The Tumbrel Diaries

About twelve years ago Uncle John gave me this beautiful object for my birthday. He acquired it in London in the early 1970s when he was a p...

In the midst of preparing to move house, I unfolded Mum’s card table—for the first time since it arrived here last February. It is a pretty...

Through the combined efforts of Susan Holbrook, of the firm of Holbrook and Hawes in Bethany, Conn., and Benny Becker of Norton Upholstery...

Lately I have been noticing fingers everywhere. For example, in his fascinating book about the methods of conducting business in the early...

The practice of drinking champagne from a lady’s shoe enjoyed one final moment of resuscitation in the early to mid-1950s, thanks in part to...

I have been fossicking through the mountains of paper that gradually accumulated while I was researching and writing The Finger: A Handbook ...

Wha t is beginning to emerge from my inquiries into the custom of drinking champagne from a lady’s white satin slipper is that this weird cr...

There are relatively few scandalous subtopics in my new book, The Finger: A Handbook , except for some damaging rumors that circulated in Lo...

Alas there was obviously no convenient berth in my new book, The Finger: A Handbook , for an exhaustive or even cursory account of the bizar...

After A Brief History of the Smile and The Finger: A Handbook , lately published in New York by Farrar, Straus and Giroux , I am not incl...