Welcome to FRESH HELL Tina Brown's Diary
Welcome everyone to my Substack diary which is simply a place - in the third trimester of my life (as I prefer to think of it) - to unload my observations, rants, news obsessions, and human exchanges with the wildly eclectic cast of characters who populate my seething inbox.
I’ve been a transatlantic media diva for close to four decades – editor in chief of Tatler, Vanity Fair, The New Yorker, Talk, founder of The Daily Beast news website, and The Women in the World Summits, author of two best-selling royal tomes The Diana Chronicles and The Palace Papers, and The Vanity Fair Diaries, creator of Truth Tellers, an annual investigative journalism summit in London in honor of my late fabulous newspaperman husband Sir Harry Evans. Thanks to the crazy, creative roller coaster of my life, I’ve collaborated and collided with so many great writers, culture shapers, newshounds, and iconoclasts over the years. So at a time when we awake every day to a news alert from Hades, I now have a place to share some of my intel and invite you to join the conversation.
What to expect
Mostly I shall write in notebook form because Big Think columns require three linked ideas and a pithy conclusion which, after a day of the required intellectual toil, can be instantly erased by some new cloudburst of crap in the unceasing news cycle. So, in this Fresh Hell Substack, I can go long or short whenever I want. Expect my diary to run every Tuesday, but who knows how prolific I might become with encouragement? I might also assign zeitgeisty pieces for a fantasy publication I don’t have to edit.
Behind the curtain
The fun of diaries is they take you behind the scenes and mix public and private. While I am still an action junkie and there’s plenty of high life on my calendar, I am, by nature, a bookworm and misanthrope with the two sides of my personality constantly at war. Off stage, my beloved buffers from the ever-encroaching turmoil of the real world are Georgie, my on-the-spectrum, 38-year-old son who for the last few years has been my chaotic, hilarious room-mate; my dynamo BFF daughter Izzy who produces documentaries and podcasts and scans everything I write to be sure I don’t say something that will get me canceled; and the third love of my life, her irresistibly chunky female English bulldog Gimli, whose huge jowly face and glimpse of protruding tongue enchant me. Georgie, Izzy, and Gimli will all, I suspect, insinuate their way into this Substack.
Stay up-to-date
Never miss an update—every new post is sent directly to your email inbox. For a spam-free, ad-free reading experience, plus audio and community features, get the Substack app:
My love for writing and in-depth reporting is because of you. My first magazine subscription was to The New Yorker (my grandmother gifted it to me each year starting at the age of seven - she did pause it for a few years after you left because she said, “it’s gone to hell without Tina.”) We read The Diana Chronicles together the summer before I went to college - meeting for cocktails once a week - to discuss each chapter. These were some of my most cherished memories. And 15 years later in the middle of the pandemic, we read it together again. This time my grandmother was 90 years old, had just lost her husband of 65 years, and was living in a body that was physically failing her while her mind continued to thrive. I was a new mother living hundreds of miles away from my family, trying to figure out how to keep my first child alive (he survived!), while working in crisis communications for a major hospital. Once again, you brought a light to my grandmother and me. While we weren’t able to discuss in person, I would FaceTime her, put the camera on the baby and then read a chapter from the book. These memories ARE my most cherished with my grandmother who has since passed away.
Thank you for your work, Tina Brown. I’ll continue to be a lifetime subscriber.
Subscribed for a year. I've always found your writing addictive and your ability to edit a magazine second to none.