We don’t show 10 things for under pounds 25 from the Reject Shop We offer escapism. This is no fusty interior guide showing you coffee tables for pounds 50 or what to do with bamboo in your front room. Wallpaper* is for homes with the potential for, if not the presence of, white sofas, leather-panelled walls and photosensitive windows.
According to Brule (the name is Estonian, the accent is Toronto-born French Canadian, and the age is a rather sickening 28), Wallpaper* is about “a design exercise rather than a cost-cutting one. For those whose decorating sensibilities haven’t yet quite progressed from the occasional flick through the Habitat catalogue, Wallpaper* (the asterisk refers to its subtitle, The Stuff That Surrounds You) is an ultra- groovy lifestyle bible which was launched last September.

Move aside Elle Decoration, Homes and Gardens, World of Interiors. He’s just had his title snapped up by that most establishment of US publishers, Time Inc. I don’t feel it’s even worthwhile to emphasise any downside – it seems horribly spoiled”. Looks like it will be a long wait before those copies of Daddy Dearest will be hitting the shelvesSerena Mackesy.

Maybe it had something to do with that issue of Vanity Fair showing Liam and our Patsy lolling around in a Union flag sheet on the cover. Or that Newsweek cover with a model wearing a Union flag Philip Treacey hat. Anyway, the story, according to Tyler Brule, editor and inventor of interior style mag Wallpaper*, is that London continues to be the place of choice for American magazines to loiter He should know. A typical quote is this one from James: “We’ve been lucky enough to have a really close family and to have a father who’s been able to give us so many opportunities. Lachlan tends to work from 7.15am to midnight; Elisabeth took just three weeks off for the birth of her first child.

Employees seem no less confident of keeping their heads under the children’s rule than the father’s. None seems to exhibit any of the weak-willed whining characteristic of the mega-rich. James, who made more of a break for independence by setting up Rawkus Records, an outfit which expects to release three dozen albums this year in a business notorious for eating up and spitting out the young and naive, is also back in the family fold as vice-president for music and new media.Murdoch looks to be grooming up the youngsters in the hope that one will succeed him as head of the family business (though the shareholders may well have things to say about this at a later date), and all three are showing startling signs of the old man’s grit and application. Spotting their talent, father has presided over meteoric career tracks within the Dark Empire for his progeny. Being related to the Digger is obviously a good way of getting one’s talents recognised: Alasdair MacLeod, husband of elder daughter Prudence, from Murdoch’s first marriage, is himself circulation and sales director of the company’s British newspapers. Elisabeth, after an 18-month stint with her husband, Elkin Pianim, running two Californian TV stations bought with a loan from papa (and turning over a nice little profit of $59.3m in the process), now presides as general manager of BSkyB; with the departure of BSkyB`s chief executive, Sam Chisholm, announced last week, further promotion looks certain.Lachlan has worked his way up the ladder, starting out as general manager of Newscorp’s Queensland Newspaper division (which includes the Brisbane Courier-Mail, sold to pay the debts of the late Sir Keith and re-acquired by Rupert in 1987), and is currently in charge of the corporation’s entire Australian operations.

Fortunately, they have not had to start from too far behind the starting line. They attended “good” universities: Elisabeth went to Vassar, where she was instrumental in setting up a campus TV station, complete with soap opera; Lachlan to Princeton, where he produced a thesis on Kantian moral systems; and James to Harvard, where he worked on the Lampoon before dropping out to concentrate on his own record label.In a normal world, all three would have been self-starters. According to an analysis of the family in July’s Vanity Fair, despite daddy’s workaholic, ruthless, right-wing tendencies, the children have been raised with heads as level as is possible for people with their backgrounds. They were expected to pay for their teenage pleasures with vacation jobs just like their peers, though the jobs they did were rather more elevated than the usual manual-and-bar-work that sixth-formers get to do.