THE BEAT | PERSONA
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at a glance
Age: 68. Occupation: Writer/Musician Resides: Paris, France, and New Orleans. Born: Jackson, Mississippi. Education: Benjamin Franklin High School, New Orleans; Harvard, B.A.; Oxford University, Ph D. in History. Favorite Book: Under the Volcano by Malcolm Lowry Favorite Movie: Round Midnight by Bertrand Tavernier Favorite TV Show: “Leave it to Beaver” Favorite food: Steak tartare, served very spicy, with pomme frites. Favorite restaurant: Mariza.
Tom Sancton Writer, Jazz Musician By Jason Berry
Tom Sancton grew up in New Orleans in the 1960s, and in high school learned jazz clarinet from George Lewis and other musicians at Preservation Hall. In fall 1967 he entered Harvard as a freshman; four years later he won a Rhodes Scholarship to Oxford
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University. He became a journalist, based for many years in Paris as Time’s bureau chief. In 1997, Sancton covered the automobile accident in which Princess Diana was killed. He and a Time colleague, Scott MacLeod, wrote a best
seller, Death of a Princess. He left Time in 2001 to write other books and work as a freelancer. Like many people changed by Hurricane Katrina, Sancton was pulled back to New Orleans to assist his aging parents; he ended up staying, revitalizing his jazz career, recording with Lars Edegran and others. In 2006 he published Song for my Fathers, a memoir of the complex relationship with his father, and his years of learning at Preservation Hall. “A newly minted classic,” wrote Susan Larson in the Times-Picayune, “filled with grace and gratitude.” For several years he taught writing at Tulane. His wife, Sylvaine Sancton, is an accomplished artist. Sancton’s new book appears in August. The Bettencourt Affair follows the saga of Liliane Bettencourt, 94, heiress to the L’Oreal cosmetics fortune and the world’s wealthiest woman. Her daughter, Françoise Bettencourt Meyers, sued to gain control of the wealth after Liliane showered huge sums on François-Marie Banier, a writer-photographer and much younger gay man whom she adored. The legal actions exposed a seamy world of money-grubbing French politicians.
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