Customer Reviews

Redeeming Features: A Memoir

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If you're up to date on your stylish Brits and Amos, you'll love Nicholas Haslam's autobiography, "Redeeming Features". Haslam was born to a wealthy and connected family in the early days of WW2. The youngest son - of three children - he was raised in a country home safely located outside London and the German bombings. After the war, he was stricken with polio and was bed-bound for a couple of years. He later was sent away to school, and then on to Eton. However, Nicky made a life outside of his four walls at Eton. Realising early his sexuality, he mainly used Eton as a base for his real life in London, amid the clever and trendy people he befriended. Haslam has lived life to the fullest, it seems, in his 70 years. He is currently an interior designer of note, and also writes for both shelter and style magazines. He's lived - and loved - in many places; London, the south of France, Morocco, Jamaica, Barbados, Los Angeles, and, for a short time, northern Arizona! Haslam "names names", but never in a mean way. His writing is delightful and the reader is introduced to many unforgettable characters Haslam has met, worked with, and loved in his life.

I can't really recommend this book to the average reader. I think if you didn't "know" at least most of the names he writes about, you wouldn't enjoy it. For those of us who do "know" the names, "Redeeming Features" is a fun read.

Haslam had more adventures before he left school than most men have in a lifetime. His touch is as light as his step when he shares the dirt on people everybody knows if everybody is somebody. Good fun.

After reading this book, I felt like a diamond miner in the Kimberly Mine after a very long day, picking in the walls with only a few diamonds to show for the effort. Was it an entertaining read? Yes. Was I bored out of my mind at times? Yes. The name dropping is relentless, but also superficial. How can I say this--it's as if Haslam himself was a bit of a third wheel in so many of his encounters, that I felt like one myself!

The worst part of it is when he veers into his own relationships. They seem like high school breakups with all the accompanying jealousies and angst.

Years ago, I had a dear gay friend tell me, "I'm the same as you, but less substantial." When he explained this to me, he said that his homosexuality prevented, to his great sorrow, forming the close bonds of spouse, children and family. Unfortunately, there is a bit of this in Haslam's book, an emptiness despite the fantastic friends, society, and country bolt-hole.

I enjoyed the gossip, true--but I felt a lot of pity, a strange feeling when I anticipated a lot of fun. How can I articulate this--brittle--yes, this was a brittle read.

Nicky Haslam is a talented writer, if a little flowery and over-the-top in his use of adjectives and obscure vocabulary but, overall, this was an entertaining read. It was less a memoir, though, than a dizzying array of celebrity name-dropping, so many it was hard to keep track of who everyone was. It was like standing on a train platform and watching a high-speed train shoot past, filled with celebrities, royals, and aristocrats at the window. Too bad the train never stopped or, at least, slowed down enough so we could get to know some of the characters in more depth and detail. Haslam's book reminded me a bit of the memoirs of Elizabeth Vigee-Lebrun, 18th century portrait painter to the royals of Europe, wherein she'd say flattering things about all the rich and famous people she knew. The result ended up flattering herself, just for being associated with them, as well as making sure not to bite any of the famous hands that fed her. And it didn't say anything meaningful about her life or her work or her philosophy of life. This book felt the same - less self-reflection than basking in the reflected glory of those with whom he socialized. Still, kudos to Nicky for having such a fabulous life. That, too, takes talent!

Nicky Haslam lead a charmed life and the proof is in this autobiography. There are quite a few revelations, some I can't imagine are true, e.g. the Duchess of Windsor was an hermaphrodite. I refuse to believe it. The scene where Dorothy Kilgallen shows up drunk at a Cleopatra premier is hysterical. I loved this book. Wish I could meet the author.

The writer has seemingly brushed shoulders (and more) with all the rich and famous of Europe, England, NY and LA! All the experiences are quite fascinating and the writing is sumptious and detailed. As an autobiographical journey, however, I wish he would reveal just a bit more about his authentic self and more about his signature aesthetic.

Nicky Haslam has been a social fixture on the transatlantic scene for decades. He's legendary for all sorts of reasons, and obviously either has an eidetic memory or keeps detailed journals stretching back decades on every party he's attended, every house he's entered, and every person he's ever met or slept with. He is, as someone said, a man who would attend a lighted candle, needless to say a party. Perhaps due to his great good looks and his all-encompassing charm Nicky has met simply everyone interesting, starting in his early teenage years with an afternoon with Tallulah Bankhead and onward from there. Every single page of his autobiography glitters with famous names. And, surprisingly enough, the book is well-written, as well. In particular, it seems that Nicky worked especially hard on adding particularly elegiac observations of the countryside as a way of keeping his book from being simply a laundry list of the great and good, the notoriously bad, and the ugly.

Ugly is something I would also use to describe some of what Nicky writes in Redeeming Features. He deliberately inserts some of the very most disobliging things about people in society that I have ever read. In particular, Mr Haslam seems to really dislike the late Alvilde Lees-Milne, and provides certain quite repellent assertions about her personal life with the late Princess Winnareta de Polignac, nee Singer, as well as supposedly recording a catty remark regarding Winnie and Alvilde by her husband's old school chum Harold Acton. Since there are no book sales to be made from mentioning someone so long dead (1994) and comparatively unfamous one can only assume that Nicky was settling an old score. Perhaps the fact that James Lees-Milne, the UK's greatest 20th century diarist, never mentioned Nicky once in all the 12 volumes of his published diaries pricked Mr Haslam's notable amour-propre. However, there are many claims Nicky makes in Redeeming Features which have been denied or doubted by living persons.

All in all, from even a cursory examination of Redeeming Features, one can only conclude that this is the record of a charmed life. After reading the whole thing one wonders, however, "but has all this rushing about, partying, making love, chattering, photographing and designing interiors really meant something that's at all important?" No one I can think of has ever traded so successfully on looks, charm, and being the minor connection of an Earl. This book is certainly not boring.

The book was written by someone (obviously) with an artistic eye. Everything - the people, homes, locations, experiences - the reader will effortlessly visualize. A rich read indeed. Wow, what a life lived.

As the reviewer in the Literary Review said Haslam can name drop for the Olympics.

Haslam is a British socialite and interior designer who is of that time and place,upper class, someone who has met lots of people.

Unfortunately we are treated to page after page of names he met here there and every where, it just gets tedious.

Gore Vidal is someone similar who has met everyone, but Vidal can write and gives some insight to those he has cross paths with, that makes a difference.

There is no real salacious gossip, Haslam says he had a brief affair with Anthony Armstrong-Jones (denied) ,well, really who cares to be honest.

This had the chance to really give us a 'slice of time; piece here - the 60's especially - but instead its more name after name and though his sexuality has nothing to do with things the entire thing come across very 'queenie'.

Disappointing