Be an empiricist
In socialism and sex!
Read Wilhelm Reich
And remember the Czechs!

—Kenneth Tynan, in a birthday poem to his daughter Tracy

In a letter written to the agent Irving “Swifty” Lazar proposing an autobiography strong on name-dropping—a “conglamouration of stars,” as John Gielgud once put it in a slip of the tongue while acting in a Congreve play—Kenneth Tynan described himself as a talent snob. Quite accurate, too. Right out of the gate the young Kenneth Tynan was a fan—fanatically worshipful of athletes, of musicians, and above all of actors—and fanatical worship easily elides into snobbery.

Later, Tynan was snobbishly pleased at his connections with the talented and greatly acclaimed. (“Last year,” he wrote to friends in 1980, “met Cary Grant. Top that.”) “In our teens,” Tynan wrote at forty in a profile of Duke Ellingt ...

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