The sort of people who work for magazines tend to be highly-strung divas, often without much common sense

Nicholas Coleridge enjoyed a glorious career as chairman and MD of British Condé Nast and president of Condé Nast International, publisher of 130 magazines including Vogue and Vanity Fair. Katie Jarvis spoke to him about his jet-setting memoirs – The Glossy Years – and about (well, a bit) the Cotswolds.

OH MY GIDDY AUNT.

[And Nicholas Coleridge almost certainly has one.]

I absolutely love Nicholas Coleridge’s gossipy, hilarious, compelling, occasionally hair-raising memoirs, The Glossy Years.

I say this because a) it’s true. (Right at chapter 1, page 1 comes one of my favourite anecdotes – a perfect illustration of his family background. His dad, David – at the time an Etonian whose charm was on an affably equal footing with his brilliance – was on his way to a scholarship to read history at Christ Church. Driven there by his Eton tutor, Giles St Aubyn, they not unnaturally stopped for lunch at a pub ‘somewhere outside Maidenhead’. (Seriously, never have I read a book more replete with significant and satisfying lunches.)

Anyway. Magnificently losing prandial track of time – as you do at these key moments in life – the two arrived just as the exam was galloping towards its final furlong. No place was offered. But – nil desperandum; this is Coleridge country! – David joined Lloyd’s of London instead... And rose to chairman.

I mean, is that Waugh or is that Waugh? (There’s Waugh-ier to come.)) And b) I say it because there’s an outside chance any such quote could be used on The Glossy Years paperback edition. Way after praise from The Sunday Times and Literary Review, of course; but, I feel optimistically, snapping at the heels of The Worcester News and Pershore Abbey pew sheet.

‘Absolutely loved it.’ Katie Jarvis, Cotswold Life magazine.

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8 NOV 2019, AT 09:40