Sept 22 09 2017

22.09.17

That’s a wrap

packing for the front line

Our edit of the best winter coats

by Emily Maitlis

The new social network

How to make friends and influence people now

PLUS:

Cool ceramics goodbye to Soho’s club King and get snooze control

James Norton on the price of fame

CONTENTS 5 Cheese, champers and cartoons in CAPITAL GAINS 7 Laura Craik on the fine lines of Botox in UPFRONT 8 Our MOST WANTED is The Kooples’ Emily bag 10 Oh wowee, FLASHBULB goes Bowie 14 Meet KAMILA SHAMSIE, the author blurring borders 21 How EMILY MAITLIS became Queen of capsule packing 25 Fair Isle gets fashionable in STYLE NOTES 26 Minimalist fragrances in MEN’S STYLE EDITOR Laura Weir

29 How to NETWORK NOW in London 36 The JAMES NORTON show: what the heartthrob did next 44 Our AUTUMN COATS edit 55 Saying goodbye to The Groucho’s BERNIE KATZ 59 Desktop skin saviours in BEAUTY 61 And so to bed… one writer’s struggle to SLEEP 65

Here are the five podcasts the ES team can’t stop listening to

1

GRACE & FLAVOUR takes a slice out of Mother 67 TART roast the perfect tomato sauce 69 The boozers going big on cocktails in DRINKS 71 Cool ceramics in HOMEWORK 73 ESCAPE to Wells-next-the-Sea in Norfolk 74 Jason Atherton’s MY LONDON

HOW I BUILT THIS ‘I’m learning the ins and outs of being an entrepreneur on my walk to work each day with this podcast, hosted by Guy Raz (left). The interviews with brand founders and innovators are extremely inspiring.’

Katie Service, beauty editor

2

POD SAVE AMERICA ‘This is a must listen for anyone interested in US politics (or who needs to sound well-informed in a rush). It digests the news succinctly and gives top-notch analysis.’

Alice-Azania Jarvis, features director

Cover: James Norton photographed by Michael Hemy.

Styled by Rose Forde. MARNI sweater, £450 (020 7491 9966). HERMÈS coat, £3,270 (uk.hermes.com); Getty

Visit us online: standard.co.uk/esmagazine • Follow us:

5

STUFF YOU SHOULD KNOW ‘I like to indulge my inquisitive streak sometimes by asking random questions like: how do psychopaths work? Or is a head transplant really a thing? Stuff You Should Know is the perfect way to find the answers…’

Sophie Paxton, merchandise editor

4

HIP HOP SAVED MY LIFE ‘Romesh Ranganathan is a comedian who talks to amazing hip-hop artists about their careers.

Expect to laugh hysterically and hear some decent tunes to boot.’ Helen Gibson, picture editor

3

MY DAD WROTE A PORNO ‘Listening to Jamie Morton quote chapters from his dad’s erotic novel is equal measures of hilarious and horrifyingly cringeworthy. Either way, My Dad Wrote a Porno is well worth a listen.’

Clara Dorrington, picture desk assistant

@eveningstandardmagazine

@

Editor Laura Weir Deputy editor Anna van Praagh Features director Alice-Azania Jarvis Acting art director Emma Woodroofe Fashion features director Katrina Israel Commissioning editor Dipal Acharya Associate features editor Hamish MacBain Features writer Frankie McCoy

Acting art editor Andy Taylor Art editor Jessica Landon Picture editor Helen Gibson Picture desk assistant Clara Dorrington

Beauty editor Katie Service Deputy beauty and lifestyle editor Lily Worcester

Social media editor Natalie Salmon Office administrator/editor’s PA Niamh O’Keeffe

Merchandise editor Sophie Paxton Fashion editor Jenny Kennedy Fashion assistant Eniola Dare Chief sub editor Matt Hryciw Deputy chief sub editor Nick Howells

Contributing editors Lucy Carr-Ellison, Tony Chambers, James Corden, Hermione Eyre, Richard Godwin, Daisy Hoppen, Jemima Jones, Anthony Kendal, David Lane, Mandi Lennard, Annabel Rivkin, Teo van den Broeke, Nicky Yates (style editor at large), Hikari Yokoyama Group client strategy director Deborah Rosenegk Head of magazines Christina Irvine

ES Magazine is published weekly and is available only with the London Evening Standard. ES Magazine is published by Evening Standard Ltd, Northcliffe House, 2 Derry Street, Kensington, London W8 5TT. ES is printed web offset by Wyndeham Bicester. Paper supplied by Perlen Paper AG. Colour transparencies or any other material submitted to ES Magazine are sent at owner’s risk. Neither Evening Standard Ltd nor their agents accept any liability for loss or damage. © Evening Standard Ltd 2016. Reproduction in whole or part of any contents of ES Magazine without prior permission of the editor is strictly prohibited

22.09.17 ES MAGAZINE 3

capital gains What to do in London

1

by FRANKIE M c COY

Namaste day

Forget hardcore cycling and icy swims: Wanderlust is a new kind of triathlon for the blissed-out. A gentle 5km run is followed by 90 minutes of yoga and a meditation session. If you’re not too relaxed to move after that, there’s aerial yoga and a craft market. Tickets from £21.80.

23 Sep (wanderlust.com)

3

2

The big fromage

Illustration by Jonathan Calugi @ Machas; Gerald Scarfe; Jake Davis

La Fromagerie is the best cheese shop in London: and now it’s opening a third site on Lamb’s Conduit Street, with a vast selection of wine, charcuterie and an oyster and smoked salmon bar on top of all that cheese. Opens 27 Sep (lafromagerie.co.uk)

5

4

Perhaps best known for his bitingly brilliant political cartoons, Gerald Scarfe also sketched some seriously covetable designs for theatre and film (left and above), which are now being displayed at the House of Illustration’s Stage and Screen exhibition. Definitely worth pencilling into your diary.

Tickets £7.50. 22 Sep to 21 Jan (houseofillustration.org.uk)

Bass instinct

Dance frenziedly over to Finsbury Park for Hospitality in the Park, a one-day festival dedicated to all things drum and bass, with a healthy dose of dubstep, reggae and jungle to boot. Just accept that Sunday will be a writeoff. Tickets £53. 23 Sep (hospitalityinthepark.co.uk)

6

The Glass Calendar by Hubert Le Gall

Staging a revolution

Sound the searing political satire klaxon.

Labour of Love, the new play by James Graham, directed by Jeremy Herrin, follows the Labour Party through 25 years of highs and lows. Stars Martin Freeman (right). Tickets from £10. 27 Sep to 2 Dec (labouroflovetheplay.co.uk)

Back to the drawing board

7

Baritone up

Cham-painting

Contrary to its name, Ruinart champagne loves the art world, and it has commissioned works from hip young artists including Nacho Carbonell and Maarten Baas to go on display at the Rosewood, with champagne dinners galore. 25 Sep to 25 Nov (rosewoodhotels.com)

last chance: to marvel at the magnitude of London’s

creativity and ingenuity at the London Design Festival, before it comes to an end on 24 September. (londondesignfestival.com)

Bluff your way to opera buff status at the King’s Head Theatre, promoter of accessible opera, which is staging a retelling of Puccini’s Tosca, set in Paris during the Second World War. A great way to ease into arias for those who can’t tell their Bohème from their Barber of Seville.

Tickets £10. 27 Sep to 28 Oct (kingsheadtheatre.com)

look ahead: a band of 11 female chefs, from Olia Hercules to Rosie Birkett, cook up a feast, Severn Sisters, in aid of Action Against Hunger on 4 October. Tickets £90 (boroughmarket.org.uk)

22.09.17 es magazine

upfront Laura Craik on (nearly) being talked into Botox, fashion standing up for the trans community and the drink that drives cabin crews crazy

out and walking the walk In between walking for Coach, Oscar de La Renta and Tory Burch, model Teddy Quinlivan (left) came out as transgender. ‘Our rights are under constant threat from the highest levels of our government. Enough is enough,’ she said in an accompanying video, posted on Instagram. It should go without saying that beauty comes in myriad shapes, hues and forms, even if the fashion industry has been slow to reflect this.

coach ss18

Josh Shinner; Getty; Alamy

I

was having my hair done the other day and got talked into having Botox.

Or rather, talked into talking about having Botox. ‘Just have a chat,’ said my hairdresser, like a pusher. ‘She’s only next door.’ I reckon the journey from ‘roots done’ to ‘face done’ is well-trodden.

Whether it’s the harsh lighting or the sight of yourself with wet paste mulched all over your head, you never feel more minging, mockit, wabbit and other descriptive Scottish words than at the hairdresser.

I had a chat. She seemed very nice.

Her Instagram bore reassuring photos of past clients, none of whom looked like Leslie Ash, Kylie Jenner or Jocelyn Wildenstein. ‘This client went straight into a meeting!’ one was captioned. This in particular assuaged me. The main reason my face remains untouched is not because I’m under any illusion that I don’t need an ocean of filler in my cheeks/lips/wherever the hell else it goes, but because I hate the thought of other people discussing it. During Fashion Month, it’s the front row’s favourite sport.

‘B’s had Restylane, T’s had a thread lift and F’s overdone it with the lasers,’ they’ll mutter, going down the frow playing Spot the Work.

The latest to fall foul of the Procedure Police is David Beckham, whose ‘has-he-hasn’t-he’ visage almost overshadowed wife Victoria’s New York show.

‘I don’t agree with Botox,’ he stated afterwards on Instagram. Which isn’t a denial, but why should anyone feel compelled to confirm or deny they’ve had work done in the first place? As the late Joan Rivers once said: ‘Money can’t buy you happiness, but it can pay for the plastic surgery.’ Life is short: do what makes you happy.

Alas, it turned out that ‘the three things I’d most like to improve about my face’ will cost me £1,700. So I did what made me happy — or at least, solvent — and left the consultation without booking in.

David Beckham and Kylie Jenner

“During Fashion Month, playing Spot the Work is the front row’s favourite sport” While ‘older’ models are increasingly common on the catwalk (Maggie Rizer, 39, at Anna Sui; Devon Aoki, 35, at Jeremy Scott) and while early signs point towards a more racially diverse show season than usual, Quinlivan’s bravery should also be applauded. With precious few role models, the trans community needs all the backing it can get. Quinlivan’s President might not support her, but at least the fashion industry does. having a fizzy fit It’s lucky that Karl Lagerfeld only flies by private jet, because his favourite drink — Diet Coke — has been revealed as the most annoying thing a passenger can order on a plane. ‘I literally have to sit and wait for the bubbles to fall before I can continue pouring,’ fumes one (anonymous) flight attendant on an airline industry blog. ‘Pouring Diet Coke is one of the biggest slow downs in the bar service,’ adds another. Really?

More time-consuming than making a Bloody Mary? I’ve spent years fretting that my favourite in-flight beverage (‘Ice? Lemon?

Pepper? Worcestershire Sauce?

More? Bit More?’) is enough to tip even the most beatific flight attendant over the edge, but clearly not. Next time, I’ll have a double.

HOT Non conformist perfume names First came Tom Ford’s F***ing Fabulous; now Bella Freud has called her new scent Psychoanalysis.

NOT Gentrification As evidenced by this splendid Make Peckham S*** Again baseball cap.

22.09.17 es magazine

THE most WANTED

The Kooples Emily bag, £348 (thekooples.co.uk)

es magazine 22.09.17

PHOTOGRAPH BY natasha pszenicki STYLED BY sophie paxton

Set design by Julia Dias

HOT TO HANDLE: The Kooples enlisted Emily Ratajkowski to design its new bag collection in covetable autumnal shades

FLASHBULB! Party pictures from around town

by FRANKIE M c COY photographs by james peltekian Charlie Barker

Henry Holland

Alexa Chung

Richard Sloan and Aimee Phillips

Lady Violet and Lady Alice Manners Lady Weymouth

House of Fun Mayfair Tigerlily Taylor

Fashion folk love a good collab, and they don’t come better than Henry Holland’s cheeky new line with Woody Woodpecker, which launched at Fenwick of Bond Street. Pal Pixie Geldof took to the decks, while Alexa Chung, stylist Richard Sloan and Tigerlily Taylor quaffed Bird in Hand Shiraz and pulled some shapes on the Nikita Andrianova dance floor to Little Mix and Katie anthems. Just your average Keight Thursday night then.

Camille Charrière

Fashionable Friends Mayfair The sisters Zimmermann lent their Mayfair boutique to support and raise awareness for the Australian Fashion Foundation on the eve of London Fashion Week.

Australian High Commissioner to the UK, the Hon Alexander Downer, co-hosted, while the likes of Lady Weymouth, the Manners sisters and fashion blogger Camille Charrière eyed up the designer clobber in store.

Richard E Grant and Dylan Jones

Kelly Eastwood

Simone Zimmermann and Marissa Montgomery

Let’s Dance, Soho

Frankie Herbert Pixie Geldof Piers Morgan

Claudia Winkleman

Ollie Proudlock

Jim Chapman

10 es magazine 22.09.17

Amber Anderson

Dylan Jones celebrated Bowie’s golden years with the launch of his book, David Bowie: A Life, at the Hotel Café Royal. A fitting venue, given Bowie famously threw an after-party at the hotel after his final performance as Ziggy Stardust in the Seventies. Jones’s party was a less raucous affair, as friends raised a glass of Moët to The Thin White Duke and partied to a perfectly respectable 11pm finish.

Stephen Jones, right, and friend

GO TO eveningstandard.co.uk / ESMAGAZINE FOR MORE PARTY PICTURES

FLASHBULB! Party pictures from around town Lady Mary Charteris

Charles Jeffrey

Mabel McVey Jasmine Sanders

Neneh Cherry

Thomas Cohen

Jack Appleyard

BOOT CAMP Leicester Square

Toby HuntingtonWhiteley

Jeremy Scott

Isaac Carew

Not since circa 2006 has the Ugg boot been so in demand. Blame Moschino’s Jeremy Scott, whose bling-tastic new collection for the brand brought the likes of Dizzee Rascal, Rita Ora and BFF Miley Cyrus to Leicester Square for a night of naughtiness.

Lottie Moss Tom Daley

Sam Rollinson

Ella Eyre

Jessie Ware

Doina Ciobanu

Azzi Glasser

The XX’s Jamie Smith, Romy Madley Croft and Oliver Sim

Clara Amfo

Sampha

Bella Freud

Loyle Carner

Marcus Mumford

Idris Elba

EAU DARLING West End

To the fragrance and candle emporium that is Liberty London, for the launch of Bella Freud’s new fragrance, Psychoanalysis — surely a homage to her great grandfather, Sigmund. While beauty junkies cooed over the juice, Flashbulb spotted pals Tom Daley, Azzi Glasser and Doina Ciobanu out in force to support clever Bella.

12 es magazine 22.09.17

Mercury rising Hammersmith

Charlie Siddick Jordan Stephens

Annie Mac

It was a big night for south London, as soul singer Sampha scooped the Mercury Prize, much to the shock of guests who thought that Kate Tempest was a shoe-in. Not that it mattered — grime king Skepta kept the audience entertained with his pyrotechnics-loaded performance, while Stormzy left Mumsy at home and partied alongside Idris Elba and fellow nominee Loyle Carner.

Stormzy

Skepta

GO TO eveningstandard.co.uk / ESMAGAZINE FOR MORE PARTY PICTURES

Writing home

Her burningly topical new novel about citizenship and radicalisation explores what it is to be a Muslim in London today.

Patricia Nicol meets author of the moment Kamila Shamsie PhotographS BY Sophia Spring

14 es magazine 22.09.17

Erdem dress, £1,945, at matchesfashion.com

T

here are two difficult moments when I meet the author Kamila Shamsie.

‘I should ask,’ I say, ‘are you in a relationship?’

‘Should you ask?’ responds Shamsie, a little testily but amused.

‘Okay, okay, okay. I’m single.’

More uncomfortable is when I ask the 44-year-old Pakistani-born writer if she would ‘define herself as Muslim’. ‘Uh-huh,’ she answers briskly.

‘And practising?’ I continue, but this is greeted with silence and a barely perceptible flicker of frustration.

And rightly so, not just because nobody ever thinks to ask me, a white British woman of Scottish descent, about faith. But also because Home Fire, Shamsie’s achingly topical new novel — a contemporary Greek tragedy for our fearful age of fundamentalist jihad — bravely explores both the consequences of Muslim radicalisation and the extent to which many British Muslims feel they are living as a suspicious minority.

Shamsie has written acclaimed novels before and has been shortlisted for major prizes, but nothing has drawn the same glare as this incendiary, fast-paced literary thriller. ‘Fearless, but hugely troubling… it makes you think. Uncomfortably,’ wrote Professor John Sutherland, reviewing it for The Times. In the US, American Vogue has described Shamsie’s latest work as ‘brilliant’, while a reviewer at The New York Times praised how it ‘builds to one of the most memorable final scenes I’ve read in a novel this century’. The Australian Booker-winner Peter Carey is quoted on the UK edition’s cover: ‘Left me awestruck, shaken, on the edge of my chair, filled with admiration for her courage and ambition.’

Shamsie herself has said that she would not have

22.09.17 es magazine 15

“Because of where I come from, I have an antenna for when democratic governments behave in ways I associate with dictatorships” fundamentalism, duty, heritage, identity and nationhood to explore one of today’s most fraught issues: what it means to belong, or to be rendered stateless.

‘But also, having so recently become a citizen, I was paying attention to all the stuff around citizenship laws,’ says Shamsie, referring to then Home Secretary Theresa May’s plans to enforce laws that revoked the citizenship of naturalised Britons (as well as dual passport-holders) if suspected of terrorism, with the potential of rendering someone stateless. ‘Because of where I come from, I have a particular antenna for when democratic governments behave in ways I associate with dictatorships,’ adds Shamsie, who lived under military rule in 1980s Karachi.

Home Fire moves this doomed tale of family and political loyalties to the 21st century, with London as its centre. Isma and her younger twin siblings, Aneeka and Parvaiz, are orphans from Wembley, with a stain upon their family name; their father was a jihadi. Karamat Lone, Britain’s first Muslim Home Secretary, is a self-made Conservative who believes passionately in integration. His handsome, mixed-race son, Eamonn, is a product of easy privilege. When the fates of these two families — ostensibly stemming from the same British Muslim community — become intertwined, the results are catastrophic.

Acne Studios dress, £550, at matchesfashion.com.

Make-up and hair by Celine at Terri Manduca using IT Cosmetics and Pureology haircare

dared to write the book before becoming a British citizen, in 2013, for fear that someone at the UK Border Agency or Home Office — one of its central characters is a hardliner Conservative Home Secretary of British Muslim descent — would have taken against the novel and used it as an excuse to turn down her citizenship application. Yet as a Pakistani-born Muslim who has lived through the precariousness of applying to be a British citizen at a time of increased anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim feeling, she is well positioned to write such a timely book.

I meet Shamsie in the sleek-but-welcoming Holborn offices of her literary agency, AM Heath. She is there when I arrive, wearing a covetably soft chocolate brown leather Theory jacket over black jeans and a black vest top, and cradling a mug of tea.

‘It is very much my first London book,’ says the author, who has been based in the capital since 2007, ‘albeit that there are bits of it set in Syria, Massachusetts, Karachi and Istanbul.’ It is also, despite being a contemporary reworking of Sophocles’ Antigone, her most urgent book to date. Home Fire entwines a tale of family, politics,

16 es magazine 22.09.17

S

hamsie had a privileged upbringing in Pakistan, the scion of a liberal literary family.

She attended Karachi Grammar School, whose alumni include Benazir Bhutto, before university in the US. From her mid 20s, she lived ‘a strange, semi-nomadic period as a global citizen’, moving between Karachi, where she wrote, America, where she had some university teaching work, and London, where ‘I came and spent the money’, she jokes. ‘But when I got to my early 30s, suddenly it didn’t seem that much fun any more.’ She decided to try to settle in London where her family have, for decades, owned a place in St John’s Wood, where she now lives.

The experience of having lived her earliest years under dictatorship and having witnessed the violent volatility of mid-1990s Pakistan inform how she interprets contemporary Britain ­— and how little she is prepared to take for granted ‘There are various things that have been terrifying to me,’ she says. ‘Where, in the name of security, civil liberties started to be suspended and this line, that there is a trade-off between security and liberty, started being

“He didn’t recognise me as Pakistani, just as foreign, and now that’s enough” ‘Discovering that progress does not necessarily move forward in a linear fashion has been one of the great disappointments of growing up. Particularly because when I was young in Pakistan, we had a military dictatorship. Then when I was 15, not only did that end, but a thirty-something woman, Benazir Bhutto, came to power. The following year, you had the fall of the Berlin Wall, then Mandela being released. It just seemed like everything was only going to get better.

‘That is why it feels so particularly awful when old liberal democracies start to eat away at their civil liberties without mass uprising. You just think, what are we doing here?’

It has intrigued Shamsie, a Labour voter, that some have assumed her fictional British Muslim Home Secretary is modelled on Sadiq Khan. In terms of policies, he is much more closely aligned to May, who was Home Secretary while she was writing. ‘My character, Karamat Lone, tries to distance himself from being a Muslim, whereas Sadiq Khan’s way is to say, “I’m a Muslim. I’m

18 es magazine 22.09.17

Of all of her novels, Kamila Shamsie says Home Fire is her ‘first London book’.

Below, the author at the 2009 Orange Prize for Fiction awards

fasting in Ramadan — and while I’m fasting, I’m opening Gay Pride.”’

In terms of prominent British Muslims, Communities Secretary Sajid Javid and Baroness Warsi were just as inspirational as Khan to Shamsie. ‘For the first time, there were these three British Muslims, two Tories and one Labour, in quite prominent positions. So, for all that you had growing Islamophobia, you also had this other thing happening. I wanted to use that in some way.’

In the novel, both Isma and Aneeka wear a hijab, something that came as a surprise to their creator. ‘It’s my seventh novel, there are Muslims in all of them and Isma’s my first head-covering one. In some ways, this book became a way of exploring my own complicated relationship to the hijab. No one in my family has worn any kind of head covering in four generations.

‘Then you come to Britain and you realise it can be about all sorts of things, like an assertion of a certain kind of identity that isn’t necessary in Pakistan, which is more than 90 per cent Muslim. And at certain points you start thinking, “Look we’re women, the issue is always, or is largely, about being looked at, and the male gaze.”

‘But for me the greatest argument against people who insist head covering means coercion is Malala Yousafzai. It’s very hard with her in the world, covering her head, to make the case that this is a symbol of repression, because she is not a repressed woman.’

A joke is made in the book about having to take care about googling while Muslim. Researching her misguided character Parvaiz’s journey towards extremism — a grooming, essentially, focused on how Isis seeks to instil a sense of nationhood and belonging in its recruits — took Shamsie into areas of the internet that she worried might flag her up to the security services. ‘This was around the time of the Snoopers’ Charter,’ she explains. ‘So, there was part of me thinking, “No, I’m a novelist, who’s going to be watching me?”’

Writing alone at home all day, Shamsie goes out most evenings, often to friends’ for supper, though she also loves to eat at Hoppers, Yauatcha and at the Churchill Arms on Kensington Church Street for Thai food. Her autumn will involve a host of literary festival appearances for Home Fire, for which she was Bookerlonglisted alongside friends Zadie Smith, Mohsin Hamid and Ali Smith.

‘I realised that it reflected that we’d reached a certain age; that we’re no longer the up-andcoming.’ No, with Home Fire Shamsie is now part of the British literary establishment ­ — but perhaps also, an occasional thorn in the establishment’s side.

‘Home Fire’ (Bloomsbury, £16.99) is out now

Getty Images

quoted as if it were a fact… And of course, that setting of one group against another, of demonising minorities, is also the hallmark of dictatorships.’

Shamsie nonetheless has a deep, abiding love for London and its sense of humour. ‘London’s been a through line in my life,’ she says. ‘It was where we would come on summer holidays and there’s a part of me that is still that 15-year-old girl arriving excitedly from Karachi.

‘I love that the whole world is here.

And that largely it is a city where people recognise that as a strength. And that you know, with all the horrors that have been happening, London voted in a Muslim Mayor [Sadiq Khan] who had had this extraordinarily bigoted campaign run against him.’

Last year, however, post Brexit vote, for the very first time here, she had a piece of direct racist abuse hurled at her. ‘I’m aware that it’s because people don’t necessarily recognise me as Pakistani that certain things don’t happen. Late at night, as I was walking to a bus stop, a very drunk young man shouted, “F*** off you bitch, go back to where you came from.” I walked on thinking, “Oh that’s interesting, is he the only white person in London who has ever recognised me as Pakistani?” And then I realised, “No, he just recognised me as foreign, and now that’s enough.”

But I don’t think that’s what this city really is.’

In person, Shamsie has a keen sense of the absurd and laughs easily, but she is also despairing of Brexit, Trump and the world’s ‘growing tribalism’.

On the

case Ready to fly anywhere at a moment’s notice, Emily Maitlis is a master of the compact pack. Let her give you a guided tour around her hand luggage illustration BY anna bu kliewer

I

n the hotel room kitchenette I can hear my miniature stove-top espresso pot banging ominously.

I ignore it for a moment — they’re always noisy. It has come with me, as it always does when I travel. I am Master of the Perfectly Packed Tiny Carry-on Suitcase. Everything in it must earn its space, fold inside something else, even dental floss — threaded on a needle — must double up as a sewing kit. The banging lid gets louder.

Then a ribbon of white starts to snake out of the top of the coffee. I draw close and see it is, in fact, my sock. The sock that I had forgotten to remove from its ingenious home — the dead space inside the cavity of the coffee machine.

Okay, so maybe things don’t always go to plan. I, Master of the Perfectly Packed Tiny Carry-on Suitcase, on a mission to travel more lightly than any human ever before, have just boiled my own sock. And the coffee has never tasted quite the same. But the mission, nevertheless, continues on a daily basis. In the corner of my bedroom at home is a small triangular cupboard. It contains my ‘grab bag’ — the first place I go when I’m deployed on a story overseas. When Fidel Castro died I headed to Cuba without even waiting for the visa (we spent some difficult hours in a local county jail). When pro democracy students faced tear gas on the streets

of Hong Kong (the struggle would become known as the Umbrella Protests in recognition of the makeshift defence they had to use), I was in Asia 12 hours later. That was the week I discovered there is nothing more cumbersome in hand luggage than a gas mask. But I was glad to have it.

When the Bataclan terror attacks hit Paris I had just landed at Heathrow from two weeks on the US presidential campaign trail. It seemed simpler not to unpack and I headed to France with the same case (the endlessly expanding soft Kipling in bright purple so I can spot it at 100 metres). After the mass shooting in Orlando, I was on the ground 50

Emily Maitlis with Donald Trump

minutes before Newsnight began. We made it as lead story thanks to kind immigration staff and a very small bag.

Each time the call comes, I empty the contents of the grab bag on to the bed and pick my way through it: the Diane von Furstenberg faux-croc-case world adapter for every conceivable shape of plug, a miniature bottle of Tabasco, Twinings teabags nicked from the BA lounge, Nuxe Huile Prodigieuse to stop my hair going curly in 98 per cent humidity and an amazing device that can break a windscreen if you’re locked inside a car with no escape.

This is now easy peasy. Second nature. The hard stuff starts with the clothes. The day that I interviewed Anthony Scaramucci — Trump’s

22.09.17 es magazine 21

Maitlis interviewing Anthony Scaramucci at the White House

Maitlis changing a tyre while on the road

former director of communications — on the White House lawn I had actually been trying to film a poultry farm in Delaware for the chlorinated chicken story. What began as my The navy Zara dress-down leggings day ended up coat Maitlis wore ‘for six months’ with an outfit splashed across every late-night US comedy show. That’s some sartorial dilemma: would I look more “would i look more stupid stupid wearing wellies in the West Wing or wearing wellies in the tailored to within an inch of my life on a farm, west wing or tailored to with chicken s*** stuck to open-toe sandals?

It was the same thing at the Democratic within an inch of my life National Convention. We had begun the day on a farm with chicken filming in the ganglands of Philadelphia. I s*** stuck to my sandals?” had ended the evening behind the main stage of the Wells Fargo Center thrusting a mic in the face of Nancy Pelosi just before The hardest thing about dressing for she did the warm-up act for Hillary Clinton.

Newsnight is the moving cameras. Something Something told me La Pelosi, Grande Dame that looks fine when you’re standing or sitting of Congress, wouldn’t stop for jeans and at a desk can look completely different when converse pumps — but our hotel by the it’s being shot with a low camera angle. And airport was too far for a detour.

I don’t get a clothes allowance, sadly.

Not for the first time, I used our hire car Over the years I’ve learnt to keep it simple: as my own personal Tardis for rapid change. the same three Tara Jarmon dresses come My cameraman, Pete, has learnt to avoid the with me each time. All A-line, which allows rear-view mirror at certain strategic times for speedy, unclingy change. All back-zipping when driving to preserve my modesty and for easy access to the mic pack, which perches our working relationship. on the back of my bra. One is black, inevitably

never leave home: Emily Maitlis’s six key grab bag items Nuxe Huile Prodigieuse.

Multipurpose moisturiser for legs and arms — and even on hair when in heavy humidity. £17 (uk.nuxe.com)

Charlotte Tilbury black Rock’n’Khol. The world’s best eyeliner — soft but smudgeproof for downpours. £19, at selfridges.com

Paule Ka shift dress and shrug — rolls into nothing and never creases. (pauleka.com)

Mascaro boots.

Amazingly comfortably boots/shoes with a heel you can still run in — highly necessary when out on the road.

22 es magazine 22.09.17

Sweaty Betty contour crop workout leggings — for everything. £45 (sweaty betty.com)

Institut Esthederm Adaptasun face sunscreen. £35, at look fantastic.com Sunglasses. For when it’s noon and you’re made to stare into the sun so you can get the White House framed in the background.

for sombre news, one is white — for dark nights when we’re short on lighting kit and I need to use the colour reflectively to brighten the shot — and one is uncompromising red — for when you need to grab someone’s attention in a crowded press room. I take heels with me for confidence — and for when you are live and need four extra inches to properly frame the shot against the right backdrop. The camera crew decides when the heels come or go.

Then there’s the coat — which, I’ve learnt, can define on-air appearances more than you realise. For the six months that I wore a navy Zara coat with gold buttons, my editor insisted on only calling me Captain Birdseye.

I can’t remember if I got sick of the coat before the jokes or vice versa. But when I took it to a New Hampshire Trump rally on Veterans’ Day I got pushed to the front of the queue by his new press officer. I’m sure she assumed I was armed forces.

For every other occasion I take my Sweaty Betty running kit. Partly because it’s my daily staple that allows me the chance to clear my head each morning. Partly because it’s a way of being quietly and comfortably invisible for those moments when you are trying to fade into the background on a complicated shoot. An airline blanket doubles as a scarf and occasionally a changing room.

A blue sleeveless Uniqlo puffa is my last obsession. Inside pockets work well when you think you’re about to be mugged.

It may sound neurotic, this overconcentration on wardrobe. But it no longer seems that way to me. What you wear says volumes about you on the road. It’s not just about practicality, or temperature, or modesty.

It speaks to whether you have fundamentally understood the story you’re covering and the situations it may take you into.

And what of the coffee pot? Has that remained a core item of the grab bag, post sock-boiling incident?

It has. It came to Cleveland, Ohio. It caught fire. Its handle melted all over the Gaggenau gas ring of our Airbnb.

I, Master of the Perfectly Packed Carryon Tiny Suitcase, am currently rethinking that one. I’ll keep you posted.

RIVER ISLAND belt, £12 (river island. com)

style notes What we love now

TOPSHOP belt, £26 (topshop.com)

EDITED by KATRINA ISRAEL

dodo bar or aw17

Maje belt, £100 (uk.maje.com)

RAG & BONE belt, £170, at net-a-porter.com

Choker, £

Western CLASSICS

When it comes to cinching in just about anything this autumn, the season’s belt of choice doesn’t sport a specific logo, but rather a distinctive buckle.

Welcome to the Wild, Wild West, fashion’s new obsession for AW17. Hitch yourself to a cowboy or alternatively look to Dodo Bar Or, Topshop or River Island to lasso a shiny new version.

a volt -eta d ig z ( 0 34

ir e

. co

m)

Rock royalty

In addition to celebrating its 20th anniversary this year, Zadig & Voltaire has enlisted Parisian jeweller Annelise Michelson to design a bijou collection that recasts barbed wire forms into sculptural chokers and cuffs.

Sophie Hulme Straw bag, £495 (sophiehulme.com)

Great entrances Wooden handicraft company Wedgie supports rural communities in Sri Lanka where their wedgies are hand-painted with cheery sartorial flair. Because even your doorstop deserves to be dressed.

Catch me if YOU CAN

Moving on from her signature tote bags, Sophie Hulme’s latest Catch collection toys with festive motifs such as cocktail stirrers and drink straws, which multitask as hardware locks. Drink up.

Karl Lagerfeld, David Bowie and Cher Wedgie doorstops, £15 each, at couverture andthegarbstore.com

InSTARglam Fashion’s favourite art bomber Donald Robertson has a pop-tastic new Assouline book out that builds upon the colourful account of ‘the Andy Warhol of Instagram’ at

vince £395 (vince.com)

SIES MARJAN shoe, £680, at barneys.com

Anya Ziourova spotted in Fendi Fair Isle

UNIQLO X JW ANDERSON £39.90 (uniqlo.com)

@drawbertson

joseph £225 (josephfashion.com)

Follow us at @eveningstandardmagazine

Colour-blocking specialist Sies Marjan has launched its first footwear line for AW17, which continues the NY-based brand’s tonal conversation.

STELLA McCARTNEY £650, at net-a-porter.com loewe aw17

Getty

It’s a SHOE-IN

Alpine highs

From Loewe to Fendi, Fair Isle jumpers are in the midst of a runway redux.

22.09.17 es magazine 25

MEN’S STYLE What to buy now

Big Ben’s bit on the side

by TEO VAN DEN BROEKE. teo is the style director OF esquire UK

Duke & Dexter loafers, £250 (dukeanddexter.com)

Born Slippy

We love a homegrown brand here at ES, and they don’t come more British than loafer manufacturer Duke & Dexter. Worn by the likes of Eddie Redmayne and Ryan Reynolds, the shoes are handmade in Sheffield and this winter’s collection is the best yet. My favourite pair? The camel suede slippers; worn with some peg leg navy trousers (with a cuff, natch) and a chunky cream knit, they’re just the ticket.

B Knit wit

The season of gaining weight, looking palid and staying indoors is (almost) upon us, which means it’s probably time to start thinking about your knitwear wardrobe (don’t pretend you don’t have a knitwear wardrobe). The place to start? Pringle of Scotland. Under the aegis of creative director Massimo Nicosia, the 200-year-old brand has had a reboot for AW17 and the results are cosy in the extreme. Expect deconstructed argyle knits, chunky Aran sweaters and beautiful knitted blazers.

Jumper, £325 (pringlescotland.com)

Shirt, £695 (pringle scotland.com)

why not?

This autumn YSL launches its first big men’s fragrance in years. Named Y and aimed squarely at millennials, it’s a punchy fougère of notes of geranium, lavender, balsam fir incense and tonka bean. It’s also housed in an ultraminimal bottle, which will look great on your bathroom shelf — even if you’re not a millennial.

YSL Y, £53 for 60ml (yslbeauty.co.uk)

26 es magazine 22.09.17

ecause nothing is too good for my young family, I decided to treat them to a summer holiday they would never forget, which is to say, three nights in the Yorkshire Dales.

The other kids at nursery have been coming back from their holidays tanned and practically Tuscan; mine, I determined, shall return to London with windburn and blisters. ‘Will there be ice cream?’ my son asked hopefully. ‘Perhaps,’ I said, as we tore up the A1. ‘But there will definitely be some limestone pavement to look at.’ Turns out he didn’t know what limestone pavement was and that he didn’t really care. Which only vindicated my decision to force them north in the first place.

But before we hit the wilds, we had a stopover at my mum’s in Leeds. And during an excursion into her loft to retrieve a big crate of my old Duplo, I spotted something else: a mysterious box with my name on it. Hmmm. I lugged it down, prised it open and discovered that it contained… everything. Or at least, everything relating to the first 18 years of my life.

“Why do I never talk about the band I was in? Well, it’s because we were cringe-worthily bad” Lists of first words, baby shoes, school photos, my Cub Scout sweatshirt replete with ‘music’ badge which, given my musical ability, I can only have stolen. There were mixtapes and posters, stacks of school reports and piles of photos from formative nights out. Everybody in the photos looks very startled. Come on. Who takes photos on a night out?

I guess the answer, in 1999, was weirdos like me.

After everybody else had gone to bed, I continued to sift through the box. It was instructive. Cathartic even.

There were photos of the band I was in as a 15-year-old.

Why do I never talk about the band I was in? Well, it’s because we were cringe-worthily bad and for many years I was ashamed of this fact. But that was 20 years ago. I think I’m over it now. Ditto my brief, glittering rugby career. Not cool, to have been good at rugby, but I was. I even played for Leeds under-16s. No point in denying it now, I suppose. Not when my mum had kept the certificate for so long.

There were even photos of me as a keen-looking Venture Scout, striding nerdily over hill and dale.

Although, to be fair, I’ve never hidden my lifelong love of walking boots and Ordnance Survey maps.

I’m sure my children will end up wishing I had.

Jonny Cochrane; Josh Shinner

Pringle of Scotland argyle jumper, £245 (pringle scotland.com)

Ben Machell stumbles upon his past in his mother’s loft

It’s a woman’s word: Otegha Uwagba’s career guide

The new

networking Forget forced encounters in soulless venues — a wave of women-centric groups is putting the fun back into making connects, writes Alix O’Neill

M

onday night at Jamavar, Mayfair’s hottest new Indian eatery. On the menu: small plates and small talk. Downstairs, women of varied ages and professions are milling around, champagne and gin cocktails in hand, while trays of malai stone bass tikka circle the candlelit room. The vibe is

chilled and welcoming. I arrive alone, but within minutes am happily chatting pregnancy and paneer (the veggie canapé is delicious) with a group of strangers.

It’s the restaurant’s inaugural Women’s Club — an evening of good food and scintillating conversation, featuring a different guest speaker each week. Tonight, journalist and former Polpetto head

22.09.17 es magazine 29

Getting it together: Otegha Uwagba, founder of Women Who

Uwagba with attendees at a Women Who meeting

“Traditional networking has this ‘take’ mentality… At the end of our workshops, we ask people both what they need and what they can bring to the community” chef, Florence Knight, takes to the floor, dishing up the secrets to her success alongside the trials of working in a maledominated field — the event was an instant sell- out . ‘Women wa nt a rela xed environment where they can learn from one another,’ says Jamavar’s co-founder Samyukta Nair, 32.

‘Growing up surrounded by talented, powerful women, I learnt about the importance of self-belief. I started the Women’s Club not only as an antidote to Mayfair’s long-standing boys’ clubs, but also to share what my elders taught me.’ Although men are welcome, Nair believes women thrive in less conventional meet-and-greet set-ups. ‘It’s necessary to talk about our

30 es magazine 22.09.17

failures as well as our successes, and women are more comfortable than men in admitting their faults.’

W

omen’s networking is transforming. The days of having a business card shoved in your face as you nurse a glass of warm wine and a soggy vol-au-vent are over. A new wave of pop-ups and groups is providing a third space between work and play for London’s female professionals. The spirit is one of sharing, not selling. And there’s not a beige foodstuff in sight.

‘I’m really conscious of how most of these

things are held in stuffy, grey conference rooms, so I look for venues that will inspire,’ says Otegha Uwagba, author of the Waterstones bestselling career guide, Little Black Book, and founder of Women Who, a community for women in creative industries.

Uwagba, who left her job in advertising in 2015 to pursue a writing career, launched the initiative last summer. ‘I found myself feeling isolated professionally and wanted

Jamavar co-founder Samyukta Nair has set up the Women’s Club at her restaurant

to connect with like-minded people,’ she explains.

As well as a weekly newsletter and regular blog posts, which h ave e a r ne d Uwa gb a a n international following, the 26year-old also hosts monthly events, from business skills workshops to socials, at some of the capital’s coolest spaces including the Ace Hotel, Modern Society and the V&A’s Balenciaga retrospective. In March she teamed up with Nike to throw a party for International Women’s Day — a gathering of 170 women at Redchurch Street ad agency Mother, where guests had the opportunity to screen-print their own T-shirts with artist Kelly Anna.

Uwagba believes there is a growing demand for groups such as Women Who. ‘Our perception of women’s networking is changing. It’s becoming more about cultural and social enrichment, as well as professional gain. I see it as an opportunity to make new friends, which I think really appeals to women. Also, social media has changed the game. A lot of my peers have built up strong working relationships online.’ The rise in flying solo could also be spurring the trend. Between 2008 and 2011, 80 per cent of people entering selfemployment were female, according to official figures. It’s hardly surprising that women-centric networks, offering advice, contacts and potential friendships, are proving so popular.

They’ve certainly helped me. I’ve been

“Growing up surrounded by talented, powerful women, I learnt about the importance of selfbelief. I want to share what they taught me”

freelancing for more than two years and, while I wouldn’t trade the freedom and variety of my job for anything, there are days when I miss the camaraderie of the workplace. Plus, it would be nice to have someone to shoot the breeze with — I fear Cicero, my areca palm, is tiring of my water cooler chat.

So I began organising quarterly midmorning catch-ups with a few fellow freelancers. We meet at Timber Yard in Soho, and, over flat whites and bowls of porridge, compare industry Girl talk: An International Women’s Day notes. It’s not all shop talk, event hosted by Women Who though. We’ll recommend podcasts we rate, let off steam when we need to and support each other in our various extracurricular endeavours.

One member of the Power Brunchers — a name likely to be revised, given a) it’s not the 1980s and b) we’ve taken to

meeting in the evenings — signed up for yoga teacher training after our last gettogether. I suppose technically, we’re hustling for the same jobs, but it doesn’t feel like that. We come away from each session feeling invigorated.

‘The reason these new networks are taking off is because there’s a mindset of collaboration, not competition,’ says Emma Sexton, 41, co-founder of Flock Global, which helps mainly female entrepreneurs grow their companies. Flock is the serendipitous result of a business trip to New York in 2014, when Sexton, co-founder Megan Thomas and a small group of other women decided to pool their resources and contacts to create a wider network.

‘Traditional networking has this “take” mentality,’ Sexton explains. ‘We’ve all been at an event where you’re talking to someone and as soon as they realise there’s no reason to do business with you, they walk off. At the end of all our workshops, we go around the room and ask people to tell us both what they need and what they can bring to the community. It’s a nicer way to do business.’

It’s a smarter approach, too. Sexton is now co-presenter of the acclaimed Badass Woman’s Hour on Talk Radio, alongside Flock members Natalie Campbell and Harriet Minter.

One of the new rules of women’s networking is playing the long game. The

22.09.17 es magazine 33

Anna Morrogh launched the Congress network

“there was a real sense that Congress was needed… I got the impression that women wanted to connect outside of their industries”

connect outside of their industries. I rarely went to networking events at Google because they seemed quite transactional and less about the people and experience.’

Morrogh anticipated a turnout of around 20 women at the first Congress event at WeWork Waterhouse Square — 60 showed up. Each month, the larger Congress network gathers to listen to a speaker deliver a session on topics ranging from public speaking to influencing, while smaller groups called cliques meet up regularly to share their personal and professional goals, and encourage one another to reach these. It was while seeking advice on how to progress Congress that Morrogh landed a job at AllBright, an organisation that supports femaleled start-ups and encourages women to invest.

‘I had a meeting with AllBright’s co-founder Debbie Wosskow in March and filled her in on Congress,’ says Morrogh. ‘She told me that she and her partner Anna A Congress networking evening [Jones, former CEO of magazine

benefits of a recent connection might not seem immediately obvious, but good things come to those who wait. When she launched London-based Congress in January with seven other women, Anna Morrogh, 33, had no idea it would lead to her dream job.

‘From speaking to friends and colleagues, there was a real sense that Congress was needed,’ says Morrogh, who previously worked in sales and marketing at Google.

‘Not all companies focus on career development or offer training on things like negotiation or personal branding. And I got the impression that women wanted to

34 es magazine 22.09.17

giant Hearst] were looking for a head of marketing and would I be interested in applying. She called Anna into her office and they interviewed me on the spot. I was offered the job that afternoon.’

Of course, some would argue that, while beneficial to women, the rise of female-only spaces hinders the feminist cause. But none of the groups I spoke to excludes men — their focus is simply on offering women some breathing space from an often maledominated working culture.

Ex-Googler and Congress member Dahlia Basar, 37, welcomes the change in the status quo. ‘I’ve met incredible people I wouldn’t necessarily have had access to — women around the same stage in life and their career but, refreshingly, not from the same industry. I’ve developed crucial skills that will help me in my next role and am planning a side project with someone in my clique. Oh, and at one of the Congress evenings, I met the Topshop designer who made the shoes I was wearing. That was pretty cool.’

Sisterhood with style credentials? Sign us up.

uniqlo long sleeve T-shirt, £12.90 (uniqlo.com). louis vuitton leather tunic, POA; trousers, £600 (louisvuitton.com)

“This industry is a roller

coaster” He made his name playing a psychopath in Happy Valley — now James Norton has Hollywood in his sights. He talks to Anna van Praagh about fame anxiety, the problem with being posh and why we all need to stand up to Trump PhotographS BY Michael Hemy stylED BY Rose Forde

Getty

J

ames Norton is staring down the barrel of the lens, narrowing his ice blue eyes, running a hand through his wavy blond hair and changing the position of his arms for the camera. The shoot is running late but Norton — who, by the way, is intimidatingly good-looking, embarrassingly good-looking, so good-looking that it’s awkward — is the picture of patience and charm.

Later, when we sit down together in a grotty pub in Kensington he’s so polite that we argue for a while over who is going to buy whom a glass of fizzy water (he wins).

He’s scruffier in real life, wearing worn black vegan Veja trainers (‘I love them because everything’s sustainable and ethically minded’), Levi’s (‘which probably aren’t so vegan’), a ‘crappy old white Tshirt, which I live in’ and a jacket he bought this summer at Gilles Peterson’s Worldwide

James Norton as Alex Godman with Maria Shukshina as Oksana in the BBC’s McMafia

Festival, where he ‘raved like I was 19’. God knows he deserves a break after a whirlwind three years since he gave the performance of a liftetime as psychopath Tommy Lee Royce in Sally Wainwright’s BBC drama, Happy Valley. The finale was watched by 10 million people, and before long you couldn’t switch on the telly without seeing Norton on every channel, playing a crime-fighting 1950s cleric on ITV in Grantchester, and Prince Andrei in the BBC drama War and Peace.

Now his star is set to go stratospheric with a lead role in the remake of the cult 1990s classic Flatliners, co-produced by Michael Douglas, and a starring role in the new BBC series McMafia, which is being hailed as the new Night Manager.

They are big roles and will propel him to another level of celebrity. Is he worried about becoming that famous?

‘Yes, it’s terrifying because right now it’s a lovely place where if we walked down the street maybe in 20 minutes someone would stare. Or you get the people on the Tube who

22.09.17 es magazine 37

lemaire doublebreasted jacket, £950; jersey T-shirt, £180 (lemaire.fr)

Norton as Tommy Lee Royce in Happy Valley

sit there with their phones pretending to text and then the flash goes off and you’re sitting there going, “You’re f***ing kidding me.” But most of the time you get people politely coming over going, “I’m sorry to stop you, but I just want to say I loved Happy Valley,” and you go, “Great”.

‘This Flatliners film or McMafia could propel me into the next stage,’ he continues, ‘and at what point do you go: “F***. I really almost wish I hadn’t moved into that place because now I can’t walk into a pub?”’

F

ame feels ‘out of control’, ‘exposing’, ‘unnerving’, but of course it’s an inevitable byproduct (‘a weird side effect’) of success in the industry he is in. ‘You can’t really work with the best directors and the best actors and have the best scripts available to you if you don’t put yourself in front of the public, as they define whether you’re a success or not.

So in a way it’s a kind of inevitability, which you sort of have to deal with.’

People come up to him ‘once every hour, half an hour’, and because he’s conscious of being recognised, ‘every interaction’s a little bit different. I am a worrier for sure,’ he says quietly. ‘I’ve had moments where I’ve been thinking about it, you know, at 4 o’clock in the morning when you’re feeling a bit anxious… sometimes I’m a bit nervous about “You get people on the tube pretending to text and then it or sometimes you feel a bit weird and you’re the flash goes off and i’m like, ‘you’re f***ing kidding me’” not quite sure why, and you try and articulate it with someone and it’s really hard to articulate because Douglas — a ‘lovely, warm, conscientious man’ — was a career most people just go, “F*** off.”’ highlight, and generally on set he ‘had the time of [his] life’.

Flatliners, in which he plays one of a group of medical Afterwards, Norton went on location in France, Russia students who stop each other’s hearts to experience the and Serbia to shoot McMafia, in which he plays Alex afterlife, was shot in Toronto last year and is his first Godman, a British-raised hedge-fund-trader son of a experience of a big-budget studio movie. He’d done Russian mafia boss who is drawn back into organised ‘nothing of this scale’ before. ‘I was completely the new crime. It’s a clever multi-layered drama about how boy,’ he laughs. ‘The amount of money they had for globalisation has connected the corporate and criminal things! The stunts.’ On his first day on set, ‘I was like worlds and how we’re all complicit. The screenplay was Norton and his f***, this is way out of my depth, playing an American created by Hossein Amini, who also wrote the screenplay girlfriend, as well, which I’ve done a bit, but I was playing an for Drive, and of all his projects it’s the one Norton is Jessie Buckley American amongst Americans.’ Working with Michael most excited about.

22.09.17 es magazine 39

“There’s a level of blame attached to someone who’s been to public school, but the thing is, you can’t turn the clock back”

CMMN SWDN Jayce shirt, £220 (cmmn-swdn. com). marni jacket, £540 (020 7491 9966)

Norton plays Diane Keaton’s son in Hampstead

‘Personally I think it’s The Night Manager with a bit more depth,’ he says. ‘You’ve got all these gangsters from across the world and they’re all incredibly rich and layered individuals, whereas I thought The Night Manager was great, but it was a bit more glossy, maybe.’

He came back to London briefly to shoot Hampstead, in which he plays Diane Keaton’s son and about which he is typically self-effacing — ‘It was amazing but I didn’t really do much in it.’

N

orton, 32, grew up in the pretty market town of Malton in North Yorkshire, the son of Hugh and Lavinia, both lecturers. He has one younger sister who is now a doctor, and has described his childhood as ‘idyllic’. He went to Ampleforth — known as the Catholic Eton — where ‘I had an odd time, because it’s quite a testosterone kind of environment. It sounds ridiculous, being quite candid, but I went through puberty quite late and it makes a huge difference if you’re at boarding school, and I loved theatre and music. I wasn’t macho.’ He now sees not fitting in as an advantage, ‘because I wasn’t so in with

40 es magazine 22.09.17

Norton with Gillian Anderson, below, in London last year

the cool kids, I managed to do a bit of work’.

He went on to get a first in theology from Cambridge and then went to Rada.

He quickly picked up good roles, playing Carey Mulligan’s boyfriend in An Education (‘I was so nervous… I was just like, you know, a wreck’) and appearing in Laura Wade’s critically acclaimed play, Posh. Theatre work, he says, gave him the best grounding, ‘particularly in this mad industry where there’s so much posturing and hot air and most of it’s a load of crap’.

The fact that most of Britain’s top actors — th i n k R ed may ne, H idd leston , a nd Cumberbatch — all went to public school is a touchy subject. Norton recently sympathised with Redmayne, saying: ‘ Two Oscar nominations in two years, it’s extraordinary.

But half the press coverage is about the fact he went to Eton.’ But it is a subject he is ‘nervous’ of engaging with, ‘because the more it’s talked about, the more people associate you with it.

‘It’s when the conversation is slightly inflammatory,’ he continues, ‘and one-sided and there’s a level of blame attached to someone who’s been to a public school, because the thing is you can’t turn the clock back.’ He points out that there are other problems in the industry that get less attention. ‘I mean, lots of people are in dynasties, that’s a leg up,’ he continues. ‘That’s never questioned. The idea of people being sons of sons or daughters of daughters. That’s a massive advantage. There is nepotism and that’s less of a conversation.’

Politically, Norton is active and engaged, but is wary of using his celebrity as a platform. ‘I did tweet about the second referendum and I went down to the protests,’ he says, ‘I’m not apolitical or apathetic by any means… I went down to the march against Trump at Whitehall and I sent one photo on Twitter, and those two tweets got so much hate and vitriol from people. It was just a very incendiary reaction, very inflamed. I was really

Wooyoungmi coat, £1,105, at Harrods (020 7730 1234).

H&M shirt, £19.99; T-shirt, £17.99 (hm.com).

CMMN SWDN shoes, £370 (cmmn-swdn.com).

Margaret Howell chino, £395 (margaret howell.co.uk)

Norton on stage in Bug with Kate Fleetwood

Death becomes him: James Norton and Ellen Page star in the Flatliners remake; right, with Robson Green in Grantchester

“What trump’s doing to the environment, what he’s doing to divide an already divided nation is... I think at some point we’re all going to have to start shouting” shocked but at the same time I do sometimes feel like at some point we’re all going to have to start shouting because it is getting so terrifying.’

He hopes he can make a difference through the roles he chooses. ‘There’s a lot of McMafia which is about transparency and corruption and that’s a conversation I would like to hopefully be a part of,’ he says, ‘particularly with what’s going on with Trump. Trump recently repealed a law which said that oil barons don’t have to make their financial dealings public so they are now basically behind a curtain, allowed to do what the f*** they want. That is criminal… And what he’s doing to the environment, what he’s doing to divide an already divided nation is… I think at some point, whether you’re an actor or not, we’re all going to have to start shouting, however much it’s going to piss people off. I haven’t got to that point and I’m nervous about it.

‘I follow the news and I have my own strong political standing,’ he continues. ‘I voted for Corbyn. Owen Jones got in touch with me on Twitter and asked me if I wanted to speak at one of the rallies because he’d seen one of my tweets. I actually couldn’t do it because I was working, but I did in my head have a speech and I was terrified about this prospect of standing up — I mean, I was absolutely terrified, and I didn’t and I’m not sure if I would now.

‘And then you get other people who go, “Look, you’re an actor, just do what you know, do what you’re good at.

You’re not a politician, you’re not a journalist,” and they’re right, you know, to a point.’

An issue he does feel confident talking out about is diabetes. He was diagnosed with Type 1 when he was 22 and is keen to dispel preconceptions about the illness. ‘Yes, please! Let’s finally tell everyone we’re not these obese wasters who sit on our arses eating candyfloss,’ he laughs. ‘It’s a manageable condition. It doesn’t make me tired or unhealthy or ill, it’s just something I have to be aware of. I have a pen here,’ he says, showing me. ‘I inject myself probably about eight to 10 times a day. In fact I’m probably due a jab now, if you don’t mind.’

He certainly couldn’t look in better health, a fact not lost on directors who seem to want him to strip on screen at every opportunity. Does he mind being objectified?

Doesn’t he find having to parade around showing off his

42 es magazine 22.09.17

From left, George Mackay, James Bay, Norton, George Barnett and Jourdan Dunn on the frow at Burberry Prorsum

muscles a bit, well, embarrassing? ‘If I had the choice I wouldn’t,’ he says breezily, ‘but what I won’t do is really complain about it, because there’s a time and a place…

You just have to take it.’

To keep in shape he cycles, swims, plays tennis, hikes, swims in rivers whenever he can and is looking to get into Pilates after recent problems with his back. He has just bought a house in Peckham, where he hangs out at Frank’s and eats at Peckham Bazaar.

He’s been going out with the actress Jessie Buckley since they met on the set of War and Peace. ‘It’s tough because you don’t see each other,’ he says of their relationship. ‘She’s been away for a year. She’s done three jobs back to back. We see each other on average once every six weeks.’

As for future projects he keeps a list on his phone of directors and actors with whom he would love to work.

‘Wes Anderson, Paul Thomas Anderson, Clio Barnard, Alfred Molina, Stanley Tucci. I met the Coen brothers recently for a film — didn’t get it. You get pretty good at rejections. You do calcify a little bit. You become good at the hits. And now I do less of the meetings, but the meetings I do go for are often ones which are, for example, going and meeting both of the Coen brothers and shaking their hand and then not getting it — it’s is a bit like, “Oh f***.” But it’s just a privilege to meet them and tell them that I love their work.’

‘This industry... throws you around,’ he reflects.

‘People who coast and love a content life, it’s not for them.

It’s a roller coaster and you have these incredible highs.

You also have incredible lows and every job offer is complemented by five rejections.’

Would he move to the US? ‘I’m not averse to it. I would go with the work and if there was a really great opportunity. I think Hollywood is this beast and there is a commercial element to it, which I’m aware of — the fact that it’s so much more profitable and money-orientated…

You could get really rich.’ He pauses. ‘That’s one way of thinking about it.’

He shrugs. ‘But then you do lose your life.’

James Norton is staring down the barrel of a lens.

‘Flatliners’ is in cinemas on 29 September

Burberry coat, £1,595; sweatshirt, £450 (burberry.com).

Kent & Curwen tie, POA, (kentand curwen.com).

Salvatore Ferragamo trousers, £460 (ferragamo.com).

AMI Derbies, £350 (amiparis.com) Grooming by Lee Machin at Caren Agency using Origins

simone rocha coat, £2,550 (020 7629 6317). dior beret, £610 (020 7172 0172)

dior beret, £610; coat, £3,300 (020 7172 0172). zara boots, £49.99 (zara.com)

BABY, it’s COLD outside It’s time to start thinking about that key staple of your autumn wardrobe.

From the hero teddy bear shearling to the timeless camel classic, here’s how to wrap up for the season ahead

PhotographS BY luc coiffait stylED BY jenny kennedy

44 es magazine 22.09.17

dior beret, £610; coat, £3,300 (020 7172 0172). zara boots, £49.99 (zara.com)

BABY, it’s COLD outside It’s time to start thinking about that key staple of your autumn wardrobe.

From the hero teddy bear shearling to the timeless camel classic, here’s how to wrap up for the season ahead

PhotographS BY luc coiffait stylED BY jenny kennedy

dior beret, as before. emilia wickstead jumper, £590 (020 7235 1104). joseph coat, £795 (joseph-fashion.com). pringle of scotland trouser, £375 (pringlescotland.com).

Topshop boots, £75 (topshop.com)

stella mccartney coat, ÂŁ1,695 (stellamccartney.com). daks scarf, ÂŁ150 (daks.com). diesel dress, poa (diesel.com)

22.09.17 es magazine 47

ellery coat, ÂŁ2,565 (elleryland.com).

Belt, stylist’s own

48 es magazine 22.09.17

urban outfitters coat, £129 (urbanoutfitters.com). jimmy choo shoe, £995 (jimmychoo.com). raey socks, £55, at matchesfashion.com

theory coat, £1,810 (theory.com). joseph shirt, £395 (joseph-fashion.com) Hair by Hiroshi using Oribe hair care.

Make-up by Jade Bird using Estée Lauder.

Fashion assistant: Eniola Dare.

With thanks to Hotel Continental, Whitstable (hotelcontinental.co.uk) and Addison Lee (020 7407 9000)

22.09.17 es magazine 51

Goodnight Mr Groucho He was the unforgettable, inimitable manager of Soho’s most iconic member’s club. Here his friends pay tribute… compiled BY kate spicer

Joseph Lynn

S

tephen Fry dubbed him the Prince of Soho. Damien Hirst designed him a logo. To anyone who regularly frequents The Groucho Club, Bernie Katz was more important than the pop art on the walls or the espresso Martinis behind the bar. For many, he made the place. Until his retirement a few months ago, he was the club’s host: a disco-loving, five-foot-tall titan in Cuban heels who spent 21 years making its members cackle. His flamboyance and fun, coupled with a deep well of compassion, made him spectacularly loved and singularly, rarely, trusted by famous and infamous alike.

His death last week at 49 sent shockwaves of grief through Soho. The club defined him, and he it. As broadcaster Richard Bacon says, ‘When you got to The Groucho and realised it was Bernie’s night off, you knew it wasn’t going to be as good or good at all.’ Here, the members who so adored him remember their confidant, cheerleader and friend. justgiving.com/berniekatztheprinceofsoho

22.09.17 es magazine 55

Noel Gallagher musician

‘Godspeed, Bernie la. You were a King amongst queens.

Who’s gonna call me gorgeous now?’

‘When I first met Bernie, he took my hand and whispered in my ear: “We’re the same, you and I, we understand.”

He would grab my hand, hold it aloft and glide me into the room with maximum drama, often pausing centre stage to climb me like a tree and plant one of his infamous kisses on my mouth, ensuring every eye in the room was on us. He celebrated me and spoiled me.

He showered me with love during good times and bad.

Bernie always reminded me of that quote from Truman Capote’s Breakfast at Tiffany’s, “...glittery voyager of secure destination, with whistles whistling and confetti in the air”. Keep voyaging on, wherever you are, my brilliant friend. You will never ever be forgotten.’

Helen McCrory actress

‘I never walk down Old Compton Street without looking out for that leopard-print jacket, cowboy boots, fag on the go, black curls bouncing and a wicked grin. He’d seen it all, but it was his capacity for love that I will never forget.’

Damon Albarn

Getty Images; Capital Pictures; Rex Features; Alpha Press

musician

‘To the spirit of Soho/Its Golem moulder and knight/In rhinestones and green satin/Your faerie dust flight/ On to scales under world/For the tailor to sew/You a suit of small mirrors/ Reflections of you flow/On to all that have loved you so we can find you again/Sing Bernie forever our magical friend’

Jaime Winstone actress

‘Bernie made a huge impact on my life, he was my little big brother. I’m heartbroken he has gone. Disco will never be the same and neither will I.’

Actress and singer

‘Bernie was one of my closest, most trusted friends. He was this amazing, flamboyant, loud, talented, charismatic man, but when I would sit on his sofa bed in his flat, he was all mine. If I was ever feeling down, he’d lift me out of it straight away and we’d end up laughing our heads off. We’d talk a lot about his severely autistic nephew. My son has Asperger syndrome, so it helped to talk I think. He raised a lot of money for a charity that supports families with autistic children, with a photo exhibition — which was us members nude, of course. He was kind and loving — and absolutely f***ing wild! There are so many stories. Once a member of staff ran to him, panicking: “Bernie, there’s two people having sex on the toilet!” To which he responded: “Well leave ’em and let ’em finish.” That was Bernie.’

Noel Fielding

Kate Moss model

Gwendoline Christie actress

Lisa Moorish

‘Soho will never be the same again.

It’s the end of an era.’

Jake Chapman artist ‘Difficult to find words to sum up a person who by their vivacity exceeded the very boundaries of simple friendliness by an incandescence that occurred with even the slightest brush with him.’

Chris Evans broadcaster

‘He told it like it was without ever making it about himself. I hate the fact that he’s not here any more. Hate it.’

Stephen Fry

actor and broadcaster

‘I never quite committed to what Soho stands for in terms of bohemianism and a full rejection of the bourgeois.

Bernie was the real thing and joins Sebastian Horsley, Jeffrey Bernard, Muriel Belcher and John Deakin in the list of figures who made the square mile exceptional and disgracefully great. I called him the Prince of Soho because if princeliness includes charm, charisma, grace, warmth, liveliness and the right amount of regal style, then Bernie was as princely as anyone I ever knew.’

comedian

‘Bernie was a fusion of Keith Richards and Sally Bowles, with a touch of Alex from A Clockwork Orange.

He would enter a room as if on wheels, arms flying like the blades of a helicopter. He’d regale you with a filthy anecdote and while you were roaring with laughter he would disappear in a puff of smoke. I only saw Bernie once in the daytime in Kentish Town and it was like seeing a genie or a unicorn. He was a mythical creature and I will miss him.’

Jude Law actor

‘Bernie’s theatre was Soho and his stage was The Groucho.

He was our star. We were all just bit players.’

Sheridan Smith actress ‘He was always there with a kiss and a hug for everyone. A rare and wonderfully eccentric soul who made so many people feel like family.’

Sadie Frost actress

‘Bernie, one of my closest confidants, saw me through two marriages.

He literally picked me up when I needed picking up — sometimes after giving me too many espresso Martinis — but then he would sober me up as well with coffee and cheese sandwiches. I cried on his shoulder and he on mine. He was an emotionally generous man. In the infamous naughty days of The Groucho, when we were all young, he’d carry me through the back door.’

22.09.17 es magazine 57

beauty

Set design by Kerry Hughes. Model: Kateryna at Hired Hands. Nails by Erin Kristensen at United Artists using Bobbi Brown. Paint by Farrow & Ball

Clockwise from top, ZO SKIN HEALTH Oclipse Daily Sheer SPF 50, £57 (zo-skinhealth.co.uk).

NIOD Survival 20, £24 (niod.com). institut ESTHEDERM City Protect Incellium Spray, £35.30, at notino.co.uk. DR SEBAGH Supreme Day Cream, £145, at libertylondon.com. EPIONCE Daily Shield Lotion Tinted SPF 50, £45 (epionce.co.uk)

by katie service

SCREEN SAVERS

Fight the ageing effect on skin from your phone or tablet’s blue light with one of these protective solutions PHOTOGRAPH BY Aleksandra Kingo STYLED BY lily worcester

22.09.17 es magazine 59

beauty

The wide awake club

Trunk Archive; Alamy

I

Emma Hughes suffered from insomnia so severe that it took a toll on her relationships, work and sanity. For years she fought it off with any kind of pill she could find. Then she found a cure...

t was 4.47am. I was lying in bed and I’d just worked out that I had been awake for 11 of the past 13 years. I did the maths as I watched daylight creep under my blackout blind, feeling like I’d gone 12 rounds with Conor McGregor. Eight hours’ kip, I calculated, works out at 122 days a year spent unconscious, and four years over the course of 13. I, though, was getting half of that — if I was lucky.

I was 30, and for my entire adult life I’d suffered from severe, debilitating insomnia, making me one of the 75 per cent of British women who report having trouble falling or

staying asleep. ‘No, you can’t die from insomnia,’ Edward Norton’s doctor tells him in Fight Club. (Actually, you can: google fatal familial insomnia. Or, if you’re anything like me, don’t.) But the consequences can be deadly serious. Longterm insomnia is associated with an increased risk of cardiac issues, stroke and developing diabetes. And skipping a single night’s sleep can make you as dangerous behind the wheel as necking a bottle of wine.

For me, it started at 17, when I found out I’d got a place at my first-choice university. I should have been walking on air but instead I found

myself wide awake at 3am, heart pounding as a parade of nameless horrors marched past my mind’s eye. That first bout lasted several weeks and I had no idea what was happening to me. I was terrified.

There are two types of insomnia, according to the NHS. The first stems from an underlying health issue, such as depression or arthritis. The second — my kind — seems to come out of nowhere. It’s often triggered by a stressful event, but after that passes, a fear that you’re going to sleep badly lingers — and it soon becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. You worry you won’t

22.09.17 es magazine 61

sleep, so you don’t. And the longer it goes on, the worse it gets.

That was me, on and off, for more than a decade. On a good night, I might get five hours of broken sleep, taking more than an hour to drift off and waking several times. On a bad night, zilch. I would lie there watching the clock, going through the five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and, finally, as the dawn chorus started, acceptance.

I tried everything from warm milk to cold showers, but nothing touched the sides. I made a mental list of the things I would swap for the ability to drift off easily. There were body parts on it.

By the time I graduated, I’d discovered sleeping pills. By registering sneakily with several GPs I was able to maintain a supply of zopiclone, a hypnotic rarely prescribed for any length of time because it’s so addictive. When they ran out, I swallowed anything I could get my hands on, from hay-fever tablets to Night Nurse. More than once, I googled ‘where to buy chloroform’.

CALL IT A NIGHT Five snoozy buys 1. Sleepio A clinically trialled digital ‘sleep-intervention’ programme. £200 for 52 weeks’ access (sleepio.com)

Natasha Pszenicki

“I had hallucinations… one night my dressing gown waved to me” ‘But you don’t look tired,’ people used to say. And I didn’t. I wore three different blushers (Nars’ Orgasm is an insomniac’s best friend), two concealers and bright lipstick. But I had a permanent, low-level cold. My blood pressure was high. And my skin, underneath all the Bobbi Brown, was like a teenager’s. I even started having hallucinations — one night I watched in horror as my dressing gown waved to me from the back of my door.

Insomnia was eating away at my relationships, too. Boyfriends imagined they could put me to sleep with a kiss like a reverse Sleeping Beauty. I hated disappointing them, so I’d secretly take a sleeping pill after I’d brushed my teeth.

I would then reach for my heavy-duty earplugs, which blocked out virtually all sound — the first time one boyfriend told me he loved me, I missed it. Even with such armoury, I’d toss and turn. I had never lived with a partner and I worried that my insomnia would mean I’d never be able to.

I was also crotchety, paranoid and cried at the drop of a hat.

I’d resigned myself to my fate when, earlier this year, I got a new GP who refused to prescribe any more sleeping pills.

As soon as I got home I started hunting for a dodgy online pharmacy that would ship me some zopiclone — and found Sleepio instead. A doctor-designed website and

2. Kiehl’s Midnight Recovery Concentrate Eight hours’ kip in a bottle. £38, at spacenk.com

3. Zara Home textured geometric knit blanket Snuggle up as you wind down. £89.99 (zarahome.com)

4. Yolke emerald silk eye mask Flimsy curtains letting the light in?

Pop this on. £25 (yolke.co.uk)

5. This Works Deep Sleep Bath Soak Stress-busting lavender and chamomile salts. £35 (thisworks.com)

app, it promised to make significant inroads into insomnia in just six weeks.

It couldn’t possibly work for me, I thought, reading the testimonials. Could it?

The first part of the ‘cure’ is behaviour modification. You’re only allowed to use your bed for sleep and sex, and have to turn your phone off at a reasonable time.

You also get access to a tailored sleep diary, relaxation MP3s and a ‘thought checker’ that addresses unhelpful thinking patterns.

That all sounded fine. But the second part — sleep restriction — was the stuff of nightmares. Insomniacs spend a lot of time lying awake and worrying.

To correct this, I was told, you need to shrink your in-bed time to a bare minimum; five hours, say. And if you’re not asleep after 20 minutes, you have to get up and read, then try again. For a few days, you might not sleep at all. But eventually, the theory goes, you’ll be so exhausted that you’ll have no choice — which starts to forge a new pathway in your brain. The thought of it made me want to go and lie in the road. But what did I have to lose?

I set my initial ‘sleep window’ from 1am to 6am. At 11pm on the first night I dimmed the lights in the living room, feeling like I was queueing for the guillotine. At 1am I hauled myself off to bed, braced for the worst — but staggeringly, within 15 minutes I was asleep. What’s more, I slept through.

When my alarm woke me at 6am I actually punched the air. Rather than dreading going to bed the next night, I was excited to see if the trick would work again. And it did.

Having spent nearly half my life chasing after sleep, I’d stopped — and it had come running after me.

‘Those kinds of results aren’t unusual at all,’ Sleepio’s Dr Sophie Bostock told me.

‘The foundation of what we’re doing — cognitive behavioural therapy for insomnia [a treatment that looks at how your thoughts affect your feelings and behaviour] — has been around for 30 years, and more than 70 per cent of patients who do a face-to-face course of it will be able to recover their sleep to healthy levels.

But what’s pretty remarkable is that we’ve shown you can use technology to deliver the same outcomes at a much greater scale.’ For now, Sleepio costs £200 for a year’s access, but there is hope that it could soon be rolled out much more widely, and cheaply, across the NHS. Five months on, I’m averaging six solid hours. I’ve had the odd bad night, but who doesn’t occasionally? I’ve even managed to share a bed without knocking myself out. These are words I never thought I’d type, but honestly, it’s a dream come true.

22.09.17 es magazine 63

feast

grace & flavour Grace Dent feels little in the way of kinship with Mother

“Mother is what I term a ‘mirage’ opening. The closer you draw to it, the more disappointingly clear it becomes that it does not really exist”

Ambience food

Jonny Cochrane; illustration by Jonathan Calugi @ Machas

B

attersea Power Station has had strong potential to become something brilliant for at least 30 years. ‘It should be an arena… or a museum’, many Londoners have sighed, spying its brooding, Gotham-like prowess from a cab window. But instead its bedraggled, albeit beautiful, shell was used mainly as a rentable backdrop for gritty pop videos and slightly naff mega-budget film premieres. The power station’s problem seemed, to me at least, to be that not only would it cost billions to make it useful again, but that London’s focus had slid so far east that Spitalfields now felt like Soho. Battersea Power Station is a London landmark, but it marks out the fact you’re close to nowhere, not even really Battersea.

So Mother, which has set up in newly titivated Battersea Power Station, feels like a bit of a trek just to taste Copenhagen’s slant on sourdough pizza. Also, ‘Circus West Village’ — as the new playground of restaurants, shopping and culture is named — isn’t remotely finished, meaning it feels like, all at once, a building site, a temporary Olympic park and somewhere ScoobyDoo might get into a terrific scrape with a disgruntled coal mine boss.

There are some things in Mother’s favour: it is in a cavernous glass-fronted arch, like a mini aircraft hangar. One could take large groups there to feast on its enormo-benches and sharing tables. In the summer it’s airy, opened-up and feels deeply European. Inside on an evening it’s nicely lit by candlelight, if your Botox is sliding.

And it has an expensive sound system. I can attest to this as on a calm Tuesday evening the

Mother 2 Arches Lane, SW11 (020 7622 4386; motherrestaurant.co.uk)

6

Glasses of Barbera

1

Olives

1

Mozzarella

£7.50

1

Baccalà fritto

£6.50

1

Porcini bruschetta

£4

1

Tortino

£6

1

Tonnata bruschetta

£4

1

Zuccone pizza

1

Porcella pizza

Total

£36 £4

£14 £15.50 £97.50

manager kept putting on Pink Floyd and turning it up really, really loud — which felt exactly like when one is at a tame house party sipping Picpoul de Pinet and someone turns up blootered on ketamine and commandeers Spotify.

At this point, I am glancing at my list of Mother plus points and experiencing a scarcity. Mother is one of those restaurants that promises wonderful things; ingredients chosen with eye-watering precision and shipped in many cases from Italy; legendary signature seawater sourdough bases and wild, gauche, experimental toppings that have left Copenhagen’s nightlife reeling. And not just pizzas, oh no. Did I mention the exquisite and ground-breaking array of small plates? Truffle and sage ravioli, shaved vegetables with pecorino, rucola salad with pesto, sautéed mussels and so on.

Mother is what I term professionally a ‘mirage’ opening. The closer you draw to it, the more disappointingly clear it becomes that it does not really exist. Taste-free salt cod fritters appeared, then a lacklustre plate of fridge-icy buffalo mozzarella and a bowl of mediocre olives. A slice of bruschetta smeared with an unseasoned broad bean mush was simply odd. So was the tortino, a sort of forlorn oven-baked culinary truck stop between a cheese soufflé and a tortilla. Maybe antipasti is not their thing, I mused. The pizzas were equally as meh-inducing. Not offensive. No one was poisoned. Still, if one is going to put courgette and smoked salmon on the Zuccone pizza, one better be damn sure that these items are boldly flavoured — or what one has is a circular vessel of cheese-spattered nothingness. And a soggy one at that. The porcella pizza with organic sausage and porcini was equally uninspiring.

A quick glance afterwards at Mother’s Facebook page proffers a host of people accusing the place of simply making bad pizza. Thank heavens for the lovely waitresses who jollied the whole thing along, being glorious, chipper and fetching us numerous glasses of Barbera to numb our pain. Mother is an odd one. If she really was my mother, I’d be writing a misery memoir.

22.09.17 es magazine 65

feast

tart london Jemima Jones and Lucy Carr-Ellison make the most of autumn’s harvest with a slow-roasted tomato sauce

Cock-a-doodle-doo! The chickens (and a dancing turkey) head off for a walk on Jemima’s farm in Somerset

Jemima Jones (left) and Lucy Carr-Ellison

Josh Shinner

I

t’s impossible not to fall in love with England when you’re in the countryside on an Indian summer’s day, with the glorious colours, light and a magical feeling of seasonal change in the air. We’ve been working from Jemima’s place in Somerset this month and enjoying the end-of-summer glut.

Fruit and vegetables are still in abundance in the bramble-filled garden. We have been harvesting a bounty of courgettes, apples and tomatoes, feeling like ancient pagans preparing to nestle down for the winter. There’s a sense of great joy you get from growing your own produce. It gives you a profound respect for — and understanding of — an ingredient. Seasonal vegetables, freshly harvested, are the best you can eat, packed with flavour and vitamins.

As summer dips into autumn, tomatoes are at their finest: full and heavy, in magnificent shades of red, orange and yellow. The idea of preparing yet another caprese salad or chilled soup no longer appeals. When there’s a nip in the air, we crave something a little warmer and heartier. We do this by roasting huge trays of tomatoes, of all shapes and sizes, with garlic, herbs, olive oil and chilli. Slow cooking this way allows the natural sugar in the fruit to caramelise; it also makes for the most delicious of sauces. So gather up as many ultra-ripe tomatoes as you can find from farmers’ markets or your greengrocer, and savour them throughout the autumn by roasting and jarring. They’re perfect for when you come home late from work and want a quick-fix pasta dish, or a base for curry or soup. You’ll find it difficult to ever open a tin again.

ingredients

slow-roasted tomato sauce

100ml olive oil 1 small onion, diced 8 garlic cloves, thinly sliced 1 tsp dried chilli flakes 1 tbsp fresh rosemary, chopped Medium bunch of basil 2kg tomatoes (a mix of big, small and on the vine), halved 2 tsp caster sugar Salt and pepper

Preheat the oven to 150C with a large roasting tray inside. When it’s nice and hot, pour in the olive oil, onion, garlic, chilli, rosemary and basil ­— be careful as it will splatter a bit. Stir for a few minutes until the oil is well-infused.

Add the tomatoes, sugar, salt and pepper, then stir until the tomatoes are well coated.

Turn all the tomatoes cut side up in a single layer (you might need to divide between two roasting tins) and roast for 2.5 hours, turning the tins around halfway through. Remove and leave to cool, then peel off as much skin as possible.

Transfer to a food processor and blitz to your desired texture. Pour into sterilised jars and store somewhere cool until needed.

22.09.17 es magazine 67

In the MIX

FEAST

The cock and tail

The trusted London local is upping its game for cocktail hour, says Frankie McCoy After-work pub outings are painful for non-beer drinkers, forced to sip watery vodka and tonic or paint-stripper Pinot Grigio. But sweet, shaken, boozy change is here. As the UK pub scene freefalls — 80 are closing every year in London alone — the remaining Royal Oaks and Queen Vics are mixing it up with stellar cocktail menus and serious pub grub to soak it all up. Whatever your poison, these pubs are here for you.

Cocktails at Plaquemine Lock

Jonny Cochrane; Alamy; glassware available at waterford.co.uk

Plaquemine Lock

‘L The Wigmore Bar star: The Wigmore, above

From Magic Rock to Beavertown to its own mouth-puckering saison, brewed with BBNo (Brew by Numbers), it would be all too easy to while away an afternoon sampling the awesome rotating line-up of beers at The Langham hotel’s new tavern. But that would be to miss its astonishing range of other booze. Inspiration comes from London through the ages, so there are fruity punches, hoptails (beer cocktails, including a fortifying Guinness Bloody Mary and the tart, fizzy peach wine, vodka and Pilsner Urquell concoction) and a short but perfectly formed menu of true London cocktail classics, such as the London calling (gin, dry sherry, lemon juice, sugar, orange bitters). And forget pork scratchings or sad pre-made pies: Michel Roux Jr is overseeing the pub classics-inspired menu, including the deservedly Insta-hyped masala-spiced Scotch eggs.

When Jacob Kenedy opens a pub, you know both the food and booze offerings are going to be spot on: after all, he’s the chef genius The Prince of Peckham behind the beloved Bocca di Lupo (and Moan all you like about gentrification, but the life-changing Gelupo gelateria). At the Prince of Peckham, formerly the Plaquemine Lock, Kenedy’s new Creole Clayton Arms (damaged in the 2011 riots), and Cajun-influenced pub in Islington, is doing a damn good job of turning a pints are replaced by some extremely slightly stale old boozer into a community punchy rum. The bywater, for example, is hub, with great cocktails to boot. Yes, the a take on the rum, green chartreuse, amaro drinks are less mixology masterpieces, more and velvet falernum concoction of the basic incarnations of classics. But when same name created in New Orleans bar those classics include Tommy’s margaritas, Arnaud’s French 75, while the tropical, rum old fashioneds and negronis, all of juicy hurricane slips down so easily you which cost a fiver during happy hour, who forget it’s made with two types of rum. needs dry ice and tonka bean-infused Oops. Line your stomach with addictive mezcal? There’s also swing dancing lessons pickled okra from the — wince — on Mondays, monthly DJ jamming The Prince of ‘snacketizer’ bar menu, or unbelt sessions and hot-wing eating Peckham’s Tommy’s for a full-on Creole feast of competitions from the epic chicken margarita gumbo and crawfish. maestros, White Men Can’t Jerk.

Douglas Blyde meets the Wimbledon man who’s aced the beer game

ondon is the world’s brewing capital,’ pronounces Mark Gordon. Toasting Wimbledon Brewery’s second year in production, which saw him supply 100,000 pints for tennis fortnight, we drain tankards of spirit-lifting Summer Ale over lunch of Cheddar flavoured with malty Copper Leaf ale, and salmon steeped in Phoenix smoked porter.

Born in Bolton, Gordon emerged from 23 years of banking to realise the dream of founding a brewery in SW19. ‘I always wanted to make something tangible, and had lived in Wimbledon for 16 years.’

The brewery took the name of the original in Wimbledon Village which fire destroyed in 1889 — to be replaced, ironically, by a fire station. Gordon had planned to personally craft beer at the new site, a former Nissan parts factory.

‘As a reasonable cook I thought brewing would be similar, so enrolled on a course.

But 10 minutes in, they started talking about microbiology and I realised I wasn’t ready for this.’

Professional help came by way of Derek Prentice. ‘A premium brand isn’t built on sand, and I was lucky to meet Derek who, with 50 years in brewing, is brewing royalty.’

Prentice’s reputation plus international associations with Wimbledon tennis helped elevate the brand in the face of ‘phenomenal’ competition. ‘With more than 80 microbreweries in London (and 1,700 breweries nationwide) a lot of people are scrambling for attention. But, while the beer market shrinks, the thirst for innovative micro and craft beer grows.

People want something different to the industrial beer equivalent of Blue Nun.’ Gordon favours balance, steering clear of fads, including a request for strawberries and cream imbued beer. ‘My answer was, “No!”’ Fans of Gordon’s beers, available in hundreds of London pubs and M&S, include AFC Wimbledon players and the Stereophonics lead singer, Kelly Jones.

‘Like a London rat, you’re never more than 10ft from a Wimbledon beer...’

22.09.17 es magazine 69

HOMEWORK

Cake server in red violets by Bunzlau Castle, £25, at amara.com

BY LILY WORCESTER

Totem poll sculpture, from £1,800 (ashley hicks.com)

Ines jug, £24 (oliver bonas.com)

Footed bowl by Bitossi Ceramiche, £292, at store.wallpaper.com Pots by John Booth, starting from £800, made on commission, (instagram. com/john_booth)

ALL FIRED-UP

Platter, £450 (lukeedward hall.com)

From the wacky and avant-garde (see John Booth’s vibrant vases inspired by the Cobra art movement) to the more traditional, as seen at Anthropologie, a piece of statement pottery is an easy hack to update your home. A visit to Liberty’s new interiors emporium is a must, where the focus is on design-led pieces, with particular emphasis on British craft — London-based Fredde Lanka’s kooky pottery is a particular highlight.

Pottery by Fredde Lanka, from £70, at liberty london.com

Cheese board, £58, and mug, £14, by Liberty for Anthropologie (anthropologie.com)

Ceramic bowl, £48.50 (summerill andbishop.com)

Ripa vessel

by Ranti Bam, £360, at thenew craftsmen.com

Vase by Leah Goren, £650, at liberty london.com

Chainsaw candle holder

by Seletti, £210, at amara.com

escape

Sandscape: the beach at Wellsnext-the-Sea

EDITED by dipal acharya

EAT

The sweet town of Wells-next-the-Sea is all cobbled alleys and narrow back streets. On Staithe Street you’ll find the Picnic Hut, famous for its traditional Norfolk ice cream and fairtrade coffee, while on The Quay is the much-loved Platten’s chippie. There’s also no shortage of glorious country pubs in the area — The Globe Inn (below), overlooking the town’s grassy Georgian square, serves modern British fare that’s perfect for Sunday lunch.

STAY

Great Barn Farm does exactly

wishing for wells

DAY TRIP

Mast but not least: the harbour at Wells-nextthe-Sea

Goodbye Gunton and so long Burnham Market. The town of Wells-next-the-Sea on the north Norfolk coast is becoming the weekend escape of choice for insiders — a seaside destination with an old worldly town surrounded by wildlife and wilderness. How this little place straddles the divide between its historical past and evolving present just adds to its intrigue and charm

Alamy

Your first port of call is to get yourself to the beach, a vast stretch of golden sand open from dawn till dusk and dog-friendly. Seals are a regular attraction in the local waters, but if you fancy getting up close and personal with a flippered friend, there are also daily scheduled boat trips setting off from Blakeney Point.

SHOP

North Norfolk has a strong brewing heritage — visit The Real Ale Shop (left) to take home a bottle (or 12) of one of the local brews. For the sweet-toothed, there’s charming Golding’s, which specialises in traditional confectionery. And don’t miss ML Walsingham — two floors of old fashioned hardware goodies, from fishing tackle to buckets and spades.

Great Barn Farm, inside and out, left

what it says on the tin and a whole lot more. No matter the size of your party, there is a place for you. Though it boasts multiple accommodations, it is still a working farm, surrounded by 1,350 acres of land. If it’s just the two of you, snuggle up like a pair of naughty grooms in the Tack Rooms, but if the whole clan has tagged along, try the Cattle Sheds. Though the animals have long gone, the rustic nature of their dwellings remains.

A week at Great Barn Farm starts from £400 for a one bed barn, up to £3,300 in a large barn. (greatbarnfarm.co.uk) In the market for more modern digs? Then look to the Modern House, which champions holiday properties with serious architectural credentials. Perfect fodder for holiday #Instastories. (themodernhouse.com)

my london

jason atherton as told to lily worcester

Home is…

Wandsworth. I’ve lived there for 12 years with my wife, Irha, and two daughters, Keziah and Jemimah.

yourself locked up there for seven days and not get bored.

Best meal you’ve had?

I had dinner recently at Claude Bosi at Bibendum (right). I think it’s going to be London’s next best three Michelin-star restaurant.

I really fell in love with it.

Most romantic thing someone’s done for you?

A couple of years ago for my birthday Irha booked a private table at Alain Ducasse at the Dorchester. Even though you’re in the middle of the room, it’s completely private. They did a beautiful tasting menu with wines to match. They treated us like a king and queen. It was a wonderful experience.

What would you do as Mayor for the day?

Clean our streets a bit more — I’m a bit of a clean freak.

What do you collect?

Super Tuscan wine; Irha and I both fell in love

74 es magazine 22.09.17

The chef eats pies at The Windmill and tips Claude Bosi at Bibendum as the capital’s next great restaurant with it a few years ago. We have maybe 300 to 350 bottles.

Favourite pub?

The Windmill in Mayfair. It does amazing pies. I normally go for the steak and stilton.

Best thing a cabbie has ever said to you?

‘Hello mate. I recognise you.’ I went, ‘Oh that’s very nice,’ and he said, ‘You’re that chef aren’t you?’ I said, ‘Yeah, that’s right.’ Then he said, ‘Is your name Jamie?’

Where do you go to let you hair down?

The most regular place we

go to is Chiltern Firehouse bar. The drinks are great and the bar menu is fantastic. The crab choux buns… oh my God, they are delicious.

If you had to be locked in a building overnight, which would it be?

The Connaught. Hélèn Darroze is an amazing chef, the new Jean-Georges restaurant (above) is everything you want an all-day dining restaurant to be and the drinks are just class. Never mind getting locked up there for a night; you could get

Best piece of advice?

It was from Marco Pierre White.

He said: ‘As a chef the only thing you’ve got to sell is the talent you’ve got in your hands and what you store in your brain.

And the harder you work on that and the more you soak up, the more valuable you’ll become.’

Who do you call when you want to have fun?

Angela Hartnett (below), she’s pretty bonkers.

Favourite London discovery?

In Soho there’s a tiny little Thai restaurant called Kiln where they cook everything over a barbecue. It’s become quite famous but I was one of the first to go.

Jason Atherton is the new UK brand ambassador for Moët & Chandon

Getty Images

Last play you saw?

Aladdin (above) at the Prince Edward Theatre. We’re good friends with Cameron Mackintosh so he gave us seats. It was the night of the Anthony Joshua fight against Wladimir Klitschko and a friend of mine had got tickets right up close. I’m a massive boxing fan, so I went home and told my wife and she said, ‘Ah, I’ve surprised everybody with Aladdin tickets.’ So I was like: okay, fine, family first.

Ever had a run-in with a policeman?

We had a gentleman who urinated on the front window of Pollen Street Social where people were dining. He was very drunk. I went out to move him, but he wouldn’t budge, so my restaurant manager threw a cold bucket of water over him.

The man then called the police.