Free Republic

On the face of it, Ms Wintour, 63, may not appear a natural candidate for international diplomacy. Her reportedly aloof and demanding personality has earned her the nickname “Nuclear Wintour” and inspired the waspish character played by Meryl Streep in the film The Devil Wears Prada. But according to Bloomberg News, Mr Obama has placed her on his short list to safeguard transatlantic relations at the Court of St James. It would be hard to find a better connected ambassador in the fields of fashion and entertainment than Ms Wintour, who was awarded an OBE for services to British journalism...

June 10, 2003, 9:30 a.m.The Devil & the Gray LadyAll about vogue. By Mark Goldblatt SEE NOTE    Truman Capote, who had a stake in saying so, once famously declared, "All literature is gossip." He was wrong, of course, but it's the kind of declaration that bamboozles literary types by its very implausibility; something so obviously false must be profound, so it gets repeated at cocktail parties and invoked in book reviews (like this one) until it becomes an inside-out cliché, a false truism, a knowing nod towards nothing whatsoever. Still, an interesting question emerges if you reverse Capote's...