Wallflower Dispatches

Amelia Earhart continues to fascinate and influence. Her life, her personality and her sense of style are constantly being discovered by new generations.

Over 40 books (“The Sound of Wings: The Life of Amelia Earhart” by Mary S. Lovell, Susan Butler’s “East to the Dawn: The Life of Amelia Earhart”), films (Hilary “Amelia”, Amy Adams in [...]

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Gerhard Richter is without doubt Germany’s greatest living painter with a body of work that spans nearly five decades. The 2002 US retrospective of his work (notably at the MOMA in New York and San Francisco) cemented his reputation as an international artist and drew attention to the breadth of his range on a wider [...]

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With the passing of two of the last three children surviving JFK siblings this August, Eunice aged 88 and Edward aged 77, it is hard to imagine that their glamorous sister-in-law Jacqueline would have celebrated her 80th birthday this year.

Despite her death fifteen years ago, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis continues to grace the cover of magazines [...]

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Hannah Pakula “An Uncommon Woman – The Empress Frederick”

19th century Great Britain is commonly known as “Victorian England” after the monarch who ruled it, although it would be more appropriate if it were called the “Albertian Age” after her Prince Consort.
Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha was a man of progressive and relatively liberal ideas [...]

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Serena Vitale “Pushkin’s Button”
There are two reasons why this biography reads like a novel. The life of Alexander Pushkin (Алексaндр Сергeевич Пyшкин), who continues to be Russia’s greatest and most beloved poet was short but rich in tragedy, passion and adventure. 

The second reason is Serena Vitale’s ability to find the right style and tone to [...]

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Alexander Granach “Da geht ein Mensch”
Alexander Granach “There goes an Actor”
Internationally speaking, his most famous role was that of one of Ninotchka’s comrade’s in Ernst Lubitsch’s film of the same name. As one of Greta Garbo’s Russian sidekicks, he played alongside some of the great Hollywood stars of the 1930s.
But Alexander Granach was a success [...]

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