Some Times in America Book

Alexander Chancellor grew up aware that most Englishmen of his class disliked America and Americans--vulgar, pushy, took their time about saving us in World Wars I and II--and that he did not. This memoir of his visits there, and jobs there, stresses his sense that to be an English person in America is in a sense to be on holiday from all the burdens of being English; you can make friends on a casual whim and people will tell you off in the street for looking unhappy on a nice day. Much of the book is the story of his working relationships, particularly his sometimes strained friendship with Tina Brown, whom he nearly hired when she was young and promising, and who has treated him with respect and regard throughout her inexorable rise. He worked for her on The New Yorker in New York and in London, and is more loyal than one might expect, given that she grew distrustful of his occasional negative coverage of her reign there. This is a book with some illuminating portraits of Anglophile Americans--such as the dying Joe Alsop--and expatriates like Pamela Harriman--and a quiet sense of national difference. --Roz KaveneyRead More