I have a friend who’s a devout Anglophile, traveling to London every year to see some shows and, mostly, walk around town and bask. He will, I suspect, love Elizabeth Sharland’s Behind the Doors of Covent Garden, a book that covers the years from Bonnie Prince Charlie and Nell Gwynn to Princess Diana.
There’s a particularly interesting chapter here on the theaters of Covent Garden, among them the magnificent Drury Lane, which has housed everything from the great Ivor Novello shows of the 1930s to Miss Saigon, which ran for at least a decade.
The book also includes a lovely guide to interesting shops in the area, including Pleasures of Past Times in Cecil Court, my favorite London bookshop — actually, my favorite bookshop in the world.
Sharland, who spends part of the year in Palm Beach, knows every foot of the place — I didn’t know that the Palm Court of the Waldorf Hotel was modeled after the Palm Court of the Titanic! — and does justice to it in her rich and spirited book.
In the pipeline …
Composer Marvin Hamlisch is writing a children’s book for Dutton titled Marvin Makes Music. It’s about a little boy who loves to play the piano but hates to practice. The book will include a CD with original music by Hamlisch … Allen Barra, a frequent contributor to this page, will write a book for Crown about the friendly rivalry between Mickey Mantle and Willie Mays. Barra writes a sports column for The Wall Street Journal and will put his head in the lion’s mouth by offering a solid opinion about which of the two was the better ballplayer (I say Mays.) Mickey and Willie will appear in spring 2011.
Mike Browning’s Word of the Week …
Wittol: A man who quietly accepts his wife’s adultery; a cuckold.