'How's your trashy book going?' my wife asked me. I paused for a moment, reflecting on the memoirs of respected magazine mogul and museum director Nicholas Coleridge and countered, 'What makes you think it's trashy?' She looked at me in disbelief; 'It has a shiny gold cover.' The Glossy Years is not trashy. It is light, amiable and very readable without being trivial. Coleridge is polite and (relatively) discreet about his many high-profile friends and associates; he only actively dishes dirt on established adversaries. A veritable roster of high society parades through the book; everyone is here from royalty to writers, clothing designers to politicians – plus some 'celebrities' whose names are familiar even to me. The secret of Coleridge's success seems to be that he knows everyone and uses his address book with acumen and aplomb; if you were to remove every name dropped in The Glossy Years it would be shorter by at least a third. Coleridge is more modest when it comes to discussing himself; although he offers some genuine insight into his life and career, he skims over many personal adventures that might have warranted much lengthier treatment. Some of my favourite passages in the book deal with his stoical father who never talks about his own hugely successful career because he considers it too boring to merit discussion. Glitzier anecdotes include the episode where the author plays highly competitive bouts of Monopoly with Michael Portillo and Charles Saachi (Saachi always won, 'with hotels on every property on the board') and a nautical tactic employed by Prince Andrew to avoid discussing haute couture with the staff of Vogue. This is a rarefied world, for which Nicholas Coleridge acts as an elegant cicerone ... and is never trashy. ( )