Barbara Amiel- Husband Conrad Black was pardoned by Trump is Insufferable

Those two deserve each other.

The book was great and will make a wondetful miniseries.

Like Zelig, Joan Colins appears.

How very dare you, R2. You bought the book and gave money to Amiel. Shame on you.

I read the book. There is a section on how she would viciously kick her boyfriend’s small dog for no reason she can identify as it shrieked with pain. Many book reviewers zeroed in on it. It takes your breath away, animal lover or not. She is a sadistic monster. I totally believe it is true. What I can’t comprehend is why she wants the world know about it.

Because people are inherently Cruel that they have POWER over. Love torturing small animals. Yes, she is a sadistic monster, but she is also a narcissist-she loves the attention she craves (good or bad).

I read lots of autobiographies and obscure, old memoirs and I found hers so boring and hard to read that I finally just quit and put it down. And I RARELY don’t finish a book I start.

Believe it or not the husband Conrad Black is the author of the incredibly well written biography on FDR.

It's a brilliant and intensely scholarly biography in my opinion

Did she write this article in the 3rd person? Gross.

Sounds juicy!

R9 You need to keep scrolling, dear.

What a horrid woman.

Holy shit, they weren't kidding about her kicking the dog, which eventually died of internal bleeding.

That is such a horrific story. I almost wish I hadn't read it. That's real sadism.

Why would anyone put that dog story in their book?

Allow me to correct my comment at r13 as the article doesn't say that the dog died, only that it experienced internal bleeding.

Googled her and to this day she has dogs. I was just staring at the dogs wondering what's happening to them.

She doesn't like the gays either.

[quote]"Amiel has used her outlets to "defend nonviolent sexual harassment" of the kind Anita Hill said she had endured from (then) Supreme Court justice nominee Clarence Thomas, to describe homosexuality as abominable, and to describe as "horrifying" the Princess of Wales' sympathy for AIDS sufferers."

R8 He is actually a very good and entertaining writer, so I believe that.

Cunt. If she dies in an unspeakably painful way, I'll not be saddened.

She wrote lists of 'enemies' and 'friends' in her book. For the US friends list, Laura Ingraham is top of the list with "(Gold Star)" next to her name; the only person who gets that.

Wow. I knew she was an awful person, but I wouldn't've accused her of that kind of cruelty.

The cunt does look great for her age.

I'm not sure I'd say she looks great for her age. Could be worse, I guess.

Watch out, Barbara. Seamus O'Regan is one of those abominable homos.

Black and Amiel move out of 26 Park Lane Circle in Toronto to a more modest house. Does anyone know where it is or can anyone link to a photo?

R25 Oh, Barbs is happy to socialise with the gays including (disappointingly) Elton John and David Furnish - whom she lists as 'friends' - if they are rich, celebrated and well-connected; she just thinks the practice is abominable. Perhaps she has changed her mind now like a lot of people have but when it mattered, she thought that being gay was abominable, which doesn't speak much of her character.

She started cosmetic surgery at a very young age (nose) and has never stopped. She'll cross over into Joan Van Ark territory soon enough.

The lips as well. Perfectly smooth forehead - Botox. A lot of work.

So tragic when friends fall out...

She was once lovely. The plastic surgery makes her look freakish.

Social X-Ray.

She was never 'lovely', let's be real. She gives me Wicked Witch vibes from any photo.

^^^ She looks attractive in OP's photo.

R33 She looks hard and bitchy at minimum.

She is the cuntiest of all cunts.

The Blacks were summed up by one biographer as millionaires desperate to live like billionaires. Hence Conrad's creative accounting and custodial time. It's just too perfect that Trump pardoned him. The Devil can certainly be quite witty.

Reading the Toronto Star review at r13, she sounds like the most repellent person.

R26, I heard an interview for the book where she claimed that she is now accepting of same-sex marriage (and same-sex relationships in general, I guess) because of how good Elton John was to her at a time when everyone else cut her out. It's pretty feeble, like people who only stop hating gays when their kid comes out, but better than nothing.

Instant DL icon

That's what I say, R39.

She has crazy eyes. And her eyebrows always have been fucked up.

R36 [quote] The Blacks were summed up by one biographer as millionaires desperate to live like billionaires.

I think that's my favorite aspect of the story about this horrid couple--they weren't even that rich.

"Only a few hundred women in the world can afford to dress like Mrs. Black", wrote Margaret Wente in a November 2003 issue of Toronto's Globe and Mail, "and Mrs. Black may not be among them."

Found a 2010 FT article which says how much he was worth was difficult to pin down but they say: "At his peak, his net worth was estimated to be $400m. The millionaire’s fortune was pegged at $275m by Forbes magazine in 1997."

R43 lol chickenshit

Barbara prepares to take flight!

Just reading the T&C excerpt makes her sound relentlessly self-absorbed and repellent. Her description of her self-pity and "shattered world" where she imagined (I believe) that Jane Wrightsman went cold on her because she was wearing Donna Karan off-the-rack and not a Paris atelier is funny and out of touch. Or talking about the Carolina Herrera off-the-rack she wore to some event compared to the other ladies' couture. Or moaning that she failed to purchase a LV white fur cape another socialite wore instead of the black one she had because she didn't look special or stand out. I suspect her society and aristocratic "friends" were simply civil with her and breathed a sigh of relief that they finally had a reason to ignore her besides her screaming narcissism and pretentiousness. The key to the society she hovered in and those old money billionaires they aspired to be is that they found ostentation and displays of self-importance gauche. She never got it.

And then I read about kicking the dog... Jesus, what a unrelenting sociopath. If she were poor and unknown, she might be another Sante Kimes.

I thought the white/black fur story was interesting. You'd see these social x-rays in photos at galas, it's oddly fascinating to me to learn this is the sort of petty thing they worry about. It humanizes them in a weird way.

She reminds me of that cunt Sally Quinn.

According to Wikipedia, she's [italic]three years older[/italic] than Conrad at 81? That's some amazing plastic surgery.

Hope she dies by being kicked to death. One can dream.

Home wrecking tramp who did everything she could to sow discord between Black and his wife so she could move in on him. Two garbage people who deserve each other and their miseries.

[quote]The key to the society she hovered in and those old money billionaires they aspired to be is that they found ostentation and displays of self-importance gauche. She never got it.

A social adventuress who genuinely thought she could fit in at what she deemed 'the top' - but is also at pains to describe how she knows she doesn't. She climbed, she fell.

At some level she knows how ridiculous she is, and is permitting herself self-satire. Outsider snobs are always likely to flounder on their own worthless values, and Barbara embodies this truism vividly.

Married 4 times (3 divorces). Am I wrong or is that a sign of some kind of personality disorder?

R53 It is always a sign of a personality disorde, yes, but the marriages are the absolute least of her problems.

"Old money billionaires" - don't the billionaires tend to be newer money? Sounds to me like she was trying to fit in to the Bonfire of the Vanities crowd. That's more of a Gilded Age type society, no?

I meant disorder. Oh dear.

[quote] I meant disorder.

Oh dear.

She seems like a total cunt. Why does anyone aspire to that kind of social position? It would be nice to have all that money, but why would you want to spend a single moment with those kinds of people? I’d love to have that money and spend the money and my time on better things. Maybe it’s because I’m older and have some life experience with cunts like her.

It’s her story, take it or leave it. I for one love climbers and want to read this!

Her story and climbing reminds me a bit of Sheilah's Graham's, although Graham was the better writer and had much better taste in men (e.g., Scott Fitzgerald and Robert Taylor),

R57 - Please, get a grip of your need for unneccesary quotation marks. Even (SOME) DL Grammar Nazis and alleged Squires can be egriously long in the tooth and fundamentally incorrect about using the most abused punctuation on God's green earth.

Ack! Correcting self. She's so still a stellar, loathesome twat!

R61 Oh, that link was pretty funny. I recommend.

I wonder what Meghan and Harry sent Kate. They had to do something. Maybe it’ll get leaked.

I’m sorry, posting about the wrong climbers at R64.