In late 1977, staffers at the publishing house of Alfred A Knopf in Manhattan, New York, got used to an extraordinary visitor: Lauren Bacall, in her stockinged feet, traipsing from room to room, notepads under her arm. Signed to write her memoir, she had complained to her editor, Robert Gottlieb, that she couldn’t work at home. What she needed wasn’t a collaborator, Gottlieb said, “and in any case would never have put up with one”. She needed structure. “So I gave her an office at Knopf, and every day she was in town she turned up and got down to work, writing in longhand on long yellow pads . . . and at the end of every day, little elves out at the front desk
© Times Media Limited 2023.
Registered in England No. 894646. Registered office: 1 London Bridge Street, SE1 9GF.