ALEC BALdWIN - The Spectator

Transcription

A R T / s t y l e / S P O R T / F I L M / T rav e l
ST E PH E N
B Ay L E Y p.53
Why the internet costs the earth
A L E X A N DE R
M c C A L L S M I T H p.46
The water of life
p.22
MELANIE
M c d O N AG H p.42
Extreme fitness for Christmas
ISSUE 04
/
S P E C TAT O R L I F E
/
WINTER 2012
TONY MENDEZ ON THE CIA, ARGO AND PINBALL
LOOK I NG A H EA D W I T H
A L E C BA L DW I N
p.36
Love, politics and life after 30 Rock
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E DI T OR’ S L ET T ER
F
rom hot dogs to pop artist Roy Lichtenstein,
this issue of Spectator Life celebrates American
institutions. On our cover Alec Baldwin says goodbye
to 30 Rock, reveals his obsession with the Leveson
inquiry and teases us all with the prospect of a possible Baldwin
campaign to be mayor of New York. One thing is for sure, he’d
make the campaign trail a whole lot more entertaining.
That said, who says entertainment itself can’t be political:
if like us you’ve seen and loved Ben Affleck’s film Argo,
you’ll get a kick out of reading the film’s real-life inspiration
Tony Mendez. While you might think they have better things
to do, the CIA even had to cast their beady eye over his article.
In answer to those who ask what it’s like at the Spectator Life
office in Westminster… on some days, it’s exactly like an
episode of Homeland.
Whether December involves earnest hedonism, whisky
at all hours, home comforts or indeed a 12 Days of Christmas
extreme pretox (is there anything worse than having to
be good in January?) we’ve got it covered. Or if you take
inspiration from our travel section and escape, perhaps
to a discreet Swiss chalet or a small Brazilian fishing village,
watch out for Taki and Jeremy Clarke, and don’t forget to
pack your Spectator Life. Happy holidays…
Spectator Life www.spectatorlife.com
Supplied free with the 01 December issue of The Spectator
22 Old Queen Street, London SW1H 9HP Telephone: 020 7961 0200
www.spectator.co.uk ISSN: 2050-2192
Original design & art direction Kuchar Swara, DKW&R
Cover image Michael Muller / CPi Syndication
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CON T R I BU TORS
SAVOIR BEDS
Dafydd Jones; Marzena Porgorzaly; Getty
SINCE 1905
Francesca Zampi
Hammerstein started her
career in London, working
for the Royal Court theatre.
She has produced events for
The Box all over the world,
making her more than
qualified to give us the best
strategies for holiday bad
behaviour. And she has just
executive produced her first
film, Oblivion.
William Boyd is the executive
producer of Restless, which
he adapted from his 2006
novel. His most recent books
are Ordinary Thunderstorms
and Waiting for Sunrise. He
has just finished a new James
Bond novel, commissioned
by the Fleming family and
due out next year. In One to
Watch he explains why Hayley
Atwell is his perfect heroine.
Tom Teodorczuk Spectator
Life’s Englishman in
New York is an arts and
business writer living in
Manhattan. For our cover
story Tom interviewed Alec
Baldwin, who he regards
as the quintessential New
Yorker, ‘talented, energetic,
entertaining and contentious’.
He has also written his
first play, a satire set in the
corporate values business.
Alexander McCall Smith,
who writes on whisky, is the
creator of the No 1 Ladies’
Detective Agency and 44
Scotland Street books, where
there’s always some of the
good stuff close to hand.
Trains and Lovers: The
Heart’s Journey has just been
published, and he’s at work on
a book titled What W.H.
Auden Can Do For You: ‘I
happen to think a lot!’
Spend a third of your
life in first class
savoirbeds.co.uk
7 Wigmore Street, London W1
555 King's Road, London SW6
Harrods, Knightsbridge, London SW1
Chairman Andrew Neil
Editor Olivia Cole
Deputy editor Danielle Wall
Sub-editors Peter Robins, Victoria Lane, Clarke Hayes Features Assistant Will Gore
Design & art direction Steve Fenn – Design by St, www.designbyst.com
Client services director Melissa McAdden: [email protected], 020 7961 0212
+44 (0)20 7493 4444
London
Paris
New York
Berlin
Stockholm
Shanghai
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CONTENTS
17 57
33 73
C U LT U R E
STYLE
LIFE
T R AV E L
14. The Index
Where to go and what to see in January, February and March
48. Hedonist or homebody?
Toby Young and Francesca Zampi Hammerstein
17. Hot dots
Louisa Buck takes a closer look at Roy Lichtenstein
53. The net vs the planet
Stephen Bayley considers the web’s hidden costs
22. My secret life
Tony Mendez on Argo and true tales of the CIA
57. Cross dressing
Pandora Sykes on raiding boys’ wardrobes
26. Interview: Sam Waley-Cohen
The high-achieving amateur jockey tells Freddy Gray
what it takes to beat the professionals
61. His nibs
James Delingpole celebrates the fountain pen
63. Tick tock vroom vroom
Simon de Burton on watches for car aficionados
30. Spitting out the Pips
Olivia Cole on why we can’t leave Great Expectations alone
66. Motoring
Alan Judd on Jaguar’s new F-Type
33. Don’t call it junk
David Blackburn tries a heavily hyped hotdog
68. The Wish List
36. Interview: Alec Baldwin
The politically vocal star talks to Tom Teodorczuk about marriage,
Michael Bloomberg and what comes after 30 Rock
73. Shelter from the storm
Not even a hurricane can put Jeremy Clarke off Brazil
42. Extreme fitness for Christmas
Melanie McDonagh on how to pretox before the parties start
76. Snow way
Camilla Swift’s guide to Switzerland, and Taki talks Gstaad
45. Investment
Christopher Silvester on rare earth metals
80. Globe trotting
New hotels for your address book
46. The Water of Life
Alexander McCall Smith raises a glass to Scotch
82. One to Watch
William Boyd on Hayley Atwell
13
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22/11/12 11:48:10
THE INDEX
JAN
FEB
Jose p h C a lleja
RFH, 11 January
The Maltese tenor isn’t often
in Britain: this is his first time
at the Royal Festival Hall. He’ll
sing Verdi, Puccini and Bizet.
T he C a p ta in
of Kop enick
National Theatre,
from 29 January
Is there still life in a satire
of Prussian militarism? When
Adrian Noble is directing, and
Antony Sher starring, yes.
Dja ng o
Unch a ined
Various cinemas, 18 January
Quentin Tarantino takes on
the Western. Might be good.
Might be bad. Might even
be ugly. But people will
definitely be talking about it.
T H E V I EW F ROM
T H E SH AR D
London Bridge,
from 1 February
M a net –
Port r aying L ife
RA, 26 January – 14 April
Yet another Impressionist
blockbuster: this one has more
than 50 paintings, including
many from private collections,
and focuses on Manet’s way
with people, both in portraits
and in his path-breaking
outdoor scenes.
F u e r z a bru ta
Roundhouse,
From 27 December
Few spaces are better
than the Roundhouse
for a theatrical ‘happening’,
and there are few more
spectacular than Fuerzabruta,
with its hair-raising stunts
and pounding soundtrack.
You may get wet.
Ja mes Ac a ste r
Soho Theatre, from 31 January
Edinburgh Comedy Awardnominated stand-up with the
talent to make whimsical
material sing.
J u e rgen T elle r
ICA, from 23 January
A retrospective from
the wilder side of fashion
photography; subjects
include Kate Moss, Victoria
Beckham and Bjork.
A Life of Galileo
Swan Theatre, from 31 January
A Brecht classic translated
for the RSC by Mark
‘Shopping and…’ Ravenhill.
A high-speed lift journey to
the 72nd floor costs £24.95,
but the panorama may well
be worth that. For a start,
it’s now about the only view
in London not to include the
Shard.
Six Nations rugby
Various venues, from 2
February
Will Wales make it two
Grand Slams in a row? Or can
England show that they really
are on the road to recovery?
14
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E uge n e O n e gi n
ROH, from 4 February
A big moment for Covent
Garden this: Kasper
Holten’s debut production
as artistic director.
F r igh t e n e d
R a bbi t
Various venues,
from 8 February
Fuerzabruta Getty; Manet National Gallery of Art, Washington; Harry Hill Getty; Barocci ‘La Madonna del Gatto’, about 1575© The National Gallery, London; Life and Death Getty
The highly rated Scottish
indie band tour England
from Norwich to Gateshead,
calling at several nice smallish
venues — the Rescue Rooms
in Nottingham, for instance.
MAR
Robo t & F r a n k
Various cinemas, from
8 March
This unconventional
buddy movie was a hit at
the London Film Festival.
‘Frank’ is Frank Langella,
playing an elderly former
jewel thief; ‘Robot’ is a
robot butler bought for
him by his son. The words
‘one last job’ spring to mind.
H a r ry H i l l
Various venues, from
8 February
C h e lt e n h a m
F e s t i va l
Cheltenham Racecourse,
12-15 March
You don’t have to be Irish
to attend the highlight of the
jump-racing season, but it
certainly helps. Kauto Star
might have retired but the
race for the Gold Cup will be
as exciting as ever.
The big-collared comedian’s
first proper tour since
TV Burp took off.
L o s A nge l e s
P h i l h a r mo n ic
Barbican, 14-17 March
LA is where the Venezuelan
prodigy Gustavo Dudamel
went next; in this short
residency, he’s conducting
pieces by John Adams,
Debussy and Stravinsky.
T r ew l a n y
of t h e W e l l s
M at i l da
Shubert Theatre, Broadway,
from 4 March
Tim Minchin’s megahit
heads to Broadway.
Donmar Warehouse,
from 15 February
Joe Wright — more
famous as a film director
— revives Arthur
Wing Pinero’s neglected
but wonderful comedy.
T h e A nge l
o f t h e Odd
Musée d’Orsay, from 5 March
Dark romanticism explored
through paintings by Goya,
Füssli, Max Ernst and more.
Ba ro cc i :
Br i l l i a nc e a n d
Gr ac e
National Gallery,
from 27 February
Altar-pieces, devotional
paintings and preparatory
sketches by the 16th-century
Italian master, many of which
have never been seen outside
his homeland.
Sigu r Ro s
Brixton Academy, 7-9 March
Icelandic post-rock
might not sound like
much fun, but Sigur
Rós are masters of their
classically influenced
ambient art.
L i f e a n d De at h
British Museum,
from 28 March
Nearly 2,000 years after
Vesuvius erupted, they’re
still digging up amazing
things at Pompeii and
Herculaneum. Many of them are in this show.
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‘Blue Nude’, 1995
HOT DOT S
Private Collection © Estate of Roy Lichtenstein/DACS 2012
Looking forward to a retrospective of the artist fascinated by how we look
Louisa Buck
R
oy Lichtenstein, the man who
brought the comic strip into the
art gallery, is renowned as one of
the definitive artists of pop. His persona is
not as familiar as the conspicuously selfcaricaturing Warhol, but Lichtenstein’s
explosions, consumer goods and comic-
book couples, rendered in his trademark
harsh outlines, primary colour palette and
Ben-Day dot shadings are as recognisable
as any Warholian soup can, Brillo box or
Marilyn, and their influence on subsequent generations of artists has arguably
been as great.
For, as Tate Modern’s forthcoming
Lichtenstein retrospective demonstrates,
there is much more to this thoughtful, complex figure than the brief explosion of Pop.
Underpinning the brash cartoonish immediacy of his works are profound conceptual concerns and a deep preoccupation with
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CULTURE
art history that have played a major part in
their enduring impact.
There is no denying the storm of controversy that greeted many of the paintings
— which have since become familiar pop
art classics — when they received their first
full-scale airing at Leo Castelli’s New York
gallery in 1962. Howls of outrage accompanied these vulgar, everyday images of fast
food, washing machines and comics, rendered in the harsh style of crude mass-production: they seemed to be violating the
sacred sanctum of high art. ‘The art galleries are being invaded by the pin-headed
and contemptible style of gum-chewers,
bobby soxers and worse, delinquents,’ fulminated the critic Max Kozloff, while art
guru Clement Greenberg declared — in a
judgment that would come back to haunt
him — that Lichtenstein would be forgot-
Collection Simonyi © Estate of Roy Lichtenstein/DACS 2012
With characteristic
ambiguity, Lichtenstein’s
painstakingly handexecuted rendering of
major cultural icons as
enlarged cartoons was
as much an act of
homage as critique
ten within ten years. Two years later, the
debate still burned when Life magazine,
parodying an earlier paean to Jackson
Pollock, which had questioned whether
he was ‘the greatest artist in the United
States’, ran an article on Lichtenstein’s
work beneath the headline, ‘Is he the worst
artist in the US?’
For his part, Lichtenstein wanted to produce art that ‘looked out into the world’,
stating: ‘Art since Cezanne has become
extremely romantic and unrealistic… it
is utopian.’ Certainly, in the face of these
deadpan, mechanically impersonal renditions of crass consumerism, even such
recent forays into Americana as Jasper
Johns’ flags and Robert Rauschenberg’s
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22/11/12 11:27:03
The Art Institute of Chicago, Barbara Neff Smith and Solomon Byron Smith Purchase Fund
© Estate of Roy Lichtenstein/DACS 2012
Above: ‘Brushstroke
with Spatter’, 1966
Left: ‘Oh Jeff, I love
you too but’, 1964
urban detritus looked hopelessly old-fashioned and handmade, while the boiling
abstract expressionist brushstrokes of Pollock et al appeared positively antique.
But Lichtenstein’s desire to engage with
the world around him is only part of the
story. Many of his paintings may reflect a
world filled with ‘gas pumps… signs and
comic strips’, but they also reflect serious
and abiding concerns about the role and
relevance of painting, the authenticity of
the art experience and how a contemporary artist can engage with art history. The
37-year-old New Jersey art teacher had
been searching for a relevant and personal artistic style for more than two decades
when he painted ‘Look Mickey’ (1961), the
work depicting Mickey Mouse and Donald
Duck which he considered to be his first
Pop painting. (Legend has it that one of
Lichtenstein’s children pointed to a comic
book and challenged him to make a better
drawing, whereupon he dashed off America’s favourite rodent and found his eureka
moment in the process.)
While there is no doubt that Lichtenstein’s adoption of a commercial style
provided a way out of a paint-splattered
abstract expressionist cul-de-sac to an
art that could express the crude commercial reality of late Fifties’ American life,
his response to that reality was ambivalent and far from celebratory. As early as
1963, he had declared that his new style
and subject matter marked ‘an involvement with what I think to be the most brazen and threatening characteristics of our
culture, things we hate but which are pow-
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22/11/12 11:27:27
CULTURE
erful in their impingement on us’. He later
declared that the purpose of his pop art
works was to ‘show… the capitalist system
in an ironic way’.
The Tate exhibition also confirms that
Lichtenstein’s classic Pop works form
a fraction of an output which was more
devoted to the art of the past than the consumer culture of the present. Even though
he had stopped painting in a Picasso-esque
style by the early Fifties, throughout his life
Lichtenstein openly acknowledged him as
his main artistic inspiration, saying in an
interview just before his death in 1997: ‘I
don’t think I am over his influence.’
Within a year of entering his Pop phase,
Lichtenstein had also used his new language to paint a cartoon-style version of
Picasso’s ‘Femme au Chapeau’, and went
on to make innumerable paintings based
on the Spanish master’s work, culminating
in 1996’s ‘Mickasso’, a drawing and a collage which presents a comic-strip version
of Picasso’s classic cubist ‘Harlequin with
Guitar’, in which a Mickey Mouse hand
plucks the strings.
Lichtenstein also responded to Picasso’s dialogue with, and reworking of, masterpieces from art history, and made many
series of paintings that reproduced the
imagery of major figures, ranging from
Matisse to Mondrian, Monet and Jackson
Pollock, as well as creating his own flattened and codified distillations of abstract
expressionism, art deco and Impressionism. This paved the way for what would
later be dubbed appropriation art.
With characteristic ambiguity, just as
Lichtenstein’s meticulously planned and
painstakingly hand-executed paintings
20
20
mimicked mechanical processes while
being quite the opposite, so his rendering
of major cultural icons as enlarged cartoons was as much an act of homage as
critique. ‘The things I have apparently parodied I actually admire,’ he admitted. His
art of flatness and façade was not so much
an attack on painting as an analysis of its
impact and power, which at the same time
acted as a sharp reminder that the way we
see most of our imagery, artistic and otherwise, is via second-hand reproductions
rather than the real thing. In the art of Roy
Lichtenstein, seemingly ironic detachment
was a subtle mask for a lifelong and passionate engagement with what we look at
and how we look at it. As he said: ‘My work
isn’t about form, it’s about seeing.’
Lichtenstein: A Retrospective, Tate
Modern, 21 February–27 May 2013
Getty Images
Lichtenstein (1923 –1997) in front his painting ‘Whaam!’ at the Tate Gallery, London, 1964
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CULTURE
The Washington Post / Getty Images
Tony Mendez,
who as a CIA agent
led the operation
that extracted six
American diplomats
from Iran, at
home in Maryland
earlier this year
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Pi n ba l l w i z ar dry
and o t h e r ad v e n t u r e s
The true story of the agent behind the Argo operation
Tony Mendez
I
our office (an office that closely resembled the ‘Q’ laboratory in the
James Bond movies). It was indicated as an imaginative approach
to problem-solving. Presidents, secretaries of state and visiting foreign dignitaries were all given the chance to admire it.
I have always been something of an outlier. I used the tactics
of the rough streets where I grew up in the boardrooms and the
senior executive service of the CIA. Even when I was promoted
to higher levels of responsibility, I insisted on keeping my hand
in, and it was working in the field and dealing with the human elements that made CIA work so compelling. If I miss anything about
the work, it is that.
Throughout my career I always referred to those negotiations
required to move the mission along as ‘pinball’. It was all about getting the ball up on the table and seeing how high a score you could
rack up. Whether scrapping for a budget for a new programme or
trying to recruit new talent to run my projects, I was always playing
pinball. And I often won.
Family life, lived in a world where part of you is often under
cover, can be complicated, awkward and confusing. When you
have constantly to lie to your neighbours and friends, you can end
up feeling very isolated. It is one of the reasons why so many of my
colleagues tended to marry within the CIA. It was an advantage
to family life when your other half understood your business and
why you couldn’t discuss the details. My first wife, Karen, did not
work at the CIA, but she understood nevertheless that some things
couldn’t be shared. Years later, after her death, I married Jonna,
a woman I had worked with for 20 years. We had worked together
on many operations, and on others I sent her into some of the most
dangerous places on the planet (at least if you were a CIA officer).
Even today we are almost joined at the hip; we have been through
so much together that we can communicate without words. It does
speed things along.
When I first saw Argo, with Ben Affleck’s face on a 30ft-high
screen saying, ‘My name is Tony Mendez…’, I got the chills. Actual
chills. It was an extraordinary experience. This story was so closely
held that a year after it happened, when I wrote it up for an inhouse CIA publication, classified ‘Confidential’, the CIA deemed
it too sensitive even to be circulated internally. My true identity
was also classified. So, at the risk of repeating myself, to see Ben
on the screen saying my name was a bit overwhelming. I have since
grew up poor and somewhat isolated in the searing desert
heat of Nevada. Perhaps because of this early childhood
experience I have always felt that my imagination was
almost on fire. My mother gave me a watercolours set when
I was about eight and told me I was going to be an artist. And so
it came to be. The CIA hired me because of my artistic skills, but
what they asked me to do with them is where the story gets interesting. Pretty pictures were never on the schedule. Forgeries and
counterfeits were more the order of the day.
Argo, the new film by Ben Affleck, deals with a CIA operation
for which I invented a somewhat unorthodox solution, turning six
Americans on the run in Tehran into a Hollywood location scouting party for a fake movie, the original movie called ‘Argo’, which
was never intended to be made. Never, that is, until now, in 2012.
But this is not the only undertaking at the CIA where I used my
overactive imagination. In the 1970s I had two groups of people
working with me and they were at war with each other. One group
were the blue-collar worker types who ran our pressroom. Most
people wouldn’t imagine that the CIA has a pressroom, but we
did and it was mammoth. The other group was comprised of the
founding members of the CIA’s new cyber-capability, who tweaked
gleaming new computers and spoke in a jargon that most people,
especially the pressmen, couldn’t understand. And so the scene
was set.
A large room in our building had recently become available and
both groups wanted to expand into that space. A sporadic internal
war flared in the corridors, with disparaging comments echoing
down the halls. As a manager, it was my responsibility to solve
the problem. I called in my executive officer, Mary, and ordered
up a new management-training device for use in enhancing the
performance of employees. It was installed in the empty room, the
object of the dispute, and I insisted that the two sides met in that
room for one hour each day to iron out their differences.
The ‘training device’ was an old-fashioned pinball machine.
Probably the only pinball machine ever bought with US taxpayer
funds. At least I hope so…
After several weeks the enemies had transferred their aggression to the pinball competition, had become friends, and the
real-estate problem was quickly resolved. The pinball machine
outsurvived me at CIA HQ and was pointed out when VIPs toured
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CULTURE
Public identity:
Mendez’s Tehran
embassy badge
got over the shock, but I like to remind everyone I meet that actually Ben is not good-looking enough to play me!
At the CIA you never expect to receive credit for what you do.
When we delivered the six American hostages to State Department Security on the tarmac at Zurich airport, they herded them
away without so much as a hello or a thank you. That is how it is
supposed to be. As my character says in the movie: ‘If we wanted
applause, we would have joined the circus.’ I thought I would go to
my grave with this story, and others. But the CIA had other ideas.
Secret handshake:
Meeting President
Carter at the White
House
In 1997 the Agency was 50 years old. In the peaceful interlude
before 9/11 it was decided that it would celebrate that anniversary
by holding a competition for the top 50 CIA officers in its first 50
years. Amazingly, I was chosen as one. Some of the officers named
had already died (Allen Dulles) and others had such narrow specialities that there was little public interest. But my job history was
chock-a-block with tales of espionage operations involving real
spies and real drama. When I was invited to tell the Argo story, I
initially balked. Why would we give away one of our best stories?
But George Tenet, then director of the CIA, was adamant. And
so we did.
I have no souvenirs from my mission to Iran. I did have a very
large caviar tin that was given to me by Joe and Kathy Stafford,
two of the rescued embassy workers… but it seems that my wife has
thrown it out. I don’t need any souvenirs, actually. I see the people
we rescued occasionally and we laugh and compare stories. That
is more than I would usually expect. It is nice to check in on their
lives occasionally. That is a souvenir in itself.
Argo: How the CIA and Hollywood Pulled Off the Most
Audacious Rescue in History, by Antonio Mendez and Matt
Baglio, is published by Penguin.
When I first saw Argo,
with Ben Affleck’s face on
a 30ft-high screen saying,
‘My name is Tony Mendez...’,
I got the chills. It was an
extraordinary experience.
This story was so closely
held that the CIA deemed
it too sensitive even to be
circulated internally
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CULTURE
AMAT EUR HOUR
The jockey Sam Waley-Cohen on what it takes to beat the pros
Freddy Gray
you, who has to live his life. Five days before this interview, for instance, Sam had a nasty fall at Ascot and
broke two ribs. (‘I got crushed,’ he says, like a public
schoolboy recalling a heavy night out.) Come Monday,
however, he was back at his day job as chief executive
of a chain of dental practices, which he started from
scratch and which now employs some 300 people.
Because of his work, Sam only has time for 30 to
40 races a year. Professional jockeys ride anything up
to a thousand. And yet he wins. How does he do it?
‘It’s rarely me as the jockey that makes the key difference,’ he begins, modestly. ‘The horse has to win
the race. The truth is, I’m an amateur in name but
Getty Images
It would be easy to resent Sam Waley-Cohen. He is a
rich boy from a well-known racing family who runs his
own successful business. In his spare time, what little
he has, he rides his father’s horses in the world’s biggest jump races. He’s won the Cheltenham Gold Cup
and King George VI Chase, and finished second in the
Grand National. Alfred Dunhill, the British luxury
men’s brand, is so impressed by his achievements on
and off the turf that they’ve brought out a documentary film about him, called For The Love.
But we shouldn’t be bitter. When you realise what it
takes to do what he does, jealousy gives way to admiration, and a sense of relief, actually, that it’s Sam, not
Sam Waley-Cohen, riding Long Run, wins
the totesport Cheltenham Gold Cup Chase at
Cheltenham racecourse on 18 March 2011
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ise called Libertine. Libertine’s trainer wanted to race
him at the Cheltenham Festival, but the jockey whom
the trainer wanted to use refused to ride such an inexperienced youngster for fear of injuring himself. ‘So
Dad said, “Sam will ride him.” And I was like, OK! I
had to lose quite a bit of weight, but I went out and rode
her and she won. It was then that I was, like, “Wow,
I’ve won a race against professionals on a professional
course and that was like, boom.”’
It’s on Libertine’s brother, Long Run, that Sam has
enjoyed his most famous wins. Sam and his father are
hoping for more: Long Run is favourite to triumph
again in the King George VI Chase on Boxing Day,
and expected to challenge once more for the Gold Cup
at Cheltenham. Sam’s eager not to look ahead, though.
‘One of the bits we try very hard to do is to concentrate
on the journey. If you pin everything on the outcome,
you’re going to turn into a rigid brick.’
It’s lucky that the ‘journey’, the process, is what
Sam seems to relish most. ‘I just love riding Long Run.
It’s a five o’clock start, driving an hour and a quarter
to freeze my balls off in darkest Berkshire. But once
I get on the horse it’s like, “Yes, that’s why!” The sun
comes up and you’re on a great horse and it’s just such
I don’t take a very amateurish approach. If you are
going to ride against professionals, you are going to
be judged against them, and so you need to be in a
position where you feel you can compete, which means
making sacrifices.’
Sam doesn’t have much room for a social life. He
trains for at least an hour every day of the working
week. Because of the handicapping system, he has to
put on and lose weight like a prizefighter. Before his
last race, he shed nine pounds in a week. Where does
he find the motivation? ‘Well, my mother says I have
always been completely bloody-minded,’ he laughs.
There’s something else, though: Sam’s younger
brother Thomas died of cancer at the age of 20. Sam
says the courage with which Thomas faced death has
inspired him ‘just never to be lazy and to enjoy everything’. ‘Thomas’s approach to it was “OK, I’m just
going to enjoy everything and do everything I possibly can do.” That’s had a massive impact on the way I
live my life.’
Sam has been racing horses since before he can
remember. As a young man he won point-to-points,
but it took an odd twist of fate to throw him into the
big time. His father had bought a horse with raw prom-
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22/11/12 11:54:13
CULTURE
a great, romantic experience. It is such a nice contrast
between the cut and thrust of business and day-to-day
life.’
Sam’s married now — his wife is expecting their
first child — and he concedes that establishing a
work/racing-life balance can prove difficult. ‘My wife
says, “You never fucking listen!” I’ve got part of my
brain thinking about teeth, part of my brain thinking about racing, another part thinking about talking to journalists, and I’ve got her saying, “Put the
orange juice back in the fridge”, and if you don’t
you get bollocked.’
It must put him at a competitive disadvantage.
But he insists that being an amateur is also a boon.
‘I don’t have that psychological pressure of “If I
don’t ride this week, or I get injured, I won’t get paid,
or if I ride a bad race, I won’t get another ride and
what the hell am I going to do? I might not be able
to feed my kids.” The difference between electing to
do something and it being an obligation is huge.’
Don’t the other jockeys envy his freedom? ‘You’d
guess they must think, “Oh, this posh boy turns up
on the weekend to ride.” But the truth is when you
are down at the start, none of that matters. There’s
a camaraderie. It doesn’t matter what your background
is, it still hurts when you’re battered and bruised.’
Sam, bold to his bootstraps, clearly revels in the
‘You’d guess they must think,
“Oh, this posh boy turns up
on the weekend to ride.” But the
truth is, when you’re down there
at the start, none of that matters’
Phil Fisk / The Guardian
sheer bloody masochism of his sport. ‘If you said to
most people who go riding, you’ll fall once in every
eight or nine times you race, they’d say you’re nuts, I’m
not going! You have to be crazy.’
Is it, then, the thrill of fear that drives him? For his
holidays, he likes to go bungee-jumping and hang-gliding. Yet perhaps pain is his spur — the pain of training, of losing, of falling. ‘When I fall, my first thought
is “Shit, I could have won that!” But then you bounce
— you literally bounce! — off the ground, and you get
this amazing adrenaline kick.’
Even winning involves suffering. ‘Actually if you
win,’ he says, ‘it can be a nightmare because then you’ve
done it. And you think “Now what?” I would love to
talk to some of the athletes who won gold at the Olympics and ask, “You put everything into it, you’ve done
it — great. What are you going to do next?” You’ve just
got to push yourself higher.’
‘Oh God,’ he adds, turning self-conscious. ‘I must
sound like American Psycho! Put it this way, if I’d won
the Grand National in the same year as the Gold Cup,
I’d have been a real prick!’
For The Love can be viewed in full at www.youtube.
com/AlfredDunhill
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CULTURE
A PAR ADE
OF PIP S
The latest film of Great Expectations testifies
to the book’s enduring appeal
Olivia Cole
Johan Persson
F
Guinea, trying to teach Great Expectations. It’s an
almost absurd yet deeply affecting story of how Dickens’s classic is taken to heart by the community in the
midst of the brutal civil war (which Jones covered as a
correspondent in the 1990s). The book is carried like
a talisman into a world as violent as that depicted in its
pages. The story works not just as an attempt to retell
Great Expectations, but as a touching reminder of why
the original continues to exert such power.
To these spin-offs, we can now add Havisham, by
Ronald Frame, a Scottish novelist and screenwriter
who won the Betty Trask prize for his first novel Winter Journey. With more than a small debt to Carey, he
tells the story of the young Catherine Havisham, who
falls for a conman only to be abandoned at twenty to
nine on the morning of her wedding. In Great Expectations, of course, the clocks have all been stopped and
Satis House has become a rotting shrine to Miss Havisham’s wedding breakfast, with mice clambering over
the cake.
On reading the original book, it’s impossible to forget the candlelit gothic oddity of Miss Havisham’s scenario. One of the delights of Helena Bonham Carter
in Newell’s film is her wittiness — commanding Pip
and Estella to play, she herself is at her own twisted
kind of play. The casting is perfect — British cinema’s
classic costume-drama virgin, who in her most famous
roles has found herself transformed by love and sex,
is here configured into literature’s ultimate frustrated
virgin who endures life in a terrible stasis.
Ronald Frame tries to present Miss Havisham’s
destructive behaviour as something epic, even feminist:
an attempt to turn herself into a mythical heroine. He
gives her a good education and an interest in the great
scorned women of history, such as Dido, abandoned
by Aeneas. ‘At interludes I had dwelt among legends,
in the knowledge of mythical beings. . . I matched my
ilm financiers justify putting money into
adaptations of Charles Dickens because
he is both ‘classic’ and ‘literary’ yet also
(kill me now) ‘relevant’. It makes one long
for more adaptations of ‘irrelevant’ books. Even Ralph
Fiennes, who turns in a superb Oscar-bait performance as Magwitch in Mike Newell’s just-released film
of Great Expectations, had recourse to the dreaded
word ‘relevant’ when asked on the red carpet at Toronto Film Festival why anyone should want to make a
film of such A Very Old Book.
Great Expectations, 1860-61, is A Very Old Book
indeed, a book by a man who lived Over A Hundred
Years Ago, as people insist on reminding us during his
bicentenary, but it’s also the ultimate coming-of-age
novel. In his fantasy of advancement from blacksmith’s
apprentice to gentleman, Pip Pirrip may remind us of
the young Dickens himself — yanked out of school
and sent to work in a blacking factory as a result of his
father’s debts.
From the classic film by David Lean to Alfonso
Cuarón’s deeply strange New York update — it’s an
irony that a novel so powerfully concerned with the
development of a reliable sense of self should inspire
so many to retell its story. The bicentenary has seen a
near festival of Expectations. Mike Newell’s new bigscreen version follows hot on the heels of the BBC1
serialisation.
Writers as well as film-makers see Great Expectations as a book that can be used as a jumping-off
point. There is Peter Carey’s tricksy post-colonial recalibration, Jack Maggs, which sees Magwitch, the
convict exiled to Australia, as the novel’s centre. Lloyd
Jones’s 2007 novel Mister Pip has now been made into
a film by Andrew Adamson, to be released next year.
It finds an English teacher, Mr Watts (played by Hugh
Laurie), on the island of Bougainville in Papua New
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To hit home the point
that Victorians had
libido, Havisham strays
dangerously close to
Fifty Shades territory
Helena Bonham
Carter as literature’s
ultimate frustrated
virgin in Mike
Newell’s Great
Expectations
fate to theirs.’ Less successful is the elaboration on her
physical fixation with her cad. To hit home the point
that Victorians had libido, it strays dangerously close
to Fifty Shades territory. ‘Spasms of excitement connected to feelings I couldn’t fully articulate. . . He had
me on a chain. No: on a silken halter.’ It should have
been a shoo-in for a bad sex in fiction nomination.
To get beyond the mythologising is a worthy enterprise and one that unifies the best of the novel’s contemporary re-imaginings. The strongest versions are
those that are deeply eccentric. Mister Pip, for example, has fun with the imagination of the brightest student, Matilda, who becomes so obsessed with the book
that she imagines her own way into the story, conversing with a Pip who exists in her head. Jack Maggs, too,
is utterly audacious and tricksy, building into the story
an encounter with Dickens himself.
darkness, in the wind, in the woods, in the sea, in the
streets. . . ’. You can fall in love with a book as well as
with a person. The fact that Great Expectations is still
being retold is testament to its incomparable power to
get under the reader’s skin. Next time anyone asks you
why you think Dickens matters, just quote a chunk of
this. It’s pure poetry. . . and it sure beats ‘relevant’.
G
reat Expectations is such a humane novel
because it’s a labyrinth of visceral feelings. As Pip tells us of his love for Estella, ‘I loved her simply because I found her
irresistible. . . I knew to my sorrow, often and often,
if not always, that I loved her against reason, against
promise, against peace, against hope, against happiness, against all discouragement that could be.’
Whether on the page or on the screen, the best of
the tributes to Great Expectations get you reaching for
your own dog-eared copy of the original. The author
of One Day, David Nicholls, wrote the screenplay for
Mike Newell’s film, and he has done an admirable job.
Happily, Pip’s most lyrical lines to Estella make it onto
the screen virtually unchanged: ‘You are part of my
existence, part of myself. You have been in every line
I have ever read. . . You have been in every prospect I
have ever seen since — on the river, on the sails of the
ships, on the marshes, in the clouds, in the light, in the
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19.09.2011 14:22:55
3/9/12 11:23:02
D ON ’T CA L L I T
JUNK
The rise and ri
se of glorified fast food
Illustrations by Nathalie Lees
David Blackburn
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LIFE
H
ow long would you queue for a hotdog? You must answer this question
if you are planning to go to Bubbledogs on C harlotte Street, one of the
‘recession-proof’ luxury fast food restaurants to have
opened in London since 2008. Each is defined by
its ‘food concept’. Spud in Covent Garden bakes
potatoes and c overs them in toppings ‘guaranteed’
to cause ‘serious food envy’. Bubbledogs’s USP is
pairing champagne with hotdogs. Bubbledogs overcomes some serious obstacles to success, foremost of
which is the outright incompatibility of champagne
and hotdogs. Yet the queue is worthwhile, unless it
exceeds the hour mark. B
ubbledogs is a stylish, buzzing and unexpectedly romantic spot. Even the f loozie
enjoyed being taken out for a hotdog.
later when she brought the main courses. There was
a cacophony of fumbling as she began to clear away
the used plates while clinging to the laden fresh ones.
Miraculously, the only casualty was a fork, although
the carafe of pinot noir from the Chapel Down
vineyard in Kent flirted briefly with catastrophe.
Soon we were three drinks up. I mention this
because the meat was so dry that it had to be washed
down or else it stuck in your gullet. My pork chop did
not so much recall Merrie England as the Harvester
at Morden circa 1983. The floozie asked for and was
promised medium rare lamb; but she got a piece of
leathery matter instead. The vegetables were cold,
which is unforgivable. Pudding was no better; the
retro arctic roll belonged in the discount bin at Iceland. My English whisky, ordered more in hope
than expectation by this late stage, was undrinkable
(which was a first); but the floozie saved Jamie’s nostalgic venture with a dash of Chaucerian honeydew
wine. Unfortunately, I’m not sure that Mr Oliver
intended to go back quite so far in time.
Union Jacks was disappointing, but not wholly
surprising: some chains smell of mediocrity when
you cross the threshold. Pizza Express has nothing
to fear from Union Jacks. The meal was a waste of
£77. In comparison, the £74 for a hotdog and two
glasses of bubbly apiece was an easy spend.
Mark Hix’s Tramshed should worry someone,
only I can’t think of an exact rival. Its unprepossessing name refers to the fact that it is situated in
an old tram shed in Rivington Street, Shoreditch.
The vast space is dominated by a Damien Hirst
sculpture of a cockerel seemingly nailed to the
back of a bull preserved in formaldehyde. The
witty, self-deprecating piece expresses the twinkle that pervades Hix’s restaurant. This glamour comes at a cost: you’ll be lucky to get a table
without a reservation. One reason for this is the
reasonably priced menu: starters are £7.95 and
main courses range from £9.95 to £20.
Hix’s guiding principle is to deny his diners choice except over the wine. If you want a
The next luxury fast-food contender was Union
Jacks, Jamie Oliver’s infant chain. It attempts to unite
Oliver’s idea of classic British fare and Hollywood’s
idea of an American diner. But the novelty of eating
potted shrimps on the set of Grease is short-lived if the
shrimps taste like they were served at Abigail’s Party.
The saving grace of Union Jacks in St Giles is
the service, and even that is charming in a lackadaisical way rather than serene. Our waitress was
a shy rose rather than one of the fearsome tribe
who demand that you ‘enjoy’ everything from the
breaking of the bread to the signing of the bill.
Her timidity was her downfall.
It was Friday night. We were two drinks up and
debating whether Poirot was superior to Marple.
The waitress loitered somewhere behind my shoulder, presumably to clear away the shrimps and whatever misfortune had befallen my companion. Guided
perhaps by the rule of service which dictates that the
only sin is intrusion, she decided not to interrupt our
absurd set-to. Her error became apparent five minutes
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starter, you are given three English tapas dishes. The
trio changes each day; we shared a Yorkshire pudding with cauliflower puree, haddock croquettes
with a garnish to savour and an array of marinated tomatoes of different varieties accompanied
by soft blue cheese. You then have a choice of sirloin steak, roast chicken and two salads. Naturally,
everything apart from the salads comes with chips.
I once ate chicken and chips on a beach in Marbella. The chef who ran that dive would have benefited
from a trip to Tramshed. Each dish is presented with
humour — bird on a stick, haunch on a slab, that kind of
thing. More importantly, though, the simple cooking of
quality produce is well executed. If you order medium
rare, you get medium rare. The floozie’s beef was perfect; my chicken was succulent. The vegetables benefited from having been prepared with care. The chips
were not semi-submerged in fat, like logs in a swamp.
Best of all, the sauces showed that the chefs possess
flair: creamed garlic and herbs dressed the chicken and
a light béarnaise accompanied the beef.
Tramshed is a proper restaurant masquerading
as a fast-food joint. Burger & Lobster is another
famous name in this mould. Predictably, Burger
& Lobster sells burger and lobster. Unpredictably,
it prices them at £20 each. I was sceptical. Twenty
pounds for a burger? Lobster for only £20? But my
scepticism was misplaced. It was an actual lobster. It
was big, too, having been imported from Nova Scotia.
Crucially, it had been well cooked. It retained its
moisture and therefore its elastic texture and delicate
flavour. Not every London restaurant can do this.
The burgers are all meat and no filling, which is
good. The meat comes from Irish and American cattle fed respectively on a diet of grass and corn. (You’ll
have noticed that this is not an environmentally friendly restaurant.) I don’t care if the beef was hand-reared
by God and slaughtered by St Peter — £20 for a burger (even a very good one) is pushing it. But £20 for a
lobster of such quality is a bargain. Burger & Lobster
and Tramshed are famous for being recession-proof.
I’ll wager that both will be boomproof.
My scepticism was
misplaced. It was an
actual lobster. It was big,
having been imported
from Nova Scotia.
And crucially, it had
been well cooked.
Not every restaurant,
recession-proof
or otherwise,
can manage that
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LIFE
HI S
next steps
After six years of 30 Rock, Alec Baldwin is ready for a fresh challenge.
Several fresh challenges, in fact…
Tom Teodorczuk
‘There’s a new chapter in my life,’ declares Alec Baldwin. That means his personal life — he recently married Spanish yoga instructor Hilaria Thomas — and
his professional life: 30 Rock, the critically acclaimed
television comedy series that raised and redefined his
reputation as an actor, is coming to an end this month
after seven seasons. As we’ll see, it might also mean
his political life. Baldwin is a famously vocal Democrat, and an increasingly active one; during the recent
election, he recorded an advert for Obama — not just
some misty endorsement, but an attack against Mitt
Romney’s stance on the automobile bailout.
Might this new chapter include more time in Britain? Baldwin’s an Anglophile — ‘I love London and
am always happy when I’m there,’ he says. He loves
English comedy: ‘The most successful comedies in
the US seem to be rather simple and one-note… British comedy just seems more subtle and layered.’ And
he’s acted notably in plays by English writers, Caryl
Churchill and Joe Orton included. So why, I ask, has
he never appeared in the West End?
He had discussions, he tells me, in the days before
30 Rock: Donmar Warehouse, National Theatre,
Royal Court. Nothing quite came of it. ‘There’s a real
consideration lifestyle-wise. Would I like to do that?
Yes. But it’s not easy to do. I just got re-married and
my wife is settling into living in New York. The show is
being produced by a new producer.’ Hilaria, he emphasises, makes him happy.
As I speak to Baldwin over the phone, we’re interrupted by Hilaria engaging in an animated conversation in Spanish. He’s intense, assertive and articulate,
and although he has a politician’s habit of answering
several questions of his choosing before he gets to the
one he’s been asked, he can be open and reflective.
Here he is, for instance, on his doubts about acting as
a career: ‘There’s a big part of me that wishes I hadn’t
done this and I had done something else. Sure, I’m very
torn about that but the business is filled with people
that way. There’s always something else people want
to do that is more substantial.’
If you really want to get Alec Baldwin talking,
the subject to choose is politics. We have discussions either side of the election. When I first bring up
the subject, his reply is an abbreviated US political history of the last 20 years. It is worth quoting in full.
‘Americans are no different to people in other countries. They’re always responding to existing conditions.
I remember Clinton being portrayed in the media
as very shrewd, very Machiavellian, very c unning.
Some people thought he was morally doubtful. His
opponents or people who were undecided about
him got Clinton fatigue. This teed up the ball for the
opposite of Clinton, a guy who was an intellectually
incurious born-again Christian moral absolutist. Bush
makes a catastrophic mess of everything and people
want to believe in someone who is doing the job to be
of service to their country and not necessarily be a corporate shill and they go as far out on a limb as they ever
had. Will they now want a fund-manager-in-chief?’
He meant Mitt Romney, who reminded him of New
York’s mayor, Michael Bloomberg: ‘a bean counter,
a guy who is all about numbers and money ledgers’.
‘The reason Bloomberg succeeded and got away with
it is because New York is overwhelmingly controlled
by wealthy people. The middle class has been pretty
muted. The poor have always been muted. Bloomberg
is not a particularly inspirational guy, not a particularly
moving speaker. His ideas are not all that soaring.’
Much to Baldwin’s relief, the fund-manager-in-chief
didn’t make it. He is a left-wing Democrat, though not
an unthinkingly party-line one — he criticised Obama
over the BP oil spill — and his response after the victory is not to bask in euphoria but to set out his hoped-for
agenda. ‘I feel like we have a real chance at least to get
started on facing those four or five things staring us in
the face that will determine if the US standard of living
has even a remote chance of sustaining. Environmental protection, infrastructure rebuilding, energy independence, proper regulation of financial markets, and
investing in education. I had little hope for any of those
if Romney won because they require amendments in
current tax policy.’
Alec is on a roll. When I ask how his own political
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views have evolved since the 1970s, when he majored in
political science at George Washington University, he
responds with a lengthy evaluation of US drone attacks
in the Middle East versus the effects of full-scale military invasion and ends by revealing his apocalyptic
fears for his country: ‘The US is competing with other
parts of the world for its resources and military intervention is probably going to be a part of our lives forever. You just don’t see that economic forces are going to
allow this change that we need. If I look at US history
the way it’s always been, then these kinds of military
interventions are never going to end. We’re going to
live this way until the country no longer exists whenever that happens.’
And on the Westminster stage, what does he think
about David Cameron’s coalition? ‘The thing I follow
most closely there is the Leveson inquiry, anything
about Rebekah Brooks and Murdoch.’ Baldwin makes
it clear he would like a Leveson inquiry in the US. ‘If
they were doing that over there, you have every reason
to believe they were doing that here as well. There is no
market that is bigger for media outlets in terms of the
tabloids and generating trash than the US. It’s a reasonable question to ask if they were doing that here
and to look into it. But I’m sure during that time there
were people out there shredding documents, deleting
the emails and doing things behind the scenes.’
He’s not opposed to the government and the fourth
estate having a relationship, he stresses. ‘The idea that
the press and government officials have a cosy relationship wasn’t invented by Murdoch and Cameron.
I’m not opposed to the press being invited to have a
drink every now and then with them [political leaders]
but to become more consistently compromised? That’s
what I object to.’
It’s clear Rupert Murdoch is not on Baldwin’s Christmas card list. He has previously called the News Corporation owner a ‘cryptofascist’, having long been a target
of the Murdoch-owned New York Post, and sees him
as a malign influence on the papers he doesn’t own,
too. ‘The New York Daily News always had a gossip
column but they were genteel compared to the Post.
Robert Gauthier/Los Angeles Times/Contour by Getty Images
‘There’s a big part of me that
wishes I hadn’t done acting.
But then the business is filled
with people who feel that way’
37
37
22/11/12 12:55:59
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643293-15_MER_Spectator_1711.indd 1
07/11/2012 12:17
19/11/12 12:03:33
Now the Daily News has hired someone from London
who worked for Murdoch [Colin Myler]. Editors are
competing with each other on that level and they’re
getting the Brits to do it.’
Baldwin’s political stance has shaped his movie
career. He once said: ‘I don’t give a shit what [powerful Hollywood agent] Mike Ovitz thinks of me. I
care what Mike Ovitz’s gardener thinks of me.’ After a
decade in TV soaps and supporting roles, he made his
name in the early 1990s in films such as The Hunt for
Red October and Malice. But the leading man cloak
never quite fitted and a fiery marriage to the actress
Kim Basinger, which ended in divorce in 2002, didn’t
help his career. (The story of their divorce is recounted
in his 2007 book A Promise to Ourselves with a confessional frankness unusual in a celebrity memoir. Sample
line: ‘The child actually believes the alienated parent is
comparable to Adolf Hitler or Saddam Hussein.’)
Baldwin can often be seen on Turner Classic Movies talking fondly about old films and it contrasts with
his feelings about his own cinematic canon. ‘I have
always had a rather uneven experience making films,’
he admits. ‘However, Turner Classics helped me to get
back to touching the world of cinema in a way that I am
abundantly comfortable with: as a viewer and a fan.’
He likes to work with up-and-coming directors, and
his enthusiasm for them shows in his performances.
Acting may have started as just the best way to earn
a living, but it’s more than that now. ‘The opportunity
to get into the business presented itself and it was on
a very small scale. I didn’t become a movie star when
I was 18 years old. It was an incremental process and
presented me with economic opportunities to help my
family. I started very small and I built my way up but
along the way I grew to love it.’
The passing of his matinee-idol phase came with the
compensation of some substantive roles: a supporting
part in Martin Scorsese’s The Departed; an Oscarnominated performance as a casino owner in The
Cooler. Then came 30 Rock in 2006. The role of the
brash television mogul Jack Donaghy — a powerful
rogue dispensing witty put-downs — was tailor-made
for Baldwin. It revitalised his acting career, winning
him Emmy and Golden Globe awards. But although
he says the show was the most enjoyable thing he’s ever
done, he’s at peace with it coming to an end. ‘I used
to think I would miss it a lot. I think everybody was
so happy that the show was so clever. With any decent
actor, the material is primary and this was very good
material. But I’m now very glad that it’s over and
excited to work on other things. I’ve got the radio
show I’ve been doing’ — Here’s The Thing, a podcast
interview series — ‘and I am going to write another
book and to continue making films.’ The book, he says,
is ‘a fictional memoir about my life’.
There’s another potential role I have to ask about,
especially given his comments on Bloomberg. People
have spoken of Baldwin as a potential candidate for
New York mayor, or for governor of the state. And it’s
certainly not something he rushes to rule out. ‘I have
no idea right now how that would work out but it’s
something I think about. It’s finding what I would do.’
Don’t expect the campaign website to go live tomorrow, but Alec Baldwin has never done things by the
book, and a political career would be the role of a lifetime.
NBCU Photo Bank via Getty Images
Above: Jack
McBrayer as
Kenneth Parcell and
Alec Baldwin as Jack
Donaghy in 30 Rock
39
39
22/11/12 12:56:24
ADVERT - Porsche_26-Nov-2012_Spectator Supplements 210x260 40
19/11/12 12:34:05
ADVERT - Porsche_26-Nov-2012_Spectator Supplements 210x260 41
19/11/12 12:38:00
LIFE
FIT
TO
PAR T Y
There’s one sure way to avoid a
miserable January: get your masochism
over with in early December.
Are you ready to pretox?
Melanie McDonagh
Illustration by James Graham
W
e all know about detoxing, right? Old-style
detoxing is about laying off the toxins after the
party season; the pretox is all about laying up merit
so as to eat, drink and loaf around for the Twelve
Days of Christmas. Detoxing is a dreary affair which casts a blight
over the new year; pretoxing is all about anticipation — cleansing
the system before you hit the champagne, a quick hit of exercise,
healthy eating and abstinence before the pudding and port.
The first step is cleansing from the inside. ‘What you’ve got to
do,’ a girlfriend told me, ‘is get Teapigs’ Matcha Green Tea. It’s
amazing. It gets your metabolism going and your skin looks really
good and you lose weight.’ This wonderproduct is actually a little
box of light green powdered tea. You mix a tiny spoonful with
liquid and drink. It’s tasteless, £25, and an easy-peasy way to get
your system going.
Next I got on to Pure Package, the company that takes the choice
out of dieting by delivering your day’s food to your very door. I
tried it for five days. It’s good stuff: three balanced meals a day and
a couple of snacks including a substantial salad and a bit of fruit.
You need, however, to have the minimal self-restraint to space out
your quota. Reader: I ate my breakfast, lunch and both snacks by
9.45 a.m. on the first day. It worked, though. I lost three pounds in
five days.
Bodyism at the Bulgari Hotel in Knightsbridge is where fat cats
go to become sleeker, leaner cats. It’s the baby of James Duigan,
an Australian fitness and diet expert whose best-known client is
Elle ‘the Body’ Macpherson. The going rate is £1,500 for a week’s
package that includes spa treatments and training sessions. I went
twice. As Nathalie, the lovely Swedish girl who put me through
my paces, remarked, the cost means ‘our clients are very, very
motivated’. Exercise is part of the system, a manageable eight
minutes a day, but diet is the big element. So, sugar’s out; so are
refined carbs (white bread and pasta) and, um, alcohol, though it
took me half a minute to spot that James prefers white spirits and
red wine to other drink, if you really must. Organic everything,
full-fat everything, and avocados at every opportunity. It’s really
very sensible. Oh — his other tip is to take a bath with Epsom salts
twice a week. That’s right, Epsom salts.
Pretoxing, like most things, starts in the mind, and my mind,
frankly, is that of a greedy and slothful piglet. So I took myself
off to Susan Hepburn, the Harley Street hypnotherapist who
specialises in weight loss. Forget everything you’ve ever heard
about hypnosis. She’s friendly and down to earth and can sort out
most errant eaters in three sessions. Does it work? All I can say is,
after my first session, I spent the best part of a week in the same
house as an almond and raspberry cake and didn’t touch it.
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42
22/11/12 12:18:24
London at present is blessed with some brilliant new LA-style
fitness centres — gym is too coarse a word. There’s been endless
hype about Equinox in Kensington and it took one visit to see why.
The trainers go to enormous trouble to test your fitness, fatness
and flexibility before you even start. Nick, a nice Californian,
measured everything from my gait to my blood pressure before he
started the workout and when he did, it was geared to what I could
do and wanted to do. It sounds obvious but not everyone does it.
Barry’s Bootcamp is a Hollywood favourite and opens in London
in the new year. I got a preview session from Olly Truelove, one of
the instructors. It’s famous for burning about 1,000 calories an hour
and by God you can see how. Classes consist of 20 to 40 people,
there’s a mixture of loud music, cardio exercise and weights, and you
get a trainer bellowing at you throughout. Sounds awful? Stars from
Katie Holmes to Sandra Bullock are queuing up to do it. The thing
is, each spurt of exercise lasts only a minute or two, which makes it
somehow do-able. My half-hour session nearly killed me but as Olly
says, ‘after a Barry’s workout you can eat anything’. Yay!
But if you want to sub-contract out the whole business of pretoxing
to the experts, let me recommend La Réserve in Geneva, a fab hotelcum-spa ten minutes from the airport, which does it all for you. For
£3,620 for the four-day detox you get a doctor’s and osteopath’s
assessment, diet advice, personal training and an apparently endless
succession of very good spa treatments: the three-in-one targets
cellulite the way a vacuum cleaner targets dust.
But obviously, there’s a sybaritic element to the pretox. Espa has
a very good range of pretox/detox products. The mineral salt scrub
is lovely and so is the seaweedy Detox Bath. In fact, I had an entire
Espa detox treatment at the Bulgari spa, including an algae wrap
which sent me straight off.
But the best therapeutic treatments to get rid of toxins in the
body involve no unguents at all. It’s manual lymphatic drainage,
or MLD, which works through gentle massage to stimulate the
body’s own mechanism for shifting toxins, the lymph system. I
swear, it can make you look like you’ve been on holiday. So there
you go: a pretox in a fortnight. I’m five pounds thinner, a partydress-fit New Woman and my toxins are on the run. So energised
and cleansed, it’s time to party. Gangway for the pudding! Bring
on the eggnog!
Pure Package, purepackage.com; Bodyism at the Bulgari, pre-Christmas
Clean and Lean spa day, £380, or a week for £1,500, 020 7151 1055;
Equinox, Kensington, 020 7666 6000, www.equinox.com; Barry’s
Bootcamp, 020 7387 7001, www.barrysbootcamp.com; La Réserve
Geneva, £3,620 for four-day detox programme, reservationsgeneve@
lareserve.ch, 0041 22 959 5959; MLD — see mlduk.org for list
of practitioners.
43
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43
22/11/12 12:18:52
J & G GRANT, GLENFARCLAS DISTILLERY, BALLINDALLOCH, BANFFSHIRE, SCOTLAND AB37 9BD
TEL +44 (0)1807 500257 [email protected] WWW.GLENFARCLAS.CO.UK
Glenfarclas encourages responsible drinking.
24334 Glenfarclas THE SPECTOR Full Page Advert.indd 1
13/11/2012 12:23
20/11/12 09:38:23
RARE
O P P OR T U N I T y
For the first time, you have the chance to
invest in rare earth metals. But should you?
Christopher Silvester
What the hell are you talking about?
These 17 chemical elements, with names such as neodymium, dysprosium and europium, are used in the manufacture of objects ranging from lasers, aerospace components
and nuclear batteries to camera lenses, energy-efficient light
bulbs and self-cleaning ovens.
Where do they come from?
Today 95 per cent of the world’s supply comes from China.
Deposits are dwindling fast and unless new sources are discovered, global demand will drastically exceed supply. California used to produce a fair amount, but closed its Mountain
Pass mine because the Chinese undercut prices. Production
has resumed there, but the Chinese still call the shots.
Why haven’t I heard of anyone investing in rare earth
metals before?
Until last year, there was no investment market in rare earth
metals. Manufacturers bought these substances directly from
suppliers, meaning that rare earths represented a pure commodity play based on supply and demand.
issue about how stable that market is. If Denver Trading were
to go out of business, you could be left with bags of rare earth
metals sitting in a bonded warehouse, and no easy way to liquidate your holding. Denver’s agents want a minimum investment of £3,000 to £5,000 and recommend holding deposits
for around five years.
How do Denver Trading and its agents make money?
Denver Trading holds stocks of rare earth metals — an
expensive business — which it later sells at a profit. In a rising market Denver Trading buys back your rare earths at a
discount to the market price. In a falling market investors
have nowhere to go other than to Denver Trading.
What else should I worry about?
The Chinese might release stockpiles into the market, thus
depressing prices, or countries other than China might develop new sources of supply (Vietnam, for example). And another thing: existing manufacturers are seeking new methods of
production that will no longer require rare earths. What’s your advice?
Never invest through companies that do not list the names
and backgrounds of their principal executives on their
websites. Other than that: fasten your seatbelts, you’re in for
a bumpy ride.
HUMPHREY BUTLER
Agents & Dealers in Fine Jeweller y
What has changed?
Denver Trading, which acts as a broker to the industrial sector, decided to create a new business model for retail investors, licensing companies that it describes as ‘agents’ to sell
small amounts of rare earths and arranging for them to be
stored in bonded warehouses in London or Zurich. Purchases
are certified as genuine by independent third-party experts.
How many companies are offering this service?
About 20 so far. If your email address is registered with any
financial websites you’re bound to have received several
enticing messages by now.
How are the prices of rare earth metals performing?
Well, some prices have risen dramatically, mainly because
the Chinese have been curbing exports of rare earths and
stockpiling them. This is the eye-catching part of the pitch.
Who wouldn’t want to profit by 500 or 1,000 per cent? But
prices have fallen of late — volatility goes with the territory.
For advice re purchase, sale or valuation please contact
H U M P H R E Y B U T L E R LT D
4 0 / 4 1 PA L L M A L L , L O N D O N S W 1 Y 5 J G
TEL +44 (0)20 7839 3193 /
WWW.HUMPHREYBUTLER.COM
How does the business model work?
Given that just about all the companies selling rare earth
metals to investors are ‘agents’ of Denver Trading, there is an
45
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45
12 HB Spectator AD.indd 1
09/11/12 11:18
22/11/12 12:20:45
LIFE
Z e n and the
a r t of S c o t c h
For many people, only one whisky will do
Alexander McCall Smith
M
iranda Grant is enthusiastic
ab out wh i sk y. At la st
December’s whisky auction
in Edinburgh, a bottle of
55-year-old Glenfiddich was sold for just
under £47,000. For Miranda, who runs
Bonhams auction house in Edinburgh,
it was very satisfactory. She enjoys a dram
as much as the next Scotswoman, but she
did not taste that particular whisky.
However, the price pointed to the
extraordinary rise in Scotch whisky
connoisseurship that now embraces not
only the traditional markets of the United
Kingdom and western Europe, but India,
China and elsewhere in the Far East. Russia
is joining in, with Moscow and St Petersburg
becoming increasingly important cities on
the world whisky map.
What is about Scotch that makes it so
special? To some extent, the answer is
the same as the answer to the question of
what makes champagne stand out among
other wines. Scotch is special because of
its name. It is, as the expression goes, the
real McCoy. Other countries can produce
whisky, and even England has now got in
on the act, making a product that has been
fairly favourably received by whisky enthusiasts. But it is not Scotch, just as the excellent sparkling wines that Australia and the
south of England produce are not champagne. What they lack is mystique, and that
also plays a major part in Scotch whisky’s
reputation. That mystique is also sufficiently important to keep a team of Edinburgh
lawyers busy, ready to sue anyone, anywhere in the world, who starts to deck their
South American or Indian whisky in tartan
or call it a Scottish-sounding name.
Of course, it is not all smoke and mirrors.
Scotch whisky has a particular taste and
nose that makes it readily distinguishable
from other whiskies. The origin of these
qualities is one that is the subject of constant
debate among connoisseurs. It is not just
the water — indeed, there is a view that the
water does not play a major part. Certainly,
the water used to make Scotch, taken from
Highland burns, is unsullied by the sort
of pollution that one might find in rivers
running through more heavily populated
places, but that is not in itself enough to
give a whisky its distinctive taste.
The real flavours come in at the stage
of maturation of the spirits in the wooden
casks that must, by law, be made of oak.
These will have once been used for the
making of bourbon or sherry and will
impart flavour to the maturing Scotch.
During that stage, though, other factors
will play a part, including even the air of the
place in which the whisky is being stored.
As anyone who has visited the Highlands
will know, there is a particular quality to the
air. It has the sea in its breath, and seaweed,
and heather, and the coconut smell of gorse,
and sometimes a hint of peat smoke. All of
that counts just as much, perhaps, as the
shape of the great copper stills in which
whisky is distilled, or the quality of the
barley used in its manufacture.
At the end of this process, Scotch whisky
will be taken from the casks, bottled, and
given a name. Most of it will be sold in a
blended form, in which whisky from several
distilleries is mixed. These are the whiskies
that are known not by the name of their
distillery but by some sort of trade name.
These can be general, knockabout whiskies
sold in bars, but they can also be very good,
and expensive — Johnnie Walker’s Jubilee
Blend will cost you over £100,000 a bottle.
The precise mixture is important, and the
person in charge of keeping it consistent is
called the blender or, better yet, the nose.
Noses ensure that a brand keeps its taste
over the years, by remembering its characteristics and, importantly, remembering
how to achieve them.
Another sort of nose is the expert who
conducts whisky nosings, the equivalent of
wine tasting. The doyen of these experts is
Charles Maclean, an award-winning whisky writer who travels all over the world talking about his passion for Scotch. In a warm
and accessible manner, Charlie exemplifies
the difference between the world of whisky
connoisseurship and its wine equivalent.
Wine enthusiasts tend to resent accusations
of snobbery — and one can sympathise with
them in that — but there still seems to hang
about the wine world a whiff of pretension
and exclusivity. An agreeable little wine,
with a strong note of blackberries, long in
the finish etc may be a parody of wine language, but it does exist and it is sometimes
difficult to listen to such descriptions with
an entirely straight face.
In contrast, the language that Charlie,
like other whisky noses, uses is robust.
I have been at nosings conducted by him
where he described the whisky as tasting
of wet straw or, on one memorable
occasion, having notes that should remind
one of the inside of one’s grandfather’s old
Rover. That is a long way from the language
used in a refined wine tasting. Sometimes,
of course, the Zen of Scotch simply requires
silence, as no words will suffice to describe
its beatific effect.
The robust nature of the world of Scotch
whisky is also underlined by Charlie’s
openness to different ways of enjoying
the drink. He stresses that there are rules
for appreciating the subtlety of whisky,
but for personal appreciation ‘do what
you like’ is the gist.
You can add water and ice to your heart’s
content, although Charlie will point out that
this changes the drinking experience. Water
brings out different features of a whisky,
and ice may close down its taste a little. But
if that’s what you want, then that’s what you
should do. And if you want to add CocaCola, as some people have been known
to do? Charlie’s moustache bristles, but
only slightly. Once again, it’s up to you.
I wouldn’t be inclined to suggest that at
a wine tasting, of course. That, I think,
would be disagreeable and would lead, one
might imagine, to a distinctly short finish.
46
Whisky_AlexanderMcCallSmith_Spectator Life_Spectator Supplements 210x260_
46
22/11/12 12:21:28
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19/11/12 13:13:04
LIFE
t w o wa y s
Ch rist m as
The
oF
Homebodies vs party animals
A Season for families
Toby Young
C
hristmas is a bit like Marmite: you either
love it or hate it. But the problem with loving the idea of it — as I do — is that the reality never lives up to your expectations. Or
maybe that’s not a problem. Maybe that’s what I like
about it.
I think my deep affection for the period is linked
to the Christmas television schedule. As a child, I had
no sources of electronic entertainment apart from the
telly. No video games, no DVDs, no satellite channels
— nothing. And the programmes on the three terrestrial channels weren’t simply better at Christmas, they
were miles better.
Christmas officially began when I turned to the
back page of the Radio Times in mid-December and
saw a picture of the cover of the next edition and read
a brief description of the delights that were in store. I’m
not just talking about things like the Porridge Christmas special — though I loved that, obviously — but the
films, too. BBC2 screened a cornucopia of black-andwhite classics. Those were the gifts that Santa brought
me every year and they rarely disappointed.
As a grown-up, my warm feelings about Christmas
have taken on a more literary tone. I now have a sort of
Dickensian image in my mind, with friends and family
gathered round a fire, accompanied by much drinking
and merriment. In this picture, I’m the Scrooge figure
— at the end of A Christmas Carol, not the beginning
— bursting in with a sack of presents and an enormous
turkey and prompting a round of applause. My children all behave like Tiny Tim, weeping with gratitude
as I hand them inexpensive wooden toys.
The reality is nothing like this, not least because
my children are glued to the television set on Christmas Day and are reluctant to be prised away from it
— just as I was. When they’re forced to turn it off and
exchange pleasantries with ageing relatives, they’re
stilted, unable to conceal their displeasure. They’re not
interested in the elaborate Christmas lunch my wife
has spent the past 48 hours preparing. They just want
to eat the chocolates hanging from the tree. And the
present-giving ritual always exposes them in the worst
possible light as they tear through wrapping paper and
disdainfully toss aside whatever gift has been carefully
chosen for them in search of something better.
I’m exaggerating slightly. Occasionally, something
goes well. Sharing a bottle of Montrachet Premier
Cru with my wine-snob brother-in-law, for instance,
or dancing to Neil Diamond with my children after
lunch. My youngest, four-year-old Charlie, might even
play for five minutes with an inexpensive wooden toy.
But these moments tend to fade into the background
as a mood of sourness descends on me. It’s as though
I begin actively looking for reasons to be disappointed
— the celebratory glass of champagne is half-empty
rather than half-full. I’m the Scrooge figure, all right
— but the one before the moral awakening.
To complicate matters, the more things I find to
complain about, the happier I am. There’s something
peculiarly British about this, and not easily understood
by anyone born outside these islands. In a sense, the
perfect British Christmas is a meticulously planned
day on which everything goes horribly wrong, involving at least one trip to A&E, and ends with the survivors breaking into a rendition of ‘Always Look on the
Bright Side of Life’.
I experienced something close to this as a child when
my late father failed to turn up for Christmas lunch.
Like me, he officially loved Christmas and insisted
that all the members of his large and dysfunctional
48
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48
22/11/12 12:22:47
family gather for a meal. So there we all were, sitting
at a large dining table, with a carefully coordinated
series of dishes about to appear, but without my father.
He was at a cemetery in Bethnal Green. He’d heard
about this ritual whereby lonely widows would appear
at the gravesides of their departed husbands and share
a Christmas cuppa with them by pouring tea into the
ground. As a sociologist with a particular interest
in the East End, he was determined to see this and he’d
disappeared that morning and failed to re-materialise.
Evidently, this macabre ritual was more compelling
than spending time with his extended family.
When he turned up, more than an hour late, we
were all furious, particularly my mother, whose lunch
was ruined. The atmosphere couldn’t have been more
hostile and several of his children (he had six in total
from three different marriages) were threatening to
leave. To placate us, my father started describing the
women he’d seen at the cemetery. He had a Dickensian gift for evoking pity and painted such a lachrymose portrait of these widows that he soon had us all in
tears. Suddenly, we felt ashamed of how ill-tempered
we’d been moments earlier and grateful that we at least
had each other. We didn’t start singing ‘Always Look
on the Bright Side of Life’ — we were middle-class,
educated and repressed — but our mood changed from
bitter frustration to stoical optimism.
I’m greatly looking forward to Christmas this year
and even fantasising about reading The Hobbit to my
children on 24 December, with all of them sitting at my
feet in their pyjamas. Won’t happen, of course, and all
my hopes of a perfect Christmas Day will be dashed.
There may even be a trip to A&E. But by the end, having found lots of reasons to be cross, I will be quietly
satisfied. ‘Another bloomin’ Christmas,’ as Raymond
Briggs’s Father Christmas is fond of saying.
A Seas on f or he d on i sts
Francesca Zampi Hammerstein
Getty Images
I
currently live between New York and Las
Vegas, but London is where I want to be in the
run-up to Christmas. Everybody is full
of boozy good cheer and it’s party mayhem for
25 days straight. If there are two things I’ve learned
from my hedonistic life, it’s that the craziest parties
are Christmas parties, and that nobody goes for
it like the Brits.
Until recently my job was fully set up for a life
of excess — working at the Box, Soho, where partying
was pretty much my profession. And while I witnessed
a lot of scandalous behaviour during my Box years,
there’s something about the holiday season that makes
people particularly naughty.
Fond Christmassy memories from the club include
one friend’s very straight, hedge-funder dad drunkenly snogging a transvestite with a huge wig and breast
implants, while holding my hand under the table for
security. Another night a staff member ended up at
a rave in east London in the early hours of a Sunday
morning with a famous fashion designer. They danced
like mad and then she went to church with him in her
full Box regalia — leotard, stockings and six-inch heels
— to sing Christmas hymns.
Needless to say, I’ve developed several strategies for
how to survive the British holiday season intact. First,
get a tan. Before heading to London to indulge in all
the things I love and can’t find in America (old friends,
mince pies, Christmas crackers and binge-drinking),
I go and spend a week or two in Miami to work on
my winter glow.
To take the stress out of consecutive nights in
your glad-rags, I advise planning your party outfits in
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LIFE
advance. Something in a reflective metallic is unfailingly festive, a winter-white dress à la Celine will be
dazzling with or without a tan, while this season’s jewel-toned dresses from Lanvin are Christmas-party
perfection. And hurrah — the trouser suit is back this
season, which is the Holy Grail of day-to-night dressing. Just switch to stilettos and a different top (or even
better, no top) for night-time antics.
The fun will also be hampered if you get fat on fun,
or sustain disco injuries. Although I don’t believe for
a second that ‘nothing tastes as good as skinny feels’,
I do know that spending Sundays un-tagging fat Facebook photos is depressing, so avoid champagne and
cocktails and drink vodka soda with lots of fresh lime.
Save your calories for Christmas dinner, which at least
you’ll remember.
It is crucial to wear flat footwear during the day
in December, to nurse your feet after dancing in preposterously high heels. Now that the platform shoe is
officially over, which is aesthetically fortunate, it does
mean shoes have become — if possible — more painful, since there is no cushion between the ball of your
foot and the pavement. I shuffle around in disgusting
I stopped bothering to get
disappointed about New Year’s
Eve when I was about 16
Although I love London for pre- Christmas
debauchery, I advise getting the hell out of Dodge
for New Year’s Eve, which I stopped bothering even
to get disappointed about aged 16. Leave town after
the 25th. For the last few years I’ve been lucky enough
to be on Mustique for the weeks after Christmas.
Days there involve yoga on the beach with my bendy
instructor Charity Joy (that is her real name), rum
punch by the pool, delicious Caribbean dinners and
lots of early nights. Highly recommended.
This year, however, I’ll be in the mecca for hedonists, Sin City itself, for 31 December. My husband,
Simon, recently opened a new club, the Act, at the Palazzo in Las Vegas. The space has winding corridors
and various chambers where you can lose the people
you came with and find new ones. Anyone who has
ever been to his other clubs knows the real party goes
on backstage — I have spent many a night squished
into the dressing rooms drinking with the performers
and friends, so this time he’s designed a dedicated bar
backstage where guests can party with the dancers,
singers, acrobats and glamorous misfits.
Maybe I’ll see you there.
Good will to all men:
Marilyn Monroe
tries on a Christmas
stocking, 1951.
Previous
page: a family
Christmas, 1971
Getty Images
old Uggs at the weekend (when nobody can see me but
my Rottweiler, Eva). Regular reflexology is also part
of my crippled-by-vanity prevention programme.
Naturally, my hangover routine is pretty refined.
My tricks are coconut water before boozing, and then
two glasses of water before bed — you’ll need to get up
in the night but it’s worth it. More coconut water in the
morning consumed while taking a bath of Epsom salts.
Antihistamine is another secret weapon — I take
a Claritin most mornings as it reduces alcohol-induced
face puff.
If you wear make-up, I recommend removing
it before going to bed. I use Quick Thinking Wipes by
No.7. Make-up removal is a relatively new thing for me
but my skin and my pillow thank me.
You need to be fighting fit to make it through all
of December without looking like a crackhead on day
two, so this is not the time for slacking with your workout routine. Hire a personal trainer to come to your
home (if you’re hungover you’ll never make it to the
gym), and keep your immune system in shape with at
least two nights of proper sleep a week. Nobody wants
to kiss someone under the mistletoe with cold sores.
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19/11/12 13:01:45
T HE DIR TY IN T ERN E T
Server farms are costly, inefficient and environmentally destructive,
but that’s just business as it has always been
Stephen Bayley
A series of tubes: Google’s data centre in Douglas County, Georgia — one of eight in the US, Finland and Belgium
Google/AP/Press Association Images
E
that powers Amazon, Facebook, Microsoft and Google. James
Glanz spent, in tribute to the Grey Lady’s pitiless thoroughness, a
year researching a series of five articles which appeared in September. His fact-checked thesis, although he did not put it quite like
this, was this: the internet is the work of the Devil. With the help of
a report commissioned from the influential McKinsey consultancy, Glanz argued that internet business is dirty and wasteful. Vast
resources are employed in pursuit of rubbish. Godless profligacy
is endemic in the web. Jeff Bezos is Mephistopheles. The suggestion was, cue echoes of Ruskin’s booming Old Testament cadences, that it threatens the existence of civilisation itself.
The reaction from the nerd ’n’ geek community was so ferocious that it sounded very much like protesting too much, the guilty
being inclined to flee where the New York Times pursueth. One
blogger called Glanz’s meticulously researched articles ‘half guesses, contradictions and flat-out incorrect information’. Another ‘an
artful, fact-laden job of telling half a story’. It was left to the laid-
very revolution has its dissenters. And the more
interesting the revolution, the more strident the dissent.
More than 150 years ago, John Ruskin elected himself
Queen Victoria’s moralist and orotundly condemned
the railways and every other fruit of mechanical industry. Metal,
pistons and steam, in his unblinking view, threatened the existence
of civilisation itself. A railway engine promised not an easier
commute on velour seats, but a terrible one-way, non-stop journey
into inhuman depravity from which the only escape was death or
the asylum.
In 2012, we have dissenters of our own. The New York Times
has elected itself a moral and practical critic of the electronic revolution that pings so oppressively around us. Never mind that the
Grey Lady, so-called because of its preference for dense, text-heavy
stories, is dangerously threatened by rapidly improving online content and comment, the paper (and how quaint a term that already
sounds!) has published an astonishing attack on the technology
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LIFE
back New York magazine to establish a sensible balance: ‘the idea
that Facebook is destroying the environment in order to give you
24-7…. access to stupid cat videos is simply too pat’. Where you
stand in the debate I am about to explain describes not just your
attitude to computers — which are no more intrinsically interesting than a pencil — but to the thrust and dynamic of our culture.
There is, Glanz rightly suggested, a generalised misunderstanding that the internet is clean, free and efficient with energy.
Your brand-new, glistening, vitreous, Platonically-inspired tablet
encourages this happy delusion. How could something so physically perfect be supported by any flawed infrastructure? Yes, with
a few touchscreen clicks you have immediRight: Google’s data
ate frictionless access to the world’s inforcentre in Hamina,
mation and, if you hold on for guaranteed
Finland.
next-day delivery, very rapid access to its
Below: Citi Data
goods as well. This must be good!
Centre, Frankfurt
But this miracle has a dirty secret that is
not so little. All high-traffic internet businesses depend on vast server farms which
are the filthy coal mines of our day. That
brilliant ‘free’ information Google brings
you is bought at a cost. At any moment
of night or day, Google has a continuous draw-down of 260 million watts. ‘The
Cloud’ makes it sound soft, fluffy, clean
and virtuous. The reality of The Cloud is
UIG via Getty Images; Connie Zhou/AP/Press Association Images
acres of vast sheds full of very hot computers which suck power
from the grid and, additionally, demand continuous cooling.
Which sucks yet more power out of the grid.
And so twitched are the robber barons of the digital era by the
damage to their reputations that a power outage and down-time
would cause, that they have gigantic diesel generators as back-up.
The only cloud you will see around, say, the Microsoft server farm
at Quincy, Washington, is a cumulus of burnt diesel and carcinogenic particulates. Worse, according to The New York Times/
McKinsey information, these server farms are only doing useful
work for 6-12 per cent of the time, but are kept running to feed the
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22/11/12 12:25:57
ronmental depravity of server farms may have been overstated, so
too have the democratic benefits of the businesses they support.
Far from being communes of zoned-out, salad-munching hippies,
Facebook, Microsoft and Amazon (‘notoriously opaque’, according to the Financial Times) all tend towards the manipulative
behaviour established by Carnegie and Vanderbilt and perfected
by General Motors and Dow Chemical. For example, Google and
Amazon are not democratising literature, they are acquiring a sinister monopoly. Right now, Amazon is buying markets and makes
very modest profits. That will change when it dominates global
distribution and its prices rise.
Even Apple, everyone’s favourite business, is not immune
to criticism. Tim Cook, the new CEO, is not a luminescent
world-improving visionary, but a hard-calculating supplychain manager. Supply-chain is to us what a production line was
to them. And while only the dullest person would not be excited
by Apple’s beautiful and useful products, are not the new product
announcements, made ever more frequent by greedy investors
elbowing for volume, identical to the planned obsolescence
of the old industrial culture?
They used to call it Detroit Machiavellismus when General
Motors introduced a new product every year… whether it was
needed or not. Market-leader Chevrolet’s factories were surrounded
by sulphurous smokestacks and poisoned rivers. But the customers
were happy. Sometimes, I think we have not experienced
a revolution. Sometimes, I think nothing has changed.
global addiction to rapid response. Even worse, in one instance,
and to avoid a $210,000 penalty for under-estimating its power
requirements, Microsoft deliberately wasted millions of watts of
electricity. It actually burnt its fine. Imagine this and an image
comes to mind that’s a metaphor for modern cupidity and sin: in a
windowless box, on desecrated agricultural land, a sinister webocracy wilfully destroys resources to save a few wretched dollars. As
sin goes, it might not be original, but it is nonetheless impressive.
But since the Devil has the best iTunes, the countervailing
argument is a powerful one: of course the web needs power, but its
abuse is wildly exaggerated. Besides, it’s a dynamic technology and
new solutions will readily be found to, for example, the problem of
cooling server farms. Moreoever, total appetite for energy from
all the web businesses combined is less than 2 per cent of what’s
available and this is disproportionately small if you consider their
economic impact. In any case, the argument continues, when you
click at home and the message goes to the Amazon warehouse at
Marston Gate, near Brogborough, Bedfordshire, you are excluding a wasteful old bookshop or hardware store and, all grossed-up,
have saved resources rather than squandered them. You can feel
good about this. You can feel even better that, if Amazon gets its
way and we all have Kindle readers embedded at birth, we will
soon do without paper altogether. Once, the printing press was an
agent of change. Now, its destruction has assumed the same role.
These arguments are finely balanced : it’s a classic case study of
progress and reaction, of revolution and dissent. While the envi-
hine_life.indd 1
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T:210 mm
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19/11/12 12:49:11
T:276 mm
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tHere’s more tHan one
Waldorf astoria.
Katharine
Hepburn dressed
as a boy in the
movie Sylvia
Scarlett, 1935
SO
MACHO
Androgyny is back, so it’s
time to beg, borrow or buy
your other half’s wardrobe
AFP/Getty Images
Pandora Sykes
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Getty Images
STYLE
In an interview last year, the actress Tilda Swinton
remembered, as a child, seeing her mother and father
(an Army major-general) going out for dinner, and
recalled thinking, ‘I’d rather be handsome, as he is, for
an hour, than pretty [like her mother] for a week’. Swinton found fame playing the title role in the film of Virginia Woolf’s Orlando — the ultimate gender-bender
in that s/he literally changes from male to female halfway through. But the actress has retained an androgynous, starkly ethereal look and, with her fierce crop,
aversion to make-up and austere clothes, she embodies the truth that a masculine style has always been
appealing for many women.
In the 1930s, screen sirens such as Katharine Hepburn, Greta Garbo, Marlene Dietrich and the fashion
designer Coco Chanel donned trousers and mannish
suits to assert their independence. Meanwhile, Amelia Earhart’s leather aviator jacket and silk tie complemented her delicate, heart-shaped face. Several decades
on, a woman in man’s clothing still had a unique power.
Who can forget that seminal scene in Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1961), when Audrey Hepburn opens the door in
a white men’s dress shirt? And when Yves Saint Laurent unveiled his trail-blazing ‘Le Smoking’ tuxedo
jacket to the fashion elite in 1966, there was an audible
intake of breath.
A few years back, we went through a fashion
‘moment’ where the notion was that girls raided their
men’s wardrobes. There was the oversized white shirt,
worn with mussed-up post-coital hair, the pilfered
cashmere jumper, the cut of jeans marketed as ‘Boyfriend’.
Now it’s all gone a bit Annie Hall. The man-towoman repertoire includes Church’s brogues (worn
battered, with punky smudged eyeliner, if you’re Coco
Sumner, or polished, with cropped jeans, if you’re
glossy style expert Olivia Palermo), the Crombie coat,
lumberjack and denim shirts and duffel coats. The
classic theft of recent years has to be the leather biker
jacket, as feminised by Alexa Chung. This season, we
also have the Letterman, or ‘varsity’, jacket (as seen
on the supermodel Cara Delevingne), cotton Oxford
shirts and men’s pyjama shirts. Accessory-wise, we’ve
nabbed the fedora (still risky), the beanie hat (positively pedestrian), smoking slippers (brightly monogrammed is best), Chelsea boots (again) and lace-up
workman boots — as loved by coal miners, Colin Farrell and, er, teenage girls. A shirt, a blazer and a pair
of Chelsea boots, teamed with leather trousers, is
the classic look for Gallic style icons such as Vogue’s
Emmanuelle Alt and the actress Clémence Poésy.
From the male rocker influence at Rick Owens, to
the tomboyish off-duty model vibe at Alexander Wang,
to the slim-cut suits at Stella McCartney and J Crew,
every contemporary womenswear label has raided
male sartorial style. At American Apparel, the high-
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Marlene Dietrich
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22/11/12 12:29:15
street hipsters’ hangout, most of their stock comes with
the label ‘unisex’.
The A-list stars of the Twilight franchise, Robert
Pattinson and Kristen Stewart, seem to share all their
clothes: their style is a compilation of baseball caps,
skinny jeans, tennis shoes, hoodies and ‘wife-beater’
T-shirts. Sharing a wardrobe can be useful, after all.
If you happen to date a man with a slender 14.5-inch
neck and a fondness for brushed cotton shirts, as I do,
then you find yourself with a lot of shirts at your disposal. During the last London Fashion Week, I snaffled a vintage burgundy shirt of his simply because it
matched my lipstick. Unlike Dietrich et al, we are now
so emancipated that we reach for the XXL tee as readily as the pencil skirt.
In a nod to Coco, Chanel recently cast Brad Pitt as
the first male face of their signature fragrance, Chanel
No. 5. But it cuts both ways, and women who are averse
to the floral pungency of many fragrances are increasingly using male or unisex grooming products. Kiehl’s
Facial Fuel, with its clean menthol smell, is bought by
almost as many women as men. Me, I rarely stray from
Acqua di Gio for Men, which I fell in love with a decade ago when I bought some for an ex-boyfriend. The
boyfriend and I split before I could give the present —
and ten years on, it remains my signature smell.
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A pen is for life, not just for Christmas
James Delingpole
Handwriting by Paul Antonio
H
ere’s what you should get
your loved one for Christmas. 1. A nice fountain pen.
2. Philip Hensher’s The
Missing Ink. You need to buy 2. — especially if the recipient is male — in order to
make him properly appreciate the point of
1. Otherwise your generosity might well be
wasted.
This is what happened many, many
years ago when my girlfriend of the time
bought me a handsome antique pen. As
I unwrapped it, she studied me carefully for my reaction. ‘It was very expensive.
You’d better like it,’ she warned. ‘Oh great.
A bloody pen,’ I thought. But obviously I
didn’t say that. ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I love it!’
But I didn’t. Just the other day, I was
cleaning out the pen holder one of the kids
— possibly even dating as far back as the
Rat — had made me out of bog roll and
wrapping paper. And I found the antique
pen, snapped in half. Tragically, I don’t
think I used it even once, which makes me
feel both sad and guilty. If only I’d known
then what I know now.
What I know now is that pens are bloody
great. They’re not — as I imagined in my
wasted middle youth — a fogeyish affectation, but one of the essential tools of a civilised existence.
You need one first and foremost, of
course, in order to be able to write comfortably and legibly. For me, ballpoints just
won’t do because they only work at a nearvertical angle, which constricts my flow
and makes it harder to form my letters and
renders the physical business of writing a
painful chore.
Owning a really nice, expensive pen, on
the other hand, makes writing feel like more
of a pleasure than a duty. Thank-you letters, for example, become not a begrudged
necessity but a delightful opportunity to
play with your shiny toy and also to gratify
the person who gave it to you by being seen
to use it.
But there’s another reason, at least as
compelling as any of the ones above: you
need a pen because it’s an essential weapon in the culture wars. After 9/11, I started
taking my kids to church, not just for the
obvious reasons, but also because I believe
that in the great clash of civilisations there
can be no room for casual bystanders. The
fountain pen — though not, perhaps, on
such a global, apocalyptic scale — serves
in the similar struggle to preserve lovely
old-school values from horrid, smelly new
ones.
Which is where Philip Hensher’s The
Missing Ink comes in. Here, Hensher elegantly and wittily spells out what we’ve all
probably noticed but would prefer not to
admit: that the age of writing by hand is
coming very rapidly to an end. He notes:
‘At some point, the ordinary pleasures
and dignity of handwriting are going to
be replaced permanently. What is going to
replace them is a man in a well-connected
electric room, waving frantically at a screen
and saying, to nobody in particular, “Why
won’t this effing thing work?” ’
No more can we stop this revolution than
writers of illustrated manuscripts could
hold back typeset print. What we can do is
at least strive to guarantee that the pleasures of writing continue to be enjoyed in
our lifetimes and in those of our children.
And the way to do this is a) to arm ourselves with the right weaponry (as it happens, William & Son, who kindly lent me
some exquisite examples, also make shotguns) and b) to remind ourselves what it is
that makes the art of writing so cherishable
and special.
Hensher offers lots of examples: that
masochistically satisfying little groove you
wear down in the flesh of your middle finger from repeated pen use; the nostalgic
bliss of soaping and scrubbing the morning’s accreted ink from your fingers; the
fun of flicking ink — either to get it flowing through the nib, or just for the hell of it.
Preceding all this, of course, is the bizarre
experience of learning to write in the first
place, which tends to happen so early in our
lives it feels more like a dream than something that actually happened to us.
We know it must have done, though. At
some stage, for example, I will have noted
someone crossing their sevens in the continental style, and thought to myself: ‘That’s
exotic and sophisticated. I’m going to copy
that.’ (‘Your hand is formed by aspiration
to others,’ Hensher sagely notes). During
the war, this would have marked me out as
suspect. In the film Went the Day Well?, it’s
how the Nazi spies give themselves away.
Then there’s vexed issue of what ink colour to use — and what it says about you.
Hensher reckons it has to be black or blueblack if you want to be taken seriously. He’s
right: royal-blue is babyish and first-yearish (because it’s washable); green means
you’re mad; red is psychotic; although I did
very much enjoy my turquoise period.
Your writing style is similarly instructive. Hensher, like most of us, has firm
views on this. ‘Someone who uses the
Greek E probably had an early homosexual experience’, ‘Anyone who writes a circle
or a heart over their i’s is a moron.’
And it all starts with the pen. My kids
swear by their Lamys, but when we’re older
we deserve to treat ourselves to something
with a bit more heft, a bit more polish, a bit
more gold and silver. I can’t be doing with
watches. Can’t see the point. But a superposh pen, now that I really covet.
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With a design inspired by Katana, the ancient Japanese art of sword making, the perfect chronograph is no longer a dream.
seiko-ananta.com
19/11/12 14:12:38
TRACK
TIME S
Chronographs and motor sport are made for each other
Simon de Burton
I
That same thinking is proving equally successful today as a growing number of watch brands form alliances with car makers. Breitling led the 21st-century race when it joined forces with Bentley
a decade ago, since when some 20 different ‘Breitling for Bentley’
models have been produced, ranging from a chronograph to commemorate a world ice speed record to a couple of one-off pocket
watches costing six-figure sums.
Another marriage of brands is Aston Martin and JaegerLeCoultre, whose partnership was announced in 2004. The initial
fruit of the collaboration was the AMVOX 1 alarm wristwatch
which was quickly followed by the AMVOX 2, the first ‘verti-
Rob Walls/Rex Features
t was a watchmaker called George Schaeren who first
observed the intimacy between cars and watches. Way back
in 1918, he had the idea of making wristwatches shaped
like the radiator surrounds of glamorous cars — Bugattis,
L ancias, Hispano-Suizas — which he sold under the Mido name
to members of automobile clubs as a form of membership card.
The sales psychology was brilliant. Only extremely wealthy
people could afford such cars, meaning Schaeren could attach
hefty price-tags to his watches — and the drivers all wanted one
because they liked being able to demonstrate that they owned
a Bugatti even when they weren’t behind the wheel.
A very valuable
wrist: Steve
McQueen on the set
of Le Mans wearing
the Heuer Monaco
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STYLE
F OU R F OR T H E ROA D
Bulgari O cto M aserati
Bulgari’s Octo Maserati features retrograde minutes, date and
chronograph hands which automatically revert to zero when
they reach the end of their range, while the hour is displayed
in the aperture below the 12 o’clock position. The centre of
the dial resembles a Maserati radiator grille, the transparent
case back carries the famous Il Tridente logo and the calfskin
strap is redolent of the cars’ upholstery. £20,300. bulgari.com
C hopard Grand P rix de M onaco
H istorique
Chopard has backed the biennial Grand Prix de Monaco
Historique since 2002 and traditionally produces a dedicated,
limited-edition chronograph to mark the occasion. This year’s
evokes the 1970s with a matte grey dial highlighted with
contrasting orange or blue detailing and a distressed,
perforated leather strap. The 42mm case can be had in
titanium (£4,870), a combination of titanium and rose gold
(limited to 500 examples priced at £7,190) or rose gold only
(around £12,000, limited to 100). chopard.com
The Carrera was named after the legendary Carrera
Panamericana car race and was worn by racing drivers including
Clay Regazzoni and Niki Lauda. This year, the brand created
a special edition of the chronograph to mark the 80th birthday
of Jack Heuer who created it in 1964. The distinctive, squarecased Monaco, meanwhile, was turned into a horological legend
when Steve McQueen wore a blue-dialled version for the filming
of the 1971 car race movie Le Mans. One of the latest, limited
edition versions commemorates the exclusive Automobile Club
de Monaco while numerous other variants include models with
dials in Gulf Oil livery and two blue- and white-striped ‘Steve
McQueen’ specials.
Another driver’s classic is the legendary Rolex Cosmograph
Daytona which was launched in 1963 and became known around
the world through the brand’s sponsorship of major automobile
events such as the Le Mans 24 Hours and the Rolex 24 at Daytona.
Legend has it that Paul Newman wore one during the motor race
movie Winning. But it’s not a legend, it’s a myth. Newman was,
however, subsequently given a Cosmograph Daytona by his wife
and regularly wore it (and others) during his secondary career
as a racing driver — and now early model Daytonas with so-called
‘Paul Newman’ exotic dials are hugely collectable.
The Omega Speedmaster, meanwhile, first appeared in 1957
with a black dial, luminous hands and a chunky 39mm case that
made it an instant hit with automobilists. ‘Our picture shows two
sports car enthusiasts racing the clock,’ read a contemporary
Speedmaster advertisement, ‘the clock being no clock at all but
the new Omega high-precision wrist computer. When the co-driver
cal trigger’ chronograph, which is controlled by pushing on the
glass rather than the buttons. The latest model, the AMVOX 7,
combines the vertical trigger system with the additional complication of a power reserve display.
And it goes without saying that Ferrari has been courted by several watch makers over the years, all keen to create the ‘official’
watch of the prancing horse marque. Girard-Perregaux was the
first, followed by Panerai, which held the position for little more
than three years. Now Hublot, which is also the official watch
of Formula 1, is in on the act with its £19,600 Big Bang Ferrari
Magic Gold.
Other car-watch collaborations include Parmigiani with
Bugatti, TAG Heuer with McLaren, Ball with BMW and Bulgari
with Maserati — while owners of the gorgeous Alfa Romeo 8C
supercar are encouraged to buy a complex and imaginative timepiece made especially for them by Manometro, the brand established by the Italian designer Giuliano Mazzuoli.
The ‘Contagiri’ watch turns normal timekeeping on its head:
its dial was inspired by the 8C’s rev counter and places the numbers
one to 12 in a 270-degree arc starting with one at the usual eight
o’clock position. The retrograde hour hand is complemented
by a digital minute indicator and the watch is wound and set by
turning the bezel.
But a watch brand need not be directly linked with a car brand
to be an automotive success. A case in point is TAG Heuer, which,
although it has formed partnerships with Mercedes-Benz and
McLaren-Mercedes F1, is historically linked to the motor racing
world through two iconic models, the Carrera and the Monaco.
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AU DE M A R S P IGU E T ROYA L OA K O F F S H OR E
M IC H A E L S C H U M AC H E R
Michael Schumacher helped to design this latest version
of the famous Royal Oak Offshore. Two blue stars and five
red ones between 12 and 1 o’clock on the dial allude to his
championship wins with Benetton in 1994 and 1995 and
Ferrari from 2000 to 2004; the minute track is decorated with
a chequered-flag motif and the hour and minute hands look
a bit like the silhouettes of a racing car monocoque. The watch
will be limited to 1,000 pieces in titanium at £31,550; 500
in pink gold at £50,470 and 100 in platinum — at £83,590.
audemarspiguet.com
AU T O DRO M O M O N O P O S T O
Autodromo is a new motoring watch brand launched from
New York last year by the industrial designer Bradley Price.
The initial, quartz-powered models have now been joined
by a 500-piece limited edition called the Monoposto which
has a dial inspired by the rev counter of a 1950s Grand Prix
car’s rev counter and a leather band with a buckle based
on a bonnet strap. $875. autodromo.com
stops the large second hand at the end of the test mile, he reads
off at a glance the time as well as the speed, the latter on the tachoproductometer etched into the rim of the case.’
Stirring stuff indeed — and it’s that strong emotional and
mechanical tie between automobiles and timekeeping that has
made the ‘car watch’ concept a seemingly unstoppable success.
Often, people who can only dream of owning a supercar by,
for example, Ferrari or McLaren, ‘live the dream’ in a small way
by owning the watch that complements them — a Hublot or a TAG
Heuer respectively.
The most extreme example of this recently emerged in the form
of a watch called a Scalfaro GTO 1962 Bizzarrini Edition. It celebrates the legendary Ferrari 250 GTO of the 1960s, one of which
recently fetched a staggering $35 million. Most of us sure ain’t
going to own one of those (only 39 were built) — but the Scalfaro
actually contains metal from the GTO owned by Pink Floyd drummer Nick Mason. So you can, at least, have a little tiny bit of a GTO
for a relatively affordable €7,950.
Likewise, anyone who has always wanted to compete in the
glamorous recreation of the Mille Miglia road race but can’t afford
a suitably rare (and expensive) car can, at least, feel closer to the
event by buying one of the Chopard limited-edition chronographs
created each year to mark the event; in the same vein, Frederique
Constant last year produced a limited edition watch to mark the
Carrera Panamericana and high-end maker François-Paul Journe
this year made a special edition of his ingenious all-aluminium
Octa Sport to commemorate the Indianapolis 500.
Cars and watches? They go together like a horse and carriage.
SHIRTMAKER S
emmettlondon.com
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STYLE
F
f or Fabu l o u s
Jaguar’s new model is a beauty, but will it surpass the E-Type?
Alan Judd
Allegedly described by Enzo Ferrari
as ‘the most beautiful car ever made’, the
E-Type did for Jaguar what Shakespeare
did for English verse drama. That is, it was
impossible to improve on. The cars that
succeeded the E-Type, the XJS and the
XK8 and variants, were, wisely, more sports
tourers than sports cars. It has taken until
now, 51 years after the E-Type was born,
for Jaguar to face the challenge head on.
Just calling it the F-Type makes that challenge explicit; they’re either very brave or
very foolish.
Jaguars must be good-lookers. Sir William
Lyons, founder of the marque, had an eye
for the sleek and svelte. It is said that he
would have his designers build a selection
of mock-ups for the next model, walk
along the line, point at one with his stick
and say: ‘Make that one.’ Then he would
point at another and say: ‘With the rear
of that one.’ Then he’d go back to his office.
And he’d be right.
The next must-have Jaguar quality is
performance — they’ve got to do the business. They haven’t all done it — the 1960s
2.4 Mk 2, the early 1970s XJ6 2.8, were
comparatively sluggish, albeit with looks
to die for. The third quality is the interior;
it’s got to make you feel special, which they
usually do. Sir William demanded that,
viewed from the side, seats should not protrude above the bottom of the windscreen.
It’s almost impossible to find a car like that
now, not least because of compulsory headrests. The final quality is that they must not
— as Rolls-Royce used to put it — fail to
proceed. Sadly, they haven’t always proceeded reliably, most notably during the
dark days of British Leyland ownership in
the 1970s. But they improved greatly under
John Egan in the 1980s and have gone on
doing so ever since. Contemporary surveys
consistently place them among the most
reliable vehicles on the planet.
The problem with any new Jaguar is
the heritage — you’ve got to use it and also
lose it. If you’re seen as too close — as with
the elegant and capable S-Type — you’re
dismissed as retro; if you’re not at all retro
you’re ‘not a Jaguar’. Under their brilliant
design director Ian Callum, they’ve cracked
it with the current brace of saloons, the
excellent XF and XJ, but the real challenge
is the new F-Type two-seater sports car. Its
problem is the E-Type.
It sounds as if handling
and drive will be all
we could hope for
— which means the
car’s limits will be way
beyond most of ours
I think the braves have it. To start with,
they’ve got the rear right. The back end is
often the most difficult bit in car design,
compromised by safety, handling and golfing requirements, but the F-Type’s rear
derives from a sensual double curve in the
rear wings, which sweeps across the sloping tail, embracing the slender wraparound
rear lights (in homage to the E-Type?) on
the way. That rearwards slope is all-important, echoing the front-end curve with its
sharpened edges and discreet power bulges. The interior is intimate and functional, with about half an acre of leather that
makes the plain old E-Type look about as
luxurious as your first bike.
Sales start in the middle of next year
and, so far, we have only the engineers’
word for how it performs. It sounds as if
handling and drive will be all you’d hope
for — which means the car’s limits will be
way beyond most of ours. There are three
engine options, all petrol, two versions of
the supercharged 3-litre V6 and one of the
5-litre supercharged V8 (it’s good to see the
supercharger making a comeback after decades of turbo dominance). The V8 offers
0-60mph in 4.2 seconds and a licence-losing
186mph top speed. Body and suspension
are aluminium and the eight-speed Quickshift gearbox is both manual and auto.
But it will cost you. Prices start at
£58,500. Traditionally, Lyons built his
Jaguars down to a budget, making them
good value compared with their premiumclass competition. But that’s also why their
metal was thinner, their electrics ancient
and their knobs and switches often from
the parts bin. Perhaps the F-Type pricing
is an assertion by Jaguar that they are truly
up with (or beyond) Audi, Mercedes and
BMW in status and build quality. They had
better be.
So what’s the provisional verdict on
this as yet un-driven beauty? Firstly, it’s no
E-Type. That was something wholly new,
like no other road car, an engineer’s evolution of the C- and D-Type Le Mans winners. The F-Type is roughly similar to other
quality sports cars, built within the same
constraints – but it is more beautiful. Callum’s pen (if he uses one) has traced strong,
graceful lines to produce a very desirable
car that will go and handle far, far better
than the E-Type ever did. They’ve taken
2,000 orders already, so if you’re tempted,
go for it now.
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asprey_The Spectator_uk_The Woodland_1212.indd 2
12/11/12 16.50
19/11/12 14:18:22
STYLE
1
2
5
4
3
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THE
W ISH LIST
7
Photography by Dennis Pedersen
9
10
8
11
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STYLE
16
12
14
17
18
13
15
19
70
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20
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ICE COOL
This page: 12 Diamond ‘Holly Wreath’ necklace, HARRY WINSTON
(POA); 13 Chronograph Ocean Sport, £18,600, HARRY WINSTON;
14 Pearl and diamond earrings by Maxim, £27,000, ANNOUSHKA;
15 Platinum fountain pen, £419, GRAF VON FABER-CASTELL;
16 Matterhorn ski goggle cufflinks, £8,250, THEO FENNELL;
17 Aquamarine and diamond ring, £6,450, ROBINSON PELHAM;
18 Fleurette diamond bracelet, £105,300, VAN CLEEF & ARPELS;
19 Quartz white gold, £15,200, VACHERON CONSTANTIN;
20 Caelograph Alpha 30 fountain pen, £3,500, CARAN D’ACHE;
21 Aura Double Halo diamond ring, £6,750, DE BEERS; 22 White gold
earrings in titanium set with 380 fancy cut diamonds, ADLER (POA);
23 Fleurier Pershing Chronograph Asteria with diamond and sapphires,
£39,000, PARMAGIANI
www.dennispedersen.com
Previous page: 1 Dew-drop earrings, £170, GEORG JENSEN;
2 Chronomatic J12, from £10,500, CHANEL; 3 St Moritz Big Bang,
£9,400, HUBLOT; 4 Move Pave bracelet, £12,300, MESSIKA;
5 Magic Gardens of PIAGET necklace (POA); 6 Tourmaline and
diamond earrings, HEMMERLE (POA); 7 Diamond crossover ring,
£15,000, WILLIAM & SON; 8 Croc Skin Cuff Bangle (thin), £500,
PATRICK MAVROS; 9 Magic ring, £1,225, GEORG JENSEN;
10 CARTIER Calibre de Cartier, £5,375; 11 Arctic Explorer Skull ring,
£14,500, THEO FENNELL
71
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22/11/12 12:39:30
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or visit our stores in Harrods or The City
Life_Abercrombie_Kent_LEFT_Side_FP.indd 1
09/11/2012 13:45
19/11/12 14:28:37
p or t
in a
st or m
Trancoso – too much of a very good thing
Jeremy Clarke
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T R AV E L
Jacuzzi in the spa treatment room: a place to relax
The discreet charm of Trancoso
O
ness, Naomi Campbell, hippy lifestyle, a strange energy, pot.
I was booked to stay at the UXUA Casa Hotel. UXUA (pronounced oosh-wa) is the indigenous word for ‘marvellous’. Wilbert
Das, the creative director of Italian fashion company Diesel, went
to Trancoso for a holiday in 2004 and liked the place so much that
he bought a casa on the Quadrado from a couple of Swiss hippies.
At the height of his success, he retired from Diesel, bought four
more historic local houses and designed several others, including a
treehouse, and acquired enough land next to the Quadrado to link
them together. The UXUA Casa hotel is the result. ‘Oh-my-God,
Jeremy!’ said the PR people, when I said that surely I wasn’t going
all that way for just another pretentious, new age, boutique hotel.
‘You’ll die when you see it. And the thing is, the UXUA Casa is
completely integrated into the community. Wilbert uses only local
materials and employs only local craftsmen, and his staff are all
Trancoso people, and he gives them full employment rights, and he
just puts back everything that he possibly can. You’ll probably fall
in love with him. We all have.’ Fucking Ada, I thought.
And that is how I went to Brazil, resentfully, not expecting anything much more than jet lag.
When I arrived in Trancoso, the driver deposited me in a muddy
lane outside an anonymous door set in a wooden fence. If the front
door was anything to go by, I thought, the UXUA Casa hotel is
truly unobtrusive. Hotel manager Carlos welcomed me with a bow
and led me to my accommodation.
Carlos was, on first impressions, profoundly gay. It shone out
of him and was a little intimidating. He was outspokenly free from
illusion and he spoke to me as though I held as few illusions about
life as he did. His time was entirely at my disposal, he said. Might he
suggest that I joined him for the capoeira class in the morning?
He led me past the indoor capoeira training court and a gym.
nce I’d Googled Trancoso and seen the words ‘boho’
and ‘Naomi Campbell’ attached to it, I didn’t want to
go. ‘Jeremy, you’ll love it,’ everyone argued. ‘It’s fabulous. You’re so lucky! Naomi! Mario Testino! They virtually live there. And, oh-my-God, the vibe is just a-maze-ing.’
Sounds like purgatory, I said. And what exactly did they mean
by ‘vibe’, anyway?
‘Well, you know, it’s so, like, chilled.’ Trancoso was isolated until
a road was built 15 years ago, so none of the locals, bless their cotton socks, would recognise a celebrity if one jumped out and bit
them. A few Brazilian hippies discovered the place in the Sixties;
Sao Paulo television celebrities started going there in the Seventies;
now ‘A’ listers from all over the world are going. And like, everyone smokes dope. It’s so cool. And you’ve got native Indians, and
blacks, and hippies, and the international jet set all rubbing shoulders, and everyone is so laid back that they’re horizontal.
‘Equality, multiculturalism and weed: the left-liberal dream
fully realised. I can’t wait,’ I said bitterly.
‘Oh, do shut up you miserable sod,’ they said. ‘You’ll love it.’
Trancoso is on the Bahian coast of Brazil, 24 miles south of Porto
Seguro (‘safe haven’). In 1500, the Portuguese navigator Pedro
Cabral stepped ashore there and claimed everything for his country. Jesuit missionaries arrived in Trancoso in 1583. They cleared
the bush and built a church over the native burial ground, then built
a settlement of 60 houses in two continuous rows on either side.
Church, settlement and the grassy space within is known collectively as the Quadrado. Today, horses graze and children and young
men play futbol on this homely green space. Apart perhaps from
the useful addition of some huge and venerable shade trees, the
scene is little changed since the 16th century. That’s the romantic
line adopted by the travel writers, anyway: horses grazing, timeless74
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22/11/12 12:42:00
We then trod a curving wood and earth walkway through a dense,
but well-swept rainforest. Other paths veered away to left and right.
Tropical birds hopped languidly about. The effect on my mind,
deceived as it was by the simple door in a suburban fence, was of
walking into a kind of Narnia. Next, we came to a library, pool,
bar and dining area. After taking another earthen path through a
banana grove, Carlos and I arrived at my accommodation.
I was given Wilbert Das’s original casa, which is, in effect, two
houses joined by an outdoor kitchen and flower garden, with a back
door and seating area on the Quadrado. Seen from there, the façade
was merely that of another pretty little house, with a wrought-iron
table and chairs in a drift of fallen bougainvillea petals.
During my brief stay, the trailing edge of Hurricane Sandy made
it too windy to sit on the beach, so every afternoon I sat at this table
outside my house in a timeless Trancoso stupor, with my mouth
open. Sometimes, a coach party of Brazilian tourists straggled past
going to and from the historic church. Occasionally, a smiling couple would ask me if I would photograph them against the background of my bougainvillea. Afterwards, they’d say, in Portuguese,
‘Nice place you have there!’ or something like that, little suspecting that my rooms extended back for about a mile, like a Bond villain’s headquarters, were extravagantly and artistically furnished,
and that they led, eventually, to a swimming pool, bar and library
in a private rainforest.
As his employees said, the UXUA Casa Hotel is as near to
perfection as it is possible for a hotel to be, and Wilbert Das is an
endearingly self-effacing individual. He eats with his staff because
he prefers it and he likes to hear all the gossip. They find it uproariously funny that the tall, softly spoken Dutchman in the sunglasses
has the smallest ego of them all, and yet all these famous people and
big shots come all the way to their humble village to see him.
Each employee will tell you that their lives have been utterly
transformed for the better since Wilbert Das arrived, and his hotel
is indeed a showcase of the better kinds of artisanal arts and crafts
that Trancoso has to offer. Once I glimpsed him coming out of a
potter’s house and making off (with a furtive, fanatical air) with
a flower vase to place in some carefully chosen spot in his hotel.
American Vogue did a cover-piece about the UXUA Casa this year.
The female journalist had such a marvellous time, and wrote such a
glowing piece, confided Wilbert, that it was rejected by her editors
for being too ridiculously enthusiastic.
The high season in Trancoso, when the celebrities go, is November to February. The climate, hurricanes aside, is pleasant all year
round, but looking for any sort of action out of season is a waste of
time, because there ain’t none.
‘So what’s this bloody vibe everyone keeps talking about,
Wilbert?’ I said at breakfast one morning. He considered my question seriously. ‘There really is one here, I think,’ he said. ‘It’s a kind
of energy. Some people buckle under it and have to leave. Others
are restored or even healed by it.’ ‘Explanation?’ I asked. ‘I am a
realist,’ he said. ‘But some say that the church was built on a sacred
indigenous burial ground, and I think that maybe this has something to do with it.’ ‘Surely you don’t believe that could have anything to do with anything,’ I said, amazed at such credulousness.
Wilbert shrugged and stirred his coffee.
‘As you English say, “Stranger things have happened at sea”,’ he
said. Personally, I think it’s just the sea air. But whatever it is about
Trancoso, you can certainly relax there.
UXUA Casa Hotel in Trancoso, Bahia (www.uxua.com) is from
£275 per night. Flights to Salvador from London on TAP Portugal
(www.flytap.com) are from £674 per person including all taxes and
surcharges. Further information on Brazil at www.visitbrasil.com
All images Fernando Lombardi / UXUA Casa Hotel
Zé e Zilda house with antique wooden ‘oratorio’ typical of Catholic homes
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T R AV E L
MOUN TAI N
H I GH
Take it from a Norwegian: there’s still
nowhere like Switzerland for skiing
samoswalkin / www.shutterstock.com
Camilla Swift
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P
rettier than the French Alps, closer than
the States, credited with being the home
of modern slalom skiing, and with some
of the best powder and off-piste skiing
you can find, it’s easy to see why the Swiss Alps are
popular with Brits seeking their annual fix of snow and
fondue. I’ve done my fair share of skiing. Having a Norwegian mother, not learning to ski was never an option
— it’s often said that Norwegians are born with skis on
their feet. My mother can confirm that is not true, but
what is true is that some of the best downhill skiing
I’ve ever experienced has been in the Swiss Alps.
These days, it’s not just about the skiing. Resorts
like St Moritz offer everything from ice cricket and
skeleton bobsleighs to shopping worthy of Bond
Street. Each of the many resorts has its own identity,
so it’s worth working out exactly what you want from
your holiday before you book.
For those of you who want more than just skiing, or
are holidaying with non-skiers, St Moritz will be right
up your street. The original Alpine resort, which first
hosted British visitors in winter in 1864, St Moritz has
developed into the winter sports capital of Switzerland.
It’s the home of the Cresta Run, and makes the most of
its fabulous location on Lake St Moritz by putting the
frozen water to unusual use over the winter. In January, it hosts the annual St Moritz Polo World Cup on
Snow. The lake also plays host to greyhound racing and
cricket, so check to see what’s on when you’re going.
St Moritz might have gained a reputation for being
pricey, glitzy and full of Russians, but don’t let that put
you off. There’s fantastic skiing to be had, particularly
if you can drag yourself away from the Corviglia slopes
closest to town, and explore Corvatsch or DiavolezzaLagalb, which are often quieter and have better snow.
If you’ve managed to make it through the recession
with your wallet unharmed, La Marmite is the restaurant of choice on the slopes — the ‘highest European
gourmet restaurant’, with caviar and truffles on everything from pizza to mashed potato. Post-ski, Café
Hanselmann is the place to rest your weary bones and
prepare for another round of champagne and caviar.
The most famous hotel is Badrutt’s Palace Hotel
— known in the resort simply as ‘The Palace’. It is
pricey, but has its own ski school and seven in-house
restaurants, including a Nobu. It also owns the popular
Chesa Veglia restaurant, whose pizzas are said to be
second to none in town. If you have the energy, Dracula
Club is the most exclusive place in town, a membersonly establishment founded by Brigitte Bardot’s
playboy ex-husband, Gunter Sachs. Alternatively,
if you’re a whisky aficionado, try The Devil’s Place,
which claims to have the world’s largest collection:
more than 2,500 choices.
If you’re after something quieter and less flashy, and
the words ‘Swiss Alps’ conjure up images of yodelling
goatherds, Klosters is sure to be your cup of glühwein.
Despite its visits from Wills and Harry, this laidback
alpine village has remained true to its farming roots.
Smaller and cosier than neighbouring Davos, Klosters
isn’t about five-star hotels — it’s more of a jeans and
a jumper place. In terms of skiing, the village is perfectly located at the base of the Parsenn mountain,
which offers some of the best slopes in the area. On
the other hand, the Madrisa mountain in the Klosters
valley boasts great slopes for beginners and children.
Klosters also offers plenty of options for eating out on
the mountain: Schwendi Ski und Berghaus is just one
example, serving delicious traditional Swiss food.
If you’re after après-ski, however, be warned —
Klosters isn’t a big party town. Gaudy’s Graströchni by
the base of the Gotschna cable car is always good for a
post-ski beer, while the Casa Antica club is a favourite
of the likes of Prince Harry and Tara Palmer-Tomkinson. Popular dinner spots include the Chesa Grischuna
or the Steinbock, while the Pizzeria Al Berto is always
a favourite, especially with families. For fine dining,
your best bet is the Hotel Walserhof, a favourite of
Prince Charles, which has just undergone a renovation
and is due to reopen in December. It gets booked up
early, especially in high season.
K losters offers numerous options for hotel
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22/11/12 12:44:12
T R AV E L
G L O R I O U S G S TA A D
The super-rich haven’t ruined it – yet
Taki
I
learned long ago that the harder it is to arrive at
one’s destination, the better the resort. Gstaad
is one of the few ultra-chic winter playgrounds
where big jets cannot land. Which means that
vulgar Russian crooks, horribly mannered sons of the
desert and other such riff-raff need to make their way
up in cars from Berne or Geneva. The spirit of rugged capitalist individualism that says that the common
good is advanced through the struggle of selfish individuals is a theory that finds many disciples among the
Gstaad residents. It wasn’t always like this. Fifty-five
years ago I made my way up there during a snowstorm
just before Christmas. Upon detraining, I thought
I had interrupted a movie being filmed. There were
horse-driven taxis, men in lederhosen smoking pipes,
and the village was permeated by silence and stillness.
High up on a hill lay the large chocolate cake of a castle-hotel, favoured by mad King Ludwig of Bavaria.
This was and is the Palace hotel, a place I have spent
most of my youth, middle and old age in. Even higher
up, unseen at night, lies the Eagle Club, a private club
which is very inclusive — too inclusive for my taste —
and which was started in 1957 by the Earl of Warwick
and some friends. The Eagle, it is said, lies on top of
the Wassengrat mountain because its members have
reached the top of society.
If you’re looking for danger and adventure in the
slopes, Gstaad is not the place for you. It has some very
good runs but also a lot of easy ones. Its strength is its
architecture, the wooden chalets that all houses must
adhere to, with no high risers, glass or cement permitted. Gstaad’s other attraction is that the village has
grown enormously, but still remains under 4,000 people during the high season. Its main street is car-free,
its nightlife centred around the Palace, and the greatest threat to its way of life are the ghastly nouveau riche
who are slowly but surely discovering the place.
Once upon a time the shops that lined the streets of
Gstaad were butchers, cheese-makers, fruit markets,
hardware stores and peasant cafés and restaurants.
No longer. Only luxury goods are sold and every shop
is top of the line. Jewellery stores lead the way. I predict that one day soon there will only be shops selling
gold and silver trinkets and that we’ll have to travel
to Berne or Geneva to find food. Russian and Arab
women, however, will love it.
a ccommodation, but Hotel Chesa Grischuna offers
some of the most traditional Swiss décor — it was built
by local craftsmen. If you’re after massages and saunas, the smartest hotel is the Hotel Vereina.
For young ’uns who want to party hard by night
and ski even harder by day, Verbier is the place. It has
retained its reputation for great skiing while developing a vibrant après-ski culture. If you want to stick to
the pistes, Verbier probably isn’t for you, but boarders
and more experienced skiers will love the challenging
couloirs and moguls. On the other hand, if you fancy
the challenge of heading off the beaten track for the
first time, it’s a great place to start, with helpful classes
from several independent ski schools. Try the Warren
Smith Ski Academy for your first off-piste experience,
or Powder Extreme to step things up a notch.
After a hard day on the slopes, head to Pub Mont
Fort for the biggest and best après-ski, which serves
(relatively) well-priced beer, and hosts all the big parties. The Hotel Farinet bar is another option, guaranteed to be packed and messy any night of the week.
When you’ve had enough, check out Verbier’s first
pop-up restaurant, the Pot Luck Club, which will be
open from December until next April. After that, if
you’ve still got the energy, head either to the Casbah,
where most après-skiers tend to end up, or the Farm
Club, which, despite its prices, has queues around the
block on Friday and Saturday nights. A new addition
to the scene, opened last season, is an outpost of Chelsea’s infamous club Public. The London version has
closed, but the Swiss one is still going strong.
Although accommodation is mostly catered chalets,
if you’re after a hotel, you can’t do better than the Hotel
Nevai. With its modern, fresh interiors and sushi restaurant, it’s a world away from chalet-style kitsch. This
year, the Nevai will be opening a sister hotel, the Hotel
Cordée des Alpes, which promises a state-of-the-art
spa and a ‘boot-room concierge’ who will ensure that
you get the perfect fit before hitting the slopes.
The latest addition to the Swiss ski scene is Andermatt, nestled in the heart of the Alps and easily accessible from Lucerne and Zurich. A buzzing resort in
the Forties and Fifties, it seemed to lose out to larger
resorts in the decades that followed, but has retained a
number of loyal fans — many of them Swiss city-dwellers up for a weekend on the slopes — who think of
Andermatt as something of a hidden gem. Change is
afoot in this quiet resort, because an ambitious development is in the works. Six new four- and five-star hotel
and apartment properties are being built, the first of
which will be the Chedi Andermatt, which opens in
December next year.
Andermatt has the goods to be the next major
resort — the Gemsstock mountain offers fantastic offpiste skiing, large snowfalls and some of the best views
in the Alps, making it a resort to keep an eye on.
78
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22/11/12 12:44:26
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19/11/12 14:36:07
T R AV E L
GLOBE
TROTTING
Our new favourite hotels
1
2
3
1 — Kurá, Osa / Bahia Ballena
A truly spectacular Costa Rican
jungle eco-retreat. Hold court from
your hammock or look out for
whales while you splash around the
saltwater infinity pool.
www.mrandmrssmith.com
3 — Royal Palm, Mauritius
Combine Mauritius with foodie
heaven at the Royal Palm where
this spring (25–27 March) you can
mix up your beach inactivity with a
Tom Aikens masterclass.
www.royalpalm-hotel.com
2 — Delano, Marrakech
A sister to South Beach’s temple of
minimalism that is a playful riff on
Morocco’s colourful architecture.
You’ll want to spend a lot of time
by one of the three pools.
www.delanomarrakech.com
4 — Andaz, Amsterdam
Formerly the Public Library,
Andaz Amsterdam has the largest
collection of video art of any hotel
in the world — reaching into the
rooms as well as the public spaces.
amsterdam.prinsengracht.andaz.com
4
80
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22/11/12 12:45:32
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22/11/12 12:45:51
O N E T O WA T C H
H AY L E Y
ATWELL
A modern young actress with classic film star appeal
I
Human Heart) and so when we were thinking who
could possibly be Eva Delectorskaya, I had but one
thought in my mind.
She has to jump out of windows and stab people in
the eye with a pencil and seduce American politicians
and fall in love with this charismatic spymaster, so it’s
an incredible rollercoaster of a journey for her. She’s
really versatile as well as having that magnetic factor
X that all stars of the screen have to have.
Hayley would fit to a T almost any female role I’ve
written — she would be a fantastic Hope Clearwater
in Brazzaville Beach. Let’s get her fighting some chimpanzees.
Restless, based on William Boyd’s novel, is on BBC1
in December.
love actors. My last novel, Waiting for Sunrise,
features an actor so I’m deeply curious about the
profession and its mysterious lifestyle. The thing
I value more than anything else, which I think is
the magic of acting, is naturalism. In Restless the actors
are pretending to be spies in 1940, saying my lines, yet
it looks like they’ve just made up the lines themselves.
There’s something about Hayley Atwell — she’s
a very beautiful young woman but there’s something
about her in that period look of the 1940s that makes
her like Vivien Leigh or Ava Gardner — a classic
movie star of the past. She’s got that kind of beauty
— the severity of the hair and make-up seems to suit
her unbelievably well. I was stunned at what a perfect Freya she was (Logan Mountstuart’s wife in Any
BBC/Endor Productions
William Boyd
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ALEC BALdWIN - The Spectator

Transcription

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