The Glossy Years
Magazines, Museums and Selective Memoirs
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Narrated by:
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Nicholas Coleridge
About this listen
Brought to you by Penguin.
Over his 30-year career at Condé Nast, Nicholas Coleridge has witnessed it all. From the anxieties of the Princess of Wales to the blazing fury of Mohamed Al-Fayed, his story is also the story of the people who populate the glamorous world of glossy magazines. With relish and astonishing candour, he offers the inside scoop on Tina Brown and Anna Wintour, David Bowie and Philip Green, Kate Moss and Beyonce and a surreal weekend away with Bob Geldof and William Hague.
The Glossy Years also provides perceptive insight into the changing and treacherous worlds of fashion, journalism, museums and a whole sweep of British society. This is a rich, honest, witty and very personal memoir of a life splendidly lived.
©2019 Nicholas Coleridge (P)2019 Penguin AudioListeners also enjoyed...
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After an uneasy start, this memoir gains steam and becomes very engaging.
- By Barbara W. on 02-24-23
By: Hugh Bonneville
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House of Trelawney
- By: Hannah Rothschild
- Narrated by: Corrie James
- Length: 13 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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The seat of the Trelawney family for over 700 years, Trelawney Castle was once the jewel of the Cornish coast. Each successive Earl spent with abandon, turning the house and grounds into a sprawling, extravagant palimpsest of wings, turrets, and follies. But as the centuries passed the Earls of Trelawney, their ambition dulled by generations of pampered living, failed to develop other skills.
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Really fun read
- By Ruthi on 04-12-20
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Lady in Waiting
- My Extraordinary Life in the Shadow of the Crown
- By: Anne Glenconner
- Narrated by: Anne Glenconner
- Length: 9 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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Anne Glenconner has been at the center of the royal circle from childhood, when she met and befriended the future Queen Elizabeth II and her sister, the Princess Margaret. Though the firstborn child of the fifth Earl of Leicester, who controlled one of the largest estates in England, as a daughter she was deemed "the greatest disappointment" and unable to inherit. Since then she has needed all her resilience to survive court life with her sense of humor intact.
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Horrible Reading
- By Teddy hall on 03-27-20
By: Anne Glenconner
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On Duty with the Queen
- By: Dickie Arbiter, Lynne Barrett-Lee - contributor
- Narrated by: Dickie Arbiter
- Length: 6 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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In this honest and entertaining book, Dickie Arbiter recounts his life's journey from a broadcast journalist to becoming a press spokesman to the Royal family, and back again to journalism. He discusses the inner workings of everyday life in Buckingham Palace, and what it was really like to work under the media spotlight with the most famous family in the world.
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Excellent Story of Many Fascinating Events
- By Batgirl on 11-03-24
By: Dickie Arbiter, and others
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Wait for Me!
- Memoirs
- By: Deborah Mitford Duchess of Devonshire
- Narrated by: Anne Flosnik
- Length: 14 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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Deborah Mitford, Duchess of Devonshire, is the youngest of the famously witty brood that includes the writers Jessica and Nancy, who wrote when Deborah was born, "How disgusting of the poor darling to go and be a girl." Deborah's effervescent memoir chronicles her remarkable life, from an eccentric but happy childhood in the Oxfordshire countryside, to tea with Adolf Hitler and her controversially political sister Unity in 1937, to her marriage to the second son of the Duke of Devonshire.
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The last of the Mitford Sisters
- By Irene on 01-11-11
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Hughes: The Private Diaries, Memos and Letters
- The Definitive Biography of the First American Billionaire
- By: Richard Hack
- Narrated by: Dan Cashman
- Length: 17 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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Howard Hughes was a true American original: legendary lover, record-setting aviator, award-winning film producer, talented inventor, ultimate eccentric, and, for much of his lifetime, the richest man in the United States. His desire for privacy was so fierce and his isolation so complete that even now, 25 years after his death, inaccurate stories continue to circulate, and many have been published as fact. Hughes explodes the illusion of his life and exposes the man behind the myth. He was a playboy whose sexual exploits with Hollywood stars were legendary.
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GOOD READ
- By Randall on 04-25-09
By: Richard Hack
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Flesh Wounds
- By: Richard Glover
- Narrated by: Richard Glover
- Length: 7 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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A mother who invented her past, a father who was often absent, a son who wondered if this could really be his family...Richard Glover's favourite dinner-party game is called 'Who's Got the Weirdest Parents?' It's a game he always thinks he'll win. There was his mother, a deluded snob who made up large swathes of her past and who ran away with Richard's English teacher, a Tolkien devotee, nudist and stuffed toy collector.
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Such a Meaningful Reflection
- By Awarenessing on 11-28-15
By: Richard Glover
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The Princess Spy
- The True Story of World War II Spy Aline Griffith, Countess of Romanones
- By: Larry Loftis
- Narrated by: Kate Reading
- Length: 9 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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When Aline Griffith was born in a quiet suburban New York hamlet, no one had any idea that she would go on to live “a life of glamour and danger that Ingrid Bergman only played at in Notorious” (Time). As the United States enters the Second World War, the young college graduate is desperate to aid in the war effort, but no one is interested in a bright-eyed young woman whose only career experience is modeling clothes.
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Repeat of spy wore red
- By Theresa Pease on 02-18-21
By: Larry Loftis
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The Riviera Set
- Glitz, Glamour, and the Hidden World of High Society
- By: Mary S. Lovell
- Narrated by: Jill Rolls
- Length: 10 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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The Riviera Set reveals the story of the group of people who lived, partied, bed-hopped, and politicked at the Château de l'Horizon near Cannes, over the course of 40 years from the time when Coco Chanel made southern French tans fashionable in the twenties to the death of the playboy Prince Aly Khan in 1960. At the heart of dynamic group was the amazing Maxine Elliott, the daughter of a fisherman from Connecticut, who built the beautiful art deco Château.
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Riviera Set
- By Lois Kelly on 05-04-18
By: Mary S. Lovell
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Ritz and Escoffier
- The Hotelier, The Chef, and the Rise of the Leisure Class
- By: Luke Barr
- Narrated by: Stefan Rudnicki
- Length: 8 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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In early August 1889, César Ritz, a Swiss hotelier highly regarded for his exquisite taste, found himself at the Savoy Hotel in London. He had come at the request of Richard D'Oyly Carte, the financier of Gilbert & Sullivan's comic operas, who had modernized theater and was now looking to create the world's best hotel. D'Oyly Carte soon seduced Ritz to move to London with his team, which included Auguste Escoffier, the chef de cuisine known for his elevated, original dishes.
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Like Cesar Ritz, a real dandy
- By BenYL on 04-24-18
By: Luke Barr
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The Chief
- The Life of William Randolph Hearst
- By: David Nasaw
- Narrated by: David Colacci
- Length: 30 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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William Randolph Hearst, known to his staff as the "Chief", was a brilliant business strategist and a man of prodigious appetites. By the 1930s, he controlled the largest publishing empire in the United States, including 28 newspapers, the Cosmopolitan Picture Studio, radio stations, and 13 magazines. He quickly learned how to use this media stronghold to achieve unprecedented political power. In The Chief, David Nasaw presents an intimate portrait of the man famously characterized in the classic film Citizen Kane.
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Fascinating but
- By Michael on 02-17-22
By: David Nasaw
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Burr
- A Novel (Narratives of Empire, Book 1)
- By: Gore Vidal
- Narrated by: Grover Gardner
- Length: 21 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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Here is an extraordinary portrait of one of the most complicated - and misunderstood - figures among the Founding Fathers. In 1804, while serving as vice president, Aaron Burr fought a duel with his political nemesis, Alexander Hamilton, and killed him. In 1807, he was arrested, tried, and acquitted of treason. In 1833, Burr is newly married, an aging statesman considered a monster by many. But he is determined to tell his own story, and he chooses to confide in a young New York City journalist. Burr is the first novel in Gore Vidal's Narratives of Empire series.
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Finally! Vidal's Great Take on the Life of Burr
- By John Norton on 06-12-19
By: Gore Vidal
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The Cartiers
- The Untold Story of the Family Behind the Jewelry Empire
- By: Francesca Cartier Brickell
- Narrated by: Hattie Morahan
- Length: 23 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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The Cartiers is the revealing tale of a jewelry dynasty—four generations, from revolutionary France to the 1970s. At its heart are the three Cartier brothers whose motto was “Never copy, only create” and who made their family firm internationally famous in the early days of the twentieth century, thanks to their unique and complementary talents.
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Wonderful Experience to Listen to This Story
- By BB on 01-12-20
What listeners say about The Glossy Years
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- bubbles
- 09-20-22
a work of comic genius
havent enjoyed an audiobook so much since Ma'am Darling. brilliant and great narration by the author himself. this is a real gem.
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- Jenny Jenkins
- 08-28-21
A Glossy Life Well Lived — and Read Well
For Anglophiles only, this memoir is best for those who can answer YES to these questions:
1. Did you know who Tina Brown was before she became editor of Vanity Fair?
2. Can you identify the Cotswolds on a map?
3. Would you expect an Etonian to remain friends with his fellow old boys all through his life and to contrast these with the “fancy people” he has met through work in the upper echelons of Condé Nast?
4. Were you young in the 80s and middle aged by the 21st century?
If so, this charmingly read memoir of a charmed life is for you. Diverting, gossipy in positive ways (no cheap or nasty shots taken) of an incredibly extroverted media figure.
Coleridge once tells the story of being on a glamping trip in Ethiopia with his family when they decide to head for a remote night club. His jeep plunges down a cliff and lands on a shepherd’s hut. He and his wife — well into middle age— clamber up the cliff and proceed to the club. That is your narrator. No party or club he won’t attend and here he is to tell you all about it, charmingly and with a light touch and very pleasant cadence.
This book kept me company as I finished painting the porch of my house. Part of me critiqued the white male upper class privilege that fueled his “luck.” And I also admired his verve and hard work. As was often the case, his charm usually lulled my inner social critic and I ended up mentally gliding along, drinking in Coleridge’s life story vicariously as I labored.
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- AminaRuhle
- 10-05-20
A superfun inside look @ world of magazine editors
The story was great and I want to learn more about the characters. My only gripe is in re the audible version. There are several flaws in the recording. One where several pages are actually repeated in the recording,, one where you can hear the author actually correct himself and repeat the lines he has just read, and several areas were words are clipped off and you don't catch the whole word, or where you miss words because the recording skips like a scratched vinyl record.
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1 person found this helpful