Spectator Life Summer 2013

A R T / S T Y L E / I N V E S T M E N T / F I L M / T R AV E L

N OVA K D J O KOV I C P.18

T OB I A S J O N E S P.34

From war to Wimbledon

A Vatican mystery

P.29

A L I SON WO L F P.15 The smart women of porn

ISSUE 06

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S P E C TAT O R L I F E

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SUMMER 2013

CLUB WARS: HOW 5 HERTFORD STREET STOLE THE STARS

KRUGER RULE S

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Film star Diane Kruger on what Hollywood’s doing wrong COVER_Spectator Life Jun 13_Spectator Supplements 210x260_

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E DI T OR ’S L E T T E R

H U M P H R EY B U T L E R

O

Agents & Dealers in Fine Jeweller y

ur cover interview this time is with the film star Diane Kruger — Helen in Troy, and a scene-stealer in Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds. When I met her in New York, she told me in no uncertain terms why Hollywood needs more parts for grown-up women.

Meanwhile, Alison Wolf, author of the brilliant The XX Factor, considers a less respectable branch of the film business, but one in which the women are often paid more than the men: porn. Are the industry’s transactions really any more empowering than the deal cut by an old-fashioned madam?

On the subject of which, the club 5 Hertford Street, in the former brothel territory of Shepherd Market, right now has a buzz akin to something like Studio 54. There’s a waiting list of thousands but, in the spirit of investigative journalism, Stephen Robinson propped up the bar both there and at Annabel’s, its rival and inspiration.

On a recent night at 5 Hertford Street, I collided with Toby Young, who on page 40 introduces Spectator Life’s hot list of the most inspirational immigrants to London, a city which in the past 25 years has become truly globalised. In that spirit I’m thrilled to introduce our new columnists — Sam Neill from New Zealand, Oscar Humphries from Australia, and Harry Cole, from, er, Westminster. Enjoy the issue!

Spectator Life www.spectatorlife.com Supplied free with the 22 June 2013 issue of The Spectator 22 Old Queen Street, London, SW1H 9HP Telephone 020 7961 0200 www.spectator.co.uk ISSN: 2050-2192

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C ON T R I B U T OR S Tobias Jones is the author of The Dark Heart of Italy, Blood on the Altar and, most recently, Death of a Showgirl. He’s the co-founder of a woodland refuge, Windsor Hill Wood (www. windsorhillwood.co.uk), and has made documentaries for the BBC and for the Italian broadcaster Rai.

SAVOIR BEDS

Deborah Anderson’s portfolio includes George Clooney, Elton John and Sting.

SINCE 1905

Stephen Robinson is a journalist and biographer.

His most recent book, The Remarkable Lives of Bill Deedes, is reprinted this month.

James Rhodes has released four albums, all of which have topped the iTunes classical charts. He has played in venues including the Barbican, Roundhouse, and Queen Elizabeth Hall. He is presenting a documentary on Channel 4 this summer and is about to perform a series of shows at the Soho Theatre and the Albert Hall in London, and the Latitude and Cheltenham Music festivals.

Spend a third of your life in first class savoirbeds.co.uk 7 Wigmore Street, London W1 Harrods, Knightsbridge, London SW1 Plaza, 535 King’s Road, London SW10 Alison Wolf is author of The XX Factor: How Working Women Are Creating A New Society and professor of public sector management at King’s College London.

+44 (0)20 7493 4444 London

Paris

New York

Berlin

Stockholm

Shanghai

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CONTENTS

15 49 29 61 C U LT U R E

STYLE

LIFE

T R AV E L

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

44. Sam Neill In praise of silence

15. The smart women of porn Alison Wolf on power, politics and pornographic film

46. Passion plays Clarissa Tan on where investment and collecting collide

18. Interview: Novak Djokovic Ksenija Pavlovic meets the world’s tennis No. 1

49. Pre-eminent in their fields Dan Jones goes in search of smaller, classier festivals 52. Interview: Angela Missoni Clover Stroud talks to the head of the fashion dynasty

22. Oscar Humphries How to survive the Venice Biennale

54. Interview: Annoushka Ducas Emma Love meets the designer and art connoisseur

24. Interview: Diane Kruger Olivia Cole meets the model turned film star 29. Club ties Stephen Robinson on a Mayfair turf war

56. The Wish List

34. Gone girl Tobias Jones on a 30-year Vatican mystery

61. Travel: Italy Sophia Martelli in search of the perfect estate

38. Harry Cole Washington’s snappy dressers

64. Globe Trotting Travel news from around the globe

40. Money walks Toby Young on London’s attraction for global talent.

Plus: the city’s top immigrants

66. One to watch The pianist James Rhodes on Marc Hagan-Guirey 11

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THE INDEX

For tips on how to dress for this summer’s events visit: mrporter.spectator.co.uk

CA R L O S AC O S TA London Coliseum, from 30 July ‘Classical Selection’ is a sort of live highlights reel from Cuba’s acclaimed ballet dancer: Balanchine, MacMillan, Ashton and more.

AUG

JUL

THE ASHES Various venues, from 10 July Even in a year with ten Ashes Tests — five home, then five away — England-Australia tickets are a cricket fan’s most prized possession. It all begins at Trent Bridge.

PAU L W E L L E R Kew the Music, 11 July The Modfather might look a little out of place in genteel Kew Gardens, but he always puts on a decent show.

L IOL A , NAT IONA L T H EAT R E National Theatre, 31 July Former NT artistic director Sir Richard Eyre returns to the Southbank to helm this Pirandello revival.

OLD PECULIER CRIME WRITING F E S T I VA L Harrogate, 18-21 July With a writer line-up including Susan Hill, Val McDermid and Ruth Rendell, you won’t be wondering why we’ve called you all here.

BLON DIE The Roundhouse, 7 July Debbie Harry et al demonstrate that punk — at least their bit of it — isn’t dead.

LU DOV IC O E I NAU DI Barbican, 31 July until 4 August The Italian pianist and composer best known for his soundtrack work on films including Untouchable and This is England comes to the Barbican for a short residency.

T H E WOR L D’S EN D Various cinemas, 19 July Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright return to the mode of Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz — now declared the first two parts of their ‘Three Flavours Cornetto’ trilogy — for a tale of a pub crawl during an alien invasion.

PETER DOIG Scottish National Gallery, 3 August until 3 November A retrospective of painting and works on paper from the past ten years by the great Scottish painter. The exhibition, No Foreign Lands, will be Doig’s first major show in his homeland.

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BLEEDING EDGE Published on 17 September Thomas Pynchon’s new novel is ‘a historical romance on New York in the early days of the internet’: after the dotcom boom, before 9/11.

SEP

Carlos Acosta: Getty; Paul Weller: Redferns via Getty; Peter Doig: Girl in White with Trees; Australia: Sidney Nolan, Ned Kelly, 1946, National Gallery of Australia, Gift of Sunday Reed, 1977

THE STRANGE UNDOING OF PRU DE NC I A H A RT CLF Theatre, 5-9 August It’s based on Burns, Border ballads and poems by Robert Service; it features live music and whiskey. And it’s on tour from the National Theatre of Scotland to a former cricket-bat factory in Peckham, south London.

F L E E T WO OD M AC Various venues, from 20 September Lots of tours get called ‘highly anticipated’. This one really is: they haven’t been on the road since 2009, and this time last year there was some doubt whether they’d ever tour again. Stops include Dublin, London and Birmingham.

THE SLEEPING BE AU T Y Royal Opera House, 5-9 August The Bolshoi Ballet arrives in London for a limited, and unmissable, run.

BR EC ON JA Z Z Various venues, 9-11 August The great Welsh jazz festival has Courtney Pine, Jules Holland, Django Bates, Mavis Staples, Acker Bilk and a great deal more.

B I L LY B U D D Glyndebourne, 10-25 August Michael Grandage’s 2010 production revived for Britten’s centenary, with Jacques Imbrailo in the title role.

US OPEN Flushing Meadows, from 26 August Can Andy Murray retain his grand slam title?

SEAN LOCK Hammersmith Apollo, 27-28 September Despite mainstream success on TV panel shows, Lock is still one of the sharpest comics on the circuit. These Apollo dates conclude his Purple Van Man tour.

BE E T HOV E N ’ S NINTH Royal Albert Hall, 28 September David Hill conducts the Royal Philharmonic with members of the London Philharmonic Choir in Beethoven’s most beloved symphony.

AUS T R A L I A Royal Academy, from 21 September A grand 200-year retrospective designed to banish for all time those cheap jokes about Australian culture. So presumably they won’t be getting Sir Les Patterson to open it.

MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING Old Vic, from 7 September Mark Rylance directs James Earl Jones and Vanessa Redgrave.

F E S T I VA L NUMBER 6 Portmeirion, 13-15 September Unlike The Prisoner – its inspiration, filmed in Portmeirion – Festival Number 6 is a number, and it isn’t free. Tickets start at £170.

For a line-up including Manic Street Preachers, Chic and John Cooper Clarke, among others, it’s probably worth it.

GHOSTS Almeida Theatre, from 26 September In its day, Ghosts so shocked the critics that it inspired Ibsen to write its follow-up, An Enemy of the People. Now freshly adapted and directed

by Richard Eyre, with Lesley Manville in the lead role.

N F L AT W EM BL EY Wembley Stadium, 29 September The Minnesota Vikings are ‘at home’ to the Pittsburgh Steelers, in what has become a transatlantic tradition.

The atmosphere will be spectacular, and by the end you might understand some of what is going on.

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CULTURE

A CA R E E R I N SE X Should we be surprised that there are intelligent women working in the porn industry?

Alison Wolf

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CULTURE Right: Asphyxia Noir, 23, has made a dozen films Far right: Brothel, 1925

Awards ceremonies are big. People love cheering the walk to the podium, love it even more when they’re the ones on the carpet. But to pick up an Adult Movies (AVN) award for Best All-Girl Couples Sex Scene or for Best Oral Sex? Or to be crowned as ‘Hottie of the Year’? How many people want this for themselves, or their daughters?

The stars of the film Aroused are women with long lists of AVN awards laid out in their Wikipedia pages.

Aroused is a documentary about America’s highest paid female porn stars and we see them in hair-rollers, premake up. That said, it’s a film with a Roedean-educated female director and scriptwriter, the photographer Deborah Anderson, an array of porn stars with soft voices, well-turned sentences, and claims to love their work, screenings at regular cinemas, and coverage in Spectator Life. All that surely adds up to a first.

But does it mean that porn has come out of the shadows? Or is it evidence of a parental nightmare, a supersexualised world where a porn star’s Wikipedia page becomes the right sort of fame to chase? Neither really.

Aroused is new in some ways — but what it really showcases is the continuation of the old.

Sex has always offered women a career. The fact that ‘nice girls didn’t’ was central to the old marriage bargain; and at the top end, beautiful girls could sometimes land themselves a serious ‘catch’, a word that says it all. But sex was also what you sold, as a girl, in societies which barred women from most of the labour market.

Throughout the 19th and early 20th century, prostitution consistently paid better than any other jobs open to ordinary women. And in the early 1900s, the wealthiest self-made women in America were madams. Sisters Minna and Ada Everleigh established the Everleigh Club, a brothel of unprecedented luxury — gold piano, Japanese Throne Room — that was frequented by men from the top of Chicago society. Running a brothel was one of the very few ways in which women could make serious money.

Old-style madams were generally ex-prostitutes themselves, the few fit survivors of a tough trade. We remember Sarah Bernhardt as a consummate, worldfamous actress, but she was also, like most early actresses, a child of the demi-monde, the daughter and niece of courtesans. Her two younger sisters became courtesans in their turn; but Régine died at 19, and Jeanne succumbed to drug addiction. Only Sarah thrived.

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These women want attention.

They want fans and fame, albeit short-lived. And crucially, they want money. Offered more than they got for stripping or modelling, they said yes

Aroused, executive produced by Trina Venit, produced by Mike Moz and produced/directed by Deborah Anderson, is out now.

Asphyxia Noir: Deborah Anderson; Brothel: Getty Images

Brothels are now, mostly, illegal. ‘Adult’ films instead pay you to have sex in front of a camera, which the punters then pay a little to watch. It sounds healthier and safer than a prostitute’s life, although the stars of Aroused had still had plenty of sexually transmitted diseases along the way. They also routinely make 200, 300, even 400 films by the time they are 25. Whether or not it’s degrading, it sounds utterly exhausting.

And their motives are clear and utterly traditional.

They want attention. They want fans and fame, albeit short-lived. (‘If you ask where the girls of 2005 are, no one knows them now,’ as one pointed out.) But also, crucially, they want money. Offered more than they got for stripping, more than they got for modelling, they said yes.

I’d assumed that adult porn brought big bucks, something the film implied as its stars gathered by limo.

But when I dug a little deeper, that wasn’t so clear.

Porn stars have a published ‘rich list’ all their own, and it is unique in being overwhelmingly female. But these stars (limos or not) aren’t actually that rich. You can get into the top 20 with a net worth of a couple of million — a lot more than most people, certainly, let alone most twenty-somethings. But given current house prices, the USA alone numbers 3 million people with over $1 million in ‘investable assets’, while the UK has close to another 500,000. And the stars who top the list are,

without exception, the ones with a business head: they’ve moved into either making films themselves, or running a successful agency. So far, so traditional — there have always been plenty of beautiful bodies around.

Which brings me to what is new. First, ‘adult film’ is pretty marginal to women’s economic chances; and that’s because the financial importance of sex has changed too, compared to the days when marriage determined women’s fates, and nice girls didn’t. Modern women have far more opportunities, and far more well-paid ones too.

(Plus nice girls do.)

Second, the people who make money from commercial sex have changed. Once, this was a world where the men might be ‘respectable’ but the women certainly weren’t. That barrier is down.

Fran Amidor, also in the film, is a well-paid ‘adult talent’ agent: a professional woman who certainly didn’t come up through the ranks. Hugh Hefner’s Playboy empire was run by his privately educated daughter, a pillar of the Chicago business elite; Anna Arrowsmith was a successful adult film director and then a Lib Dem candidate at the last election; and while she didn’t win, she did increase the party’s share of the vote.

And then there’s my own entrepreneurial profession.

Academics have by now turned their deathly prose style on pretty much everything, and porn is no exception. The new journal Porn Studies, edited by two senior female academics, is dedicated to ‘the serious and transdisciplinary analysis of porn’. It won’t make the bestseller lists, but it marks an era when nothing is safe from educated women intent on making a career. Not even adult films.

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Getty Images

CULTURE

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of waking up during the night at 3 a.m. and feeling uncertain about what the next day would bring. Due to that experience, I learned to face and overcome fear at an early age. Having been in an environment where people were in fear for their lives, the fear of failure in tennis did not seem that frightening.’ It’s easy to see how he’s managed, unlike some of his tennis peers, to hang on to a sense of perspective, however high the stakes.

‘On 22 May 1999, I was celebrating my 12th birthday. I don’t like to remember this, but it is one of my strongest memories. That birthday celebration in the Serbian tennis club Partisan, when everyone was singing ‘Happy Birthday’ while the aeroplanes were flying over the sky dropping bombs on Belgrade. I think that at that time I was too young to conceptualise what was happening. Instead, I learned to refocus and to not listen to the sirens.

I learned to focus on pleasure in having so much ‘free time’ to play tennis. I thought if I focus on the talent I believed I had, I can be the No. 1, I can win Wimbledon one day. That determination was crucial in my development as a professional athlete. Even today I draw on those foundations.’

Although still in his twenties, Djokovic knows himself well.

Mentally, he’s very strong and open and has a ‘tell no lies’ attitude.

He explains that living through tumultuous times taught him the importance of gratitude and giving back to the world.

‘I fell completely in love with this sport at the age of four. It has defined my whole life. There are not so many people in the world who can say they love what they do and they’re the most successful at it. I am highly aware of the opportunity I’ve been given and I think it was all destiny — the hand of cards I’ve been dealt — for which I am very grateful.’

Djokovic was born in Belgrade into a sporty family. He was the first to play tennis, which his three younger brothers now do too.

Talking about his family, Djokovic says his parents have been enormously supportive and have always believed in him.

‘One of the biggest mentors in my life was my first tennis coach, Jelena Gencic [who died on 1 June, a serious emotional blow to Djokovic]. I remember as a kid, she made me read poetry and we spent most of our time together listening to classical music from Bach and Mozart to Beethoven. We spent so many hours in her house, in that legendary living-room filled with hundreds of tennis trophies she had on display. I dreamt that one day I would

Novak Djokovic is the world’s No. 1 tennis player not in spite of his wartorn background, but because of it Ksenija Pavlovic

While the hard graft of being the world’s No. 1 tennis player is not to be underestimated, it has its stylish moments too. My interview with the greatest sporting export from my homeland, Serbia, takes place in the Monte Carlo Country Club, with the sun setting over the Mediterranean. Despite the dreamy location, I’m keen to get on with my questions. ‘We should get started,’ I say the moment we sit down at the restaurant. He looks at me in amazement, probably thinking I’ve become too much of a New Yorker. Even on the most gruelling schedules, Serbs are known for being pretty relaxed, and Novak Djokovic has a striking warmth.

As he does on the tennis court, Djokovic sets the pace for the conversation. His mind has a tendency to go directly to the point, fierce and fast. This quick responsiveness makes him even more exciting to talk to. Referring to the saying ‘Through adversity to the stars’, he recalls the life path that led him to becoming the No. 1 tennis player in the world.

‘There were two turning points in my life that made me into the person I am today, events which I think made me stronger and defined my character. One of them happened at the age of 12 when I left for Germany to play tennis. At that moment, the situation in Serbia was very hard. The country was under embargo; those were times of extreme poverty and hardship. In those harsh conditions, development of children in any sport, let alone in tennis, was impossible. At such a young age, in order to play tennis, I had to be separated from my family. Overnight I had to get used to not depending on my parents and practically start living life on my own. I was very young, but the circumstances made me adjust to my new life away from my family. This was one of the major markers in my life that later defined me both as an athlete and as a man.’

The second point is one of the most dramatic events in recent history, the Nato bombing of Serbia. ‘Those two and a half months

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CULTURE

Having been in an environment where people lived in fear for their lives, the fear of failure in tennis did not seem that frightening

‘London is a fabulous city, I enjoy St James’s Park, I love the tradition and culture, the British respect for the royal family. In these modern times, lots of nations have forgotten what makes up their identity. I love that British society still holds to theirs.’

His friend Sarah Ferguson, the Duchess of York, has recently agreed to become a Global Ambassador for the Novak Djokovic Foundation. He calls her ‘a magnificent woman’.

‘Sarah is a great philanthropist and very dedicated to her work with children. The Duchess has agreed to be the global ambassador of my foundation, and that brought me so much joy. We are planning to bring her to Serbia to open schools for children. She offered books and toys. . . She gave a very touching speech at the benefit dinner of the Novak Djokovic Foundation in New York.

In her closing remarks she said that the work we are doing inspires her. Hearing that from her — such a big philanthropist — was a great honour.’

Djokovic has a notable ability to befriend intriguing characters, from Richard Branson, who invited him to play in his private tennis tournament on Necker Island, to Anna Wintour, a tennis fanatic who is so obsessed with Wimbledon that she once sent her hairdresser to sort out Federer’s hair before a match. ‘Anna is a warm and giving person who has donated not only her time but her own money to support the cause my foundation stands for. For me, this is enough reason to know how good and caring a person she is,’ he says.

At the benefit dinner in New York, Tommy Hilfiger told me that what he loves about Novak is his sense of humour. Djokovic, known to his friends as Nole, is the classic glass-half-full optimist. ‘My life is filled with love and joy. Of course, not everything is always ideal. Sometimes I wake up on the wrong side of the bed, and there are days when I don’t feel like practising, when I am not in the best mood, but my strongest motivator is this drive to succeed in all aspects of my life. Tennis is an individual sport, and when people watch me on TV they see me standing by myself on the court raising the trophy and they may think that I am solely responsible for all that. But there is an army of people behind this success. Their ongoing contributions are making my life on- and off-court much easier and help me be the best person I can.’

Djokovic and his girlfriend, Jelena, live in Monte Carlo with their puppy, Pierre. When they have free time, they enjoy going to La Spiaggia, a relaxed Italian restaurant on the beach. Djokovic smiles when I ask him if he thinks he would be the same man if he did not have such a supportive girlfriend in his life. ‘Jelena is a big support in everything I do. It means a lot to have such a wonderful woman in my life. This understanding and the love we share helps us go through life together and overcome the obstacles we encounter on the way. Together, we resolve all our important life questions, and this makes life much easier.’

The most impressive thing, however, may be that, despite the magnitude of his celebrity. Djokovic still has both feet on the ground. ‘I don’t like to think of myself as someone higher, better or stronger than anyone else,’ he tells me. ‘We can have more or less success in our lives, but in the end, it all comes down to who we are as people. I don’t like false pretences. I choose to be open and treat everyone equally. It takes so little to be kind.’

In my experience, he is as good as his word.

be winning them too. We were listening to this wonderful music and doing visualisation exercises. Her philosophy was that these exercises would open up my creativity and help me believe in my dreams. She thought this would help me clarify the image in my mind of winning Wimbledon and becoming the best tennis player in the world. . . One of the best and the most emotional moments of my life was when I brought the Wimbledon trophy to Jelena’s house and put it among all the trophies I used to admire when I was a kid.’

After winning Wimbledon, surrounded by reporters and admiring crowd, he flew back to Serbia to experience something that probably happens only once in a lifetime. Over 100,000 people lined the streets from Nikola Tesla airport to the centre of Belgrade.

‘I felt enormous pride and joy; the images were running through my mind of everything I’d achieved, of everything I had to go through: playing tennis in a period of crisis, war, empty shops, parents who were hardly making ends meet, borrowing money, having all doors closed on them. And here I was, a decade later, holding a Wimbledon trophy, living out my biggest dream. That day people asked me, OK, so now you achieved your two biggest dreams: you became the No. 1 tennis player in the world and you won Wimbledon at 24 — what is next for you? What I told them then and what I’m telling them now is there’s no end in dreaming: never give up on your dreams.’

The world’s most famous Serbian athlete today has a global platform. To allow children to live their dreams and cultivate their talents, he founded the Novak Djokovic Foundation. Last September, I witnessed Djokovic’s philanthropy, attending the inaugural benefit dinner at Capitale in New York City, where he raised $1.4 million for an early-years education project in Serbia.

A few months later, he was presented with a Centrepoint award by the charity’s patron, Prince William, the Duke of Cambridge.

‘I know how many families have problems securing for their children basic education,’ he reflects. ‘Problems giving them an opportunity to unlock their talents and discover their potential.

I come from a country that was tormented by war, economic starvation, a country that in the last 30 years has gone through lots of difficulty, to which I was a witness. Not everyone can isolate themselves from their problems — many get overwhelmed by them. This is why I want to help so much.’

Djokovic’s ultimate goal and definition of success is to give back and help people achieve their dreams. Ahead of his fundraising dinner at the Roundhouse in London on 8 July, he is looking forward to spending some time in Britain, not just on centre court.

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CULTURE

OSCA R H U M PH R IES

Where to go — and what to say — when the art world invades Venice

Sitting at lunch the other week, in a rainy London, I let my mind drift to Venice.

I was to visit the city for the Biennale — that greatest of arts festivals. One that, in its opening days, seems to take over the entire city. As well as the main shows and national pavilions, pop-up exhibitions of varying sizes are everywhere. Houses are taken over by ‘art collectives’ and churches are given over to secular postmodernism. Dragging myself back to the room, I said to my hostess that I’d be going there. It emerged that she’d visited the city in the early 1960s with her friend Truman Capote. She related all of this in her southern drawl. They’d come for the Biennale and were walking past the Lido when they saw a macabrely thin woman about to swim. ‘That’s a monster!’ said Capote. ‘No, that’s anorexia nervosa,’ said my friend Marguerette. ‘Oh Marguerette,’ said Capote, ‘you know everyone!’

The best time to visit the Biennale is not during the opening: that’s a social rather than a cultural event. The moment you step off the vaporetto it’s upon you — art-world flâneurs clutching iPhones, trying to figure out whether they should have drinks at the Gritti or the Bauer. Every night there are dinners and parties given for artists by curators, collectors and dealers, so everyone comes down with that art-world malady, ‘Fomo’ (Fear of Missing Out). Far better, I think, to come later in the summer, when people wear bum bags and T-shirts rather than the black uniform that the art world dons regardless of the weather.

The theme of this year’s Biennale is ‘the encyclopaedic palace’: a fantasy museum that hold records of all human endeavour

and achievement — which means a great deal of work by ‘outsider’ artists in the main show at the Arsenale. It is variety that seems to be the differentiator of this year’s Biennale.

Around town, the Tapies show — which includes work by the Catalan artist as well as works he owns by other artists — at the beautiful Palazzo Fortuny is worth seeing for the imaginative presentation alone. The Anthony Caro show at the Museo Correr gives us an opportunity to reconsider this important British sculptor. Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, who won the 2012 Future Generation Art Prize and has been nominated for this year’s Turner Prize, is a new talent about whom people seem excited.

She is not the creator of video or installation art but a painter — something of a novelty here. Her work forms part of a larger show at the Pinchuk Foundation’s space at the Palazzo Contarini Polignac on the Grand Canal.

The social side of art collecting is most visible in Venice. I saw Leonardo DiCaprio at Harry’s Bar. The art world has an amazing ability to play on the insecurities of the rich and famous; what art you own can

If you walk around the city bah-humbugging about the triviality of some of the pieces and the idiocy of the people, then you are missing the point

be an indicator of intellect and sophistication, perfect for the thespian with low self-esteem. Everyone has the same conversation at these Venice shindigs: What did you see today? And what do you like?

Sitting opposite a very nice but very LA woman at a dinner for an American artist, I tried explaining that I was collecting less contemporary art and more historic art.

You mean old art, she said, seeming to have no concept of any art history predating Andy Warhol. She kept talking about hip young LA artists and I was trying to tell her about Sickert’s Camden Town paintings; we might as well have been speaking different languages. We both pretended to know about the other person was talking about. When asked what she thought of Caro’s work, she said, ‘I know what her work means to me, what does it mean to you?’ She’s great, I said, as the main course arrived at 11.30 p.m.

But then, after seeing the work of hundreds of artists in one day, you need a bit of light relief. If you walk around the city bah-humbugging about the triviality of some of the pieces and the idiocy of the people, then you are missing the point.

True, much of today’s new art is superficial and vacuous, but then that’s because we in the West live in decadent, twittering times. If this is the end — or at least the near end — of an overheated art market, then we might as well enjoy ourselves. This Venice crew might be fiddling while the town burns, but I for one would rather fiddle than burn.

And if you don’t like contemporary art then you can see the excellent Manet show — better than the one we had in London.

Portrait: David Sparshott

The Biennale carnival

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Role model

ing of the Hollywood wind tunnel about that amazing face of hers.

In America, Kruger became famous virtually overnight when she was cast as Helen in Troy (2004). However, without a doubt her greatest role to date was her Dietrich-esque turn as a doublecrossing German film star Bridget von Hammersmark in Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds (2009) ‘He fired someone who showed up for rehearsal without a pen, so you can see the level of intensity,’ she says of Tarantino, who she compares to Hitchcock.

Though she is cast in her fair share of popcorn movies, creative challenge is something for which she plainly hankers. ‘Oh my God, it’s so hard,’ she says, when I ask how about finding a meaningful female role. I venture that her spectacular looks must also minimise the roles she can convincingly play. Unlike the K/Cates (Winslet and Blanchett), talented actresses who can look beautiful or plain on the turn of a pin, there is nothing of the chameleon about Kruger. She looks a knockout buying the groceries.

‘You know,’ she says, slightly wearily, ‘I’m not even sure that the physical thing has anything to do with that, I think it is very hard in America . . . I mean there are roles , but those are very, very rare, they really are.’ She cites Robin Wright’s scheming character in David Fincher’s House of Cards as remarkable. ‘We don’t make movies like that anymore. Have you ever seen a strong female character like that in a movie?’

Like Claire Danes in Homeland and Spacey and co. in House of Cards, Kruger is the latest in the list of film stars to sign on to a well-written TV series, with great production values. From next month, she will be seen in The Bridge, the American remake of the noirish Scandinavian series. Kruger will play a detective who suf-

Diane Kruger has moved seamlessly from ballet to fashion to film stardom. But can Hollywood supply the grown-up roles to match her ambition?

Olivia Cole

Mention that you are interviewing the German film star Diane Kruger and boys will note that she is ‘hot’, while girls will forcibly express their love of her style. In Paris, she lives next door to Karl Lagerfeld, a close friend of hers. If any woman could cope with the stress of running into the style fascist Karl as you pop out in your PJs for a café au lait and croissant, it is probably her.

We meet in New York at a lunch in the Rockefeller Building hosted by Swiss watchmaker Jaeger LeCoultre. Over lunch (actual food, a glass of wine) she’s friendly, unstarry and chats enthusiastically about Coachella, the Palm Springs music festival, which she recently attended with her boyfriend, the actor Joshua Jackson.

Tonight, they are at the Met Ball, the fashion equivalent of the Oscars, and she is looking forward to seeing fashion friends from the ‘old days’. She used to model, has fronted Jaeger LeCoultre campaigns for the past two years, and has recently been named as the new face of Chanel beauty. At the Met, she’ll know a ton of people and it will really feel like a party. Could the girl get any cooler?

After lunch, high above the hot pandemonium of Fifth Avenue, our interview takes place in the Anzac war memorial garden: there’s a breeze, blue skies and the soothing gurgle of a fountain, it’s ‘not bad’, she jokes. Close up, at 35, there is noth25

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CULTURE

fers from Asperger’s. ‘It’s always the male that gets cast first, there are very few women who are in a position to get a film green lit and be basically the star. . . I think that’s why in America, at least, cable television has become this other outlet.’

She was born and brought up in Algermissen, a small village in northern Germany, and grew up to be a good enough dancer to study with the Royal Ballet School, until a knee injury stopped her in her mid-teens. She helped her mother, to whom she is very close, through a tough few years after her parents split up. Money was tight, and she always did odd jobs to earn pocket money. When later I ask her what in her life she’s most proud of, she answers without missing a beat: ‘My home, because I come from a very lower-middle-class background and to be able to afford to buy a house when I was 27 was a huge accomplishment.’

Her mother plainly gave Kruger her sense of can-do, teaching her that she ‘could be whoever I wanted to be’. When she was 15, her then boyfriend sent her photograph to a modelling contest run

by Elite. The prize was a contract with the agency and flights to Paris.

She was scarily young. What advice would she give to a teenage model in that position, up to her neck in a sometimes brutal industry? ‘Honestly,’ she laughs, ‘today, at 35, if I thought about my daughter being 15 and saying, “Can I go away and live in Paris?”

I’d be like, “Fucking get to your room and don’t leave your room for another year!” But then at the same time it is thanks to my mother’s trust that I am who I am today, so I don’t know. If my Above: As Bridget von Hammersmark in Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds

ried to the French actor Guillaume Canet for three years in her twenties and once rather wisely said that she thought people should get married at the end of their life, if their relationship endures, not at the start. ‘You know, I don’t know any different,’ she says of her way of life. ‘Even modelling is such a gypsy life, so I don’t really know what a normal relationship would be like. You take it every day. I think [a relationship] is more for yourself, when you want to be with somebody, you make time for that and I think maybe that’s changed. I think I just want to make time more than I ever have.’

So sorry about that, boys. As for the girls, for anyone looking for style tips from Diane Kruger, I can’t help all that much. On the red carpet she says she likes ‘to look the most like myself as I can’ and refuses to use a stylist. ‘I think it’s so weird as an adult that somebody picks out clothes for you,’ she exclaims, ‘I mean, like, I’m not ten you know!’ She’s a grown-up dresser and a grown-up intelligent actor — someday soon, someone needs to give her a film role that does her justice.

daughter is really cool and I can trust her then that’s great but it seems crazy to me, I’ve got to be honest . . . ’ Would she like a family of her own one day? ‘Of course, of course, yes,’ she laughs, despite saying that she’s had a lifelong aversion to living ‘in a perfect house with a white fence, with a boy and a girl and a husband’.

In Paris, she became a favourite of major photographers like Patrick Demarchelier and by the late-1990s had appeared in campaigns for almost anyone you care to name, from Armani to Burberry and Chanel. Most people would have been content to just enjoy it. Instead, at 22, she decided to move to Paris and go to drama school. ‘I did really well and I had a great time doing it — it just became a little boring at the end because I grew up. . . ’ As she puts it, ‘When you’re a model you are a very nice coat-hanger.’

It’s not a way of life you can imagine the feisty Kruger finding fulfilling for very long.

She and Jackson have been together since 2006. She was mar-

Universal Pictures / The Kobal Collection; Warner Bros. / The Kobal Collection / Alex Bailey

Left: As the face that launched a thousand ships in Troy, with Orlando Bloom

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12/6/13 16:29:44

CLUB TIE S

Robin Birley wouldn’t speak to me because journalists always want to ask him about Annabel’s and his supposed feud with Richard Caring, but I was invited to his club, 5 Hertford Street, shortly before its first birthday.

The night I went was the height of ‘swivelgate’: Tory backbenchers were in a state of sulphurous revolt because David Cameron’s tennis partner had reportedly suggested they were captives of swivel-eyed lunatic activists. I was sitting in the airy smoking terrace, decorated with candles and peonies, chewing this over with an old Tory friend, when who should lope into view but Norman Tebbit.

Now, you expect to see the old Chingford skinhead on television at Baroness Thatcher’s funeral, or blogging away in the Telegraph about the idiocies of Cameroonian conservatism. But you do not expect to see him walking through the heart of Mayfair’s most happening members’ club when it is packed with the rich, beautiful, entitled London elite and their elegant, leggy consorts necking really rather good champagne.

Intrigued, I followed him under a magnificent chandelier up the stairs to investigate, and almost collided with Liam Fox, another Tory who is not exactly part of the Cameron inner chumocracy.

Sadly there was no sign of Adam Werritty, his indispensable adviser

Robin Birley, Richard Caring, and the battle for a changing Mayfair Stephen Robinson

Illustration: Brett Ryder

LIFE

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Lords Peter Mandelson and John Browne are regulars, as indeed are Norman Lamont and Lord Rothermere, who has even been known to lure Paul Dacre away from the backbench of the Daily Mail for a bite and a few drinks. So there is an element about 5 Hertford Street of the Conservative party in exile. It may be significant that the Cabinet member spotted most regularly here in Mayfair is Michael Gove, who is increasingly seen as the most effective Tory performer and a potential future leader.

5 Hertford Street exists and marks its first anniversary this summer only because Robin’s father Mark Birley founded Annabel’s around the corner exactly 50 years ago, and named it after his wife who was later to move on to marry Jimmy Goldsmith. Annabel’s opened in the summer of the Beatles, Mary Quant and the Pill, and the launch was a sensation.

Among the guests squeezed into the basement of 44 Berkeley Square that night were, in no particular order of precedence, the Devonshires, the Douglas Fairbankses, Stas and Lee Radziwill, the Somersets, the Cazelets, Evelyn Rothschild, Rupert Lowenstein, the Tennants, Andrew Parker-Bowles, the Maharaja of Jaipur and many more. Such was the crush that Lady Annabel almost caused an international incident by ordering David Bruce, the US ambassador, to leave the premises, mistaking him for a gatecrasher.

Mark Birley had dug 6,000 tons of London clay out of the basement of a derelict Mayfair townhouse and created, in the words of one awestruck American journalist, ‘the place where you find the prettiest girls in the greatest clothes. Their hair reaches down to their bottoms and their dresses reach up to them.’

Until the Birley revolution, London clubs were still based on a pre-war model with execrable food and a live band playing Cole

who cost him his job as defence secretary. Possibly he had already gone downstairs to bag a good table at Loulou’s, the basement discotheque catering for the club’s younger crowd.

Eventually I track down Lord Tebbit to the club television room where he is discussing, one assumes, robust conservative politics with the proprietor. Birley is thumpingly right-wing, a past supporter of General Pinochet and the Mozambican rebel group Renamo, and he ran for the Referendum party in the 1997 general election.

Birley is as languid and as long-limbed as the pair of whippets that invariably accompany him around his domain. His manner is clipped and personable, while his face still shows the scars of a boyhood accident when he was mauled in the tiger enclosure at John Aspinall’s zoo.

That night’s crowd at 5 Hertford Street reflects how social life in the capital has changed in the past half-century. It’s not conspicuously flashy, a mixture of ages from thirties through to sixties, a majority of men but many more women than you would see at the Garrick or Savile, and more hedge-fund people from Mayfair offices than established City types.

Within weeks of opening last summer, Birley’s venture had been endorsed by visits from Daphne Guinness, Mick Jagger and Kate Moss. More importantly for the financial well-being of the club — which has yet to publish detailed financial accounts of its performance — was the £5,000 cash tip left by an Indian billionaire.

If it is not full of toffs it’s for simple economic reasons: ‘Let’s be honest,’ says one member, ‘not many aristos bat at the top level in Mayfair these days.’ Rather, 5 Hertford Street is staking out ground where the information/communication elite intersect with the world of politics and finance.

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Left: Jerry Hall at Annabel’s nightclub, 1987

a brand new club of his own, backing on to Mayfair’s once notorious Shepherd Market. On opening there was, inevitably, a mass exodus of old Annabel’s hands towards 5 Hertford Street. Partly it was simple loyalty to the Birley name and heritage, partly dismay at the way Annabel’s was changing.

‘I was there one night and one of the new barmen said in my hearing to my dear friend Debonnaire Bismarck: “Goodness, you’re looking cute,” and I thought, that’s enough,’ recalls Taki, The Spectator’s veteran style helmsman.

He was at Annabel’s at the opening in 1963 as a young blade when Mark Birley cut him a cheap membership deal. He concedes the place had been going downhill during the latter years of Birley ownership, a victim of what he sees as the wider coarsening of London society.

‘Annabel’s changed again overnight when that vulgarian took over,’ he complains, unwilling to use Caring’s name.

Taki says he continues to lecture his old friend Robin Birley that there are too many ‘sleazeballs’ and new-money types in his new club, though concedes that on his now rare trips to London, he tends to spend every night there. ‘The problem with any club,’ he explains from Switzerland, ‘is never the staff, who are fabulous, but the members, who are shit.’

Unsurprisingly, Birley and the perma-tanned, pearly toothed, suspiciously smooth-skinned Caring are unlikely to be seen sharing a table at either club. When Birley said he was going to use his own name for his new venture, Caring sued, arguing he had bought the name along with his father’s clubs. As a result of the deal his father had struck with Caring, Robin Birley found himself unable to use his own name in business.

Caring once said of Birley: ‘What do we know about him?

He put his head in a tiger’s mouth,’ a rather cruel jibe about a lifechanging accident which required 57 operations on his severely disfigured face.

Jemima Khan, Robin’s half-sister, said of his need for facial surgery, it was ‘much like Caring, judging by the pictures of him’.

Caring, who is said to regret making the remark, has privately told at least one friend that he probably overpaid for the Birley clubs. He is unsentimental about the perceived loss of Annabel’s aristocratic sheen, telling one friend that ‘the sons of marquesses don’t spend any cash anyway’.

So much may be true. Even those who remain loyal to Annabel’s concede that, especially at the weekend, it can seem — as one regular puts it — ‘a little bit Essex’, with footballers’ wives and C-list celebs, and people, frankly, no one has ever heard of. The regular was shocked to drop in one evening recently and not recognise a single face.

Yet Annabel’s seems to be doing well financially, and feels like a little time warp of London before the credit crunch. In buying the club, Caring was not just securing the lease on a Mayfair basement and one of the most extensive wine cellars in London. The financial key was the long tail of annual dues of 7,000 paid-up members.

Annabel’s still honours the old principle of freezing annual membership dues at the rate at which you joined, so the very limited band of surviving founder members are still paying 12 guineas a year. For new members annual subs are £1,000, rather less than most Pall Mall clubs, and well below 5 Hertford Street, which

There is no doubting that with 5 Hertford Street, Robin Birley has come up with a spectacular riposte to the man who snatched his birthright around the corner in Berkeley Square Porter medleys. Birley blew that notion away with Annabel’s, putting the emphasis on style, good food, and hot female disc jockeys in miniskirts running the cramped dance floor.

Membership was 12 guineas a year, five guineas for the under25s, and everyone was handpicked and personally approved

by Mark Birley. The same principle applies today at 5 Hertford Street, where his son Robin puts a red pencil through the names of potential members he regards as unsuitable.

Annabel’s was glorious while it lasted, but inevitably it fell out of fashion, until in the late 1990s it was joked that younger members avoided the place for fear of bumping into their own fathers with mistresses in tow. Robin Birley was brought in by his father ten years ago to perk it up, and for a while all was going well, profits were up, until there was a spectacular family rupture. Robin had used Annabel’s club funds to pay a rogue private investigator to look into the background of the lover of his sister, India Jane. Mark was enraged, and forced Robin out of the club.

Worse was to follow: Mark, increasingly erratic, and drinking heavily while taking long-term medication, entered into secret negotiations in 2007 to sell his stable of clubs, including Annabel’s, Harry’s Bar, and Mark’s, to the clothing tycoon Richard Caring, for just over £90 million.

Lady Annabel suggested her ex-husband give Robin and India Jane a substantial slice of the money, but he demurred, and when asked what he was going to do with his pile of cash, replied, ‘I’m going on a cruise.’ Robin’s friends were appalled, and saw the transfer of Annabel’s to Caring as a brutal illustration of the way financial power was shifting in London from old to new money.

Robin first stewed, then calmly planned his comeback with 31

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Caring is unsentimental about the perceived loss of Annabel’s aristocratic sheen, telling a friend that ‘the sons of marquesses don’t spend any cash anyway’

ers and the Goldsmith family are also substantial investors. Membership is rising towards 2,000, with a very long waiting list, but even if the nominees meet Robin Birley’s strict criteria, he daren’t expand the base too far.

Some regulars already complain that the dining-room is cramped, and that it can be difficult to get a table, so it is hard to see, while the club is still ‘hot’ and new members are using it a lot, how Birley can have even a third of the number of members as Annabel’s.

Yet there is no doubting that with 5 Hertford Street, Birley has come up with a sensational riposte to the man who snatched his birthright around the corner in Berkeley Square.

It is very much his personal fiefdom — there is no general manager, for that role is taken by Birley himself, who has a flat on the premises the better to observe the operation. His club is beautifully done, and he clearly has the same eye for detail as his father: it is formal but not stuffy, the staff are professional but not fawning.

There is an oyster and cigar bar, and the dining rooms by the Turkish designer Rifat Ozbek are exquisite.

For Caring, owning Annabel’s is much less of a calling, though he has set his youngest son, Ben, 33, to work at the club, thus maintaining the Birley hereditary principle of club management. Caring senior, answering questions by email, says Annabel’s lends his wider business group ‘a famous splendour’, which is another way of saying it is good for his global branding. ‘Few nightclubs will ever be able to say that the Queen of England was a guest,’ he says.

He reacts to my suggestion that he overpaid for Annabel’s by reminding me it is profitable, and asking ‘how you could put a price on something that is priceless?’ Annabel’s was not ‘tired’ when he bought it, though it lacked what he calls ‘forward motion’.

Caring does not say quite in which direction he is taking this jewel in his corporate crown, other than to say he is determined to maintain Mark Birley’s ‘eclectic mix’ of members. The snobbier type of Annabel’s refusenik would argue that not everyone shares Caring’s definition of ‘eclectic’.

Though he has not visited 5 Hertford Street since its opening, he seems anxious to put past rancour to one side, praising Robin Birley’s ‘great taste and originality’. He dismisses the notion that they are fierce commercial rivals, for they own ‘different clubs for different people in different walks of life who want to be entertained in a particular manner’.

Ben Goldsmith recently became a director of 5 Hertford Street, confirming his family’s total break from the club the children have known all their lives. He says it is where the wider Goldsmith clan gather when they meet lawyers and accountants to discuss the vast family trusts left by Sir James.

None of them goes to Annabel’s anymore, though, anxious not to breathe new life into the Birley-Caring feud, he diplomatically (though not wholly convincingly) insists: ‘I like and respect Richard Caring greatly.’

Mayfair is a different sort of place 50 years on. Then the rich and glamorous and high-born thought they knew ‘simply everyone’.

That world, if it ever really existed as they remember it, is long gone, and the real surprise is that in these wretched economic times so many people are still prepared to pay so much money to keep that illusion alive.

recently hiked its dues to £1,500, to the annoyance of some members. Annabel’s members in their twenties pay only £250 a year, which makes it very affordable for young professionals who want to impress their friends.

This is the attraction of the Annabel’s business model — the members’ subs pour in, about 40 per cent of them live overseas, and many only visit a couple of times a year, if at all. And when they come, the Russians and Arabs will glance at the wine list before splashing £19,500 on a double magnum of Château Latour 1982.

The margins are sensational and the latest financial figures show the club comfortably fighting through the economic headwinds.

Turnover is up 4 per cent to £8.3 million with after-tax profits rising by about the same margin to £2.58 million.

As the directors note, the increase in profit suggests success in their ambition to ‘deliver a premier members experience of service and ambience’. One cannot imagine Mark Birley using such corporate language.

These returns were achieved despite the costs of hiring acts such as Lady Gaga (which one doubts Mark Birley would have approved).

The single most expensive innovation — at more than £800,000 — was the creation of a rooftop cigar terrace out of an upstairs staff changing room. As Caring explained, you can’t have Annabel’s members nipping out into Berkeley Square for a smoke.

Annabel’s remains essentially a dining club and discotheque. It opens at eight in the evening, and closes about seven or eight hours later; by contrast, 5 Hertford Street is an all-day operation, a place where members come for business meetings, morning coffee, lunch, afternoon tea, early evening cocktails, dinner, then dancing.

This requires huge staffing, and space is tight. Many members use the club as a home from home and business venue, which is fine, but afternoon coffees and bottles of club claret do not in themselves recoup the vast start-up costs, which ballooned to £30 million after planning delays.

Birley raised a third of that by selling founder memberships at £20,000 to 500 of his closest friends. The Reuben property broth32

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12/6/13 16:43:15

LIFE

On the 30th anniversary of the mysterious disappearance of the teenager Emanuela Orlandi Tobias Jones

Gone girl This month marks the 30th anniversary of one of Italy’s most iconic, and mysterious, crimes: on 22 June 1983, a 15-year-old citizen of the Vatican, Emanuela Orlandi, went missing. The case has never been solved and, coming at the endgame of the Cold War and involving the secretive Pontifical state, it has generated plenty of conspiracy theories. There are at least a dozen versions of what might have happened to her, and each possibility seems simultaneously credible and incredible, plausible but somehow far-fetched.

The facts of the case are well-known. Emanuela was the fourth of five children born to Ercole and Maria Orlandi. Her father was, like her grandfather, a ‘commesso’, a clerk in the Vatican. Emanuela had just finished her second year of high school and had left home that evening to go to her music lesson elsewhere in Rome.

A keen musician, she played the piano and the flute. She was wearing gym shoes, jeans and a white shirt. She took the number 64 bus to her music school, arriving late. Appearing distracted, she asked to leave the lesson early, at 6.50 p.m. A subsequent phone call to her sister, Federica, revealed that a man had offered her a lot of money to publicise Avon cosmetic products. Federica suggested her younger sister discuss the matter with their parents.

As Emanuela’s friends got on their bus home, she was glimpsed talking to a woman with red hair. She was also seen near a green BMW, from which an Avon satchel was visible. But Emanuela didn’t keep her appointment with another sister, Cristina, outside the Tribunale della Cassazione. She was never seen again.

Three days after her disappearance, her family was called by a man who identified himself as ‘Pierluigi’. He claimed that his girlfriend knew a girl who matched Emanuela’s appearance: she was going under the name of ‘Barbara’, was selling cosmetics, wore glasses and played the flute in the Campo dei Fiori. Another man calling himself ‘Mario’ also phoned the family, claiming that a girl called Barbara was selling cosmetics with another woman.

Those phonecalls were just the start of hundreds of crank and cryptic messages that the family would receive over the next three decades. Thanks to a well-intentioned but ill-advised move by John Paul II, the case of Emanuela Orlandi became global news on 3 July 1983. At the conclusion of the Angelus, the Pope made an appeal to the young girl’s kidnappers: ‘I am close to the Orlandi family. . . ’ he began. It was a move that exponentially increased the stakes, and he repeated his appeal another seven times. The world

now understood the importance the young girl’s life had for the Pope, and the kidnappers realised their hostage was suddenly very high-profile, and therefore not easy to return to her family.

Two days after that public appeal, a mysterious character called both the Vatican and the Orlandi household. Over the next few days, he would phone the Italian news agency, Ansa, and the Orlandi house and Vatican again, using the code number 158 to identify himself. Nicknamed ‘l’Americano’ because of his allegedly Anglo-Saxon accent, he demanded the release of Mehmet Ali 34

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Agca, the Turk who two years before had shot and wounded the Pope. That, it suddenly appeared, was the purpose of the Orlandi kidnap: she had been taken by the ultra-nationalist Turkish ‘Grey Wolves’ in order to effect a swap with their fellow militant.

The ‘American’ appeared to have proof that he did, indeed, hold the young woman. A photocopy of her registration card for the music school was, after an anonymous tip-off, found in the chapel of Fiumicino airport. On 4 September, a letter from the ‘American’ contained photocopies of sheet music for flute by the composer Luigi Hugues, a piece which Emanuela had been studying.

The ‘American’ was last heard from on 27 October 1983. Long before he fell silent, other organisations were muddying the waters, claiming to hold Orlandi. A group calling itself the Turkish AntiChristian Liberation Front wrote two identical letters from Frankfurt, addressed to Ansa and a Roman newspaper, Il Messaggero, demanding the release of Agca and his accomplices. That group later made mention of Mirella Gregori, another young girl who had gone missing in Rome in the summer of 1983. The suggestion was that both girls had been kidnapped by the same organisation.

By this time the Orlandi case had become so notorious that it was being used by unscrupulous organisations to publicise their cause, or to send coded messages across the globe. A group called ‘Phoenix’ appeared, as did something called Nomlac (the ‘new Muslim organisation for the anti-Christian battle’), which again demanded the release of Agca.

In recent years, it’s become clear that various secret services were involved in the creation of those messages. The Italian magistrate Ferdinando Imposimato claims to have been informed by Günter Bohnsack, an ex-officer of the Stasi (the East German intelligence agency) that the Turkish group in Frankfurt was fabricated by the Stasi to give the impression that Agca’s attempt on the Pope was the responsibility of anti-Christian fanatics, rather than a Soviet conspiracy hatched in Bulgaria. The fact that Agca publicly declared he didn’t want to be released from his Italian prison certainly suggests that he knew the messages weren’t coming from his paramilitary comrades.

Phoenix, too, appears to have been a creation of an intelligence agency, this time the Italian Sisde. Their messages were an attempt to clear the waters of all crank callers: ‘Pierluigi’ and ‘Mario’, said one message, ‘made a big mistake in boasting’ of their involvement; Phoenix criticised the ‘Turkish farce’. There were threats about the consequences for anyone else who interfered. Giulio Gangi, a Sisde operative who was close to the Orlandi family, once admitted to Emanuela’s older brother Pietro that Phoenix ‘is us’.

It was Gangi, in fact, who appeared to have made an early breakthrough in the case. Because Emanuela was seen talking to someone with a BMW, he trawled the city looking for the vehicle, and found a mechanic in Piazza Vescovio who had repaired a BMW window that had been broken from the inside, as if there had been a struggle within. The mechanic gave him the name and address of the woman who had brought it in. Gangi went there, to the Residence Mallia apartments in Balduina. An irate woman demanded he stop interfering; on returning to the Sisde office, Gangi was instructed never to disturb the woman again.

Over the years there were other leads. When a reward was offered for information, a woman called Josephine Hofer Spitaler

went to the police. It was 4 March 1985. She claimed to have seen Emanuela being taken into the house of her neighbours, Kay Springorum and Francesca di Teuffenbach, in Bolzano in Alto Adige, near the Austrian border. Spitaler claimed that Emanuela was taken away in a Peugeot by Rudolf di Teuffenbach on 19 August 1983.

The mention of di Teuffenbach was intriguing, as he was working for the Italian military intelligence agency, Sismi, in Munich. He and the others were cleared of any involvement at a later trial, but the so-called ‘Pista Bolzano’ has fascinated followers of the story; not least because a music teacher from Bolzano, Giovanna Blum, once picked up her phone to hear these words: ‘I’m Emanuela Orlandi. I’m in Bolzano. Call the police.’ It may have been the umpteenth crank call, or a genuine plea for help.

Over the years there have been faint hints that she was still alive. On 26 April 1984 the newspaper Corriere della Sera accom-

panied a piece about Emanuela with a photograph showing her next to John Paul II. Another young woman, Gabriella Giordani, was visible in the photo. The same morning that the photo was published, the phone rang in the Giordani household. Her mother answered: ‘Tell Gabriella that Emanuela is alive and well,’ said the anonymous caller. The speed at which Gabriella had been identified by the supposed kidnappers suggested to some that Emanuela had identified her friend for them. In the spring of 2009 an Italian woman, Rita del Biondo, came forward to say that her Turkish husband, Salin Sufurler, had seen Emanuela in Morocco. The Italian authorities, although initially energetic in following the lead, came to distrust the informer and the lead was dropped.

Another theory is that she was killed within hours of her disappearance. Pino Nicotri, a journalist with Espresso, has written a book suggesting that she was the victim of a satanic sexual orgy organised by certain priests, who then produced endless messages and clues as a distraction. One anonymous letter claimed to have seen Orlandi already dead on the night of her disappearance in the Basilica di Sant’Apollinare, a church belonging to Opus Dei and which was later to become central to the case. Many, indeed, have suggested that her disappearance was an ‘inside job’ organised by the Vatican: possibly an attempt to force the Pope to embrace ‘Ostpolitik’, meaning a rapprochement with the Soviet block. When in 1998 one of the Vatican’s Swiss guards, Alois Estermann, and his wife were murdered inside the Vatican, that added grist to the conspiracy theorists’ mill; Estermann was allegedly a Stasi spy.

What is certain is that numerous letters and calls regarding the kidnap displayed an intimate knowledge of the Vatican and its per-

Olycom SPA/Rex Features

The so-called Bolzano lead has fascinated people, not least because a music teacher once picked up her phone to hear these words: ‘I’m Emanuela Orlandi.

I’m in Bolzano. Call the police.’

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LIFE

sonnel. Over the years, it has become clear that the state was less than open in revealing all it knew about the kidnap. A priest who worked at the Central Office for Vatican Vigilance, Raoul Bonarelli, was overheard in a phone tap being urged by his boss to deny knowledge of Vatican investigations into the case. Pietro Orlandi told Spectator Life: ‘The behaviour of the Vatican makes me think that someone has responsibility, directly or indirectly. The Vatican has always tried to forget this story.’ He believes that the real ransom was demanded in secretive negotiations that the Vatican has never made public.

The last, and perhaps most plausible ‘pista’, however, is that of the Banda della Magliana. The Banda was a criminal gang in Rome who were extremely well-connected. Operating from the late 1970s to the early 1990s, they appeared, on occasion, to have links to the Mafia, to masonic lodges, to politicians and the intelligence services. The gang had invested its vast fortunes in the Mafia-linked Banco Ambrosiano, one of whose main shareholders was the Vatican’s IOR, the Istituto per le Opere Religiose. When the bank crashed, the gang lost millions and realised that the Vatican was the weak spot through which it could recoup its losses.

Before Emanuela’s disappearance, the Vatican had, indeed, been warned by the French secret service, the Sdece, that it was being targeted by its enemies.

One of Emanuela’s close friends, Raffaela Gugel, who looked rather similar to her, felt she was being followed in the early summer of 1983; her family were sufficiently concerned to disconnect their phone. And a few days before Emanuela was taken, someone inside an Autobianchi A112 car apparently grabbed her and said, ‘Is this the one?’ Emanuela and her friends merely assumed it was the usual case of a couple of Roman men having a laugh.

There are many reasons why the Banda della Magliana link is believable. One of the gang’s leaders was called Enrico De Pedis.

His former lover, the escort Sabrina Minardi, claims to have seen Emanuela in the hands of the gang, to have seen her hideout in the following months, and even to have seen De Pedis disposing of her body. Minardi’s reconstruction of events was hazy: a lifetime of drug abuse caused her to confuse dates, but her evidence was substantiated by other witnesses. The traffic warden who had seen Emanuela talking to a man in a BMW worked on a likeness of the man. The resulting sketch was strikingly similar to Enrico De Pedis. A repentant member of the gang, Maurizio Abbatino, once said: ‘I’ve always known that the kidnap of Emanuela Orlandi was our work.’ Amazingly, De Pedis was actually buried in the Basilica of Sant’Appollinare, a very prestigious resting place for a gangster.

What’s clear is that the gang had both the motive and the means to effect the kidnap. The fact that the Vatican’s IOR restored to Banco Ambrosiano creditors $440 million in an agreement in Geneva in May 1984 suggests to some that Orlandi was the bargaining chip in negotiations. Last year, De Pedis’s body was disinterred in the hope there might be clues to the case, but nothing emerged and his family afterwards cremated him.

Then, in April this year, there was another revelation. A man called Marco Fassoni Accetti telephoned an Italian programme which is dedicated to missing persons. He knew, he said, where Emanuela’s flute could be found. He led one of the programme’s

A few days before Emanuela was taken, someone inside an Autobianchi A112 car apparently grabbed her and said ‘Is this the one?’ Emanuela and her friends assumed it was just a couple of Roman men having a laugh

reporters to the old headquarters of the De Laurentiis film production company, and revealed a flute wrapped in a paper containing an interview with Emanuela’s father from 1985. Tests are being conducted to determine whether it is, indeed, hers.

Accetti, a Catholic turned communist, has since identified himself as one of the callers to the family; he claims that Emanuela was living in Rome for many months after her kidnap. Accetti maintains that Orlandi’s disappearance was a work of counterespionage from within the Vatican in order to exert pressure on the Pope. He claims to have made the revelations now because he trusts in the transparency of the new incumbent, Francis I. Accetti’s lead may prove to be yet another depistaggio, a red herring. But many, like the investigative journalist Fabrizio Peronaci, believe that his story is convincing, and that pro-Soviet Vatican insiders may have temporarily allied themselves with Roman gangsters because of overlapping interests: the one providing intelligence, the other operational abilities.

Pietro Orlandi certainly believes that his sister was taken because she was a citizen of the Vatican. ‘She was a wedge in a system of blackmails, a system that included perhaps bits of the Mafia, the masons, the Vatican. . . ’. The Agca connection, he suggests, was merely a means to give the case maximum visibility in order to obtain a direct line to the centre of the Vatican. ‘You know, it’s not easy to get that kind of line.’

As the 30th anniversary of her disappearance approaches, Emanuela’s face still haunts Italy. Almost every week there’s an article about her in the press, and the photograph used is usually the same: she’s smiling at the camera and wearing a red and yellow headband, the colours of her beloved Roma football team.

It’s likely that we will never know what happened to her. Perhaps the most we can hope to learn is what her disappearance says about those two complicated, sometimes conspiratorial states: the Vatican and Italy itself.

Tobias Jones’s Italian crime novel, Death of a Showgirl, has just been published by Faber.

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12/6/13 16:45:15

LIFE

HARRY COLE

Washington DC’s conservatives are smartening up their act

Imagine a giant Vegas hotel without the casinos. Replace the dancing girls and gamblers with right-wing political activists, lobbyists and tetchy journalists, shift it all about 2,000 miles northeast, and you can begin to imagine the scene in the lobby of the Gaylord Hotel and Convention Centre, Maryland, on the first evening of CPAC. The Conservative Political Action Committee is Washington DC’s answer to Tory conference, super-sized. Every year the pick of America’s conservative movement gather to bang tables, drink martinis and politely register their disquiet at the state of the nation. Having just watched a man who hopes to be the Republican party’s nominee for president in 2016 give the speech of the day while wearing a button-down collar and suit that made him look as if he had been washed at too high a temperature, I cannot help but notice a strange fact.

Everyone, bar the delegation from Texas, is impeccably dressed.

It was not the guns, the girls or even God that most shocked me about DC, it was the suits. You would not think so if you looked around a bar in Westminster, but the parliamentary estate has its own in-house tailor. It’s a throwback to a bygone era before M&S provided the lowly parliamentary bag-carrier with a machine-washable suit.

While in DC conservative kids are going wild over the chance to ‘dress British’, many of London’s political class look like highly flammable, polyester-clad mobile-phone salesmen who would immolate if they were rubbed the wrong way up the Palace of Westminster’s carpet.

Traditionally, America has a bad reputation, clothes-wise. Nowhere more than in DC. The West Wing was never famed for its

fashion advice, yet fast-forward to the US remake of House of Cards that is currently all the rage, and you can see the difference.

The only thing sharper than Kevin Spacey’s put-downs are his suits. Washington is a town that is smartening up its act. Meanwhile, London is being left behind. As the BBC’s The Thick of It notes, government special advisers dress like they work in ‘the men’s department of Debenhams’.

Back at CPAC, and the activists are picking the brains of the gentleman tailor from Benson and Clegg, who has a look in his eye that says the new custom gained at the conference was more than worth the trip over. These are not your hillbilly Tea Party types, but they’re not your K-Street political consultants either — they are those behind-the-scenes guys you will find on either side of the pond who make the political machine tick. They call their look ‘evy-league’ — a little bit of English mixed with preppy. ‘Suits that are well-tailored.

Shirts that fit well with appropriate collars.

Just good style,’ one tells me. ‘Avoiding skinny ties, wearing pocket squares. You know, generally the things that make you a good dresser. But to be fair, the best dresser I know on the hill is an Englishman.’ There remains something unmistakably American about it. Maybe it’s the fact that there are so many bow-ties around.

It’s a surprise when people dress well in Westminster. The Foreign Secretary manages it, and Chuka Umunna stands out on the Labour benches because you can see he’s spent money on the look. When Ed Miliband stands up at Labour conference he looks far better than he does for the rest of the year, because he’s wearing an Ozwald Boateng number rather that his

usual too-short-in-the-sleeve T.M. Lewin two-piece.

Somewhat surprisingly, our two most recent prime ministers share a tailor. Timothy Everest cut suits for both Cameron and Brown; it’s about the only thing they have in common. Dave has upgraded of late to Richard James, and told a London Fashion Week reception last year that he gets his shirts from Charles Tyrwhitt. He was acutely embarrassed in opposition when it was revealed at party conference that his suit was £3,500, while his wife managed in a £65 M&S frock, and that could well be part of London’s problem.

A policy wonk who has spent time working in both DC and SW1 certainly thinks so: ‘People take pride in their image in DC. Especially the conservatives. Image is everything and they revel in the pearls and good suits. In Westminster, people are trying to be something they are not.’ Though it looks to me that Washington’s new-found love of the stitch is just as shallow.

Sipping mint juleps in the back bar at the Old Ebbitt Grill as a matter of tradition, an old buddy puts the world to rights: ‘The degradation of standards for men’s dress in public went hand in hand with increased liberalisation,’ he says, looking sniffily at my undone top button. ‘To dress sharply is to rebel against the vulgarisation and destruction of western culture that has increased rapidly since the 1960s. Conservatives will find any way to reject the casual lefty consensus gripping America.’

He may be right. Washington seems to be undergoing a sartorial renaissance, one that shows no sign of being replicated over here. And it will not, unless conservatives start to be proud of who they are again.

Portrait: David Sparshott

Dressing right

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12/6/13 16:47:09

LIFE

MON EY WA L K S How London became the home from home of the international rich Toby Young

I can’t say I’m surprised that Ukip has started to attract support from rich aristocrats in the City of London, with several of them writing large cheques to the party at a fund-raiser last month. They are feeling swamped by the sheer scale of immigration to our capital. In their case, though, it’s not benefit tourists that are the problem. Rather, it’s the arrival of the world’s super-rich, pricing them out of London’s most desirable neighbou rhoods and maki ng it harder and harder to get their not very bright little darlings into good schools.

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Illustration: Brett Ryder

It’s 25 years since Nigel Lawson’s budget made London one of the most appealing places in the world to be rich. In the last year, the number of foreigners entering the country on Tier 1 visas — only available to those who have more than £1 million to invest in the UK — jumped by 78 per cent. One of the perks of this visa is that you’re eligible for fast-track residency status, with those who invest £10 million qualifying for indefinite leave to remain after just two years. Best of all, a significant percentage of your ‘investment’ can be in the London housing market. Which might explain why more than 60 per cent of all sales above £2 million in the capital are currently going to overseas buyers.

Britain has long held many attractions for wealthy immigrants. Its laws are respected, its political system is stable and its officials are honest, making it a safe haven for those with large fortunes to protect. But London has become even more attractive thanks to its ever-improving international transport links. One of the unforeseen consequences of the Channel Tunnel is that London is now the world’s sixth-largest French city — and this population is growing all the time thanks to François Hollande’s 75 per cent super tax.

French nationals now comprise 4 per cent of the population of Kensington and Chelsea, the UK’s wealthiest borough. It even has its own lycée.

It was considerate of France’s well-heeled immigrants to bring their own school. One of the loudest complaints of London’s dwindling population of rich Britons is that they can no longer afford to educate their children at their alma maters. At St Paul’s School, for instance, the fees have risen at twice the rate of inflation in the past ten years, and even those British children whose parents can afford the fees find it hard to compete with the over-achieving offspring of Chinese billionaires. At Westminster, the school’s brightest pupils do A-levels in Physics, Chemistry, Biology, Maths and Further Maths — a combination known as ‘the Asian five’.

But before we turn to Nigel Farage, it’s worth reflecting on the astonishing achievements, whether in finance or culture, of those who have chosen to make London their home.

It’s not just about making it an exciting place to be or to visit; the London property market bucked the national trend last year, with average house prices increasing by 13 per cent. That wouldn’t have happened without all that foreign capital sloshing around.

Indeed, London’s economy wouldn’t be nearly so buoyant if it weren’t for the non-doms.

And don’t forget the restaurants. British food used to have the reputation of being the worst in the world.

Today, London has better restaurants than Paris, New York and Tokyo combined. OK, we natives cannot afford to eat in them. But still. It’s nice to know they’re there.

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LIFE

ADOPTED LONDONERS

Brits that Oriental cuisine doesn’t have to mean MSG and banana fritters.

Arpad Busson At just one dinner in 2008 the hedge-fund manager raised almost £26 million for his charity ARK.

Xavier Rolet CEO of the London Stock Exchange Group. Yes, the Stock Exchange is controlled by a Frenchman!

Gwyneth Paltrow Happily juicing green vegetables and dispensing her Goop wisdom from Belsize Park since 2003.

Alexander & Evgeny Lebedev Gave the Evening Standard to London – literally. Co-own the Grapes pub in Limehouse (with Ian McKellen).

Lana Del Rey The pouty New York songstress lives in London but supports Liverpool FC.

Donald Gordon The Royal Opera House’s Grand Tier is named after the South African insurance magnate. Understandably — he gave them £20 million.

Anish Kapoor The Indian-born sculptor and purveyor of high-concept helter-skelter rides has lived here since the 1970s.

Tim Minchin An Australian in north London.

He applied his eye-linered humour to Roald Dahl’s Matilda and made it a huge West End and Broadway hit.

Zaha Hadid The Iraqi-born architect contributed the Aquatic Centre to London’s Olympic Park.

Eduard Shifrin You’re born in 1960, you get a PhD in metallurgy, you take control of a steelmaker, you make yourself over a billion dollars … just a typical Ukrainian story these days.

Tamara Rojo Spanish ballerina — a principal dancer with the English National Ballet and now its artistic director too. A force of nature.

Jussi Pylkkanen Going, going, g—… oh no, actually the President of Christie’s Europe is staying in London.

Mahdi Al Tajir Born in Bahrain, he now owns Highland Spring. Selling water to the Brits — next he’ll be selling snow to the Inuits.

Michael Fassbender The hottest Irish export to Hollywood is a Hackney resident

Kevin Spacey In 2003 he moved to London to became artistic director of the now booming Old Vic, once threatened with going bust.

Ron Arad Israeli-born designer. His breakthrough piece was a seat from a Rover car housed in the frame of a milking stall.

Nasser Khalili Iranian-born scholar, collector and philanthropist, called ‘the cultural ambassador of Islam’ by leaders of Muslim countries.

Ronald Cohen Egyptian-born ‘father of British venture capital’. One of the companies he has funded cloned Dolly the sheep.

Louis Bacon The American who showed London that ‘hedge fund’ didn’t mean the legal costs in a Leylandii dispute.

Michael Hintze Australian philanthropist who has given millions to the Old Vic, the National Theatre, the National Gallery and, the oldest show of all, the Conservative party.

John Studzinski American veteran of Morgan Stanley and HSBC, his work with Human Rights Watch is a reminder that perhaps not all bankers are evil.

Sigrid Rausing Used her part of the TetraPak fortune to buy Granta magazine and give nearly £200 million to good causes.

Alisher Usmanov £13.3 billion fortune and top place on the 2013 Sunday Times Rich List, achieved in part by owning a third of Arsenal FC. Leonard Blavatnik Ukrainian with second place on the 2013 Sunday Times Rich List, achieved in part by owning Warner, Parlophone and other bits of EMI.

Clive James Critic, poet, legend. Hails from Oz.

Charlene de Carvalho-Heineken Heineken because of her father; de Carvalho because of her husband Michel, who at 17 played an Arab boy in Lawrence of Arabia.

Barry Humphries See above, possums. Moved to London in 1959. Wave your glads for Edna and give Les Patterson Maria Miller’s job.

Joseph Lau Hong Kong property billionaire. His Eaton Square house has a gold-plated swimming pool. No really, it’s gold-plated.

Richard Gnodde Born in South Africa, now CEO of Goldman Sachs International.

Alan Yau Founded Wagamama, Busuba Eathai, Hakkasan and Yauatcha, to show the

Tim Burton American director, lives in north London with his wife Helena Bonham Carter.

Lord Darzi Iraqi-born medic who holds the key to keyhole surgery.

Frederick Mulder Canadian art dealer, based in Belsize Park, who favours giving his profits to charity over buying yachts.

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12/6/13 16:53:10

LIFE

SA M N E I L L

After all the clamour, there’s nothing to beat the sound of silence

I have recently had a new grandson. I say this almost as if it were a personal achievement, but grandchildren in truth are thrust upon you whether you like it or not.

He seems a perfectly agreeable sort of chap, as babies go. He’s a quiet baby, and quietness is highly regarded in people that small. And in fact I admire it wherever I find it.

I’m honest enough to tell you that, in my view, babies are overrated. This boy’s grandmothers are in a complete lather over him, and are quite incapable of keeping their hands off the little tyke. I’m not big on baby cuddling as it happens. I’m perfectly willing to give him a pat en passant, but that’s about as far as it goes. They’re just not my thing, other people’s bubbas.

One’s own babies are of course another thing altogether. I suspect they are born with some innate hypnotic superpower that renders the new parent robotically helpless. When your newborn first gazes coolly upon you from its comfy cradle thing, if you listen very carefully, you might hear a tiny voice at the back of your brain. The baby is saying, in a cute but steely way — ‘I am going to count from one to ten. When I get to ten, you will see me as the Most Beautiful Being in the Universe. And you will feed me, clean me, house me and lavish me with tender ministrations 24/7 for years and years, until such time as I am sick to death of you and decide to leave home.’

Silently you reply, telepathically — ‘Yes, oh Divine One, we hear and obey.’

My youngest daughter — mother of this new boy — is a case in point. She is now the most beautiful of women: elegant and serene. But as a baby, my God she was

plain. Delightful, but . . . looking at photo albums twenty-something years on — what were we thinking, intoxicated as we were by her seeming heavenly countenance?

In fact she looked rather like those joke Buddhas you can find at dodgy markets, the laughing ones whose belly you rub for good luck.

Anyway, this boy seems to be universally thought of as winsome. I have no idea about that, but I do like his general quietness. We sit and look at each other in companionable silence; he sucks on his pacifier and I on my 2008 Pinot. I like to be quiet too. This is often regarded with suspicion by the more garrulous of those under my roof. They ask me: ‘What’s the matter?

You’re so quiet.’ ‘Nothing,’ I reply helpfully. ‘No, what’s wrong?’ they persist, ‘are you in a bad mood?’ ‘No,’ I snarl, ‘but I bloody well will be if you carry on with this.’ It’s funny how a mildly irritating question can turn you into a deeply unpleasant person just like that.

The quietest person I think I ever met was Charles Upham, the only man to earn a double Victoria Cross in the second world war. He would sometimes come over to my girlfriend’s farm for lunch on Sundays. Her father, Dick Ormond, was a prisoner of war in Colditz with Charlie; another very quiet man and perhaps Upham’s closest friend.

I was impressed by how they never felt the slightest compulsion to talk at all, even to each other. Their fearsomely chatty wives filled all the gaps. It’s worth looking at Wikipedia to get a snapshot of Upham’s astonishing war, and you can understand a little why a quiet farming life would subsequently appeal. I have been offered various

roles over the years in films about Charlie that invariably foundered. The thing is, if you filmed it as it really happened, no one would believe it.

Like most of his generation, he never mentioned the war, but he never forgot it either. He had an abiding dislike for anything German. Charlie had three intoxicatingly gorgeous daughters who were much pursued by young hooray farming types in moleskins and Viyella shirts. These young men for some reason almost always drove Volkswagen Beetles. The sight of the badge on the front of their cars would move Charlie to great anger, and they would be immediately ordered off the property, much to the fury of the beautiful daughters.

His friend Dick would give me work in the holidays on the land. Like many farmers who had been to war, he had a thousand -yard stare; he’d lean quietly on a gate, sigh and make a contented noise like a frog, ‘Yup’, and that’d be as much as you’d get out of him for an hour or so.

He was a lovely, gentle and quiet man.

Quietness is an increasingly difficult thing to find these days. It’s very quiet here on the vineyard, however, and on a still night there is often no sound at all. That’s when I realise that those years of Crazy Horse, Springsteen and so on have left me with all kinds of interesting tinnitis whines and whistles. For a while I could have sworn there was a truck continually grinding up the mountain opposite, changing gears all the while. Not so. No matter — this week we picked the last of our grapes, a beautiful vintage, and I found myself leaning on a wall making a small contented sound as well. Quietly.

Portrait: David Sparshott

Quiet, please

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EST 1973

“Age is just a number. It’s totally irrelevant unless, of course, you happen to be a bottle of wine” Joan Collins

40 YEARS OF BUILDING EXCELLENCE

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LIFE

PA S S I O N P L AY S The pleasures, opportunities and risks of investing in one-of-a-kind luxuries

Courtesy of Sotheby's

Clarissa Tan

It’s a weird world, the one where love and money collide. Would you cough up £42 million for a depiction of a bunch of apples, as a lover of Cézanne recently did for the Impressionist’s ‘Les Pommes’? Or nearly $10 million for very old tableware, as a ceramics collector has for a ruby-red, lotus-decorated bowl from the time of the Chinese emperor Kangxi?

Recently a wealthy fan of classic cars put down $2 million for a dark blue 1967 Ferrari, while that distinguished intersection of humanity representing both auto- and Diana-philes are eagerly awaiting the auction of the late royal’s forest-green 1991 Audi Cabriolet (guide price: £25,000; price of a vehicle similiar in every sense, except it’s never been driven by the Princess of Wales: £2,000).

There is more interest in such sentimentally exorbitant buys than ever before. The interest comes not only from collectors, whose obsessions range from luxury watches — sorry, I mean ‘timepieces’ — to stamps, champagne, commemorative coins, Audrey Hepburn dresses, Beatles guitars. It also comes from banking circles, where such purchases are known as ‘investments of passion’.

Investments of passion are those made on objects whose value depends on reasons other than utility.

Take, for example, the two bottles of undrinkable whisky that were sold for £12,050 in May — the UK buyer had to fight off rival bids from all over the world because the bottles were part of the cargo of the SS Politician which sank off the shores of the Outer Hebrides in 1941 and inspired the book Whisky Galore.

Bankers’ interest in such investments have been piqued because, with the economic rise of Asia and the Arab world, the collecting crowd has burgeoned.

Financiers are also taking a closer look because, while many initially thought luxury items would be the first sector to suffer in a worldwide downturn, prices have been rising. As stock markets have slumped, investments of passion have climbed new heights.

The banking boffins, as is their wont, have been busy translating this trend into graphs and tables. They

have been trying to calculate passion. Thus we now have things like the Knight Frank Luxury Investment Index, which draws from industry markers such as the Stanley Gibbons coin index and data from Art Market Research to measure the combined rise in the prices of coins, stamps, fine art, fine wine, classic cars, jewellery, Chinese ceramics, watches and furniture.

The composite index shows a surge of 175 per cent in the past decade, almost double that of the 100 per cent rise in prime residential prices in central London over the same period. Leading the passion pack are classic cars, the price of which has accelerated fivefold.

Rolling in second are coins (up 250 per cent), followed by stamps and fine art (both higher by around 200 per cent). Watches, that primary symbol of affluence, only clocked in a gain of 76 per cent, proving that a luxury object’s popularity can only be a rough measure of its 46

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Cézanne’s ‘Les Pommes’ sold recently for £42 million at auction

investment potential. ‘The actual number of watches that will increase in value is somewhat limited and largely restricted to vintage watches and some modern models by Rolex and Patek Philippe,’ Paul Maudsley of auctioneer Bonhams tells Knight Frank. Vintage Patek Philippes are now commanding about a million dollars each at auctions.

‘Passion’ investors are sometimes willing to spend on items whose monetary value are likely to depreciate — if such items give them access to greater opportunities and experiences. The value of most cars, for instance, starts deteriorating the moment you drive them out of the showroom. But a Porsche or a Ferrari will help gain you entrance to another world, parking you in another social circle, as it were.

It’s not so much that a global economic slowdown somehow triggers a rush for high-end goods, but that

such goods, ever available to the very wealthy, are shielded from the vagaries of the markets. The superrich are relatively unaffected by economic turmoil, while their passions stay unchanged. Their numbers are growing, and what would normally regarded as pie-in-the-sky purchases can turn out to be bulwarks against financial storms.

Still, before you rush out to place a $20 million bid on that Ming vase, you should know that investments of passion are subject to heavy risks. There are now funds that help you invest in luxury items, but these funds and their managers lack a track record. Transaction costs are high, the market is neither transparent nor liquid, and fakes and forgeries abound.

Because investments of passion have such an emotive factor, certain luxury items can suffer great fluctuations in price. Take for example the wine market which, while liquid, can be subject to bubbles. Two years ago the Liv-ex 100 Index of wines dropped as Chinese buyers, who’d been buying up crates of Château Lafite, suddenly lost interest in that label.

What would you do if caught in that situation? Well, even if your investment may have tanked, you’ve still got your asset. And that’s the biggest upside of investing with your heart as well as your head. After the party’s over, you can still drink up.

A r d m o r e C e r a m i c s G e n e t Tu r e e n Exclusively at Patrick Mavros

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THAT T I M E OF YEAR

Festivals? A young man’s game.

I know this because I was a young man until quite recently, so I went to loads of them and can tell you exactly what they were like. Glastonbury? Just as it appears on the telly: wet, muddy, pungent with cow-shit. Back in the day I gave some dodgy bloke a fiver to get in (you still could, then), climbed over the fence on his rope ladder, took some ‘ecstasy’ that was, on reflection, worming tablets, lost my tent more times than I could count, watched the Smashing Pumpkins, felt sad, then got the train home early.

It wasn’t much better at Reading. Hot, stinky, towny air heavy with the tang of tipped portaloos: here I recall drinking two or three litres of Frosty Jack cider, ripping my own shoes off in a mosh pit and throwing them at Dave Grohl from the Foo Fighters, sleeping next to a fire made of fag packets, waking up thinking I had consumption and taking the train home, early.

Worst of all was the V Festival. Here, one year, I blagged a VIP pass to their ‘Louder Lounge’ celebrity area to hang out with a mate who was presenting teenage telly. We drank free cocktails.

Ate free hot dogs. Didn’t watch any bands at all. Drank more free cocktails. Drank more free cocktails. Still saw no bands. Drank

There is now a festival – big or small – to suit absolutely everyone Dan Jones

Illustration: Brett Ryder

STYLE

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will find plenty to do; Lollibop is a kids’ event at which adults must suffer. Bestival features Fatboy Slim, Elton John and Snoop Dogg; Lollibop stars Dick & Dom (a pair of hyperactive youngbloods who shout ‘bogies’ a lot) and Peppa Pig, who will, alas, not be turning slowly on the hog roast. Still, the nippers will love it, and you will probably find a beer stall somewhere, if you look hard.

If the child is, in fact, you, then check out the small, 3,000 capacity BlissFields, (Winchester, 5-7 July) a themed music festival that this year takes as its inspiration the idea of ‘The Director’s Cut’. Fancy dress on a cinematic theme is encouraged (think Star Wars; don’t think Django Unchained) and there is an independent film festival in which a jury will award the ‘Blissfields Favourite’ prize for the best submission.

Bastille and Mystery Jets headline the music stage.

Of course, dressing up as a stormtrooper may strike you as an abomination against the spirit of festivals: i.e. simply listening to live music with like-minded folk. In that case, look to Festival Number 6 (Portmeirion, 13-15 September), where you can watch Serious But Brilliant Artists Who Don’t Smile Much, and nod your head in anxious appreciation. James Blake, the Manic Street Preachers, I Am Kloot and Tricky are all being ‘curated’ there, as well as DJs including Gilles Peterson, Daddy G and Carl Craig. Curated? They’re playing. What can I say? It’s about the music, dig. Accommodation ranges from tents and tipis to rooms in the castle.

Finally, if all this sounds a bit too civilised, and you still reckon yourself a raver, investigate Eastern Electrics (2-4 August) — a three-day underground house and techno banger that started in a car park by the O2 last year, and has now expanded to Knebworth Park. It is headlined by acts and DJs so cool that you, like me, have never heard of any of them. All you need to know is that the party goes on till 6 a.m. each day, and if you want a handful of my worming tablets to keep your buzz up, you’d better get in touch early.

more free cocktails. The next day I woke up on the floor in Channel 4’s hotel. Everyone seemed angry, and offended. I got the train home. Yes, early.

In short, dear reader, the big mainstream festivals are dangerous, and if you want my opinion, the best of the British festival summer is to be found in lesser trodden fields.

Happily, there are lots of these to choose from, and festivals this year seem to be promoting a gentility and civilisation I seldom experienced in my youth. Take, for example, Wilderness (8-11 August), headlined this year by Noah and the Whale and Martha Wainwright. Despite the name, Wilderness is not some Hebridean retreat.

It’s in Cornbury Park, just down the road from Bicester Village: you can swing over and buy a half-price Burberry trench the minute it starts drizzling.

Wilderness is pretty much central London in a field, with food by Ottolenghi, Mark Hix and J. Sheekey, talks by Intelligence Squared and theatre from Shakespeare’s Globe. The wildest thing on the line-up looks to be ‘organised woodland walks’ or perhaps an event called Singalonga-Wickerman, in which I suppose they might immolate a few virgins, although I can’t see Ottolenghi liking that very much.

If that sounds pleasant but a little lo-fi, your best bet is Latitude (Southwold, 18-21 July), now the UK’s leading nice, safe, familyfriendly festival, whose musical headliners this year include Bloc Party, Foals and — delightfully — Kraftwerk, and which will also feature a massive comedy stage starring Eddie Izzard, Dylan Moran and Sean Lock, theatre from the Sadler’s Wells ‘Balletboyz’ and literary events by Germaine Greer, Marcel Theroux and Granta’s Best Young Novelists.

For breeders who wish to introduce their kids to festival life before they are old enough to run off and score behind the burger van, other excellent options are Bestival (Isle of Wight, 5-8 September) and Lollibop (Olympic Park, 16-18 August). Bestival, like Latitude, is an adult’s festival where children are welcome and

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MI S SON I ’S MI S SION The head of the Italian fashion dynasty talks about keeping it in the family

Olycon SPA/Rex Features

Clover Stroud

When Angela Missoni was pregnant with her third child, Theresa (now 23), she told her father Tai she couldn’t go on working for the fashion dynasty he’d founded. ‘I said to my father I’d vomit if I saw another dress and that I didn’t want to work in fashion one moment more. And he said, maybe it’s the pregnancy making you sick, not the dresses?’ Until that moment, Angela had been working for ‘pocket money’ for her mother, Rosita, who was then creative director, at the factory near their home in Varese outside Milan.

‘I often went to my father for advice. He knew how strong my mother was, and understood I needed to start designing alone, to understand Missoni on my own terms.’ Missoni, her father reassured her, was ‘a big hat’, as though she could pull from it some magic of her own creation.

She took up the challenge, starting with accessories, then launching Missoni childrenswear and her eponymous knitwear collection. This year, Missoni celebrates its 60th anniversary.

‘And after five or six seasons with my own designs, my mother told me I was taking Missoni in the direction she wanted it to go, and that she loved my designs,’ Angela says proudly, when I meet her in the Cadogan hotel in Knightsbridge. She took over from Rosita as creative director in 1998, her runway collection bringing a fresh injection of energy to the label that had embodied bohemian lux since Tai and Rosita first set up a knitwear workshop in 1953. Tai sadly died last month, at the great age of 92. It was the second loss to the family in a short time, after her brother Vittorio and his wife were in a plane crash off the coast of Venezuela at the start of the year, and are, tragically, presumed dead.

The allure of Missoni has always been one of barefoot Mediterranean glamour, and while that derives from the clothes, of course, they arguably play second fiddle to the magnetism of the family itself. This wasn’t an accident, because when Tai invented that famous textured zigzag, he deliberately created a business that would allow him and Rosita to exercise their talents for art and fashion respectively, but without compro52

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mising their family life. Tai Missoni was, says Angela, ‘an artist first of all’, so building a factory within walking distance of their home meant there was a seamless division between work and family. ‘My father turned down orders so he could keep life pleasant. I remember him saying to my mother, why do you want to work more, to earn more money, if you don’t have time to spend it? That was a unique vision. That sense of Missoni as something real and relaxed is important.’

As a child, Angela did her homework beside her parents as they designed in the factory, watching dresses being created, and a generation later her own children — Margherita, Francesco and Teresa — were to do the same. ‘It’s how we are. We’re all involved with the business.’ Rosita lives nearby, and Angela is five minutes away, in a house with a view of the Alps.

Teresa and her husband are building a house in Varese. ‘All my children have been away, but now they are coming back,’ she says. Angela still works with her mother, who is now in charge of the home collection; and right up to his death her father continued to help her design fabrics — he called it his ‘homework’.

Living and working together, the Missonis might seem like the archetypical Italian family, but they’ve always been unconventional, from the moment Rosita caused outrage by making her models go bra-less when they showed at the Pitti Palace in 1967. They weren’t invited back, but earned a place in fashion history.

Her parents, Angela tells me, were not just designers but ‘inventors of a style, which is very rare in fashion, and especially one that has lasted’, and they invented Italian pret-à-porter and the Milano collezione. ‘My father was logical and didn’t want to go to Florence to show,’ explains Angela. Their colour-drenched, multi-textured clothes heralded a new era of stylish informality. ‘Clothes and textiles were in my DNA. We were around fashion and shoots all the time,’ says Angela. ‘Besides it was safer for my mother to take me on a shoot to New York or Paris or London than leave me alone as a teenager!’

Angela’s momentary disenchantment with this world, when pregnant with Teresa, is important, because it’s characteristic of a woman who clearly lives life on her own terms. ‘First of all I want to be an independent woman,’ she says, referring to the fact that she cuts her own hair, but it could just as well be her philosophy for life. Her marriage, at 23, to Marco Maccapania ended after seven years, but produced her children, and for two decades she’s enjoyed a devoted relationship with textile entrepreneur Bruno Regazzi, whom she had first met aged 14. Bruno, who has three grownup children, keeps his own house on Lake Como. ‘We carry our toothbrushes between the houses, so then I can buy as much art as I like for my house.’

And she likes to keep her family close, by which she means ‘all the closest people in my life’. Macca-

As a child, Angela did her homework sitting beside her parents as they designed in the factory; and a generation later her children were to do the same

pania’s mother still spends Christmas with her. ‘My mother-in-law — I call her that as I only married once — she wouldn’t think it was Christmas if she didn’t come to my parents’ house.’

As a young mother in her early twenties, before she really got to grips with fashion, Angela ran a children’s playschool in Varese and kept an organic chicken farm. ‘That was 30 years ago. It would have been good business if I’d kept that going, no?’ she jokes. But being born a Missoni, she says, has given her a ‘genetic sensibility’ for fashion. Dressed in black and gold zigzags, a mane of dark hair swept over her shoulders, she looks utterly at home on Sloane Street, surrounded by the trappings of high fashion — the handbags in Perspex boxes guarded by bouncers in the silent stores along the street.

She’s also a natural ambassador for this relaxed family brand, warm and deeply feminine, and it’s easy to picture her as the bosomy Italian mamma on holiday with her children in Sardinia every summer. ‘We always have a birthday party for Teresa for about 100 people, and I do everything.’ Organise caterers and florists, I venture? She looks shocked.

‘No! Actually cooking all the dishes and setting flowers on the tables. I like to prove to myself that I can organise it all.’

Angela is now 54, just five years younger than Rosita was when she handed the creative reins over to her.

In her eldest daughter, Margherita, Angela has a natural heir, one who has brought Missoni to a younger audience. ‘I pushed for Margherita to take on the role of ambassador. She’s working under my supervision, and I’ve given her Accessories.’

Until she hands over completely, she says her biggest challenge is to modernise the production side of the company. ‘My aim is to leave a company to the next generation that is modern,’ she tells me. ‘It’s a big responsibility. But our private life, it is very, very important too. You go home from work, but home is a priority, and always to try to be happy. To try to be happy — that is through your personal life, not through your success.’

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Jewellery maker Annoushka Ducas is an art connoisseur whose shop is also a gallery Emma Love

The jeweller’s art I’m pretty sure the first thing most people do when they meet Annoushka Ducas is check out her jewellery. This is, after all, the woman who founded Links of London in 1990 after designing a pair of silver cufflinks for her mother to give as a Christmas present, and grew the business into a global empire with nearly 50 shops before selling it 17 years later for a reportedly cool £50 million to jewellery manufacturer Folli Follie. These days, she’s better known as the name behind Annoushka, the far more intimate jewellery label she launched four years ago, which counts the likes of Gwyneth Paltrow and Kate Hudson as fans.

‘What do you think of these?’ she asks, leaning forward across the kitchen table when we meet at her southwest London Georgian home, tucking her blonde

hair behind her ears to show off a pair of beautiful cross-shaped diamond earrings. Like the other pieces she’s sporting today — two gold chain necklaces, one with a tiny delicate cross, the other with a smooth, eye-catching, gold pomegranate pendant, and a stack of gold bracelets — the earrings come, of course, from her own design studio. ‘They were meant to be part of a different pair of earrings but I thought they looked too heraldic. I’ve got old and new samples on and I do a lot of that, a lot of asking people what they think as I’m wearing them.’

Jewellery aside, my eyes are drawn to the art that’s dotted about the place: a still-life painting of lemons

by Jo Barrett hangs in the kitchen; there are pieces by Colin Self and Antony Gormley; a paper-cut by Oi

Annoushka Ducas’s latest artistic collaboration at her shop in Chelsea, above, is with Nathalie Hambro

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Nuen Sprunt and, taking pride of place in the bedroom, a pop art-inspired collage on canvas by her 18-year-old son Olly, the second of her four children. ‘Both John, my husband, and I are passionate about art. My grandfather was Russian so we had a lot of Russian art and furniture, and my great-uncle was the icons specialist for Christie’s. I guess I’ve been surrounded by art all my life,’ she explains.

So ‘Tools’, the latest in an occasional series of artist collaborations under the umbrella of Art At Annoushka, makes perfect sense. She has paired up with the designer, curator and art consultant Nathalie Hambro, who ‘is fascinated by metal’, on a steel-based exhibition at her Chelsea boutique. There will be Hambro’s photographs of tools (such as screws, bolts and taps) on the wall, sculpture in the window, and a limited edition,

The way you make jewellery and the way you make sculpture are exactly the same – I always wanted a gallery round the outside with jewellery in the middle

jewellery and in her homes (the main family home is in Sussex, where furniture that has been passed down from her grandparents sits alongside Turkish carpets bought back from her travels). ‘I think my home is eclectic and my jewellery design is too,’ she says. ‘I want to be comfortable at home and I won’t design jewellery that isn’t comfortable or tactile either. That’s where they connect. I’m quite casual and I think my jewellery reflects that: it’s about how you dress up your jeans, not your ball gown.’

Her take on jewellery has always been popular, dating back to the super-successful ‘Sweetie’ and ‘Friendship’ bracelets she designed at Links of London (when I ask what she thinks of the brand now, she says, rather diplomatically, that ‘they still seem to be selling a lot of those bracelets, I’m not really sure it’s changed that much’). She sold up because it all got too big and corporate and although it was ‘a bit like losing a fifth child’ at the beginning, she’s obviously very happy now. ‘I absolutely love what I do. I see the business as growing, but not as global. I’m introducing new pieces all the time and I like knowing what we sold yesterday and who to.’

Right now, Ducas is exactly where she wants to be.

‘Tools’ runs from 3 June–15 July at 41 Cadogan Gardens, London SW3 2TB; annoushka-jewellery.com

oxidised silver, chain-mail-style bracelet designed specially. Art projects like this were always part of Ducas’s plan. ‘When I designed the shop with Tino Zervudachi, my oldest friend and an interior designer, who also designed this house, I always knew that I wanted to exhibit other interesting things. I wanted it to be a gallery round the outside with jewellery in the middle,’ she recalls.

The first artistic hook-up was with Zervudachi’s sister, Manuela, also a childhood friend and a Paris-based sculptor who creates large bronze structures. For that exhibition, as well as sculpture, there was a jewellery collection that interpreted Zervudachi’s organic shapes (such as the pomegranate) in 18-carat gold and diamonds. ‘The way you make jewellery and the way you make sculpture is exactly the same so it was very relevant,’ says Ducas, who has also previously worked with multimedia artist Rosie Emerson and ceramicist Bouke de Vries.

Even though it was a professional one-off, de Vries’s influence lives on in the china installation that lines one wall in Ducas’ kitchen. ‘I had lots of New Hall china left to me by my great-aunt and it was in my cellar for years. When I saw Bouke’s collection of Dutch Delft porcelain arranged around the fireplace in his house I decided to put my china on display,’ she says of the now modern-looking cups and saucers which are perched atop individual glass shelves.

This meeting of old and new is obvious, both in her 55

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THE WI SH LIST

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Photography by Arthur Woodcroft Set design by Kerry Hughes

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Previous page (left to right): Les Exclusifs de Chanel in Jersey, £110; Valbonne by Molton Brown, £65; Saffron Cologne Intense by Jo Malone, £100; Vétiver Babylone by Giorgio Armani, £82; Santal Massoïa from The Hermessence Collection by Hermès, £161.

This page (clockwise from top): Limelight Garden Party ring, POA, Piaget; Sunflower bracelet, £7,500, Asprey; Castaway multi-gemstones and diamond ring, £4,800, Boodles; Paris Nouvelle Vague ‘Sparkling’ ring, pink gold, pink sapphires and diamonds, £16,600, Cartier; Ribbon ring, £4,200, William & Son; Rainforest drop earrings, £2,500, Theo Fennell; Lobster cufflinks, £3,750, William & Son; Calatrava Cross ring, £4,360, Patek Philippe; Paloma Picasso Olive Leaf drop earrings, £850, Tiffany & Co.

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TRAVEL

E S TA T E SE CR E T S

In the lower right quadrant of Da Vinci’s ‘Mona Lisa’, a seven-arch bridge is pictured: this is the Ponte Buriano and it has spanned the Arno since 1277. Too narrow for two lanes of traffic, waiting an eternity for the light on the south side to change is normal; driving across, the experience is almost too brief to be appreciated.

But you will have left the industrial sprawl surrounding Arezzo behind and entered a timeless, green, undulating cypress-strewn landscape complete with olive groves and a sprinkling of very desirable stone houses.

Italian property, I am assured by estate agents and specialist lawyers, is a great investment — and now is apparently a brilliant time to buy because at the top end of the market, prices are down 20 per cent. ‘The market is flat, Italians are not buying or selling and they’re not advertising either,’ says Georgia Catarame of Withers Worldwide. This may not sound promising, but ‘if an owner knows someone is interested, they are often happy to sell in a private, off-market negotiation’ — and with a price tag the buyer is happy with.

All over Italy, landowners have turned large properties into wonderful places to stay Sophia Martelli

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T RAV E L

The trouble with property is that one tends only to hear the I-picked-it-up-for-a-few-million-lire-andnow-it’s-worth-millions-of-pounds stories (particularly prevalent in Tuscany in the mid-2000s). So what do you do if you didn’t? The obvious answer is that — for far less capital outlay and without the headaches that come with ownership — you can experience the Italian dream by staying in one of the country’s many gently restored ancient properties.

La Vialla, an agriturismo estate about ten minutes (by car, not cart) from Arezzo, is a good place to start.

Comprising 3,000 acres of a hillside, with vineyards, olive groves, grazing sheep and a few discreet solar panels, it’s a collection of farms that was bought by four families in 1978 and developed into a wonderfully efficient and stylish agriturismo by the Lo Franco family.

Coppola first visited his family’s village in Italy in 1962.

‘It was like hearing about a fairytale setting and then suddenly finding it was a real place. I was enchanted’

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Above: The grounds and golf course of Castelfalfi Previous page: La Vialla

The three sons now run it with the helping hands of their parents, and until last year the youngest, Bandido, lived in the main farmhouse with his young family.

There are over 23 restored and secluded farmhouses on the estate that you or I can stay in — large, clean rooms; wood fires (as well as central heating); space to eat and admire the views; and a distinct lack of wifi.

Wild boars in the woods. Simplicity itself, really, and excellent value for money: Spedale, which sleeps ten, is rented out for €130 a night. There’s even a readymade social life should you want it: on Tuesdays and Wednesdays guests and locals can eat at communal tables under the trees, often with 80 or 90 at a sitting.

Apart from the salami — which is local — the good, uncomplicated food is all produced by Fattoria La Vialla: bread and biscotti straight from the bakery (the mill that grinds the wheat came from the monastery at nearby La Verna, on condition that it was used; it is, daily); salty, creamy Pecorino cheese from the grazing sheep (via the space-age, super-hygienic dairy); pasta sauces from the vegetable garden. Antipasti of bruschetta with artichoke or chicken liver pâté or roasted red pepper, delicious fennel and chilli marinaded olives issue from the kitchen — as do olive oil and wine (Chianti, sparkling, Vin Santo), which are brought up from the cellars on a very regular basis, and are made on the premises in enormous, EU part-funded steel vats.

You can even taste La Vialla at home, by ordering food directly from their lavish hardback catalogue-cum-recipe book (which also includes accounts of walks around the area, reviews of nearby restaurants, a short history of the Tuscan farmhouse, and family photographs — for example, the Lo Franco brothers with their wives, on Vespas and looking like Jamie-and-Jules-Oliver in triplicate). This place is what I would call a ‘find’.

So too is La Foce, in Val d’Orcia, the estate famous for its early 20th-century garden designed by Cecil Pinsent, tended by the aristocratic American writer Iris Origo. As well as the extraordinary vistas, there are ten luxuriously restored properties available to make your own for a week, and they come with swimming pools (but at more aristocratic prices than, say, La Vialla).

Even the pig sty has been done up, to excellent effect.

If you’re looking to do a similar thing yourself but don’t want to get your hands dirty, you could look at Toscana Resort Castelfalfi, once a near-deserted medieval hilltop hamlet in the municipality of Montaione (population: 5) and since 2007 the property of German holiday company TUI. The entire estate is being restored and when it is finished (chalked up for 2015, though this is Italy), Castelfalfi will have three hotels, several hundred apartments, 11 newbuild villas, 18 farmhouses dotted around the grounds, a 27-hole golf course, spa, cookery school, several pools and a restaurant. If it sounds busy, it isn’t: only 0.3 per cent of the land will ever be built on. Apartments start at a rela-

tively reasonable €230,000 for a two-bed and go up to €805,000; the newbuild golf villas are from €1.2 million. The restored farmhouses start at €1.8 million for the smaller size and €2.5 million for the larger casalis (or farmhouses). All houses come with their own pools and garden.

Someone who has got the restoration bug in a big way is director Francis Ford Coppola; he moonlights in property restoration and has become a hotelier ‘by chance’ because so many people have come to stay in his sumptuously designed properties. This is to his guests’ advantage, as all his projects are supremely individual, and they’re available by the night: in his latest property, Palazzo Margarita in Bernalda, south Italy, you can lounge in Sofia Coppola’s bed and admire the faux marble and gold trompe l’oeil trellising.

The whole project is inspired by his family, as his grandfather was born in this small, sleepy-borderingon-comatose village. Twenty minutes from unspoilt white beaches, Bernalda remains largely unchanged by tourism. With the memories of his parents and paternal grandparents, who had settled in Detroit, looming large in his imagination, Coppola himself first visited in 1962. ‘It was like hearing about a fairytale setting and then suddenly finding it was a real place,’ he recalls. ‘I was enchanted.’ After hearing so much from his grandfather, Agostino, he wasn’t disappointed.

‘Many places, the square of the old village, the church, the castle and the walls were as he described.’

As a result the hotel was a labour of love and he was ‘totally involved in each step’. He still has cousins in the village and is always drawn back: ‘the great unique food, wine, the character of the people, the little mini festivals always going on — the region itself, the Ionian sea’. While his grandfather painted a picture of the home they had left behind — largely, you imagine, unchanged in the years since — Francis Ford Coppola knew him after he had lost his sight to diabetes. His strongest memory is of his grandfather making out the shape of his features with his hands. Fittingly, the hotel has its own cinema and a vast collection of Italian films.

However, if a few nights isn’t enough: to buy or not to buy? What a question — and maybe the problem is the obsession with couching these decisions in commercial terms. Yes, Italy’s advantageous capital gains tax (20 per cent for five years, and none after that) is great, but that may change as often as its government does. The thing with these ‘investments’ is if you really fall for a place — and among the evergreen mistwreathed slopes of the Italian countryside, well really, who wouldn’t — why would you think of selling it? www.lavialla.it www.coppolaresorts.com/palazzomargherita www.castelfalfi.co.uk

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T R AV E L

GLOBE TROTTING Our latest travel favourites

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O N E T O WA T C H

MAR C HA GA NGU I R E Y Making sculpture from cut paper

lights come on and suddenly they’re really scary.

There are so many great pieces it’s hard to choose a favourite. I love his Addams Family house. The original set designer even emailed Marc to say that he loved it.

His model of the Dakota Building is a brilliant piece. It’s from Rosemary’s Baby and the little pram in front of the door is so sinister, especially backlit green. But Psycho is my favourite. Because you never forget the first time you saw the film.

I wish I owned one of his pieces, but his exhibition at Gallery One and a Half sold out. His whole story intrigues me: you quit your job and the security, and just throw yourself into something creatively, no matter what the risks.

James Rhodes is @JRhodesPianist on Twitter. See more of Marc HaganGuirey’s work at: www.paperdandy.co.uk

Paul Plews

James Rhodes

I’ve known Marc Hagan-Guirey, through his partner, for two or three years. I used to go to their house and see laser-cutting tools and paper everywhere. It was like I’d stumbled into an ultra-exclusive presentwrapping room.

Marc used to be in digital design and he bravely walked away from his job in order to do something he was obsessed with as a child. It’s something I’ve managed to do and I wish more people would. A lot of them would like to, if they had the stupidity or the balls.

With ‘Horrorgami’, Marc does the most astonishing things with card: he’ll take a sheet, just one flat sheet, and turn it into a location from Psycho or The Shining. He’s obsessed with the macabre, and he loves architecture. It’s the buildings he finds fascinating. During the day his models of them are white and beautiful in their lightboxes, then night falls. The back-

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