Article: As his magazine heads for 57, the old devil's still a Playboy at heart

It's easy to forget that, in his day, Hugh Hefner was something of a visionary. The louche, laconic 82-year-old, best known these days for lounging around his luxurious California mansion dressed in silk pyjamas and velvet loafers, spent his youth devouring the culture of Depression-era America.

He read, watched, saw whatever he could, and then copied, transformed and invented.

When the first copies of Playboy appeared in November 1953, the magazine read like a literary who's who (with the odd titillating photograph thrown in).

Sherlock Holmes was nestled alongside Ray Bradbury, F Scott Fitzgerald, Vladimir Nabokov and John Updike.

This month sees the publication of Hefner's magnum opus: a ...

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