Big Names, Odd Canapés at TLS Summer Fête
by Zoe Strimpel
Sun, 29 Jun 2008 at 6:32 PM
The Times Literary Supplement (TLS) held its summer party on Thursday evening and, boy, did the crowds pack in. If anyone was in doubt about the size of the readership of that august publication, any concerns about its social clout can be laid to rest. I've stayed out of the publishing party circuit for some time; it all begins to look the same after a while: the same gossip columnists skulking around, the same bad white wine, the same mistaking agents for famous authors. But everyone likes to think they've got a bookish, highbrow edge, so a good literary shindig can, in fact, attract glitz of the type a blockbuster movie premiere can't rival.
So at the Foundling Museum in Bloomsbury on Thursday, weaving their way through the most absurd collection of ill-fitting suits and outlandishly made-up and jeweled older women, were Sir Tom Stoppard; Clive James; the editor of the Times of London, James Harding; Sunday Times editor John Witherow; star restaurant columnist Giles Coren; celebrity agony aunt and broadcaster Bel Mooney (whose recent marriage to a much younger man made headlines), and, according to rumors, Martin Amis himself.
But though it may have been the daddy of parties, rest assured we were still very much in literary land: no champagne (bad white wine everywhere), strange canapés making unpredictable rounds (pasta shapes on skewers with salmon, anyone?), and absolutely no mention of the Euro 2008 semifinal match between Spain and Russia that everyone else in the country — and the European continent — was watching at the same time. Hogarth may have been on display for guests, but somehow the organizers allowed the TV screens to slip through the cracks.
London Arts & Letters Homepage
|
Print
Send
RSS
