Finch's Quarterly Review issue 12 by Tristram Fetherstonhaugh

Issue 12: Summer 2011

£10

Finch’s

uarterly Review

Ecce, mundus est

sordidus et olidus, sed etiam habet multas res smashingae

Luc Roeg on Sir Terence Conran’s Simon de Pury on being a child favourite French the books he won’t star in Cannes cigar terraces read this summer

Robin Wright on the assassination of Abraham Lincoln

Lyn Lear on Johnny Jason McCue’s greening the Pigozzi on front line red carpet LimoLand report

plus: Leslie Phillips CBE, Christian Bérard, Jeremy Thomas CBE, Nick Ashley, Somerset Maugham, The Windsors, King Farouk, Mark Birley, Turquoise, Andrew Grima, Genetics

“Open my heart and you will see, Graved inside of it, ‘Italy’” hat was Robert Browning at his lyrical best. Bouncing Bob Browning, as I am sure the revered Victorian poet was not known to his contemporaries, may have been born the son of a Camberwell clerk, but a mere geographical accident of birth could not stifle the yearnings of his artistic soul, which were clearly for the dolce far niente existence of Mediterranean Europe. Although my favourite Browning poem is the dramatic monologue Mr Sludge, The Medium, the balance of critical opinion seems to come down in favour of The Ring and The Book, a verse novel of over 20,000 lines about a murder trial and love triangle in 17th-century Rome – a sort of courtroom drama (I imagine it to be a little like The Lincoln Lawyer in knee breeches and a lace collar). I may be a way off target, but somehow I don’t think that it would have quite the same impact or success had it been set in his native Camberwell. The Mediterranean world has long exerted a powerful hold on the imagination and not just for Lord Browning: Byron, Lady Blessington, Lord Brougham – and even some 19th-century Brits who were untitled and whose names did not begin with a “B” – all loved the “Med”, that million or so square miles of by turns polluted and pellucid water that many of us will be heading to for our summer holidays. The Mediterranean has a special place in our culture. After all, it was in this neck of the woods that civilisation (at least, the civilisation of Pliny and Cocteau, bouillabaisse and the chocolate mousse at the Marbella Club served with aplomb by the maître Alfonso) got started. While my ancestors were still daubing themselves with woad and cultivating an early form of dreadlocks, the people around the

Taken from the book Ermenegildo Zegna - An enduring passion for Fabrics, Innovation, Quality and Style. By kind permission of Zegna.

Summer 2011

Club Med Nick Foulkes celebrates the Mediterranean’s special place in our culture, its coat of many colours and its great political potential – almost as much as he revels in the chocolate mousse and easy glamour of the Marbella Club Mediterranean were debating the Ptolemaic system of the arrangement of the universe, which saw the earth at the centre and, as its name suggests, the Mediterranean at the centre of that. So, given that it has been a long old winter, we thought that we might as well as celebrate the Mare Nostrum. At Finch’s Quarterly Review we don’t really have “style” issues – we leave that to proper magazines and newspapers – but if you want to call this our Mediterranean style issue, please feel free to do so. We have even put a brilliant photograph – borrowed from our friends at Zegna and taken in the early Seventies, of two young blades in the back of what looks suspiciously like a RollsRoyce – to encourage you in this belief. Besides, this is the issue that comes out at around the same time as the Cannes Film Festival, which, last time I looked, was a Mediterranean event. And, even in these days of Oriental economic domination and American military might, the Mediterranean still matters. Don’t take my word for it. According to my learned friends at Wikipedia, it was Hegel who said, “For the threequarters of the globe, the Mediterranean Sea is similarly the uniting element and the centre of

World History.” And you will not find me taking on Hegel in a hurry. Besides, the Mediterranean need not mean the Mediterranean, as Norman Davies explains in his Europe: A History, “The ‘Mediterranean lands’ have never been confined to the countries on the immediate shoreline. In Europe, the Mediterranean watershed lies far to the north, taking in Bavaria, Transylvania and Ukraine.” If anything, Professor Davies was being a bit cautious: anyone who is familiar with Palm Beach and Boca Raton will know that the district-defining architecture of Addison Mizner was essentially pastiche Mediterranean. I remember one wizened Palm Beacher explaining to me that his hometown was blessed with picturesque little vias. “Vias,” he told me, “just like you get in France” – even though he lived across an ocean, here was a true happy to mix his French and Italian when describing a pastiche petite rue. If the Mediterranean can dominate Palm Beach, it is easy to see how Browning’s Camberwell also falls within the Mediterranean sphere of influence. And given the choice between Camberwell and, well, Cannes.

The Mediterranean is more than a mere body of water south of Italy and north of Africa; it is an idea, a dream that has beguiled the world for centuries. For generations of Northern Europeans on the Grand Tour, it represented civilisation and the sites of Antiquity. And even if the oratory of Cicero and the sites of classical Antiquity are no longer as central to our shared culture as they once were, the Mediterranean dream is still alluring. I find its siren song (The Odyssey is, of course, just one of the many bestsellers set in the Med) impossible to resist: the scent of bougainvillea and jasmine; drenching the balmy evening air, the song of crickets, cypresses and palms silhouetted against the setting sun… even in these days of mass tourism, there is truth in the old cliché yet. The great thing about the Mediterranean is that it offers an almost infinite number of variable versions of itself. It can be the Mediterranean of the Marbella Club Grill in the evening with the soaring umbrella pines above the terrace forming a natural cathedrallike vaulted ceiling. It can be Charles’s Mediterranean of lunches with Hollywood big shots at the Eden Roc. It can be the retreat of writers (videlicet Somerset Maugham, whose Villa Mauresque we write about in this issue) or the playground of sybarites (as in the case of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, whose life in the various villas of the Côte d’Azur is also told in this issue). It can be the Mediterranean of linen dinner jackets on Capri, as espoused by Mariano Rubinacci, or Chuc’s bathing costumes on the beach, as this paper’s eponym will be wearing (and selling from his shop in Mayfair). But of course, as events along the northern African coast this year have shown, the Mediterranean is more than a holiday destination or a source of literary and

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The Prologue Good, better, best, never let it rest… At Finch’s, everyone follows our revered leader in the art of amelioration, says Nick Foulkes

s part of the ceaseless Stakhanovite rolling programme of improvement, this tireless joyful cycle of ever better issues, this constant improving on perfection, it is one our cherished tenets that we only now employ staff at editor level. FQR is a centre of excellence in a world of declining standards, and evidence of this can be found in our newest employee, Tom Chamberlin. Tom eschewed a career in our armed forces and chose instead the path of belles lettres and is now our Managing Editor. His credentials are impeccable: his father, the founder of gentlemen’s gymnasia Slim Jim’s, served in the Army and was a friend of the late, truly great and much missed Mark Birley (the child of any friend of the great man is equipped with talents that mere education at Oxford, Cambridge, Yale or Harvard is unable to bestow). If you demonstrate the good sense and foresight to advertise in Finch’s Quarterly Review you will already be familiar with this frank, well-turned-out young man, whose word is his bond and all that… Elsewhere, it is pretty much business as usual: further evidence of Tristram’s genius came to light when his mother admitted that he had received an art scholarship to St Paul’s – apparently, he was already creating vast allegorical canvases in the manner of Nicolas Poussin at the age of seven – and, according to his brother, the scholarship was renamed the Tristram Fetherstonhaugh scholarship, in honour of its most able recipient. By the time you read this, I will have probably retired, as my recent bestseller (far outstripping sales of any other recent book on gambling in the summer of 1844), Gentlemen & Blackguards, comes out in paperback and, if Charles is not too busy, I will be asking him to conduct an auction for the film rights. But Charles has a lot on his plate. As well as guiding the great engine of commerce that is Finch & Partners, he has been looking

continued from the front page... sartorial inspiration; it has political potential. A couple of years ago this was presciently outlined to me by Otto von Habsburg, the man who would be running the Austro-Hungarian Empire were there still such a thing. It came to him in one of those sudden flashes of clarity: “I was looking at the map every morning and one day it was clear to me that the future is a community of Mediterranean (countries).” Otto, if I may call him that, is an extraordinary man, old enough to remember the funeral of Kaiser Franz Josef in 1916. Were one to write a novel about an emperor without a throne who has lived for very nearly 100 years and who talks of the great events of the 20th century with the unique insight of a participant in history, rather than merely a spectator or a student of the past, it would be dismissed as a fairy tale. And yet, the last time I saw him he was very much alive, well, and more mentally alert than a room full of Mensa members, slipping easily from Spanish into English into German and back into Spanish as conversation demanded. For him, men like de Gaulle, Churchill and Hitler are not monoliths of history but actual human beings. But Otto was not so much concerned with the past as with the future, envisaging a time when religion unites rather than divides the peoples of the Mediterranean. In the past the Mediterranean has been a little like a religious rev counter, the relative fortunes of Christianity and Islam to be read

at sites around the Mediterranean for his beachwear brand and soon every resort from Portofino to Puerto Banus will be furnished with its own Chuc’s (I hope that he finds a little place on the counter for a tastefully designed rack to display FQR). Indeed, now that he has cracked the rag trade Charles is focusing on his next plan, as daring as it is revolutionary: The Charles Finch Academy for Young Gentlemen. Charles decided it was time to give something back (although quite what and to whom remains to be determined). Anyway, this autumn the first cohort of students will matriculate; they will stroll through the grove of academe, wander on the slopes of Mount Parnassus and loll artistically against the timeworn ivy-wreathed stonework of the historic Heddon Street campus. Not since the Stoa of Ancient Greece has there been such a pedagogical marvel. Tom will be offering instruction on military bearing and brisk, manly handshakes. Tristram will be in charge of the faculty of fine arts, advanced mechanics, and the celestial music of the spheres. I will be leading a small number of especially gifted students through a course of advanced study at Charvet, the so-called Sorbonne of the shirt. In short, we will give intellectual ballast and academic gravitas to our proud and historic motto “Ecce, mundus est sordidus et olidus, sed etiam habet multas res smashingae”. I am sure anyone with any sense will agree that the more time one spends on holiday in the pursuit of beauty – whether it comes in the shape of a Charvet shirt, a Patek Philippe Minute Repeater Perpetual Calendar or a copy of Finch’s Quarterly Review – the less time one has to indulge in wickedness. It is our aim at FQR to spread the gospel of the higher moral purpose of living well… a virtuous calling that we, and I hope you, will be pursuing with the utmost selflessness all summer long.

Image by Christian Bérard, Courtesy of the Restaurant La Mediterraneé, Paris

off around the coast. For almost 800 years from the beginning of the eighth century to the end of the 15th, most of modern Spain was under Islamic rule, and the governor of Al-Andalus got as far as Tours before being defeated by Charles Martel, ancestor of the celebrated Iberian tastemaker Jean-Pierre Martel, the man who has recently redesigned the Marbella Club Grill (the Mediterranean connection again). Since then the balance has shifted backward and forwards: 1492 might have seen the end of the Caliphate of Granada, but 40 years earlier, Sultan Mehmet II had stormed Constantinople and ended the Christian Empire of Byzantium. After that, the Ottomans

received a reverse at the battle of Lepanto in 1571 but the next century the they were besieging Vienna… I cannot imagine how ghastly these wars for the soul of Europe must have been, but Roger Crowley’s book Empires of the Sea about the siege of Malta in the 1560s gives some pretty graphic accounts of the cruelty. Anyway, what Otto was driving at was using monotheistic religion as a way of turning the Mediterranean into a geopolitical powerhouse. He described the Mediterranean as a theologically “important centre – with Islam, Judaism, Christianity”. “These three Mediterranean religions have things in common” – I like the idea of Mediterranean religions – “I’m Catholic, but I also believe that we should come to an understanding with other religions that believe in God because it is such a tremendous element of strength in any community and we are losing our position by abandoning this principle. The Mediterranean is the centre of future developments, but we have to give it a community.” Alas, it seems that that community of Mediterranean religions is some way off. Nevertheless, it was somehow fitting that he shared these thoughts with me at that cynosure of Mediterranean hotels: the Marbella Club (which, by the way, I confidently believe to the location of the original Garden of Eden). Nick Foulkes is the editorial director of the FQR Group of Publications and Editor in Chief of Finch’s Quarterly Review

Proprietor’s Spouse: Sydney Ingle-Finch

Proprietor: Charles Finch Editor in Chief: Nick Foulkes

Art Director: Tristram Fetherstonhaugh

Contributing editors: Vicki Reeve, Simon de Pury, Tom Stubbs, Kevin Spacey, Emma Thompson, Saffron Aldridge, L’Wren Scott, Stephen Pulvirent (mississippi steamboat correspondent) Editor at Large: Elisabeth von Thurn und Taxis Deputy Editor: Emilia Hungerford Literary Editor: John Malkovich Aviation At Large: Nettie Mason Managing Editor: Tom Chamberlin Entrepreneur at Large: James Caan Liberal at Large: Matthew Modine Film Editor: Adam Dawtrey Fine Arts Editor: Charles Saumarez Smith Photography Editor: Patrick Fetherstonhaugh Cookery Editor: Maya Even Highland Editor (19th Century): Charlie Gladstone Travel Editor: Kate Lenahan Hunting Editor: Reza Rashidian Racing Editor: The Hon. Harry Herbert Polo Editor: James McBride PA to the Proprietor: Tiffany Grayson The FQR Group of Publications including: FQR Art; FQR Style; FQR Living Well, FQR Big Game Hunter, Game Shot and Conservation; FQR Equestrian Life; FQR Ocean Wave incorporating Nautical Style; FQR Home and Hearth; FQR Paranormal; FQR Faith (Formerly FQR Monotheism in the Modern Age); www.finchsquarterly.com Chief Executive: Charles Finch Editorial Director: Nick Foulkes Creative Director: Tristram Fetherstonhaugh Commercial Director: Jonathan Sanders, Chief Financial Officer: Adam Bent Designed and produced by Fetherstonhaugh Associates www.fetherstonhaugh.com The views expressed in Finch’s Quarterly Review are not necessarily those of the editorial team. The editorial team is not responsible or liable for text, pictures or illustrations, which remain the responsibility of the authors. Finch’s Quarterly Review is fully protected by copyright and nothing may be printed, translated or reproduced wholly or in part without written permission. Next issue: September 2011. All advertising and subscription enquiries should be sent for the attention of Tom Chamberlin: tom@finchsquarterly.com Tel: +44 (0)20 7851 7140.

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Summer 2011

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FQR Cannes Special

From Child’s Play to Life’s Work

Luc Roeg in Cannes in 1971 outside the Carlton Hotel sitting on David Gulpilil’s shoulders alongside Jenny Agutter. By kind permission of Luc Roeg

From kangaroos and kookaburras to the Carlton and Croisette Luc Roeg tells how an epic walkabout as a child star was just the start of his journey in the film world

uring March the BFI ran a retrospective of my father’s work at the NFT. As part of the retrospective it screened Walkabout, a movie Nic directed and photographed and one I was lucky enough to star in (being the son of the director actually meant luck had nothing to do with it!). They invited me and my co-star, Jenny Agutter, to introduce the film along with Nic. I was seven years old when we made Walkabout, and it has always represented a very special part of my childhood. My father, mother and two of my brothers (there are six Roeg boys now!) travelled to Australia in the late Sixties to make a film based on James Vance Marshall’s novel. The story is about a young boy (me) and his sister (Agutter) who get lost in the Australian outback and are saved by an Aborigine (David Gulpilil) who is on his walkabout. Walkabout is a simple story about life and being alive; it covers the most basic

summer 2011

human themes – birth, death, mutability. At a time when much of Australia was still undiscovered, we spent a year exploring the vast interior making the film. Travelling in light aircraft and Jeeps we crossed the great salt flats and went as far north as Alice Springs. We slept under canvas and had very little contact with the outside world. It was an incredible adventure, which at the time felt quite normal but, looking back on it, seems full of magical realism. David Gulpilil, an indigenous Aborigine, led us into his world. The tiny film crew became our extended family. My mother, who was in her element, was never happier and my father was surrounded by the two things he loves most: film and family. The fact the film was such an intensely personal experience is, I believe, what connects it to its audience. I was reminded at the NFT screening of what a beautiful film my father made and also how surreal it is to watch yourself on screen,

especially as a young child. Jenny, Nic and I took to the stage after the screening to talk about our respective memories of making Walkabout and what it meant to us. It was fascinating to listen to their interpretations. I realised that, subconsciously, I had formed my “own” memories linked to the very same events. My memories were largely dictated by an emotional response to the film itself, almost as if it was a reality. I like to think that all our memories are different versions of the same truth. Walkabout premiered in competition at the 1971 Cannes Film Festival (Sergio Leone was on the jury and The Go-Between won the Palme d’Or), my first official Cannes! Forty years on, I will be attending Cannes this year as an independent film producer. I have been privileged to have a career in film. While it is fraught with difficulty and unbelievably challenging on so many levels, it is also immensely rewarding. What I now realise is that each film has come to represent a chapter in my life in much the same way

how surreal it is to watch yourself on screen, especially as a young child

Walkabout did all those years ago. I am now in the process of finishing my latest film, We Need to Talk About Kevin, based on Lionel Shriver’s bestselling novel. Lynne Ramsay directed, and Tilda Swinton and John C Reilly star. We shot the film in Connecticut last year. When the BBC first approached me about getting involved (the BBC developed the project with Lynne), I was immediately very excited. I was a big fan of Lynne’s work and of the book. The film has a number of child actors in it; I wonder how their experience will affect them when they are older. I am anxiously looking forward to its release this September. s yet, I still don’t know what I will produce next. I have a number of projects in development at Independent, from an adaptation of John Banville’s Booker Prizewinning novel, The Sea, to an epic medieval film based around the battle of Agincourt, which Michael Mann will direct. The precarious nature of the film business means you can never really know what you are doing next, but that is also part of the excitement. What I do know is that every film is a journey; you just don’t know where that journey is going to take you. Luc Roeg is a film producer whose latest film, We Need to Talk about Kevin, starring Tilda Swinton and John C Reilly, is released this year

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FQR Cannes Special

And The Award For Best-Looking Award Goes To…

Caroline Gruosi-Scheufele explains how she came to redesign one of the film world’s most famous trophies

have been asked before how Cannes approached me to design the Palme d’Or. The truth is, I approached them! We had decided to open a new boutique in Cannes, on the Croisette. I had the idea to have the opening during the Cannes Film Festival to benefit from the synergy of this international event. But to do so, I wanted to meet with the Festival President, to discuss with him the opportunity of doing an event together. I went to Paris to meet him. We were sitting in his office, talking, and he had the award standing behind him, just at eye level. I asked to pick it up. While I was looking at it, Pierre Viot asked me, “Would you be interested in redesigning it, young lady?” Of course, I said yes! And this is how the story of our partnership with the Cannes Film Festival started. I took the award back with me to Geneva, to our design office, where we played around with sketches and models. The aim was to make the Palme d’Or look more graceful, to make it become a real piece of jewellery. The project was, in every sense, a labour of love for me. The final design was a reinterpretation of the old trophy, but with the Chopard touch. We created the Palme in 18ct yellow gold, with a delicately cut stem and small heart at the base. This Palme rests on a crystal cushion shaped like an emerald-cut diamond. The crystal symbolises the uniqueness of each award: as no crystal can ever be the same, therefore each award is inimitable. Pierre Viot and his team loved the design and so it came that our redesigned Palme d’Or was unveiled on 24 May 1997. It was a day of great pride for me, my family and the entire Chopard team. To be a part of something as magical as this Festival is a very great honour. We became official sponsors of the Festival in 1998, but the most magical moment for me was the first time the award, a “Palme of Palmes”, was presented to anyone. It was the Festival’s 50th anniversary in 1997 and the winner was Ingmar Bergman. In his absence, his daughter Linn Ulmann, looking absolutely radiant and filled with pride, collected the award. This ceremony being particularly special, 28 of the previous Palme d’Or winners were in the audience applauding, and it was an extraordinary atmosphere.

Since then I have been to every Cannes Film Festival. It is amazing how my professional life enables me to take part in such extraordinary events and to meet wonderful people: directors, movie stars, artists, designers… My creativity is nurtured by all these talents around me and by all the fantastic personalities I have been privileged to encounter. I draw inspiration from these experiences to create new jewels. Each year I am both delighted and eager to unveil the new Red Carpet collection and to see it worn on the red carpet by the world’s greatest stars at the Cannes Film Festival. Each piece is very different from the other ones, so that each star can find the adornment perfectly suited to her personality and best able to exalt her beauty. uring the 12 days of the Festival, spectators can admire a large number of luminaries striding up the famous steps and sparkling in haute joaillerie creations by Chopard. This ritual is one of the Festival highlights, with journalists and photographers from around the world thronging the steps of the Palais des Festivals to film and photograph the stars who light up the red carpet each night. I have seen actresses such as Marion Cotillard, Kristin Scott Thomas and Naomi Watts glide down the carpet looking stunningly glamorous dressed in Chopard jewels, and been proud to see our name displayed among the sponsors. In 2000 we were asked to design a smaller variation of the award for the Best Actress and Actor winners at the Festival. These two Mini-Palmes – identical replicas of the “big sister” are both equally unique and all hand-crafted by the Chopard Manufacture in Geneva. Chopard also supports the film industry in Cannes with the Trophée Chopard, which has been awarded to talented young actors since 2001. Many of the recipients of the trophy go on to conduct international careers, such as Marion Cotillard, Diane Kruger, Gael García Bernal or Jonathan Rhys Meyers. It is important to me, as a true cinema lover, to promote the young generations and it is really interesting to see new talents blossom.

Caroline Gruosi-Scheufele is the co-president of Chopard worldwide. This year, Chopard is celebrating the 10th anniversary of the Chopard Trophee.

I have been asked before how Cannes approached me to design the Palme d’Or. The truth is, I approached them

Caroline Gruosi Scheufele. By kind permission of Chopard.

summer 2011

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FQR Cannes Special

‘Grand Prix’ - James Garner and Francoise Hardy - 1966.

America it’s still regarded as an effete European affectation that ought to come with subtitles. A couple of years ago, that great British producer and FQR contributor Jeremy Thomas tried to mount a movie about the FrenchCanadian tearaway Gilles Villeneuve, who crashed and died in qualifying for the Belgian Grand Prix in 1982. But American financiers just didn’t get it. tateside, Formula One takes a distant third place to Indy car racing, with its blue-riband Indianapolis 500 event, and the baffling redneck spectacle (and I use the word loosely to describe stock cars driving round and round a concrete oval for hours) of stock car racing, known as NASCAR. These allAmerican motorsports (let’s not bore ourselves with the differences between them here) have spawned a few movies, with famous fans including Paul Newman and John Lasseter. But even Indy car and NASCAR haven’t been embraced as wholeheartedly by Hollywood as their enormous popularity in the US heartlands might warrant. NASCAR, in particular, is a vast, Southern, gun-toting, Republican-voting subculture that doesn’t connect easily with the coastal élites who decide which movies get made. It’s natural Sarah Palin territory. Hillary Clinton’s attempt to curry votes from the NASCAR constituency in North Carolina was one of the more excruciating episodes of the last Democratic primaries. Lasseter’s love of NASCAR led him as close to a creative mis-step as Pixar has come. Cars was successful enough to spawn a sequel, and enjoyed a lucrative afterlife in merchandising, but it never inspired the same love as Pixar’s other hits. Even for a genius such as Lasseter, making a great movie about motorsport turned out to be a step too far. In honour of the Monaco Grand Prix (the race that even non-petrolheads can relate to, because it takes place on Monte Carlo’s winding streets) and the release of Senna, here is an FQR guide to motor racing on the big screen. Adam Dawtrey is Finch’s Quarterly Review’s film critic

Everett Collection/Rex Features

Adam Dawtrey’s high-speed history of motor racing and the movies

xotic locations. Beautiful women. Raging egos. Deadly rivalries. Daring heroes with playboy lifestyles who put it all on the line. On the face of it, Formula One motor racing seems ready-made for Hollywood. The two worlds, with their marriage of glamour and technology, high risk and low cunning, have so much in common. Yet it’s a perplexing fact that they rarely meet. Every May, the Côte d’Azur plays host to two fabled and fabulous events – the Cannes Film Festival and the Monaco Grand Prix. But the relationship between these great media circuses is virtually nonexistent. Even when their

dates exactly coincide, it’s possible to attend one in complete ignorance that the other is taking place. Fast cars are one of Hollywood’s essential tropes, but you can count the movies made about Formula One on one hand. Working Title’s acclaimed documentary Senna, which won an award at Sundance in January, is arguably the first significant film to tackle Formula One since John Frankenheimer’s Grand Prix in 1966. The producers are hoping to mount a gala screening of Senna at the Monaco Grand Prix. It would be a rare event to bridge the divide.

Why has there been such a long estrangement, such froideur, between two worlds that should be natural bedfellows? Perhaps that’s the problem. They are just too similar and too self-important ever to share the spotlight comfortably with each other. The big screen just isn’t big enough for both of them. Or maybe there’s a more prosaic reason. The studios don’t tend to make movies about subjects that US audiences don’t understand. Formula One (like soccer, that other global passion that has largely passed Hollywood by) may be huge everywhere from Tokyo to Rio de Janeiro, but in

WHEELY SAYING SOMETHING r u o m Gla annes C e h T n

Senna (2011). Writer/producer Manish Pandey and director Asif Kapadia charmed F1 supremo Bernie Ecclestone into giving them the run of his vast archive at Biggin Hill, with thousands of hours of behind-the-scenes and in-car footage. The result is an intimate, passionate film about the life and death of Brazilian legend Ayrton Senna that leaves even s u o i people with no love of motorsport in tears. An early tip for next year’s documentary elic d h t i Oscar. –w e t ll has e i t a s n t i r – a h ur inc o love? dy and charmiinngg. I think it is t o Grand Prix (1966). Until Senna, this was the greatest F1 movie ever m a l t g t hea tch s a e , i o s c i w , u n n s o d i made, though that’s not saying much. James Garner plays an American a is Ros . What’s mething glor he edge of an n ars. It tars in a t s h h t s t driver entangled with the wife of a British rival. 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A shocking statistic: nine of the 32 e o d h ad G ies er uc an hia bea her tw f deba being in a rench stars ple fact tha ies and Sixt Bed with M Alek Keshis th Whoopi t, I rememb o o t r professional drivers in the movie were dead by the end of the o t i F c , of n ift m as ation e to ogle at n to the si ck to the F her film I the director rious day w egor – in fa that we had o n i b m following year. a co I got z; wh es dow McGr chanc t a glo e with of ER ook b ns the aybe it com ic. If you l down ther adonna and year I spen and Ewan part series enélope Cru a c i r e n n ico was two wM One s Am ng P le. M dma Bobby Deerfield (1977). Sydney Pollack and Al Pacino t in It give ente cordia he years are Madonna t to intervie ever since. g Nicole Ki volved in a s was meeti t t n idnigh e f a n o n f i e n r i g , e o e M t h o o i v f n s s w o d i a o o t m e v n g l b e 1 r made one film together, and it ranks among the most t d a o fi e p 9 d h nc n kin oody’s some coul ch nded u le, but we w as a highlig of Fra annes in 19 r in 1990. W Cannes o e W h I t d e u n d o forgettable of both of their careers. Pacino plays an o t su ib ,a an tim ou yw the S went to C to see lm ’s jury ome I skip ition t been going Roth. One retty incred traight Stor l a b y t v i i m t t n s s A unhappily married F1 driver who embarks on a reckless affair u r s fi Fe rt ve t, m eS yp nd I fi g the e grea ve the oppo you finish a ing al Blo esting. I ha the great Ti is obviousl Lynch’s Th r n i i a s d r s a e r e v a with a terminally ill woman. No wonder he and Pollack never ye ok ha en eh contro more inter interview ner, which eing David will b it all. Some films. You joy and wh ants overlo o r i o n e e t i b worked together again. N S r d t with n. De for the ery much en finest restau out to other I wen and me to econd part. y Alle relationship to Cannes s e v n d f e a i I e o h , t t h o w t t c a f y e bo atch gm and W going tic; this asp ny at one o e-hate Le Mans (1971). To make this movie, Steve McQueen and w invitin e Niro a sort of lov place I love D t eclec stic compa them to get back r e d b e e n v o a h a t R t g h a wanted to enter the actual Le Mans 24-hour race with f r t e n g I a declin enjoy that? interviewin be honest, d glamour o ic, interesti ded by fan even-p s a g r n n Jackie Stewart as his co-driver, but he was blocked by n e o ’t e t a oi ou ot couldn year I will b estival. But e romance ll be d ally es f wine surr i u w s u I . e h i the organisers. There’s something admirable about this o F o ar e st This ening the well a f films that great bottl Ciném . s o a t p , n y o l i commitment to authenticity. It’s just a shame they forgot to a s o e ry Paris i ut ultimate ious range obster and resist. m, tun on its histo t. gs. o o n t i o r n d l B c e r i g . make it entertaining. e l isode r livin dnigh better tful and de and have a y, pretty ha en scr ning or of you 0-minute ep t before mi time betwe e h sa t d g i r i s l ’d o t scree I e f u , d h m o d a the yac o any nce – it’s sa4 e co , an y t r a y h walk l a n o t l l i l a w n e t e a a m m e r Days of Thunder (1990). Set on the NASCAR circuit, a w c g ro s oo ile ffe d, you stival f e Festival, a our hotel r agne to wh ot expect to on’t take o not ba e ; F a e e s h risible attempt by Tom Cruise and Tony Scott to replicate y th .D mp to on of t the erage gossip from o get back rs with cha curity; so d ans on leads v h t o i c w their winning Top Gun formula – cocky hothead in hot rod g te ti in d tt se al – or watch terviews an don’t expec hotel or oys assion for ds and Alsa m r n o o n n redeemed by a brush with tragedy and the love of a good woman, to a p an guar and local ’re kee great ws, in rger th a l s If you ies with ne ty of time – pastis in a also have a ty checks by e z soundtrack of screaming engines and Eighties pomp rock. si a er ri h en ple of vision e u l o e t c mini-s yourself pl ings – have s, the Frenc gh five secu a K ousers rou with U Give in the even ve of film stival ir of tr one th e Talledega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby (2006). a o g l F x p g a r a l i m n e e l i e R s Fi tak hav e th e ; t d f n i s l s r n e g a fi s r n Characteristically sharp Will Ferrell spoof of NASCAR’s machismo, t u u ’s C Alo joy yo witho ch way. is year oi.tv n g h e t n i o n r t o e t which used an inspired turn by Sacha Baron Cohen as a gay, n en em ies gath the Fr u really wa art ser 12 www.cin y p l e r n e u o v aristocratic Gallic speedster in an attempt to internationalise the joke. p se y , if y sting a begin on Ma o Lastly tic waist. h e b ll s ill an ela than Ross w i, which wi o m é Jona n el Ci chann

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summer 2011

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FQR Film Focus

Robin Wrigh

Everett Collection/Rex Features

I got to hang out with most of the actors

something I will take away with me. It was really a very different experience for me; it wasn’t the traditional approach most directors use. It is something that I think I will use as a director. I am going to direct a film next year. A friend of mine who is a producer brought me a script. I’d done an interview last year in which I said I wanted to direct something, so he brought it and said, “Here!” ne other memory I have of the filming of The Conspirator was how much fun we had. The cast really were wonderful. I got to hang out with most of the actors. McAvoy had me in stitches the whole time. He is hysterical, just so much fun, and we laughed and laughed. I walked away not only having learned a great deal but with a whole new set of crow’s feet. Robin Wright stars in The Conspirator, which was released April 15(US), the 146th anniversary of the death of President Lincoln

Features

was more about relationships and discovering the truth about someone. It’s like peeling an onion, and once you get under the surface of someone you might find things that change how you feel about them. During production, Robert only spoke to me at length about three times. Each time it was like he was reciting a poem. The poem was the story of Mary Surratt and her journey. He would take me back to the beginning of the story and describe the arc of her character, where she was in this arc, who she was, who she became, and who she was going to become. It literally felt like I was reading a novel; I would read it then put it down and when I picked it up again it was like I had read it before. The story had seeped into my cells and had become part of my make-up. Robert immersed me in the period. There were times when I distrusted myself and became afraid. There are very specific moments within scenes that I definitely feared. They revolved around not being able to reach the pinnacle of a scene or moment. So I would get myself riled up and be thinking, “I’m going to fail at achieving this moment.” Mary doesn’t really speak. She is quiet and introverted and embodies the thoughts and feelings of the scene and the story. My job was to show this, but without indicating or verbalising it. It was a challenge. This story-telling approach that I learned from Robert is

ational/Rex

H E Conspirator is a film that tells the story of Mary Surratt, who was the only female coconspirator charged in the Abraham Lincoln Assassination on Good Friday

1865 in post-Civil War Washington. She was also the first woman to be hanged by the United States Federal Government. Robert Redford directs the film and the cast includes myself, James McAvoy, Kevin Kline and Tom Wilkinson. I had worked with Robert before. He played my father in a movie some time ago. We had worked really well together and, of course, I liked him a lot. He had always been in the periphery of my life: his son was a neighbour of mine, he had children the same age, and we had a couple of mutual friends. What attracted me to the script when I first saw it was that the story was not a courtroom drama. It was not just a case of the defending and prosecuting attorneys battling it out while witnesses sat on the stand awaiting their verdict; it is a story about relationships and how they get defined. My character, Mary Surratt, is the mother of John Surratt, who was a friend of John Wilkes Booth. John Wilkes Booth, along with a group of others, conspired to kidnap the President. Mary owned the boarding house where the conspirators met and planned the kidnap, which became an assassination. She was the only woman charged for the crime. Mary was a Confederate and her attorney, Frederick Aiken – played by McAvoy – was a Unionist, so he represents her against his will. But he ends up realising he has feelings he never thought he would have for Mary. He goes beyond the politics and has to discover her human side – who she really is. So the story, I felt,

Fotos Intern

It’s Wright With T Redford

Robin Wright on the pleasures of working with the legend that is Robert Redford

Execution of four Lincoln assassination conspirators on July 7, 1865. Hanging hooded bodies of the four conspirators: Mary E. Surratt, Lewis Payne, David E. Herold, and George Atzerodt.

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summer 2011

FQR Film Focus

‘Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid’, Paul Newman, Robert Redford.

Jolly Green Giants Lyn Lear on the EMAs, the film awards that are turning the red carpet green

nvironmental Media Association (EMA) began over lunch with a close friend, Cindy Horn. This was back in 1989. We were pregnant at the same time and began to wonder about what the world would be like in 30 years. After doing some research we concluded our environmental future was frightening indeed. Cindy and I decided we could support the big 10 environmental groups at the time through our access to the media with our collective connections. Cindy and I knew that television, film and music, the entertainment community in general, had enormous power to influence the awareness of millions of people. People needed to be educated about climate change, sustainability, endangered species, so many of the problems that plague us today… and, equally important, people need to know there is hope and how to take action. We spoke to our husbands – my husband Norman is a television writer/producer and Cindy’s husband, Alan, is head of Warner Brothers – about how we could get Hollywood and the movers and shakers of the industry behind our organisation. We decided to produce an awards show that celebrated environmental messages through media. This was before Hollywood had gone “green” and only a few were interested or knowledgeable about these problems. The concept of co-ordinating an entertainment industry response to the global environmental crisis was born. Since then, it has diversified and grown beyond anything we could have imagined. Today our annual EMA Awards honour film and TV personalities, productions, musicians

summer 2011

and musical tours that convey environmental messages in the most creative and influential ways. In the early days we honoured Al Gore (who gave one of his first slide shows at EMA), Mikhail Gorbachev, Trudie Styler and Sting, among others. Recently, we honoured Richard Branson, Jeff Skoll, Ted Turner, James Cameron and Maroon 5. We also started an annual EMA Green Seal Award ceremony, which honours productions and corporate-entertainment offices that meet EMA Green Seal standards. EMA offers practical guidance on how the entertainment industry and individuals can “green” their day-to-day lives and, throughout the year, we organise ecofocused events and salons that attract vital media and public attention and help spread awareness about the environment. We regularly network with writers, directors and producers, helping shape plotlines that seamlessly incorporate environmental messages. We invented the concept of the “green carpet”, which encourages the use of a hybrid- or alternative-fuel vehicle to high-profile awards events. Not long ago the Environmental Media Association launched an ongoing partnership with LAUSD to support organic gardens and

greenery in urban schools across Los Angeles. In addition, EMA will directly support a number of school gardens through funding and celebrity mentoring via EMA’s Young Hollywood Board. The work that we have done for almost 20 years has helped inspire millions of people to reduce air pollution, ensure clean water for drinking and recreation, protect endangered species, preserve open spaces, minimise waste, promote a safe food supply and live more environmentally sustainable lives. Much of this is due to EMA’s leader, Debbie Levin – who is a dynamo – she has brought a new vision to our organisation. She even came with a crew this year to Park City to further “green” the Sundance Festival. Another of our first honourees was Robert Redford. Bob is an icon in the environmental movement. He is extremely smart, incredibly talented and has accomplished wonders. What Redford has done with the Sundance Festival is remarkable. A few years ago, I was greatly honoured to be asked to join the Sundance Institute’s board. We go on a board retreat every year to the Sundance Lodge and it is green in

One of the first people we honoured at our EMA Awards ceremony was Robert Redford

every way. Redford really lives what he preaches. One thing I admire is that Sundance’s aura has its own cachet. The films shown at Sundance exude a certain quality – the true identity of independent film. Sundance is also there to help filmmakers and directors who are really passionate about making films develop and grow to their full potential. Screenwriting labs are organised with the best writers and directors giving the best advice possible. These labs now occur all over the world. We just opened one in India and are working on getting a documentary lab created in China. Many who were part of these groups have gone on to be major directors, including Quentin Tarentino. These are just a few of the things Bob really cares about. ast year 10,000 films were submitted to Sundance and eight out of the 10 nominees for this year’s Best Film Academy Award came from Sundance. Furthermore, four of the five documentaries up for the Oscar premiered at Sundance, and all five have worked with Sundance programmes before. This year, 50 films have been sold, out of 117 shown. The Sundance Festival is one of the largest markets for buying films in the world. And remember: the Sundance Institute, Festival and labs are a part of a vision that is spreading worldwide. This is a truly remarkable accomplishment and a gift to artists and art lovers everywhere. Lyn Lear has a PhD in clinical psychology, and is a co-founder and member of the Board of the Environmental Media Association (EMA), an Institute Board Member of Sundance and mother of three.

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FQR British Films in Focus

The Doctor Will See You Now

Jeremy Thomas on the importance and enduring appeal of his father’s great British Doctor movies

Doctor In Love Standing, Michael Craig (left) and Leslie Phillips. Sitting, James Robertson Justice with Virginia Maskell (left) and Carole Lesley. Rex Features

A living legend with an OBE, a CBE and now Freedom of the City of London to his name, Leslie Phillips in fact needs no introduction. He deserves a knighthood, though… www.finchsquarterly.com

was hoping to get knighted; I have an OBE and a CBE, which usually leads to knighthood. In fact, people often write to me as “Sir”. But then suddenly, out of the blue, I was granted Freedom of the City of London. They wrote to me and invited me to the ceremony, which took place at the Chamberlain’s Court at Guildhall. It was totally different from getting an OBE and CBE, which were given to me by the Queen. The Queen is so good, in control and charming; and she presented it beautifully. She was absolutely sweet, and what made it even more special for me is that we are about the same age and almost share the same birthday. However, I couldn’t for the life of me work out why I was granted the Freedom and it really only made sense when I read the background and history behind it. It is quite extraordinary when you think of the other people who have received it in the past; people who are famous and have been famous for donkey’s years, such as Nelson Mandela, Churchill and even the Queen. So you’re following in the footsteps of these amazing characters, which is a tremendous honour. But it is hard to realise exactly what it means, as it is so old; it is one of the oldest surviving traditional ceremonies, dating back to 1237. In those days recipients were called freemen, and the privilege enabled you to carry out trade in London. You also received a number of other benefits, which today sound quite extraordinary – for example, the right to herd sheep over London Bridge, be married at St Paul’s and be drunk and disorderly without fear of arrest. It was a hell of a day; I was escorted to the Chamberlain’s Court by people with traditional clothing and then asked to read the oath and sign the Freeman’s Declaration book. I was also given a little

he Doctor books were written by Dr Richard Gordon, a GP and author. They were good books, extremely popular in their day, but few would remember them today had it not been for my father, Ralph Thomas. My father was a contract director at Rank, back in the 1950s, and he acquired the rights to adapt them for the screen. The cinema was totally different then, because everybody went once or twice a week. Children would go down for the Saturdaymorning pictures; it was part of life and the shared viewing and laughing was hugely important to me. I suppose that Britain consumed films then, much in the way that it devours television programmes today. There was a tremendous demand for new films with British stars, and my father thought the Doctor books would make great films. They made a low-budget film called Doctor in the House, which starred Dirk Bogarde. Dirk was already on the way to stardom, but Doctor in the House really made him a household name. It was a gigantic success. I think it exceeded £1m at the UK box office on its first outing, and then it was re-released. It was phenomenal. It had a particularly British sort of humour – a sort of gentle double entendre, with a tweed-jacket-and-twill ambience. When I see the films now, I watch them all the way through and laugh. I appreciate them also as period pieces. It’s a completely different way and feeling of how people were with each other. Directors, producers and writers wore three-piece suits on the set, and then down the grade you’d have men in jackets and ties. It was a different time. Even the technicians were formal. After Doctor in the House, they went on to make Doctor at Sea and, after that, Doctor at Large. They made five good ones, then had a hiatus and made one that was not in the same spirit, starring Simon Dee – not a proud moment, that one, for the Doctor series. The first film came out in the early Fifties, before my memory began, so I don’t remember the shooting of it. Later, though, I went to the sets and remember going to the hospital in Gower Street and seeing filming in the courtyard there. These films were much loved by the medical profession, because the doctor was the star and they spawned “Doctor” industry – not least the Carry On films, which grew out of them: Carry On Doctor, Carry On Nurse, Carry On Matron… the bed-panorama of hospital life, as they used to call it. These films travelled, too, and became successful in America and Australia. And it was because of their success that my father was given more freedom to make films by the Rank organisation. The deal was that he could make one Doctor film and then a film such as A Tale of Two Cities, or No Love for Johnnie, which starred Charles’s father, Peter Finch. One of the secrets of their success was that my father never looked down on the Doctor films; he enjoyed making them and, as the consummate craftsman who took immense pride in everything he did, he was proud of them all (at least the first five, anyway). They were great fun and really rather glamorous. Doctor at Sea was Brigitte Bardot’s first English-speaking role. I remember having Brigitte Bardot in our house. I knew – wow! – this was

red book of Rules for the Conduct of Life, written by the Lord Mayor in the 1700s. All sorts of people were there, including lawyers and judges from the Old Bailey. Then we were invited to lunch with them. These lawyers and judges – who were in the midst of dealing with quite serious problems – stopped for a jolly good lunch. God only knows what they did with the people they were working with that afternoon! Today people are asked to take up the Freedom to acknowledge their personal contribution to the City. My contribution has been my work as an actor, which I started almost 60 years ago. Since

I have been in over 100 films and at the age of 87, I am still going then, I have been in over 100 films and at the age of 87, I am still going. Some of the first films I made were at Pinewood Studios, just outside London. In fact, I am the only actor alive today to have performed at the studios the week it opened, and I have since gone on to make 44 films there. One of the reasons that I am still in showbusiness is that many of the films I did are still being pushed around the world on TV, films such as the Carry Ons and

summer 2011

FQR British Films in Focus

a French actress. I didn’t know who she was at the time, but I knew she was important. And then there was James Robertson Justice, a wonderfully ebullient character – I would hear his 300SL Gullwing, which impressed me very much as he roared down our drive in his Mercedes. By contrast, Dirk Bogarde – always “Uncle Dirk”, a supposed godfather to me and my sister – couldn’t actually drive. He was phobic about vehicles and, if he appeared on screen at the wheel of a car, people would have to tow him with a rope in a tracking shot. ooking back, I can see just how important those Doctor films were, not least because they gave us a very affluent lifestyle at Pinewood, England’s little Hollywood. The whole area was dotted around with people who worked in films: the writers, producers and stars. Everyone lived around Pinewood because it was a great production base: a film factory, much like the American studios. And there were plenty of Americans over here at that time. People forget that McCarthyism meant that many people were unable to work in the US so they came to England and we made big movies with big British stars, films such as Cleopatra. Of course, the Doctor films weren’t like that, but they were immensely popular at the time and they have a charm today that I feel makes them more watchable than many of the big-budget epics and Hollywood films made at the same time. And recently I heard that there are plans to bring them up to date, like the St Trinian’s films, and I think it is a good idea. After all, the originals are still shown on TV, and films that last 50 or 60 years and are still shown, with people still laughing at the jokes, must be pretty strong. The best of them have stood the test of time and have become part of British culture. Jeremy Thomas CBE is an Academy Award winning film producer and founder of the Recorded Picture Company

Doctor At Large Director Ralph Thomas (right),. Rex Features.

Doctor series. I get the most amazing fan mail from people from all over who have seen the films and enjoy them, especially in America and China. I enjoyed the Doctor series, which was directed by Ralph Thomas. It had a certain kind of class to it, with a strong medical background and nurses and god knows what else. Of course, the writing was so good and they were very funny. I did three Doctor films: Doctor in Love (1960), Doctor in Clover (1966) and Doctor in Trouble (1970). I took over from the great Kenneth More, who died quite young. He was one of the leading lights of the English film industry who touched on Hollywood. I had been in Hollywood, which was quite rare for an English actor at that time and had come back to England to make the Carry On and Doctor films. I really only enjoyed making Carry On Nurse (1959), which broke all records. I remember it opening in New York. At the time, English films just didn’t go there, but that one did and it hit the jackpot. The Carry Ons and Doctor series were directed by members of the Thomas family – Gerald and Ralph. They kept it in the family. They were great fun to work with and I made some wonderful friends on the series. James Robertson Justice became a good mate. I knew him terribly well and he almost died in my arms, which was tragic. The family who made the Doctors and the Carry Ons, and Peter Rogers, who produced the Carry Ons, have died – they’ve all bloody died. In fact, this is what hits me the most when I receive awards such as the Freedom of the City; it reminds me of all the wonderful people I have worked with over the years and who became part of my life. The thing is that they’ve all bloody gone, the lot of them! Leslie Phillips is currently filming Death, directed by Martin Gooch

summer 2011

I remember having Brigitte Bardot in our house

Ralph Thomas with cast. By kind permission of Jeremy Thomas.

Doctor In Clover Director Ralph Thomas and Producer Betty Box. Rex Features.

Doctor At Large L-R. Brigitte Bardot, Producer Betty Box, Dirk Bogarde and Director Ralph Thomas. Rex Features.

Declaration of a Freeman “I do solemnly swear that I will be good and true to our Sovereign Lady Queen Elizabeth the Second ; that I will be obedient to the Ma yor of this City; that I will maint ain the Franchises and Customs thereo f, and will keep this City harmless, in that which in me is; that I will also keep the Queen’s Peace in my own person; that I will know no Gatherin gs nor Conspiracies made against the Queen’s Peace, but I will warn the Mayor thereof, or hinder it to my pow er; and that all these points and article s I will well and truly keep, according to the Laws and Customs of this Cit y, to my power.” Leslie Phillips receives the Freedom of the City of London, Guildhall, London, Britain - 16 Nov 2010. Ray Tang/Rex Features

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The futureâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s safe. Portuguese Perpetual Calendar. Ref. 5021: One thing at IWC always remains the same: the desire to get even better. Here is one of the finest examples, with the largest automatic movement manufactured by IWC, Pellaton winding and a seven-day power reserve. The perpetual calendar shows the date and moon phase and is mechanically programmed until the year 2499. In short: a watch that has already written the future. IWC. Engineered for men. IWC Schaffhausen, Switzerland. www.iwc.com

Johnny Holiday FQR Cannes Special

Johnny Pigozzi is meticulous in his preparations for stylish summering in the South of France

o prepare for summer, firstly I have a haircut. The style of the haircut is not important – as long as it is short for summer. The most essential thing, though, is that having my hair cut is quick and that the hairdresser doesn’t twist my ears. I hate having my ears touched or bent. But, really, the speed is the most important thing as, while I am having it cut, I am without my BlackBerry, and so it is time wasted. Another rule I have is that the hairdresser stays well away from electric hair clippers or shavers; the moment I hear those things I get afraid. That happened last year when I was having my hair cut in LA by an attractive girl. I was so busy looking at her and not concentrating that she almost clipped my eyebrows off. That’s another rule I have – they can’t touch my eyebrows. This summer I will be wearing clothes from my LimoLand range (www.aLimoLand.com). I have some beautiful Peruvian soft cotton polo shirts in raspberry, light blue and navy. I will wear these with khaki or white cotton chino pants. I also have some very nice colourful cotton hoodies, which feature designs such as LimoLand’s signature monogram. They have silk-lined hoods, waterproof pockets to protect my BlackBerry or iPod, a small hole to thread headphones through, and are designed with bright colours. I find hoodies very comfortable. They’ve definitely replaced the blazers and tweed jackets that my father used to wear. They’re also great to travel with and for walking around the house and in the street. The swimming trunks I wear are also from LimoLand and covered in fun colours and patterns that I designed. I will be wearing a baseball cap and T-shirts with fun graphics, which I also designed. I haven’t resolved the problem of shoes, as I hate flip-flops, but I also hate leather shoes in the summer, so it’s best not to wear shoes at all. The most important thing for me, especially in summer, is to wear clothes that are comfortable, that fit and that I feel relaxed in. I hate wearing shirts you can’t breathe in or trousers you can’t sit in. In my younger days I was a dandy and had all my clothes made to measure on Savile Row. I would be tremendously upset if my trousers were not perfectly ironed or my jacket had creases. But now I am much more relaxed. I started LimoLand as I couldn’t find clothes that were adapted for my age and body and that were also colourful and fun. I used to buy my clothes in Harlem because it was the only place I could find vibrant clothes that fitted my size. But in the end I decided to start my own label and make clothes for myself and other men between the ages of 30 and 120 that made them feel relaxed and that were fun – for those of us who are older but still feel young at heart. LimoLand represents this kind of man. I love colourful clothes – all colours except too much white, which reminds me of a hospital. I find colours incredibly important and they can liven up anyone’s day. My dear old friend Ettore Sottsass, who was one of the greatest architects of the 20th century, influenced me in this respect as he loved putting colour in all his furniture and designs. I am also very influenced by the colours of my contemporary African and Japanese art collections. It would be much easier just to make black, brown and beige clothes, but I do not see the world in black, brown and beige. I will be going to the South of France this summer, to my house on Cap d’Antibes. My favourite things to do in the South of France are going to lunch in Nice at La Petite Maison, swimming in the sea (as long as there are no jellyfish), taking the boat to St Tropez, going for lunch at Club 55 and seeing friends who are staying at Hôtel du Cap-Eden-Roc. I also like reading, and save all my newspapers and magazines onto my iPad so when I have time over the summer I can read them. I like to listen to music, but music with no words, and I especially like African music. I don’t go dancing any more and I don’t sail in the South of France. I don’t play games and hate playing sport, no ping-pong or snorkelling or board games or cards. I hate all that! I am zero competitive. I will also be taking pictures this summer in Cap d’Antibes. Taking pictures for me is a way of documenting my life. I have always taken pictures and every 10 years or so I publish a book of photographs – of my travels, pretty women, friends and places I have been to. My latest book, Catalogue Déraisonné, was published last autumn in the UK by Steidl, the Rolls-Royce of photographic publishing. It contains photos taken over the past 20 years. It is like a diary – an organised diary. It is important for me to take pictures because I am dyslexic and like to remember things. I would like to write a daily diary but I don’t have the patience, so I take pictures of everything I see instead. Jean (Johnny) Pigozzi is a venture capitalist, philanthropist, photographer and art collector and has assembled a collection of contemporary African art. Pieces from his collection are currently on view at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, until 21 August (www.caacart.com)

summer 2011

I find hoodies very comfortable. They’ve definitely replaced the blazers and tweed jackets that my father used to wear Johnny’s Top Tips for the South of France Swim in the sea, unless you see too many jellyfish – they will always win the battle. Have lunch at Club 55 in St Tropez; make a reservation at least a year in advance if you are not very famous (www.club55.fr). Have dinner at La Petite Maison in Nice; there, too, make a reservation at least six months in advance (www.lapetitemaisonnice.com). Visit the Fondation Maeght (www. fondation-maeght.com). On Monday mornings there is a great flea market in Nice. You won’t need a reservation for that, but do take a lot of cash as the prices are often quite steep, and you do find some fun things there. Have lunch at the Hôtel du Cap; there, too, take a lot of cash (www.hotel-du-cap-edenroc.com). Dine at Tétou, where they only accept euros, no credit cards: 8 Avenue Frères-Roustan, 06220 Le Golfe Juan (+33(0)4-9363 7116).

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FQR Resort Report - St Tropez

Nick Ashley reveals the key role that the formerly simple and boho St Tropez played in the history of Laura Ashley

y parents went to St Tropez for the first time in 1949. They were on honeymoon and rode down there on an old Triumph army motorbike. The War had not long been over; Britain still had rationing, so they headed south for some warmth and food. They ran out of money, had to sell the bike and hitchhike home. They vowed to return one day and live in the most beautiful house… Even in those days St Tropez had a reputation as a cool fishing village where artists and actors went to live like locals. My parents were attracted to the bohemian glamour and a lifestyle that was easy to achieve – if you had the right attitude. Both my parents came from poor, but strict, backgrounds, my father as a Brixton barrow boy, and my mother from the terraced streets of Merthyr Tydfil in Wales. During the War my father was posted to the Gurkhas in India, my mother worked for intelligence in Paris, so they were both exposed to the bigger picture out there. St Tropez was a real focus for them; it represented a kind of Utopia, with sun, sea, hills and freedom from boring, “Victorian” Britain. They craved the lifestyle of this simple fishing village, with its pretty painted wooden boats bobbing in the harbour and friendly locals in cafés eating and drinking things that you could not get at home (such as coffee and salad!) with the occasional frisson of excitement when an interesting boat would moor up with someone glamorous on it. Residents travelled around by moped (Solex or Motobecane); scooter (Vespa or Lambretta) or Jeep (Willys exAmerican army). They wore “Les blues” workwear (Halles-Villette) with Breton T-shirts (Armor Lux) and espadrilles. Many of them (including my father) wore ex-army issue because that was all that was around. It didn’t matter – the most important thing was to exist in this beautiful place in peace. It was like an early hippie

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commune. Part of the day was spent on the beach and the rest in the village; to make the transition from one to the other, the girls used to put on a printed cotton headscarf and a skirt over the onepiece (this is pre-bikini). My mother started wearing this look, and it was a big influence… When she returned home, my mother bought a book on screen printing and had a crack at making some of the pretty cotton headscarves that the girls had worn at St Tropez. She wore these around London, and her friends wanted some, then somebody suggested that Harrods would like some but she was too embarrassed

When she returned home, my mother bought a book on screen printing and had a crack at making some of the pretty cotton headscarves that the girls had worn at St Tropez to go and hawk her wares, so my father took a suitcase along and sold them all. By the time he returned home they were on the phone ordering more. My parents then set up production in their flat in Pimlico with screen printing on the kitchen table, baking (to fix the dye) in the oven and washing and sewing all over the place. Even my Welsh grandma was roped in. They were in business. In the following years my parents worked like hell, building up a business and bringing up a family. Eventually, they saved enough money for a return trip. This happened in 1965. They had three children, a Land Rover and two ex-army pup tents. These tents had

actually been our home in Wales (we had traded up to a caravan), so it was exciting to travel for days and days until the land ran out. We camped at Pampelonne Beach on a field that belonged to a friendly local gypsy family. They looked after us well, feeding us fresh grilled fish from the men in the boats; they had a tiny beach shack (later to become Club 55). We drove in to the village of St Tropez and the first thing I noticed was a brand-new silver Ferrari 275 GTB, looking insane surrounded by all the fishing nets and stuff. I didn’t fully realise at the time, but that image really defines the mad mix that people flock to see. or example, Brigitte Bardot, the most iconic French actress at the time, would queue up at the fish market in her simple clothes like anybody else, and then go home to a modest house (in a fantastic location). She rode a Harley (ex-American army) up into the hills to have lunch with her best friend, Jeanne Moreau, in her beautiful farmhouse. Picasso would be there, dressed like a peasant; Orson Welles would drop in by helicopter (Bell 47). All the clever people bought houses in the hills where it is cool and breezy, then travelled by Jeep or Mini Moke along dirt tracks to go shopping in the market at St Tropez. In fact, the dirt tracks are still there. Much of old St Tropez is still there: the fish market, boules in Place des Lices, Galeries Tropezienne for workwear, Club 55, Hôtel Byblos, Russians in Lambos, hookers draped across huge plastic boats, girls dancing naked on the bar at the VIP lounge. Same mad mix, just more of it… and always totally intoxicating. My parents are, sadly, no longer around, but they did manage to get hold of the most beautiful house in St Tropez (once Jeanne Moreau had finished with it) but that’s the end of the chapter. So if anyone wants this home and, therefore, the lifestyle – please let me know. Personally, I’m heading back towards the pup tent… Nick Ashley, son of Laura and Bernard Ashley of the Laura Ashley empire, launched his own brand selling menswear clothing for motorbikes, before becoming a design consultant for Alfred Dunhill

summer 2011

visit

For Charles Saumarez Smith, the South of France is all about the art

Maeght in the pinewoods just north of Saint Paul-de-Vence. It was the subject of one of the nicest recent exhibitions in the Sackler Galleries of the Royal Academy, and celebrated the astonishing collection of Aimé Maeght, which had been built up from the shop he and his wife started in Cannes in 1936 selling radios. He was probably lucky in that he made friends with two elderly artists living nearby, Bonnard and Matisse, and was able to sell their work when they needed to during World War II, transporting works of art in and out of the War zone in Paris. By the sixties he had accumulated such a remarkable collection of works of art that he was able to establish the Fondation Maeght and, in 1964, commissioned the Catalan architect, José Luis Sert, to design a gallery to house his collection. Here you can see works by Giacometti, Miró and Chagall, with the additional benefit that you can afterwards go to lunch at La Colombe d’Or. Then there’s the Matisse chapel nearby, which Matisee not only decorated but paid for, as a thank-you to the Dominicans for curing him from illness during the early part of the War, and which he regarded as his greatest work: “It is not a labour I chose but for which destiny chose me at the end of my road… I consider it, despite all its imperfections, my masterpiece, an effort resulting from an entire life dedicated to the search for truth.” Last of the places around Cannes that my friend Ed Jones recommends visiting (he has built himself a fine, Corbusian house outside Bargemon) is the Abbaye du Thoronet, an early Cistercian monastery up in one of the valleys of the Var, restored on the instructions of Prosper Mérimée after he found it overgrown with vegetation in 1840, and apparently much beloved by Le Corbusier for the austerity of its design.

don’t really consider myself a South of France type, having only ever been along the Riviera three times, once as a scrofulous student when I drove with my sister from a youth hostel in Avignon to the Italian border only to discover that I had left our passports under the mattress in Avignon. My sister said that she would cross the border alone and meet me in Lucca, so I hitchhiked back through the night along the autoroutes of the Riviera, sleeping in the central reservation – not the best experience of my life. Then, also when I was a student, I stayed with my friend Jon Savage in his parents’ apartment in Antibes. I remember little of this trip except for lounging about in the heat of the July sun, presumably puffing away on cigarettes and reading. And I must have been taken to see the Fondation Maeght because I dimly remember its Légers. More recently, I flew to the aerodrome in Nice in order to have lunch on a private gunboat, which had been recently delivered from a shipyard in Gdansk. We docked in St Tropez and then went to the opening of an exhibition by students from the Royal Academy Schools in the Galerie Aalders up in the hills above St Tropez in the fashionable hillside village of La Garde-Freinet. There’s a sweet little museum in St Tropez, the Musée de l’Annonciade, full of the work of local artists, including Vuillard, Bonnard and Matisse, slightly oddly situated close to the harbourfront in amongst all those huge boats, aggressively docked along the portside street. And the following day we went on a hairraising drive to the Carthusian monastery of La Chatreuse de la Verne, high in the Massif des Maures, where we were given a comprehensive tour of the monastery buildings by the mother superior. So, what should one go and see on a day off in Cannes? Well, of course, it’s absolutely essential to go to the Fondation

Côte of Paint

Charles Saumarez Smith CBE is FQR’s Fine Arts Editor and Secretary and Chief Executive of the Royal Academy of Arts

Posters With Power Simon Khachadourian on the heady combination of danger and glamour in the evocative, stunning – and rare – posters promoting Monte Carlo’s early Grand Prix

t is perhaps odd that the smallest country in the world (after Vatican City) should have been responsible for such a remarkable output of stylish posters – how many events, or spectacles, could take place in an area smaller than Central Park that required such promotion? The answer, of course, is “many”. Since the late-19th century, affluent Europeans – predominantly British – have frequented the French Riviera for rest and recreation, and the exhilaration of athletic events, either as spectators or participants. Apart from the casino, visitors could enjoy horse racing, polo, tennis, golf and pigeon shooting, but it was the drama and excitement of new-fangled “motorsports” that were by far the most popular attraction. Motorsports, of course, included motorboat racing, Monaco having pioneered the sport of racing canots automobiles, as they were known, as early as 1904. Air races with the high-powered seaplanes or hydro-avions also attracted huge crowds all along the Côte d’Azur, but the king of motorsports was without doubt automobile racing. The stage was set in 1911 with the Rallye Automobile (Monte Carlo Rally), still run to this day every January, and the Monaco Semaine Automobile of the 1920s, and it was in order to gain status for the Automobile Club de Monaco (ACM) that its president, Antony Nogues, organised a motor race to be run completely within the principality’s borders. The inaugural race in 1929 – 100 laps! – was a huge success, watched by 100,000 spectators, and was won by the Englishman William Grover-Williams in a green Type 35 Bugatti (a fascinating and secretive man, Grover-Williams later served his country in military intelligence, perishing at the hands of the Gestapo in early 1945). It was decided to repeat the event in 1930 and annually thereafter, and the ACM commissioned the Italian artist Roberto Falcucci (1900-1989) to create the poster for the second event, which has become one of the most collectable of all posters. It is believed that only 200-300 examples were printed, most of which, of course, would have been destroyed when removed from billboards, and the few survivors in mint condition now change hands for sums in excess of £20,000.

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The Grand Prix poster tradition was established. Falcucci designed equally stunning Art-Deco imagery for the 1931 and 1932 events before handing over to French poster designer and dilettante racing driver Geo Ham (actually Georges Hamel, 1900-1972). Ham’s masterful 1933 poster, depicting Louis Chiron’s Bugatti exiting the tunnel at high speed, is one of the most dramatic Grand Prix posters created, and he went on to execute equally dramatic posters for 1934 (Britain’s Earl Howe powering his Maserati 8c past the Casino), 1935 (Rudolf Caracciola in the Mercedes “Silver Arrow”), 1936 (Auto Union and Alfa-Romeo), and 1937 (Alfa Romeo hurtling past “Tabac”). Economic uncertainty in 1938, and the unpleasantness of 1939, prevented the Grand Prix de Monaco from being run again until 1948, and motor racing’s Age d’Or was over. Happily, however, the posters live on – admittedly, in short and finite supply. All the Monaco Grand Prix posters of the 1930s are the same size (120cm x 80cm or 48in x 32in), a perfect size for framing, and as only eight different images were created, it is conceivable for (wealthy) collectors to acquire the complete set – always a wise move. As is usually the case with the “best of the best”, demand exceeds supply, with even poor-condition examples making over £10,000 at auction. Pristine examples change hands at more than twice that level on the rare occasions they become available, and special rules apply for the notoriously hard-to-find 1931 and 1937 posters… Their rarity and value is also accounted for by the fact that they are time- and event-specific – in other words, the day after the race was run, the posters became as useful as yesterday’s newspapers, hence print runs were always much more limited than, say, for posters for cigarettes or spirits. Apart from their function – to announce and promote the race – these stunning Art-Deco graphics today provide a beautiful and majestic record of a splendid period and the dangerous, glamorous races held in that sunny place for shady people. Simon Khachadourian is the owner of the Pullman Gallery www.pullmangallery.com

summer 2011 Summer

Henri Matisse self portrait. Roger-Viollet/Rex Features

FQR Resort Report

The Outside Draw

Horizon – Deck, Restaurant & Champagne Bar

Sir Terence Conran smokes out the best cigar terraces

ating outdoors is one of the greatest pleasures in life, but having the freedom to light up one of my favourite cigars at the table after a meal completes the feeling of luxury. I smoked my first cigar on the night we opened the original Habitat store in 1964. Someone gave me something rather small and inexpensive, but I remember holding it and feeling the sensation of success. I was just 32 and could feel that we were about to achieve something truly special. Unfortunately for my bank balance, I quickly came to the conclusion that Havanas were the best and over the past 40 years they have become as integral to my life as a cup of coffee or a glass of wine. My very first overseas trip in 1952 was with my dear friend Michael Wickham and our girlfriends at the time. We drove south in his old Lagonda and that summer sparked my unrelenting love affair with the country and its food, wine and culture. I was amazed by the quality of everyday French country life – the delicious food in roadside cafés, washed down with carafes of rough red wine, which were generously thrown in for free; a spirit of generosity and easy living that I have been trying to capture ever since. It is a love affair that over the years has led to the discovery of the some of the world’s finest terraces and gardens where indulging in a cigar is still celebrated and unrestricted. Launching Boundary two years ago was my first new private venture since the opening of Bibendum back in 1987. It continues to give me enormous gratification to have a very personal involvement in the entire project. In particular, I drew inspiration from the qualities of my

favourite cigar terraces, and incorporated them in the design of the Boundary Rooftop, of which I’m unashamedly proud. I used to own a house in Provence, near Les Baux. Nearby was the rural and terribly romantic L’Oustau du Baumanière hotel, set amongst the white mountains of Les Alpilles. I stayed here, and also visited on several occasions over the years, and developed a close bond with Serge, the old and charming maître d’, who is, sadly, no longer with us. His knowledge of cigars was legendary and on occasions, he would persuade me to put aside my customary Hoyo de Monterrey for a Montecristo (the No 1 was his preference, if I recall correctly), or even a strong Partagas, according to what I had eaten, or was drinking, for that matter. It was always a great pleasure to sit at the foot of the cliff and enjoy great Provençal recipes, fine wine and smoke a more-than-decent cigar. It felt like a life without worries, which is all any of us could ask for. Gardens give me immense pleasure, and I love to sit in my greenhouse in summer and breathe in the moist and musty smell and find it a very creative place to sit, think and have a glass or two of decent wine with a cigar or two. An evening stroll through L’Oustau’s idyllic garden, taking in the olive groves, lavender and rose bushes, cherubs and fountains, would always make me feel completely at peace and I would happily sit

under a tree and smoke a cigar. It was unrealistic to attempt to replicate anything similar on a rooftop in the gritty East End of London for Boundary, though we certainly tried to capture some of that peaceful spirit. Working with the hugely talented garden designer Nicola Lesbirel to design the garden and façade planting worked very well and we were also determined to maintain the unobstructed 360-degree views across the rooftops and spires of East London through to the iconic Cityscape. Speaking of views, the relatively new outdoor Horizon Deck at Monaco’s redeveloped Fairmont offers a breathtaking backdrop of the stunningly azure Riviera, the Principality’s palace and casino. Monaco has a beautiful ambience and I get a real thrill from the buzz of its restaurants, bars and boutiques. On the Horizon’s deck you can enjoy a substantial H Upmann, such as the Sir Winston, with a glass or even good bottle of Vieille Prune chosen from an extensive list, every day of the year. The simplicity and unpretentiousness of the design particularly makes it one of the more comfortable modern outdoor spaces I’ve recently enjoyed, and the service is impeccable. La Colombe d’Or, in tranquil off-season SaintPaul de Vence, is perhaps more famous for its vibrant art collection and its history of interesting

lodgers from the art world, ahead of its terrace. Over the years, La Colombe has retained its rustic charm, and the experience of enjoying a cigar on the Mediterranean patio, absorbing the smells, tastes and atmosphere, captures the conviviality of staying with friends. I love the glamorous romance of the Twenties and Thirties, and the historic Bar des Célébrités at The Carlton in Cannes still retains some of the old-fashioned charm of a bygone era. Inevitably, it has become somewhat of a tourist attraction these days, but it still has a marvellous terrace and for decades enjoyed a reputation of being the original and best cigar terrace in France. was reminded of the bar at The Carlton when I paid my first visit to Cuba in 2007. There are many hotels, bars and buildings in Havana from this same period, although many are in a sad state of disrepair. Breathing new life into old buildings has given me great pleasure over the years, particularly in London, but I fear Havana may be one step too far. At one of the cigar factories I was fascinated to see my Epicure No 2s being made by hand and afterwards I was presented with a bundle of them made especially for me. I smoked one at the tiny, pure Art-Deco bar in the former Bacardi building, and dreamed of the South of France. Life with a Hoyo de Monterrey Epicure No 2 is simply more pleasant in every way. Sir Terence Conran is Britain’s leading designer. He is also a restaurateur, retailer and Britain’s most famous cigar smoker. The Boundary Rooftop is now open. 2-4 Boundary Street, Shoreditch, London www.theboundary.co.uk

taste of the people you’re working for. The more time you spend with them and in their garden, the better. It’s quite rare to work with people who are willing to take risks in their garden and to deeply experience something different. eople often have in their mind images that already exist. So really you are entering an idea they have that they have already created in their minds. It’s quite rare to have the possibility of being wild, and creative, but when it happens it is the most exciting way to work. The funny thing about my work is that I’m trying to interpret the feelings I have about the people and

their wishes, while I listen to them. Some ladies hate blue or yellow and I listen to that, but I also have to understand how those people are working inside. These are the stories you have to find out. All the good gardens in the South of France have a British background. All the good 19th- and early-20th-century gardens were owned by the British – for example, in Cap d’Antibes. In my opinion, I would say that today in France people who want gardens have a sort of British complex. They want to create British gardens, but we don’t usually have the right gardeners. There are good gardens in France made by French people, but it’s more rare, to be honest. You just realise that all the good ideas, designs and use of plants are connected to England. I have created over 250 gardens and park projects all over the world, from Panama to Greece to Morocco, but one of my favourite places to work is France. I have designed a private garden in St Tropez, one in Provence and many more in and around Paris and will soon be starting one in Cannes. I feel very lucky to be working on something I am passionate about –and being surrounded by nature is one of the happiest places I can be. Louis Benech has been a garden designer since 1985. He is a Member of the Royal Horticultural Society (London) and is currently working on the gardens of Château La Coste near Aix en Provence and Château de Coligny, near Orléans, France.

life with a Hoyo de Monterrey Epicure No 2 is simply more pleasant in every way

would say that I came to gardening and garden design out of a love for plants. When I was a child, we would go to our family house in Toulon for summer. One of the gardens had been invaded by an American poppy, called Romneya coulteri. It has a seagreen leaf and a huge papery flower, with a perfectly round set of stamens in the centre that are bright yellow. It looks like a sort of fried egg. The size of the stamen-bunch is the same. As a child, this plant was above me, it grows about 1m to 1.3m, and I was swimming in the plants. It was wonderful. It’s still in my mind and I use it in plenty of places. Over the years, I would say that I have learned to work closer to nature in my designs, trying to bring my new designs in harmony with the natural environment. I use more and more native plants in my gardens; plants generally needing less water and maintenance than exotics plants do. I do allow myself areas that are going to have to be maintained in a more sophisticated way, with lawns, for example, but I’m trying to reduce them to the minimum. Last century one could have described gardens in Monaco or Cannes as high maintenance with mainly exotic plants, but today we are quite happy to use olive trees, rather than exotic palm trees or plants that need a bit more attention. My aim in a garden is to make it a nice, happy and gentle environment. I work like an old daddy.

summer 2011

Designing gardens is heaven for Louis Benech, especially when he’s working in France I like things that are soft and not harsh. I use no concrete, no iron and only use if for the purpose of making sculptures or things like that. More and more, I love gardens that are simple to the eye and not too sophisticated to the mind. What I really love is a plant in its happiest situation and, generally, that’s native plants in native habitats. I prefer to be alone when I first start work on a garden. It’s the best way to notice the small details that people often miss. My job is to create dreams, making something beautiful, improving the views or reducing them if they are boring and helping to create space. I try to listen to the owners of the garden. Ultimately, it’s about understanding the

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FQR Resort Report - Benghazi

Free Spirit

Jason McCue on his recent epic – and productive – trip to Libya to meet and help the new Transitional National Council

hen I received an invite from the new Transitional National Council, I immediately set about preparing. First stop: Chucs, to pick up the must-have conflictzone shorts. Next: Rolex, to get the essential desert watch, the Sea-Dweller. And just to be frivolous, I gathered a couple of SAS men from Moda Solutions. My advice is never to travel to a conflict zone without such essential items – and product placement is critical to success. We were making the long journey by land from Cairo to Benghazi for two reasons. Firstly to help resolve some of the decades-old legacy issues (IRA, Lockerbie etc). By so doing, the TNC could define itself and thus receive deserved international definition, support and recognition. Secondly, to offer legal (assistance on preservation of evidence, transitional justice and rule of law) and civil-society advice to Free Libya. I was joined by my comrade Mark Muller, who is Chair of the Human Rights Committee of the UK Bar Council. It may seem a strange mission in the middle of a “war”, but laying the groundwork for such matters at the earliest opportunity is proven to shorten conflict, reconciliation and reconstruction. The Egyptian/Libyan border was awash with the inevitable tide of refugees. Their ghostlike figures poured around our vehicle. Their stares mesmerised all within. The vision was only shattered by AK-47 fire about our car as a young rebel got excited about perceived Gaddafi mercenaries. On our way we passed numerous war graves and towns that echoed the World War II films of our youth. Through checkpoint after checkpoint we crawled gradually westwards. Every rebel checkpoint, enthused at the discovery of “Brits”, would eagerly make victory signs and joyfully proclaim “Cameron”. There was no credit in Libya, so cash was king. We were forced to hide our stashes of money

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throughout the vehicle as there were “banditos” Council were a success. For the first time in on the road – as inevitable as the refugees. I refuse 42 years, the Libyan people through the TNC to disclose my number-one hiding place but one had been able to express themselves against the of my favourites is to unroll toilet paper and then brutality of the Gaddafi regime and its support roll Lincolns inside it, a marvellous stash that can for international terrorism. For the first time, a normally only be spoilt by a bandit with tummy Libyan, through the brave chairman Abdel Jalil, ache. However, little did we know that new Libya had given evidence of Gaddafi’s direct complicity was short of bog roll and it was a prized bandit and sanctioning of Lockerbie. For the first time, commodity! How the new user must have thought the new Libyan people had given hope through God was shining on him when, after a moment of their desires for the IRA victims of Gaddafi relief from the conflict, Abraham was unravelled Semtex to receive compensation. The new Libya to reveal his face! had expressed its self, Benghazi was shown compassion exhilarating. We were and thus defined all committed Free itself, proven its bona Libyans before the trip fides and shown that but Benghazi made us it practises what it 1. A Rolex Seadweller committed rebels. Boy preached. This joyous 2. A selection of Chucs Dive and Mountain scouts had taken to occasion has brought Shop apparel. traffic-cop duties and much gratitude and 3. A Shahtoosh old men with old AK’s thus acknowledgment 4. Pen Knife were guarding public and support to the 5. United Nations Security Council buildings. Freedom TNC. Resolution 1973 Square was exactly what The press conference it said on the tin. Walls in front of the Libyan of brave martyrs’ faces and world press was stared from the posters, teenagers cracked off shots emotional and daunting. I had been asked by the into the air proclaiming, in unison with the graffiti Council to read out their statements and then say walls, “Gaddafi go to hell!” A crowd of young a few words to celebrate what had been achieved and old gun-toting women in uniform marched in the middle of the chaos of a conflict. For the past proclaiming freedom and the end of Gaddafi victims, it was the beginning of hope; for Libya tyranny. Entrepreneurs set up stalls selling shrapnel the beginning of a new period in its history and, and secondhand guns. It was all fabulous chaos for me, a significant chapter in 20 years of my emerging around a simple tenet: freedom and an career. I saluted them and gave a salvo of words end to Gaddafi. May that dream come true. against Gaddafi. Sure enough, we lost Muller on several The SAS team were not keen for me to hang occasions. His artistic Delfina Foundation side about after that. Gaddafi snatch-squad cells could not be quelled in the euphoria. We found were in Benghazi and had killed a young graffiti him with street artists, offering London residences artist but a few days ago, simply because of his post-conflict. In fairness, what we saw was a wonderful, ironic caricatures of Gaddafi. Being cultural feast. But it was more than that. It was anything but brave, our delegation fled, as proof that what was occurring here would never advised, heading into the Libyan desert with all go back to the tyranny of the Gaddafi regime. the signed statements to give the good news to Benghazi and its freedom of expression were alive the victims. and no one – least of all Gaddafi – was ever going It was a relief to meet the refugees again at to take it away from them. There was no place for the border. Once safely across, it was good to be him in the new Libya. able to take off the headscarf my security team Our meetings with the Transitional National had desired me to wear. The SAS guys visibly

Jason McCue’s 5 essentials in Libya

relaxed. I looked in my bag at the memories I had collected; the TNC statements, a few bullets that we had picked up from Gaddafi’s bedroom, a new Libyan flag signed by Jalil thanking Cameron, a free Libyan hat for my son. I had lost several nights’ sleep, pounds of weight worrying and a toilet roll. But the real gain was a renewed sense of respect and compatriotism for the Libyan people and hope for the international victims of Gaddafi. In its adversity and hour of need, the new Libya had shown itself to be generous and compassionate. What more proof do we need to appreciate that UNSCR 1973* and the international support for free Libya was the right thing to do? We need to help them further and, of course, that includes Charles opening a Chucs outlet in Benghazi! Jason McCue is a recognised legal expert in reputation management, counter-terrorism, human rights and restorative justice

United Nations Security Council Resolution 1973 *United Nations Security Council Resolution 1973, on the situatio n in Libya, is a measure that was adopted on 17 March 2011. The Security Council resolution was proposed by France, Lebano n, and the United Kingdom. Ten Securit y Council members voted in the affirma tive (Bosnia and Herzegovina, Colombia , Gabon, Lebanon, Nigeria, Portugal, Sou th Africa, and permanent members France , the UK, and the US). Five (Brazil, Ger many, and India, and permanent memb ers China and Russia) abstained, with non e opposed. The resolution demands “an immediate ceasefire” and authorizes the international community to establish a nofly zone over Libya and to use all means nec essary short of foreign occupation to protect civilians.

Wham, Glam, Thank You, Maugham…

Somerset Maugham ca. 1950

etting to know Syrie Maugham has been a fascinating experience. During the six years of putting my book together, I immersed myself in both her amazing life and in the now-vanished world in which her career flourished. Because a number of “tell-all” books have been written about her second husband, the author and playwright W Somerset Maugham (known familiarly as “Willie”), detailing their troubled marriage, I was able to focus on Syrie as a pioneer interior decorator. But a lessknown (untold) story concerns the houses they each constructed for themselves in different places, vivid reflections of their very disparate personalities. To create a fabulous dwelling remains one of the most telling legacies a famous author or designer can leave. While neither Syrie’s nor Willie’s houses retain their original interiors, thanks to photographs it is possible to glimpse into a rarefied world of luxury that existed between the two World Wars. Though the two abodes were very different – hers at 213 King’s Road in London, his the Villa Mauresque on Cap Ferrat – both spelled Glamour. Syrie had a flair for combining furnishings from a variety of periods and sources. She broke away from the stiffness of the Edwardian drawing room by mixing furniture in traditional 18th- and 19th-century styles with elements of Moderne. She was not constrained by a great reverence for antiques and had no compunction about doctoring them to suit her fancy. James Amster, a prominent American designer, recalled: “She took pieces that nobody wanted, and painted the hell out of them and made them look wonderful.” Maugham opened her first shop in London in 1922, selling antiques and objets, in addition to offering decorating advice. Although often considered a British counterpart to Elsie de Wolfe, unlike de Wolfe she did not write a manual of taste by which to be remembered. But in her heyday, during the Thirties and Forties, having been the wife of Somerset Maugham (they were

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divorced in the late Twenties), one of the 20th century’s most popular authors, certainly added to her social cachet. Cleverly surrounding herself with some of the great decorative arts talents of the day, her artistic coterie included such figures as the great French designer Jean-Michel Frank; textile and carpet designer Marion Dorn; London’s favourite set designer Oliver Messel; and the well-known florist Constance Spry. Their innovative designs certainly contributed to making her interiors fresh and lively. However, what really gave her interiors panache was her close alliance with Cecil Beaton. His camera captured not only Syrie, but numerous clients whose interiors frequently graced the pages of Vogue magazine. Beaton posed his sister Baba in an elegant white-silk evening dress standing before a mirrored screen, next to a glass column topped with a vase of white lilies. Maugham’s all-white decorating scheme was the perfect foil for Beaton’s black-and-white photography. It combined elegance and formality with a more casual look of loosely arranged flowers and a sofa covered in white satin. As captured by Beaton, it was the quintessence of chic. The all-white room at King’s Road is probably the most well known of Syrie’s rooms; it was also the most modern. Born in 1879, Gwendoline Maud Syrie Barnardo was the daughter of Thomas John Barnardo, the founder of the famous Barnardo Homes for Boys and Girls. Her first husband was Henry Solomon Wellcome, an eminent American chemist 27 years her senior. After six years, most spent travelling to the Far East and South America, sources for Wellcome’s medicinal research, Syrie

Somerset Maugham 1963 had had enough. However, Wellcome’s generous financial settlement enabled her to establish servants, paintings and an impressive array of herself as a superb hostess whose elegant parties antiques. The villa, set amidst 12 acres of wooded mingled “café society” with celebrities and hillside, sat at the end of a drive through terraced royals. gardens overlooking the Mediterranean. A pool Her next marriage to Somerset Maugham, was surrounded by lush vegetation with flowering between the years 1917 to 1929, was not a happy fruit trees, mimosa and agapanthus. Built around one, either. Many are surprised that Maugham an interior arched courtyard, the villa had seven was married at all. Syrie and Willie did, however, bedrooms. For his own room, located in a produce a daughter, corner on the first floor, with a view of the sea, Liza, much beloved Maugham placed a narrow Sicilian painted bed by her mother. at an angle to get the best light for reading. His As their marriage taste in furnishings ranged from rather heavy went on, the pieces of Spanish Baroque to Savonnerie carpets, Maughams spent less even a Chinese figure of Kuan-Yin brought back and less time together. from Peking. (In fact, Willie While Maugham remained secure in this pined for his real Mediterranean fortress for the rest of his life, love, the handsome Syrie’s fate was not so fortunate. Always living decadent American, beyond her means, she spent her last years Gerald Haxton.) A shuttling between New York and London. temporary solution She survived by parting with her idiosyncratic to their increasingly antiques, sold to her few remaining clients. separate lives was Both Syrie and Willie, though disparate in their Willie’s purchase in lifestyles, were products of a similar era; their 1926 of the Villa respective dwellings provide a perspective into a Mauresque at Cap Ferrat on the French Riviera. world now gone, leaving some of us still yearning The Moorish villa – by this time a “white for just a taste of that luxurious glamour. elephant” – was originally built by the Belgian Pauline Metcalf ’s latest book is on Syrie Maugham: King Leopold for one of his mistresses in 1906. Staging the Glamorous Interior (Acanthus Press, Maugham transformed the villa into a place US, 2010) of impressive luxury. At the villa, he could do what he pleased, primarily surrounding himself with beautiful young men. Not surprisingly, the decoration of the interiors showed no discernible influence from his spouse, by now the highly touted decorator from whom he was divorced in 1928. By the Thirties Maugham was considered the great man of letters on the Riviera who remained cosseted in his landmark villa, to which invitations were highly prized. Living among tycoons and princes, he surrounded himself with

At the villa, he could do what he pleased, primarily surrounding himself with beautiful young men

summer 2011

George Konig/Rex Feature

Syrie and Somerset Maugham were an incongruous match. Though equally glamorous, it’s no wonder their houses were so dissimilar, says Pauline Metcalf

Everett Collection/Rex Features

FQR Resort Report - Cap d’Antibes

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The Windsors’ Côte d’Amour Hugo Vickers on the starring role of the South of France in the life of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor

art of my life has been spent following the Windsors around, consciously or subconsciously. As a teenager, I spent my holidays in the South of France on the Cap d’Antibes. Le Clos de la Garoupe was one of many ingeniously designed Barry Dierks villas built along the coast, most of which seem to have been visited by the Duke and Duchess of Windsor at one time or another. Dierks’ villas had several features that made them easily recognisable. More often than not, they were white with dark green shutters. The bedrooms were divided by interlocking bathrooms, which meant these could be shared and equally afforded easy access from one bedroom to the next without the need to go into the corridor. There were shared balconies too and sometimes these could serve as an escape route for amatory miscreants. It was said that the Duke of Windsor liked to dance in the area where my hosts invariably lunched and dined – an almost open-air arcaded room at the end of the building. I was once taken to the nearby Château de la Croë, then the home of Stavros Niarchos. It was this house, built for Sir William Pomeroy Burton in 1927, set in some seven hectares leading to the rocks and then the sea, which the Windsors leased between 1938 and 1949, of which more presently. In the summer of 1975 I was invited to stay at Villa Le Roc, the home sor d in W f o of Sybil, Marchioness of Cholmondeley (hence the name derived Duchess Duke and from her husband’s nickname, Rock e at La Cro from Rocksavage). Then rented by Americans, it was here that the Prince of Wales spent part of the summer of 1935 with Wallis Simpson as his guest. This too was a Dierks creation, and in 1975 there was a disused swimming pool set in its own annexe, which looked as though it should have been part of a ship. It was easy to see why the Windsors had liked these sumptuous villas and the life they offered – the clear blue Mediterranean sea, the sunshine, the smell of pine trees and the sound of crickets by night. The South of France had played a part in the drama that dominated their lives – the Abdication. In London in 1936 a plan was forged in the office of Lord y Beaverbrook that it might not be a bad idea to frighten s/Gett Fox Photo Mrs Simpson, in the hope of driving her away. Though both Beaverbrook and Winston Churchill later denied they had played a part in any of this, a timely stone thrown at Mrs Simpson’s window in Cumberland Terrace, Regent’s Park, had the desired effect. Mrs Simpson took fright, retreated to Fort Belvedere and presently left for the South of France. The next part of the plan did not work. Churchill hoped that Edward VIII would soon forget her - that Lord Dawson of Penn might sedate him for a while; giving him the chance to calm down at Windsor Castle, pull himself together and reassume his monarchical duties. But they underestimated his dependence on Mrs Simpson, and his subconscious desire to escape. Without Mrs Simpson to constrain him, he proceeded to abdicate – to the horror of the nation and, indeed, the world, and to the near consternation of Mrs Simpson herself. Meanwhile, she took refuge with her closest friends, Herman and Katherine Rogers, at Villa Lou Viei in

Barry Dierks

Cannes, where she remained under siege for some weeks. There exists news footage of her on the terrace, suddenly spotting the cameraman and rushing inside. It was here that Mrs Simpson heard the Abdication speech relayed over the wireless. She listened to it, cowering under a rug, desperately wishing she did not have to believe its import. After that she had no choice but to await her destiny. The once glamorous Prince of Wales, turned into worried King, was now a rather desolate Duke of Windsor, with nothing to do but whine about his rights and his role, slights perceived or otherwise and to dote on the lady who was unwittingly the cause of his fall from grace. Wallis remained in Cannes until the spring. Besides her kind hosts, her vigil was lightened by figures such as Constance Atherton, the spirited mistress of HG Wells and others, and by Somerset Maugham, along the coast at Cap Ferrat. After their marriage, the Windsors took the Château de la Croë, where they entertained in some style. The Duke liked to wear his kilts and play his bagpipes as before. Crates of his furniture were sent over from England to boost the part furnishing of the house. Here they entertained their closer friends. They were intensely social, dining with the other villa owners along the coast, again including Somerset Maugham. It was s ature at a dinner at the Villa Mauresque that ex Fe on/R ti c e ll tt Co Harold Nicolson was shocked to hear Evere the Duke apologise for being late, using the phrase, “Her Royal Highness couldn’t drag herself away.” As Nicolson described it, “He had said it. The three words fell into the circle like three stones into a pool. Her Royal (shudder) Highness (gasp) (and not one eye dared to meet another).” The Windsors were at La Croë when war broke out in September 1939, and, after a brief attempt to do their patriotic duty in Paris, it was here that they took refuge before being obliged to flee, as did so many others, from the South of France via Madrid and on to Lisbon. hey returned briefly after the War, which they had spent in the Bahamas, the Duke serving as Governor-General. Returning to Europe they found German landmines in the garden of La Croë and it was some time before they could move Bettman/Co rbis back in. They took it over again in the spring of 1946 but apparently judged the South of France too much changed and so in 1949 they gave it up. They should never have given up La Croë. The Duchess always preferred the South of France to the countryside near Paris. She liked the cosmopolitan life to be found on the Côte d’Azur. In the 1970s, not long before he died, the Duke of Windsor asked his secretary to find him a villa in the South of France but he died in May 1972 before realising this dream. In widowhood the Duchess took holidays in Biarritz for three Augusts in a row. In the summer of 1973 she stayed in a villa on Cap Ferrat and visited her friend Frances Munn-Baker at her home in Grasse. The last times she was in the South of France were when joining or leaving a liner to take her to New York from Cannes, and back again as late as the summer of 1975. Then the Duchess fell gravely ill, lingering on at her house in Paris until she finally died in 1986. Hugo Vickers’ book about the Duchess of Windsor, Behind Closed Doors, was published by Hutchinson on 7 April. rbis an/Co

the shared balconies too could serve as an escape route for amatory miscreants

summer 2011

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FQR Resort Report - Italian Island Focus

to arrive, I called him to check his whereabouts. “Of course I’m not coming,” he said. “It’s raining.” Silly me, no one leaves the house when it rains. There’s almost a public outcry when the sky is grey for more than an hour or so, and they talk about the weather as much as we do in England, although it must be said, most of the time with glowing pride. “Who cares that the country is riddled with corruption, there’s no work and no hope for Sicily, we eat like kings and the sunshine is glorious” is what the local basket weaver tells me. And I have to agree with him. Sunlight nourishes the soul. he majority of people here work for the family business or for the state. State jobs tend to be inherited or bought with votes and favours, and if you work for a private company it’s not guaranteed that you’ll get paid. No meritocracy, shall we say. I thought, “How on earth am I going to earn a living?” So I decided to set up shop. In England, you send a polite note to the council that you’re opening a business and you get showered with help and advice. Here, the system is pretty much designed to prevent entrepreneurship. It has been a sobering experience. However, I found a lovely space in an old palazzo with stone vaulted ceilings in a pretty square that is now my studio and shop. Having spent my working life in the fashion industry, I felt the need to search for something more authentic and to make things with my own hands. I take second hand or antique pieces and deconstruct them – strip them and rebuild them. If you’re stripping a chandelier or sofa you really get a sense of how these things were made and sometimes, as they reveal their secrets, a sense of who made them. One day I hope to find a secret message from a craftsman, until then I leave notes inside upholstery for someone to find in the future. Then I put them back together, but not with the same ingredients. Being an outsider living in Sicily is enormously challenging, at least once a day someone will demand of you “Pazienza!” [pa-zièn-za]. Patience! And delivered with an irritatingly knowing sigh, it generates in one the kind of anguish one might experience in the face of such demands as “Be spontaneous!” – impossible! However, as the Sicilian one-size-fits-all response, it is a piece of local advice you’d be well advised to take. Therefore, if I had to give one tip that pretty much covers everything on how to survive living in Sicily it would be, be patient. Emma Bernhardt is a designer who runs her eponymous shop in Sicily, Piazza Mazzini 4, Modica, Ragusa. 00 39 0932 943461

The English Patience Emma Bernhardt on her experiences of living in Sicily and one piece of local advice you’d be well advised to take

aving spent my childhood in Mallorca and my thirties in Mexico, I was looking for a romantic combination of the two to emigrate to. London had become too much for me and Sicily seemed to fit the bill. Well it’s certainly Latin, underdeveloped, beautiful and very hot. I bought an old country house, small and sweet, but it still took two years and five architects to refurbish it. They would say: “Don’t worry, I’ll do everything, trust me”, and then you wouldn’t see them for a month and nothing would have been done. Their explanation? “Be patient, I had something important to do!” Sicilians don’t respond well to deadlines, and responsibility is an altogether alien concept, but they are skilled craftsmen and at least they have a sense of humour; my electrician is aptly named Mr Eventually. In the end, I had to redesign the house myself and project-manage the lot. Last week, having waited four hours for the plumber

Sicilian Sense 1. Study the dictionary definition of pazienza, eg, Webster: “The state or quality of being patient; the power of suffering with fortitude; uncomplaining endurance of evils or wrongs, as toil, pain, poverty, insult, oppression, calamity etc.” If that doesn’t sound appealing, and you are determined to spend time in Sicily, you could start by completing the sentence “I am the very picture of patience because…” 10 times every morning as you wait for your espresso. 2. Understand that pazienza is not a virtue, it is a way of life – which is not to say that the people who profess it live by it; after all, pazienza is also used effectively as a lament or even a threat. 3. When your plumber (architect, doctor, accountant, lawyer et al) prescribes pazienza, it’s time to find a new one. 4. Practise saying pazienza with a sigh to other people in seemingly inappropriate situations. You’ll find it a fabulously flexible retort and amazing what you can get away with, but remember not to use it when back home. 5. When you start to suspect that pazienza is an excuse, a cop-out, you may be right, but go back to tip Number 1 and start again if you want to preserve your sanity here in Sicily.

I Capture The Castle Luisa Beccaria recharges her brio at Borgo del Castelluccio, the castle she and her husband renovated over 14 years

ne of the first stories I heard about Borgo del Castelluccio, the mid18th-century castle my husband inherited from his mother’s family in Sicily, was when we first arrived a number of years ago and before we had started restoring it. It gives you an idea of just how far, in many respects, Castelluccio and Sicily are from the rest of the world and how primitive the people are. The castle lies between the Hyblean mountains and the Ionian Sea, in the province

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Capri Sun

Mariano Rubinacci writes about Capri, where over the past five decades he and his tailoring have been adding super-stylish touches to the already chic proceedings

first went to Capri in 1956. I was 13 years old, and it was a shopping trip of sorts – my father was opening the Capri branch of our family tailoring firm. The shop was managed by his old friend the Marchese Pisani Massamormile. The Marchese knew everyone who came to Capri in the summer; he even introduced my father to King Farouk. When His Majesty came to the shop and ordered just one blazer, my father was a little disappointed. Then, after a couple of days, the King’s secretary returned with a pile of club crest badges to attach to the blazer. My father recommended making a clip for him to be able to change them easily. The secretary, offended, was quick to point out that His Majesty wanted a separate blazer for each club, and there were over 24 of them… Not such a bad day after all. And it was largely because of this that my father thought the Marchese would be a good man to have in Capri, where he knew everyone from Gracie Fields to Countess Ciano, the daughter of Mussolini. And then there were the people who came every summer: Onassis and his future wife, Jackie, who was not yet married to her first husband, JFK. Capri was funny in those days. Of course, it seems much better in retrospect, but people really were more elegant, in beautiful blazers, white linen suits, extravagant trousers and striped matelot tops, worn with rope-soled shoes and linen loafers. The Piazzetta was like a twice-daily fashion show; as no one in Capri gets up before noon, the first promenade took place between 2pm and 3pm with a glass of champagne before the participants headed to the beach or their boats. Then at 10pm, after a hard day, they would parade again for their apéritif at the Quisisana, which is still there today. And after dinner they would go to the Number Two nightclub, which also still exists. Believe it or not, we did a marvellous summer trade in black linen dining suits and white linen dinner jackets. At the beginning of the summer, people would come to Capri on their boats and visit the shop to be measured and then they would pick them up and wear them at the height of the season. A little later, things became less formal and you could wear black trousers with a pale pleat-front shirt – white, pink, lilac or blue – and velvet slippers in red or purple. Meanwhile, the local jeweller, Chantecler, would compete with the extremely sophisticated and elegant Fred Horowitz, the representative from Harry Winston in New York, who would take a house for the summer and entertain beautifully. There were plenty of great parties. The Prince of Sirignano spent one of the best fortunes in Naples on parties, women and clothes; his nickname was Pupetto, while my father was called Bebe. The Princess Mafalda di Savoia was also a great hostess at her palace, which was conveniently close to the Piazzetta. And the San Pellegrino-owning Mentasti family were also famous for their parties, which they would give some days on their yacht, the Croce del Sud, which along with the yacht owned by the Gucci family, was one of the most beautiful in the port. But the best party was at the Villa Capricorno, which was owned at the time by a famous gay American called Bob Hornstein. Capri in those days was totally removed from the rest of life. In those days, life in Italy was still hard, except on Capri where everyone had fun. I remember seeing countless films as a young man set in this magical atmosphere – the actor Totò was known as the Principe of Capri. Today, of course, there are more day trippers, and the princesses and marcheses of the old days have lost all their money. But it is still a beautiful place – at least, that is what my wife thinks. Barbara has been conducting a love affair with Capri for as long as I can remember. She has been going there since she was six years old, so the island is almost like a family member, and from the last Saturday in June to the last Sunday in September she refuses to move from here. It is easy to see why. There is a magic about the place; and at night as we walk through the hibiscus-, jasmine- and bougainvillea-scented air I can almost fool myself into thinking that I am going to meet King Farouk – wearing a Rubinacci blazer, of course. Mariano Rubinacci is the proprietor of Rubinacci, the eponymous Neapolitan tailoring house

of Siracusa, east Sicily near the baroque town of Noto and a three-hour drive from Palermo and a one hour drive from Catania airport. The main castle is surrounded by little houses where the people who work on the 990-acre estate reside. There was an old lady living there, and she was one of the first people I met when I first went up to explore Castelluccio and she told me this story about her encounter with Prince Charles. Prince Charles had visited Castelluccio when

it was still in ruins to paint the landscape and had asked the lady permission to paint it. She said, “Of course”, and allowed him to paint and they started talking and she suddenly said, “I recognise you, you are an actor on TV!” I never found out what Prince Charles’s response was, but it shows you how the local Sicilians live a totally different reality to the one we are used to in cities such as London or Milan. I remember that first visit to Castelluccio very well and falling in love with

There are honey-coloured cows that that match the colour of the stone in which the house is built

summer 2011

FQR Resort Report - Italian Island Focus

Mariano Rubinacci’s Capri Top Tips 1. Drink a martini (very dry with an olive) at the Quisisana. 2. Eat pasta e chichierchie (wild beans) with a touch of tomato, chilli and rosemary at Paolino under the lemon trees in the garden. 3. Visit Villa Fersen, which is owned by the municipality but used to be one of the most fantastic private houses on the island (where they used to smoke opium). 4. Take a boat trip for the day to Nerano and eat at Lo Scoglio. Peppino, the owner, is a good friend – mention my name and ask for the pasta with zucchini and the fabled peach nut from his garden. 5. Spend a day in Naples and a lot of money in my shop on the Via Filangieri!

King Farouk of Egypt (192 0-1965) CSU Archive s / Everett Col lection/Rex Fea tures

Mariano Rubinacci en route to Capri by Fetherstonhaugh

the place the moment I arrived, and precisely for this reason, its isolation, and, of course, its immense beauty. The estate had always been in my husband’s family but had not been lived in for 70 years and it was in ruins when I first arrived, and I suggested we renovate it to bring it back to its former glory. We started after the first summer we spent there and worked on redoing the ground-floor rooms. Then we decided we wanted to convert the entire castle and we started renovating the other floors and built a pool and tennis court. It was wonderfully creative and we took time and thought about it, and it has taken over 14 years to complete! Each room has a different ambience and is dedicated to different times of the day. The castle is also big and built to have lots of friends and guests, and we entertain a lot over the summer, which is enormous fun. I also fell in love with the landscape and started planting a garden early on. I worked with a great friend of mine, a painter with an incredible sense for nature and gardening. He was well known for his talent but he sadly died and I had to continue on my own. But I think he was still helping me from whatever world he has gone

summer 2011

to because I discovered I had a true talent for designing gardens, which I now really enjoy. The landscape is truly something special. We are on a hill and it overlooks the sea and what is amazing is that you don’t see anything that ruins that beauty of the view. It is a very rustic and real place; real people living close to nature, which gives it a very magical feeling. e produce olive oil and almonds, and I spend time walking around the olive and almond groves. It’s one of the biggest almond groves in Europe. It’s a very aesthetic type of agriculture, with old plants and trees. There are honey-coloured cows that are typical to the area and that match the colour of the stone in which the house is built. There are parts of Sicily that are dark, but this area is bright and happy, and I love it here. It is a place to recharge my batteries and be inspired. I use the colours for my summer collection, such as the colour of the stone and the wheat when it’s ready. I have some flower prints that remind of the poppies and other natural flowers in the meadows. We have another house that we’ve restored. It’s an old beach

house 20 minutes from Castelluccio in the nature reserve. We often spend the day there. We go to the sea to swim or go on long walks in the country. We talk with our friends, and these days the key moment is always mealtimes. We spend hours making the table look wonderful, setting it in new, beautiful and creative ways, discovering new spots to have breakfast, lunch or dinner. It’s all about the lifestyle and having time to talk to your children, relatives and friends. I’m not a very good cook because I’m spoilt – I have always had someone to do it. And to protect myself I always pretend I can’t cook. In Sicily we produce a lot of our own food, which we eat fresh and which is pretty special. It is very much home cooking with local food and vegetables and we have wonderful cooks. It is a pretty special place for me – a sanctuary from the hectic city life in Milan and, most importantly, where I have time to be with my family and friends. Luisa Beccaria is a Milanese fashion designer (www.luisabeccaria. it). She lives with her Sicilian husband, Don Lucio Bonaccorsi dei Principi di Reburdone, and their five children, Lucilla, Lucrezia, Ludovico, Luna and Luchino

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Spring Summer 2011

Hugo Vickers and the

Queen Mother

FQR Nautical but Nice

The Megawatt Megayacht Man

Supremely talented gentleman yacht designer Jon Bannenberg made huge waves in his chosen field, says Mark Lloyd

first met the legendary yacht designer Jon Bannenberg after writing to him from school. As a result, Jon kindly invited me to his spectacular studio at 6 Burnsall Street in Chelsea and, to my astonishment, lavished on me exactly the same enthusiasm, charisma and charm that he would normally reserve for his most A-W 2:Layout 1 17/1/11 17:34 Page 2 distinguished clients. I later discovered this

trait was part of his genius: he talked to the most humble shipwright in exactly the same way as he would to the shipyard owner. I remember everything about first meeting, from the beautifully embossed letter that arrived at Charterhouse inviting me to visit – with the unique oversize typeface he always used for correspondence – to being offered my very first cup of espresso, which, in 1971,

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was a truly foreign delicacy. Apart from a few of the best Italian restaurants, almost nobody owned an espresso machine in their home, let alone their office! But this detail was typical of Jon, who always blended great style with functionality. Up until Jon’s arrival on the yachting scene, boat builders had generally dictated the methodology for construction and design. This was about to change. Armed simply with force of personality and the warmth of his charm, Jon took on these formidable Dutch, German and Italian boatyards and redefined what was possible. In the end, they succumbed and, after a long struggle, finally realised that Jon’s ideas were achievable and, furthermore, much more advanced than anything they had previously worked with. A new era in boat design was about to happen, and this was due entirely to Jon. Not only were the designs exciting and avant garde, they were also practical – and used materials that had never been seen in these classic boatyards: carbon fibre, Corian, Plexiglas, special lightweight stainless-steel alloys, inter alia, were all introduced to the yacht industry by Jon. His client list and the yachts he built for them were truly amazing: Adnan Khashoggi’s Nabila, Helmut Horten’s Carinthia VI, Malcolm Forbes’ Highlander, Les Wexner’s Limitless, Sir Paul Getty’s Talitha G and his last vessel, the 453ft Rising Sun for Larry Ellison, which at the time of its launch in 2003 was not only the longest, but also most technically advanced yacht in the world. Even Fidel Castro summoned Jon to Havana to discuss the construction of a State yacht, which, sadly, never materialised as there was no shipyard behind the Iron Curtain capable of building it. A pity, as El Comandante would have enjoyed one of Jon’s vessels. His legacy is profound, and not only in the 300-plus vessels he left behind, but because most of the successful yacht designers in the world today – such as Terence Disdale, Andrew Winch and Tim Heywood – were all apprentices at his studio in Burnsall Street at one time or another Jon hated what he termed as anything “pedestrian”. His emphasis was always on the aesthetic and best summed up in his own words: “The private yacht world stimulated in me a desire to drive design forward without any compromise. There were disagreements within the industry but, as far as I was concerned, art came first, with structure, performance and the practical integrated into the whole concept, my

vision greatly aided by parallel advances in new technology. Barriers were removed in leaps and bounds.” The great tragedy was Jon’s death, at the very zenith of his creativity, due to inoperable brain cancer at the age of 72. This was particularly ironic, given that Jon always maintained a level of fitness that a man half his age would be proud of. He ran most days, and eschewed business lunches in favour of a light sandwich or salad at the office, which always made me feel rather guilty in his presence, as the most exercise I generally did was with a knife and fork! He became a good friend, and I hugely miss dropping into his studio from time to time and having Jon expound on his latest project and then being shown the drawings and maquettes for this new creation. Alas, my yacht Drumbeat was built two years after Jon died, so I just missed having him do it. This is, in fact, one of my great sadnesses, as nothing would have given me greater pleasure than working up a design and then enjoying the whole construction process with Jon at my side. Notwithstanding, his influence, along with that of Mark Birley, who adored Jon, pervades every choice I make in life. I cannot think of two greater, but entirely different, mentors to have had the supreme luxury of knowing. Spending time in either’s company was a learning curve in lifestyle. Both lifted the notion of “best” onto an entirely more exalted plane. y hope is that one day the V&A museum will organise a proper retrospective of this truly exceptional designer. It would be wonderful for young people to share, see and understand the brilliance of just some of the projects in which he was involved. From the most exotic yachts to, mirabile dictu, the fireplaces he designed for the National Coal Board. Jon is one of those people who would have excelled at anything. He was truly multitalented – a brilliant pianist, photographer, artist and illustrator, with a wit, charm, brilliance and understanding of technology, all of which would and could have dominated any boardroom had he wished to pursue a career in industry or, indeed, the arts. Today the Bannenberg name thrives under his son, Dickie, who, with his partner, Simon Rowell, continues to produce innovative and stylish designs for a new breed of even more demanding superyacht customer. Mark Lloyd is a yachtsman, traveller and bon viveur

his influence, along with that of Mark Birley pervades every choice I make in life

Purely bespoke and exclusively to your specification Muga ~ Pashmina ~ Silk ~ Veedon ~ Wool www.veedonfleece.com veedon@veedonfleece.com Telephone: +44 (0)1483 575758 summer 2011

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FQR Liberal at Large and Parenting Special

ave you ever played Darwin imagined the the whisper game? deliberate evolution of species First you make a circle and organisms that make sense or a line with a dozen or more in their respective habitats. people. The first player whispers Is the evolution of human a sentence into the ear of the thought so different? The www player to his left. Each player whisper game alters Darwinian successively whispers what evolution because of the speed he or she believes they heard at which a whisper is able to into the ear of the next player. travel. Within a sentence, a The last player announces the few misheard and then altered statement to the entire group. words can reshape the sentence Almost every time, what is and its true or intended finally announced is full of meaning. The efficacy of the errors, which accumulated in sentence becomes misjudged, each whispered retelling. The creating potential desperation, final statement announced panic or even anger in everyone differs significantly, and often that “clicks” on the website. comically, from the one spoken The “sources” on these sites by the first. This party game is are faceless – colourful web often invoked as a symbol for pages that seem only to exist cumulative error, especially the within satellites and fibre-optic inaccuracies of how rumours cables. Web pages that have the or gossip spread. The game dangerous potential to terrorise also magnifies the fallibility of truth and choke it to death human recollection. It shows with rumour. The internet has how easily information can the guise of TRUTH. We look become corrupted by indirect to it now as our first source for communication. information: “Google it.” The In 2010, we saw the excellent internet has the face and assured retelling of what director David of absolute authority when Matthew Modine fears for a world that relies on “facts” disseminated via the internet voice Fincher and screenwriter Aaron at many times it is no more than Sorkin believed to be the creation the big, angry face of the allof Mark Zuckerberg’s social network. It is an excellent film with feel the same way about his Facebook domain and maybe he and powerful Oz, who was in reality an old man projecting his face and amazing performances. While the film could have been interesting Assange really are all that. And maybe Assange’s primary goal really manipulating his voice behind a curtain. if Sorkin and Fincher had simply tried to recreate what they believed is “to expose oppressive regimes”. But what if the information he It’s good that individuals speak truth to power. It is fantastic that to be the facts – and I say “facts” loosely – the film might have been is acquiring is in fact being deliberately given, or leaked, to him the internet is so democratic, egalitarian and autonomous. It’s great an appealing biopic. The genius of the film is that it uses metaphor, by the people he imagines he is exposing? What if what Assange when corruption is exposed. It’s great when the average Joe beats like the Greek epics, and tells a story of betrayal on a biblical scale. thinks he’s exposing is, in fact, information the oppressive regime and takes down a giant. That is the kind of story that gives people By employing a dramatic storytelling structure, the movie offers the has carefully planned and selected to be “leaked”? a sense of hope and possibility. WikiLeaks and Facebook were audience an intelligent and emotional lesson about life that is almost Reliable and established newspaper and magazine editors require both created by seemingly normal guys who saw the internet as an impossible to do simply with facts. Yes, films and books often neatly substantiation for stories before they go to print. There must be opportunity to spread and share information, to tackle giants. tie up the loose ends and wrap up the lives of the characters in their sources, and the sources must be vetted to ensure they are reliable To me, Assange and Zuckerberg are the same type, and their sites stories. That’s why we enjoy them. There is resolution. Day-to-day and trustworthy. For those people accused of crimes, we have a are kind of the same thing: a whisper game. What if WikiLeaks life is too full of unfinished business and facts are confusing, or as justice system that provides due process, which guarantees a was around during Reagan’s presidency and heard him say this, Ronald Reagan said, “Facts are stupid things.” He actually got his defendant the fundamental right to be clearly informed of the “My fellow Americans. I’m pleased to announce that I’ve signed facts wrong, as he was trying to quote John Adams, who said, “Facts nature and cause of the accusations or charges against him. legislation outlawing the Soviet Union. We begin bombing in five are stubborn things.” Indeed they are. Especially when they are And here lies the problem with the internet: there is no due minutes.” Reagan was only making a joke before his Saturday radio based on opinion. Today, people are more interested in what others process. WikiLeaks, Facebook and most of the information on broadcast. In this brave new internet world, a sentence like that, think than what they actually know. We are living, or existing, in a the net, are full of personal opinion, not substantiated fact. When Twittered, then “leaked” and sent out on the www might be a loud world where we communicate more with our fingers than with our someone types/screams out from their personal computer and and dangerous shot heard round the world. voices; facts dispersed on the world wide web are even more stupid, sends it out onto the www there is no correcting or retracting the Freedom of speech is an enormous freedom. Ask anyone that stubborn, and potentially dangerous. message or blog once it is SENT. It is unleashed and spreads like a lives in, or comes from, a country where it doesn’t exist. The Facebook was created around 2004, Wikipedia around 2001, fire in a field of dry grass on a warm, windy day; the message races challenge of the internet is accountability and responsibility. How but it really took off in 2004. WikiLeaks’ domain name was around the globe at the speed of whichever internet connection you to enforce truth and avoid cumulative error, inaccuracies, rumours registered in October 2006. Julian Assange has described himself can afford. And like the whisper game, the message changes from and gossip in a virtual forum where the lack of restrictions to write as the “heart and soul of this organisation, its founder, philosopher, one internet site to the next. Exaggerated. Coloured. Misquoted. and post one’s opinion is a freedom we treasure. spokesperson, original coder, organiser, financer, and all the rest”. Rewritten. Once released, there is no rational questioning of the FQR’s liberal-at-large Matthew Modine is the founder of Card Zuckerberg might posted opinion. The opinion becomes a quasi-truth. Carrying Liberal (www.cardcarryingliberal.org)

You Stop Telling Lies About Us and

We’ll Stop Telling The Truth About You

Blunt Speaking James Blunt’s latest album cover has a photo of a father joyously throwing his baby into the air. Bet the latter got into Some Kind of Trouble with his wife… www.finchsquarterly.com

y first two albums I recorded solo, with just an acoustic guitar. They both have a pretty sad and melancholic feel to them. But my third album, Some Kind of Trouble, is different – the music and songs are much more upbeat, fun and exciting. I recorded it with Steve Robson, who has sold over 35m records as a songwriter and producer. I was introduced to him by my drummer. He was in his studio when we met, playing the piano and we were just supposed to meet for a beer. I walked in and there were all these electric guitars, so I picked one up and started to play. We both just started to jam and ended up writing a song we called Dangerous. We liked it, and I came in the following day and recorded it, then wrote another song with him, and then came in the third day to write another, and so on. Steve and I would sit in the studio from 11am till 1am – and what was supposed to be a beer turned into over a year of writing and recording music. I called it Some Kind of Trouble because there is some kind of trouble in all of the songs – not all bad, some exciting and fun as well. The songs are all really about the emotion and experience that I understand, but I also write them through the eyes of other people: Heart of Gold is about a girl who is judged on the way she looks, while Superstar is about a teenager who is bombarded

by reality television saying that fame is the measurement of success and magazines that dictate likes and dislikes. I chose the album artwork because a great friend, whose son is my godson, sent me a picture of him throwing his son into the air. It struck me this would make a great CD cover. It was different, it reflected the album name and there was an innocence to it that I think the album has too. I certainly didn’t want another picture of myself on the front! It looked amazing and unique, but it was not quite right for a cover. So I googled “baby throw”, and the first picture that came up was this great image of a guy throwing his child into the air. I e-mailed him and asked if I could use the picture for the album cover. He e-mailed back saying no, thinking it was some sort of joke or set-up. I then had to get my managers to e-mail him and say it really is this singer/songwriter from England who would really love to use the image. Then he believed me, and e-mailed me back saying, “Yes, great – of course!” The album was released at the end of last year and has already sold 1m copies worldwide. What I am excited by is not the fact that I get to Number One, it’s the fact that when I turn up to play the album live, people will show up knowing the songs and singing them. One of the first gigs I did of my new album was in Belgium and the audiences

sang the entire single for me. It was amazing, and a very weird feeling because I had only played it live a handful of times. I was still learning how to play it live myself with my band, and yet the audiences seemed to know the songs better than me. James Blunt is former soldier turned singer songwriter. Some Kind of Trouble was released in November. James started his World Tour in January (www.jamesblunt.com)

James Blunt’s Top Tips for Baby Throwing 1. Get proper training. See YouTube clip “How High Can I throw Babytard?” 2. Use someone else’s child. 3. Make the kid wear something with grip – like a rubber wetsuit. See the Babywrap wetsuit at www.childrens-wetsuits.co.uk 4. Wear protective headgear and eye protection. Falling children can be dangerous. See ice-warrior.com for full body protection 5. Keep trying! You may break a few children in the process, but that’s to be expected

summer 2011

FQR Summer Style

Getting The Blues Nicolas Bos explains why turquoise is as precious as diamonds

“B

ut this is a semiprecious stone!” This is what I remember hearing years ago when I would suggest using turquoise with diamonds of exceptional quality on a highjewellery piece. I remained perplexed… What did it really mean, semiprecious? Can anything be half-precious? Half-beautiful? Half-perfect? It was nevertheless the fate of certain stones a decade ago not to be as revered as emeralds, rubies or sapphires – which, together with diamonds are usually referred to as precious. But Egyptian Pharaohs, Aztec rulers and Chinese emperors did not bother with these categories, and traditionally adorned themselves with turquoise. It was an expression of power, of refinement, of beauty and holiness, a talisman against bad omen. A piece of the sky that you would wear as a necklace or a crown. For turquoise speaks of blue skies, summer light, joy of life and lightheartedness. No wonder it was so much appreciated by jewellers during the Roaring Twenties, and then in the Sixties and Seventies. Often associated with diamonds and platinum in the Art Deco period, in an elegant reference to Egyptian and Persian traditions of decorative arts, turquoise was then to be set in yellow gold 50 years later, sometimes paired with rubies or angel skin coral on pieces that would convey warmth and happiness. Like most stones, turquoise comes in an almost infinite range of quality and colours. It can be found in different places on earth, but mostly in Sinai, Iran (historically Persia) and America. When one thinks of turquoise as a colour, it is Iranian turquoise that comes to mind: a rich and intense blue, evenly distributed. As for the stones themselves, the widest-known reference is probably the American production (Arizona, Nevada), which is more of a blue-green colour,

often associated with matrix (brown or black veining) and that has been worked for centuries by Native Americans. Cool belt buckles – but quite far from the requirements of Fine Jewellery… The turquoise we would select at Van Cleef & Arpels, generally of Iranian origin, needs to be intense blue, with no matrix or veining. This is the finest and 1. The more blue, the more intense, the less the rarest quality. It veined, the rarest. This is the quality you sometimes perfect should be looking for. to the point that it 2. If the quality is high and the turquoise doesn’t look natural has been stabilised (a very ancient – which it always is, technique that prevents the colour from obviously. fading), no special care is required. his is the Otherwise, be cautious with shocks stone that and long exposure to direct sunlight or you would seawater, which might cause the colour to find, cut in the shape change over time. of a sugar loaf, as 3. Wear turquoise with white or beige, or the centre motif of with other bright colours (coral, orange, a spectacular 1920 purple). But, above all, wear it with a platinum bracelet. Or touch of Seventies nonchalance, with in a series of delicate style, and with a smile. That’s summer, cabochons, featuring after all… the vibrant petals of a flower brooch in 1945, associated with rubies and diamonds. Or, more recently, sculpted to create patterns on the wings of a jewelled Vanessa butterfly, in combination with elements in lapis lazuli, to recreate the “gradual and dual blue” that Vladimir Nabokov mentions at the beginning of Pale Fire. A butterfly with turquoise wings flying in a turquoise sky… The sky as we would always like it to be: cloudless on a summer’s day. Nicolas Bos is Vice-President and Creative Director of Van Cleef & Arpels

Top Turquoise Tips

Insider Trading

hen I am travelling overseas (I love that expression – it’s something my mother always says, and I think it sounds so much more romantic than “going abroad”; it reminds me of ocean-going liners, Louis Vuitton Jeremy trunks with painted stripes and labels inscribed with “Wanted On Board”) I like to visit shops that are indigenous to that country. For instance, if I’m in France I will visit J M Weston in Paris and pick up a pair of its golf shoes because they are French made and it’s one of the few shoemakers that stocks narrow fittings. When I am in Barcelona I might pop into Bel, which is famous for its knitted Teba jackets. I may wander down to the port area and look up a shop that only sells espadrilles, also taking in an establishment opposite that exclusively sells straw hats. It is this quest for indigenous products that took me to Vienna some years ago. At the time a very good Austrian customer of mine, who was always incredibly well turned out in a manner that I like to call

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Which brings me to the Budapest last and, given that Austria and Hungary once forged strong links, it is no surprise that the Hackett on shopping like a local when he’s abroad Budapest last has been so popular amongst Austrians. On first appearance a shoe made on the “severe classicism”, suggested that I might like to visit Vienna and Budapest last looks clumpy and awkward when compared to the he would show me around. Never having been to Vienna it was too more refined toe shapes of English shoes but, perversely, that is good an opportunity to miss, so under the guise of market research what I found so appealing. The price at the time for a bespoke pair and with my credit card paid up, we headed off to this city of was reasonable so I ordered a two-tie blucher in dark brown with a coffee shops. I remember one day having lunch with a Richemont heavy sole and, naturally, on the Budapest last. I requested heel and director, Mario Suarez, a suave, urbane gentleman who gave me toe plates only because they were made from brass, which I had not the sage advice that if you want to know how people are dressing, seen before. As we bade farewell and I was assured that my shoes would be ready in three months, was it my imagination or did the shoemaker click his heels? arl, my guide, was keen that I should see a couple of other shops in town so it was off to Wilhelm Jungmann & Neffe, a grand tailoring emporium with lofty ceilings and walnut-panelled walls and elaborately carved wooden counters just sit in a restaurant or café and watch them go by. Taking heed that displayed rolls of grey flannel and Scottish tweeds in the style of his advice and with my Austrian colleague as my guide, we of Anderson & Sheppard when they were on Savile Row. Here drank morning coffee at one of the older coffee houses in Vienna, you could have suits made by tailors from Prague and Budapest decorated in the Art-Nouveau style with green and yellow flowery with cloth from the best British mills. Ancient madder silk ties tiled walls and floor. sat alongside tab-collar shirts. It’s odd; I see tab-collar shirts We sat in the window at an original Thonet table with matching everywhere I go in Europe. Why? I ask the proprietors, and they bentwood chairs and observed the passers-by After a while I gave usually reply, “Because it’s very English,” which is strange as I rarely up counting the number of Loden coats that swept past worn by see an Englishman in a shirt with a tab collar – well, not since the gents in grey flannels and dark brown brogues – but there was Sixties (I was there and yes, I do remember). something about their footwear that struck me as being quite We make a final stop at Knize, once maker to the Habsburg different from traditional English shoes and, indeed, my companion Archdukes, where I am seduced by the range of fragrances smartly was wearing something similar. He explained to me that they were packaged in white boxes with black graphics. I had Knize’s colognes classic Austrian shoes made on what is known as a Budapest last and soap arranged on my bathroom shelf for some considerable and that the maker was here in Vienna. My earlier enthusiasm for time without using them until, being fickle, I replaced them with coffee shops suddenly waned, and all I wanted was to get to this D R Harris. My Materna shoes remain in the shoe cupboard – shoemaker immediately. Five minutes later we waltzed into the unworn for eight years – and, with each passing year, I find it more hallowed quarters of Materna,Vienna’s long-standing bespoke difficult to countenance the very idea of wearing them as they look shoemaker to the Austrian aristocracy. There is nothing fancy so beautiful and architecturally pleasing sitting there in shoe trees. about its shoes – they are solid, well made and honest, not unlike I am off to Switzerland in a couple of weeks. Now, I wonder, what Arts and Crafts furniture. Eastern Europeans have a long history on earth could be indigenous to that country that I can’t possibly of producing shoemakers – whether they are Polish, Czech or live without? Time will tell… Hungarian. Historically, many of the famous London shoemakers Jeremy Hackett is the co-founder of Hackett men’s clothing store and outfitters, and is also the author of Mr Classic (Thames & Hudson, 2007) employed such people.

was it my imagination or did the shoemaker click his heels?

summer 2011

FQR Summer Style

Halston; we have a (drug) problem

KPA/Zuma/Rex Features

How Kinvara Balfour got involved with the most fashion conscious film of the year

Elizabeth Taylor and Roy Halston.

t was while pitching my screenplay to an agent in the garden at the Chateau Marmont (please allow me this pitiful cliché; it has taken me a lifetime to get to the point where I can say it) that I first set eyes on a man who can only be described as hybrid of Freddie Mercury, Tom Selleck and David Walliams. Dressed in a retro pinstripe suit and shiny John Lobb’s and with a handlebar moustache to kill for (had he done so, he’d surely have used a Remington 11-87 with a homemade suppressor), the dude looked like he’d walked off the set of No Country For Old Men via Out of the Closet thrift store. My initial thoughts: “Who’s that guy, where does he come from and where can I get one?” We were introduced, minutes later, by a mutual friend – film producer Mia Fenwick – and there, over vodka on the rocks, my friendship with Whitney Sudler-Smith sprang forth. At that time, Whitney was in the process of editing a biopic feature film about Seventies American fashion designer Roy Halston. Ultrasuede: In Search of Halston had taken him a couple of years to make and he was now adding a mass of archive footage and music. Having worked in the fashion industry for the past 15 years, I know my stuff. And I know about Halston. I know about the genius of the man because he fascinated me from an early age and, in addition, my aunt, Carina Frost – Ossie Clarke’s house model and a Seventies fashion fiend – has often spoken about the man and his crazy era. Whitney’s project excited me more than most of the movies discussed around the table that night. The following day I accepted an invitation to watch a rough cut at Whitney’s house in Venice Beach, whose ground floor had become a full-on editing suite. What I saw was exciting, fascinating, beguiling and brilliant. “When you are ready to bring this film to London, I want to help you,” I

summer 2011

said. In retrospect, I’m not sure Whitney needed much help. In Ultrasuede, Whitney explores the life of Roy Halston Frowick and documents the demise of his cult fashion label and his personal life. (For him, the moral of this story is, “Don’t do two eight balls a day and try and run a billion-dollar fashion empire.”) Sex, drugs and rock’n’roll are all explored with vigour in Ultrasuede – there’s some riveting archive footage of Studio 54 that warrants an entire movie of its own – alongside interviews with Pat Cleveland, Anjelica Huston, André Leon Talley and Liza Minnelli who, according to Whitney, was “a lot of fun to interview, although wholly intimidating. Not only did she insist on lighting herself, she would periodically get up mid-interview and ask for a playback. I love any woman that chain-smokes 100s.” But the real star of the film is undoubtedly Whitney himself. Performing with a refreshingly comic balance of competence and incompetence, the man lurks in front of the camera with disarming ease, and lures his interviewees in so cleverly that you care more about the man asking the questions than those dispensing the answers. Whitney’s own fashion adds much to every scene: moustaches come and go, peroxide blond hair makes a star appearance and various retro suits and boots are sported with muscle. (“I love a late-Seventies Savile Row/ Huntsman cut; real nut-hugging trousers that go up to your belly button under an impossibly

tight – and long – double-wide vented jacket. Mix in a little Paul Simonon and there you have it,” says my stylish friend. His latest purchase, a punk-studded Burberry trench, is also a favourite.) But it’s Whitney’s apparent lack of knowledge on the subject he set out to make a film about that is so funny. His reasons for making the film are casual: “I have neither a crush on Roy Halston nor any real fascination with women’s clothing; late-Seventies New York was an incredible time in American history, and nobody ruled the city more than Halston. And his story has an almost Shakespearean rise and fall to it, so I thought there was a great movie there.” And great it is. ast-forward two years after my private Venice screening and Ultrasuede: In Search of Halston has had major success on both sides of the Atlantic. After an initial screening at Tribeca, I hosted the European premiere at The Electric cinema on London’s Portobello Road. Nicky Haslam co-hosted (he appears in the film); Whitney’s BF Nellee Hooper joined, and there we had it: a thrilling threesome. Whitney wore bespoke Anderson & Sheppard and looked dapper as ever (when David Walliams arrived in much the same thing you could have sworn the

Don’t do two eight balls a day and try and run a billion-dollar fashion empire.

pair were twins). Though I was kindly offered some vintage Halston to wear on the night by Atelier Mayer owner Carmen Haid, I opted for a shiny gold pantsuit given to me by new brand Halston Heritage (whose creative director is Sarah Jessica Parker) teamed with some Seventies disco curls courtesy of disco-DJ hairdresser John Vial. Whitney claimed I made a fine Halstonette – I certainly partied like one after the screening, though I’m ashamed to say I kept my clothes on. Overall, we amassed a fun and fashionable crowd (Vladimir Roitfeld, Giovanna Battaglia, Edie Campbell, Tatiana of Greece, Daniella Helayal, Fatima Bhutto, Dan Macmillan, Stephen Jones, Charlotte and Andrea Dellal), plenty of headlines and, for the film, a mega UK distribution deal. I’m now an official Sudler-Smithette. Stylist Daniela Agnelli hailed Whitney as the next big name to watch, whilst fashion designer Matthew Williamson suggested Whitney make Ultrachiffon: In Search of Williamson, an idea that has yet to be executed. While Ultrasuede opens in cinemas across the US this April and the UK later this year, Whitney’s next cinematic project remains a secret but I can exclusively confirm that it involves more sex, more drugs and a whole lotta rock’n’roll. Whitney’s charm, wit and dry humour will undoubtedly return. I can only hope that the hairy handlebars and the nut-huggers do too. Kinvara Balfour is a playwright.

www.finchsquarterly.com

FQR Cannes Special

Her illustrious surname gives away her profession. And, as Francesca Grima explains, she has her parents to thank – both for her innate talent as a jewellery designer and for the most important part of her education

y father, Andrew Grima, was an older father – really more of a grandfather figure –whom I admired and adored. He was 59 by the time I was born and had already become a famous society jeweller. He made it very clear to my mother, a great beauty more than 30 years his junior, that he did not wish to change his lifestyle for a new baby. Surprisingly, I was not handed over to a nanny to be presented washed and scrubbed before bedtime but instead became an addendum whenever they dined at Michelinstarred restaurants, stayed in luxurious hotels and travelled throughout Asia, America and Europe on business. Nor did he want to change his London residence, a “set” in Albany, just off Piccadilly. His reasoning was irrefutable: it was a stone’s throw away from his former Jermyn Street shop and a

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short taxi ride to his favourite restaurant, Le Gavroche. The main drawback was that children under the age of 13 were not allowed, and thus I became a baby in hiding and (unofficially) the youngest Albany resident in history. We moved to Switzerland when I was six, where I was enrolled in a conservative Catholic school in Lugano. My parents continued to travel extensively, usually taking me with them, and I always dreaded the end-ofyear attendance check, when the names of those with the best attendance records were read out first and I was always called last, usually with an embarrassing 100 or so days of absence to my name. By the time I was 11, I wanted to go to boarding school. Le Rosey – with its campus based on Lac Léman (between Geneva and Lausanne) in the summer months and in the ski resort of Gstaad in winter (where we eventually moved) – was heaven on earth but not exactly down to earth. It was a different planet, where every student (except me) wore a Rolex by the age of 12, and the Sunday mass collection box looked like the GNP of a small Eastern European country. You would not describe my time at Le Rosey as a total triumph. The only subject I excelled in was art and, eventually, when threatened with expulsion I was moved on to another school (this time in Germany), then another and then another. Happily, I have inherited my father’s easy facility for drawing and jewellery design, coupled with a well-developed aesthetic sensibility. I speak four languages more or less fluently, and I am at ease with people with money – and quite good at persuading them to part with it! My upbringing has equipped me perfectly for the job I do now, even though I have the CV of a spoilt, educationally retarded troublemaker. My father did not believe in a formal jewellery design education as he felt it would hinder my imagination. He taught me how to design, how to be inspired by a stone, its shape, its inner beauty. He was himself a keen amateur artist but had no formal training in art or design and it was by sheer chance that he began a career in jewellery. At the time, he was working for his first wife’s father, bookkeeping for his jewellery manufacturing company, Haller Jewellery Co, which produced jewellery typical of the Fifties; everything was bows, birds or blooms. When two Brazilian stone dealers visited Mr Haller in his office with a suitcase of rough, uncut, semiprecious stones Mr Haller told them nothing could be done with them and was about to send them on their way. My father, however, had been watching the

summer 2011

FQR Cannes Special

three men from his desk and was mesmerised by the crystals, their irregular shapes, their unusual colours and natural beauty. He had been uninspired by everything he had seen in the jewellery trade until then. He persuaded his father-in-law to purchase the entire suitcase and went on to design his first collection. This moment of pure chance and inspiration became a key turning point in the history of modern jewellery design. And this inspiration would remain with him throughout his life. I would watch him drawing for hours. He was already in his seventies, yet his hand was so steady, so controlled, so smooth. Customers who brought loose stones or old jewellery for redesigning would sit in awe as he sketched three or four different designs within minutes, right before their eyes. He never hesitated, and rarely rubbed anything out. So much thought went into what seemed to be total improvisation. It was very difficult to follow in my father’s footsteps and be “the daughter who also designs”. His pieces adorned the most glamorous of people, including HM Queen Elizabeth II (from whom he received a Royal Warrant), Princess Anne and Princess Margaret, plus film stars such as Ursula Andress and Peter Sellers and, more recently, the fashion designers Miuccia Prada and Marc Jacobs. I realised the only way to be a designer in my own right was to come up with new, fresh, ideas influenced by my father’s work. My pieces are perhaps more feminine and younger. The sort of jewellery I would wear every day. My father introduced me to unusual semiprecious stones, my favourite being dendrites from Madagascar: rock crystals with fossilised inclusions that resemble forests seen from an aeroplane or, as I used to call them as a child, “stones with fluff in them”. Textures play a large role in my finished designs. I love experimenting and creating new textures that at times create a further dimension to my pieces or blend in and forge a smooth and inconspicuous relationship with the stone. My mother, Jojo, is also a talented designer with a unique ability for creating new pieces in the house style (abstract, glamorous, exquisitely crafted) and, having started her Grima apprenticeship in the workshop, she often helps me with my designs and any technical problems that arise. We are incredibly close, which makes working together on a daily basis easy and gratifying. My mother grew up in South Africa and is the greatgranddaughter of Sir Thomas

summer 2011

Cullinan, who owned the Premier mine, where the largest rough diamond ever found was discovered (the largest polished gem from the stone was named the Great Star of Africa and now resides in the Royal Sceptre). Unfortunately, the Cullinans got through their money and, after four years touring provincial theatres as an actress, my mother moved to London, where she met my father while working for the legendary Mark Birley as a DJ in Annabel’s. Their first encounter involved a piece of shrapnel her boyfriend at the time had dug out of his leg in Oman, which she wanted made into a necklace. My father must have taken a fancy to her because the budget she gave him for the commission was only £20, and the strangest piece of jewellery he had ever made was duly presented over dinner at the Waterside Inn at Bray. The rest, as they say… My mother had always thought jewellery an expensive and purposeless extravagance, until she saw my father’s designs; they were wearable works of art, never following a trend, never in or out of fashion, always collectable, possessed more of an aesthetic value than an intrinsic worth. She spent many years learning from the 60 goldsmiths in the Grima workshop and eventually took over the reins of the business as my father’s health declined. We still have our shop in Gstaad, but are now looking forward to spending more time in London and have found a fantastic venue for an exhibition on the first floor of a town house on Albemarle Street, where we will show our new collections as well as vintage pieces. It’s a first step in re-establishing the Grima name in London, where it all began – and where it truly belongs. Grima will be exhibiting vintage and new pieces at 1st floor, 16 Albemarle Street, London W1 (07900-590 123; www.grimajewellery.com; info@grimajewellery.com from 7 June to 12 July; 10am to 5pm or by appointment

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Finch & Co

This quarter I will be Killing Mostly…

“By”spoke Polo Yes, it’s wheely polo, says James McBride. It’s just on bicycles

he crazy thing is I have always wanted to than a tennis ball. Obviously, bicycles are used go to India but decided not to go until instead of ponies, and foot polo mallets. You can’t I had an invitation to a great party. My strike the ball while your foot is on the ground philosophy is that if you’re going to go to India, but other than that the rules are pretty much you’ve got to do it right. So I waited 45 years for the same as horse polo. I don’t think I’ve ever this invitation from Satinder Garcha. He was been so exhausted in my entire life – and now hosting a party in Jaipur and Jodhpur to celebrate I know how the ponies feel! Cycling on a field, his wife Harpreet Bedi’s 40th birthday. Satinder riding up and down, chasing some young Indian is the son of Colonel Garcha, a very well-known gentlemen – who were far more agile and far fitter Indian Sikh polo player from Jaipur, who used to than myself – was true torture. Furthermore, the coach the Indian national team. Colonel Garcha pressure of the crowd watching, which included founded the Jaipur Riding and Polo Club, the Maharaja, was quite intense. At this point, I situated in Sirsi village on wondered why I’d accepted the outskirts of Jaipur. This the invitation from the is where the event started off, good Duke. However, I was and we played some light able to score a spectacular polo at the club – just for fun goal, which made it all and nothing too serious. worthwhile. We then took a bus journey Bicycle polo is a great way from hell, which, because of for people to get a feel for 1. Only play one chukka – some demonstrations that the game. You can get an you’re apt to have a heart were taking place, took 13 idea of what it’s like to move attack if you play two. hours from Jaipur to Jodhpur, around and hit the ball, and 2. Have a shot of Royal Salute instead of the usual four. It for children it’s a good way prior to playing. involved camel rides and to improve their balance. It’s 3. Make sure Peter Prentice, the broken tyres, and really was one the same movement – one commentator, does not know of those truly Indian trips you hand on the handlebars, one your name. have to experience. Eventually, striking – and it’s fun and 4. Gently insert your stick in we arrived in Jodhpur, where something that can be done your opponents spokes when the Royal Salute Maharaja in places where people don’t desperate. of Jodhpur Golden Jubilee have horses. 5. Have three other team-mates Cup was taking place. Indian While I was in India under 20. and international teams I stayed at a hotel called competed on the historic field Raas, in Jodhpur, which was in the foothills of the Royal spectacular. It was in the old Umaid Bhawan Palace. Satinder was playing and walled city, right underneath the Mehrangarh His Highness The Maharaja of Jodhpur and the Fort, which almost gave it a Marrakech feel. This 13th Duke of Argyll were also present. I wasn’t was where the party was; the party I had waited all playing, just watching. Also taking place was one of those years to attend. Every night was a different the inaugural bicycle polo games, with the Duke of theme, with the final night being Indian Bling. I Argyll and others participating, which was the first ended up wearing a diamante turban with a giant time I had ever seen the game being Jay-Z crystal around my neck, a velvet jacket, and played. Fortunately, I was able jodhpurs I had made in Jodhpur. I thought that to play in the second chukka, if you go to Jodhpur, you have to have a pair of and with several much- jodhpurs made, right? They have the real baggy esteemed Indian bicycle polo look and are pretty effective and cool. The final players. night was spectacular and took place in the fort Bicycle polo is played overlooking Jodhpur. on a field about half The beauty of playing polo in India is that the the size of a normal games are usually of a high standard and very polo field, with a competitive, but it is also very social and you ball a little bigger have these extraordinary parties organised, so it really captivates the imagination and the spirit of India on all levels. James McBride is President of YTL Hotels and FQR’s Polo Editor

Top Tips for Bicycle Polo the Indian Way:

in the garage this quarter

Jaguar E-Type

1932: A team of four young women all ready for Hollywood’s latest sport of polo-cycling. Fox Photos/Getty Images

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Enzo Ferrari described the Jaguar E-type as the most beautiful car in the world – praise indeed and the E-t ype roadster is on permanent exhibition at the museum of Modern Art in New Yo rk. It celebrated its 50th birthday in March and is surely a timeless icon; still great to drive, light steering, and great per formance, still damn fast, sexy as hell and it’s value. It’s probably the bes going up in t sports car of all time and a great British product! Sir Anthony Bamford is the Chairman of JCB and a motoring enthu siast, well known for his enviable collection of classic sports and racing cars.

The Idea That Hunting Is Merely About Killing Animals Reza Rashidian argues that, far from being all about the big bang, hunting is a series of complex experiences

here is a theory in quantum physics that states that through the mere process of observation one might change the nature of how something behaves. This stipulation is very interesting in that it inadvertently applies to the least scientific of all human emotions, in other words, love and passion. When I started to write about hunting, I felt that – through the mere process of analysing and dissecting my passion with a view to reassembling it for the consumption of others – this assertion might apply. I was right. Some of the mystique is inevitably lost. When you compromise love, your only hope of salvaging it is to refer to the subtle details and minutiae of why you fell in love in the first place. Attempting a dénouement of a concept that is essentially, as Frida Kahlo says, “the sum of multiplication of all numbers”, in order to identify its key aspects is an exercise in futility. So what I am going to do is present a collage of miscellaneous ramblings that the reader may either assemble to get a whole, or dismiss as yours truly’s writer’s block masquerading in the guise of most contemporary

art: in other words, a self-indulgent, craftless, subjective expression that its charlatan originator demands others to read and interpret because he needs it explaining to himself. The links of my non-sequitur experiences might be too tenuous to come together in a Tarantino-esque way. But they are not necessarily meant to. The point of this exercise is to demonstrate that the love of hunting for the true outdoorsman is a multifaceted and complex bond, made up of the most unexpected and disjointed experiences. Sitting with my Mongolian guide in the Altai Mountains, sharing a meagre lunch, I suddenly realised I could communicate fairly well in Mongolian, although I didn’t speak a word of the language. It dawned on me that I had done this in the past with other people in the most far-flung places on earth. I had learned, as a direct result of having to communicate with people of different cultures and languages, a sort of sign language combined with an exchange of key words that made it possible for us to get by. I was mesmerised by the devastating beauty

And We’re Off…

Harry Herbert anticipates another cracking season for British racing

he oft-repeated mantra “British racing is the best in the world” was sounding just a shade jaded at the beginning of the 2010 season. But galloping to the rescue came Harbinger, victor of the King George & Queen Elizabeth Stakes with its backdrop of Ascot’s extravagant edifice, and in a style that brooked no argument that here was the best horse in the world – and British-owned, too, by the Highclere Syndicate. As the founder of Highclere, my interest in Harbinger was utterly partial; but as a racing man, I could see that the universal pleasure he brought was edifying for all concerned with the British turf. His fractured leg, sustained on Newmarket gallops, and his subsequent emigration to stud in Japan destroyed dreams of a dynasty, and we will be blessed if we see his like again… Hang on, didn’t we say that about another true champion, Sea The Stars, at the end of 2009? So we can, we must, approach 2011 with the sense of anticipation that Phil Bull, one of racing’s late great thinkers, encapsulated in the phrase “What keeps me going from one year to the next is seeing how last year’s two-year-olds turn out.” There is an obvious focus for glory this season – the unbeaten three-year-old Frankel. Star quality has oozed from this striking individual in a succession of slashing victories. Frankel’s profile is enhanced by his trainer, the mercurial Henry Cecil, a many-time champion who has reversed declines in health and achievement to regain a pedestal he once occupied alone. The “could be anything” category in racing is more large dustbin than lucky bag, but Frankel looks the real deal for a race such as the 2,000 Guineas. Personally, I do not envisage him staying the mile and a half of the Epsom Derby trip. The colt is home-bred by Prince Khalid Abdullah, whose 2010 season ran on parallel lines of success with Highclere and whose Derby-winning Workforce redeemed himself in Paris in the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe after being dismissed by Harbinger in the King George. Workforce stays in training and is likely to prove that he wasn’t merely a wide-margin winner of an ordinary Derby and that a narrow Arc triumph was something more than courtesy of a dream ride from Ryan Moore. He will take all the beating in

the top middle-distance races both here and abroad in 2011. And there is also Highclere’s Conduct, a striking grey son of Selkirk, also trained by Sir Michael Stoute, who is unbeaten from two races as a threeyear-old and – who knows? – could just be the “next Harbinger”. Stoute also “houses” Carlton House, a handsome juvenile who left his field for dead second time out at Newbury. Owned by Her Majesty The Queen, he is her best Classic hope for many a year and, on breeding, is more likely to stay the Derby trip than Frankel. Another “lurker” is Mantoba, trained by Brian Meehan at Manton. After two fine successes, Mantoba was authentically unlucky in the Breeders’ Cup and he could be the surprise package of his generation. ven at Highclere we didn’t see Harbinger coming – and no one could envisage another Ouija Board within four years of Lord Derby’s phenomenal mare, who took the racing world – three continents – by storm. Yet there came another, in the shape of dual-Oaks heroine Snow Fairy, also trained by Ed Dunlop. She fetched a paltry €£1,800 as a yearling and has now won over £2m in prize money – a fairy story indeed; racing has never needed to invent them.. Writing of winners, to say that Ryan Moore surrendered his Flat Jockeys’ Championship through injury is to belittle Paul Hanagan’s seizure of unforeseen chances to become only the third northern-based jockey since the War to take the title. Which brings us to the inaugural Champions’ Day at Ascot in October, when there will be more prize money – £3m – than for any other single day’s racing and over which the game has shown its congenital disposition to tear itself apart. The day’s supporters will hope that it immediately stamps its pedigree and does more than lodge in the crevice between the Arc weekend and the Breeders’ Cup: detractors wonder whether a single exotic meeting will reverse trends that have seen racing’s income from the bookmakers’ levy plummet. Phil Bull would have appreciated the sense of impending drama. Harry Herbert is FQR’s Racing Correspondent

summer 2011

the taking of a clean shot at a fair distance, allowing for the cross wind and a 24in bullet drop to make a clean kill

of a woman in a village we stopped at in Ethiopia on our way to the Danakil Desert. Her poor surroundings only served to accentuate her beauty. I remember turning around and looking at her from the back window of the car as we drove off until she disappeared from view. I have never seen such perfect beauty again. We started walking at 3am at -20°C in the Pamir Mountains so that by daylight we could get a view of a herd of Marco Polo we had spotted the day before. With all the excitement of laying eyes again on the magnificent ram that was within that group, we approached the area where we had last spotted them, only for the wind to change and for the entire herd to spook and run the minute we had sight of them. The perseverance of not quitting despite that and following as best we could in deep snow on fairly rugged ground… The desperate run we had to do at 4pm when we saw the sheep climbing a steep mountain that, if they had crossed, would have meant they would be in Afghanistan… The calming of my heart and breathing after a fair sprint at 18,000ft and the taking of a clean shot at a fair distance, allowing for the cross wind and a 24in bullet drop to make a clean kill… Every cell in my body and all thought processes focused and in unison… A state of meditation I have only experienced when hunting. The look of the Customs man when I arrived with a bow we had taken off some elephant

Finch & Co

poachers we had chased off in the Central African Republic (I had decided to leave the poison-laced arrows behind), and the conversation I was forced to have with the taxi driver back home whilst trying to readjust to being back in London. I failed as much to convey the story behind my confiscated bow to the Customs man and the taxi driver as to everyone else I attempted to tell it to. The only people who understood were my fellow hunters and adventurers. I will never forget the first time I tasted moose. I had been eating tinned food for a week in the vast wilderness of British Columbia. And then we finally spotted the bull moose that I decided to take. It was and remains the most delicious meat I have ever eaten. I ate moose non-stop for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Oh, and moose for elevenses too. I tried moose again at a restaurant several months later. Not even close, I’m afraid. Sometimes the entirety of an experience is captured through the expression of selective tranches of memories, randomly chosen and in no particular order. And this applies especially to the things we have chosen to love. They are rarely explicable in a tidy, digestible, linear fashion. What I hope this article demonstrates more than anything else is that for the true outdoorsman, hunting is not only about the killing of animals. Otherwise, it would be easier to get a job in an abattoir. Reza Rashidian is Finch’s Quarterly Review’s hunting and shooting correspondent

Harry Fane Obsidian Objets d’art

www.harryfane.com

Tel +44 207 930 8606

1970’s Cartier Gold ‘Nail’ Bangles

summer 2011

Smart Thinking About Health For the ingenious Christofer Toumazou, technology is not just a fashion accessory – far more importantly, it can be used for the good and the health of mankind

icrochips have revolutionised the consumer industry, with every person’s lifestyle being defined by the technology around them (iPhones, computers, Nintendos etc). Toumazou and his group have shown that if you just apply a fraction of this technology to healthcare you can make major innovations in next-generation individualised medicine. As a result, two companies have spun out of the Imperial College’s Centre for Bio-Inspired Technology: Toumaz Technology, which allows continuous monitoring of your heart wherever you are in the world, and DNA Electronics which, for the first time, employs a microchip with a saliva sample to determine whether it is written in your genetics that you are susceptible to a disease such as diabetes or if the drugs you are prescribed are right for you. Advances in genomics and information and communications technologies are enabling rapid research advances in other areas of healthcare in which progress had previously been slow. These advances mean that there can be a shift in care away from a centralised model that puts the physician at its core to a smarter, more decentralised approach focused on the patient. This opens up new ways of coping with the huge problems of ageing populations and surges in chronic ailments such as diabetes and heart disease. We believe this shift in the model will result in a more portable, precise and personal way to deliver healthcare utilising user-friendly devices such as personal digital assistants and mobile phones. These are very useful for “hiding medical monitoring” whilst displaying data in ways that enable patients to act on specific information. Current work in Toumazou’s group that is destined to be part of this model includes the development of an artificial pancreas. In creating this, bio-inspired metabolic technology is under trial in a therapeutic domain – diabetes treatment, where semiconductor chips have been configured to mimic the function of pancreatic beta cells that usually regulate insulin. The whole system continuously monitors blood sugar (glucose sensor) and secretes the amount of insulin required at any time to keep it in balance. Another example of a wireless healthcare monitoring system is something Toumaz Technology is developing at the moment, the Sensium digital plaster. This is an ultra-low-power systemon-chip technology platform that enables a new generation of low-cost, non-intrusive, bodyworn wireless vital-signs monitors for medical and professional healthcare applications. Powered by thin, flexible batteries, and looking much like a plaster, the body-worn Sensium-enabled monitors can process and extract key features of the data and intelligently integrate it into an electronic medical record via a base station, using a power-optimised wireless operating and networking system. For healthcare professionals, this delivers possibilities for 24/7 monitoring and improved quality of care at reduced cost. Traditional healthcare models are simply not able to offer this level of continuous care except in expensive intensive-care-unit settings. Toumazou’s group has also pioneered the application of microchip technology to genetics. This can be tailored to rapidly detect the genetics of interest: human, animal, plant or microbial. The ability to accurately detect a gene sequence in real time using a standalone, fully portable, low-power unit provides end-users with technology as yet unavailable outside a laboratory. In several applications, a real-time answer at the point of care would save time, money – and lives. Imagine a portable genetic test at the pharmacy to prescribe drugs specific to your genetic footprint. The same can be applied to cosmetics, disease predisposition and health screening. Over the past few years, we have been using the physics of semiconductor technology to model the biological behaviour of the retina, cochlea, neurons, beta-cells etc, and to provide intelligent, physiological semiconductor chips with almost the efficiency of the original biology. This has led to a new platform of local intelligent monitors and therapy and has enabled personalised interfaces with the human body in a non-obtrusive, wireless and physiological way. The intention with the deployment of this technology for real-time monitoring and intervention is the prevention of chronic disease and patients being admitted to intensive care. Our future research projects are either based on applying state-of-the-art engineering technologies to provide solutions for complex biological, physiological and medical problems such as prosthetics and diagnostics; or focused on deriving novel technologies based on the biological or physiological behaviour of complex systems, such as biometrics and smart sensors. We believe the result of this investment and research means the healthcare outcomes of individuals and the financial health of the economy can only get better. It is interesting to note how biology has inspired technology, which then solves major healthcare problems. This same paradigm is now being explored for other applications in both energy and the environment. Billions of years of evolution are now coming to the rescue. Professor Christofer Toumazou is the Director, Chief Scientist and Research Director at the Department of Bionics at Imperial College and has made outstanding contributions to the fields of low-power analogue circuit design and current mode circuits and systems for radio frequency and biomedical applications. He was made one of the youngest ever professors at Imperial College at the age of 33, in recognition of his outstanding research.

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FQR Summer Books

Write Here, Write Now Novelist Bella Pollen procrastinates over the task in hand…

’ve been meaning to write this for ages. I wanted to start last week, truly I did, but somehow I never got round to it. Same thing yesterday. I’m only doing it now because the deadline is today. An excuse might be the answer: my computer’s overrun with unsolicited porn or my cat got squished by the Ocado van – not that I have a cat, or can even tolerate the horrid lip-licking furballs. Still, 800 words is hardly a stretch and there’s only so many times that work can be put off before fear and self loathing set in. Besides, I’ve already written 107. What’s 107 into 800? Where’s my calculator? Oh look, there’s a weekend supplement still in its plastic wrapping. The cover promises an article on the Dutch economy. That could be interesting, I guess. Come on, who am I kidding? Focus! I wonder if it would help to eat something… OK, so what if breakfast was an unusually protracted affair? The fridge needed sorting out and somebody had to make stock from that rotting chicken cadaver. Anyway, is it my fault

that things are happening slowly? Jet lag is a killer. I should take a pep-me-up. Something to help me be me, but on a really good day. Gosh, so many bubbles. Who knew Berocca took forever to dissolve! Why am I obsessing about bubbles? Maybe I need a job. A real one with a pay cheque and pervy boss, though god knows who’d hire me, let alone sexually harass me with these nails. Why do other people’s nails not chip? The Customs officer at Newark had hers decorated with tiny little American eagles. I lied and told her they looked great, but secretly they reminded me of string vests and wife beating. The inside of my medicine cabinet is like the Black Hole of Calcutta. It’s so dark and fetid in here, I swear I could grow my own antibiotics. I keep meaning to sort it out. Honestly, where does the time go? The nail-varnish-removal pads have dried up and using the blunt edge of a pair of scissors is not as easy as it looks. Why is my voodoo doll lying on the floor? It was delivered by my sister after somebody was rude to me recently. She had glued a headshot of the offending pig onto a paper body and stuck pins into vital organs with ailments he would soon be suffering. Gonorrhea, halitosis. Boils. I love my sister! She’s so funny! Maybe I’ll see if she wants to go to the movies tonight. On Rotten Tomatoes, I watch a couple of trailers. OK, eight trailers – what’s the big deal? They’re only short. Shit, why haven’t I heard from my agent? Just how long do directors take to read scripts, for God’s sake? 11.30am and the shame of work avoidance is setting in. Focus, focus! y hand hovers over the computer waiting for the impetus of intelligent thought that will propel it across the keyboard. Nothing. My brain feels weird. Iris Murdoch had Alzheimer’s, and she was a writer. But wasn’t she older? Am I ageing faster than my friends? Better for it to be writer’s block than dementia from premature ageing. But wait – didn’t I once write something pertinent and insightful about writer’s block? I could find it and plagiarise myself… Yes, here we go. Writer’s block. Can anyone get it? Is it catching? Oh crap, this isn’t good enough to plagiarise, and now I’ve re-read the opening paragraph that’ll have to go too. I’ll never get this piece written, or any other piece. I know what’s going on here. I’ve just handed in a book. Fine, all right, not just. A few months ago. Six, to be exact. Although, technically the manuscript was finished well before publication date, which makes nine. Oh God, that’s nearly a year, then. Don’t judge me. I’ve done stuff since then. Built a website, taken it down again. Fiddled with a film script. That’s work, isn’t it? Being curled up on the sofa all day in a foetal position eating egg sandwiches whilst practising truncated dialogue on inanimate objects? Now you’re wondering if the problem is all in my head. Of course it is! My head is exactly the problem. There used to be an entire family living in there. Not just a family, but also a dead diplomat and a philosophical grizzly bear – and now they’re gone, all of them, and there’s nothing else to fill the void. Nothing. Oh, I can tell what you’re thinking: “Stop whingeing, start another f**ing book!” But I can’t start a book until I have another idea, and how can I come up with an idea while there’s my bathroom cupboard to fumigate and this piece to write – and all the other pieces I haven’t written because I’m mourning my non-existant dead cat and ordering a replacement hard drive for my computer? Besides, it is surely time for lunch. 12 30pm. Good enough. Bella Pollen’s latest book Summer of the Bear (Mantle) is published in paperback this May

My hand hovers over the computer waiting for the impetus of intelligent thought that will propel it across the keyboard

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FQR Summer Books

ands up those who recall the Bedford Square Book Bang? If, like me, you say “yes”, then you reveal your age, but the Book Bang was also the books sensation of 1971. Held outdoors in a Bloomsbury square, it attracted more than 50,000 people despite appalling weather, which turned the square into a quagmire. The Bedford Square Book Bang was the idea of a coming man of the 1970s, a bookseller by the name of Martyn Goff, who in a long career also ran Britain’s best-known and most influential book award, the (Man) Booker Prize. Looking back on these four decades one realises that the Book Bang set the scene for what would become the brave new world of innovative literature festivals in Britain. Until the Book Bang, book fairs – with few exceptions – tended to be stuffy affairs held in boring exhibition halls. What they lacked was spark. But what the Book Bang had, and what the best literature festivals have today, was a feeling that books and their authors could be inspiring and often full of fun. In the 40 years since the Book Bang, no self-respecting city has felt itself complete without a books or literature festival. They come in all shapes – Harrogate specialises in crime fiction, Bath has two festivals, including one just for children’s books. Even smaller towns seek their place in the literary sun: King’s Lynn twice yearly for poetry

and fiction, Stroud purely for poetry. And there are those, such as Winchester, which in the main run on what one critic called the “free plug circuit” – interviews with bestselling authors who turn up not for the size of a fee, but for a chance to meet their public by selling and signing copies of their books. Ion Trewin’s guide to British In the premier league of British literature literary festivals festivals today, though, three stand out: Cheltenham, the oldest (this year will as “Glastonbury for bibliophiles”. be its 62nd); Edinburgh, founded in Payment was originally in wine. I well 1983; and Hay-on-Wye, five years remember Peter Florence filling the lift later. Each has gone its own special and of my office – I was a publisher then often spectacular way. Cheltenham – with cases of red and white to hand has the biggest single venue, an arena out to authors who had taken part. at Cheltenham’s racecourse, which can One year and unaware of the time seat the best part of 2,000 people and differemce Peter phoned Arthur Miller has packed it with stars such as Stephen about taking part. Miller picked up Fry, Michael Palin and Judi Dench. Hay, described by Bill Clinton as “the Woodstock of the mind” has been a family affair, begun by Norman Florence, his wife, Rhoda Lewis, and run by their son, Peter, who were Hay-on-Wye: 26 May-5 June inspired by the town’s reputation as Edinburgh International Book Britain’s used-book capital. Once it Festival: 13-29 August was held in a series of marquees so Cheltenham Literature Festival: prayers for fine weather were top of October 7-16 the list. No wonder it became known

This year’s festivals

the phone in what was for him still the middle of the night. Florence repeated the venue: “Hay-on-Wye.” “What’s that?” responded the still half-asleep Miller, “some kind of sandwich?” Some 200,000 seats were sold over the 10 days of last year’s Hay Festival. And that was just at the home event. Now it has gone international with Hay Festivals in Spain, Kenya, Mexico, Lebanon, Colombia - and even the Maldives. North of the border the Edinburgh literature festival was founded in the shadow of its big brother, the Edinburgh International Festival of Music and Drama. Initially held every two years with a handful of events, confidence grew and now it is a healthy annual affair. Charlotte Square’s gardens become a tented village, and last year some 220,000 visitors attended over 700 events. Edinburgh has been in the vanguard with events for children. The novelist Jacqueline Wilson, who always has a word for every child who buys a book and brings it to her to sign, had a queue that snaked its way through the gardens. She finished the signing five hours after it began. Cheltenham’s festival also began in a shadow – of the town’s music festival,

which began just before the World War II. By 1949 the annual music festival was booming. Benjamin Britten, William Walton and Arthur Bliss were among those who played at the early post-War festivals. The town council was so encouraged that they thought if one can do it with music, why not books and authors, too? And so the Literature Festival was born, with speakers that first year including Compton Mackenzie and Cecil Day-Lewis. Today the Festival is run by the meticulous and ever imaginative Sarah Smyth, who has seen it grow from an audience of 20,000 in the late 1990s to more than 120,000 in 2010. Once it was held just in Cheltenham’s magnificent Edwardian Town Hall, with children’s events in a side room. Today it has also taken over the nearby Imperial Gardens and a number of venues close by. And expansion is in the air for this year’s festival. Book signings have become a crucial element. The book tent, once tacked on to the tradesmen’s entrance of the Town Hall now rates a huge tent all of its own, where takings last year topped £150,000. E-books may have come, but there is still no substitute for authors speaking, authors reading from their works, authors being interviewed, and, above all, authors meeting their public. Ion Trewin is the Literary Director of the Man Booker Prize and author of Alan Clark: The Biography

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FQR Summer Books

Tome Alone Simon de Pury on the books he won’t be reading this summer

earning how to read and write was an experience that I still fondly and vividly remember, despite the fact that it occurred light years ago! Putting pen to paper is a physical kick that I still enjoy as much today as I did back then, even though we are now living in the days of BlackBerries and iPhones. One thing that I am, however, highly embarrassed to admit is that I don’t read any books. It is not for lack of trying. I cannot count the books that I have gleefully opened on the first page and enthusiastically started reading. I invariably make it past the first page but, by the second or third at the very latest, my attention gets totally distracted and any effort to get back into the book is in vain. Often I catch myself actually reading several pages while at the same time thinking of something that has strictly nothing to do with what is written in the book. I can only think of a handful of books where I was so gripped by their content that I could not stop reading them from start to finish. When I closed these books I was overcome by an intense feeling of satisfaction and accomplishment. I read the bulk of them during my adolescence. Le Rouge et le Noir by Stendhal brilliantly describes the

extreme ambition of a young man called Julien Sorel. It matched and fed well into the feelings of a big ambition I was beginning to discover in myself. These feelings have, luckily, far receded into the background. John Braine’s novel Room at the Top was an Anglo-Saxon version of ambition that equally gripped me. Le Grand Meaulnes, the only book ever written by Alain-Fournier, on the other hand, fuelled my highly developed romantic fibre. Two or three books written by the Belgian novelist Henri Vernes describing the extraordinary espionage and sciencefiction adventures of a French hero named Bob Morane made me thrive for an existence of which routine was going to be absent. Despite the absence of aptitude for reading books, I loved literature class at school and was actually doing reasonably well in it. Seeing movies and listening to the stories told to me by my schoolmates gave me enough material to write or speak eloquently enough about books to obtain good marks. Comics and cartoons, of course, were the exception and I devoured everything from Tintin to Mickey Mouse and from Asterix to Superman. The French cartoonist Jean-Jacques

Sempé so aptly and lovingly observes the human condition that I feel he is long overdue for the Literature Nobel Prize. I made it through even fewer books in my adult years. The second to last book I read was Justine Lévy’s Rien de Grave, which appeared in 2004. In it, the daughter of the French philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy describes with humour, sadness and immense talent her marriage to Raphaël Enthoven, whom she lost to Carla Bruni, who was later to become the First Lady of France by marrying Nicolas Sarkozy. The last book I have read (for the time being) is The Debutante Divorcée by Plum Sykes, which appeared in 2006. As will be evident to any reader who has made it this far into my article, it is high time a new book came out that is good enough to grab my attention! When Baron H H Thyssen-Bornemisza used to write annual reports for his sisters on his family business, he would write the following message on page 23: “If you have made it this far into this document, please call me immediately and I will be happy to send you a crate of Krug champagne.” He never did need to send his sisters any champagne since they

While I don’t read books, I am nevertheless totally enamoured of them

never made it that far. It may seem perverse for somebody who has hardly read more than two handfuls of books during a lifetime that I own a library that is so massive I do not have enough space to house it all at home. Most of it is filling a huge space in a fine-art storage warehouse. While I don’t read books, I am nevertheless totally enamoured of them. I love their physicality, to hold them, smell them and look at them. When I reached the age of 15 my parents wanted to offer me a gold watch. I politely declined, saying that I would much rather receive the catalogue raisonné on Pablo Picasso’s early work by Daix & Rosselet that had just been published. In the days before Benedikt Taschen revolutionised the market for art books, one could easily cost more than an expensive watch. Since I am art obsessed, most of my books are art books in which I look at the pictures. I like biographies and personal memoirs as well, but normally only read the index and look up passages relating to people or topics I am interested in. While I don’t read any books, I continuously read magazines, papers, e-mails and my iPad – I am impatiently waiting for the delivery of my iPad 2! Luckily, a father tends to score his greatest educational successes as a negative example. It is for that reason that I am very relieved to see that my adult children love reading books. Simon de Pury is Chairman of Phillips de Pury & Company

On the beach this quarter

Emilia Hungerford talks to Chris Anderson, who became the curator of the TED Conference in 2002

The Anatomy of a Moment: 30th anniversary souvenir of Tejero’s retro Franco chic coup attempt Reprobates: They may not have won the civil war, but they had the best hairdos; a fascinating study perhaps if they’d spent less time writing poetry and going to the hairdresser King Charles would have kept his head. Lawrence of Arabia: you’ve seen the movie, required reading if you want to know how we got from the seven pillars to the twin towers The Popes: an intimate history of God’s vicars

summer 2011

What is TED? TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) is a non-profit organisation devoted to Ideas Worth Spreading. It started 27 years ago as a four-day conference in California and has grown since then to support people around the world who are working on world-changing ideas and initiatives. At the annual TED Conference at Long Beach, California, we invite the world’s leading thinkers and doers in fields such as science, technology, design, business and global issues, as well as arts, culture and entertainment, to speak for 18 minutes on their area of expertise. People such as Bill Gates, Sir Richard Branson, Al Gore, Richard Dawkins, Stephen Hawking and Bill Clinton have spoken at TED, and all speak on fascinating themes and subjects. For example, in 2010 Craig Venter announced at TED that the first fully functioning, reproducing cell controlled by synthetic DNA had been created and explained how this achievement marked the beginning of a new era for science. And we’ve had Sylvia Earle, who’s been at the frontier of deep ocean exploration for four decades and worked towards creating global marine protected areas or “hope spots” large enough to save and restore the ocean. Each year one exceptional individual with a wish to change the world is awarded the TED Prize, which gives them the opportunity to put their wishes into action. This year’s winner is JR, a photographer whose wish is to create a global art project where people

can reveal and express stories and issues they care about and share with the rest of the world (www.insideoutproject.net). How did you get involved? I first went in 1998 and fell in love with it immediately, because the conference attracted people who weren’t afraid to dream – and dream big. I was able to acquire it, put it into a non-profit, and for the past 10 years have been figuring out how to open it up to the world. Two of the most significant steps on that journey were the decision to release talks for free on the web at TED. com, which has ended up attracting a global audience in the many millions, and allowing people to organise their own TED-like events around the world under the TEDx brand, which, to our surprise, has led to more than 1,000 events being organised in more than 90 countries. We also have the TED Fellows programme, helping worldchanging innovators from around the globe become part of the TED community and, with its help, amplify the impact of their remarkable projects and activities.

your talks, Crowd Accelerated Innovation. Can you tell us about it? Ideas come when people spark off each other. And it’s a striking – and perhaps under-reported – fact that web video has granted visibility to far more people, and sparked a really giant new cycle of learning and innovation. And that’s what TED is tapping into. The original and most powerful communications medium – that of human-to-human communication – can be captured on video, so it’s allowing people to share ideas in a way that taps deeply into something that’s primal in all of us. one

you speak about

What

would be your

“one

wish to

change the world”?

Most of the problems in today’s world are global, and the people trying to solve them, unfortunately, are elected on national or, if you like, tribal mandates. I’d love to see a world with more global souls in it, so my wish would be for every child to spend a year at an international school at some point during their life. It’d make a huge difference.

How has TED grown over the years? TED has a life of its own, and my job is to nurture it and let it grow. It’s thrilling What recent conferences have taken to see the global growth partly through place and what’s coming up? the volunteer translation programme, TEDWomen, with a them of “Reshaping which has taken the Talks into more the Future”, took place last December than 70 languages, and we’d love to see in Washington DC. TED2011, “The that process continue. Ultimately, we’re Rediscovery of Wonder”, was held in simply looking for ways to make learning February, in Long Beach, California, along easier and more exciting, whether that’s with the TEDActive simulcast in Palm school kids or adults, in the US or Springs. TEDGlobal 2011, “The Stuff of anywhere else in the world. Our aim is Life”, will take place July 11-15, 2011, in for as many people as possible to watch Edinburgh. TED videos online and be inspired by Follow TED at www.ted.com, www.twitter. what they see. com/TEDTalks or www.facebook.com/TED

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FQR In the Soup

Does This Float Your Boat? Flying a seaplane is a challenge even for intrepid pilot Annette Mason, but so far it’s all gone swimmingly

n 1988 my husband and I were in Vancouver, Canada. Whilst there, we visited his ex-wife’s sister. She suggested we go for a picnic by seaplane (and no, she wasn’t trying to kill me!). So on the next clear day we went to the lakeside and there, bobbing in the water, was a little taxi floatplane. Looking at it, I wondered at the first brave soul to fly one – a Frenchman, apparently, in 1910. I think ours was a Grumman Goose; it had twin floats like a giant pair of inflated skis. Actually, it was one of my more exciting flying experiences, and great fun, initially bumping along, speedboat-style, and suddenly smoothly rising over the water up the shore and over the city. The views were spectacular. We flew high up into the mountains and landed in a beautiful, remote area on a vast lake some 3,000ft above sea level. As the water was slightly choppy, the landing was initially quite heart-stopping, as from the low, smooth descent the floats made contact with the water with a sensation a little like going over a giant wake on water skis. Jumping from the float onto the shore is challenging, and rarely results in an elegant arrival; we laughed heartily at each other’s splash landings. Bare feet, spare socks or wellies are recommended. The best pilots are adept at manoeuvring the aircraft with a single paddle, which requires real skill. Imagine trying to dock a boat with a 40ft wingspan, no engine and a breeze pushing on the tailplane. The two floats behave like a catamaran and the single paddle seems highly inadequate. After a short stroll, in squelchy shoes,

and with cloud closing in, we departed, executing another exciting water-soaked leap onto the floats, followed by a treetop skimming departure. I would definitely recommend anyone to try it if given the chance. The original Grumman seaplane was a singleengine bi-plane JF Duck built in 1933 (which looks a bit like a giant monoskiing bird). The Ducks were followed in 1937 by the twin-engine amphibious Grumman Gooses (they are never called Geese, by the way). Sadly, seaplanes appear to have declined in popularity – although, apparently, a new plane called the Antilles Super Goose is being built as I write. I recently flew in a seaplane from the ski resort of Mont Tremblant near Montreal, to a lake 100 miles north-west called Lac Tapani. It’s incredible how many lakes there are, and looking at the miles of uninterrupted forest, it’s hard to comprehend that the world is facing overpopulation. This time I was able to follow through on

the landing, as well as fly the straight and level sector. It is tricky. It’s important to make sure C the floats land stem first essna 180 h on m on the rear of the float, like floats rk.co . By k artwo ft a r c r ind perm i a water-ski jump. Failure to do ission of Nick Linehan. www.customa this can result in the aircraft pitching over on its nose, spoiling the whole day most horribly probably too rough, and the Grumman has (and at the very least spilling the contents of the trouble with waves bigger than a foot, but in picnic basket). There are many variables – wind an emergency, who cares? It’s probably more to direction, height of waves – and then there’s do with cost. Floats are large, heavy and create judging your lots of drag – much more than a normal plane height above the – this in turn makes the plane slower (not good water, lack of for busy multimillionaires) and use more fuel. manoeuvrability Jets can’t land at many Caribbean islands as the on the water runways are too short; you need aircraft that can (very difficult), land on a sixpence (perfect for an amphibious no brakes, wind plane, though), maybe an Albatross (wonder turbulence in if they’d read The Ancient Mariner when they m o u n t a i n o u s named this one?), Antilles or Mallard as it has its regions, and the fuselage in the water for buoyancy to cope with huge change to bigger waves. the feel of the aircraft from land to water. In the The airfield, and flying into it, is a constant UK if you want to learn how to fly a seaplane, topic of conversation in Mustique (a bit like the there’s an intrepid man who will teach you on a weather in England), where the runway is only just loch an hour’s drive north of Glasgow. 3,180ft and situated between two steep hills, The Last Christmas, sitting in the airport in planes that fly there at the moment are twin engine Barbados after another knee-trembling de Havilland Otters (there are floats available for small-plane flight from the islands, these planes) and Islanders. On a recent trip, after whilst waiting for my flight back showing my licence, the pilot let me sit in the front to UK, I pondered why they don’t and take the controls, though not for the landing – use amphibious seaplanes in the even my family balked at that. It’s easy flying there; Caribbean, so that in an emergency from Barbados, you fly towards the sun – though it’s you could land on either land or sea. worth remembering that is only in the afternoon. The sea is The Mustique Company has just replaced some of its charter planes, as there have been a few “good moments” in the ageing ones, including windows flying open at 10,000ft! A friend said that the air pressure made it impossible to close them again at that height. Private jets have to land nearby When it comes to making fabulous gazpacho, Maya Even is blending in very nicely in St Vincent or Canouan; I’ve been at the controls and Not a soup for the faint-hearted, my make it well in advance since the flavour virgin, sherry vinegar should be a properly corns and come out of a grinder landed there, as its runway gazpacho. Not to be eaten by anyone benefits from several hours to overnight aged Spanish variety without bits of twig – not a shaker. You may be slightly is 5,800ft, but there’s only overly concerned about flatulence, bad development in a fridge. or fruit in the bottle, the tomatoes must be alarmed about the amount of olive an empty golf course and breath, repeating, their circumference or A note about the ingredients: because this fresh, ripe and scented and should on no oil this recipe calls for. Don’t be. The deserted hotel (apparently, dry-cleaning bills. On the other hand, it is soup is raw, the ingredients have nothing to account come from a Dutch greenhouse, oil is what makes for a perfect emulsion it is getting a makeover) an excellent cold starter on a hot summer’s hide behind if they are less than flawless. So the salt should be a good flaked sea salt such and elevates the soup from merely good to visit, so it’s mainly an day, the preparation is simple and you can olive oil should be cold-pressed and extra- as Maldon, and black pepper should be in to sublime. “in transit” airport. The shortest INGREDIENTS batches, and these piles will help to maintain a consistent never ever start or stop the blender with the lid or cap runway of all in 2kg fresh, ripe tomatoes flavour and texture. off. When you have poured roughly a third of the bottle the Caribbean is 1 largish white or Spanish onion Set your sieve over one of the very large bowls. Put the into the purée, add 1 tablespoon of the vinegar, a flat in St Barts (Saint 1 medium green pepper contents of the first medium bowl into the blender and, teaspoon of salt and a good grind of pepper. The purée Barthélemy): 1 cucumber (about 1ft in length) moving gradually to the highest speed, blend for 1-2 will by this time have lightened and brightened in colour 2,170ft with a steep 3 fat cloves of garlic minutes. Pour the contents through the sieve into the bowl. from a muddy red to a glorious rich orange. Blend for hill at one end, and 1 litre (approx) good olive oil While it is straining, run the next batch of ingredients from another minute or so, and then replace the cap or lid and beach and another 3-4 tbsp best sherry vinegar the second bowl through the blender. In the meantime, take stop the machine. Pour the purée through the sieve into steep hill at the good sea salt a wooden spoon and stir down the contents of the sieve the clean bowl. You will note that it will have thickened other. You need a freshly ground black pepper till there is no more liquid, only the residue skin and pips. into a creamy emulsion. Repeat the process with the rest special permit to 1 fresh chilli about 1in/2.5cm in length (optional) Throw this out, rinse the sieve, replace it on the bowl and of the purée, sieving the mix after each blend. Though it land there, and you pour the next batch of blended ingredients into the sieve. isn’t necessary to clean the sieve each time, throwing out have to land in St EQUIPMENT Repeat this operation till the vegetables are all puréed in the the residue will speed the sieving and help produce a more Martin first to get Blender, Large wire sieve, 3 medium bowls, 2 very large large bowl. Rinse out the blender. Re-sit the rinsed sieve on velvety soup. Before you fill the blender for the final their qualification bowls, 1 large and elegant jug for serving the soup the other large bowl. time, taste the sieved mix in the bowl. Does it need more and brief. A friend Now make the emulsion. With a ladle or large measuring seasoning? More vinegar? Less? As you blend the last swore he will never METHOD cup, fill the blender about halfway up with the purée. You batch, adjust the salt, pepper and vinegar accordingly. go there again after Place your empty serving jug in the fridge. will eventually be adding another 1/3 of a litre of olive oil, Sieve the entire soup once more, this time directly into his pilot on a windy Halve, de-seed, de-stem and wash the green so factor this in to your calculations or your ceiling will the cold serving jug. Return to the fridge. Just before evening, rushing to pepper. Wash, but do not peel, the tomatoes. look like a slasher film. You know your blender. At your serving, give the mix a good whisk in the jug. Pour avoid nightfall, nearly Peel the onions, cucumber and garlic. Roughly side, you should also have, the bottle of olive oil, the bottle into cold bowls. killed him after suddenly chop all the above ingredients, keeping each of sherry vinegar, salt, the pepper grinder, a tablespoon, a Serve with a crusty good white bread for turning 90 degrees doing separate. In the three medium bowls, make teaspoon, and, if it is a very hot day, a glass of very good mopping up (or what the Italians more a go-around and brushing three roughly equal piles of tomatoes, cold sherry to help things along. elegantly call a scarpetta) and a crisp the top of the trees as he tried onions, peppers, cucumbers, garlic and So, after closing the lid, start the blender, and push the white wine or cold fino. to ascend. Seaplane, anybody? chilli (if you want a bit more kick). speed up to the highest setting. Your blender should have Maya Even is FQR’s Cookery Annette Lynton-Mason, wife of Pink You are going to pulverise the lot, a removable central cap, which you can open at this point. Editor Floyd drummer Nick, is an actress, but – unless you have a blender Start pouring the olive oil in a very thin steady stream into motor racer, biker (on a Suzuki Bandit), the size of a mammoth the purée through this opening. If your blender is an oldhelicopter pilot, competitive horse rider, – you will have to do fashioned type without a cap, do not despair, you can still sculptor, mother, housewife – and writer it in three or do this, but you must lower the speed and then remove m o r e the entire lid, watching the sides like a hawk to ensure the summer 2011 www.finchsquarterly.com liquid does not overflow. Whatever you do,

Failure to do this can result in the aircraft pitching over on its nose, spoiling the whole day

Getting Macho With The Gazpacho

FQR Victorian Design Special

Architecture by George Gilbert Scott is visible all over London, from the Foreign Office and Albert Memorial to the newly named and launched St Pancras Renaissance Hotel. Royden Stock celebrates his work

eorge Gilbert Scott (13 July 1811–27 March 1878) was born in Gawcott, a small village near Buckingham. The fourth son of the Reverend Thomas Scott and Euphemia Lynch, and the grandson of the Biblical commentator Thomas Scott, he was initially educated in his father’s own school, attached to the church. In 1827 he travelled to Homerton in East London to train as an architect under James Edmeston, an architect and hymn writer. After almost six years with Edmeston, Scott assisted Henry Roberts and, occasionally, his friend Sampson Kempthorne. In 1835 Scott himself employed an assistant, William Bonython Moffatt. Three years later, Scott became the business partner of Moffatt and the marital partner of Caroline Oldrid. Scott & Moffatt completed over 40 workhouses and many churches over the following 10 years. Although Moffatt was good at securing work, it would seem that earnings were often low or nonexistent. At the insistence of his wife, Scott ended the partnership. A more profitable career ensued. Scott was hugely influenced by his contemporary, Augustus Welby Pugin, and among the many architects trained in Scott’s office was George E Street, architect of the Royal Courts of Justice. By the time Scott’s design for The Midland Grand Hotel was chosen, he was one of the most eminent architects in the Empire and certainly one of the best known publicly, after all the trouble he had had with his designs for the Foreign Office. Scott had originally designed the Foreign Office in his favoured Gothic Revival style, only to have these accepted designs rebuked by Lord Palmerston when he became Prime Minister after the competition. But before the work had started. Palmerston insisted that Scott redesign the offices in the classical style or withdraw and allow someone else to complete them. Scott chose the former, and the buildings still fulfil the needs today. When Scott was announced winner of the Midland Grand Hotel competition and his plans shown, some of the other entrants bemoaned the fact that, if they too had been allowed to work outside the mainly financial parameters laid down by the Midland Railway, they could have done a better job. Indeed, Scott’s estimate for his plan was £50,000 more than his nearest rival. Nevertheless, the appointment was made and Scott brought in immediately to oversee building works and confer with Barlow (designer of St Pancras station) on accommodation needed for the railway. Then the first of many financial problems occurred: the Overend, Gurney & Co bank collapsed in June 1866 (the largest bank crash in British history until 1995). This caused the Directors of the Midland Railway to revise their plans at St Pancras. Firstly, they decided not to move their headquarters to London. Secondly, they told Scott that he must change his design to save a considerable amount on the estimated cost. Scott removed the entire fourth floor of accommodation from the designs for an estimated saving of £20,000. Additional savings were to be made “wherever it was practicable to do so”. The plans were redrawn and along with the removal of one entire floor, the central tower and clock tower were altered to be more equal in height. The station opened once it was complete enough for it to commence operations, on 1 October 1868. The above-platform-level work on the hotel started in 1869 and, although not yet completed, it opened with no ceremony on 5 May 1873. Knighted by Queen Victoria in 1872 for the Albert Memorial, a magnificent tribute to her late husband, Scott died in 1878, only two years after the completion of the Midland Grand Hotel. The hotel operated successfully for 62 years, but closed in 1935 due to being outdated, needing very costly maintenance works and the depressed state of the economy. It was gradually turned into railway offices, renamed St Pancras Chambers, and came close to demolition in the early 1960s. A public campaign by the Victorian Society saw it saved when it was listed Grade I in 1967. The exterior was extensively restored in the 1990s as part of a package of urgent safety works to the building, which also saw it completely reroofed. In 1996 the building was taken over by London & Continental Railways & Property as part of the Channel Tunnel rail link works, which saw the station refurbished and connected by high-speed railway to the Channel Tunnel. St Pancras replaced Waterloo as the terminus for Eurostar in London. Manhattan Loft Corporation won the competition to turn the disused and neglected building into apartments and a superb five-star hotel and, as I write 15 years later, this project has come to fruition. Years of neglect have been swept away. Much restoration has taken place under the guidance of English Heritage and the foresight and financial might of CEO Harry Handelsman, and a new jewel in London’s hospitality industry will once again welcome those who want not only a comfortable bed for the night, but also a real Victorian experience in the heart of London. Royden Stock is a tour guide and historian. Guided tour details and bookings can be found at: www.stpancrasrenaissance.com

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summer 2011

FQR Victorian Design Special

Beauty & The Best Stephen Calloway, relives the ideas and ideals of the V&A’s major exhibition on the Aesthetic Movement

Sir George Gilbert Scott (1811-1878) the English architect in middle age. He was the leading proponent of the Gothic revival in architecture, and his work includes St. Pancreas Station in London. Hulton-Deutsch Collection/CORBIS

summer 2011

he notion of a Golden Age and tantalising glimpses of the sophistication of lost civilisations have an increasing appeal in a corrupt present that seems hell-bent on spreading social and political chaos, financial ruin and unthinking ugliness to every last corner of the globe. We live in a world where, as Matthew Arnold predicted, the tide of civilisation has turned and, as it relentlessly recedes, it leaves desolate beaches where “ignorant armies clash by night”. How wonderful, then, and timely, that the major spring exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum should be devoted to the ideal of beauty. The Cult of Beauty celebrates the achievements of the wonderfully idealistic Aesthetic Movement in Victorian Britain in the four decades from 1860 to 1900. This major exhibition gathers an unrivalled gallery of masterpieces, ranging from depictions of beautiful femmes fatales by Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Edward Burne-Jones and the febrile, daringly decadent drawings of Aubrey Beardsley through to the revolutionary Nocturnes and Symphonies of James McNeill Whistler and Frederic Leighton’s supremely languorous late paintings of classical subjects such as The Hesperides and The Bath of Psyche. The Cult of Beauty is, in fact, the first show ever to assemble many of these greatest Aesthetic pictures together with the finest furniture, decorative arts, fashionable dress and jewels of this extraordinary movement, setting them all in the context of a glittering cast of characters featuring not only the artists, but the poets and their muses, the designers and makers of exquisite things, and the patrons and collectors who devoted their lives to the single-minded pursuit of beauty. With the rallying cry “Art for Art’s Sake”, the Aesthetes espoused the, at that time, highly controversial idea that art should exist for no other reason than to be beautiful. They boldly declared that works of art should not seek to tell stories or preach; devoid of narrative, free from anecdotal subjectmatter and making no moral points, pictures and sculpture should simply give visual and tactile delight and dare to hint at sensuous pleasure. Increasingly, as such ideals took hold, the life devoted to art came to be seen as a high calling and, reaping the rewards of their new success, Aesthetic artists began to create for themselves handsomely furnished studios filled with exquisite objects. Even John Ruskin, that most earnest of art pundits, realised that something extraordinary was happening and recognised that “beautiful art can only be produced by people who have beautiful things about them”. The idea took hold that artists’ studios such as these were sacred spaces consecrated to the rites of the new cult: ivory towers of beauty and palaces of art. Piqued by what little was really known of the way in which painters such as Rossetti, Whistler, Leighton or Burne-Jones actually lived, public curiosity now grew not just about works of art, but about the artists’ houses and the artists themselves, making these painters some of the first celebrities. Every scrap of information from the illustrated papers was eagerly devoured and it would not be

long before everyone wanted “art-furniture” and “art-pottery”, to wear “artistic dress” and to adopt the “artistic lifestyle”. One of the most important examples of the mutual influence between artists and designers is to be found in the startling collaborations between Whistler and his great friend, the architect E W Godwin, who designed the White House for the painter and designed some of the most innovative furniture of the day. Characterised equally by elegance and eccentricity, Whistler and Godwin both drew upon influences as diverse as Ancient Greek sculpture and artefacts and newly discovered Japanese woodblock prints with their bold colours and stylised lack of perspective. In the 1870s, the leading Aesthetic artists – Whistler, Leighton, Watts, Albert Moore and Burne-Jones – evolved a new kind of self-consciously exquisite painting in which mood, colour, harmony and beauty of form were all, and subject played little or no part. In 1877 the Grosvenor Gallery opened as the fashionable and glamorous showcase for this new and much-discussed art. Grand society patrons now not only bought pictures shown on the gallery’s famous “greenery-yallery” silklined walls; they bought into the movement, commissioning portraits, adopting “artistic” dress and decorating their rooms according to the aesthetic principles. The notion of “The House Beautiful” became a touchstone of cultured life. But even so, the decade closed with intense controversy exemplified by the critic John Ruskin’s savage attack on Whistler, which prompted the painter’s spirited defence of the ideals of Art for Art’s Sake both in his brilliantly witty pamphlets and by the idiosyncratic staging of his own exhibitions. scar Wilde, the first celebrity style guru, invented a brilliant pose of “poetic intensity”, but initially made his name promoting the idea of “The House Beautiful”. By the 1880s Britain was in the grip of the “greenery-yallery” Aesthetic craze, lovingly satirised by Gilbert and Sullivan in their famous comic opera Patience and by the caricaturist George du Maurier in the pages of Punch. In the last decade of Queen Victoria’s reign, the Aesthetic Movement entered its final, fascinating Decadent phase, characterised by the extraordinary black-and-white drawings of Aubrey Beardsley in The Yellow Book. In the final room, the V&A show culminates in a glorious sunset of great, late paintings by the old men – Rossetti, Moore, Burne-Jones and Leighton – shown in company with a group of sensuous nude figures sculpted in bronze and other precious materials by their younger contemporaries and protégés, the exponents of the so-called “New Sculpture”. These include the very last cast to be made of Alfred Gilbert’s celebrated Eros, probably the most familiar but least looked at and really appreciated work of art of the Victorian age. Stephen Calloway is the exhibition curator of The Cult of Beauty: The Aesthetic Movement in Britain, 1860-1900 at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London until 17 July 2011

We live in a world where the tide of civilisation has turned and relentlessly recedes

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summer 2011

FQR Art Exclusive

Lost and Found by Patrick and Tristram Fetherstonhaugh

Lost and Found, a series of thirty-five photographs by Patrick and Tristram Fetherstonhaugh, documents the pottery collection at the Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology, University College London. The bulk of the collection was assembled by Professor Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie (1853–1942), the great excavator and Egyptologist. The pottery dates from 5,000 BC and includes ceremonial and everyday items. Petrie designed the collection to be used for teaching and the pieces are arranged by type rather than where they were found, giving each cabinet its own character and palette. The photographs were taken over a three-year period with technical sponsorship from Hasselblad. A boxed set of Lost and Found is published by Sebastien Montabonel’s Alaska Editions (www.alaskaeditions.com) as thirty-five individually wrapped 305x305mm C-type prints presented together with texts by Stephen Quirke, Curator of the Petrie Museum and Simon Baker, Curator of Photography and International Art at Tate Modern.

summer 2011