Spectator Life - Issue 2

f i l m / s t y l e / i n v e s t m e n t / S P O R T / Tr av e l

M AR IO T E S T I N O p.17 What I owe to Peru

ED S M I T H p.26 Roger Federer’s late style

p.31

T om H olla n der p.66 In love with folk

ISSUE 02

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S P E C TAT O R L I F E

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SUMMER 2012

POLO, PARTIES AND POWER GAMES

T H E CU RIOUS

REBE C CA HALL

p.22

Britain’s subtlest young star on spies, Hollywood and lessons from her father

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EDI T OR’S L ET T ER

T

he predominant theme

running through this, the second issue of Spectator Life, is Britishness. It would be redundant to point out that patriotic feelings are running high this summer, but rather than join the jamboree in championing the Olympics, we have chosen to focus on some of our nation’s other great strengths. We celebrate great British design, in fashion, interiors and jewellery; the rise of private members’ clubs in London; the bucolic pleasures of the British countryside; and a day at the polo.

If there’s another strand running through the magazine, it is understatement. Consider our cover star Rebecca Hall, whose performances are always fascinatingly nuanced; and the modesty, grace and sheer sportsmanship of Roger Federer, whose ‘delicious contribution’ to tennis we glorify in these pages. He may be approaching the autumn of his career but that in no way diminishes the midsummer delight of watching him play. We wish him well as Wimbledon fortnight begins. He may not be British, but he’s still the best.

Spend a third of your life in first class

Lucinda Baring, Editor

savoirbeds.co.uk 7 Wigmore Street, London W1 555 Kings Road, London SW6 Harrods, Knightsbridge, London SW1 +44 (0)20 7493 4444

SAVOIR BEDS Chairman Andrew Neil Editor Lucinda Baring Deputy editor Danielle Wall Sub-editors Peter Robins, Victoria Lane Design & art direction Steve Fenn – Design by St, www.designbyst.com Client services director Melissa McAdden: melissa@spectator.co.uk, 020 7961 0212

SINCE 1905

London

Paris

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Berlin

Stockholm

Beijing

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CONTENTS

17 47 31 61 C U LT U R E

STYLE

LIFE

T R AV E L

14. The Index Where to go and what to see in July, August and September

43. Invested interests Merryn Somerset Webb on London property

17. A gift to Peru Mario Testino on giving something back to Lima

47. Rock stars Sophia Waugh on celebrities’ adventures in jewellery design

21. Pop fiction Chinese writers are finding new platforms, says Clarissa Tan

51. Personality, please Hatta Byng tells us how to create interiors with character

22. Interview: Rebecca Hall The rising Hollywood star talks to Peter Hoskin

54. A stitch in time Mary Wakefield on London’s best-kept fashion secret

26. An ace in autumn The eternal joyfulness of Roger Federer, by Ed Smith

57. The Wish List The best of British watch and jewellery design

31. Polo, anyone?

The party crowd are too much for some sponsors, says Dan Jones

61. Yacht or not?

Ian Henderson on where to get afloat in the Mediterranean

34. Cheaper by the glass David Blackburn seeks out vintage wine at old-fashioned prices

64. Globe trotting Which hotels to head for this summer

37. Members only Matthew Bell takes us on a tour of Mayfair’s hottest new clubs

66. One to Watch Tom Hollander extols the appeal of Hannah Peel, a rising young folk star

40. Less muck, more brass Harry Mount on the new breed of country squire 13

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T H E I NDE X P o r t Eli o t F e s t i va l Cornwall, 19-22 July The stunning seat of the Earl and Countess of St Germans is the setting for this eclectic arts and literature festival.

Ali Smith, Geoff Dyer, Kate Summerscale and Jon Ronson will all be appearing

Ch a ri o t s o f F ir e Gielgud Theatre, Until 10 Nov The great British Olympic story adapted for the stage by Hampstead Theatre, complete with that Vangelis score

E n gl a n d V S o u t h Afri c A The Oval, 19-23 July This could be the Test that decides the No. 1 team in the world. And if South Africa’s fast bowlers hit their stride, it could also decide the fate of several England batsmen

AUG

JUL

E d va r d M u n c h Tate Modern, Until 14 Oct His most famous painting (all $120 million of it) dates from the 1890s, but the Norwegian expressionist kept working until the 1940s; this extensive survey show makes a case for his later work, including film and photography

M e t a m o rph o s i s National Gallery, 11 July-23 Sept The National’s two great Titians — ‘Diana and Actaeon’ and ‘The Death of Actaeon’ — serve as

J u li u s C a e s a r Newcastle Theatre Royal, 19-28 July Greg Doran’s African Caesar in Newcastle’s lovely 1837 theatre, as part of the RSC’s World Shakespeare Festival

Dr D e e English National Opera, Until 7 July A second opera from Damon Albarn, the Blur frontman, this one about the brilliant occultist John Dee, who was one of Elizabeth I’s most remarkable courtiers.

Typically inventive and eclectic music fits a staging with something of the Elizabethan masque to it

Th e L o d g e r Barbican, 21 July Hitchcock’s most acclaimed silent – an audacious serialkiller drama – is likely to be even more gripping when accompanied by the London Symphony Orchestra

G e rh a r d Richter Louvre, Until 17 Sept If you enjoyed his big retrospective at Tate Modern last year, a closer look at Richter’s works on paper will be well worth the trip

B e iji n g S y mph o n y Or c h e s t r a and London P hilh a rm o n i c Or c h e s t r a Royal Festival Hall, 29 July Two top-class symphony orchestras, two Olympicthemed pieces from China — one of them ‘a gift to London’ — oh, and Beethoven’s Ninth

inspiration, along with their Scottish sister ‘Diana and Callisto’, for new works from big names including Chris Ofili and Mark Wallinger

L o n d o n Roa d National Theatre, Until 6 Sept A musical about the Ipswich prostitute murders might sound like a dreadful idea, but Alecky Blythe’s breathtaking show is returning by popular demand Antony’s M e lt d o w n Southbank Centre, 1-12 Aug For his programme at the Southbank’s genrebending festival, Antony Hegarty has invited Laurie Anderson, Marc Almond and the performance artist Marina Abramovic, among many others

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Abs u r d P e r s o n Singular Minerva Theatre, Chichester 10 Aug-8 Sept August might seem an odd time for a play about disastrous Christmas parties, but when it’s an Alan Ayckbourn classic, and Ayckbourn’s directing, who’s going to argue?

Port Eliot Fiona Campbell; Metamorphosis © Chris Nash/The National Gallery; Van Morrison Wire Image; US Open, Lady Gaga Getty Images

Green Man F e st i va l Glanusk Park, Wales, 17-19 Aug There’s no Glastonbury this year, so why not try this small but perfectly formed festival?

Van Morrison is the main draw; other highlights include Feist and Michael Kiwanuka

Claire Cunningham Queen Elizabeth Hall, 8 Sept The award-winning Scottish dancer presents a dark and funny love story, with crutches

U S Op e n T e n n i s New York, 27 Aug-9 Sept Last year, Novak Djokovic confirmed his pre-eminence with his first US Open victory at Flushing Meadows; it’ll be fascinating to watch him defend his title

L a dy G a g a Twickenham Stadium, 8-9 Sept Gaga’s support act is The Darkness, and you can expect her to make them look very understated: at recent gigs, she’s been arriving on stage on horseback

Leonard Cohen Hop Farm, 8-9 Sept His only British shows this year

SEP

D o n a ld R u n n i cl e s a n d th e B B C S c o tt i sh S y mph o n y O r ch e st r a Royal Albert Hall, 3 Aug The esteemed conductor’s first Proms appearance of the year sees him lead his orchestra through a programme that includes pieces by Bruckner and Wagner

F i lm 4 S u mm e r Screen Somerset House, 16-25 Aug In winter, Somerset House’s fountain court is the most picturesque place in London to ice-skate; in high summer (if it doesn’t rain) it becomes the capital’s most magical outdoor cinema, screening classics and new releases

King Lear Almeida Theatre, Until 4 Nov Thirty years ago, Jonathan Pryce was an astonishing Hamlet; now he’s arrived at the other end of Shakespeare’s age spectrum.

Michael Attenborough directs

J u mp y Duke of York’s, 16 Aug-3 Nov April De Angelis’s family drama about a middle-aged ex-radical was a hit at the Royal Court. Now it’s coming to the West End, still with Tamsin Greig in the lead

T on y C r ag g Exhibition Road, 1 Sept-30 Nov When cars are banished from the heart of London’s museum quarter, they will be making way for five gigantic abstract sculptures, up to 20ft high

V e n i c e F i lm F e st i va l Various venues, 29 Aug-8 Sept Along with Cannes, the most glamorous film festival on the circuit

P r e - R a ph a e l i t e s : V i ct o r i a n Ava n t - G a r d e Tate Britain, 12 Sept-13 Jan A major exhibition drawing from one of the strongest areas of the Tate’s collection Let it Be Prince of Wales Theatre, 14 Sept-19 Jan The Beatles finally get the jukebox musical treatment; too early to say whether it’ll be a good show, but it’s certainly an achievement in copyright negotiation S a n F r a n c i sc o B a ll e t Sadler’s Wells, 14-23 Sept America’s oldest professional ballet company perform three different programmes during a two-week residency

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VIEW

FROM

PERU

All images Mario Testino

Photographer Mario Testino on what he owes his homeland, and why he is setting up a foundation and exhibition centre in Lima

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C u lt u r e

Claudia Schiffer, German Vogue, Paris 2008.

Previous page: Stella Tennant, American Vogue, New York 2006

A

means. I want to give them an international platform to exhibit their work, which I hope in turn will help them get residences to show their work abroad. I love Lima; I feel excited by its potential and I am in the fortunate position of being able to create opportunities for people which they might not have had otherwise.

This foundation is also a way of saying thank you, as I think my nationality has in some ways been the key to my career.

When I started out, all the other photographers on the circuit were German, Italian, French, American or British. My Peruvian background gave me a totally different perspective. It’s no secret that I adore Italy, London and Brazil — Italy because it’s part of my heritage, London because it’s the most exciting place in the world, full of tolerance, humour and individuality, and Brazil because it taught me what it is to have a really good time.

couple of years ago I had an exhibition at the MALI Museo de Arte in Lima. On seeing the positive reaction of my fellow countrymen, I started to feel my work should live in Peru so the people could feel it belonged to them.

Later, a friend brought a derelict building to my attention. I’ve always been obsessed with the great buildings that were put up after Peru became independent in 1821. Many of them were built in the 1850s but became largely disused due to their size and the cost of the upkeep. My friend suggested I buy the building and restore it. So I set up MATE, Asociación Mario Testino, and established there a permanent home for my work as well as a foundation to support local artists.

The foundation’s aim is to identify Peruvian artists who have talent but lack

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In some ways I think my nationality has been the key to my career. My Peruvian background gave me a totally different perspective to all the other photographers on the circuit

Kate Moss, British Vogue, London 2008

But home is where the heart is and, in a very humble way, I feel I carry the flag for Peru. I want to use that to my advantage.

When I was younger, I considered entering the priesthood. My career followed another path in the end, but I still want to put my energy into good causes when and where I can.

MATE will open with ‘Todo o Nada’, an exhibition of my work that was first shown in Madrid in 2010. When choosing which of my portraits to include in the show, I decided to concentrate on putting together a collection of images that contradict but compliment each other. There are portraits of people dressed most exquisitely in couture; in others, the models are in a state of undress, even semi-nudity.

What I love about photography is being able to share what I see. Everyone I photograph adds something different; they are all fabulous and interesting in some way. Take

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C u lt u r e

Nicole Kidman, American Vogue, England 2006

woman; she collects art and is always curious about life. The same can be said for Kate Moss. She and I have had parallel careers, despite the age gap between us. It takes a photo­grapher a lot longer to build a career than it does a model and Kate has been an inspiration to me from the very beginning — not only for her beauty, but also her style, kindness, humour and openness. She’s awesome.

Every person I photograph brings something unique with them; they are all fabulous, beautiful and interesting in some way.

People often ask me who is the most beautiful person I’ve ever photographed and the honest answer is that it’s impossible to choose just one. But the portraits I took of Princess Diana have become iconic; they stay in people’s minds. So perhaps I should choose her, simply because she is the most everlasting.

Stella Tennant. Every time I work with her, the final result is completely different; each photograph is full of her personality. She is very down to earth and full of surprises. I have come to know her well. In fact, she married my assistant, David Lasnet. One day I was working with Stella and noticed there was something funny going on. When I asked her who she was flirting with, I ­realised one of my assistants was blushing furiously. They now have four children, one of whom is my goddaughter, Jasmine.

It has been fascinating working with models and watching their careers develop.

I’ve always been obsessed with how people change through the years. When I first met Claudia Schiffer, she was only 17 and just embarking on modelling. Then her career took off and she became a supermodel.

She has developed into such an ­interesting 20

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P op f ict ion China’s pulp writers reflect their urban readership: spoilt, young and tech-savvy Clarissa Tan

T

o the West, Chinese literature is a takeaway that comes in two flavours — the ancient classic that offers sage morsels of advice, such as the I Ching and Sun Tzu’s Art of War, and the weighty full-course Nobel-winning novel, often written by someone the Beijing authorities have put in the slammer. Chinese authors, in the western imagination, are either dead or incarcerated. Clearly though, a country of 1.4 billion people must consume more varied fare. In the past ten years, Chinese popular fiction has developed a weird and wacky texture all of its own, one resulting from a confluence of factors — the Cultural Revolution, the one-child policy and the internet. And just the fact that China is pretty weird in general.

Take Han Han, probably the nation’s most famous writer. Han published his first book, Triple Door, when he was 17. Relating the experiences of a third-year junior school student in Shanghai, it sold 20 million copies and is the best-selling novel in China in 20 years. But Han, now 29, is not just a novelist. He’s also a professional racing driver and China’s most popular blogger — indeed, by some accounts, the most popular blogger in the world. Han appears in many photos as a fey young man with hair perpetually skew-whiff, like the lead vocalist of a boy band.

But even his glossy public persona dims in comparison to that of the cross-dressing author Guo Jingming, Big Brother Guo to fans, whose mass-market fiction has been described by the New York Times as focusing on ‘the tortured psyches of his adolescent characters, who either nurse their melancholy by sitting alone for long hours under trees and on rooftops, or try to blunt it with drinking, fighting and karaoke’. Big Bro Guo’s photos feature him half-naked in the shower, or bedecked with Dolce &

Gabbana accessories, or looking winsome in a crumpled bed. Bro Guo may have been accused of plagiarism, but that didn’t stop his novel Cry Me a River, about a pregnant high-school student, from selling a million copies in ten days. He has also released a music album called Lost.

Much of Chinese popular fiction is popstar fiction, the domain of a generation of youngsters who don’t know what it’s like to have brothers or sisters. Their plots exist in a kind of shiftless, wistful, self-centred never-never land, the sort of literary landscape you might get if previous generations had feared for their lives for producing certain kinds of art — and if everyone then took a great leap forward into wanton

Much of Chinese popular fiction is the domain of a generation of youngsters who don’t have brothers or sisters

materialism. Anchored in nothing, they often twist into anything.

In Daffodils Took Carp and Went Away, 26-year-old Zhang Yueran’s hit novel, a bulimic girl falls in love with her stepfather, is mistreated by her mother and then carted off to boarding school. Sheng Keyi’s Northern Girls follows the adventures of a country girl seeking a new life in the city, her future driven by her unusually large mammaries. There’s a constant searching — Nanpai Sanshu’s Grave Robber series traces the adventures of the grandson of a grave robber who discovers his grand-

dad’s mysterious journal. And the ‘workplace novel’ is a genre in its own right — Du Lala’s Promotion Diary tells about a woman’s rise from secretary to human resources person at a Fortune 500 company, and has been made into a 32-part TV series. Fantasy, as you might expect, is strong — Bro Guo’s first book was set in the Ice Kingdom and told the story of a 350-year-old prince forced to kill his brother.

H

owever, it’s not the content that’s most significant, but the platform. Much of China’s pulp fiction is no longer on pulp — an entire industry has emerged in mobile literature, where books are downloaded and read on smartphones. A crop of new authors now write uniquely for the mobile, China’s pictogram-based language being particularly suited for the text screen: the biggest phone publisher, Cloudary, started off by making phone games.

The rights to film the popular mobile novel Ghost Blows Out the Light was sold for millions of yuan, according to C114 website.

Then of course there’s web literature, tailored for the internet — a sub-industry now worth five billion yuan (£500 million) a year.

The business is brutal. A new pop-lit generation has popped up to usurp the likes of Han and Guo and, like child gymnasts, they appear to be getting younger and younger. If Han and Guo are of the post-1980s generation, these new writers are of the post-1990s, not so much Little Emperors as Precious Snowflakes, so-called because they’re too coddled to withstand much heat. Authors Tang Chao and Yang Daqing were around 13 when they first got published; Yang Yang — all of nine when he made his debut — has been compared to J.K. Rowling. His first book, The Magic Violin, is about a little boy who befriends magical objects after his father disappears.

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R E BE C CA One of Britain’s finest young actresses on tackling challenging roles and playing the piano

HALL Interview Peter Hoskin. Portrait Nathaniel Goldberg

Rebecca Hall has walked into the room and — nope — my moviestar radar still hasn’t started beeping. I don’t mean this in a bad way: there are countless photo shoots and red carpet appearances to prove that she has awesome star wattage. It’s just that today she seems so unfussy, so low-key. She tugs off the woolly hat she was wearing against the rain outside, reclines into a chair, and kicks one sneakered foot over the other. ‘Brrr… it’s so nasty out there.’

If you’ve seen any of Ms Hall’s movie performances so far, this may be what you were expecting. In films such as Woody Allen’s Vicky Cristina Barcelona (2008) or Ben Affleck’s The Town (2010), she stands out because of her subtlety. She’s one of those wonderful actresses who do most of the work with their eyes, building up a character with tiny flashes of emotion, rather than with look-at-me dramatics. Only a few minutes into our conversation, I suspect something similar could be said of her in real life. This woman who had the newspapers frothing last year after it was confirmed that she was dating the film director Sam Mendes (only shortly after his divorce from Kate Winslet) is remarkably understated as film stars go.

Strangely enough, some of this may be down to her theatrical background. Her father is Sir Peter Hall, founder of the Royal Shakespeare Company, and much of her immediate family works on or around the stage. ‘I worked out, when I started doing theatre, that I tended to play all the emotions in the most extreme way.

After three weeks of rehearsals I’d chip it down until all of that was on the inside and I was able to play the minimum on the outside.

I suppose when I started doing film that became even more interesting because you could really communicate an inner life without playing it. Just have the inner life.’

Inner or outer life, Rebecca Hall seems to be changing things at the moment. As she turns 30, the film roles that she’s taking on are different from before, perhaps even more extravagant.

There’s her performance as Beth, a hyperactive former stripper who totters into the world of sports betting and beyond, in Lay the Favorite. And then there is Sylvia — scheming, destructive Sylvia — in the forthcoming television adaptation of Ford Madox Ford’s novel Parade’s End, scripted by Tom Stoppard. ‘Without wanting to sound frightfully grand about it,’ she explains, ‘I do this purely out of curiosity about people. If I just do the one type I’m never going to satisfy that curiosity, so the more outside my realm of experience, the more outside my immediate understanding, the better.’

And that realm of experience could soon be stretched even further. On the very day of this interview, the internet is all aquiver with 23

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C u lt u r e

I read the book, as she’s acting within incredibly reactionary confines. I kept on thinking if she had been born into a different family, with an education, after women’s rights, what would have happened to her? She probably would have been running the world!’

There are projects with more obvious modern parallels on Hall’s slate as well. She is currently bobbing between courtrooms, shooting a film about the legal fog that surrounds the intelligence community — and, gosh, it has her animated. ‘I understand that, for national security reasons, it is important to keep some things secret. But somebody has to be given a fair trial, and if you start letting that slip, and you start creating weird situations that are outside of the law, it’s just not fair. It’s as simple as that.’

Before Hall has to leave, I quickly ask whether she has any heroes. Her eyes gleam as she replies, ‘Plenty! But mainly jazz pianists. Bud Powell or Art Tatum or Bill Evans, people like that.

I get nearly everything from music. If I had been remotely talented in that department I’d have done it in a flash. I still try to practise piano for a couple of hours each day. It’s how I decompress.’

And then, as compact as one of Thelonious Monk’s melodies, it’s back on with the woolly hat and the jacket, and out into the rain. If you don’t look closely, she might be just another person, sliding through just another wet afternoon in London.

the news that Hall is to be cast in the comic-book mega-film Iron Man 3. She doesn’t confirm or deny the reports, although she does grimace when I tell her how the role is being described (‘A sexy scientist? God, that’s depressing. Why can’t she just be a scientist or why can’t she just be sexy, why do they have to qualify it?’), and admits that she isn’t so averse to doing big Hollywood fare as she was in the past. ‘I used to be all very Marlene Dietrich about it: “I don’t want to do anything like that! I just want to be on my own!”

But I’m getting over that now.’

We mostly discuss Parade’s End, though. This BBC and HBO co-production fits in with a peculiar vogue for dramas — such as Downton Abbey and Boardwalk Empire — centred on the years during or just after the first world war, when all the wounds were still fresh. ‘There is something specific about times of complication, financial crisis and all the rest of it, when we look to certain histories that have connections with our own,’ she muses. ‘I don’t know, I’ve always been quite a nostalgic person and I’m quite pro it.’

Her character, Sylvia, will probably be advertised as the queen bitch of the series, not least because of the affairs she conducts in defiance of her husband, our starched protagonist Christopher Tietjens (played by Benedict Cumberbatch). But Hall is keen to get in her defence early. ‘I felt increasingly sorry for Sylvia when

Woody Allen Antena 3 Films/Mediapro/The Kobal Collection; Parades End BBC/Mammoth Screen

Hall with Woody Allen on the set of Vicky Cristina Barcelona, which brought her to a new level of fame in 2008.

She’s likely to step up again this year with the Stoppardscripted Parade’s End, below left, in which she’s the unfaithful wife of Benedict Cumberbatch’s noble soldier, and as co-star to Bruce Willis in Stephen Frears’s Lay the Favourite, below

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24.05.12 14:58 31/5/12 14:09:13

C U LT U R E

AC E AU T U M N AN

IN

As Roger Federer’s power wanes, his grace becomes even more evident Ed Smith

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6/6/12 11:54:41

Getty Images

T

here shouldn’t be anything left to say about Roger Federer. The superlatives ought to be exhausted, the eulogies weary, the mysteries resolved.

And how could anyone advance on David Foster Wallace’s New York Times essay from 2006? ‘Almost anyone who loves tennis has had… Federer Moments. These are times, as you watch the young Swiss play, when the jaw drops and eyes protrude and sounds are made that bring spouses in from other rooms to see if you’re OK.’ Foster Wallace’s words still hold. But the Federer story has become even more interesting since those halcyon days of the mid-2000s, when he was so dominant that he won five consecutive Wimbledon titles. ‘Late Federer’ — assuming, perhaps rashly, that this is the autumn of his career — is even more fascinating than ‘High Federer’. I do not apologise for the artistic terminology. If you do not admire the way Federer plays tennis then you are blind to beauty. Federer is a tennis player through and through, but the play he produces should not be classified as simply ‘sport’: it has a universal quality.

So we begin with two Federer paradoxes. In terms of ranking points, he is now behind both Novak Djokovic and Rafael Nadal. The world’s most admired sportsman is only its No. 3 tennis player. Secondly, this relative decline has not chipped away at his innate self-possession and self-confidence. Most champions find being dragged back into the pack unbearably painful. Not Federer. He demonstrates the same joy, grace and expressiveness as world No. 3 that he once showed as No. 1. By doing so, he has made a delicious contribution to the age-old debate about how to measure greatness in sport.

A few years ago, two sportsmen could claim to be the outstanding athlete in the world: Tiger Woods and Federer. By chance, they had very different styles and personalities. Woods embodied the triumph of determination.

He sought to be a machine; treated emotions as flaws to be ironed out like a faulty backswing. Federer, in contrast, for all his epic consistency, embodied the effortless elegance of the perfect amateur. So which would prevail?

Would future champions be defined by self-expression (the Federer type) or iron-willed self-denial (the Woods type)? Was professional sport marching towards the triumph of willpower and the elimination of joy?

Watching the two players now tells us the answer.

Shorn of his dominance, we can see the emptiness that ran through Woods’s career. Winning was the only point for Woods; the game, and the friendships within the game, were incidental. Now that Woods is not winning, he struggles to find joy in anything — he snarls his way around the course, cursing the failure of the fairways and greens to co-operate with his commands. He finds the challenge of being a human baffling and unfair. ‘Why am I being asked to stoop so low?’ his body language asks.

That he is lucky to earn a living playing a sport he professes to enjoy seems never to have occurred to him.

Compare late Woods with the eternal joyfulness of late Federer. I have watched Federer field questions from journalists asking if he is planning to retire. You don’t need to listen to the words; Federer’s body language tells the real tale. We might translate them roughly like this: ‘Why would I give this up, why would I not want to entertain as I do, to bring joy around the world? What could be better? No. 3, No. 4, No. 1 — yes, each number has meaning. But which other sportsman is able to be so gloriously himself? Who can run that race as well as I do?’

Revealingly, his rivals recognise this about Federer.

Nadal holds an 18-10 winning record in head-to-heads.

But he insists Federer is the greater player. Nadal’s conviction is only partly explained by Federer’s superior talent (Nadal’s words), and only partly informed by Federer’s higher tally of majors. I suspect there is also a deeper reason. Reading Nadal’s autobiography, you sense that he subliminally envies Federer. Nadal has always played with a hounded intensity, as if he were scared of someone noticing he’d taken his foot off the gas. Even though he has beaten Federer so many times, Nadal sees in his great rival an expressiveness and openness that he finds more elusive. Nadal has trained himself to be the ultimate winner, but the real nature of winning is more complicated than what is written on the score sheet. For Nadal, the more he suffers, the better he plays. Federer is just the way he is. As a life, that is hard to improve upon.

At the peak of the David Beckham craze, Julie Burchill replied to Beckham’s critics by asking them to stand alone in a room and shout ‘I feel sorry for David Beckham!’ They would, she felt, be unable to spit out the words. It was a nice conceit: no doubt Beckham enjoys life. But he surely suffers from the vulnerability of someone who needs to be liked. Federer has much of Beckham’s charm, but more self-reliance. I suggest Federer’s critics try shouting ‘I feel sorry for Roger Federer!’ at top volume alone in their garage.

Federer’s achievements are the least of it — the 16 majors, the 22 consecutive semi-finals, the way he raised the bar of courtesy and sportsmanship. No, he has done something much bigger than that. He has always been entirely, joyously himself. ‘I have to play every point differently,’ he once said. Every day presents the chance to play new points and to express himself in new ways.

In his essay ‘Late Style’, Edward Said described how ‘age confers a spirit of reconciliation and serenity on late works’. We’re now enjoying Federer’s late works. In their own way, they are at least the equal of his earlier preeminence. How typical of the mercurial Federer that he would start with perfection and then improve upon it.

Ed Smith’s Luck: What It Means and Why It Matters is out now

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6/6/12 11:55:05

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31/05/2012 11:05:30 31/5/12 15:07:50

POLO, A N YON E? How the event of the season lost its sparkle and its sponsor

Getty Images

Dan Jones

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Alice Gipps Polo Photography www.alicegipps.com

LIFE

T

here’s a moment when the day turns. The sun has gone down, the clonk of mallet on ball has fallen silent, and the wicker ­hampers have been packed away, back into the boots of the SUVs and 4x4s from which they were taken earlier in the afternoon.

All around the Guards Polo Club at Windsor, people are calling their chauffeurs, piling back into their cars and snaking out of the park, towards the motorway — east to Chelsea or west back towards the Cotswolds. Polo’s daytime set is going home.

The traffic is moving, however, in both directions. As dark descends over Windsor, a new crowd is arriving for whom the night has nothing to do with polo and everything to do with partying. The rumble of bass has replaced the thunder of hooves. In the huge Chinawhite tent the most raucous shindig in the polo calendar is about to begin.

Corks are popped; shots are served; tankedup flopsies from Fulham get their thighs out and dance on tables, sweaty hair plastered on their foreheads. These are the two faces of what used to be known — until this summer — as the Cartier International Polo.

The polo season runs from May to September. On pretty much any weekend during the summer you can sniff out a match, mostly in the corridor between the river Thames and the M4. Polo is one of the more agreeable spectator sports imaginable. It’s exciting, demanding supreme physical fitness and bravery from its contestants (both ponies and men). But unlike an afternoon at, say, the football, your fellow spectator is not likely to be a puce-faced bald man with halitosis and a pie gut.

Rather, polo attracts the well-heeled and well-groomed. As John Zammett, head of PR at Audi UK, who sponsor a number of the highest-profile polo events in the calendar, puts it, polo attracts ‘very highend individuals’.

The greatest concentration of those high-end individuals has traditionally been at the International. The event attracts crowds of up to 25,000, including actors, pop-stars, socialites, journalists, royals, models and the broader set of the internationally wealthy. Chuck a polo ball and you’d be unlucky not to hit someone like Prince Harry, Emma Watson, Freddie Windsor,

Angelina Jolie or Piers Morgan. Some come for the sport, but many more come for the larks afterwards.

This year, however, Cartier has dropped its sponsorship of the International, and switched focus to another event, at the same ground but on a different day. After several years of trying to weed out the trashier elements of the crowd who came to the International to table-dance — most years since 2008 there has been a story about the glamour model Katie Price, a.k.a. Jordan, being ‘banned’ from the event — Cartier has finally abandoned ship. It has switched to the smaller, more exclusive Queens Cup, held at Guards a month earlier, long before the Chinawhite tent has gone up.

‘When we started our association, polo was associated with the kind of ­clientele that we knew: the elite, the kings, the queens, the maharajas — all these people were associated with the sport of polo,’ says Arnaud M. Bamberger, executive chairman of Cartier. ‘But there was also something very exciting about the sport: the uniqueness, the beauty, the danger.’

Over the past three decades, Cartier

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PICK OF THE POLO T he C a r tie r Q u ee n ’ s C u p The new jewel in the calendar; historically, the trophy is presented by the Queen.

Guards Polo Club, Windsor Finals day 17 June Tickets £40-£170 | guardspoloclub.com A u d i I n te r n atio n al S e r ies Besides the former Cartier day Audi host the St Regis International Cup (England v USA) at Cowdray Park Polo Club, Midhurst; and internationals at Beaufort Polo Club, Tetbury (England v Commonwealth); and Chester racecourse (England v South America) V e u ve C licq u ot G ol d C u p Final of the British Open Championship, held on the lawns at Cowdray Park in Sussex.

Cowdray Park, Midhurst | Finals Day 15 July £19.50-£420 | cowdraypolo.co.uk G a u cho O 2 P olo The world’s largest indoor polo competition concentrates on fans rather than socialites.

O2, Greenwich | gauchopolo.com

Prince Charles Steve Parson/PA Wire; Night club Jab Promotions

Left: the 2010 Cartier International.

Above: the Prince of Wales at the Coronation Cup. Right: Chinawhite at the polo

has sponsored polo all over the world, from ice polo in St Moritz to elephant polo in India, to demonstrate that, as Baumberger puts it, the sport ‘can be diverse, but it is still elite’.

Over the 27 years of its sponsorship, Cartier’s hospitality at the International was legendary: a lunch for up to 800 guests put on by Mosimann’s, lubricated with plenty of the best wines and champagne.

This year, however, they needed a change of direction. ‘The International became a big thing,’ says Baumberger. ‘It became so big that the element of sport started to become less important. We wanted to recentre a bit more to the sport itself.

‘People were more looking at Chinawhite with the girls from Essex coming, who were not that interested in polo. They were more interested in having fun than watching polo — and that was OK. We’re not against people having fun! But we just said that before it becomes too big, too… a tiny bit out of control towards the image of Cartier, we decided to re-centre and come back to where we began. Which is the sport of polo. The beauty of it.’

Into Cartier’s place have stepped Audi, who have long been partners with Cartier, chauffeuring guests to their events. The event in July is now called the Audi International, and serves as part of the brand’s summer-long series of polo events, in which carefully chosen celebrities and high-spending customers are entertained, 200 or so at a time.

To the Chinawhite-goer, not much will appear to have changed; to those who land Audi hospitality, the day is still likely to be a combination of great sport and agreeable gluttony.

Zammett is rather less worried that Audi’s brand could be tainted by the ­Chinawhite crowd. ‘We don’t feel so sensitive about it,’ he says. ‘[The party] is the other side of the field from the clubhouse and it’s not going on during the polo match.

The Chinawhite bit only becomes noticeable in the evening, so no, I’m not so sensitive.’

We’ll see what he says when Jordan’s Lucozade-coloured buttocks hove into view, of course — but one wishes them all the best, nevertheless.

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life

Cheaper

By T h e

Gl a ss Drinking fine wines for a fraction of the usual price David Blackburn

The gavel struck the block. ‘Sold,’ said the auctioneer, ‘for £40,250.’ The date was Wednesday 8 February, 2012; the place was the Mandarin Oriental Hotel in Knightsbridge; and the consumption was conspicuous.

The sold lot was a jeroboam of Romanée-Conti, 1990.

I’ll let you into a secret. I’ve done something the buyer of that bottle will never do: I’ve drunk RomanéeConti, and it didn’t cost me £40,000. I drank it in an unfashionable London restaurant several years ago; and I paid half of £180 for the immeasurable pleasure.

Restaurant mark-ups are notorious, more so since the explosion of fine wine prices over the last 20 years.

But London still has one or two quiet bistros that sell the very best at astonishing value. Indeed, it’s a mystery how these businesses turn a profit.

Andrew Edmunds is one such place. It’s a small brasserie, tucked away in Soho. It might have been in provincial France: unprepossessing exterior, low ceilings, battered wooden furniture. You half expect René Artois to emerge from the pantry, wiping Yvette’s garish lipstick from his mouth with one hand and handing you the menu with the other.

It has oodles of charm, which is just as well because the cooking is unremarkable for London these days.

The wine list, however, is scarcely credible. Recognised burgundies and clarets are available for less than a wine merchant would ask for them. All of them drink very well, but you can afford to be extravagant here.

Alas, the Romanée-Conti has been drunk, but plenty of other luminaries are on offer. The best of the bunch is a 2004 d’Yquem. It’s the most exquisite pudding wine on the planet: sweet without being cloying and rich without being heavy. It costs £185 here. To put that into context, the same wine is available at Brad and Angelina’s favourite Riviera haunt, Le Bacon, for just under €2,000. The Romanée-Conti is a snip at €13,500.

Andrew Edmunds is an old-fashioned restaurant; 28˚–50˚, on Fetter Lane, is a different proposition. It pretentiously calls itself a ‘Wine Workshop’, but don’t let that deter you. The list is more interesting than that at Andrew Edmunds, and you can sample more of it,

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thanks to their ‘wine by the glass’ machine. A fiver to the barmaid will buy you a small glass of something that a lunatic would waste x thousand pounds on at auction.

As retail prices for the famous wines of France grow ever more extortionate, the huddled masses have to delve deeper into la campagne and other parts of Europe. 28˚–50˚ is a good place to experiment. There are rare gems from regional France, and an array of underrated Italians, Spaniards and Germans — German (and Austrian) wine has recovered from the nadir of 1970s Blue Nun and is enjoying a renaissance.

The waiters are hugely knowledgeable and, if asked, will recommend matches with the good food without condescension. I ate beef that night (predictably), and was recommended a bottle of Domaine de Trevallon 1999. Trevallon comes from the wild country at the mouth of the Rhône, and it’s a musky hunk of a wine.

It describes itself as ‘red table wine’, but it has a subtle, minty aftertaste: a sign of its structure and the fact that it ages well. In that sense, it’s reminiscent of a fine Bordeaux — except that it’s a good deal cheaper at £71 a bottle.

Next up was one of those elegant Germans: a Mosel Riesling, grown by the renowned producer Fritz Haag.

It was sharp enough to cut through the thick yoghurt in my pudding, but sufficiently sweet to complement the rhubarb topping. £12.95 for a large glass might seem to be pushing it, but this is a wine in its own class: able to enhance complicated modern desserts in a way that grand old Sauternes sometimes cannot. You can find it in other fashionable London restaurants, but not by the glass.

The chief delight of 28˚-50˚ is to drink an exceptional wine that hasn’t yet caught the eye of a rapacious oligarch. A mellifluous Hermitage Blanc, a white from the hills above the Rhône, was matched with my salmon starter. It’s a unique wine, so wholesome in taste and texture that it warmed me on that bitterly cold night. It was also a bargain, at £4.95 a glass. But this can’t last: Harrods has just started flogging it for £195 a bottle.

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6/6/12 11:58:37

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Members ON LY A gossip columnist’s guide to London’s most hush-hush establishments

Matthew Bell

D

iscretion. It’s what private members’ clubs are all about. And money. As a gossip columnist, I don’t have much of either. What I do have, as an ironic consequence of the job, is an insider’s knowledge of all the best clubs and restaurants in London.

Well, an outsider’s: clubs insist on Chatham House rules, so I’m not at liberty to disclose exactly what I saw Kate Moss doing with Robbie Coltrane on that Thursday in March. But I can tell you where is good right now.

Take the Arts Club on Dover Street (pictured). A year ago, if someone had suggested including it in a guide to London’s hip hangouts, I would have choked on my pomegranate sidecar. Back then, the Arts Club meant vomity carpets and white-wine book launches. Membership had dwindled to 600 and the doorman went home at 5 p.m. But thanks to chief executive Brian Clivaz, founder of Home House, who has brought in a handful of new investors and completely revamped the place, this is London’s new powerhouse: a vibrant, exclusive hangout for money-makers with taste.

I pop in to see Brian for lunch. Upstairs, a dozen discreet conversations are burbling round muted grey walls. Downstairs it’s all bigger and brasher — high ceilings and white tablecloths. ‘That,’ he says, ‘is where you go to be seen. To broker a deal.’

The club was founded in 1863 by Frederick Leighton and Charles Dickens, and members now include David Hockney and Tracy Emin. Gwyneth Paltrow and the Duke of Edinburgh hit it 37

Matthew Bell on clubs_Spectator Life_Spectator Supplements 210x260_

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life

Ed Reeve

Richard Young / Rex Features

Previous page: a painting by George Condo at the Arts Club.

Right: the DJ box at Low. Centre: the Perspex chandelier that hangs in the lobby of the Arts Club.

Below: Gwyneth Paltrow performs at the opening of the Arts Club

and Mark’s, Robin has clubs in his DNA. But father and son fell out, and the portfolio was sold in 2007 to restaurant magnate Richard Caring just months before Mark died. Robin was left only £1 million and a sour taste in his mouth. Five years on, he’s laying down the gauntlet to Caring, and is set re-establish Birley as a byword for ultra-exclusive.

The premises are large — an island of five stuccoed houses knocked together to create a warren of lounges and drinking dens, centred on a courtyard. Daytime dining is on the ground floor, with private rooms upstairs and, eventually, bedrooms above. There’s a nightclub in the basement, Loulou’s, named, like all Birley ventures, after one of the family (cousin Loulou de la Falaise was a model and muse to Yves Saint Laurent). Renovation is said to have cost north of £20 million, but 500 founder members have already signed up, all with deep pockets — Jemima Khan, Bryan Ferry, countless Goldsmiths and Rothschilds. A further 1,000 members will be chosen by them, making membership here seriously sought-after.

Across town, in Covent Garden, the

off famously at the relaunch. There aren’t any slebs in today, but there’s a lot of lolly.

‘That man owns two Van Dycks,’ says Brian, pointing. ‘That one owns an important collection of guitars. You have to remember that the Arts Club has always been for patrons. From day one we have had bankers, solicitors, industrialists, entrepreneurs — all with an interest in the arts.’

With over 3,000 members, the club is full, though ‘key art people’ are still welcome. ‘If you’re just a banker who likes to collect watches or the odd yacht, then this is not for you. What we want are hedgies who in their spare time will fork out £120 million for The Scream.’ It costs £1,500 a year, plus a £2,000 joining fee, and as well as two restaurants and various lounges, there’s a slinky nightclub in the basement, and a programme of lectures and talks. As of next year, there will be bedrooms.

A few streets west, in Shepherd’s Market, the finishing touches are being put to 5 Hertford Street, the long-awaited new club

by Robin Birley. The saga behind its creation is worthy of Tolstoy, and has kept gossip columnists tip-tapping away. As son of the late Mark Birley, founder of Annabel’s

Club at The Ivy is one of London’s bestkept secrets. Yes, we all know The Ivy is the restaurant of A-listers and power-brokers, but it’s also open to the neck-craning public. Connoisseurs now head for the door on the right, hidden in a flower shop, and zoom up the crystal lift; here, you’ll find three floors exclusively for use by members, though don’t think it’s at all stuffy.

Alice Cooper once shared that lift with Douglas Hurd. It’s that kind of place.

Creating a club here was one of Caring’s smartest moves. When he bought The Ivy, the upstairs was just offices. But with its prime location on the Soho/Covent Garden borders, it was an obvious place for a club. It now pulls in a similar crowd to the Groucho. Was that Kulveer Ranger, Boris Johnson’s secret weapon, I saw letting his hair down the night before the election?

The first-floor bar has a jangly, upbeat vibe, though you do wonder how many times Joe Thompson has played ‘Kissed by a Rose’. He came from Ronnie Scott’s, though he was playing Adele the other night. Tommy and Stephen look after you, and barman Cas Oh will shake up his signature drink, the Twinkle. One of the joys of

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Above: the Arts Club Brasserie.

Left: the heated rooftop bench at the Club at The Ivy

The Ivy’s triangular floorplan and leaded latticed windows is that you always know you’re at The Ivy, no matter how many Twinkles you’ve seen.

Upstairs is the dining room proper, though they do a mean red onion hot dog at the bar, and above that is the vast function room, hired one night by the Booker Prize, the next by Christian Louboutin.

Cigar-chompers sprawl on the heated rooftop stone bench. Membership is £1,000 per year, plus a £500 joining fee: cheap, given the payload.

Back in Mayfair, the new members’ nightclub Low opened in November. Created by David Serlui of Aura fame and Andy Giorgini, ex-Brompton Club, Low is buried two stories beneath Jermyn Street.

They want to keep it a secret, and you have to go through a deserted restaurant to get there. There’s no dress code, but obviously they want you to look good enough to dance with at 3 a.m. Isaac Ferry had a party there recently, and Rihanna is said to have dropped in. When I went the other night, Guy Pelly, the princes’ social gatekeeper, was getting reacquainted with his ex-girlfriend Susannah Warren, and then

The saga behind the creation of 5 Hertford Street is worthy of Tolstoy, and has kept newspaper diarists tip-tapping away

spending a lot of time in the street being counselled by pals. Life membership is a mere £1,000, and they throw in a personalised bottle of Johnnie Walker Blue Label.

Annual membership is £500, for those who think the caravan will move on. Oh, and the urinals in the men’s loos are modelled on Mick Jagger’s lips.

The other closely guarded secret is round the corner at Scotch. If the name’s familiar, that’s because it was big in the sixties. Paul McCartney and Rod Stewart were regulars, and in 1966 a then unheard-of Jimi Hendrix once joined the house band to play some blues standards — his first UK gig. Fast forward two decades, and it was the Director’s Lodge, home to a very different kind of gentleman’s entertainment.

It’s still hard to find, discreetly hidden behind the White Cube gallery in Mason’s Yard, though Dinos Chapman’s pals knew where to find him for his 50th in January, when it first opened. It’s open from 10 p.m. to 5.30 a.m., and entry is strictly by invitation only. They don’t have a website and they don’t want any publicity and I promised not to tell. Oops. Looks like I won’t be asked back any time soon.

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less

muck bra s s ,

mor E

English country life in the age of the oligarch farmer Harry Mount

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Lichtbilder – Reinhard Goldmann, Cologne, Germany

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they do like going outdoors; they fetishise the country walk, worshipping the health-giving properties of fresh country air. Farmers, who view the land as a workplace, a factory with the lid off, don’t go for walks — it’s like visiting your office at the weekend.

A touch of countrified asymmetry is allowed over the New Rustic threshold. Slate and limestone floors — with their natural kinks and coloured streaks — are positively welcomed. You can even buy polished new flagstones for your country kitchen, artificially moulded from reconstituted stone to produce a natural, knobbly effect.

But that’s where the rural references end. The New Rustic interior is otherwise intensely urban, particularly when it comes to comfort and entertainment.

The sitting room becomes a mini-cinema; the Aga is flanked by the fridge-freezer, groaning with the weekly ­Waitrose shop — God forbid that you should have to go to the village Spar for sliced white bread, or ownbrand washing-up liquid that can’t shift the arborio

taying near Zutphen, Holland, recently, I came across a remarkably untidy Dutch farmer.

With his ripped silage bags and rusty agricultural machinery cluttering up the farmyard, he was known as der Engelse boer, ‘the English farmer’.

But the days of the filthy English farmer are numbered. Gradually, the amiably run-down parts of the English countryside are being mucked out, hosed down and vacuumed to within an inch of their life.

The New Rustics have arrived — the gazillionaires who move to the country and take a chunk of Notting Hill with them.

Their version of country life is a cherry-picked, rose-tinted version of the real thing. They may not be quite as minimalist in the sticks as they are in their un­adorned London houses, lined with right-angled planes of steel, glass and blond timber. They must have a few rural identifiers at least — the Aga, the Cath Kidston oilcloth over the kitchen table, the battered Barbour for long walks. To be fair to the New Rustics, 41

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risotto from the pan. The ultimate in New Rustic living is Babington House, near Frome, where Soho House members can be transported to Somerset and barely notice they’ve moved — there’s a spa in the old cowshed, an indoor and outdoor heated pool, a cinema, a steam room, a gym and an aroma room. A night in the Playroom, on the first floor of the 18th-century manor house, is yours for £640.

Across the country, peeling floral wallpapers and cracked magnolia paint have been replaced by Farrow & Ball beiges and whites, the pale void punctured by a lone work of modern art. The doghair-covered sofa gives way to a boxy, chocolate-coloured job from Sofa. com. The open fire — another crucial rural signifier — is backed up with underfloor heating. Bye bye, coughing pipes and weekly baths; hello, acres of fluffy white towels and hot water on demand.

Not that you really need many baths in New Rustic farmhouses. It is a mud-free existence, with the inside hermetically sealed against the outside, an inversion of the farmhouse’s original purpose. The house was originally an integral part of the farmyard; in medieval longhouses, the animals were kept in one half of the building, with the farmer’s family in the other half.

A dwindling number of working farmhouses retain the overlap between home and working building: baling twine stuffed into the cutlery drawer; the smell of warm cow hovering in the hall; hunks of cold, butchered cow in the freezer.

Even the outside world has been swept clean by the New Rustics. I recently drove past an Arab financier’s farm near David Cameron’s house in north Oxfordshire. There wasn’t a piece of straw or a speck of muck in the farmyard, and it was like a cleaning lady had been at the fields — the grass was a closely cropped, even, rich green, the hedgerows clipped into cuboids.

Rural life — like terraced houses in Notting Hill, the

summer season and ropey prep schools — has undergone an international, gilded apotheosis.

Bankers are merrily converting their bonuses into farmhouses and rectories — ‘The Old Rectory’ is the most popular name for million-pound-plus houses, according to Land Registry figures from 2007 to last year. The number of million-pound-plus houses has risen in many parts of the countryside since 2006/7, the supposed peak of the market: in the Home Counties but also in Dorset, Gloucestershire, Warwickshire, the Isle of Wight, Northumberland, Yorkshire, Suffolk and Norfolk — prime second-home territory.

The English countryside has also become a haven for endangered roubles, Libyan dinars, Greek euros and Egyptian pounds. No wonder land prices are soaring.

But while the boutique farmers pour in, real farmers and rural natives — most of the ten million people in the English countryside — are suffering. According to the Commission for Rural Communities, rural life costs 20 per cent more than living in a city, with essential items beyond the pockets of many families. About 700,000 people in the country live below the poverty line. The usual direction of migration, New Rustics apart, remains from country to town. And as real farmers disappear, so do animals and crops. Three-quarters of British orchards have gone since 1950. Kent had 46,600 acres of hop fields in the 1870s; now it’s 1,000.

Pig numbers have fallen by nearly half over the past 20 years; cows by nearly a quarter.

Much of England used to be milk country — our wet, temperate climate and fertile soils are ideal for grass-growing — but less and less so. The Chinese even used to say we smelt of milk; these days, New Rustic farmhouses smell of cleaning products, and money.

Above: Babington House.

Left: a ­country-home kitchen in the new style, ­complete with Aga and muted paint palette

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CAPITAL

GAINS There’s still money to be made in London property Merryn Somerset Webb

What’s happening with house prices in London?

That depends what you mean by London. Last year prices in the best areas rose fast — by 10 per cent or so in ­Kensington and Chelsea, for example, and in Westminster. But prices fell in some of the city’s 32 boroughs, and overall the market was more or less flat. So while ‘super-prime’ property — the top 5 per cent of the market — is now priced around 20 per cent higher than it was at its pre-crunch peak, and prices in other prime areas, such as Fulham, Islington and Battersea, have held up very well, the fast-growth numbers Londoners quote are led by a few small areas. That said, even the worst areas of London are better than the best elsewhere, In the north of England around 12 per cent of homes are in negative equity. In London that number is 3 per cent.

So why has prime property done so well?

It’s all about foreign buyers and about the pound. Over the past 15 years, Russian money has been pouring into London. Five to six years ago it was joined by Chinese money.

And since the financial crisis rich Europeans looking for a safe haven have been pouring in too: all estate agents report fast rising sales to the French, the Greeks and the Italians.

They are now expecting the French to arrive in even greater numbers thanks to François Hollande and his 75 per cent income tax plans. Foreign buyers have been encouraged partly by the safe haven status of the UK — we offer legal security alongside very low taxes. But the weak pound has helped too: between 2007 and mid-2011 it lost about 20 per cent of its value. That effectively offered overseas buyers a 20 per cent price cut. In 2007 around 75 per cent of super prime properties in London were bought by foreign buyers.

By last year that number was 85 per cent.

What next?

Global instability — the thing that really brings the foreigners in — doesn’t look like it is going to abate any time soon.

But there are a few things that should make buyers more cautious than usual. The first is stamp duty. The attempts to deal with tax evasion and to make the rich pay more by pushing the duty payable inside companies up to 15 per cent and the ordinary duty for houses costing over £2 mil-

lion to 7 per cent is bound to affect prices at the top end.

Then there is the pound. It has now started to rise again (as I write, it is at a 20-month high against a basket of currencies). That has started to put up prices for foreigners. A £2 million house would have cost €2.27 million a year ago.

Now it would be €2.45 million. Add on the rise in stamp duty and you’re talking real money. Remember also that rental values do matter — investors like to get a reasonable yield when they buy — and rents in London are finally cooling. According to Savills, super-prime rents have slipped by 0.5 per cent so far this year. Finally, it is worth noting that, while foreigners are important, research from Capital Economics also shows that those areas in London with the highest rises in house prices also have the lowest levels of unemployment. As our recession drags on that might change — and prices might stall as a result.

Where should I buy?

Assuming you aren’t a Chinese money-launderer with £10 million to spend, the answer is probably nowhere specific. If you really want to be in the London market — and you understand that to buy is to make a bet on currencies, global friction and financial industry employment — your best bet is probably to diversify via a fund. If I were looking for one, which right now I am not, I’d consider LCP (londoncentralportfolio.com). The firm is launching its third London residential fund with an eye to buying properties below the £2 million mark and renting them out to blue-chip executive clients.

THE VOW COLLECTION

12A Piccadilly Arcade SW1Y 6NH www.nigelmilne.co.uk

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Advertising Feature

The BMW 6 Series Gran Coupé: turns the A283 into a Con tinen tal br eak.

T

hink driving pleasure, and your thoughts tend to stray automatically BMWards.

Now imagine heading effortlessly through the Sussex countryside with the Downs ahead of you and Chichester your destination.

It’s the A283, you’re at the wheel of the new BMW 6 Series Gran Coupé, and from the moment it was delivered to your driveway you’ve grown used to people looking at you, or at least you and your car. Hardly surprising. A BMW always turns heads.

But when you’re among the first in the UK to drive a model that combines style, efficiency and pleasure in equal measure, then envious glances are almost part of the spec. And for your passengers, the Dakota leather seats, fitted as stand-

ard, and eight-speed transmission are making for comfort and a smooth ride, but then that too was always a given.

Passengers? But hang on, isn’t this a coupé?

Aren’t coupés about a lone, well-dressed codriver? Normally, it’s yes to all of these, but the BMW 6 Series Gran Coupé is that rarest of beasts, a four-door coupé with the same level of elegant and luxurious accommodation in the back as in the front.

Driving down from south-west London can be a tedious business, but everyone’s having a good time. Even as the driver, you’re enjoying the moment. In place of the usual routine, the car’s sporty handling and surprising agility have turned this journey from trek to trip.

Not far now, and your eye sweeps the instru44

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Advertising Feature ment panel, resting momentarily on the fuel gauge. It has moved, but not by much. The extensive use of aluminium, meaning a lighter body, and EfficientDynamic technologies have lived up to the low fuel consumption promise.

And although you read and reread the manual, it’s still hard to believe how effective the Auto Start-Stop is at combining responsive performance with economy.

When it came to choosing, you wanted a BMW — that was the starting point. But this time, would it be the 6 Series Coupé or the Convertible? A real dilemma. And the sudden appearance of a four-door coupé made selection even more difficult. No regrets though, and on your first long(ish) jaunt everything is perfect.

Now the day will soon be complete. Cosseted by the top-end surround sound, the heated leather seats and the individual air conditioning, you’re ready for the Festival Theatre and this time you’re arriving in style. An overnight stay and then back to town. And in the excite-

ment of your first out-of-town drive, you’d almost forgotten the competition that means tea at The Ritz followed by The Spectator’s summer party with a driver taking you there — in a BMW, naturally. All of that lies ahead. For now, you’ve dropped off your back-seat passengers at Petworth and it’s the final run to Chichester.

And what about your co-driver and soulmate? She hasn’t had this much fun since you turned buying your last BMW into a driving holiday. Between you, you criss-crossed France with the drive as much part of the break as that gîte in the Jura and the final night in that rather grand Grand Hotel in Normandy. This time, it’s the Downs and it’s every bit as much fun.

And if this all sounds like an adman’s dream, or perhaps an idle moment in the boardroom, perhaps it’s time to consider making the journey as important as the destination. The BMW 6 Series Gran Coupé. It’s what you know you’ve always wanted, and now it’s here.

‘The BMW 6 Series Gran Coupé.

It’s what you know you’ve always wanted, and now it’s here’

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1/6/12 16:23:56 31/5/12 16:25:11

Angelina Jolie with jeweller Robert Procop

Angelina Jolie Robert Procop/PA

R O C K S TAR S How celebrities took over jewellery design Sophia Waugh

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Frank Gehry Hand-painted watercolour torque bangles in bone china

by Frank Gehry for Tiffany & Co., POA

Demi Moore and Ashton Kutcher Handcuff necklace in yellow gold with white diamonds

by Jack Vartanian for the DNA Foundation, £1,380

dren in crisis.’ Money from the collection goes towards one of Angelina’s charities, the Education Partnership for Children in Conflict, with the aim to build schools in Afghanistan. So there you have everything — jewellery, celebrity association and charity.

Not all celebrity jewellery with a charity twist has such a happy outcome. Demi Moore and Ashton Kutcher, working with Jack Vartanian, designed a range of necklaces based on handcuffs. Oh, this was clever. It symbolised everything worth symbolising — their conjoined happiness, a hint at raunchy bedroom activity and — this was the killer — a stand against child sex slavery, raising money for the Demi and Ashton (DNA) Foundation, a non-profit organisation aiming to raise awareness about the issue. Well, lovely. But now Demi and Ashton have split up, and the necklaces aren’t that pretty: who’s actually going to wear them?

Two years ago Sharon Stone, one of the most beautiful and old-fashioned of all Hollywood stars, unveiled a collection in aid of ‘Drop in the Bucket’, a charity which works towards providing clean drinking water in Africa. ‘We went to Uganda. We saw these places in need, just desperate to have our help. I want to give the proceeds of it back to putting in clean water wells and latrines,’ professed Stone. ‘I’m gonna cry because I always get so emotional about it!’

Her range is called ‘Maji’, which means ‘water’ in Swahili. It is clear where the inspiration comes from — rough-cut diamonds are mounted on burnished gold and silver, to look like drops of water. To be honest, it looks more like a child’s dried-pasta stick-on

It started, not with a kiss, but with scent. Celebrities ‘created’ ‘perfumes’ aimed at their fan bases. The result being that most of them were cheap and singularly disgusting: Beyonce’s ‘Heat’ and ‘Pulse’, Britney Spears’s ‘Radiance’ and even Jade Goody’s ‘Shh’, which had to be removed from the shelves after she didn’t shh her views on Indians. The clever (or should I say Klever?) Kardashians produced ‘Dashing’ — another cheap smell aimed at a reality TV audience with little spending money or discernment.

The new celebrity craze (of which the Kardashian sisters are taking full advantage) is jewellery design.

The Kardashian range begins at fifteen pounds and rises to the dizzying heights of £115 a pop. But before we sneer too much, some celebrities are designing jewellery as part of their charity work. To the fore in this are (as ever) Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie. Their engagement has recently been announced, and with it pictures of a very beautiful ring — a large diamond in a ribbed band. The ring was designed by Brad in collaboration with Robert Procop, with whom the couple have been working for some time.

Unlike the Kardashian end of the market, Angelina’s range (the Style of Jolie) through Procop is undeniably beautiful. Using semi-precious stones such as citrines and golden beryls, the rings and earrings are modern yet traditional, chunky yet feminine. Any woman worth her salt would be proud to own them.

‘Together we strive for nothing less than artistic innovation,’ says Procop, adding that ‘the beauty of those creations is matched by the beauty of spirit behind Angelina’s most heartfelt mission — to empower chil48

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Sharon Stone Brown gold and rough diamond ring by Sharon Stone for Damiani, £1,670

Angelina Jolie Pear-shaped emerald earrings by Angelina Jolie for Robert Procop, POA

effect than jewellery, but again, it comes with the price tag and the celebrity association. Stone’s collection came through the designer Damiani, who stresses that she came up with the idea ‘all by herself’. Designers and celebrities need each other, that’s the point.

Jade Jagger’s jewellery is a bit more serious, and there appears to be no charity tag involved. She was with Garrard, but is now working on her own. Her style is to ‘marry glamour and rock chic together with onyx skulls and diamond disco ball necklaces and bracelets’. They’re quite expensive pieces, but also really rather small.

Perhaps the most surprising ‘celebrity’ jewellery designer is Frank Gehry, the Canadian-born, icehockey-loving contemporary architect. In some ways his forays into jewellery make more sense than those of the rich birds who just love to wear the jewels. His bangles, sold through Tiffany, show an eye for line and style beyond anything you could expect from the reality show celebrities. But then is his white gold octagonal torque really worth more for being designed by him? There’s beauty, and there’s snob value. And there are prices attached to each.

So there’s the problem: do we buy jewellery for what it looks like, for how much it costs, for the charity or celebrity to which it is attached? If we are not careful, will it not just become merchandising of another brand? Do we, without thinking, just buy the latest Disney-themed lunchbox for our children, and the latest celebrity jewellery for our wives or mistresses?

In the end should we not look at the jewels, at the designs, at the sheer beauty, rather than the names?

HUMPHREY BUTLER Agents & Dealers in Fine Jeweller y

For advice re purchase, sale or valuation please contact H U M P H R E Y B U T L E R LT D 4 0 / 4 1 PA L L M A L L , L O N D O N S W 1 Y 5 J G TEL +44 (0)20 7839 3193 / WWW.HUMPHREYBUTLER.COM

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SSSS A AA N N ND D D YYYY JJJJ O O ON N N EEEE SSSS A N D O N H H HA N ND D DM M MA D D EEEE R U UG G G SSSS H AAA N N D M AAA D D RRR U U G 222444000 BBBaaattttteeerrrssseeeaaa PPPaaarrrkkk RRRoooaaaddd 2 4 0 B a t t e r s e a Pa r k R o a d LLLooonnndddooonnn SSSW W W111111 444N N NG GG London SW11 4NG TTT + + +444444 222000 777444999888 222777111777 T +44 20 7498 2717

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INTERIOR INTERIOR INTERIOR BY BY

BY CHESTER CHESTER CHESTER JONES JONES JONES INTERIOR BY CHESTER JONES ADVERT - Sandy Jones_Spectator Life_Spectator Supplements 210x260_

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PER SONA LI TY P L E A se Luxurious interiors don’t have to lack character Hatta Byng W ill F is h e r Filled with fine antiques and curiosities, this London drawing room perfectly reflects the style and idiosyncrasies of its owner, Will Fisher, inveterate collector and the antiques dealer behind Jamb (www.jamblimited.com); he specialises in antique and reproduction fireplaces.

A stuffed French fighting dog sits in front of a chimneypiece that was the inspiration for his ‘Oxford’ fireplace. The Regency lantern is the Windsor from Jamb’s lighting range.

W

orking for House & Garden, I meet interior designers on a regular basis and see new interior projects daily, either in person or in photographs. This is usually a huge privilege, but there are times when it can be quite demoralising. A few weeks ago I met one such designer, who shall remain nameless and who runs an impressive team of 20 or so, working for clients worldwide.

She said that in one of her latest projects she was aiming to create a ‘classic London look’. Intrigued, I probed further and was shown some pictures of a house that, while being undeniably smart and modern, lacked any kind of soul — to my mind anyway. With its plush carpets, silk curtains,

bespoke joinery, monochrome palette and carefully chosen accessories from designer catalogues, it was sadly the kind of interior I’m shown all too often. The overall effect was reminiscent of a hotel. I’ve heard the phrase ‘classic London look’ used several times since. Although it describes a look and a level of comfort that is clearly in vogue, I’d like to make the case for eclecticism and patina, for faded charm. It’s not huge originality or serious wow factor I’m after — most of us don’t want to live with that kind of statement day in, day out — but characterful interiors, whether modern or traditional: contrasting colours and patterns, art and objects, old things and new things, and a bit of individuality.

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SIMON UPTON Interiors photographer Simon Upton travels the world picking up pieces for his home as he goes. Here in the dining area of his west London flat, a former warehouse, he mixes inherited pieces — the Welsh dresser was his grandmother’s — with pieces found on his travels and in local antique shops. He opted for white walls throughout and the wood floors are limed ash — as close in colour as possible to white — to enhance the feeling of space and light. Pictures are all black and white, allowing the textiles and objects to add colour. Monochrome it may be, but the mix is quirky and entirely personal.

Chairs & Table Eero Saarinen’s iconic Tulip chair and table, designed 1955-56 for Knoll, are still in production today. Prices start from £1,068 for the chair, available to order through Liberty (020 7734 1234, www.liberty.co.uk). Or try ebay for vintage versions.

Antiquarian prints Dealers Isaac and Ede (020 7629 9040, www.isaacandede.com) not only have a good amount of stock but will also source specific objects and assemble a collection if required.

Pictured top left is an aquatint printed in sepia and published as part of J&J Boydell’s History of the Thames, 1795-1796. It measures 13½ x 22 inches and costs £250.

Tribal Art Tribal Gathering London (020 7221 6650, www.tribalgatheringlondon.com) specialises in striking pieces of tribal art and artefacts, mostly from Africa. Once just a stall on Portobello Road it now has a Notting Hill showroom, open by appointment. For a large bowl like the one on Upton’s table, a household bowl from Northern Kenya, expect to pay around £150.

Accessories African springbok cushions, from £75, at Mufti (020 7243 4444, www.mufti.co.uk).

Simon Upton/The Interior Archive

Dresser This unusual 18th-century housekeeper’s cupboard (left), with its original varnish, measures 210cm x 186.5 cm x 51 cm, from Arcadia Antiques (07768 666 833, www.arcadiaantiques.co.uk). A similar piece would cost about £3,770. Decorative Collective (www.decorativecollective.com), a website set up by a group of antique dealers, also yields good finds.

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Hugh Leslie This is the sitting room of a 1970s London mews house by designer Hugh Leslie (www.hughleslie.com). The room had little architectural merit and the idea was to give it a studio-like quality; a dining area with glass roof leads off to the left. Leslie ripped out ugly cornices and downlights and the decorators replastered using a wooden float rather than a steel one, which gives the walls a less flat, more handmade quality. They

Vase The Aalto Vase by Alvar Aalto was created in 1937 and is an icon of modern design. It is available in several sizes and colours from Skandium (020 7584 2066, www.skandium.com) from £74.

were also asked to round edges with their thumbs. A marble or stone fireplace was eschewed in favour of something more ‘modest and friendly’ to suit the room, hence the horizontal tongue and groove painted boards with a simple marble slip; the timber will move over time, adding character. Mixing periods and styles, the furnishings are designed to be comfortable and informal, emphasised by the loose cover on the banquette sofa.

Armchair The 19th-century chair in the main picture is from Howe (020 7730 7987, www.howelondon. com), upholstered in natural linen from Nicole Fabre (01485 576 200, www.nicolefabredesigns. com), with red piping. Leslie designed a stool to match, with the same square tapered legs. As well as a selection of interesting antique chairs, Howe has a range of its own designs to be made to order, like this Beagle Chair (left), from £2,160.

Carpet The ‘Peloponnese’ carpet by designer Sandy Jones (020 7498 2717, www.sandyjones.co.uk) anchors the room. Jones will design something bespoke or tweak a design from her archive.

All her carpets — flat pile or kilim — are woven in Turkey, where the wool is dyed by hand, adding distinction to the final product. The carpet pictured at the top of the page is called ‘Oppède II’. Prices start from £950 per square metre.

Antiques The French cherry-wood standard lamp is from Guinevere (020 7736 2917, www.guinevere. com) on the King’s Road, a treasure trove of decorative antiques and textiles. The 1950s oak coffee table is French and came from Gallery 25 (020 7730 7516, www.gallery25.co.uk) on Pimlico Road, a good source of 20th-century furniture.

Wood floor Chestnut was chosen for its colour and open grain. The boards are solid rather than engineered, so they will shrink and move, adding character. The waxed polish will also mean patina is added over time. Try Walking on Wood (www.walkingonwood.com); boards cost £156 per metre square, supply only.

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a stitch in time Why Suzannah Crabb is a fashion saint Mary Wakefield

In a few days, I’ll have been married for six months — so we’ll drain a few bottles of red, my new husband and i, say: all right so far, darling? Not too bad, is it? And while he’s hunting for stray cigarettes down the back of the sofa, I’ll be secretly raising a glass to a woman called Suzannah, because without her, I just might not have made it down the aisle at all.

Suzannah Crabb (pictured) is a dress designer; a British girl who did her time on the high street — Whistles, Karen Millen,

Marks — before launching her own label from a little shop in Belsize Park. I first arrived at the shop on a wet October day, wearing an anorak, a bobble hat and what must have looked like a very odd expression for a bride-to-be. It was two months till D-day and the whole wedding thing was giving me hives. I was embarrassed about needing a white dress and embarrassed about being so embarrassed. I’d landed up there, because I’d bought online from Suzannah before — a lovely silk tea dress

with a friendly swish. It was on my side, that dress, so when i found myself engaged, I made a beeline for Belsize Park.

So there I stood, feeling more six than 36, looking at my shoes . . . but one of the nice things about Suzannah’s shop is that it’s impossible to stay anxious in it for long. The dresses simply won’t allow it. It’s a warm place, glamorous without being intimidating; a touch of burlesque, a breath of vintage; fur stoles; pillbox hats, long coloured feathers — and they’re proper

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Suzannah Crabb www.benlister.com; Mary Wakefield www.jamescummingsphotography.com

Here’s what a doll Suzannah is. Two days before her own wedding, she was on her knees stitching the hem of my customised train, a puddle of clotted cream-coloured silk, determined to get it just right

characters, those dresses. There are some inspired by the Thirties, some by the Forties; Fifties skirts with kick and flair; knowing little pop couture numbers in dove grey, pink, vibrant green. And they surround you in that glamorous room, like women at a cocktail party.

In your average high-street shop, the clothes yell like children: each hectic little pair of hot-pants is desperate to show off.

In Suzannah’s place, each blouse or dress takes its time to speak. But they spoke with one voice that morning: ‘take off that disgusting anorak, stop chewing your thumb, and have some pride in yourself, honey.

You’re a grown woman getting married!

Calm down, then we’ll talk.’

Then Suzannah herself appeared, the hostess of this party — gamine, blonde, smiling. Now I don’t much believe much in fate, but wasn’t it a bit spooky that Suzannah herself turned out to be getting hitched the week before me? And that there was her ‘Astor’ dress on the bridal rail, gleaming at me like a headless goddess, a lighthouse in this alarming sea. And that Suzannah turned out to be some sort of fashion saint.

She found me the perfect shoes (rose-gold sandals by Rupert Sanderson), and recommended her own wonderful make-up artist and stylist (Nadira Persaud, www.nadiramakeup.com). When I had suffocating palpitations at the sight of a traditional veil, she found me a perfect hat, with just a hint of a veil (Edwina Ibbotson).

The author at the altar, wearing her ‘Astor’ dress

Here’s what a doll Suzannah is. Two days before her own wedding, she was on her knees stitching the hem of my Astor’s customised train — a puddle of clotted creamcoloured Italian silk – determined to get it just right. And she’d managed, somehow, to prepare both the dress and me. For the first time, I could meet my own eye in her floor-length mirror, ready for the runway.

I left through the shop for the last time, with the dress over my arm and new thoughts unfolding in my head: perhaps

fashion isn’t just for airheads; perhaps a cut, a cloth, can change as well as reflect your state of mind. And sometimes, a dress isn’t just a dress — it’s a decision too.

The funny thing is, since meeting her, I’ve found there’s something of a secret Suzannah society amongst women in the know. Not long after my first fitting, my best friend’s sister sidled up to me: ‘I gather you’ve found Suzannah! I’m just off there tonight.’ The next day, an email from a cousin: ‘Ah! Suzannah! what a perfect choice.’ How on earth did she did know?

Even in the Daily Mail, of all places, Suzannah is described as a secret. Liz Jones calls her: ‘a woman’s secret weapon. She is not a household name, nor a Parisienne diva.

She makes clothes that are almost couture, and they are all produced in Britain.’

Denise van Outen is a regular customer, and so is Pippa Middleton. We share a dress, Pippa and I — a lovely pea-green version of my wedding Astor — though of course my bottom looks a lot better in it than hers.

There’s something about Suzannah that reminds me of Vivienne Westwood. She’s more vintage than punk, but there’s a Britishness about both designers — a sense of humour and a talent for playing with history.

More than that: the clothes feel like they’re for women. Suzannah designs with her customers in mind: she’s for them, not for the industry insiders. Which is why, however famous she gets — and she deserves it all — Suzannah will always feels like a secret.

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The W ish list

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Photography Dennis Pedersen

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BEST OF BRITISH Previous page: 01 Ministry chronograph in rose gold, £16,950, DENT; 02 ALT1-C, £3,945, BREMONT; 03 Limited-edition rose gold watch with crocodile strap, £11,000, WILLIAM & SON; 04 Swordfish chronograph with blue crocodile strap, £7,120, GRAHAM; 05 Regent Blue Velvet with diamonds and sapphires, £49,290, BACKES & STRAUSS. This page: 06 Gold, ruby and diamond earrings, £1,250, HUMPHREY BUTLER; 07 Jubilee eternity ring with diamonds, sapphires and rubies, £2,350, NIGEL MILNE; 08 Honeysuckle necklace, £140,000, BOODLES; 09 Woodland charm bracelet in yellow gold, £18,000, ASPREY; 10 Trefoil key in white gold with diamond and ruby chain, £7,825, THEO FENNELL; 11 Edwardian diamond and ruby cluster ring, £4,900; 12 Diamond Yorkshire Regimental brooch, £2,800, both HUMPHREY BUTLER 13 White gold and diamond fringe necklace, POA; 14 Platinum, sapphire and white diamond ring, POA; 15 Burma wildflower earrings with pink diamonds and rubies, POA, all DAVID MORRIS; 16 Spinel beetle pendant, £3,800, BOODLES. Cupcakes provided by the Hummingbird Bakery.

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Spectator Spitfire 1_Layout 1 01/06/2012 15:54 Page 1

Barker | Cheaney | Church’s | Herring | Loake | Tricker’s

Charlie Brown, Spitfire pilot wears Herring Burgh

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1/6/12 16:34:44

YACHT

OR

NOT?

Andrew Lever shutterstock.com

Somewhere on the Mediterranean, there’s a boat to suit you Ian Henderson

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T R AV E L A vintage Riva boat, Gardoni riviera, Italy

Beach at Brela, Croatia

The Mediterranean is ideal for boatlife. No tides; settled weather; warm water. Out in the breeze, away from the lines of landlubbing sunbathers, there’s bound to be a secluded cove just for you, your boat, perhaps a pair of Dutch naturists.

There are challenges, of course. One is the rising flotsam of regulation: from this summer you’ll need a licence known as an ICC, or International Certificate of Competence (find out how to get one at www. rya.org.uk), to hire anything bigger than a dinghy. And a maiden voyage through a crowded harbour with crossed mooring lines, angry fishermen and swimming children would have put Magellan off.

But if the call of the sea is still loud in your ears, there are options for a day or two afloat. People say that if it flies or floats, rent it (you may have heard the longer version) and that’s what most people do — even the billionaires.

The easiest option is a basic motorboat. Some have solid hulls and are easily dented. Others have rubber tops and are called RIBs, which stands for rigid inflatable boats. (In Spain they’re called semirigidas.) Nearly every seaside town has a rental operator of some sort.

At the pretty little harbour in Aiguafreda, on the Catalan coastline around Begur, you’ll find Sylvie Portavella (www.begurboats.com). Sylvie charmingly manages a very efficient business, charging from €240 for a day’s hire between June and September. With a speedboat or semirigida, you’ll be free to explore the castles, caves, woods and islands of one of Spain’s most beautiful coastlines. There will be a local Sylvie almost anywhere you go, so ask your hotel or villa rental company.

If you fancy something flashier, there’s nothing more stylish than a Riva Aquarama: the utterly gorgeous, handbuilt, wooden, 1960s film star’s speedboat of choice. And where else would you go in a Riva than to Antibes or Cannes? Don’t for a moment imagine you’ll drive it yourself though — a Riva is worth around half a million euros, but as you arrive at Club 55 on Pampleonne Beach you’ll feel like at least twice that, and for a mere €1,800 a day.

Chartering a beautiful boat doesn’t mean you have to swank about among the beach clubs of St Tropez.

You may consider that a little, well, vulgar. An immaculate 1930s sailing yacht with 80 feet of teak decks, white sails and gleaming brass fittings is undeniably stylish, though. One of these will cost you around €3,500 a day almost anywhere in Europe (www.boatbookings.com).

The experience of steering one of these in a fresh breeze across a sparkling bay is worth every penny.

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Left to right: M.Bonotto, Tatiana Popova, George Koultouridis (Shutterstock.com)

Blue caves, Zakynthos, Greece

(regulation is usually quite relaxed), while day trips on large gulets can be a great way of seeing the coast in comfort — though there’s always a risk of joining someone else’s booze cruise.

The perfect sailing waters around Greece, however, cry out for a proper yacht. Boats up to 40 feet can be handled by any vaguely competent skipper, with a bit of help. Unfortunately, chartering one is a trickier enterprise, as most firms only take bookings by the week. Search carefully, though, and you can enjoy a day or two’s sailing by booking a month ahead. Sail Ionian (www.sailionian.com) can give you a skipper if you don’t have an ICC or much sailing experience. They also rent day boats (a small, fast, open yacht with no cabin — the way God meant us to sail) with a skipper from €190 a day. They are based on the island of Lefkas, from where you can sail to Skorpios, Onassis’s island, and drop anchor or visit the pretty (and inexpensive) restaurants around Fiskardo’s harbour on Cephalonia.

Stop at One House Bay on Atoko island for the perfect place to swim.

For something different, try Croatia. It has become fashionable, but much of the coastline remains charmingly undeveloped. Try Dalmatian Destinations (www. dalmatiandestinations.com), which have a range of glorious boats (crewed gulets and schooners, rather than motor boats). They know all the best spots.

I could go on. The Mediterranean has about 45,000 kilometres of coastline (that’s more than once round the equator) so there’s plenty to explore. I’ll certainly be afloat in the Med this summer. Wave if you’re passing.

Much like Spain, Ibiza is best enjoyed by boat, especially in the busiest months, when you might feel the need to escape the hordes of revellers flocking to the island. Ibiza Nonsense has 11 boats of various shapes and sizes (mostly speedboats but there is one catamaran; the biggest in the fleet takes 12) and prices start at €400 a day. Formentera, an island six kilometres south of Ibiza, is the place to head to, where the water is Caribbean-clear. The trick is to pack a picnic and find your own spot to pass away the day, though if you want to head ashore for a fun and fashionable lunch, try Juan Y Andrea (the skipper will book a table for you).

To the east, between Corfu and Ithaca, the Greek Ionian Sea offers some of the gentlest sailing waters known to man. Zephyrs waft you towards picturesque villages where you can enjoy a simple meal of local fish for roughly the same price as the fisherman’s house.

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T R AV E L

GLOBE TROTTING Wow factor: four new hotels that all boast something spectacular

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01 — Corinthia Hotel, London Each of the seven penthouses follows a different theme. This one, the Musician’s, has a grand piano in the drawing room and a working fireplace on the vast roof terrace. corinthia.com

03 — The Selman, Marrakech With so many new hotels opening in Marrakech, it can be hard to keep up. This one is distinguished by its stable of Arabian horses — there purely for decoration. glahotels.com/hotel/selman_maroc/

02 — Devi Ratn, Jaipur Patterned flooring, exquisite latticework and interiors in shades of ruby, emerald, sapphire and gold ensure this 63-suite boutique hotel dazzles the eye at every turn. deviresorts.in

04 — Rocco Forte, Abu Dhabi The sixth-floor bar, Blue, looks as if it’s floating in the middle of the hotel’s striking 11-storey glass atrium. Unsurprisingly, it has the best views in the city. roccofortehotelabudhabi.com

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08:

ON E TO W ATCH

H a n na h Peel Flame-haired singer songwriter touring the folk circuit this summer Tom Hollander

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pieces of paper she had perforated with a hole punch.

When the papers came to an end and fell to the floor the songs were over.

Last year she released The Broken Wave, a brilliant debut album of her own songs. They have titles like ‘the almond tree’, ‘song of the sea’, ‘solitude’.

Haunting. Clever. Catchy. This year she is touring with the Magnetic North. She is tall and beautiful and has red hair. But that’s not strictly relevant.

Hannah Peel is performing with the Magnetic North at the st magnus Festival, Kirkwall, Orkneys, in june, latitude festival in july and the Moseley folk festival in september

annah Peel is a northern irish singer songwriter. She is listed under ‘alternative’. She describes her music as ‘wonky folk-pop’. She is an extremely talented and versatile musician and composer. I saw her singing in a friend’s house, and she performed simple beautiful versions of soft cell’s ‘tainted love’, new order’s ‘blue Monday’ and the Cocteau twins’ ‘sugar hiccup’. Covers of songs which I listened to as a teenager. Songs that were becoming famous just as she was being born.

She stood straight-backed with her weight on one leg, and accompanied herself by hand, cranking a small wooden music box, through which she wound long 66

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