Welcome to Notes by Alfred Tong

Notes from the rooms where taste is made.

I had a dream recently in which I spotted Gay Talese in the bar of a cinema. Legendary Esquire writer, titan of New Journalism — except he had shrunk to comically tiny proportions: a perfectly dressed literary leprechaun.

A literary patriarch reduced to pocket size is a neat metaphor for what I’m doing here.

I’ve spent years writing within the great institutions — British GQ, Esquire, The Times, The Daily Telegraph, Mr Porter — but NOTES isn’t an attempt to recreate that world.

It’s still writing about desire, status and London, but with a freedom legacy media rarely allows. Less finished article, more working notebook. Fragmentary. Observational. Sometimes intimate, sometimes analytical.

Each week I observe something, experience something, and speak to someone. From that come scenes, conversations, party dispatches, private rooms, back-room moments, small theories about taste and power — and the details that never quite make it into glossy magazines or newspaper supplements.

Some of this can be written publicly.
Some of it only makes sense over time.

NOTES is an accumulation. Meaning emerges as you read on.