<br><br>Prior to that, spent 10 years on the Waitrose Board, accountable for all elements of the 7bn commercial and customer proposition. There are no celebrities on the cover (and rarely any inside). He leaves a huge void but also a wonderful legacy which lives on. My feeling is that probably hed been doing imitations of me for years and when he did Cocktail Sticks he was simply going public, Bennett says. 2/9 The study inside Giorgio Armani's Milan residence. Recently, its been The Shepherds Life, a memoir of farming in the Lake District by James Rebanks (a very good book). I've been going to Portobello on a Friday morning for 30 years - particularly Golborne Road, which is still junky, cheap and cheerful, like markets used to be. The times changed and then Rupert and I have been together for 23 years, you see, so its never been an issue since then., He wouldnt have come out while his parents were alive, anyway. I have collaborated with the WoI for nearly 30 years, through the time of Min Hogg and her brilliant successor Rupert Thomas, I approve of him, if only because it brings Labour back to what they ought to be thinking about. We are talking in his front room in Primrose Hill in London. There were so many incidents when she was not actually physically roughed up, but people banged on the side of the van, hoping to get her out and waving her stick, that I always had one eye on her and it stopped me working. To experience The World of Interiors, you still have to buy the print magazine. He was sent to train with an infantry platoon in Pontefract that was going to be sent to the war in Korea; not unreasonably, he didnt want to go. Pen I try to hand-write cards to people, particularly if they've sent pictures of their houses to the magazine. The glossy monthly magazine covers interior design. In all his travelling across the world and with all the items that he saw, Robert maintained an encyclopedic set of references, but had an amused take on conventional categories. Find Rupert Thomas of The World of Interiors's articles, email address, contact information, Twitter and more The course, though, was lovely, idyllic. That began to go, I hope., Bennett has written that he gave Guy Burgess some of his own sentiments in his one-act play and film about the spy, An Englishman Abroad lines such as: I can say I love London. He had very green fingers. The World of Interiors - August 2011 Editor - Mr. Rupert Thomas. You dont feel the hand of advertisers, publicists or digital panic on every page. But we were never like that, he said. It takes about 45 minutes. Titles once so culturally influential they created mythologies around them Time, Sports Illustrated, Rolling Stone have been supplanted by social media and blogs, and are sometimes so thin with advertising and editorial pages as to look like brochures. His partner of 23 years, Rupert Thomas, is the editor of the World Of Interiors magazine and it shows the room is a comfortable cave of 18th-century pictures, a mantelpiece loaded up with cards (one handmade in the shape of a red-soled grey shoe) and a wall lined with books: fat Pevsner architectural guides, the journals of Anthony Powell, Virginia Woolf and John Cheever, Claire Tomalins Thomas Hardy biography, and volumes on the history of blue-and-white china. Occasionally people say they like my work and then I see they have a copy of the Mail, and you think, Well, how can you? The irony is, he says, that half the royal family dont even sing the anthem they dont even seem to know the words to Jerusalem. James spends the summer with relatives in the country. Bennetts work is full of timid characters overwhelmed by and attracted to bolder, flashier types: Kenneth Halliwell and Joe Orton in the film Prick Up Your Ears, for example; Benjamin Britten and WH Auden in the play The Habit Of Art; even Bennett and Miss Shepherd in The Lady In The Van. Carol Prisant, the New York editor, was an antique dealer whod never written for magazines before she penned a query letter to Ms. Hogg and was hired, in 1989. Its not of the moment.. Only it isnt. Its never settled. For years after, The World of Interiors shared office space with the Cond Nast circulation department in another building across town, leaving it physically and metaphorically apart. New York Interiors | Vendome Press | Publisher of Art and Illustrated Books New York Interiors By: Simon Upton Edited by Karen Howes Foreword by Rupert Thomas 360 pages 9 x 12 in. Curated by Rupert Thomas, former editor of The World of Interiors, the exhibition extends throughout the house and is the largest selection of Simon's work ever shown publicly. Once, on a Turkish bus, he bought the headscarf of the lady in front of him a kandili print with a pattern of pea pods. Vogue and Vanity Fair are famous for the practice. And it makes money as a print object, especially in Britain where there is still a robust newsstand culture and an appreciation for print (In 2019, ad revenue for The World of Interiors outperformed the market, Ms. Redmayne said. In fact, the photography is rather moody and in chiaroscuro tones, giving the empty furnished rooms a compelling, dreamlike quality. Today's barber is my partner, Rupert Thomas, who, while professing to admire my abundant locks, manages to make me look like a blond Hitler. 192 pages, Paperback. Rupert Thomas. Garden Ours is a real London garden: tiny. While Bennetts audiences and readers have come to know all kinds of apparently intimate things about him the pigskin suitcases his Aunty Myra brought back from India during the war, the particular smell of his grandmothers dresser he has kept much of himself back. "To us, San Franciscans seem. Since 1981 The World of Interiors has documented the rich diversity of ways in which we live, showcasing the stylish and the unexpected as well as applauding individuality. In my case, coming out about what? As King Charles wrote of Robert, You often hear of people who are said to have a good eye, but Robert Kimes must surely be one of the best. He gets on the tube with his backpack. I bought it cheap. The findings demonstrated the power of data mining over the world's largest set of bibliographic metadata and highlighted the value of collaborative collective cataloging. By the age of 16, he had won a place at the University of Oxford to read medieval history, but, too young to go up, spent 18 months working on archaeological digs in Greece and Israel. He researched each piece and he learnt where to sell it to get the best price. Walk to work I'm not good at getting up in the morning, but I actively look forward to the daily walk to work through Regent's Park. But we are., The Lady In The Van is released on 13 November, The Uncommon Reader by Alan Bennett review, Original reporting and incisive analysis, direct from the Guardian every morning, 2023 Guardian News & Media Limited or its affiliated companies. Sitting in his wood-paneled office inside Vogue House, the publishers London headquarters, Mr. Read held up the October issue of The World of Interiors. If that makes sense., Inside The World of Interiors, Cond Nasts Secret Weapon, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/04/style/world-of-interiors.html. Robert persuaded her to let him sell it for her, and she set him up in a shop in Oundle. The notion that they were wanting to choose somebody who would win the election when we are three, four years away from one, regardless of what half the nation wants that seems to me far more risky than what they have done. He loves the comedy of Stewart Lee, and the geeky sitcom The Big Bang Theory, and the funny but so savage playwright Martin McDonagh. Rupert Thomas Private Pilot and Business Owner at Rockwell Claims Consultants, Inc. Charlotte, NC Owner - Rockwell Claims Consultants, Inc., +3 more KELLER GRADUATE SCHOOL OF MANAGEMENT, +1. document.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value", ( new Date() ).getTime() ); Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window), Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window), Click to email a link to a friend (Opens in new window), Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window), Click to share on WhatsApp (Opens in new window), The Company of Artists: The Origins of the Royal Academy of Arts in London, The Rise of Design: Design and Domestic Interior in Eighteenth-century England. Helen, the author of the acclaimed Meg and Mog series of childrens books, died in 2012. At the time of the relationship he enjoyed the sense of wrongfooting people: I think I probably got some satisfaction from thinking, Well, everyone assumes I am gay.. Its the antithesis to the data-driven digital attitude that we have to embrace in other part of our business.. At 16 I briefly had a stall in Camden Lock. Categories: Suggest Category. The attention that goes into the photo captions its a dying art, said Fritz Karch, an antique dealer in New Jersey who used to work at Martha Stewart Living magazine and has read The World of Interiors since the mid-80s. To my lasting regret, I never got to know Robert very well. Several months into the works I rang him on site and he told me, it looks like a rather bad shipwreck, I can see from the third floor to the basement through the joists!. After Oxford, a chance meeting at a student house party at Ashton Wold, the Northamptonshire home of the scientist Miriam Rothschild, led to his first shop. It makes you sound so pompous if you put it like that.. He still has that schoolboy mop of blond hair, and were it not for a little stiffness as he rises from his chair, and deep veins on his hands, you would take him for a much younger man. Its not trend-driven. The World of Interiors is produced in a corner of the second floor of Vogue House, the publishers drably charming brown-brick building in central London. (When quizzed last summer he knew exactly the colour of the watered silk covering four chairs he had sold to my parents in 1972.). To fund our efforts, The World of Interiors runs advertisements and occasionally partners with advertisers to produce sponsored content, videos, events, and other collaborations. Pigeonholed. When you walk, even in central London, you're very aware of the seasons. . It enjoys a semi-indie status among our titles, said Albert Read, the managing director of Cond Nast Britain. 1/9 Inside Nicolas Ghesquire's flat in Paris. Together they began to create a range of fabrics including one inspired by the pea pods. 5/9 The restaurant is what I like to think of New York as being: glamorous, bustling, relentlessly social. Rupert Thomas is editor in chief of World of Interiors. I mean, if the World of Interiors circulation suddenly jumped to 150,000, Id almost be worried.. One day I asked him how you can tell a fake from a genuine thing. Having a fragment makes it human. It afforded Robert the bliss of rooting through the royal attics at Windsor on behalf of a client who shared many of his tastes, including a love of Near Eastern fabrics. The World of Interiors - November 2021. It remains firmly acknowledged as the most . A collection she had discussed with Robert before he died is under way. Our goal is to document the rich diversity of ways in which we live, showcasing the stylish and the unexpected as well as applauding individuality. He is not a celebrity editor in the Anna Wintour mold. Those who have to sacrifice in order to purchase it know it. Oddly, few people round here use their gardens, so you can be out all day and not hear anything. Every morning he looked minutely at his catalogues and turned down the corners before handing in a list of lots to the auction houses. The van had been parked at various points along the road, and at length drifted down to his house. After 40 years, it continues to surprise and inspire. The local men indulge secret desires in a deserted barn and James' relatives have their own hidden pleasures. The knowledge there is phenomenal. The World of Interiors is essentially a decorating magazine, but this is like saying Vogue concerns itself with sewing. From childhood, Robert was fascinated by history. Mr. Thomas grew up in public housing in north London (his mother was a costumer) and joined the staff of The World of Interiors as a junior editor in 1992, after working for the art-book . The glamorising of her that has happened has nothing to do with anything, really its just exploiting her. I assume he means Helen Mirrens more recent take in the film The Queen, and on stage in The Audience. Theres something about it that does not feel throwaway. Rupert Thomas, the 22 . To submit comments, suggestions, or other inquiries related to digital editorial content, reach out to donna.salek@condenast.co.uk, and for print-related queries, ariadne.fletcher@condenast.co.uk. Very often overawed clients would come into the shop and on seeing Robert would declare, are you the great Robert Kime I so admire everything you do, to which Robert would invariably wince, wave them away and say, oh, youll get over it. I had harboured a small and ludicrous fantasy that Bennett might also have ended up spying, but am swiftly disabused. Let's take a look at their personal lives and find out how it all started. The gold-standard shelter magazine runs on a brass-tacks budget and refuses to kowtow to the internet.Lord of the light box: Rupert Thomas, the editor in chief of The World of Interiors, at the magazine's office in London.Credit.Tom Jamieson for The New York TimesPublished Dec. 4, 2019Updated Dec. 5, 2019LONDON To be a magazine reader Then there was the other one, which came out of the nest too soon and had to be fed by the robin. Share Since 1981, The World of Interiors has documented the rich diversity of ways in which we live, showcasing the stylish and the unexpected as well as applauding individuality. It was making a profit and there was no reason to sell it back again. Subscriptions hotline: 0844 848 5202, open Mon-Fri 8am-9.30pm, Sat 8am-4pm. Is it really true, I ask, that you keep your work-in-progress in the fridge for safekeeping? Out now in the current November issue of the magazine. I dont know whether he does it instinctively or whether he does it with other people, but it always works for me. It used to be like that at the BBC: Bennett worked for 20 years with the late producer Innes Lloyd, on dramas such as A Day Out (his first play for television, broadcast in 1972) and Talking Heads. . It was about five foot higher when we bought the house. Bringing her into the drive was a way of getting rid of that and enabling me to find a way to work. I was writing overlooking the garden and it was exactly as it was with Miss Shepherd: half my eye was on this bird because there were jays about, and seagulls. His friend Alastair Langlands, who wrote the 2015 monograph Robert Kime (Frances Lincoln), was astonished when he saw the habitually gentle, soft-voiced Robert in operation at antique fairs: He was extraordinary, always first at the gate as it opened, deciding instantly what he wanted, concluding deals at lightning speed.. I tell him I still dont understand why Miss Shepherd ended up in his driveway; for years, visitors to the house were obliged to sidle past her parked van. He lays out the whole shoot from England from that series of photographs. 3.33. His tutor would not hear of it and gave Robert the rest of the year to sort things out. Lady of the lampshade: Emma Redmayne, the publisher of World of Interiors. With his partner of 23 years, Rupert Thomas. WOW! You tell people that youre happy and they are bored by that. You told him what you wanted to do, and he would arrange things without letting you know there was any problem at all. In the film, there are two Alan Bennetts. Bringing style to an empty space is relatively easy; imbuing it with soul and a sense of history is far more complicated. And with 43 percent of total circulation coming from subscriptions, it boasts the most loyal subscribers of any Cond title). That is true of me, I think. Design Avenue (11) Design Centre News (88) Events (12) Interviews (702) Latest Products (856 . Early in 2009, a team from Christies came down to view the proposed lots for the first of his sales, one of them rather cheekily asked, who are your best clients, Robert? to which, with a mischievous look, Robert replied, the ones I turn down. Mr. Thomas showed off what would be his office, had he chosen to sit apart from his staff and not at a cluttered desk alongside them following the example set by his predecessor. We also earn affiliate revenue through products seen on our website and other platforms, frequently via products that our writers and editors have personally used and love. His partner of 23 years, Rupert Thomas, is the editor of the World Of Interiors magazine and it shows the room is a comfortable cave of 18th-century pictures, a mantelpiece loaded up with cards (one handmade in the shape of a red-soled grey shoe) and a wall lined with books: fat Pevsner architectural guides, the journals of Anthony Powell, Virginia Woolf and John Cheever, Claire Tomalins Thomas Hardy biography, and volumes on the history of blue-and-white china. I don't listen to music. Im freaking out. Bennett has been known to complain that he is not taken as seriously as some of his peers, and a 1998 National Theatre ranking of the . Being sceptical about patriotism is a part of patriotism a refined sense of patriotism, I think. The men stood in the center of the office over a white tabletop that, on closer inspection, revealed itself to be a dormant light box for viewing photographic transparencies. His new film, The Lady In The Van, is about the extraordinary figure of Miss Shepherd, who for 15 years, from 1974-89, made her home in a van parked in the driveway of the house where he used to live, a few streets from his current home in Camden Town. Except at The World of Interiors, which has lost none of its gloss and seems utterly unaffected by modern media trends. Everyone at his school knew there was a possible get-out clause that could be invoked by bright boys: the Russian course, an intensive language training aimed at providing interpreters, translators and sometimes intelligence officers. Ms. Smith went on: He just showed up by himself with a tiny bag. The people who produce it, he said, are all artistic bohemian types. Editor, World of Interiors magazine. Other than a cursory if reasonably popular Instagram presence and website of inspirational indices, its not really on the internet, or trying limply to be of the internet as so many other legacy titles are. All of which leaves Mr. Thomas in the unique position of editing a print magazine with a rosy future. Details and Domino folded. Rupert Thomas Bio Details. Its features covering every aspect of interior design, from traditional to contemporary, have made it unique in the world of publishing. Education. I see that poems like [Hughes] The Pike are wonderful, but they arent about the life I lead.. Part of its magic is that it's just a fragment. It raised two fledglings: one fell out of the nest and was killed. We can do a major shoot in a day., Mr. Thomas said, Theres something better than throwing money at a situation. He got into trouble a few years back when he said in an interview that he didnt read contemporary British fiction, which was taken as being an affront to AS Byatt and everybody else but I just read other things. They're serious and thorough, but can be off-puttingly dry. Professionally, Hytner gets the mixture of encouragement and criticism exactly right, Bennett says. In Bennetts very funny story The Uncommon Reader, the Queen discovers a taste for novels and thereby an inner existence. The only styling I did was hide wires.. He talks about the totalitarian Tories, why he doesnt go to the theatre, and a lifetime of being contrary. History The . The magazines readership is small, with a circulation of 55,000, but influential. It started with a pair I bought in the King's Road when I was 15 that laced up at the side. The office is one largish room with deeply scuffed wood floors, a drop ceiling and windows overlooking green Hanover Square. I was quite conservative and Christian and rather priggish when I went into the army. She had a mass of furniture she wanted to clear, but had fallen out with the two great auction houses. They are also useful decrypters of taste, and this famous literary diarist is clearly a connoisseur of other literary diarists. Other subscription queries can be directed tocondenast@subscription.co.uk. His own work continues slowly: he goes to his desk each morning at 10.30am; and Hytner has an old screenplay of his, once written for John Schlesinger but never made, that might turn into something. Or rather, he is easily mistaken: those wry Yorkshire tones and an art that tends to dwell on matters domestic and provincial mean he is frequently regarded as rather cosy when, in fact, plays such as The History Boys and People only thinly disguise his political anger. I was so nervous it was painful, really. Rivals Hearst and Meredith face similar challenges. I also have a set of Shell Guides (pictured) and find them invaluable. I became more leftwing. In its entrance is a bright 1950s machine that makes a wonderful clunking sound as it gives you this little ticket (pictured) with the Odeon's details on the back. He still has that schoolboy mop of blond hair, and were it not for a little stiffness as he rises from his chair, and deep veins on his hands, you would take him for a much younger man. It's not big enough to dig, so lots of deadheading goes on. It would have distressed both of them. in life and in his fiction, Alan Bennett is a bundle of contradictions. Their first meeting was in a restaurant in Primrose Hill, and Bennett spent much of the dinner explaining the area to him. He could summon any number of exceptions and variations with his fluid vocabulary of detail. Its not merely that they want to be the governing party, but the only party, and thats never been part of the British political tradition. 4.0 / 5.0 0 comments. Everybody knows how she speaks, what her circumstances are, so youve only got to do a tiny bit. (LogOut/ When the digital-advertising apocalypse came for print in the last decade, gutting budgets along with staffs, The World of Interiors scarcely had to adjust. His partner of 23 years, Rupert Thomas, is the editor of the World Of Interiors magazine and it shows - the room is a comfortable cave of 18th-century pictures, a mantelpiece loaded up with . The Bennett at the desk knows, on some level, that Miss Shepherd may well end up providing him with good material (though, he points out, I wasnt nurturing her as a possible subject). Huge thanks to Rupert Thomas and all the team at The World of Interiors for featuring one of our studio's favourite projects The refurbishment of an unloved farmhouse on a family estate in Buckinghamshire. The editorial team of The World of Interiors works to ensure the accuracy and integrity of everything we publish, and we carefully report, edit, and fact check every story we produce. Thomas, who joined the Conde Nast title in 1991, had been editor-in-chief Min Hogg's deputy since 1997. His compositions involve site, landscape, architecture, spatial sequence, historical reference, texture, material, colour, and function. Youre totally involved in the product. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/04/style/world-of-interiors.html. The adjacent room held a worktable strewn with fabric swatches, a sewing machine, back issues of the magazine, clothes on hangars, rolls of wallpaper stuffed into a closet. Glamour, Seventeen, Vibe, Self and Playboy have either retreated from print altogether or appear on newsstands infrequently. This was testament to his enormous memory and capacity for detail. A friend in Buenos Aires also sends me gaucho trousers that button up at the ankle but are wide in the leg so you can sling yourself on to a horse. a cover quite as eye-popping as this current one by Donatella Versace," writes Rupert Thomas, editor of The World of Interiors, . A highly experienced and inspirational business leader, who sits on the Fortnum & Mason Executive as Chief Commercial Officer. New York Interiors: Simon Upton Hardcover - 7 Oct. 2021 by Karen Howes (Editor), Rupert Thomas (Foreword), Simon Upton (Photographer) 38 ratings See all formats and editions Hardcover 47.55 1 Used from 42.18 7 New from 42.17 Rupert Thomas, 44, has been the editor of The World of Interiors since June 2000, and is only the second person to edit the design and decoration magazine since it was founded in 1981. It wasnt, at the time, a humanitarian gesture, Bennett says. Well, I dont really, he says. a cursory if reasonably popular Instagram presence. The architecture was a document, just like the decorative objects, which all brought their referential history to the composition. Gender. My parents were quite shy and, looking back, it felt they had made shy into a virtue and I believed that, he tells me. I have always loved exploring buildings with Robert, each of us trying to unravel the puzzle of the sequence of periods and with this understanding making the new work legible. He always said that selling the furniture his grandmother and his mother, an avid collector, had amassed was how he learnt his trade. The director approached him in 1989 to write an adaptation of The Wind In The Willows for the National Theatre, then run by Richard Eyre. Like his staff, Mr. Thomas is frugal and workmanlike. The magazines point-of-view is distinct, even wacky. Its just such a beautiful thing, Mr. Read said, biased but not wrong. Occupations. Sources of domestic tension, meantime, are few. Lord of the light box: Rupert Thomas, the editor in chief of The World of Interiors, at the magazines office in London. The image would have been taken from a more sophisticated engraving, but by the time she appears on what remains of our plate she's hilariously boot-faced - Queen Mary via Beavis and Butt-Head. For the Nationals 50th anniversary gala in 2013, he performed an excerpt from The History Boys, in which he took on the part of the wayward teacher Hector, originally played by the late Richard Griffiths. Despite the sense of familiarity that comes from having watched his television plays of the 70s and 80s, or read his autobiographical stories, he is not in any real sense knowable. Partner of writer Alan Bennett.. Further Reading/Research Ive read magazines all my relatively grown-up life. Assembled into a single narrative, they were first published in the LRB after Miss Shepherds death. No one made rooms seem more elegantly inevitable. And inventive: Though product pages typically consist of clip art on a white background, The World of Interiors will collect the latest fabrics and drape them across a farm field in the Cotswolds. Since 1981 The World of Interiors has documented the rich diversity of ways in which we live, showcasing the stylish and the unexpected as well as applauding individuality. Another time, after a visit to the British Museum to see a Chinese exhibition, Robert went to the barber and said, can you do me a Chinese warrior?, to which the barber replied, no, but I can do you a Roman emperor! On another occasion he was looking at a chinoiserie decorated tle coal bucket and remarked of the gilded pagoda, Im not sure if thats the La Tour Eiffel or Blackpool Tower!.