At the New York Public Library’s annual Library Lunch, former New Yorker editor Tina Brown said there’s an obvious best seller waiting to be bestowed on one lucky biographer: the book on Queen Elizabeth.
Brown — who also once led Vanity Fair — spoke on the panel at the event about her work covering the royals, saying that there is a “huge question mark about who will get the official biography of Queen Elizabeth II,” we hear.
The queen kept a diary every day of her life, Brown noted.
The Princess Diana biographer also said that while current Queen Camilla would likely never pen a book of her own, she “has seen it all” and “has a great sense of humor” that would lend itself to an “absolutely cracking book,” sources told Page Six.
As for Brown’s next subjects? Possibly Anne Boleyn or Elizabeth I, leading her to call out for any agents in the room to green-light the projects. Brown is also behind the Substack newsletter, “Fresh Hell.”
Also appearing on the panel, held under the Celeste Bartos Forum’s historic glass dome, were current New Yorker editor David Remnick, National Book Award winner Imani Perry and Pulitzer Prize winner Stacy Schiff.
Schiff recalled that her best seller “Cleopatra: A Life” was researched entirely at the library, while Perry quipped that she will “probably not write a biography of a living person. Most of the people I’m most interested in are dead,” sources told us.
Off-stage, guests buzzed that one literary lion was notably absent from the gala: library president and CEO Anthony Marx, though his name was on the invitation.
But a source close to the former president of Amherst College told us: “It’s a brief health leave, but he’s actually doing really well, and has been in touch” with Iris Weinshall, NYPL’s COO and treasurer.
Attendees at the high-brow event also included Candice Bergen, Martha Stewart, Abby Milstein, Mahnaz Ispahani Bartos, Louise Grunwald, Daisy Prince, Deborah Goodrich Royce, Peggy Noonan, Gillian Minter, Elyse Newhouse, Min Jin Lee and Tara Westover, among others.
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