Sept 08 09 17

08.09.17 taking on potus Tears & fears

The BBC man who squared up to Trump

The passion of

Natalia Vodianova

a w a y & u p , london’s , p U

brightest rising stars

EDITOR’S LETTER 5 Yoga raves and fashion to crave in CAPITAL GAINS 6 Laura Craik says everyone’s an icon now in UPFRONT 9 Our MOST WANTED is Bulgari’s snake-charming bag 12 Super VODIANOVA: Natalia on poverty, divorce and being a working mother

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19 Retro jeans and kaftan dreams in STYLE NOTES 21 Our man in Washington, JON SOPEL 24 The YOUNG ACTORS about to break big REFLECTION ROOM ‘For an immersive public art experience visit the V&A, where the London-based Australian light artist Flynn Talbot illuminates each end of the Prince Consort Gallery with his signature coloured light installations.’

Wendy Tee, acting art director

31 Fascia is the word you need to know in BEAUTY

EDITOR Laura Weir

35 GRACE & FLAVOUR is torn over The Wigmore 37 TART fry some courgette fritters 38 Soup up your stationery in HOMEWORK 41 ESCAPE to the UK’s university towns 42 Alice Temperley’s MY LONDON

Here’s what the ES team can’t wait to see at London Design Festival

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SET IN STONE ‘The Design Museum is unearthing marble marvels from 16-24 September, including a slide by Elemental and domestic objects by Michael Anastassiades.’ Katrina Israel, fashion features director

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SILENT ARCH ‘I love the idea of Silent Arch by Bharat and Jean, which makes reference to the redevelopment of Brixton’s railway arches and encourages visitors to reflect on an ever-changing urban environment.’

Helen Gibson, picture editor

THE MECHANICS OF DISBELIEF ‘Es Devlin is famous for designing stage sets for everyone from Beyoncé to Kanye West. I’m such an admirer of her work and can’t wait for her talk, The Mechanics of Disbelief, at the Design Festival.’

Anna van Praagh, deputy editor

Visit us online: standard.co.uk/esmagazine • Follow us: Cover: Jess, Amber, Fisayo and Joe photographed by Jonny Cochrane and Morgane Lay. Credits on page 24

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VILLA WALALA ‘I adore everything that Camille Walala does and am so excited that she is doing the landmark project.’ Lily Worcester, deputy beauty and lifestyle editor

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Editor Laura Weir Deputy editor Anna van Praagh Features director Alice-Azania Jarvis Acting art director Wendy Tee 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

08.09.17 ES MAGAZINE 3

capital gains What to do in London

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Rays money

Paddles at the ready, as Christie’s and Paddle8 host a silent auction of some seriously impressive artists, from Gormley to Yeo. It’s all in aid of the brilliant Rays of Sunshine Children’s Charity, so every winning bid for an Emin or Opie is philanthropic to boot.

Tickets £75. 7 Sep (raysofsunshine.org.uk)

by FRANKIE M c COY

RIXO ON

Pecker up

Remember Woody Woodpecker? Good luck getting that laugh out of your head as you peruse House of Holland’s latest Woody-inspired collection of denim, T-shirts and dresses, exclusively available at its Fenwick pop-up for Fashion Week.

11-18 Sep (fenwick.com)

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Fan of a floaty, gorgeously patterned vintage-style frock? Get to the Rixo pop-up shop in Soho, which will be selling the brand’s AW17 ‘Shanghai Chic’ collection plus an exclusive, super colourful ‘Porcelain Oriental’ print.

Essential wearing, FYI. Until 14 Sep (rixo.co.uk)

Vive Tel Aviv

Tel Aviv is known as the ‘Miami of the Middle East’, dontcha know — find out what makes this hard-partying, culture-packed city so brilliant at TLV in LDN, a festival dedicated to food, music and art from the Israeli city, all kicking off on Friday with a show by ‘godfathers of psychedelic trance’, Infected Mushroom (left). Trust us, they’re great. Various locations.

8-11 Sep (tlvinldn.org)

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High bloom

Getty Images; illustration by Jonathan Calugi @ Machas

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Make your back-to-school resolution to learn floriography — the language of flowers — by immersing yourself in a big bunch of posh petals, as Bloom & Wild collaborates with superflorist Nikki Tibbles on a premier collection. (bloomandwild.com)

last chance: Soak up the sonorous tones of Audra McDonald as she belts out Billie Holiday’s classics in ‘Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar and Grill’, before it closes on 9 Sep. (wyndhamstheatre.co.uk)

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Scent of a woman

Bathe in oceans of scent at Espace Gabrielle Chanel, a cool, perfumed oasis in Old Bond Street dedicated to the fashion house founder, with interactive fragrance workshops in beautiful surroundings. Free entry. 8-24 Sep (espacegabriellechanel.co.uk)

Downward rave

Prepare to stretch yourself sweaty as the brilliant Fierce Grace North hot yoga studio celebrates its revamped Hothouse with a Yoga Rave night, soundtracked by live DJs, followed by a Camden Town Brewery-fuelled after-party. Tickets £10.

8 Sep (fiercegracenorth.com)

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look ahead: Head to the King’s Road as Anouska

Beckwith shows her stunning photo series War in Heaven at the Saatchi Gallery’s START art fair. 14-17 Sep (startartfair.com)

08.09.17 es magazine

upfront Laura Craik on what makes an icon, eating the rainbow and designer collaborations

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over the rainbow Most people put on weight after Christmas; I gain it over summer.

September is my January, which is a shame because you’re meant to look all shiny and thin after your holidays as opposed to merely shiny in a toxic, earlymenopausal way. I’m currently trying to ‘eat the rainbow’ instead of all the pies, but it isn’t going well, so I’m cheered by a new study claiming that if you want to ward off an early, gruesome death, you only need to suffer three portions of fruit and veg a day rather

es magazine 08.09.17

Kim Kardashian West as Jackie Onassis for Interview

Kendall Jenner is a sweet, hard-working girl making the most of fame, but she is not a style icon than the prescribed five. ‘Rainbows: Pretty In The Sky, Minging On The Plate’ is what my fridge magnet would say if I were a fridge-magnet manufacturer. And also: ‘Nutrition Experts Should Stop Changing Their Minds And Admit They Don’t Have A Clue What They Are Talking About.’ perfect partners Missed out on that Supreme x Louis Vuitton weekend bag? Still pining after that Canada Goose x Vetements camoprint parka? Fear not: The North Face x Sacai is here. Street x la-di-da designer collaborations are quite the thing this year, but as a person whose Sacai x Vans baseball boots still rank among my top 10 shoes three years after I got my greedy little hands on them, I’d say this partnership is a little special.

Especially if you’re a sad f*** like me who’s spent her life looking for the perfect parka. The North Face x Sacai parkas, at Dover Street Market.

Spot the icon: Kendall Jenner or Naomi Campbell?

HOT manhattan beach Jennifer Egan’s new novel: believe the hype.

Out 3 October.

NOT purple Hot enough last week, but now not, after Prince’s sister revealed his favourite colour was actually orange. Orange Rain doesn’t quite have the same ring to it.

Steven Klein/courtesy Interview magazine; Getty; Rex; Alamy

ne of my favourite things about going to church is gazing up at the large plaster effigy of Jesus Christ. Even in my saddest moments, He always looks sadder. Probably because He’s being crucified. And for what?

So North Korea can fire missiles over Japan?

Jesus is an icon. But in 1,983 years’ time it is unlikely that people will be bending the knee to any burnished-gold effigies of Kendall Jenner. Yet in a matter of hours, Kendall will be crowned Fashion Icon Of The Decade at an awards ceremony during New York Fashion Week. Even though, a decade ago, she was 11 years old. And wore Keds. Which is fine, only not iconic.

Kendall’s exhaltation is just the latest example of Superlativitis, that modern disease whereby people attach far more illustrious descriptors to people/ outfits/bacon sarnies than they deserve.

‘OMG OMG SO ICONIC,’ people will post under another picture of Taylor Swift in fishnets and a basque. Other things recently described as iconic: the GBBO kitchen, an actor who starred in Neighbours, a Royal Mail sorting office, a hamburger.

Enthusiasm is a wonderful thing. I’m all for it. Being nonplussed about stuff is the easiest stance in the world.

But we really need to reclaim the word ‘icon’. Or at least be more selective with its use. Kendall Jenner is a sweet, hard-working girl making the most of the fame that fate and shrewd business acumen has bestowed upon her family, but she is not a style icon.

She is not the Virgin Mary, Princess Diana, Liza Minnelli, Grace Jones or Jackie Onassis, currently rolling in her grave over Kim Kardashian West impersonating her on the cover of Interview.

The next time you’re tempted to call someone an icon, follow this handy checklist. Is she holding a Gaia bag? Is she better looking than you? Does she have a million followers? Not enough. Is she Naomi Campbell opening the Alaïa show in July 2017? She’s an icon.

THE most WANTED BULGARI x Nicholas Kirkwood Serpenti Forever flap cover bag, £1,990, at net-a-porter.com

NameSnake This is acharmer: swathe of dummy Nicholas hastoreWORKED text that Kirkwood can be used indicate how Bulgari’s Serpenti bag many wordsForever fit a with a little extra bite Caption of item goes here to fill

PHOTOGRAPH BY john gribben STYLED BY sophie paxton

08.09.17 es magazine

12 es magazine 08.09.17

She’s got the

power

Liz Collins/Trunk Archive

Natalia Vodianova grew up in grinding poverty and became one of the world’s top models. But she didn’t stop there. She tells Charlotte Edwardes about changing lives through her foundation, her relentless work ethic and why her marriage broke down

atalia Vodianova has the accent of a seductive James Bond v i l la i ne s s: hu sk y a nd indeterminate, her native Russian laced with Parisian fricatives. She’s probably a good deal tougher than Bond though, despite her bone-snapping appearance. She has a focused determination that seems uniquely Russian: unrelenting and hard. Whereas the cliché once belonged to gymnasts and piano players, Russia now seems to export these gritty female entrepreneurs whose work ethic makes us all look idle.

Last time I met her she was eight months’ pregnant and wearing a sweatshirt over a bump the size of a bum bag. Two babies in the intervening three years and I detect a little concealer around the eyes, maybe a shallow frown line. At 35 she’s a mother of five (five!). Is she done?

‘For a while,’ she smiles. ‘I need to just make sure I do well with everything else I have on, which is a lot.’

Yes, well she certainly packs it in. There’s the modelling from which she made her name, a £20m career trimmed to an efficient 20 days a year. Then there is her Naked Heart Foundation, which has raised £30m since 2004 for children with disabilities. Four years ago she launched Elbi, an app which allows people to ‘micro donate’ by pressing a ‘love button’. She calls it ‘a

philanthropy collective’, happily reclaiming a word once soaked in communist propaganda.

‘It’s a very Russian idea,’ she continues. ‘You don’t have 100 roubles but you have a hundred friends. It’s the alternative to billionaires who donate to certain causes and who choose where this money should go. It’s about collective power.’

It’s tempting — oh, so tempting — to see her as another rich celebrity patronising the poor and relieving their consciences with ‘good works’. After all, she was married aged 19 to the aristocrat Justin Portman, 13 years older, whose family coffers pulsate with revenue from the large chunk of central London they own. Now she lives with the father of her two youngest children, Antoine Arnault, the son of Bernard Arnault, the owner of LVMH, worth £43.5bn and ranked the eighth richest person in the world. Arguably she has a Marie Antoinette existence in central Paris with a view of the Eiffel Tower from her apartment — C’est génial! — and any material thing her fluttering heart desires.

But that is to oversimplify. Hers is a rags-to-riches story: a childhood below the poverty line in Nizhny Novgorod, a bleak and grim industrial city in western Russia. She and her mother, Larissa, were abandoned first by her father, then her stepfather after her half-sister Oksana was born with autism and cerebral palsy.

Sometimes a sachet of dried soup was all she ate in a day.

By 11 she was selling fruit by the side of the road. Cold,

08.09.17 es magazine 13

Vodianova with her children’s furniture range for made.com and, below from left, with Mario Testino, Patrick Demarchelier and Anna Wintour at her 35th birthday party in Paris

The Naked Heart Foundation Fund Fair

Getty; Instagram

On the runway a month after having her fifth child

hunger, survival — these were not alien or romanticised concepts. The mark of poverty is still on her, she says, most With, from left, Caroline Winberg, Cara Delevingne explicitly in her understanding and Doutzen Kroes of the ‘shame’ that surrounds it. When I ask if she can see it in others, she surprises me: she starts to cry. It touches something visceral.

‘It’s a very emotional question. For those simple families who nobody cares about, really living with that stigma [for example] of disability, then even if I give them money, it’s not enough. The best thing I can do is spend time with them listening and to share my story.

And, yes, we cry a lot. Usually.’

She says shared traumatic experiences — whether it is living in poverty, with someone disabled, or losing someone to cancer — transcends friendship, nationality, blood ‘or any other bond’. In an ideal world, she says, we would draw on our experiences to comfort one another more often. ‘We have blind corners in our lives; we may have next door someone who we could understand.’

I’m sure psychologists could find an unconscious link

between the hardship of childhood and her attraction to extremely rich men, but one driving ambition has been to improve her mother’s life.

‘And I have succeeded.

My mother has a little business and is independent.

She can buy me presents that I did not pay for.’ She says Larissa instilled in her two things: self-reliance and a steely drive. (‘I tell myself this is the heritage I am leaving my children: a work ethic.’)

‘My mother was in a desperate situation, working four jobs, raising kids alone. From a young age she taught me: “Only rely on yourself. You have to be strong. No one will do anything for you; you have to do it for yourself.”

‘And she lived it. I had this idea that the government is a faraway thing that does not affect me, touch me or help me.’

Of course, her children are growing up in a different universe, with easy proximity to the French government.

Vodianova has met Emmanuel Macron, and Macron’s wife, Brigitte, is friends with Antoine’s sister, Delphine. (I make a terrible faux pas by asking if Delphine helps Brigitte with her wardrobe — ‘Ha! Fashion for Delphine is a businesswoman, not a Relief with Bella stylist. How funny that you thought she Hadid, Kendall This is a Jenner of and was a stylist. I must tell her.’) swathe Naomi Campbell We sidetrack to discuss the age difference between the President and his wife — it’s 25 years — and Vodianova gives me a Gallic shrug and says this is not unusual in Paris. ‘I often see it where you have this incredibly handsome young guy with this beautiful older woman — and obviously much older. It’s quite common. If he wasn’t the President, no one would blink.’

“If you haven’t been born into the British aristocracy, it can be difficult to be part of. I was born working class” We are sitting in the showroom of Made.com on Rue Étienne Marcel surveying yet another of her projects combining tech and fundraising: a children’s furniture range she has designed for the online company cofounded by her buddy Brent Hoberman of lastminute. com fame. A bedroom scene — bed, wardrobe, bookshelves decorated with matryoshkas — has been set up in a little tableau vivant beside us in. Vodianova tells me she met Hoberman through Founders Forum and he insisted she get involved, which wasn’t a chore as she loves tech (‘It’s where everything is going’). Most importantly, all proceeds go to Naked Heart.

She takes me through the detail — the pull holes for drawers to stop little fingers getting trapped: ‘This is a phobia for me because when I was five someone closed the door on my finger. I still remember the pain.’

08.09.17 es magazine 15

So what was her own bedroom like growing up? ‘I didn’t have a bedroom,’ she says. ‘Every single one’ of her children — Lucas, 16; Neva, 11; Viktor, 10, with Portman; Maxim, three; and Roman, one, with Arnault — have just done a publicity shoot here and ‘loved it’, she says.

She softens when she is talking about her kids, flipping one thigh-high boot over the other, her rodstraight back dissolving a little. They were all breastVodianova with fed, ‘which is very, very tiring. None of my children her children slept, so for the last 15 years I’ve been up every night twice at least. The baby is my bonus for all the hard work I’ve done: he’s a saint.’

She has help — ‘Of course, or I wouldn’t be here’ — and keeps tabs on each of them by carving out one-on-one time. ‘I have moments where I feel I’m losing control of one — that’s motherhood. Naturally babies With, from left, get priority, but then it’s about working out Oksana, Kristina and their mother, Larissa which child needs extra time.’

They don’t complain, although recently she overheard the youngest of the Portman brood saying to the eldest: ‘Yes, but you had mummy to yourself for four years.’ The three eldest moved to Paris from a rural Mill House in West Sussex in 2012. ‘It was With exciting and scary. They were very courageous. Of Antoine Arnault course, they left friends behind and I do sense that they miss the pleasures of the countryside because they don’t have this in Paris. But they’ve settled well. And now they speak another language.’

Are they very Parisian now? She smirks. ‘No, they are still very English.’ In fact, Paris was the first European city the 17-year-old Vodianova experienced on arriving from Russia as a fledgling model. ‘I spent one year here as a girl with no money, going on the Metro, really discovering the city. And it’s probably the city I know the most out of my home town.’

A

t 18 she moved to New York where she threw herself into her work. And it was there she met the sybaritic Portman, an artist and Prince Charming with a taste for models (more recently he was dating the Ukrainian Anna Shut, 23).

Vodianova could have lived happily ever after if her happily ever had been going to parties, looking pretty and staying up late. She once said that ‘the biggest differences between England and France is royalty versus republican and my marriages reflect that. My first husband was a member of the aristocracy, did not work but was a walking encyclopedia. My second husband is a workaholic.’

I ask her to elaborate. ‘I am a workaholic as well,’ she says brightly. ‘That’s why it didn’t work with my ex-husband. We loved each other but we separated like water and oil because we were just very…’ she searches for the elusive word. ‘Our everyday lives were different. Our rhythm of life was different.’

In the past she has described Portman’s parenting as ‘hands-off’. ‘With Antoine we love to get up in the morning, be with the children then go to work.’

16 es magazine 08.09.17

With, from left, Antoine, Bernard, Hélène Mercier and Frédéric Arnault

With Delphine Arnault, left, and Miroslava Duma

The British aristocracy, she says, was ‘another world’, not necessarily welcoming to outsiders. ‘It’s a beautiful world, yes. But if you haven’t been born into it, it can be difficult to be part of. I was born into a working-class family. And then when things became really desperate I had to work. I was very young.’

By 19 she was married to Portman and had her first child. Not that it slowed her down. She stepped back on to the runway 10 days after giving birth and did 40 shows that season. ‘He had all this free time to follow me and our baby around in my crazy career. At the time I thought I knew everything. I thought that it didn’t matter that we were so different because we had complicity elsewhere. In emotional ways we were very supportive of each other.’

With exhusband On returning to England they bought Justin their rambling country house from Portman Evelyn de Rothschild and filled it with children and animals. But the ‘glue’ of their relationship began to come apart.

Vodianova’s patience with Portman’s partying wore thin.

She met Arnault in 2008 shooting for Louis Vuitton although she doesn’t remember it. They met again in 2011 and after two dates she was smitten. Moving her three children to Paris wasn’t difficult as Portman spends so much time wrapped in a sarong in a sprawling estate in Uruguay. But shortly after they separated Portman wrote a post on Facebook saying that his life was not in ‘synchronicity’ with her ‘fashion’ life. He claims she was embarrassed of him, treated him like an ‘old Louis Vuitton handbag’ and that after a stint in rehab he said she didn’t receive him home with any warmth.

She describes the 40-year-old Arnault — the chief executive of Berluti and the chairman of the Italian cashmere company Loro Piana — as ‘always happy to go to work: very driven and very hardworking.

‘For me work is my life. I guess in that sense we are very well balanced. He inspires me and I think I inspire him because of the same energy I give, but to philanthropy.

‘He is actually an incredibly compassionate person,’ she adds. ‘But like any man his view is, “Make your own money first, secure your career, your wellbeing, the wellbeing of your family and then you think of everything else.”’ She says she feels guilty about working so hard ‘especially when in principle I don’t have to work any more’. She says she compensates by having no time to herself — and anyway even when she tries she feels guilty. Last night, she says, she tried to enhance her evening beauty routine by five minutes.

‘I swear to God I am standing there doing this last night, thinking, “Agh, my husband is already in bed. I could be cuddling with him. Or I could be like chatting with my kids.” I tell myself, “Shut up — stop it. You’re crazy.”

‘But I can’t help it.’

To see the full Matryoshka children’s furniture collection designed in collaboration with Natalia Vodianova, go to made.com

STYLE NOTES What we love now

M.I.H JEANS jacket, £345 (mihjeans.com)

EUDON CHOI coat, £260, at johnlewis. com

EDITED BY KATRINA ISRAEL

Golborne GIRL

M.i.h Jeans has collaborated with stylist and Shepherd’s Bush local Bay Garnett on the Golborne Road Project: an eightpiece collection that draws upon this west London style mecca’s 1990s heyday, M.I.H JEANS when the mixing dress, £345 of high and low and (mih-jeans.com) designer and vintage formulated a new way of dressing. The line references archive favourites from Garnett’s closet including Anita Pallenberg’s 1970s velour Henley and the classic camo shirt.

FINE LINES

Eudon Choi flexes his tailoring skills as John Lewis’s AW17 guest designer, with a five-piece coat collection available online and in store from 7 September.

YES WE KAFTAN

If you’ve waited until September for your summer holiday, reward yourself with one of March11’s covetable kaftans. The brand is known for its exceptional embroidery, which can take days to stitch, and flattering folk styles that reference the traditional Ukrainian vyshyvanka blouse. Catch these while you can; they already sold out at Selfridges and Harrods once this summer.

TOM DAVIES glasses, £995 (tdtomdavies.com)

Natasha Pszenicki; illustration by Jonathan Calugi @ Machas

THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS

London’s premier spectacle designer Tom Davies is opening his fifth store, this time in Covent Garden, offering his latest ready-to-wear (above) along with his bespoke service that’s used by Heston Blumenthal to Kristen Stewart.

If you have never been entirely happy with the fit of your frames, this custom offering will change the way you feel about wearing glasses.

14 The Piazza, Covent Garden, WC2

CLAUDIE PIERLOT Anouck bag, £260 (020 7487 4784)

Full CIRCLE

Parisian label Claudie Pierlot’s new Anouck bag marries clean lines with the brand’s signature ring hardware for a modern spin on the cross-body.

InSTARglam A spin-off from e-com platform coffeenclothes.com, this designer cuppa is stylishly caffeinated to our taste.

@designerlattes

MARCH11 maxi dress, £1,630; blouse, £543, both at harrods.com

A leaf in TIME

In celebration of his 100th collection for AW17, Dries Van Noten has released twin retrospective tomes that majestically chronicle each of his exquisite shows. ‘Dries Van Noten 1-50’ and ‘51-100’, £65 each; limited edition slipcase ‘Dries Van Noten 1-100’, £130, published by Lannoo

Follow us at @eveningstandardmagazine

08.09.17 ES MAGAZINE 19

Our man in

DC

He’s the Beeb’s North America editor, responsible for covering the White House and holding Donald Trump to account. Jon Sopel describes the madness — and exhilaration — of covering a most unusual presidency PhotographS BY Noah Willman

Rex; Getty; Noah Willman

S

oon after my appointment as the BBC’s North America editor in the spring of 2014, my wife and I moved in to our new house in Washington, DC. The first conversation with our neighbour across the street revolved around the subject of the weather.

‘What’s it like in the summer?’ my wife asked. ‘Brutal,’ he said. And in winter? He paused for a moment before repeating himself: ‘Brutal.’

He wasn’t wrong — in winter the temperature struggles to get above freezing point — but it’s precisely this ‘brutal’ weather I have to thank for the moment that I found myself, one February morning, going head to head with President Donald Trump in what became one of the most memorable White House news conferences ever given, and certainly one of the most memorable moments of my journalistic career.

Rewind a few hours and I was at home, working on my book, when an announcement on the television caught my attention. The President

was to hold an unscheduled news conference. I dashed to the White House, finding on arrival that most journalists were sitting in the warmth of the briefing room waiting to be ushered up the outdoor staircase that leads into the East Wing, where the conference would take place.

I realised that if I was going to get a good seat with a clear eye-line to the President, I needed to be among the first to get into the room. So instead of joining them I braved the cold and waited outside at the bottom of the staircase.

Sure enough, I nabbed a prime spot. The President was in feisty, belligerent form, using the occasion to berate the ‘dishonest’ media, and growling and barking his replies to questions from the Sopel, familiar US network below, correspondents. questions Trump Then he pointed his finger at me. I had barely

got a word out when, hearing my accent, he demanded to know where I was from.

‘BBC News,’ I said.

‘Another beauty,’ he muttered.

‘Good line,’ I quipped, but then with — hopefully — firmness and politeness, I said we were ‘impartial, free and fair’.

‘Yeah, sure,’ he replied. ‘Just like CNN, right?’ And the banter went on back and forth, with the President eventually saying, ‘I know who you are,’ which, as my children were quick to note, contained more than a hint of menace.

Now, if you had said to me when I started my career that I’d one day find myself in the same room as the leader of the free world, I would have thought that far-fetched. If you had said I would have been going toe to toe with him in the East Room of the White House, I would have thought that unimaginable.

The reaction to our stand-off was extraordinary: people whom I hadn’t heard from for years got in touch. I misread my Twitter numbers and thought I had gained 50 followers; in fact, I had gained 5,000. The American press, from whom, as a Brit, I’d always been one step removed, started treat-

08.09.17 es magazine 21

Jon Sopel in Washington, DC, and below, with other members of the British press in a selfie taken by Nick Robinson at the Ultimate News Quiz in March 2014

ing me as part of the gang.

But then Donald Trump’s presidency is one like no other. It’s not so much that the President plays by different rules; it’s as though there are no rules. Things he’s said and done that would sink another politician seem to leave no mark. It’s as though he is simultaneously coated in perma-tan and Teflon. And, if any journalist is about to come out to Washington to cover this story, my advice is this — work on strengthening your jaw muscles. Because your jaw will be hitting the floor daily.

picture credits please xxxxx

“it’s impossible to report every single thing happening without going mad” Take the evening last November when I was sitting in a lovely fish restaurant opposite Georgetown Waterfront on the banks of the Potomac River. My phone started vibrating wildly. The then president-elect had just tweeted that Nigel Farage should become Britain’s next ambassador to Washington.

The press officer at the embassy in DC said the issue was above his pay grade and that I would have to speak to Downing Street directly for a comment. The problem? The Downing Street press officer whom I awoke

at 3am issued a string of words that I would not have been able to use on that morning’s Radio 4 bulletin. I paraphrased and said there had been a ‘shocked’ reaction.

The first briefing at the White House after the inauguration in January was also quite special.

The then press secretary, Sean Spicer, called an unheard-of Saturday evening briefing to berate us. He refused questions, but insisted that the crowds attending the inauguration were the biggest in history.

The photos proved conclusively otherwise. The person sitting next to me at this extraordinary event, who’d been a Southern Africa correspondent, said it was like being back in Zimbabwe again. I said it felt like we were children being told off at school.

The animosity between the administration and the press is all the more remarkable in the US since the primary difference between reporting here and my old job in London — as a BBC 1 presenter and anchor on BBC World News — is that the US press act with more deference towards the President than the British do to the Prime Minister.

They always, for example, stand up when the President comes into the room. That is certainly not the response to Theresa May. In the same press conference during which we came to blows, the President insisted that his victory in the electoral college was the biggest since Ronald Reagan.

True — if you ignore Barack Obama’s two victories and George HW Bush’s landslide in 1988. Trump would claim that his loss of the popular vote was down to millions of people voting illegally, all of them for Hillary Clinton. Not a shred of evidence has been produced to back up this assertion. Indeed, the only prosecution to date for impersonation at the ballot box is for someone voting twice for Trump.

Then there is the madness of this summer.

There isn’t the space to list it all. But — and here I am taking the deepest of breaths — he has lost his press secretary, his new communications director Anthony ‘the Mooch’ Scaramucci, who lasted just 10 days, his chief of staff, his chief strategist Steve Bannon, his adviser Sebastian Gorka — all in four weeks.

He has claimed that he has received phone

Sopel interviews Barack Obama in July 2015

calls from the President of Mexico congratulating him on his immigration policies and from the leader of the Boy Scouts saying the President had delivered the greatest-ever speech to the scouts at their annual jamboree. Days later the White House conceded that these calls did not happen (maintaining instead that they took place in person).

He has publicly insulted his Attorney General, has gone to war with the most senior Republicans in his party and seemed to threaten nuclear war against North Korea.

He has banned transgender individuals from the military and caused a furore with his ambiguous reaction to the events in Charlottesville. On that topic his chief economic adviser openly criticised him, while the chief executives of the corporate titans of America resigned en masse from a White House advisory council.

In normal times this would be a summary of the events of a four-year term, not four weeks. On the day of the firing of Bannon, my wife and I were on a plane about to take off for Chicago, where we were heading for the weekend. My instinct was to get off the plane, but I decided against it. It is impossible to cover every single thing happening at the moment without going mad. Or, as someone put it to me, reporting on this President is like trying to put your mouth over a fire hydrant and catching every drop of water.

Can it carry on like this? I suspect it can.

A former chief of staff to Obama said he was going to nominate this White House for a Tony award for most drama. Not best drama — just most. This often feels like being part of the maddest reality-TV show ever devised… and, as the promoters like to say, it’s going to run and run.

As for me, well, when my time here eventually comes to an end, I’ll need a stint at the beach, with a good book and a piña colada — but for now I have the best job in news.

Nothing will top it.

‘If Only They Didn’t Speak English — Notes from Trump’s America’ by Jon Sopel is published by BBC Books, £20

08.09.17 es magazine 23

Talent show A new generation of acting stars is on the rise this autumn. From the Stockwell lad winning plaudits at the National to the Burberry model starring in JK Rowling’s Strike, Frankie McCoy introduces the class of 2017 PhotographS BY Jonny cochrane and morgane lay

f

ew things in life are as enjoyable as being able to say, ‘I told you so’ — particularly when an actor you have been raving about makes it and becomes the star you always said they were destined to be. The good news is that, right now, there is a whole group of bright young things about to step out of the shadows of the huge names they have already supported — we’re talking George Clooney, Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett, all by the age of 16 — and into the limelight themselves. Look closely and take note: these are the kids you’ll be seeing picking up Baftas and Oscars in a few years’ time.

Amber Anderson

Born in Glastonbury and Steiner-educated (‘my childhood was pretty New Age, I grew up on a lot of homeopathy and organic veg’) until the age of 11, Anderson is a talented pianist, violinist and jazz singer, having studied at music school in Aberdeen after her parents moved there. Now based in Ladbroke Grove, she was scouted at 15 after a school friend persuaded her to enter a magazine modelling competition, and used modelling as a means to live in

24 es magazine 08.09.17

DIANE VON FURSTENBERG dress, £374, at matches fashion.com

London. Now 25, she still models for Burberry, but currently her acting career is in the ascendance, with roles in the BBC’s Strike and London-set thriller In Darkness following later this year.

She spends her downtime drinking red wine at her local, Ariadne’s Nectar, and hanging out with boyfriend Jordan Stephens from Rizzle Kicks and her two cats Sooty and Jasper (‘I’m slowly convincing Jordan — he’s definitely more of a dog person!’)

What’s your favourite food?

‘A Scottish delicacy you don’t get here, the macaroni pie — pastry full of macaroni cheese.’

Cover image: Jess wears TOPSHOP dress, £245 (topshop.com).

Amber wears MARQUES’ALMEIDA dress, £420; and Fisayo wears GUCCI jumper, £795, both at brownsfashion.com; APC trousers, £240, at harveynichols.com.

Joe wears ETUDES jumper, £410, at Liberty (020 7734 1234); SANDRO trousers, £210, at harrods.com

Laurie Kynaston

Dogged perseverance and pretending to live in London got Kynaston his first agent: ‘When I was 19 I bought the Spotlight Contacts book and I started at A, writing to agents and saying I was living in London. By the time I got to G there were enough replies.’ Having grown up on a farm in north Wales, he got into acting to get out of lessons and, after doing time at the National Youth Theatre of Wales, the 23-year-old has starred in BBC2’s Cradle to Grave. Despite minimal theatre experience (‘I think because I didn’t go to drama school it’s a bit harder to get into theatre; all the guys my age have just finished, with four years of experience’), he has the backing of former Globe artistic director Dominic Dromgoole, and stars in the new film he has produced, Undercliffe. Kynaston now actually does live in London (Stoke Newington), and can currently be seen in cinemas as The Smiths’s Johnny Marr in Morrissey biopic England is Mine. ‘My favourite song has to be “How Soon Is Now?”’ he says, ‘because the song makes you feel like you’re on a journey; it’s almost like a train going down the tracks in that Johnny Marr riff.’

What was your first experience of London?

‘I remember catching the train to see my brother when I was 11 and walking down Ridley Road market, and it being such an attack on the senses for a boy from a farm in north Wales!’

SANDRO T-shirt, £69; FOLK cropped trousers, £115, both at harrods.com.

DR MARTENS boots, £135 (drmartens.com)

08.09.17 es magazine 25

Raffey Cassidy

Worsley-born Cassidy has been acting for more than half her life: the 15-year-old’s career accidentally kicked off when she was seven and waiting for her brother Finney while he auditioned for the BBC’s Spanish Flu: The Forgotten Fallen in 2009. The producers suddenly decided they needed a little girl, invited Cassidy in and she won the part (her brother, who still acts, didn’t.

Oops). Since then it’s been one starry production after another, from Tomorrowland with George Clooney in 2015 to Allied with Brad Pitt in 2016 — although her favourite role was playing the young Snow White in Snow White and the Huntsman, alongside Kristen Stewart (‘I had a really cool daily training routine of swimming, gymnastics and martial arts for nine months’). The next big deal is creepy thriller The Killing of a Sacred Deer (the cult film of early 2018, FYI) starring Colin Farrell and Nicole Kidman, in which Cassidy’s American accent comes from watching the Disney Channel.

What would you do if not acting?

‘I’d really want to be a fashion designer. Me and my sister are actually making a dress for my mum.’

AMI tee, £80 (amiparis.com)

TOPSHOP shirt, £29 (topshop.com)

Fisayo Akinade

As a young Mancunian, Akinade wanted to be a gymnast, before a back injury took him out of action. The athletics world’s loss ended up being acting’s gain, as he filled his Monday evenings with drama club instead. A production of August Wilson’s play Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom reinforced his path: ‘It was the first time I’d seen black men on stage,’ he says. ‘And not just having a line or two. The story and storyline were about them. It really meant a lot to me.’ The 29-yearold has since starred in E4’s brilliant LGBT series Cucumber, and alongside Gemma Arterton in the National Theatre’s Saint Joan. Now in Forest Hill, he’s just finished a run of the Barber Shop Chronicles at the NT’s Dorfman (catch it when it returns this autumn); next he appears alongside Alex Hassell and Conleth Hill in the supernatural horror, The Isle. When he’s not acting, find him at Pizza Express, demolishing a Pollo Ad Astra.

Is there a problem with diversity in the industry?

‘Riz Ahmed’s speech in the House of Commons was brilliant. He said it’s not about being diverse, you’ve got to be representative to tell diverse stories. It’s not just saying: “We did a black Julius Caesar.” You’ve got to tell stories from those communities.’

26 es magazine 08.09.17

Ka e Alexander

GoT fans, look closely and see if you recognise Alexander. Granted, it’s not easy, given that the 32-year-old played one of the Children of the Forest, Leaf, in series six: so heavily madeup, with prosthetics glued onto her entire body, that ‘I was getting picked up at midnight to get into make-up at 1am, to be on set for 10am!’ Born in Kobe, Japan, at the age of 10 she moved to north London, where she became obsessed with Pineapple Studio classes and, aged 14, got into acting after she was dragged down to an opening day at the BRIT school by a friend. Since then, she’s appeared alongside Jack Whitehall in school comedy Bad Education and Phoebe WallerBridge in the brilliant sitcom Fleabag, and has just finished filming Steven Spielberg’s Ready Player One (‘He caught me crouched under a table drinking coffee and came and talked to me!’) and playing a journalist in Gloria at Hampstead Theatre (did it make you want to be a journalist? ‘Absolutely not!’). Catch her taking over the Beeb next, with roles in David Hare’s thriller Collateral and Neil Cross’s Hard Sun, both out next year.

Where do you hang out?

‘I go climbing at The Arch Climbing Wall in Bermondsey; it’s a really nice place to socialise and get your mind off things, and it’s great for co-ordination and core work.’

DAVID KOMA dress, £785 (davidkoma.co.uk).

Shoes, Kae’s own

08.09.17 es magazine 27

TOPSHOP dress, £245 (topshop.com)

Jess Barden

It was Dolly Parton who inspired Barden to seek something other than working nine to five: ‘I remember being three years old and my auntie listening to Dolly Parton. Then I saw an album cover with Dolly on it, and I was like, “I want to be famous.”’ Luckily ITV used to make its children’s TV shows in Yorkshire, so the Wetherby-born Barden swooped in as an extra, and worked her way down to London at 16 with a part in Jez Butterworth’s Jerusalem at the Royal Court in 2009. An angst-ridden turn as the eponymous star of the Channel 4 drama, Ellen — a performance fuelled by a painful, real-life break-up — followed in 2015. Next? The 25-year-old is spearheading Netflix/ E4’s big dark comedy of the autumn, TEOTFW (The End of the F***ing World), in which she stars as misunderstood teenager Alyssa: ‘I’d have loved to have seen a character like Alyssa in a film or TV show when I was younger; she does exactly what she wants to do and doesn’t try to fit in with anyone.’

Fashion inspiration?

‘Anything Michelle Pfeiffer wore in the Nineties: she always has the best gold hoops and really cool denim jackets.’

28 es magazine 08.09.17

OUR LEGACY jacket, £260, at mrporter. com. JOHN ELLIOT T-shirt, £75, at harvey nichols.com. SANDRO trousers, £210, at harrods.com.

WHISTLES shoes, £175 (whistles.com)

Joe Quinn

The Stockwell-based Quinn got into acting because ‘I didn’t need A levels to go to drama school’. After a stint at LAMDA, the 23-year-old played Arthur Havisham in the BBC’s Dickensian in 2016 and the period drama work continues later in the year when he’ll play poor Leonard Bast in Kenneth Lonegarn’s adaptation of EM Forster’s classic Howard’s End. Currently he’s back in the present day, starring in the National Theatre’s sold-out production of Mosquitoes, alongside Olivia Williams and Olivia Colman, one of his idols (‘I couldn’t talk to her for the first three days because I was just staring at her thinking, “That’s Sophie from Peep Show!”’). In his downtime, it’s all about the theatre (he name-checks Angels in America as a recent favourite and says he ‘met Andrew Garfield outside The Understudy bar, when we were both pissed’) and spends a lot of time hanging out in ‘Brixton, Peckham, Soho. Such a cliché. Painfully millennial’.

What do you do to get in shape for performing?

‘Before Mosquitoes I was in impeccable shape, but the 17-year-old I play wouldn’t care about his aesthetic body-wise, so I’ve kind of let it go. It’s for the part!’

COS jumpsuit, £215 (cosstores.com) Hair and make-up

by Yulia Yurchenko.

Set design by Julia Dias

Jade Anouka

Acting was always more of a ‘hobby’ to Camberwell-based Anouka, who comes from a family of ‘numbers people’. ‘I genuinely grew up not knowing that you could be a professional actor,’ says the 28-year-old. Nonetheless, her drama teacher (shout-out to Mrs Forbes) insisted on getting her funding for the National Youth Theatre, and while she was still filling in her UCAS forms to do computer design, she found out that she had a place at Guildford School of Acting.

A successful audition at the Royal Shakespeare Company for The Penelopiad in 2007 followed, and she quickly became one of Phyllida Lloyd’s key actors in the director’s all-female Donmar Shakespeare trilogy (‘Meeting Phyllida changed my whole view about what performing Shakespeare could be’). She has just finished filming Mike Bartlett’s new thriller Trauma for ITV and makes poetry films in her spare time, roping in actors she has worked with (including Judi Dench). Her real goal though? Comedy: ‘I grew up obsessed with Jim Carrey. I would sit in front of the mirror and pull faces and move my eyebrows as much as I could.’

Where do you watch films?

‘Peckhamplex is basically my favourite place to be. Everything you see there is so much more fun, it’s just such a vibe seeing stuff there. Especially comedy!’

08.09.17 es magazine 29

beauty by katie service

Set design: Kerry Hughes. Model: Kateryna at Hired Hands. Nail technician: Erin Kristensen at Untitled Artists using Bobbi Brown. Paint from Farrow and Ball

From left, THIS WORKS Perfect Legs Skin Protector, £40 (thisworks.com). PRISMOLOGIE Citrine & Bergamot Energising Shower Gel, £30 (prismologie.com).

SOL DE JANEIRO Brazilian Bum Bum Cream, £44, at libertylondon. com. RODIAL Bee Venom Body Serum, £65 (rodial.co.uk)

naked ambition

Tinting, smoothing and hydrating products to turn your body into a work of art

PHOTOGRAPH BY Aleksandra Kingo STYLED BY LIly Worcester

08.09.17 es magazine 31

BEAUTY

Y

ou’ve got your cardio-toweights-training ratio down, you meditate daily, your diet is that of a saint — but how’s your fascia doing? The ‘F-word’ currently has the wellness world abuzz, with a host of new workouts and products promising to condition and work it.

But first: what is it? A connective tissue that is made mostly from collagen, fascia wraps like cling film around all the muscles, ligaments and organs in our body, both controlling their mobility and holding them in place. You could think of it, as Chiswick-based myofascial release NIKE Recovery therapist Fran Kehoe Ball, £21.99, at says, as five or six layers of taskers-sports. co.uk wetsuit zipped up tightly over muscles.

As we age, fascia can stiffen, with individual layers of the ‘wetsuit’ becoming twisted out of place, resulting in tension.

Keeping one’s fascia in good order reduces injury risk and increases muscle mobility: essentially powering up your workout. ‘If you think about the evolution of fitness, from the Jane Fonda aerobics boom through to body building, it has all been about isolation of muscle groups,’ muses Gideon Remfry, head of health and nutrition and Chelsea’s exclusive KX gym.

‘Now people are looking for a more integrative, holistic approach to working the body as a whole. Fascia, which interconnects everything in your anatomy, from your muscles to your central nervous system to your digestion, does exactly that.’

There are two sides to this fascia focus:

32 ES MAGAZINE 08.09.17

The F-word

London’s fitness elite are flexing their fascia — or connective tissue — to boost performance. Time to join them, says Katie Service tension release and prehab (ie conditioning your fascia to perform better while you work out). At Triyoga, myofascial release specialist Suzanne Waterworth uses her feet to feel out kinks in the layers of your fascia, followed by a hands-on resistance stretch, during which she actively reconditions the fascia. ‘Resistance stretching is similar to when you yawn and stretch in the morning,’ she surmises. ‘You tense your muscles first and move through that tension, engaging the fascia and not just pulling on it.’

For something more active, there’s the RX class at Equinox: a self-myofascial massage prehabilitation on the gym floor designed to eliminate pain, improve TRIGGER POINT Point Nano, £16, at sportsdirect.com

posture and enhance performance. At Moving Stretch at Breathe London’s Covent Garden studio, meanwhile, you can also work the fascia via resistance stretch movements, which surprisingly is harder work than it sounds. And if you’re a Pilates fan, sign up to the Melt Method — a workshop being held in October in Camden that applies fascial science to your Pilates mat.

Remfry also advocates the use of breath and meditation to activate the fascia before a workout. ‘If you oxygenate it, you can passively affect it and start to relax it.’ He recommends taking time before your gym session to take five deep inhales and exhales (in for five, hold for five, out for five).

Try stretching before and after and you’ll be amazed by your increased range of motion.

Inevitably, props to aid fascial conditioning are advancing as well. The GatorTail is a souped-up foam roller (read implement of torture) with a strategically grooved surface. It is short enough to carry in your kit bag and long enough to cover any width of your body: eking out any adhesions in the fascia. The same South Kensingtonbased brand is launching self-massaging flip flops that work with the fascia and reflexology points in the soles of the feet.

Until then, Remfry says a golf ball will do the trick: ‘There is a posterior chain of fascia that connects the sole of the foot and runs all the way up the back and over the top of the head and down into the forehead.

You can release that whole expanse of fascia just by rolling a golf ball under your foot for two to three minutes, pushing into the tender parts.’

Long may the fascianation continue.

Getty Images

GATORTAIL foam roller, £39.97 (gatortail.co.uk)

feast

grace & flavour The Wigmore has been hailed as a West End saviour.

Grace Dent undergoes a baptism of fire

“The chips are served with Bloody Mary salt that tastes like the gritty stuff from a bag of Nobby’s Nuts”

Ambience food

Jonny Cochrane; illustration by Jonathan Calugi @ Machas; James McDonald

W

onderful central London pubs are a precarious, nigh-mythical thing.

I weep for tourists peddled the myth of a warm ye olde British welcome, fine ales, a cosy fire in winter, perhaps an amiable pub dog. Ugh, those loveless hovels in the West End that smell of the daily disinfectant swill-out, deep fat fryer and staff’s depression. I’d rather be in Pret. Still, when news arrived of a new ‘modern British tavern’, The Wigmore, stuffed into the hind portions of The Langham hotel, I was interested. Not only was the menu sanctioned by Michel Roux Jr, The Wigmore is literally over the road from Broadcasting House, meaning here is a new venue for BBC management to beckon me proffering exciting projects, buy me the cheapest wine, inform me what a startling breath of fresh air I am to the station, then inevitably give the job to some public school wazzock with an ancestor. The Wigmore will doubtless be scene to many forthcoming Alan Partridge-style ‘Smell my cheese’ rampages. Or perhaps, ‘Smell my Masala Scotch egg in a puddle of dahl’, as this is one of the Roux-directed bar snacks that were flying off the menu when I ate there in the unloveable back saloon-style room.

The Wigmore is, according to the website, ‘a deluxe re-imagining’ of a British pub. It’s a pub where the olives are stuffed with veal and the chips festooned with a Bloody Mary salt, which tastes like the gritty stuff from a bag of Nobby’s Nuts. Much of The Wigmore menu is typical pub food, but with a wilfully ‘hip’ flourish. There’s gammon and eggs but with Sriracha mayo.

There’s a cheeseburger, but with a layer of grilled

the wigmore 15 Langham Place, Regent Street, W1 (020 7965 0198; the-wigmore.co.uk)

3

Ginger lemonade

1

Toastie

1

Olives

1

Scotch egg

£5.50

1

Blackberry lemonade

£4.50

1

Glass of Chapel Down

£9

1

Grapefruit juice

1

Diet Coke

1

Soda water

1

Burger

1

Chicken pie

1

Chips

1

Soft serve

Total

£13.50 £9 £6

£3.50 £7 £3.50 £13.50 £13 £4.50 £5 £97.50

ox tongue. There are mentions of seaweed butter, hispi cabbage, posh grilled cheese and lots of other things that had a moment in foodland 15 months ago for regional types to order and feel they’ve seen fancy London. Meanwhile, media types can snap up the small chicken pie with a puddle of mash for £13, listen to the server’s speech about the sublime quality of the pastry and not feel thoroughly hoodwinked, just partially.

I am torn on The Wigmore as I’m glad it exists, and it appears to be making some people happy, but I never, ever want to go there again.

The low seats in the saloon area that leave everyone trying to eat dinner with their knees somewhere up by their eyelines. The awful flock mock-common wallpaper. It’s like Anouska Hempel had a go designing a Toby Carvery. The noisiness of 200 post-work pint drinkers accompanying sad-faced tourists trying to divide up a whole chicken at a small pub table. And regardless of the menu’s strident modernism, the kitchen is being forced to serve a fearful amount of covers, and this showed. Nothing was seasoned properly or produced with anything resembling love because, well, how could it be? The trendily runny Scotch egg looked pretty but arrived in an inoffensive dahl lacking any clout. The fried vealstuffed olives were a lovely idea but tasted of very little. The grilled cheese was enormous, but offered no real impetus to splurge carb-intake on it.

The more food arrived, the less hungry I became, despite eating very little. Still, there is a small chance, I’ll float the idea, that I am a spoilt, over-indulged restaurant-critiquing tosspot who is literally fed up to the back teeth with offers of jolly experiences, so cannot see The Wigmore’s strengths. Several people tell me it has become their saviour, that the olives and Scotch egg are their go-to cheer-up snacks, and that the cheese toastie is really quite doable after three glasses of Chapel Down. Listen to these folk if you want.

I’m not right all of the time. Just pretty much almost all of it.

08.09.17 es magazine 35

feast

tart london Jemima Jones and Lucy Carr-Ellison turn a glut of

courgettes into fritters to nibble with a glass of wine

How does your garden grow? Lucy stocks up at the vegetable patch

Jemima Jones (left) and Lucy Carr-Ellison

Josh Shinner

M

arrows aren’t typically a vegetable we get excited about. Often flavourless and watery, a big old marrow doesn’t exactly inspire culinary creativity. But when it comes to the baby version — the ever-reliable courgette — we feel motivated to cook. There are so many ways to prepare these delicious, versatile vegetables.

Courgettes, along with mushrooms, are always a treat to find in the fridge. We like slow-cooking them with plenty of garlic, dried chilli, cream and tarragon, to be stirred through pasta for a midweek dinner; or slicing them lengthways and griddling them, to be added to a salad with chicken, parmesan and toasted pine nuts. We also adore them simply raw and marinated in olive oil.

Thanks to an end-of-summer glut we’ve found ourselves inundated with an amazing abundance of courgettes, quickly harvested before they grow into the dreaded marrow. Finding new ways to use them up has been a fun challenge. This is a recipe made up one summer afternoon in France, when we had a basket filled with courgettes.

Rather than throwing them on the barbecue, we thought about what you most want with that first cold drink of the evening. Something sizzling hot, crisp and cheesy — light enough not to spoil your dinner and with a moreish sauce for dunking.

These courgette fritters tick all the boxes, especially with the kick from the chilli. They’re the sort of thing worth frying the unhealthy way: a crispy delight that goes nicely with a good glass of buttery chardonnay.

Serves 4

courgette fritters

Olive oil, for frying 2 medium-sized courgettes, diced into 1cm cubes 3 garlic cloves, sliced 1 red chilli, deseeded and finely chopped 1 buffalo mozzarella ball, diced fine 3 tbsp finely grated parmesan 2 tbsp pine nuts, toasted Small bunch of mint, finely chopped Small bunch of parsley, finely chopped Zest of 1 lemon, plus juice for finishing 2 heaped tbsp all-purpose flour Sea salt and black pepper 2 eggs, yolks and whites separated

Heat a little olive oil in a pan and sauté the courgettes, garlic and chilli over a medium heat for five minutes until golden. Remove and place in a bowl with the remaining fritter ingredients, apart from the egg whites. In a separate bowl, whisk the egg whites into soft peaks then fold into the courgette mixture. Heat a good glug of olive oil in a pan and shallow-fry tablespoons of the mixture, flipping halfway until crisp and golden on both sides. Transfer to kitchen paper, squeeze over half a lemon and add an extra sprinkle of salt and pepper. Stir together the dip ingredients in a pretty bowl, and get dunking.

For the yoghurt dip 4 tbsp yoghurt 1 tbsp harissa Juice of ½ a lemon

08.09.17 es magazine 37

HOMEWORK

Calligraphy pen, £165 (tomsstudio.co.uk)

BY LILY WORCESTER

A4 Ripple organiser

by Wrap, £10.95, at liberty.co.uk

Marble Article 07 notebook, £15 (katieleamon.com)

DSK01 desk organiser by Shibui, £33, at store.wallpaper.com

Small lined journal, £15.50 each (esmie.co.uk) Marbled II gift tags, £4.40 for a four-pack (katieleamon.com)

PAPER TOWN

Spine binder

by HAY, £13, at amara.com

Handblown hourglass, £40, at choosing keeping.com

Is there anything more satisfying than a fresh set of stationery? This September’s pickings are particularly rich, with the shops full of exciting launches and collaborations, from Papier’s venture with fashion brand Mother of Pearl and Mary Katrantzou’s collection of jazzy invitations with Paperless Post to Papersmiths’ recently opened trendy Shoreditch store. For super high-end, bespoke stationery look to GF Smith, which uses only the highestquality paper to produce everything from handmade envelopes to embossed writing paper. You name it and — if it’s made from paper — it can make it.

u, zo om nt t.c a r s at spo y K le s r a r M pe by t pa n a tio p, it a 10 v In om fr

Palette sticky notes

by Paperways, £10, at papersmiths.co.uk Pink Dreamer lined notebook

by Mother of Pearl, £12.99 (papier.com)

A4 paper, 28p; envelope (left), 30p; A6 folded card in envelope, 42p (gfsmith.com)

Papersmiths’ new store at Boxpark in Shoreditch

38 ES MAGAZINE

Japanese Binding A4 notebook, £25 (stories. com)

Tamburlaine,

escape

CAMBRIDGE

EDITED by dipal acharya

The Principal, EDINBURGH

The Principal isn’t exactly new: the fivestorey Georgian townhouse first opened in 1848 on beautiful Charlotte Square garden. Neoclassical on the outside (below), the inside is elegantly cosy, with softly lit rooms decorated with quirky Scottish art and a reception tuck shop for you to restock your minibar with Walkers shortbread and whisky miniatures. Don’t fill up before trying Baba: the hotel’s Levantine restaurant, opening in October, comes from the respected team behind Glasgow’s Ox and Finch, with a bespoke charcoal grill blasting Scottish lamb plus some very interesting cocktails.

Pistachio, chocolate and mint julep, anyone? CC From £169 (phcompany.com)

winning by degrees

Whether you’re visiting student friends or family, or fancy a break steeped in academia, here’s where to stay in three of the UK’s most celebrated university towns

The hottest kid on campus is Cambridge’s Tamburlaine, located mere minutes from the train station. The 155-room property very much has a sense of place: its name comes from a play by Christopher Marlowe, celebrated alumni of Corpus Christi. Rooms are decorated in a soothing palette of Cambridge blue and come with bespoke furniture, wooden panelling, Roberts radios and roomy beds made-up with Egyptian cotton and Foxford throws.

Elsewhere, the interiors are eminently Insta-friendly: afternoon tea is served in the dreamy Colonial-style Garden Room (left) where guests can lounge on millennial pink velvet sofas surrounded by ornate Victorian wallpaper and abundant greenery.

After a day of punting and pints on the Cam, head to the relaxed brasserie-style dining room where wonderfully attentive staff serve a seasonal and locally sourced menu — try the Barnsley lamb with a Sophia cocktail, a gin-based delight containing Prosecco and violet liqueur. NO’K From £200 B&B (thetamberlaine.co.uk)

Artist Residence, OXFORD

Justin and Charlotte Salisbury are two of the hottest young British hoteliers in the business. From their cult first opening, a sweet B&B in Brighton, to outposts in Pimlico and Penzance, the latest hotel from the pair, the Artist Residence Oxfordshire, is their coolest yet. A 20minute drive from the spires of Oxford city centre, they’ve taken over Mr Hanbury’s Mason Arms pub and transformed it entirely. Expect rustic rooms, exposed beams and roll-top copper baths (above), hearty pub grub (head chef Leon Smith trained Tom Aikens) and a superlative collection of art, curated by The Connor Brothers.

Perfect for a pre-term break. DA From £130 B&B (artistresidenceoxford.co.uk)

08.09.17 es magazine 41

MY LONDON

ALICE TEMPERLEY AS TOLD TO LILY WORCESTER

What’s your biggest extravagance?

I make 95 per cent of the clothes I wear so I spend money on shoes and jewellery. I love large rings by Jade Jagger (above), Solange Azagury-Partridge or Tara Agace. And impractical classic cars. I had to get rid of my 1969 American Ford T-Bird as it was so massive I couldn’t find many places to park it in London.

Last play you saw?

I went with my best friend, Lara Cazalet, to see Requiem For Aleppo (above) by her brother David. It was a sell-out for one night only at Sadler’s Wells and was just at the Edinburgh Festival. It is very moving and it’s raising money for Syrian relief and the rebuilding of Aleppo.

Best place for a first date?

Dates should involve dinner, cocktails, dancing and ideally dressing up. So starting at HIX Soho and then carrying on into the night nearby where fun can always be found: the more unexpected the better.

Earliest memory?

Watching a veterans’ march when my grandfather was participating. I think I was about eight. It was just off The Mall around the back of Downing Street. We then walked up to Buckingham Palace where I remember both looking through the railings while holding my mother’s hand, and the red Liberty smocked dress I was wearing with a brown tweed coat.

Who is your hero?

Natalie Massenet (right) for starting

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The fashion designer would take a date to HIX Soho, goes for massages at FaceGym in Selfridges and sips Guinness at The Cow Net-a-Porter when she did, and now seeing what she is doing with Farfetch. She has been an amazing support to Temperley London since the beginning and shows you how you should get on with it.

Building you’d like to buy?

The old In & Out club near Green Park. I would love to convert it into a hotel. Or Winfield House in Regent’s Park would do for me: the garden is huge and I would make it into a magical woodland oasis.

Favourite London discoveries?

Clifton Nurseries for potted ‘London’ trees and Retrouvius (left ) on Harrow Road for reclaimed furniture and amazing tiles.

What do you collect?

Fabrics, books, headdresses, embroideries, vintage glass crystal pieces and mix-andmatch tableware.

Best piece of advice you’ve been given?

‘Longevity and sticking around is the most important thing,’ Calvin Klein told me.

Favourite pub?

The Cow for Guinness and the best fish pie (right).

The Groucho for early evening drinks… or very late nightcaps.

What are you up to at work now?

I am working on Temperley London’s new Summer 18 collection and have just finished my second book with Rizzoli, English Myths and Legends.

Favourite shops?

Les Couilles du Chien for interiors and sourcing on Goldborne Road, FaceGym in Selfridges for an invigorating massage and Le Creuset for kitchen stuff.

Last album you downloaded?

Plastic Beach by Gorillaz; Damon is a genius. I love the song ‘To Binge’.

‘Alice Temperley: English Myths and Legends’, published by Rizzoli, is out now

Tomo Brejc; Getty Images; Alamy

Home is…

I moved to Notting Hill when I went to the Royal College of Art and then I never left.