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Madonna at Home

Tuesday, September 22, 2009 02:30 PM

tags: Celebrity, Dan Cairns, Madonna, Sunday Times

Three days ago in London's Sunday Times there was an interview with Madonna by Dan Cairns so good, so filled with nice detail that it's difficult to find a best section to excerpt. The talk took place in one of the singer's two six-story adjoining mansions in central London, two of those "standard-issue London mansions – that is, way beyond the standards most of us are accustomed to," he writes.

Once inside, and after a long delay, the interview "finally gets under way in Madonna’s study, an all-grey room with a Frida Kahlo painting above the huge art-deco desk, glass shelves bearing art books and family photographs, and two semi-facing armchairs, on which we sit. In the flesh, in black trousers and a sleeveless shirt, the 51-year-old is tiny, even in heels, and pretty, her face somehow more animated and readable than you expect, her features forming into butter-wouldn’t-melt or knowingly ironic expressions as she talks. Her accent is noticeably clipped, with a Queen’s English clarity, a result of the amount of time she began to spend in this country following her marriage to Guy Ritchie. For a good 10 minutes, her discomfort is visible, a hand covering her face as she answers. And when, during this initial awkwardness, I lean into the space between us to emphasise a point, I sense without any room for doubt that I have crossed an invisible line."