Michael Bennett - Best Of Times, Worst Of Times

BEST OF TIMES, WORST OF TIMES
'The Best Of Times, The Worst Of Times' appeared in the British newspaper The Independent on Mondays, from 1989 to 1991. Interviewed by Danny Danziger, the subjects recounted a high or low point in their lives. A number of prints are in the collection of The National Portrait Gallery, London.

Sir George Martin (1926 – 2016) was an English record producer, arranger, composer, conductor, audio engineer and musician. In reference to his extensive involvement on each of The Beatles' original albums, Paul McCartney said upon his death, "If anyone earned the title of the fifth Beatle, it was George". He is considered one of the greatest record producers of all time.
Photographed in London, 1990

Photographer Tessa Traeger is known for her still life and food photography. Her work has been published in two books of her own; included in a number of books with others on gardening and food, exhibited in both solo and group exhibitions; and is held in the collections of the National Portrait Gallery and Victoria and Albert Museum, London. Photographed at her London studio, 1991

Harry Thompson (1960 – 2005) was an English radio and television producer, comedy writer, novelist and biographer. For five years, he was producer of BBC TV's "Have I Got News For You", "They Think It's All Over' and Never Mind The Buzzcocks". Thompson (Obituary, The Guardian) was widely regarded as one of the most successful television producers and comedy writers of his generation. He died on November 7, 2005. Photographed in the gardens at Soho Square, London, 1991. National Portrait Gallery, London

Susan Howatch is an author. Her books have included The Starbridge Series and The St. Benet's Trilogy.
Photographed in 1991

Russell Twisk (1941 – 2013) was a journalist & editor of The Listener (BBC) and Reader's Digest.
Photographed in 1991
National Portrait Gallery, London

Monica Connell is a writer and photographer, author of 'Against a Peacock Sky'.
Photographed at her home, 1991

Miriam Margolyes (b. 1941) is a British-Australian actress and voice artist. Her earliest roles were in theatre and after several supporting roles in film and television she won a BAFTA Award for her role in The Age of Innocence (1993) and went on to take the role of Professor Sprout in the Harry Potter film series.
Photographed at her home, 1990

John Sessions (1953 – 2020) was a Scottish actor and comedian. He was known for comedy improvisation in television shows such as Whose Line Is It Anyway?, as a panellist on QI, and as a character actor in numerous films, both in the UK and in Hollywood.
Photographed at his home, 1991

Pamella Bordes is an Indian-born photographer and former Miss India who briefly hit the headlines in the United Kingdom in 1988 and 1989 as the mistress and escort of several notable individuals, including arms dealer Adnan Khashoggi. She had been known in society columns as a social companion of Andrew Neil, editor of Sunday Times; Donald Trelford, editor of The Observer and of junior minister Colin Moynihan.
Photographed in London, 1990

Sir Jonathon Porritt, (b. 1950) is an environmentalist and writer, known for his advocacy of the Green Party.
Photographed at his home, 1990

William Douglas Home (1912 – 1992) was a British dramatist and politician, author of 50 plays, most of them comedies in an upper class setting. In 1944, whilst on military service as an officer, Douglas-Home was charged at a Field General Court Martial for disobeying orders during a German attack on Le Harve. He argued he had acted on humanitarian grounds, but was convicted and sent to prison, serving eight months. His eldest brother was Sir Alec Douglas-Home, Prime Minister from 1963 to 1964.
Photographed at his home in Hampshire, 1990

Chris Tarrant (b. 1946) presented the ITV children's television show Tiswas from 1974 to 1981, and the game show Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? from 1998 to 2014. He was a Capital Radio host from 1984 to 2004.
Photographed at Capital Radio Studios, 1990

Celebrity chef Marco Pierre White (b. 1961) was, at the time, the youngest chef ever to have been awarded three Michelin stars. He has trained chefs such as Gordon Ramsay and Curtis Stone.
Photographed at Harvey's, his restaurant in Wandsworth, London, 1991

(Left) J. G. Ballard (1930 – 2009) was a novelist, short story writer, and prominent member of the New Wave movement in science fiction. His best-known books are Crash (1973), adapted into a film by David Cronenberg, and the semi-autobiographical Empire of the Sun (1984), made into a film by Steven Spielberg. Photographed at his home in west London, which was filled with copies of his favourite paintings, many of them from the surrealist movement.
Photographed at his home, 1991

(Right) Kathleen Tynan (1937 – 1995) was a Canadian-British journalist, author, and screenwriter, once married to theatre critic Kenneth Tynan. Following his death in 1980, she wrote the biography The Life of Kenneth Tynan (1987), her best-known book.
Photographed at her home, 1990

Anton Mosimann (b. 1947) has presented television programmes in the UK and Switzerland. In 2016 a museum dedicated to his life and culinary arts was opened in the César Ritz Colleges, located on the shores of Lake Geneva (lac Léman), in the town of Le Bouveret.
Photographed at his restaurant, 1991

(Left) Ernie Wise OBE (1925 – 1999), was a comedian, best known as one half of the comedy duo Morecambe and Wise, who became an institution on British television, especially for their Christmas specials.
Photographed at his home, 1990

(Right) Ian Curteis (1935 – 2021) was a British dramatist and former television director, known for
The Falklands Play, originally scheduled for production in 1985, which was eventually broadcast in 2002. At the time production was cancelled, Curteis blamed a "liberal conspiracy" at the BBC. One of his three marriages was to the novelist Joanna Trollope.
Photographed at his home, 1990

Lee Earle "James" Ellroy (b. 1948) is an American crime fiction writer. Ellroy’s novels include The Black Dahlia (1987), The Big Nowhere (1988), L.A. Confidential (1990), White Jazz (1992), American Tabloid (1995), The Cold Six Thousand (2001), and Blood's a Rover (2009). A number have been successfully adapted as films.
Photographed in London, 1990

Barry Fantoni (b. 1940) is a writer, comic strip cartoonist and jazz musician, most famous for his work with the magazine Private Eye, where he is the writer of poems under the name E. J. Thribb.
Photographed in London, 1990

(Left) Brian Johnston (1912 – 1994) was a cricket commentator and presenter for the BBC.
Photographed at his home, 1991

(Right) Ralph Steadman (b. 1936) is a satirical cartoonist best known for his work with American author Hunter S. Thompson. At the photo session he suggested a shot showing off the copy of Leonardo's The Last Supper he had painted onto his bedroom wall (above). Steadman worked for Punch, Private Eye, The Daily Telegraph, The New York Times The New Statesman and Rolling Stone.
Photographed at his home, 1991

Deborah Moggach is a novelist and screenwriter. She has written nineteen novels, including The Ex-Wives, Tulip Fever (made into the film of the same name), These Foolish Things (made into the film The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel) and Heartbreak Hotel. Photographed at her home, 1991

Sir Michael Parkinson CBE (1935 – 2023) was a television presenter, broadcaster, journalist and author. He presented his television talk show Parkinson from 1971 to 1982 and from 1998 to 2007, as well as other talk shows and programmes both in the UK and internationally. He also worked in radio and was described by The Guardian as "the great British talkshow host".

Anthony Blond (1928 – 2008) was a publisher and author. Blond was an early director and publisher of satirical magazine Private Eye. His friendship with James Goldsmith (and other members of the Clermont Clubcircle) survived Goldsmith's numerous writs to the magazine in the mid-1970s. He was described in Michael Barber's Guardian obituary as "the last of the eponymous Jewish publishers whose chutzpah made publishing hum in the days before the conglomerates"

Antony Worrall Thompson is a restaurateur and celebrity chef, television presenter and radio broadcaster, photographed in 1991

Douglas Adams (1952 – 2001) was an author, humorist, and screenwriter, best known for The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Originally a 1978 BBC radio comedy, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy developed into a "trilogy" of five books that sold more than 15 million copies in his lifetime. It was further developed into a television series, several stage plays, comics, a video game, and a 2005 feature film. Photographed at his home, 1991

Lucy Ellmann is an American-born British novelist based in Edinburgh, Scotland. Her first book, Sweet Desserts, won the Guardian Fiction Prize. She is the daughter of the American biographer and literary critic Richard Ellmann and the feminist literary critic Mary Ellmann. She is married to the American writer Todd McEwen. Her fourth novel, Dot in the Universe, was longlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction and shortlisted for the Believer Book Award. Photographed in London, 1991

Fay Maschler MBE is a journalist who was the restaurant critic of London's Evening Standard newspaper for nearly 50 years. She won a contest for the position in 1972, when her tenure was supposed to last for three months. In December 2020, the Evening Standard announced that Maschler would leave the role of its chief restaurant critic after 48 years. She was subsequently appointed restaurant critic of Tatler magazine. Photographed in 1991

Writer Alan Sillitoe (1928 – 2010) was one of the so-called "angry young men" of the 1950s. He disliked the label, as did most of the other writers to whom it was applied. He is best known for his debut novel Saturday Night and Sunday Morning and his early short story "The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner", both of which were adapted into films. Sillitoe was born in Nottingham to working-class parents. Like Arthur Seaton, the anti-hero of his first novel, Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, his father worked at the Raleigh Bicycle Company's factory in the town. His father was illiterate, violent, and unsteady with his jobs, and the family was often on the brink of starvation. Photographed at his home, 1991