I’m reminded of a short story by F. Scott Fitzgerald, Head and Shoulders, in which an intellectual falls for a showgirl only for the roles to reverse—he becomes the performer and she the writer.

I often feel Michael and I are living a version of this, though with more politics in the mix and significantly more subtitles for me to edit.

The younger, marginally more photogenic one, (that would be me)—who once posted the occasional sexy selfie—is now behind the camera, styling and stage-managing the intellectual (that would be my husband Michael Wolff), whom she more or less dragged kicking and screaming out from under a rock and into the algorithm.

A year later, his Instagram is now verging on a million followers.

My job each morning is to locate light.

Not just any light. Not overhead light (criminal), not side light (punitive), but that forgiving coastal light we are blessed with in Amagansett that suggests both authority and good bone structure. Good lighting can make even a curmudgeon look affable.

I then remove all evidence of life. The children are shooed outside or, if necessary, bribed into silence with screen time. Objects are edited with care: the clutter goes, but the meaningful clutter remains. Our house is full of evocative items that people read into. Daffodils are “Narcissus invoking our Narcissist-in-Chief.” A stack of books becomes intellectual credibility. A painting of a ship in rough weather reflects our nation’s precarious state of being.

My husband becomes the talent.

Everything—including the talent—is moved two inches repeatedly.

If someone starts the vacuum cleaner, we yell “quiet on the set,” like a low-budget production with delusions of grandeur. Occasionally we must pause for political differences as well, which adds a certain frisson to the domestic workplace.

Then I edit. I subtitle. I caption. I post.

Once a week, I also post a slideshow of quotes from his Substack, HOWL, where he’s currently writing a serial about Jeffrey Epstein.

It has become…a lot.

Success, it turns out, is simply a demand for more production. Content is an inexhaustible resource.

For Michael’s podcast Inside Trump’s Head, which he cohosts with Joanna Coles, he now has a second setup in our library with enormous lights—permanent fixtures, which I loathe with the quiet fury of someone who designed the opposite of this, a private, serene, oasis without wires for quiet contemplation.

Our house is no longer a house. It is a location.

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I had a dream last night that I was living in a house that wasn’t mine.

It was unlocked, empty, and for sale—one of those perfectly nice, faintly soulless houses with very good appliances. I began, without explanation, by filming an Instagram reel there. Then I brought in a few things—children, toys, a basket of laundry.

And then, without ever deciding to, I simply lived there.

It was only when prospective buyers arrived that I felt a flicker of panic. I pretended, quickly, to be viewing the house too. But by then it was too late.

And I understood, with a certain dread, that the only way to resolve the situation was to buy the house—a house I didn’t want, and had never meant to live in.

I woke up thinking—not about real estate—but about performance.

About how one begins by trying something on, and ends by being unable to take it off.

If you have been following my own domestic life, as I’ve chosen to present it here, you could be forgiven for wondering whether I, too, have been trying something on.

This may be true. But I think the dream may be related to my recent uptick in viewing social media rather than making it.

In the past three days, with a mixture of curiosity and mild dread, I’ve been immersing myself in tradwife content—a corner of the internet I haven’t visited in some time—prompted in part by Caro Clare Burke’s debut novel Yesteryear about a modern tradwife influencer forced to live in the 19th century past she romanticizes.

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I tend to think of this Substack as a kind of weekly rhythm—meals, a little domestic tinkering, and if I get a chance to hear my own thoughts, a longer essay. A life, if not exactly orderly, at least arranged. But travel weeks are another creature entirely. They resist structure. They ask instead for observation—for a slightly chaotic scrapbook of what one saw, ate, thought, and overheard.

And so: New York.

Note: (You’ll see things underlined and linked here for a further dive.)

We took the children in for the start of spring break—a Passover Seder, some family, a few new babies (one newly walking, one imminently arriving), and, ambitiously, a dash of culture.

When we first moved to Amagansett full time, I imagined we’d sweep into the city regularly, a sort of breezy back-and-forth existence. In reality, traveling with children turns any trip into a full-scale campaign—you don’t just “pop in.”

This time we carved out three days for pleasure, which felt almost decadent.

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Welcome—do come in.

For those of you already in the House, you’ll recognize this as part of an ongoing series I’ve decided to call Basket Case. These are essays about managing a busy household in an unsettling world—what we carry, what we drop, and what we insist is perfectly balanced when it very much is not. Also, I do love a basket.

Last weekend I did something wildly impractical: I went to a five-and-a-half hour opera screening of Tristan and Isolde, Live From the Met—a length of time that would ordinarily be reserved for transatlantic flights—on a day when my kids’ schedules usually trump all.

It was a rare experience—slow, immersive, spellbinding, and when it wasn’t, I allowed my thoughts to wander. That felt nice too.

No phones. No multitasking. No sense that one might “just check something quickly.”

At one point I looked around and realized that an entire room of people—in fact, rooms of people around the world—had agreed, collectively, to do something difficult with their attention. It felt almost radical.

My ten-year-old daughter, Louise, came for the first act—ninety minutes of tolerant interpretive confusion. I was puffed up proud of her because she stayed with it, which, I’m beginning to think, is the whole game.

The next morning, I was back to the usual drill—attempting to do everything, failing, and marveling over the woman who appears to have it all figured out.

You know the type.

She’s writing a newsletter of piercing clarity, running a business, on a book deadline, launching a podcast (of course), maintaining a brisk and witty presence across Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube (non-negotiable, I’m told), possibly hosting seminars, possibly renovating a house, exercising with admirable regularity, fasting (for reasons that remain unclear), raising charming children who eat olives—and doing all of this with the serene air of someone who has simply organized herself properly.

(Often while recommending twelve things one must buy immediately.)

I look at her and think: How?

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The Brits have a literary form mostly foreign to Americans called the public diary. Some of the British greats have been diarists—Samuel Pepys and Virginia Woolf down to the celebrities and eccentrics called on to write the Spectator Magazine's weekly diary. Done well, it’s part social record, part window into a particular life—name-dropping included.

I’ve slightly cooled on city guides and lists of where to eat and shop, so I thought I’d try this instead.

Here is my diary of a recent week in London.

There is a particular thrill to arriving in London just as the daffodils have popped, the bright yellow against the grey and damp. We drove straight to Claridge’s, less a hotel than a well-cast 1930s film in which one has been given a speaking part. We’ve been going for twenty years, which is long enough that the place now feels like a parallel life in which we’re better dressed.

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I love an underline-the-whole-page kind of read.

I’ve been giving so much thought in the past couple years on how to cook for and approach meals with my two children who, to say the very least, lack gastronomic zeal. So after I read Helen Zoe Veit’s guest essay in the New York Times, I immediately pre-ordered her book Picky: How American Children Became the Fussiest Eaters in History.

Zeit’s argument is both comforting and vaguely infuriating: modern American children’s pickiness is not innate. It is recent, manufactured, a cultural confection of the 20th century born of reduced physical activity, perpetual snacking, processed “kid food,” and the curious modern belief that children require a separate cuisine, preferably beige.

Before the 1930s, being a picky eater didn’t exist as a concept. In the 19th century, American children ate what adults ate—oysters, pickles, stewed greens, organ meats hearty grains. They had roaring appetites at suppertime. They walked to school, did chores, played outside and arrived at supper hungry. They did not have string cheese in the buggy cupholder at all times.

We may be aware that children from other countries eat a broader diet. When I was pregnant with my first child, I read French Children Don’t Throw Food, by Pamela Druckerman, and vowed to raise a small Parisian who would nibble radishes and ask for more potage. Instead, I had a toddler who staged sit-ins over lentils. I chose my battles. I did not wish to become the woman swapping pizza with quinoa at a birthday party.

I was wary of the anti-sugar, ant-gluten brigades who made every social occasion fraught for their children. I heard so much about “self-regulation,” as though a four-year-old with a cupcake was a ticking time bomb. My daughter ate cake and did not immediately overturn furniture or later have a tantrum. It was confusing.

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Now that my children are older, and I have slightly more backbone, I have been conducting a quiet domestic experiment. I plan meals carefully—not in a militant way, but in a “let’s not miss out on life (and flavor)” way. And it’s working!

My kids are making leaps and bounds. Buttered pasta remains on the roster (we are not monsters), and sugar has not been exiled, but my children now eat fish, beans, grains, eggs, a proper range of meats, and all kinds of vegetables, including brussels sprouts—yes, brussels sprouts—with something approaching enthusiasm.

And yet—I have fallen for the modern chorus of confusion:

Children’s diets don’t matter; we ate junk and survived.

Children naturally prefer bland food and are instinctively suspicious of strong flavors.

They’ll grow out of it.

They should be able to trust their own body’s cues.

Some kids have sensory issues surrounding texture.

Phases! Phases!

Don’t make meal times stressful.

Meanwhile sugar seeps into everything, including “healthy” foods marketed to children. There is always a well-meaning mother who solemnly announces that her family “doesn’t do sugar,” one day and another day produces cookies at the playground, distributing them like party favors. There are fruit pouches (so convenient, so suspicious.) Neon yogurts at other people’s houses. Chicken fingers molded like spoons in the freezer aisle (why? just why?). Birthday weeks. Travel weeks. Restaurants with the traditional “kid food” on the menu. There is the worry that withholding foods will make them more attractive later or that you’re an overbearing mother, or that you might create eating disorders by focussing too much on food.

It’s a lot.

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I built us a library just before we moved to Amagansett full time. It was not a romantic notion. It was an emergency.

We have too many books, and we had learned, grimly, that basements are not neutral spaces. Some years earlier, Michael’s poetry collection—folios, rare editions, earnest inscriptions—had spent too long in storage. When we opened the boxes we began to choke. Mold. Immediate choking.

Death by poetry is one way to go, but not the one we were aiming for.

So the home library was built quickly, urgently, with a faint air of triage. That summer, when we moved the rest of our belongings from the city to what had been our beach house and was now simply the house, I began shelving alphabetically. Or rather, I began thinking about shelving alphabetically while frantically rescuing books from boxes before they absorbed the local damp.

I dreamt of order. Survival was the goal.

The books landed loosely. The plan—always comforting—was to return later and impose order. In the meantime I found books by instinct, which is how one locates most things in a household with children and writers.

This week, on a brutally cold afternoon, I began again. Snow blanketed the ground. The house was sealed tight against the weather—or as much as a drafty old house can be. The news, meanwhile, seeped in through every possible crack.

I attacked the piles.

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Everything I sat down to write this week—an essay about the art of the love affair, my thoughts on screen time—felt like fiddling while Rome burns. So I’m going to continue to write about bullying—on a much larger scale.

First, thank you—truly—for the messages and notes that followed The Price of Perfection series. So many of you wrote to me about your p…

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In part one, I wrote about our family’s experience with New York City private schools, beginning with my husband Michael—who, with his former wife, put three children through the city’s top schools—and who, once he believed himself safely on the other side, wrote a funny and highly critical piece about the experience for New York Magazine. Fate, which e…

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The Price of Perfection Redux (Part 1), On NYC Private Schools and the Cost

In part one, I wrote about our family’s experience with New York City private schools, beginning with my husband Michael—who put three children through The Brearley School and The Collegiate School, pre-K through high school—and who, once he believed himself safely on the other side, wrote a funny and highly critical piece about the experience for New York Magazine. Fate, which enjoys irony, then gave him two more children and the opportunity to do it all again.

Our daughter’s early private school years were, on the surface, smooth. Not effortless—nothing in New York parenting ever is—but smooth enough. Then, abruptly, they weren’t.

It’s not unusual for school experiences to get bumpy. In our case it wasn’t academic. It was social. Mean girl stuff that nobody seemed willing to acknowledge—or, worse, capable of acknowledging.

It was only after we moved to Amagansett—a decision made, in fact, before what I now think of as our annus horribilis at The Spence School—that I fully understood how bad things had become. And not only that, I saw, with some shock, how good they could be.

In our case, “good” meant a small-town public school.

I should pause here to acknowledge the obvious: our experience is not universal. We had choices. We had the means to move. We had flexibility. My mother reminded me of this recently, gently but firmly. Our story is perhaps amplified by two extremes: New York City private schools at the peak of wealth and pressure and a particularly well-funded public school in the Hamptons.

What interests me now is not only the very New York-specific angle—because New York culture is clearly at a turning point with a landslide vote against billionaires and privilege—but also the more universal truth underneath it. At some point, most parents will face a school situation that becomes tricky, then more tricky, then quietly alarming. Social or academic. Manageable, until it isn’t. And then comes the moment when you are forced to consider other options.

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In 2002, my husband Michael wrote a piece for New York magazine poking fun at New York City private schools—the status obsession they engender, the quiet hysteria they produce, and how completely nuts they had made him personally, having put his three older children through them. The piece was called “The Price of Perfection.”

He had been saving it up for years. Possibly the subject he had obsessed over most: the elaborate theater of Manhattan private education (and expense!). He waited until his children were safely on the other side of acceptance before having his say.

But life, as it tends to do, intervened.

In 2015, Michael had another child. With me.

And that child needed schooling.

And we still lived in New York City.

Michael warned me. He had seen things. He explained that New York City private schools were torturous not only for children, but for parents—perhaps especially for parents. He spoke as a survivor.

I did not believe him. Or rather, I believed him intellectually, but not emotionally. The alternatives felt either impractical or oddly ideological, or simply too far outside my own experience. I had attended private schools (though far from Manhattan!) Michael had attended private schools. Our daughter, Louise, surely deserved the same sort of fancy education her parents had received—and her older siblings, too.

And anyway, how bad could it be?

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I wrote two very long posts this week while I had the flu, which is not a condition known for clarity, proportion, or emotional restraint.

One of them—an essay about whether moving to the country is liberating or limiting—I passed to Michael, something of a sphinx editor, for a look. It was, I intuited, gently declined. Not rejected exactly. More… placed carefully on a shelf marked Already Said.

We have a small set of questions we ask before sending anything out into the world.

Is it necessary?

Is it adding anything?

Does it land?

Is it funny?

Apparently, the answer to all four was a..demur. The piece was, I got him to acknowledge, “a bit flat.”

This seemed fair. I felt flat.

Then I attempted a New Year’s highlights post. My favorite things of 2025. Proof, perhaps, that even in grim times there are still tulips, and excellent vintage shopping, and moments of real delight if one is paying attention.

By the time I finished, the self-loathing was intense.

The embarrassment of blessings. The shame of cheerfulness. The chirpy optimism of “my favorite fashion moment” and “a personal highlight” felt inappropriate, if not actively immoral. Who was I to be perky? Read the room. Read any room.

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In 2005, the writer Thomas Beller published my very first short story in the magazine he edited, Open City Literary Magazine. I was young, living in New York City, reading a lot of Salinger and overwriting my way into a life.

The story was based on a bad date I’d had when I was a student at Vassar College. Not a catastrophic date. Just the sort that lod…

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I have always loved children’s books — maybe especially so because I grew up inside them as did my father and uncle. My grandparents were a children’s book author–illustrator team, who often found inspiration (and models) in their offspring. Books were treated in our family as serious objects: vessels of beauty, feeling, education, and moral instruction, without ever being preachy. A good children’s book, I was taught early, should calm the room and gather the children in. It should give shape to their feelings, order to their thoughts, and a sense that the world, even at its most mysterious, is comprehensible.

This year, that inheritance came full circle. I read two of my grandmother Louise’s out-of-print “girl novels” with my daughter, who is named for her. One, Sara, follows a girl growing up in New York City in 1925, falling in love with the theater and writing her first play. The other, A Year to Remember, is based on my grandmother’s own time at a Swiss boarding school. Both held my daughter completely — proof that a good story does not expire simply because fashion changes. (Both are wonderful for girls around ten and up, if you can find them.)

At Christmas especially, books feel essential. They soften the feeling of the house. They give our mornings and evenings shape. I read them in the morning while Jack is having his milk, sometimes at breakfast, and before bed, of course. Below are the Christmas books we return to year after year — some famous, some forgotten, some worth tracking down second-hand — all chosen because they do what the best holiday books should: make the season more meaningful.

Our Favorite Christmas Books

Mr. Willowby’s Christmas Tree

Written & illustrated by Robert Barry

A too-tall tree is trimmed and trimmed again until even the smallest creatures receive a Christmas miracle. Gentle, funny, and reassuringly anti-perfectionist.

Silent Night

Illustrated by Will Moses

A hushed, reverent rendering of the carol, set in a glowing American town. Quiet enough to feel almost sacred. Will Moses learned to paint from his grandfather, folk artist Forrest Moses, who learned from his mother, Anna Mary Robertson Moses, better known as Grandma Moses.

The Christmas Angels

By Elsa Wenz-Viëtor

Soft, devotional, and old-world. Angels descend with baskets of light and kindness. A book that seems to glow on the shelf and a companion to meaningful work.

Peter and Lotta’s Christmas

By Elsa Beskow (illustrated by the author)

The ultimate Scandinavian Christmas: baking, sleigh rides, candlelight, and cozy competence. Makes one want to knit mittens immediately.

The First Christmas

Written & illustrated by Tomie dePaola

A pop-up Nativity story which I had as a child and now read to my children. Simple and reverent.

Sleep Tight Farm

By Eugenie Doyle

Illustrated by Becca Stadtlander

A modern classic. The gentle rhythm of a farm settling into winter sleep is almost hypnotic.

The Christmas Boot

By Lisa Wheeler

Illustrated by Jerry Pinkney

A folksy fable about contentment, simple things and the spirit of Christmas.

Cat Family Christmas

(Lift-the-Flap Advent Book)

By Lucy Brownridge

Illustrated by Eunyoung Seo

Charming, cozy, and interactive — especially beloved by younger children counting down the days.

The Christmas Alphabet

By Robert Sabuda

A pop-up spectacle that’s wonderful for children learning their ABCs, and grownups who have a love of letter books. (I should do a post just on these.)

Christmas in the Big Woods

By Laura Ingalls Wilder

Illustrated by Renée Graef

One of the “first” Little House book series, loved here for its steady, calming tone. Snow, patience, and quiet anticipation.

The Night It Rained Toys

(Out of Print)

By Dorothy Stephenson

Illustrated by John E. Johnson

A forgotten gem in which toys rain from the sky. Worth hunting down on Etsy or eBay.

First Snow

By Bomi Park

Nearly wordless, modern, and emotionally precise. Reads like a held breath.

The Little Reindeer

By Nicola Killen

Soft pencil drawings and a tender story of courage and belonging. Perfect for bedtime.

The Usborne Nativity Sticker Book

Illustrated by various artists

Sticker books are not literature, but this one tells the Christmas Story through paintings of the Nativity, from Renaissance to modern times.

Santa Mouse

By Michael Brown

Illustrated by Elfrieda de Witt

A tiny mouse, a letter to Santa, and a lesson in kindness. Modest and enduring.

The Shortest Day

By Susan Cooper

Illustrated by Carson Ellis

A winter poem rather than a story — ancient, pagan, and wise. Makes December feel old in the best way.

Who’s Coming to Our House?

By Joseph Slate

Illustrated by Ashley Wolff

Animals prepare their home for a mysterious guest. A perfect Nativity introduction for the very young.

Holly and Ivy

By Rumer Godden

Illustrated by Barbara Cooney

A moving story about a doll and an orphan both wanting to be loved. And yes, the wish is fulfilled: Doll gets girl. Girl gets doll . . .and a family, to boot. If your child likes this one, I recommend Rumer Godden’s Miss Flower and Miss Happiness and its sequel, Little Plum.

It’s Christmas Everywhere

By Hannah Barnaby

Illustrated by Joao Fazenda

A thoughtful look at how Christmas is celebrated around the world. Modern, inclusive, and visually striking.

The Story of the Snow Children

By Sibylle von Olfers

Dreamlike and slightly melancholy. Snow children melt, seasons turn, life goes on.

A Christmas Carol

By Charles Dickens

Illustrated by Arthur Rackham

Rackham’s shadowy illustrations suit Dickens perfectly. A serious Christmas book, in the best sense.

When Santa Was a Baby

By Linda Bailey

Illustrated by Geneviève Godbout

Gentle humor with exquisite illustrations. Makes Santa human — which children find comforting.

A Time to Keep

By Tasha Tudor

A wonderful companion to a whole year of homemade celebrations and family traditions. Tasha Tudor’s illustrations are so detailed because she was was living them in real life.

In the City

By Jessie Spicer Zerner

A pocket sized book about an old-fashioned Victorian Christmas in the city.

Drop a heart if you liked this post and do re-Stack if you found it useful as that really helps with visibility.

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Michael Wolff, my husband, owns exactly one category of sweater: the cardigan. No crews. No V-necks. No quarter zip sweater. No turtlenecks. No experiments.

For him, it’s a comfort choice. He doesn’t like anything touching his neck. For me, the creative director on his daily Instagram videos, they read reassurance and authority. They read, “I’ve seen some things, and I am not going to skimp on my knitwear just because the news is bad.” Grim news does not require grim clothing.

Over time, his cardigans have become. . .famous

On Instagram, where Michael delivers his daily updates on Trump, the commentary inevitably splits into two camps:

1. “This is chilling.”

2. “Where is that cardigan from?”

People often ask if I knit them. I do not. I barely survive knitting a scarf. I occasionally cluck at the investment here, but he says they last a lifetime so it’s really only pennies a day.

Below, is a practical and emotional guide to the cardigans themselves (with links).

The Professor Emeritus

Mood: Ivy League tenure, window light, a stack of manila folders.

Color: Oatmeal, “library dust” or a crazy pop like this basil green.

Worn when: Explaining something deeply alarming in a soothing voice.

Vibe: You should sit down for this, but also have a cookie.

Where to Buy: Ralph Lauren — Michael bought his at the East Hampton store, but it is also here. Also we love Alex Mill — The Mitchell sweater is fantastic and on sale!

The Mr. Rogers

Mood: Gentle moral order, Home comforts

Color: Forest green, brown, and camel

Worn When: The world is on fire but bedtime still exists

Vibe: Comfort television for adults who no longer believe in comfort television

Where to Buy: Vintage Peter Scott, Artist and Residence.

The Irish Fisherman

Mood: Salt air, clarity, truth

Color: Cream, ecrue, navy, heather brown,

Worn When: Talking about stormy weather ahead with maritime calm

Vibe: If this man owned a boat, you would trust it

Where to Buy: Anderson and Sheppard Haberdashery. This is our favorite of all time shop. Go visit the in London on Clifford Street in London. Michael wears their cashmere and merino knitted jacket. Also, Aran Woolen Mills: I’m thinking of this one for Christmas.

The Media Storm Cardigan

Mood: “I didn’t choose this, but here we are”

Color: Charcoal, dark navy

Worn when: Podcasting multiple times a day

Vibe: Armor, but make it cozy

Where to Buy: Connoly - The City Cardigan

The Weekend Cardigan

Mood: Coffee, papers, the illusion of rest

Color: Brown donegal, buttery yellow

Where to buy: TOAST—Michael wears this Donegal Wool V-Neck Cardigan, as well as a beautiful butter yellow from fall/winter 2024. Guest in Residence — This “Industry Jacket” is very special. It’s my current favorite.

Final Notes From The Wife/Creative Director

• Cardigans are buttoned when things are grave

• Unbuttoned when things are really grave

• Sleeves pushed up = breaking news

If you’re shopping for a man who loves sweaters and being comfortable while explaining the collapse of democracy, start here.

And no — I didn’t knit them. I love sweaters. I love sheep. But I didn’t marry one. I married the news cycle.

Drop a heart if you liked this post and do re-Stack if you found it useful as that really helps with visibility.

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Some families, like ours, live beside oceans, others in deserts, or on mountains. We, however, live beside a far stranger weather system altogether—a capricious and occasionally deranged front known simply as the media. It has its own climate, forecasts, impact and aftermath. And even though we no longer live in Manhattan, the pulsating epicenter of suc…

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In the middle of this week’s press maelstrom—a tempest that deposits its debris onto your front doorstep—a consoling friend texted me a photograph of a book cover: I Married Adventure, by Osa Johnson.

We are not in deepest Africa and Michael is not tracking wildebeests so much as aspiring autocrats and oligarchs, but the spirit is similar. Never a dull moment.

I married the news cycle. The irony is that I am not at all a news person. I can remain blissfully oblivious. The world grows quieter, more eccentric, more human without the news. You notice your own thoughts—none of which appear in headlines.

But since last March, when I began producing Michael’s Instagram videos and just recently his Substack—sitting behind the camera, nudging the lighting, stitching together his apocalyptic asides with a backdrop of antique Windsor chairs—my life has tilted, gently but unmistakably, toward the public side of the glass.

And so, after this noisy week, it occurred to me that it may be of some interest—if only as a cautionary tale—to describe what it’s like to be married to a writer. Not just any writer, but one who covers the monsters of our time.

This is not my first rodeo.

Chapter I: The Murdoch Affair (Not Ours—But Then Somehow, Ours)

The first maelstrom began when Michael published his biography of Rupert Murdoch, The Man Who Owns the News. Murdoch called to request a small “correction”—the actual date he met his third wife, Wendi, as he’d fudged it for his children. If Michael would only shift the date, the News Corp papers would support the book. If not, well then…prepare for siege warfare.

Michael, being Michael, declined.

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We all spend a lot of time in the smallest rooms in our houses. Dollar for dollar they are often the most expensive rooms in our homes. And they are often the rooms that, no matter the money we spend—probably because of the money we spend—date themselves most quickly.

Donald Trump’s “facelift” of the Lincoln Bathroom (quotation marks doing heavy lifting) has me thinking about the sorry state of most bathroom design.

The pre-Trump Lincoln bathroom, a certain sort of Deco perfection, was chic and timeless—restrained and quietly dignified. The new one already feels dated, like a generically opulent hotel bathroom that mistakes marble for meaning.

Claridge’s in London remains, to me, the apotheosis of bath design. I’ve photographed their bathrooms obsessively—particularly the early ones that haven’t been tampered with. The newer versions keep the spirit: gleaming black-and-white tile, green marble, and the delicate chain one pulls for the maid or valet—a design detail that whispers of grace and order (having never pulled it, I don’t know if anyone actually comes).

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Melania Trump is not, to say the least, a popular figure in our household, but I’ve been wondering if I ought to find some measure of sympathy for her. In fiction and history, I’ve always had a softness for the maîtresses en titre— and in life, for the New York girls I used to know who couldn’t afford a taxi across town one…

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