MY LUNCH WITH MARILYN

My Lunch with Marilyn … and Other Stories is a brilliant, funny and often jaw-dropping collection from the journalist and writer Stanley Price – collated and edited by Munro Price, with a foreword by Maureen Lipman. It opens in late-1950s New York, with Price newly arrived at Life magazine and tasked with escorting Marilyn Monroe to a private lunch hosted by the formidable publisher Henry Luce – a set-piece of nerves, glamour and newsroom comedy that Price tells with perfect, dry timing. From there, the book ranges widely across showbusiness, publishing, theatre, Fleet Street and the absurdities of ordinary life. Price writes with a reporter’s eye for detail, but also with a novelist’s sense of scene: you’ll find encounters and profiles (sometimes affectionate, sometimes wickedly appraising), along with sharply observed comic essays and true stories that only a working journalist could have stumbled into – or survived. Among the stand-out pieces are a memorable early assignment involving the boy-genius Bobby Fischer; a film-set tale featuring Graham Greene; backstage and theatrical stories (including one that features Jack Rosenthal and ends with an inspired practical joke); and modern London capers such as a number-plate cloning incident and a cash-machine “fiver” scam. Originally written over many years (with thanks to The Oldie Magazine for permissions), these pieces bring back a lost world of editors, agents, stars, hustlers, dinner parties and deadlines – and they remain disarmingly readable because Price never overclaims, never sentimentalises and always lands the point.