  More later.

Now I'm thinking that from now on the title of every post should be one word that ends in y.  I hope you appreciate what I go through for you.