Olivia de Havilland

An insight into the American Dream: Table for Two, by Amor Towles, reviewed

From our UK edition

Amor Towles was a Wall Street banker before he published his first novel, Rules of Civility, in 2011, at the age of 46. Since then, his books have sold six million copies, and the second, A Gentleman in Moscow (2016), has been made into a Paramount + series starring Ewan McGregor. Towles’s success in banking and publishing has perhaps given him a particular insight into the American Dream. The six stories and one novella that make up his stylish and confident new collection, Table for Two, all feature characters in pursuit of an ambition that puts them in varying degrees of peril – protagonists tasked with missions of differing seriousness.

Olivia de Havilland’s Red Scare

Olivia de Havilland, who has passed aged 104, will forever be remembered for the role of Melanie Hamilton in Gone with the Wind, a performance that earned her a Best Supporting Actress nod from the Academy. She would go on to star in acclaimed romantic dramas like To Each His Own and The Heiress, both of which brought her Oscars for Best Actress, but to fans of classic movies she will always be Scarlett O’Hara's sickly cousin, love rival but ultimate ally. She was cinema’s quintessential southern belle: genteel on the surface, steel underneath. Less well known is that de Havilland was a lively anti-communist and worked to expose and counter the influence of Soviet sympathizers in Hollywood.

olivia de havilland