London Sprawling

THE AUTHORS OFBRIGHT YOUNG THINGSTURN A KEEN EYE TO BRITAIN

As a compendium for obsessives of the jet-set pecking order, interior decorators, and house burglars. Bright Young Things: London (Assouline) will be an invaluable resource. Not that the British edition of this society I-spy book (a U.S. version was published a couple of years ago with a thinly disguised mandate to give Manhattan’s heiresses compelling occupations) isn't drenched with certifiable fabulousness and achievement—it’s just that the brand-name cash reserves necessary to properly compete in the transatlantic game of lifestyle perfectionism are less in evidence. Described glowingly by friends and relatives, and photographed by V.F. snapper Jonathan Becker, the almost three dozen subjects anointed with Evelyn Waugh's venerable idiom appear enviably composed as international ambassadors of refinement. The subjects' poses range from the conventional to the oddly pornographic (fashion stylist Charlotte Stockdale), from the supremely graceful (prima ballerina Darcey Bussell) to the eccentric (art dealer Detmar Blow luxuriating, sister Selina sporting a Philip Treacv hat resembling a pair of buttocks). The book may ultimately migrate from the coffee table to a downstairs bathroom, perhaps to return in years hence as a curiosity of the times, but nonetheless its prime mover, London migrant Brooke de Ocampo, has comprehensively penetrated the social reaches of her destination and will someday be able to return to New York with a souvenir in hardcover.

EDWARD HELMORE