Ardent fans of Sherlock star Benedict Cumberbatch may still be reeling from his defeat in the high-stakes competition of this year’s Oscars, when fellow Brit Eddie Redmayne won for his compelling portrayal of Stephen Hawking in The Theory of Everything. The announcement of the Queen’s Birthday Honors in June, however, provided a curious twist: The…

While thumbing through one of Cecil Beaton’s unpublished scrapbooks two years ago—enjoying a peek at a friend’s rarefied collection—I stumbled on a blurry black-and-white photograph of a tousle-haired youth. Beneath it Beaton had scribbled a caption: “Horrid Madboy.”

When great American writers go to heaven—or to some infernal rotisserie—their papers generally wind up at the University of Texas at Austin, purchased for princely sums by the prodigiously funded Harry Ransom Center. Mindful of this curious literary migration, Tom Wolfe, now 83, was adamant that his own archives should remain in New York City,…

Even in his natural habitat “Twin Quarries”—his Arcadian estate in Gloucester, Mass., where hummingbirds gather nectar beside a tranquil quarry lake—Horace “Woody” Brock is an exceedingly rare bird.

“I never thought I’d live to see the day!” says Sondra Gilman, the Whitney Museum of American Art’s longest-serving trustee (since 1977), after taking a tour of the Museum’s spectacular new 220,000-square-foot home in the meatpacking district. Designed by the Pritzker Prize-winning architect Renzo Piano, the building, which officially opens on May 1,includes an 18,000-square-foot…