The New Zealand Herald is bringing back some of the best stories of 2020 from our premium syndicators, including The New York Times, Financial Times and The Times of London.
Today we look at the wife of disgraced newspaper proprietor Conrad Black, Russia's 'road of bones', the end of Hollywood as we know it, what it's really like on reality TV show Below Deck and Vogue's diversity issue.
'I was toxic'
The private jets! The mansions! The celebrity parties! BarbaraAmiel became instantly rich when she married newspaper proprietor Conrad Black. Then, in 2007, he was jailed for fraud. Overnight, Lady Black's hairdresser and friends all shunned her.
She tells her side of the story – from Watford schoolgirl to billionaire wife to prison widow, dropped by everyone (apart from Melania and Elton).
Conrad Black and his wife Barbara Amiel at a party in Toronto in 2005. Photo / Getty Images
Along Russia's 'road of bones,' relics of suffering and despair
The prisoners, hacking their way through insect-infested summer swamps and winter ice fields, brought the road, and the road then brought yet more prisoners, delivering a torrent of slave labour to the gold mines and prison camps of Kolyma, the most frigid and deadly outpost of Josef Stalin's gulag.
Their path became known as the "road of bones," a track of gravel, mud and, for much of the year, ice that stretches 2,027km west from the Russian port city of Magadan on the Pacific Ocean inland to Yakutsk, the capital of the Yakutia region in eastern Siberia. Snaking across the wilderness of the Russian Far East, it slithers through vistas of harsh, breathtaking beauty dotted with frozen, unmarked graves and the rapidly vanishing traces of labour camps.
A lone truck traverses the Kolyma Highway, the notorious 'road of bones' in Russia's Far East. Photo / Emile Ducke, The New York Times
The week old Hollywood finally, actually died
For decades, the best thing about being a Hollywood executive, really, was how you got fired. Studio executives would be gradually, gently, even lovingly, nudged aside, given months to shape their own narratives and find new work, or even promoted.
That, of course, was before streaming services arrived, upending everything with a ruthless logic and coldhearted efficiency.
That was never more clear than on August 7, when WarnerMedia abruptly eliminated the jobs of hundreds of employees, emptying the executive suite at the once-great studio that built Hollywood.
Bob Greenblatt, the chairman of WarnerMedia Entertainment, was among those ousted as Warner Media emptied the executive suite at the once-great studio that built Hollywood. Photo / AP
The reality behind Below Deck
How real is reality television? The New York went behind the scenes of Bravo's hit show, Below Deck, which offers a window into the world of yachts and yachties. What they found was a master suite crammed with producers, camera operators and Pringles.
An episode of Bravo's Below Deck Mediterranean is filmed in Majorca, Spain. Photo / Albert Bonsfills Morell, The New York Times
The White issue: Has Vogue editor Anna Wintour's diversity push come too late?
Vogue's September issue celebrated Black culture and contributors. But some employees say the magazine's powerful editor fostered a workplace that sidelined women of colour.
Anna Wintour arriving at Paris Fashion week in Janaruy 2020 in a fur coat. The Vogue editor and Conde Nast artistic director has been accused of being out of touch. Photo / Getty
