UK’S NUMBER ONE DESTINATION FOR LUXURY WATCHES & JEWELLERY
UK’S NUMBER ONE DESTINATION FOR LUXURY WATCHES & JEWELLERY
Discover the world of luxury watches and jewellery from the Watches of Switzerland group with multibrand showrooms across Watches of Switzerland, Mappin & Webb and Goldsmiths.
Our expert teams are here to guide you to find that perfect piece.
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Tailored escapes, exceptional service and exquisite detail.
Editor:
Christopher Jackson
Editor-at-large: Claire Coe
Contributing Editors:
Emily Prescott, Meredith Taylor, Lord Ranger, Liz Brewer, Dr Paul Hokemeyer
Advisory Board:
Sir John Griffin (Chairman), Dame Mary Richardson, Sir Anthony Seldon, Elizabeth Diaferia, Ty Goddard, Neil Carmichael
Management: Ronel Lehmann (Founder & CEO), Colin Hudson, Tom Pauk, Professor Robert Campbell Christopher Jackson, Curtis Ross, Julia Carrick OBE, Gaynor Goodliffe
Mentors:
Derek Walker, Andrew Inman, Chloë Garland, Alejandra Arteta, Angelina Giovani, Christopher Clark, Robin Rose, Sophia Petrides, Dana JamesEdwards, Iain Smith, Jeremy Cordrey, Martin Israel, Iandra Tchoudnowsky, Tim Levy, Peter Ibbetson, Claire Orlic, Judith Cocking, Sandra Hermitage, Claire Ashley, Dr Richard Davis, Sir David Lidington, Coco Stevenson, Talan Skeels-Piggins, Edward Short, David Hogan, Susan Hunt, Divyesh Kamdar, Julia Glenn, Neil Lancaster, Dr David Moffat, Jonathan Lander, Kirsty Bell, Simon Bell, Paul Brannigan, Kate King, Paul Aplin, Professor Andrew Eder, Derek Bell, Graham Turner, Matthew Thompson, Douglas Pryde, Pervin Shaikh, Adam Mitcheson, Ross Power, Caroline Roberts, Sue Harkness, Andy Tait, Mike Donoghue, Tony Mallin, Patrick Chapman, Amanda Brown, Tom Pauk, Daniel Barres, Patrick Chapman, Merrill Powell, Kate Glick, Lord Mott, Dr Susan Doering, Raghav Parkash, Marcus Day, Sheridan Mangal, Mark Thistlethwaite, Madhu Palmar, Margaret Stephens, John Cottrell, Victoria Anstey, Stephen Goldman, Patrick Timms, James Meek, Dominique Rollo, Tracey Jones, Alan Urmston, Duncan Palmer, James Slater, Charles Hamilton-Stubber, Catherine Wood, Guy Beresford
Business Development: Rara Plumptre
Design and Digital: Nick Pelekanos, Ankita Agrawal, D’Arcy Lawson Baker
Photography: Sam Pearce, Will Purcell, Gemma Levine
Public Relations:
Pedroza Communications
Website Development: Eprefix
Media Buying: Virtual Campaign Management
Print Production: Marcus Dobbs
Printers:
Micropress Printers Ltd
Distribution: Emblem Group
Registered Address:
Finito Education Limited, 14th floor, 33 Cavendish Square, London W1G 0PW, +44 (0)20 3780 7700 Finito and FinitoWorld are trade marks of the owner. We cannot accept responsibility for unsolicited submissions, manuscripts and photographs. All prices and details are correct at time of going to press, but subject to change. We take no responsibility for omissions or errors. Reproduction in whole or in part without the publisher’s written permission is strictly prohibited. All rights reserved. Registered in England No. 9985173
I have worked with many photographers, including our very own Sam Pearce. She is a creative force and an accredited Royal Rota photographer, highly regarded by our student and career change candidates, not to mention the Editors of all the national newspapers, online media and picture libraries.
I have known Gemma Levine, another acclaimed photographer and author, for over three decades and first worked with her on a publication in aid of the Malcolm Sargent Cancer Fund for Children. The special project was a book entitled People of the 90’s which won commendation, especially for her pictures of Diana, Princess of Wales. Her work has been exhibited in galleries worldwide, including the National Portrait Gallery.
Gemma now devotes her life to combating Lymphoedema, a disease that she was diagnosed with which occurs when the lymphatic system doesn’t function correctly. It is thought to affect over 200,000 people in the UK. The Lymphoedema Research Fund at St George’s Hospital Charity is meeting the urgent need for expanded research into lymphatic system diseases to pave the way for innovative treatments for future patients.
I must express our deepest gratitude to Gemma for arranging the front cover feature interview with Dame Judi Dench at Claridge’s.
Dame Judi is justly proud of her legacy and once famously told Louis Theroux to ‘f*** off’ after he branded her a ‘national treasure.’ Ask any reader and they will tell you that we all feel great pride and a little shared ownership of the Oscar winning actress.
I was in awe to be able to listen to her expressive voice, which manages to convey such a range of emotions. Some years ago, she did famously lose this for two days after being scared by a snake during a stage performance of 'Antony and Cleopatra.' Today, she suffers from macular degeneration, a condition which causes eyesight to deteriorate over time. I can honestly say that it hasn’t hindered the sparkle she creates when in her presence.
Each year, we sponsor The Jack Tinker Award for Best Newcomer at the annual Theatre Critics’ Circle Awards. Held at the National Theatre for the first time, these awards are entirely voted for by professional theatre critics. At a time when we hear so many negative stories about the arts and theatre industries in Britain, it’s a real joy to be involved in an event that purely celebrates the talent, creativity and brilliance - and resilience - of actors, playwrights, directors and designers.
It’s a myth that critics enjoy panning shows. Let’s give them all a curtain call and applaud their valuable contribution.
Ata certain point, the dysfunction becomes so well-known that it begins to feel ordinary. And yet there is nothing ordinary about the slow collapse of Thames Water — the country’s largest water company, provider of an essential service to nearly a quarter of the UK population, and now a cautionary tale in how not to run infrastructure.
The news that US private equity firm KKR has walked away from a proposed £4bn deal to recapitalise the company is the sort of moment that usually triggers quiet crisis meetings in Westminster. In this case, they’re likely already underway. Without that investment, Thames inches closer to a government-managed special administration, a fate it has managed to keep at bay with considerable effort — and increasingly elaborate financial choreography.
Thames called the withdrawal “disappointing” and insisted it would now proceed with an alternative plan led by its creditors. That plan, sources say, is ready and fully funded. But it also represents, in effect, the final available route before the company becomes unmanageable.
For many observers, this outcome was long in the making. When Thames was privatised in 1989, it carried no debt. Now, it carries £19bn — a fact that says something about the limits of privatisation not just as an ideology but as a business model. Over the years, successive owners focused more on financial engineering than engineering of the traditional kind: upgrading pipes, fixing leaks, preventing spills.
The results have been widely felt and poorly contained. Thames has struggled to control sewage discharges, repair
ageing infrastructure, and meet public expectations — all while navigating scrutiny from Ofwat and increasingly frustrated parliamentary committees. As Alistair Carmichael MP, chair of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee, said last week: “Our concerns have been realised, putting Thames in a perilous position.”
What makes this story more than a tale of one company’s missteps is the timing. KKR’s withdrawal came on the very morning that Sir Jon Cunliffe, a former deputy governor of the Bank of England, released interim findings from an independent review of the water sector. His verdict was stark: the system is failing, the regulatory framework is “chaotic,” and the sector will struggle to attract investment unless reform is undertaken quickly and credibly.
There is a quiet consensus emerging. The system, as currently designed, doesn’t encourage the right kind of investor. “We need long-term investors like pension funds,” Sir Jon said. “If the regulatory system is too volatile, we won’t get them.” His words ring true. A sector so central to public health and environmental integrity cannot rely on the instincts of short-term capital alone.
More than just a corporate failure, Thames Water has become a symbol of something larger: a warning about what happens when essential services are treated like abstract assets rather than living systems. The neglect becomes not only technical, but also moral — a slow erosion of trust in institutions meant to protect the public. Water, like electricity and healthcare, is a bedrock of civilised life. Its decay reflects something deeper about the state’s contract with its citizens.
This isn’t just about infrastructure either — it’s about imagination. For decades, we’ve lacked the political courage to envision an alternative to the existing model, preferring to manage decline rather than confront its causes. But the cost of inaction is growing. Whether through nationalisation, mutualisation or a new regulatory paradigm, reform is no longer a matter of preference. It is becoming a matter of necessity.
Some, like Castle Water, have said they are “ready and willing” to step in. But even those offers appear to lack committed financing. Others — and this includes the government — are preparing for the possibility that state intervention may soon become inevitable.
Yet this is about more than a single company or a single crisis. What’s being tested is the viability of a model — the idea that we can privatise core utilities, extract returns for shareholders, and still somehow meet public need. Thames Water has become the latest, and most visible, indication that this equation no longer adds up.
There are still reasons for hope. Water services will continue, regardless of what happens to the ownership structure. People will still turn on taps and expect — quite rightly — clean water to appear. But that surface normality hides deeper systemic questions. What are the terms on which we want our infrastructure to be run? Who should pay for its renewal? And what happens when the money simply isn’t there?
These are questions that go well beyond Thames. But the answers will likely begin there.
This June, a defining moment for the UK’s healthcare sector will unfold: 350,000 nursing staff across England, Wales, and Northern Ireland will vote on a proposed 3.6% pay rise. Presented with bureaucratic calm, the offer has drawn what the Royal College of Nursing calls “justified outrage” — a figure deemed grotesque in the face of present realities.
“Grotesque” is the right word. It captures the growing chasm between society’s need for nurses and the government’s willingness to properly recognise them. This is not simply a pay dispute. It is a referendum on respect — one taking shape on picket lines, in empty hospital corridors, and in the silent exits of those who can no longer cope.
But the story of nursing doesn’t begin with ballots or budgets. It begins with the nurse. This is not a profession chosen for prestige or wealth. There are no spotlights, no applause. The nurse steps forward to care — to guide people through pain, fear, birth, death. They
hold the clinical and the compassionate in each hand. They are where science meets grace.
And yet, we ask nurses to bear all this — while enduring over a decade of realterms pay erosion. Their responsibilities have grown; their compensation has not. That contradiction is reaching its limit.
Strikes have brought nurses to the public square, not in scrubs but in protest. The image surprised some — but it shouldn’t have. Beneath the saintly stereotype is an economic worker, one who cannot be endlessly taken for granted. And yet, despite the pressures, people still choose to nurse. They still choose meaning. But meaning alone does not pay bills or keep wards safely staffed.
This is a global profession now. UKtrained nurses leave for better pay and conditions in Canada, Australia, the Gulf. Meanwhile, others arrive from abroad, drawn by a historic system that still carries weight. But this flow is fragile. A nation that fails to retain its nurses will, in time, struggle to attract
new ones. The goodwill of international recruits, like that of their domestic peers, is not infinite.
All of this arrives as the government prepares to launch a 10-year NHS workforce plan — one likely to rely heavily on nursing. And yet: how do you build a future on a workforce that feels underpaid and undervalued?
Nurses are not asking for medals. They are asking for fair pay, safe staffing, and the chance to do their jobs without burning out. To ignore that is not only unwise — it is unsustainable.
The decision ahead is not easy. Any serious pay rise demands trade-offs in a landscape of stretched public services and historic debt. But the test of leadership is not ease — it is priority. In choosing how to treat its nurses, the UK chooses what kind of country it wants to be.
Nursing is a promise — made daily, quietly, with dignity. That promise now needs to be met with policy.
At a time when politics too often rewards noise over substance, Stephen McPartland has delivered something rare: a serious piece of work that might actually make us safer.
The McPartland Review, published by Finito Publishing, offers a comprehensive roadmap for strengthening the UK’s cybersecurity and resilience across public and private sectors. It is thoughtful, rigorous, and — crucially — grounded in both
technical understanding and practical realism. Rather than grandstanding, McPartland asks the right questions: Where are the systemic gaps? Who is accountable? What would it take to make cybersecurity not an afterthought but a strategic priority?
In an era where critical infrastructure can be compromised by a keyboard stroke and foreign adversaries wage invisible wars, the stakes could not be higher. McPartland’s review
understands that cyber risk is not a niche concern — it is foundational to national resilience, economic competitiveness, and public trust.
But perhaps most importantly, his tone is constructive. The report does not seek blame; it seeks progress. That, in today’s political landscape, is a leadership trait worth celebrating.
We are proud to publish his review and hope it receives the serious engagement — and urgent action — it deserves.
FOUNDER'S
Andrew Pierce
12 MEET THE MENTOR
Julia Carrick OBE
20 THE FORMER PRIME MINISTER
Boris Johnson on Conservative reinvention
21 THE NOVELIST
Zadie Smith on belief and London
22 THE POLYMATH
Sarah Tucker wears many hats
24 THE WORLD CHAMPION
Fatima Whitbread on childcare
26 THE FIXER
Dominic Cummings on the bureaucratic machine
28 A QUESTION OF DEGREE
Charlotte Leigh on not going to university
30 RELATIVELY SPEAKING
Guy Ritchie on his upbringing
32 10,000 HOURS
Nigel Tait on justice, reputation and the art of the algorithm
34 TOMORROW’S LEADERS ARE BUSY TONIGHT
Zubair Junjunia on equality, EdTech, and activism
38 THOSE ARE MY PRINCIPLES
Ece Temelkuran on global democracy’s unravelling
40 EVENT REPORT
Sir Ed Davey
46 EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW
Dame Judi Dench on longevity, learning, and legacy
60 TOP TEN JUDI DENCH PERFORMANCES
A ranking of greatness
62 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF POWER AND INCURIOSITY
Why leaders stop listening
66 ABOUT TIME
Ever considered a career in clocks?
74 THE GLASS WORKERS
A sector of shattering careers
78 CRYPTOCURRENCY
Claire Cummings breaks down the digital currency
88 BURSARY UPDATE
Luela Figueira
92 FOOTBALL FOCUS
The Talented Mr Mabutt
94 LETTER FROM DENMARK
Sarah Tucker reports
96 LETTER FROM NOVA SCOTIA
Nishad Sanzagiri
100 TURRI AT 100
A century of modern luxury
106 NORMAN FOSTER AT 90
Building for a world without cathedrals
112 BACK TO THE BEACH BOYS
Remembering Brian Wilson
116 ACTING UP
When actors become politicians
120 THE BARD AT WORK
Shakespeare and careers
124 OSCAR EAGLE
Introducing a new artist
128 THE CROWN JEWELLER
Brian Duffy on Mappin & Webb
132 A LITTLER BIT OF LOVE
Where next for darts?
134 BOOK REVIEWS
Including Bill Gates’ Source Code
136 ANTIGUA AHOY
Bulletin from the Caribbean
144 CLASS DISMISSED
Jack Charles
SCAN BELOW TO SUBSCRIBE TO FINITO WORLD
Keir Starmer once came up to me and said, “Tory boy, why are you so awful about me in the paper?” I thought: where to begin? But instead I said, politely, “Prime Minister, you’re just really boring.” He gave me seven and a half minutes of his time. I’ll never get them back. “How did I do?” he asked at the end. “Still boring,” I replied. His entourage nearly fainted.
You’d expect any Labour conference after 14 years in opposition to be electric. Instead, it was about £30,000 suits, posh spectacles, and a Prime Minister in a polo shirt. “Why no tie?” I asked. “They came together,” he shrugged. I said, “Wagyu, were they?” The conversation ended there. His special adviser said to me: “You just know how to ruin everything.” I’ve been called worse.
Whispers now, even at Labour receptions, about whether Starmer can last. “He doesn’t look like he’s enjoying it,” someone said. “He knows he can’t do it.” Who replaces him? They’re already muttering about Bridget Phillipson. “Colder than a block of ice,” one insider called her. “A class war cow,” added another. Wes Streeting’s always on telly but doesn’t have the numbers. And Rachel Reeves? She’s more Gordon Brown tribute act than heir apparent.
Reeves, we’re told, had a Gordon Brown poster on her wall at Oxford. Everyone else had pop stars; she had fiscal prudence. Now she’s stuck. No room to raise taxes. No
emergency budget without looking panicked. She warned us of a £22 billion black hole — then raised £40 billion in taxes. The Institute for Fiscal Studies said the hole was more like £10 billion. Either way, no one's buying it anymore.
The most awkward conversation I’ve had lately? Tulip Siddiq, anti-corruption minister, forced to resign after properties gifted to her were traced to Bangladeshi state assets. She cleared her desk with a carrier bag. I asked how it felt being on the backbenches again. Her response? Two words. Neither of them printable here. What possessed Starmer to give her the anticorruption brief in the first place? “She’s his best mate in Parliament,” one Labour MP told me. “They share a cow.” Quite.
Jon Sopel (Wikipedia.org)
As for the Tories, they’ve lost the donors and don’t know where to find them. Reform’s hoovering up the cheques. One tale involves Kemi Badenoch having breakfast with a major Tory donor. Halfway through, she asked: “Why am I here?” Not, “Thanks for the toast” — but “Why am I here?” The donor, once good for millions, has since gone silent. Charm offensive it was not. Another breakfast — this time at Chatham House — ended with her pushing the plate back and saying, “I don’t like this food.” She asked for something else. To the editor of The Times. Who’d shown up sympathetic.
Can Boris come back? Well, his book is outselling most of the
Shadow Cabinet combined. He’s convinced Labour will face a byelection soon — and that it could break their majority. “Still wants the Tory leadership,” someone whispered to me. He’d better move fast. Reform might win the next by-election. Though it could just as easily implode — it’s not a party, remember. It’s a limited company. Nigel Farage is literally the main shareholder.
Speaking of Nigel, there’s a party being thrown by Arron Banks — the man who bankrolled Brexit — on a Washington rooftop. Lord Mandelson will be there. You read that right. Peter Mandelson, once EU commissioner, now courting the man who brought us Trump and Farage, just to keep Labour’s back channels open with the Republicans. And people say politics isn’t entertaining anymore.
“LUXURY HAS NEVER BEEN MORE ABOUT EMOTIONAL CONNECTION”
JuliaCarrick OBE is best known for founding the multi-award-winning Financial Times supplement How to Spend It, an iconic title that helped redefine luxury publishing. Julia also gained recognition for the British Luxury sector through co-founding Walpole, the official sector body for UK Luxury, and helping to build it to what it is today. With decades of influence in the global luxury sector, Julia’s perspective is rooted in storytelling, heritage and authenticity — all of which she now brings to her ambassadorial work with Finito World. She is passionate about mentoring the next generation and is an outspoken advocate for British brands, heritage and the power of community.
At the heart of Julia’s philosophy is a belief in inspiration, experience and emotional connection — not only in her professional life, but also in the way she helps young people navigate their path to meaningful work.
“WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THE WORK FINITO DOES IS THAT IT SEEKS TO INSPIRE YOUNG PEOPLE AND HELP THEM MAKE THE RIGHT CHOICES.”
“What I love about the work Finito does is that it seeks to inspire young
people and help them make the right choices. It’s all about that smooth and painless transition into the workplace. The luxury industry places a high value on craftsmanship, and training programmes for maintaining high standards and preserving specialised
skills. Blending traditional techniques with modern innovations, ensuring the perpetuation of luxury’s unique heritage while embracing technological advancements. The qualities Finito teaches are exactly what the luxury sector is looking for.”
According to Julia, the luxury market has undergone a profound evolution in recent years. Where once luxury was defined by the most expensive or exclusive product, today it is more nuanced — a blend of emotion, experience and meaning.
“Today’s consumer wants something personal. Luxury now is about craftsmanship, emotion, and theatre. People want something that resonates — something with intrinsic value that can occupy a special place in their heart.”
Julia has long been on the front line of cultural change, and she’s quick to point out that global audiences differ widely in how they engage with luxury. In Asian markets, trust is paramount; in the West,
sustainability and purpose are rising fast on the agenda.
For Julia, the brands that win are those that know how to create community — a theme which recurs throughout her work. From her support of the Design Centre Chelsea Harbour to her campaigns in defence of British tax-free shopping, Julia sees belonging as central to resilience — whether you’re a young person entering the workforce or a heritage brand in a crowded market.
“In a period of uncertainty, it becomes more important than ever to bring people together — brands and customers, students and mentors, creators and thinkers. That’s how we build something that lasts.”
One of Julia’s most high-profile recent campaigns has been to lobby against the removal of tax-free shopping for international visitors to the UK. The entire tourist economy has been affected, whether that be regional tourist centres or manufacturers down the supply chain, hotels and restaurants, taxis, galleries and museums and cafes. Reintroducing tax-free shopping, which had existed for decades, but was scrapped would benefit every region by firing up economic growth and create at least 73,000 new jobs.
Global travel is resuming, and the data shows we are losing out. International tourists are increasingly being driven into the arms of the UK’s rivals thanks to the absence of VAT rebates, taking their spending to Paris, Milan and Madrid. Meanwhile, we’ve cut off our own advantage.
Over the past two and a half years, Julia has been a powerful voice in this space, working directly with brands, policymakers and experts across the hospitality, retail and tourism industries.
“I got involved because so many Captains of Industry and CEO’s asked for my help. I had the connections, and I knew I could make a difference. The evidence is crystal clear — this decision is hurting British business.” Together with other industry bodies Julia is urging Ministers “to seize a major Brexit benefit worth £3.7 billion a year to the economy by reintroducing tax-free shopping for international visitors.”
Julia Carrick continues to bring not just insight but energy, humour and rigour to everything she does. She is the perfect example of what a mentor can be — a passionate guide, a fierce advocate, and someone who always remembers that business, at its best, is about people.
As she puts it, “We need to stay relevant, yes — but we also need to stay human.”
CUMMINGS AND GOINGS Bureaucracy kills democracy
ACCESSORIES BATHROOMS BEDS
CARPETS, RUGS & FLOORING
CURTAINS, POLES & FINIALS
FABRICS FURNITURE HARDWARE
KITCHENS LIGHTING
OUTDOOR FABRICS
OUTDOOR FURNITURE PAINT
TILES TRIMMINGS & LEATHER
WALLCOVERINGS
ABI INTERIORS ALEXANDER LAMONT + MILES ALTFIELD
ALTON-BROOKE AND OBJECTS ANDREW MARTIN
ARTE ARTERIORS ARTISANS OF DEVIZES AUGUST & CO
BAKER LIFESTYLE BELLA FIGURA BRUNSCHWIG & FILS
C & C MILANO CASAMANCE CECCOTTI COLLEZIONI CHASE
ERWIN CHRISTIAN LEE (FABRICUT) CHRISTOPHER HYDE
LIGHTING COLE & SON COLEFAX AND FOWLER COLLIER WEBB
COLONY BY CASA LUIZA CRUCIAL TRADING DAVID HUNT
LIGHTING DAVID SEYFRIED LTD DE LE CUONA DEDAR DONGHIA AT GP & J BAKER ECCOTRADING DESIGN
LONDON EDELMAN EGGERSMANN DESIGN ELITIS ESPRESSO
DESIGN FLEXFORM FORBES & LOMAX FOX LINTON FRATO
GALLOTTI&RADICE GEORGE SPENCER DESIGNS GLADEE
LIGHTING GP & J BAKER HAMILTON LITESTAT HARLEQUIN
HECTOR FINCH HOLLAND & SHERRY HOULÈS HOUSE OF ROHL
HUMA KITCHENS IKSEL DECORATIVE ARTS INTERDESIGN UK
JACARANDA CARPETS & RUGS JAIPUR RUGS JASON D’SOUZA
JEAN MONRO JENNIFER MANNERS DESIGN JENSEN BEDS JULIAN
CHICHESTER KINGCOME KRAVET KVADRAT LASKASAS LEE JOFA
LELIÈVRE PARIS LEWIS & WOOD LINCRUSTA LIZZO LONDON
BASIN COMPANY LONDONART WALLPAPER LOOM FURNITURE
MARVIC TEXTILES MCKINNON AND HARRIS MINDTHEGAP MODERN BRITISH KITCHENS MORRIS & CO MULBERRY HOME THE NANZ COMPANY NOBILIS OFICINA INGLESA FURNITURE
ORIGINAL BTC OSBORNE & LITTLE PAOLO MOSCHINO LTD
PAVONI PERENNIALS SUTHERLAND STUDIO PHILIPPE HUREL
PHILLIP JEFFRIES PIERRE FREY PORADA PORTA ROMANA QUOTE & CURATE RALPH LAUREN HOME RESTED ROBERT LANGFORD
ROMO RUBELLI THE RUG COMPANY SA BAXTER ARCHITECTURAL HARDWARE SACCO CARPET SAMUEL & SONS SAMUEL HEATH
SANDERSON SAVOIR BEDS SCHUMACHER SHEPEL’ SIMPSONS THE SPECIFIED STARK CARPET STUDIO FRANCHI STUDIOTEX SUMMIT FURNITURE THG PARIS THREADS AT GP & J BAKER TIGERMOTH LIGHTING TIM PAGE CARPETS TISSUS D’HÉLÈNE TOLLGARD
TOM RAFFIELD TOPFLOOR BY ESTI TUFENKIAN ARTISAN CARPETS TURNELL & GIGON TURNSTYLE DESIGNS TURRI VAUGHAN VIA ARKADIA (TILES) VISPRING VISUAL COMFORT & CO. WATTS 1874 WENDY MORRISON WEST ONE BATHROOMS WIRED CUSTOM LIGHTING WOOL CLASSICS ZIMMER + ROHDE ZOFFANY ZUBER
Product shown sourced from Design Centre, Chelsea Harbour. See www.dcch.co.uk/advertising-credits
THE HOME OF THE WORLD’S GREATEST DESIGN AND DECORATION BRANDS
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Design Centre
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www.dcch.co.uk
The Former Prime Minister
THE FORMER PM LOOKS BACK ON THE UPS AND DOWNS OF HIS
WhenI was Prime Minister, I was firmly on the side of Israel: that’s because Israel has the right to protect its population against the kind of orgy of sadism and violence that was perpetrated against innocent men, women, and children on 7 October.
“I THINK THERE IS HOPE THAT WITH TRUMP BACK IN THE WHITE HOUSE CAN GET TO AN END OF THIS APPALLING BUSINESS IN GAZA.”
Lead by the Iranians, who clearly encouraged Hamas to do what they did, this was an attempt to frustrate peace in the region. To cut a long story short, I think there is hope that with Trump back in the White House, we can get to an end of this appalling business in Gaza. Everyone seems to forget that hostages are still being held in Gaza. If Hamas wants to fix this thing, give the hostages back.
I am perverse in the sense that I see glimmers of optimism for the world. A Trump presidency could unlock things, and I think this is one of them. I pray that it does.
I think the freedom of Ukraine is incredibly important for everybody. What Putin did was absolutely evil. Ukraine is a free, sovereign, independent country. It was no threat and remains no threat to Russia. He had no justification for his invasion. The reason he did it
was entirely to do with the survival of Vladimir Putin and the desire to have a nationalist cause around which the Russian people could rally.
The Ukrainians are fighting like lions for their country, for their freedom, for their independence. It is overwhelmingly important for us in the West to continue to support them. This isn’t just about land—it’s about destiny. Any deal must make it clear that Ukraine’s future is in the West. They must have a path to NATO, the EU, and proper security guarantees, or else any land deal is just another pause before Putin attacks again.
Of course, I sometimes look back at my time as PM. Covid was an unutterable disaster. The government actually, after a great deal of initial difficulty, handled it pretty well because we had the fastest vaccine rollout in Europe. It’s very difficult in a mature, diverse, highly freedom-loving society to stop the spread of a contagious disease. But we used our powers of persuasion and organisation, and once we had the vaccine, we moved fast.
Let’s not forget folks that we vaccinated 45 per cent of the adult population and 100 per cent of those over 80 and vulnerable by March 2021. In the EU, it was about 10 per cent. That was a huge problem politically for them and a massive benefit for us.
But the fact remains: Covid took Britain to the left. It massively expanded state control and spending. It was tyrannical. We paid people to stay at home. It was the right thing to do, but immensely costly. It changed the economy, and in the end, it changed the Conservative Party too.
The ongoing disruption to global shipping lanes and geopolitical tensions around China and Taiwan are reshaping supply chains. More companies are bringing manufacturing closer to home—a trend that will dominate economic discussions this year. The balance between globalisation and national security concerns is shifting, and it’s happening faster than many expected.
If Rishi and I had stuck together, I think we would have won the next election. Even in July 2022, we were only a couple of points behind Starmer. I had a great innings, but like all politicians, I look back and wonder—what if?
One morning recently, I opened the internet and saw an extraordinary painting by Tracey Emin of the Passion. It’s in the Royal Academy and has rave reviews, but the review said: what could be more shocking than a painter like Tracey Emin painting the Passion?
I was thinking of when I was a baby writer. I remember reading these lines by David Foster Wallace, which you could put on a wall: “If you worship money, you will always feel poor. If you worship beauty, you will always feel ugly. If you worship power, you will always feel weak.” I remember thinking: “If you worship God, what will you always feel?”
When I wrote White Teeth , the comedy of that book was religious people — Muslims and Jehovah’s Witnesses — and then a third set: liberals. And the third set thought they didn’t have a religion, but they did. That’s what interested me as I grew up in radical atheism. Once, when I was about nine, my father bought me a Bible for my birthday, and I threw it out of the window in front of his face.
I was interested in religions as philosophical systems. I was fascinated by people breaking fast, and seder — I was always introduced. After White Teeth, I wrote The Autograph Man, which is about Judaism and Buddhism. On Beauty is about the worship of art. NW , for me is an Anglican novel. Swing Time is about that syncretic African idea. To me, The Fraud is a Catholic novel. I’ve realised, after 25
years of writing books, that if writing was a way of being good, it was a very slow process. This is a very laborious way of becoming a slightly better person.
At NYU, I would meet truly evil moral philosophers, selfish poets, or brutal novelists — and I include myself. I thought: “This doesn’t work. Look at all these people — and look at me.” When I moved back to London, to the same street I was born on, in the nice house, not the council estate across the road, I was surrounded by Jews and Muslims and Catholics. Like the Jews, I don’t have heaven and hell; like the Muslims, I believe in surrender to contingency; and like the Anglicans and Catholics, I find the story of Christ inspiring. And like the Hindus, I have many gods.
There’s a local church in my area, and it’s the church I used to dance in when I was a kid — a big 19th-century church, and half of it was sold off to flats around 1987. I found myself going one day and walked in, nervous. The congregation, on a good day, is 12 people — half of whom are heroin addicts. The first day I walked in, the vicar didn’t come — and one of the congregation, a homeless man, was giving a eulogy for another homeless man. I thought: what am I doing here?
I think I had an alibi in my mind — an Iris Murdoch alibi. I think, to me, the idea that God exists universally and in every culture is God — and that is what interests me. It’s still an alibi — I’m in an Anglican church worshipping an Alsatian.
Every Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, we feed people in the community. When I walk through the neighbourhood, I now think: that’s not a meth head, that’s Dave. I see every layer of my community — because I know these people now. It’s that thing: how do you want to be connected with people? It’s also about being in a place where, for thousands of years, people have gathered to be quiet. I suddenly found that a not-contemptible idea. The language of Anglicanism is meaningful to me — and the whole conception of prayer has interested me more and more. I’m not in any way an effective, good, or faithful Anglican, but I was so interested in the idea that this space — that at least in contemporary capitalism — is not available anywhere else.
When you're nearing the end of university overdraft maxed, degree halfway legible, still unsure how to properly cook rice someone inevitably asks The Question:
“SO,
The implication? That you're supposed to know. Worse, that there's one perfect, gleaming answer. That out there, somewhere, is your One True Career, the path you were meant to walk, possibly while wearing beige chinos and answering emails about deliverables.
Let’s be blunt, the path is a myth. There is no path. At best, it’s a cobbled back alley full of detours, strange signage, and the occasional urban fox. At worst, it’s a conveyor belt to burnout, boredom, and having opinions about coffee machines.
But here’s the real plot twist the fact nobody’s told you because it messes with the brochure:
YOU DON’T HAVE TO CHOOSE ONE THING. YOU DON’T HAVE TO DO IT FOREVER. AND YOU’RE NOT BROKEN BECAUSE YOU HAVEN’T FIGURED IT OUT.
I’m Sarah Tucker. I was a banker.
Then I became a yoga teacher. Then a novelist. Then a travel journalist. Then a radio presenter. Then I wrote the biography of Edward de Bono, the man who literally invented lateral thinking. I am, according to most HR departments, an absolute nightmare. But let me tell you something with authority and zero apology, life gets vastly more interesting when you stop trying to be one thing and start building sideways.
We’re conditioned to think of careers as ladders to climb rung by rung, shake hands, get promoted, die slightly inside. But what if it’s not a ladder? What if it’s a web?
That’s the idea behind polymathy, the concept of pursuing multiple interests deeply and letting them feed each other. It’s not scatterbrained. It’s strategic. And it’s increasingly how the world works, even if LinkedIn still prefers a tidy CV.
A polymath is someone who doesn’t just know a bit of everything they synthesise across disciplines. They’re the ones who read an article about bird migration and end up designing an app that improves traffic systems. Or study philosophy and become better marketers. Or quit law to become chefs, only to return as food policy advisers.
It’s not confusion. It’s crosspollination.
Then there’s the portfolio career, which sounds like something your uncle in private equity would fake-smile about but is actually the backbone of a lateral life.
Imagine your career not as one long job title that gets gradually sadder, but as a set of overlapping projects, gigs, roles, and fascinations that evolve over time. It’s working in UX while running a podcast. Consulting by day, writing noir fiction by night. Designing a fintech start-up while teaching Pilates in the park.
You don’t have to put “multihyphenate” in your Instagram bio. You just have to stop pretending there’s only one acceptable shape for a “real job”.
No. It’s the opposite of flaky. It’s adaptive. Flaky is staying in a job you hate because you can’t imagine anything else. Lateral thinking is noticing the cracks in the wall and realising you might enjoy knocking the whole thing down.
Some of the most interesting people alive never picked one lane. Maya Angelou, poet, journalist, calypso dancer, Hollywood director, civil rights activist. Hedy Lamarr, actress and coinventor of Wi-Fi. Steve Jobs said a single calligraphy class shaped Apple. Elon Musk… well, he’s a cautionary tale, but you get the point.
Lateral living isn’t lack of focus. It’s layered intelligence. It’s competence with range. And in a world that no longer rewards staying in your lane, that range is power.
Here’s what nobody tells you about career advice, it’s mostly retrospective fiction. People stitch a narrative together after the fact to make it sound intentional. Nobody includes the existential dread, the unpaid internships, the months spent making spreadsheets about spreadsheets.
Your first job will likely be a placeholder. That’s fine. Your degree might never come up again, except in pub quizzes. Also, fine. The idea that your life has to make sense now is ludicrous, and possibly a conspiracy by people who peaked in Year Eleven. The careers of the future, the ones that don’t exist yet, will be shaped by people who didn’t specialise too early, who kept playing with ideas, mixing skills, and asking strange questions. Who saw not just the career ladder, but the scaffolding around it, and redesigned the whole thing.
Start with what’s in front of you.
Write down not just what you’re “good at”, but what you do compulsively even when nobody’s asking. The niche YouTube rabbit holes. The odd obsessions. The moments when you disappear into a task and time loses all meaning.
Next, look sideways. Where do your skills and interests intersect? Are you an English student with a gift for data? A software developer who plays jazz piano? A politics undergraduate who sketches cartoons in the margins?
Those aren’t quirks. They’re raw materials. Combine them, and suddenly you’re
doing work nobody else is equipped to do because only you have that combination.
Now, before you dash off and start six side hustles and a non-profit, a word of caution. The dark side of polymathy is what psychologists have called “Leonardo Syndrome”, the tendency to start everything and finish nothing, like a creative goldfish on espresso.
The trick is structure. Systems. Deep work. Not everything has to be monetised, but some of it needs follow-through. Use tools - old-school calendars or AI if it helps - to build containers for your chaos.
And don’t worry if it doesn’t look tidy. Tidiness is for IKEA. You’re building something better.
Polymaths, the ones with portfolio careers and lateral minds, tend to do better in times of crisis. They adapt faster. They innovate more. They don't crumble when one job disappears or one industry shifts, because they’re not defined by that job or that industry. Also, they’re more interesting at dinner parties.
A study by Dr Robert Root-Bernstein found that Nobel Prize winners were disproportionately likely to paint, dance, act, or write poetry. Not because it made them smarter, but because it made them more flexible. Creativity isn’t a hobby; it’s a survival trait.
At some point, you’ll be older. Maybe even thirty. And you’ll go metaphorically, or literally, into your attic. Not for Christmas decorations,
but to take stock of your life so far. And the question you’ll ask yourself won’t be, Did I follow the path? It’ll be, What did I build?
Did you accumulate titles, or stories?
A career, or a body of work?
A CV, or a life?
Be the person who went wide, deep, and strange. Who took the job and left it. Who made sense of the mess and occasionally turned it into something brilliant. Who didn’t just climb, but rewired the staircase, painted it red, and installed a trapdoor.
IT’S THE PLAN THAT LETS YOU CHANGE THE GAME.
Now go do something gloriously unfocused.
Sarah Tucker is a novelist, journalist, broadcaster, yoga teacher, travel writer, lecturer, and biographer of Edward de Bono. She’s available for existential career counselling, assuming there’s tea.
THE FORMER OLYMPIAN JAVELINIST DESCRIBES THE PROGRESS OF HER CAMPAIGN TO FIX THE CHILDCARE SYSTEM IN THIS COUNTRY
Somethingextraordinary happened at our recent summit. And I don’t say that lightly. What we saw was a genuine shift — in tone, in energy, and in belief. For too long, the care system has been fragmented, siloed, full of good intentions and poor execution.
But for once, we saw collaboration on a national scale: 110 organisations, from virtual school heads and mental health professionals to police commanders and local authorities — all coming together to say: enough.
This wasn’t just another event. It was a movement in the making. Guests came from across the four nations — even as far as the Isle of Man — and we saw, for the first time, a unified conversation about care. Ministers, stakeholders, and most importantly, the young people
themselves, gave voice to something urgent: the need for belonging.
You cannot thrive in life if you don’t first know where you belong. And for too many children in care, the absence of stability, consistency and love creates deep wounds that last a lifetime. When we interviewed young people for this campaign, their message was clear: “Listen to us.” Over 80 interviews, including with children, ministers, frontline workers and experts, revealed a system that needs more than reform — it needs reimagining.
“YOU CANNOT THRIVE IN LIFE IF YOU DON’T FIRST KNOW WHERE YOU BELONG.”
We’re campaigning to raise the age at which young people leave care from 18 to 25. Think about that: how many of us were truly ready at 18? And yet, a third of care leavers become homeless within two years. We’ve also called for a National Foster Register, to ensure matching is done with care and dignity — so children aren’t moved from “pillar to post” 30 or 40 times. That isn’t care. That’s trauma.
I was proud to have the support of figures like Michael Gove, Helen Hayes, Janet Daby and Lord John Bird — each speaking with authenticity, each recognising the power of lived experience. Michael was himself fostered. He knows what’s at stake. The support from leaders across party lines, including Keir Starmer who wrote the
foreword to our programme, tells me we’re not shouting into a void. The challenge now is to keep the momentum going.
“WE NEED TO ELIMINATE THE POSTCODE LOTTERY THAT DETERMINES A CHILD’S FUTURE.”
I’m taking the campaign on the road — localising the work, speaking directly to communities, and continuing to build on the momentum we’ve created. Nicola Sturgeon said it well: “We’ll only improve the care system through shared good practice and knowledge.” She’s right. We need depth and breadth — and we need to eliminate the postcode lottery that determines a child’s future.
I believe in the power of creativity. Sport changed my life. It gave me purpose, identity, direction. That’s why part of our campaign involves introducing arts, sports and tech programmes to engage young people and teach vital life skills. These aren't just hobbies — they are pathways to employment, to self-worth, to sustainable independence.
I’ve raised funds mostly from the everyday person — the small donations, the believers. We’ve had little to no financial backing from big corporates, even though many of them are aware of our work. I’ve learned tough lessons about how competitive and political funding can be. But here’s what I’ve also learned: if you invest in smaller charities, the ones rooted in community, they will be the ones still standing when the system falls short.
Too much money gets lost in admin and red tape. We need to support the frontline — the people who show up, day after day, doing the work that makes a difference. Look after your smaller charities, and they’ll look after you.
We have a White Paper coming, and a public petition to support it — available soon at Fatima’s Campaign. The message is simple: Invest in our children, and you invest in your future. It’s not just political; it’s moral.
“THESE
This campaign has challenged me in every way — physically, emotionally, financially. But I don’t regret a second of it. Because something is happening. People are waking up. And as long as I’ve got breath in my lungs, I’ll keep pushing.
The care system doesn’t just need fixing. It needs to be seen. These children are not statistics. They are potential. And it’s time we gave them the chance to fulfil it.
Sevenyears after the referendum and four prime ministers later, what should be obvious is still being denied across Westminster and Whitehall: this country is governed by a self-satisfied cartel of parties, civil servants, and media hacks who no longer even pretend to fix things. They just want to be seen to care, while everything gets worse.
Everyone says “we need change” but nobody in power is willing to do change. The system is fundamentally broken — and both Labour and the Conservatives are now fully invested in keeping it broken. Take immigration. We ran the 2019 election on a simple promise: fix the system with a proper points-based model. Boris and I sat in meetings and said clearly, cut low-skilled immigration, increase the high-skilled intake. The mandarins smirked — they assumed we’d forget. When we didn’t, they simply blocked implementation. Once I left, and Boris got bored, the whole thing collapsed. We now have the highest legal migration numbers in history. Meanwhile, Sunak claimed he’d “stop the boats.” He didn’t even slow them.
Now Labour has taken over — and Starmer, Reeves and Streeting are carrying on exactly the same policies. Immigration, taxes, energy, education — no new ideas, no delivery, just more of the same, all underpinned by civil service groupthink and media theatre. They've simply inherited the Osborne-Sunak-Bailey model and are going through the motions.
People outside SW1 can see this. They know politics is a Potemkin village. A fake machine with fake meetings and fake decisions. When I worked in No.10, you’d
see it every day: Cabinet ministers reading out scripts written by civil servants, prime ministerial “conclusions” pre-written before a word had been spoken. The actual battles happen in the footnotes — over who writes the paper that goes into the meeting, not the meeting itself.
This is not a functioning democracy. It’s a bureaucracy masquerading as one.
Ask yourself this: why is public trust at historic lows? Because people have voted again and again for change — in 2010, in 2016, in 2019 — and watched as nothing actually changed. Blair, Cameron, May, Johnson, Starmer — all variants of the same formula: no strategy, no urgency, no accountability. The system absorbs opposition, neutralises disruption, and rewards inertia.
Reeves warned of a £22 billion black hole in public finances — then raised £40 billion in taxes. The IFS said the hole was £10 billion. So either Labour can’t count or they’re gaslighting the public. And their reward? More media praise. Meanwhile, services get worse, NHS waits grow longer, and productivity collapses.
You can’t fix this with another focus group or one more spin doctor. It needs a complete redesign.
We need a new model of governance — one that prioritises outcomes, not appearances. That means stripping back Whitehall, rebuilding from first principles, and ending the system where ministers serve officials, not the other way around. Real reform would mean cutting 30% of central bureaucracy, moving key institutions out of London, and hiring people who’ve built things rather than
people who’ve sat in panels about building things.
People say: “Ah, but what about Farage and Reform?” Good question. On the one hand, Nigel says the right things. He’s long been consistent on borders and energy. On the other hand, Reform is not a serious political party. It’s a limited company in which Farage is the sole shareholder. There’s no structure. No candidates. No strategy. It’s not a party, it’s a protest vehicle. Can it help topple the establishment? Probably. Can it run a government? No.
So where does that leave us? In a country where voters know that the core issue isn’t party versus party — it’s system versus people. Westminster versus the rest. And as long as officials, broadcasters and legacy parties keep pretending that this is all normal — that our economic stagnation, migration chaos and institutional decay are just background noise — things will keep getting worse.
We need new forces. New coalitions. New brains. And less politics-as-PR. Until then, we’re just rearranging deckchairs while the ship takes on water.
THE JEWELLER DIDN’T FOLLOW THE TRADITIONAL PATH. INSTEAD, SHE BUILT TWO THRIVING BUSINESSES, RAISED A YOUNG FAMILY, AND REVOLUTIONISED THE BESPOKE JEWELLERY EXPERIENCE—PROVING THAT SUCCESS ISN’T ABOUT TICKING BOXES.
I’m the only one in my family who didn’t go to university—and that turned out to be my superpower.
I actually started a degree in dance, drama and art at the University of Birmingham in 2001, but I quickly realised it wasn’t for me. I’ve always been creative and curious, but sitting through lectures on the theory of Russian ballet didn’t quite hit the spot. I left, and for a while, I felt like the family failure. Everyone else was racking up degrees, and I felt like the one who hadn’t made the cut.
Now, I see things differently. I strongly suspect I’m neurodivergent—ADHD, autism, or maybe both—but I’ve never chased a diagnosis. Instead, I’ve learned to understand myself and create success in a way that works for me, not despite me. And honestly, that freedom to build outside the system has been my greatest asset.
At 21, I launched my first business—a property inventory company—from my mum’s spare room. She’d just left a coercively controlled marriage and had no means, so together we built something from scratch. No experience. No qualifications. Just grit, late nights, and a whole lot of trial and error.
Within two years, we’d secured investment, moved into offices, hired staff, and added additional property services like PAT tests and EPCs. We landed clients like Berkeley Homes, JLL, Savills, and The Crown Estate— many of whom still work with us today. And just to keep things interesting, I also survived a brain haemorrhage in the
middle of it all.
The business taught me everything you don’t learn in a lecture hall—how to make decisions when you don’t feel ready, the importance of customer service (which we won awards for), how to problem-solve, and how to take a punch and keep moving. But after several years of growth and success, something still wasn’t sitting right: I was missing a creative outlet.
Then came my engagement ring.
I had what should have been a joyful experience—but instead, it was frustrating and impersonal. I was oversold a diamond that didn’t suit my needs, ended up with a design I loathed, and was left with a ring I was too embarrassed to show off. And I realised
my friends were having the same experience: “It’s nice… but I don’t love it.” How had something so meaningful become so transactional?
That was my lightbulb moment.
Despite having no experience in the industry, I decided to reimagine the fine jewellery experience from the ground up. I got my GIA diamond qualifications, trained with Melanie Eddy at The Goldsmiths’ Centre, and worked (unpaid!) in workshops just to observe the goldsmiths at work and understand how jewellery is actually made.
One moment with Melanie will stay with me forever. I asked her, “Am I mad for thinking I can do this?” She looked at me and said, “Charlotte, you’re already doing it.” That gave me the confidence I
needed—but there was more. I told her how I approached my designs by first working out the profitability and then designing the piece backwards from there. She paused and said, “I’ve never heard a designer work that way before.” Most get swept up in creativity and then realise later that the design isn’t commercially viable. But I was doing it the other way round—balancing creativity with business instinct from day one.
While building industry connections, I was still running the property business and raising two small children at home. It was intense. But every free moment, every nap time or evening, I poured into refining my design process.
I started by working with family and friends, asking for their unworn or inherited pieces—the ones sitting in jewellery boxes, untouched but too sentimental to part with. I remodelled them, tested my CAD and 3D-printing workflow, and perfected the client journey. I designed pieces that could be seen, touched, and tried on in model form before they were made. Everyone was blown away. The response was clear: I was onto something special. So I launched.
Today, my jewellery business is thriving. I work with high-profile individuals,
celebrities, and collectors. I source the best-value diamonds for every budget—including rare fancy coloured stones and investment-grade options. I specialise in remodelling heirlooms into showstoppers and creating bespoke pieces that are as meaningful as they are beautiful.
My clients get a truly immersive experience, and they work directly with me—not a junior designer. I bring together artistry, transparency, and cutting-edge technology, and I work exclusively with the finest workshops in the UK. My goldsmiths have won six Craft & Design Awards and are widely regarded as the best in the business.
I’ve been featured in national newspapers, magazines, and on television. But for me, the real reward is the look on a client’s face when they see their story told in precious metals and stones. When the work speaks to their heart.
Today, I’m still a director of the property business, but the day-to-day is handled brilliantly by my husband and mum— freeing me up to focus fully on jewellery design. And I’ve never felt more aligned with what I do.
The power of instinct and self-belief
Without any formal background, I’ve had to lean hard on soft skills—instinct,
emotional intelligence, creativity, and resilience. I’ve learned to back myself even when others didn’t. And that ability to trust my gut is what’s allowed me to innovate where others followed tradition.
Redefining failure and success
I’ve been underestimated plenty of times. I’ve had moments of self-doubt, of feeling judged for not having a degree. But now I see those moments for what they were: fuel. Success, for me, is about freedom, purpose, and legacy— not just accolades.
Advice for others
To anyone feeling the pressure to follow a conventional path—especially young people—please know: there are many ways to succeed. University is brilliant for some. But the world also needs people who are brave enough to do things differently. Who listen to their gut. Who bet on themselves.
The full circle
In the end, being “unqualified” is what made me exceptional. I wasn’t boxed in by the way things had always been done. I built something better—two businesses, in fact—while raising a family and rewriting the rulebook. No degree required.
Charlotte is a UK-based entrepreneur, diamond specialist, and bespoke fine jewellery designer. After launching a successful property business at just 21, she went on to disrupt the fine jewellery industry with her immersive, client-led design process. Her work has been featured in national newspapers, magazines, and on television. She works closely with high-networth individuals, celebrities, and collectors to create extraordinary one-of-a-kind pieces using a blend of traditional craftsmanship and cutting-edge technology.
charlotte@lottieleigh.com www.lottieleigh.com @lottieleighfinejewellery
Let me say something off the bat: I don't really trust anything that doesn't burn, bend, or break. That's why I'm a fan of wood. It moves, it cuts, it burns. It gives back. And I'm not sure our modern world gives back in quite the same way.
I'm not very interested in theory that doesn't bleed into action. If it doesn't burn, bend, or break, it's probably not worth much. Wood does all three — and so, I've built a life around it.
I was raised by a single mum in a rambling old farmhouse in Hatfield Heath, Essex — not posh, not poor, just full of dust and character. My dad was a bit more of a rolling stone, dropped in now and then. But his story shaped me in ways I'm still understanding. He had a rough time. Lost both his parents before the age of ten. Saw his grandmother killed in front of him during the war when a bomb dropped on the Cumberland Hotel. Of 26 relatives before the First World War, only three made it through the second. I carry that history without making a religion of it. But it's part of me. It's why I can't stomach complaining.
My mum, too, had no real parenting in her early years. She wasn't adopted until late. The result? An upbringing without much softness. But in a way, it taught me the value of resilience. These were people who didn't outsource their responsibility — they just got on with it. The real consistency in my life was things. Broken things. Old things. Solid things. Bits of machinery, wooden stools, rusty spanners — things that had stories but didn't talk. I didn't like school much. That was clear
early on. I'm dyslexic — which meant, in the eyes of 1980s teachers, either lazy or thick. I was neither. Just wired differently. I always thought the way I saw the world was perfectly logical. It just didn't match the paper in front of me. But when you're 10 years old, you don't explain that. You just get up and leave. Which I did — permanently — at 15.
I didn't grow up in the system. Or rather, I grew up dodging it. No one talked to me about what being an adult meant. No one had a conversation about the point of education — certainly not independence, or self-reliance. It was all structure, no essence. And I've been suspicious of that imbalance ever since.
I didn't meet anyone who went to university until I was about 30. That whole world — it just didn't touch mine. Instead, I was earning a tenner a day in the back of a van moving antiques, fixing Windsor chairs badly, trying to make something out of the day with my hands. I grew up fiddling with broken chairs in the back of a van, trading antiques for a tenner a day, learning how to tell a story with your hands before you ever thought of writing one down. I started Ritchie's Removals at 18. My education came through weight, friction and figuring things out.
I learned early on that family isn't just biology — it's who shows up. My mum
showed up. She worked hard, believed in me before anyone else did. And I suppose that's why I've always wanted to build communities — whether on a film set or in a village square. Family is people who do the work with you. Who shoulder the weight and walk beside you when it's easier to drift off.
“I ALWAYS THOUGHT THE WAY I SAW THE WORLD WAS PERFECTLY LOGICAL. IT JUST DIDN'T MATCH THE PAPER IN FRONT OF ME.”
That's still the way I like to work. Efficiency is romantic to me. The right tool for the job. Something that works when you're not looking. It's the same with how I build — villages, cabins, a chair, or a career. You've got to marry the conceptual with the physical. If it's just beautiful but doesn't work, it's not worth it. If it's efficient but ugly, it misses the point. The sweet spot's in the overlap: beauty that earns its keep.
What I'm trying to do — in films, in building, in community — is to reconcile those two worlds: form and function, essence and structure, the primal and the designed. You walk into one of my cabins, and sure, there's a bit of theatre about it — the roof slides off, the woodburner's ticking — but it's also designed to last, to move, to evolve.
Here's the irony: my kids prefer living here, in a cabin under a £12,000 retractable roof, than in our "proper" house. Why? Because they can see the sky. Because they can cook with fire. Because something real happens here. It's fun. It's warm. It doesn't lie to you. The same could be said of community,
storytelling, or jiu-jitsu. You have to feel it. It has to hurt a bit.
“THE EDUCATION SYSTEM DOESN’T TELL YOU THAT
I'm not a fan of dependency. That's not a boast — it's just that by then, I'd already figured out how to pay my way. I've always felt independence — real independence — is the goal. Not because it's heroic. Because it's honest. Because if you build something yourself, it'll hold you up when everything else falls away.
The education system doesn't really talk about that. Doesn't tell you that being an adult means becoming someone you can rely on. Instead, we teach young people how to shuffle around the deck of the boat — never how to swim.
At my company, of the hundred or so people we employ, only one's got a university degree. He was a captain in the army, and you can tell — he's got that old-fashioned sense of direction. He doesn't drift. And I think that's the difference between boys and men. Boys drift. Men row.
I don't like being bound by conditions, even though I often am — tethered by the very real fear around my children's wellbeing. I swing between wanting to build a village and wanting to disappear into the woods. But the village keeps winning. I believe in people. And I believe we can build places people love again — if we get the basics right.
And here's the thing: I'm not nostalgic. I'm not yearning for some lost England with top hats and handshakes. I'm yearning for the future. A better one. One
you can build with your hands and live in with your heart.
We need to solve the housing crisis, yes — but not just with units and data. With villages. With craftsmanship. With pride. Wouldn't it be nice to build something people want near them? Somewhere that fits in, not stands out. Somewhere you'd be proud to walk your kids through. That's what I'm aiming for — not the Disney version of a model village, but something that breathes and burns and means something.
Somewhere along the way I became obsessed with charcoal, pizza ovens, and stargazing. The fire draws you in — the stars remind you you're small. And if you cook your eggs on a slowly cooling oven in the morning, you start your day with a kind of poetry that's been lost.
“THE NATURAL WORLD OFFERS EVERYTHING — WARMTH, FUEL, RHYTHM, CLARITY. IT WILL TEACH YOU TO LISTEN, IF YOU'LL LET IT.”
Everything I'm interested in now — whether it's charcoal, jiu-jitsu, storytelling or stargazing — it all comes back to the same thing: how to live well, without becoming tethered to nonsense. The natural world offers everything — warmth, fuel, rhythm, clarity. It will teach you to listen, if you'll let it.
So here's the goal: build things that last. People. Buildings. Ideas. Not because they're perfect — but because they work when the storm comes. Stop asking others to define you. Don't outsource your beliefs. Don't drift. Row.
And the storm always comes.
Ten Thousand Hours
Nigel
Tait, Managing Partner at Carter-Ruck, enters not with fanfare, but with a calm authority, courteous, composed, and that particular brand of lawyerly calm that comes from decades spent keeping other people’s reputations and privacy protected from media attacks. As with many media lawyers, there’s a distinct sense that he could tell some extraordinary stories but of course, they’re all confidential and Tait is far too discreet to tell them, which is exactly why clients and referrers alike trust him.
That discretion is part of the job and it’s precisely because of his steady hand that Tait is known in legal circles as “the doyen” of media law. Many lawyers’ websites make grand claims, but in Tait’s case, it’s no exaggeration. Over the years, he’s been at the forefront of some of the UK’s most high-profile privacy and defamation cases. But as we sit down in his smart Fetter Lane office; appropriately low-key, yet at the very heart of legal London, what emerges is not just a career of highlights, but a story of personal and professional evolution against the backdrop of a rapidly shifting media and legal landscape.
Rewinding to the beginning, Tait’s entry into the profession didn’t come with a grand masterplan. In fact, he laughs as he recalls his trainee interview at Carter-Ruck saved, he says, by his last-minute glance at the back cover of Francis Pym’s Politics of Consent.
"I hadn’t read much of the book by the time of the interview but was asked what I was currently reading and what I thought of it," he says. "On the back cover a reviewer had stated that it was hard to disagree with what the author said, so I used that as my answer. It obviously worked he quips, "because I received an offer.
Over a career of almost 40 years, Tait has become a central figure in the defence of individual privacy and corporate reputation in the UK and beyond. His professional life has spanned the rise of the internet and the explosion of social media, making the early days of his career almost unrecognisable compared to today. It’s a story of rapid and at times alarming change.
“When I started,” he says, “it was telex machines, then faxes. Now, a defamatory tweet/post can reach millions in minutes and the legal consequences need to move just as fast.”
Tait has had a front-row seat for that transformation. Carter-Ruck, its reputation originally forged for its defamation and privacy work, has a now long and notable presence in Parliamentary, sanctions and International Arbitration law, advising MPs, global business leaders, companies and heads of state.
Adaptability has always been at the cornerstone of a good legal adviser but for a media law firm evolution isn’t just
important its essential. "To operate consistently at this level the firm has had to be ahead of the issues our clients face from the intricacies of digital platforms and global reputational risk to evolving concepts of privacy and the balance of freedom of expression." Tait says. Tait knows this means not only keeping pace with (and in his case developing) the law but shaping his advice so it reflects the realities of the 24/7 media environment his clients and all of us face. Tait says “clients want clarity, speed and strategy and a real awareness of the issues they’re dealing with. But above all they want results”.
“AT ITS BEST, MEDIA LAW IS ABOUT DIGNITY — GIVING PEOPLE THE TOOLS TO TELL THEIR STORY, OR PROTECT IT, WHEN IT MATTERS MOST.”
That evolution was recently recognised with the 2024 Citywealth Award for Reputation Management Law Firm of the Year, and the firm continues to sit comfortably in Band 1 of the legal directories. Tait, Spear’s magazine's Reputation Lawyer of the Year, as usual, underplays his own role in that success.
Asked to break down the role for aspiring lawyers, Tait offers a neat framework. “There are really three stages in claimant media law,” he says. “Pre-publication, that’s the firefighting stage, trying to prevent the breach of privacy/confidence or defamation
before its published which occasionally may have to involve going to court to seek an injunction. Then there is postpublication where you deal with the aftermath and seek redress. But much of our work involves keeping clients out of trouble and away from the media spotlight in the first place."
Standout moments? Tait has had plenty including PJS v News Group Newspapers, a landmark privacy case that went to the High Court, the Court of Appeal twice and finally to the Supreme Court where the UK’s highest court granted an injunction to prevent misuse of private information. "It was certainly one of the high points of my career," says Tait.
One of the less talked-about but deeply significant strands of Tait’s career has been his long-standing commitment to inclusion, particularly the advancement of women in the legal profession.
At Carter-Ruck, he supported and encouraged the Women Who Inspire (WWI) initiative, a network designed to spotlight, celebrate and empower female professionals in law and beyond.
The initiative hosts high-profile guest speakers from across business, law, media and politics, from BAFTAnominated producer Sam McAlister, best known for securing the Prince Andrew interview for Newsnight, to Baroness Helena Kennedy KC, a tireless voice for civil liberties. “These are women with extraordinary stories and impact,” says Tait. “We wanted to create a space where young female lawyers and students could hear and see what’s possible.”
It’s more than just a speaker series.
WWI now also provides mentoring, career development support and a community of shared experience. “The challenges for women in law are often structural and cultural,” Tait reflects. “We’ve got to be intentional about changing that. Not just in policy but in practice.”
For someone with such a storied CV, Tait remains focused on the future. “I love working with young lawyers and watching them grow into their careers and I am still learning myself from others.”
“I LOVE WORKING WITH YOUNG LAWYERS AND WATCHING THEM GROW INTO THEIR CAREERS AND I AM STILL LEARNING MYSELF FROM OTHERS.”
What’s the one thing he hopes young people take from his story?
“Don’t be afraid of complexity,” he says. “And never forget that what we do affects real lives. At its best, media law is about dignity, giving people the tools to tell their story, or protect it, when it matters most.”
As I leave his office, I realise that while the media landscape may be everchanging, figures like Nigel Tait provide the kind of consistency the world still badly needs. Calm in the storm, and clarity in the noise.
Let’s begin at the beginning — when you look back at your early years, were there signs even then of the path you would follow? What first awakened your passion for education and equal access?
I was born and raised in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, to Pakistani parents, and studied in a British school. It was a multicultural upbringing, fusing my Pakistani heritage with British schooling and Saudi culture and history. Even then, I noticed a clear gap. I had great resources and qualified teachers, but I saw others around me struggling due to a lack of relevant resources or underqualified teachers. It felt unfair that students faced the same standardised exams that played such a big role in our future, yet the support we received was so unequal. This firsthand experience of witnessing educational inequality was the beginning of my
You founded ZNotes at just 16. Can you take us back to that moment? What was the gap you saw — and how did you begin to build something from nothing?
At 16, I saw firsthand the inequities of the education system as I took an exam alongside hundreds of thousands of others around the world, yet each facing completely different realities. This realisation of the uneven playing field prompted me to start ZNotes.
During my IGCSEs, I had created notes to revise for myself, and after my exams, I thought to share these online so it could benefit others too. That was the first version of ZNotes. What I did not realise was that there were thousands of students around the
world looking for just that. When I started getting messages from people in different countries saying how much it had helped them, I knew this had to be built into something bigger. Suddenly, we had users coming from all over the world who not only benefited from the resources but also began offering to contribute, turning it from a solo project to a student-led movement.
Today, ZNotes is an award-winning online learning platform providing free access to high-quality learning resources and peer-learning support that has reached six million students and 40+ million hits in 190+ countries. ZNotes primarily focuses on students between the ages of 14 to 18 completing high school exams across nine national and international exam boards by providing free access to high-quality learning resources and peer-learning support.
A lot of young people have ideas, but fewer have the staying power to turn them into sustainable, global organisations. What personal qualities or mindsets do you think helped you make that leap?
I think a big part of it is being consistent. I never imagined ZNotes would become what it has today, that I would be running a global startup from an initiative I started as a teenager 11 years ago. But through my schooling and university years, I continued to stay consistent and dedicated. More importantly, I believed in solving the underlying social problem rather than being obsessed about my solution. This enabled ZNotes to continue to evolve and serve our users in the best possible way, always remaining differentiated and relevant. The habits of consistency appear in my life in other ways too, such as my dedication to my running streak (running every single day a minimum of 5km outdoors) that has now lasted over 10 years! Finally, it is about making it sustainable - I dedicated time towards ZNotes during my university years but also maintained healthy academics, social and sports activities. Whether it was racing for the UCL Cross Country team, to travelling with friends or going deep into learning about general relativity and cosmology in my maths degree, I maintained a healthy balance across my varied interests.
What do you know now that you wish you’d known when you started?
To be a leader is to empower every single individual in your team, to identify their unique traits and enable them to contribute towards the mission over a sustained period of time. It is easy to be obsessed with achieving isolated tasks and maximising productivity, but true innovation and growth as a team only happens when everyone is
empowered on that journey.
ZNotes has grown into a global movement, but it’s also still personal. How do you stay connected to your users and to the mission behind the platform?
ZNotes continues to be supported by hundreds of volunteers spanning the globe, each contributing across varying levels of engagement and skillsets. With students at the heart of everything we do, we always remain relevant and connected to our student base. Alongside our learning platform that serves millions, ZNotes also cultivates a global peer-learning community on Discord that supports tens of thousands of students. This community is a continuous source of feedback and new ideas as our platform develops.
The education sector is facing immense change — from AI to accessibility to post-pandemic inequality. What excites you about the future of learning? And what worries you?
AI has the potential to truly personalise learning at scale like never before. However, it maintains the critical challenge that any digital tool has - those across the digital divide will have inequalities exacerbated. We must consider how we bring these technologies to those most likely to be left behind. Alongside this, we must ensure the quality and delivery of content ensures cognitive development and accuracy of information. At ZNotes, we have developed a personalised AI tutor bot that answers students’ questions by using only pre-validated and syllabus-aligned learning content. Our future AI strategy continues to leverage our unique data and aligns with learning principles.
Do you believe entrepreneurship
should be a bigger part of how we educate young people today?
Entrepreneurship is not just about starting businesses; it is about problemsolving, creativity, and resilience. These are skills every young person should have, whether or not they start a company, and play an increasingly important role in future jobs in an AIpowered world.
What role do you see for policy, government, or cross-sector collaboration in fixing the structural problems in education?
Access and equity in education is a wicked problem, and it needs collaboration across the third sector, governments, corporates, and startups to really solve it. In the startup world, we have the ability to move fast, adapt quickly, and use the latest technologies to solve problems. But that mindset also comes with limitations: startups often lack resources and capacity and need to focus on narrow use cases to build sustainable models. That is not necessarily a bad thing, though, and the focus allows for innovation.
What really matters is how we collaborate with others to scale those innovations. Larger organisations like governments, multilaterals, and nonprofits bring the structure, networks, and scale that startups cannot always reach on their own. That is why collaboration is key.
For ZNotes, we have worked with amazing partners like UNDP, who have not only elevated our work but also helped us access country offices and bring our work to the ground. We have partnered with non-profits to co-create content, especially around skills. And we have had support from corporates through accelerators, funding, and credits, organisations like Samsung, AWS, Meta, EY, and many more. That
is how ZNotes continues to operate and scale impact: staying agile as a startup but growing through the strength of this wider ecosystem.
Who have been the key mentors or inspirations in your journey so far? Are there writers, thinkers, or figures you return to when you need perspective?
I have always drawn inspiration from social impact leaders like Muhammad Yunus, who pioneered microfinance with Grameen Bank. I also look up to other founders in the EdTech space like Haroon Yasin from Taleemabad, Mathieu Nebra from OpenClassrooms, and Luis von Ahn from Duolingo, who have built impactful, scalable education platforms while sustaining strong, values-driven companies that support their teams and create real employment opportunities.
I am incredibly fortunate to have a global advisory council of people I admire and can turn to for honest advice when it matters most. And beyond the professional side, the founder’s journey is deeply personal. I have been lucky to have mentors and family members who share my values and aspirations, and who have been essential to my own growth as a leader and to ZNotes’ evolution as a mission-driven organisation.
You’ve been featured by Forbes, Samsung, and UNDP — but you remain grounded. How do you stay balanced amid the demands of visibility and leadership?
I am incredibly grateful to be recognised and given the chance to share spaces with inspiring leaders and young changemakers. But it has not always been like this, much of the ZNotes journey happened without the glitz and glamour, without the visibility or global
moments. That is actually the heart of it. I did not start ZNotes for recognition, and I do not keep going because of it either.
What truly fills me with joy is hearing a meaningful piece of feedback or running into someone who tells me how ZNotes impacted their life. That is the kind of real, tangible change that matters more than any global stage. At the same time, I understand how powerful these platforms can be. They open doors to partnerships, governments, and global collaboration. So, I see it as a balance, staying grounded in the mission while recognising that visibility can help scale the impact. The mission has to stay at the centre of everything.
What does success look like to you now — and has that definition changed over time?
Success is shaped by our experiences and the things we value most at a given moment. There was a time when the only image of a “successful” startup was one with a hockey stick growth curve and a massive valuation. But that definition is already changing. Today, smaller teams with sustainable revenue models and deep impact are often seen as more successful than companies with inflated valuations and huge employee bases. Mission-driven and impactful companies are gaining more recognition, and rightly so.
My own definition of success has evolved in that same way. I see success in how much impact an organisation can create, not just externally for its users, but internally for its team. A company’s success shows up not just on its balance sheet or in its impact report, but also in the way it becomes a catalyst for others, how it inspires and supports its ecosystem.
And then there is a whole other layer of success we often overlook: the personal,
quieter parts. Success in relationships, friendships, starting families, developing as a person, maintaining health and balance, these matter just as much. In fact, they might be the only things that remain when everything else is gone.
Finally, what’s next for you and ZNotes? What are you most excited about over the coming year?
ZNotes now reaches over a million students each year with 85% of them in emerging economies. In the last year, our largest user bases have been in South Asia, Southeast Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa, and the Middle East, regions with young populations and strained education systems. What is exciting is that this growth has mostly been organic, driven by students sharing it with each other, grassroots communities, and teachers adopting the platform. Looking ahead, we are focused on scaling this impact further by going deeper. That means expanding our localised content, adding more language support, and increasing adoption through our school-focused initiative. We have already launched pilots for national curricula in places like Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Pakistan, and India, and we want to keep growing our support across Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. Leveraging AI to accelerate content development and facilitate peer-learning allows us to scale impact faster.
At the same time, we are building partnerships with NGOs, EdTech, and ministries of education so we can reach even more learners and create stronger systems of support. Through emerging AI technologies, sustainable education models, and a proven ability to execute, ZNotes is pioneering the future of equitable, technology-driven learning.
Empower your school community with innovative digital tools that support teachers, engage students, and help every learner reach their potential - an essential solution in today’s world, where technology complements teaching, not replaces it.
My problem with the word democracy to begin with is what kind of democracy are we talking about? There is a growing reaction against democracy. From where I stand, what I see is the crisis of the capitalist system coupled with a broken form of democracy.
It is natural and understandable that people lost their faith in democracy on a global level – and especially in those countries where we thought democracy was mature and well-developed. For decades, especially since the end of the Cold War, democracy has failed to fulfil its promises: the fundamental contract of equality has been cancelled by capitalism. I believe the unleashed form of capitalism called neoliberalism has taken over.
“DEMOCRACY HAS FAILED TO FULFIL ITS PROMISES: THE FUNDAMENTAL CONTRACT OF EQUALITY HAS BEEN CANCELLED BY CAPITALISM.”
People are reacting to this reality in various ways, whether it be authoritarian regimes, general cynicism against democracy or a reaction to politics. People are trying to find another system which fulfils the promises of human equality, dignity and justice.
The most important achievement of neoliberalism or capitalism is that it made us believe that it’s not an ideology – it’s the given order and the natural way of things. Many people think that this is the world –that capitalism is the world. Many people think America is capitalism. Many people do not realise that both America and humanity are bigger than this.
There are many books on this, including my How to Lose a Country.
Much of the debate around these things evades the question of capitalism, and the way in which neoliberalism deformed the idea of democracy. The idea is that if we can fix one or two things in the political machine then everything will be back to normal. The analysis also often outsources the problem to the people – we say the people don’t believe in democracy enough and that it needs to be reinvigorated.
The question became: Why did we
lose our faith in democracy? There was a massive panic after Trump came to power and there was a desperate mobilisation. We watched it from the other part of the world with pitiful eyes.
What are Trump, Modi or Erdogan supporters? They are reacting to a system but they are reacting to a system with a narrative they’ve been given. It is an essentially emotional narrative which tells the supporters that they are victims, their pride is broken and if they come together and support this strongman, he will go to the power hub, defend their pride and make the elite kneel down before them.
“FROM WHERE I STAND, WHAT I SEE IS THE CRISIS OF THE CAPITALIST SYSTEM COUPLED WITH A BROKEN FORM OF DEMOCRACY.”
It was the politics of emotions, which they are masters of, which brought those people together. The victimhood was true – it was to do with inequality. But then there was another bit: manufactured victimhood. Many of us cannot know what ordinary people feel in life. We can approach it, or glimpse it, or understand it – but we cannot feel it. We do not know the urge to feel part of a greater thing which we are living right now. These strongmen, these political leaders, promised them that, they promised them meaning and a cause – these are the things which progressives and the left in general have left behind. So
we need to go back to emotion, cause, faith, meaning.
“THE MOST IMPORTANT ACHIEVEMENT OF NEOLIBERALISM IS THAT IT MADE US BELIEVE IT’S NOT AN IDEOLOGY — IT’S THE NATURAL WAY OF THINGS.”
I left my country in 2016 because the fear was paralyzing and it was impossible to do any intellectual work. I moved to Zagreb on the borders of Europe. I was watching the same movie on a bigger screen with more high definition. I was going around in Europe and the United States saying: “This is what is going to happen to you.” It took them quite a long time to accept that the crisis they were going through was different. They thought things happened in Turkey because it’s a Muslim country, in India because it’s a crazy country –Western exceptionalism blinded them to what was really going on.
But they forgot there are seven easy steps from democracy to dictatorship, which I outline in How to Lose a Country . They just don’t always happen in the same order. So what’s the common reason? It was capitalistic ideals taking over democracy. It was eating up what was left of democracy.
Modi and Trump were caricatures of human cynicism. There were serious articles in 2016 that Trump would only last one year – and now there is a Supreme Court hearing about his immunity. The fact is fascism – and
I do not call it rightwing populism anymore - is inherently present in the neoliberal system and we realised it too late.
Some people wanted to see people in army boots when we talk of fascism. This was necessary in the 1930s when there was a massive workers’ movement. Today, there is no such massive strong workers’ movement or leftist movement. Actually, they can come to power through clownish figures such as Trump.
It was painful to see American democracy come to pieces in four years. Modi, Erdogan – these are political animals. They had fascist or political Islamist organisations which had been there for decades. Trump had nothing, just funny hair and a television show and we saw the whole mechanism coming down.
“FASCISM IS INHERENTLY PRESENT IN THE NEOLIBERAL SYSTEM — AND WE REALISED IT TOO LATE.”
We have to do something globally about this. We have to share information – and my part of the world has to share experience and yours share the stamina. Ask anyone in Turkey or India, and they’re exhausted. First, we have to come to the agreement that the system is inhumane.
Finito recently hosted a special breakfast at the East India Club, bringing together a wide-ranging group of guests from across politics, business, law, media, and education. Among the attendees were Professor Michael Mainelli, Romie Tager KC, David Landsman OBE, Lady Lucy French, Giles Clarke, and many others. The guest of honour was the Rt Hon Sir Ed Davey MP, Leader of the Liberal Democrats, who delivered a deeply personal and timely address on the themes of care, leadership, and the urgent need for social reform. The event was generously sponsored by entrepreneur and philanthropist Dinesh Dhamija, who also took a
moment to present Sir Ed with a hat with the Liberal Democrat colours on it in a gesture that combined humour with high regard. “This is today’s stunt,” said Davey.
Speaking without notes, Sir Ed shared a moving and often raw account of how his personal story has shaped his political mission—and why the issue of care should be at the heart of how we think about policy, the NHS, and the future of the economy. Below, we publish an edited version of his remarks:
I wrote Why I Care: And Why Care Matters because so much of my life has been shaped by caring—not just
in policy terms, but in deeply personal ways. I wanted to tell my story, but more than that, I wanted to tell the story of over seven million people in the UK who care for a loved one every single day and yet are rarely seen or heard in our political discourse.
My father died when I was four. He was diagnosed in November and gone by March. I didn’t really know him, but he did everything he could in those final months to protect us— leaving a will to support our education and letters to each of his sons. That sense of love, of being cared for even in absence, stayed with me.
My mother was extraordinary. She
held our family together in the aftermath of that loss. But when I was twelve, she became seriously ill with cancer. My brothers and I, alongside our grandparents, became her carers. I spent countless hours by her side. That experience, painful as it was, taught me resilience—and taught me that a stable, loving family can carry you through almost anything.
Later in life, I looked after my grandmother. And today, my wife and I care for our son John, who has a serious neurological condition. These experiences don’t just inform my politics; they define them. They’ve shown me how broken our system is, but also how much possibility there is for change—if only we have the courage to prioritise care as the essential infrastructure of a functioning society.
For too long, we've talked about reforming social care in the abstract. Since 1997, there have been 27 reviews and commissions, two rounds
of legislation—and yet we’re still stuck. Meanwhile, the NHS is under immense pressure, in part because people can’t be discharged due to a lack of proper care provision.
But here’s the thing: if we supported family carers properly, if we recognised them as partners rather than invisible assets, we could transform not just the care system but the wider economy. It’s not just a moral imperative—it’s a financial one.
In my constituency, a group of carers for people with dementia formed a WhatsApp group. That simple act—no massive funding, no grand strategy— reduced isolation, increased access to advice, and extended people’s capacity to care for their loved ones at home. It worked. It’s those kinds of low-cost, high-impact innovations we need to scale.
The medical profession, for all its brilliance, often overlooks family carers. My wife and I have seen this firsthand when advocating for our son.
Too often, decisions are made without the people who know the patient best. That mindset has to change.
Care isn’t sentimental—it’s structural. If we get it right, we reduce hospital admissions, improve wellbeing, and save money. But more than that, we become a better society—one that values reciprocity, understands vulnerability, and rewards empathy.
I also talk in the book about the anthropologist Marcel Mauss, and his idea of the gift—not just as a material exchange, but as a moral contract. That’s how I see caring. It’s not a transaction. It’s a relationship. It’s the essence of being human.
We have to think differently—about how we train, how we plan housing, how we support working carers, and how we build a culture that doesn’t isolate people as they age, but integrates them. It’s not about sentiment. It’s about systems. And it’s long overdue.
AGAINST INCURIOSITY
Why do we turn a blind eye?
Breaking down the digital lingo
FIGUERES IT OUT
Our Latest Bursary Candidate
CHRISTOPHER JACKSON
Judi Dench doesn’t walk; she glides. Even at 90, she seems to move as though through some different element — air, yes, but mixed with light. There’s an effortlessness to her presence, a practiced grace that doesn’t just enter a room; it reshapes it. I see a group of girls have their photo taken with her, and when she moves away they jump up and down in delight like they’ve just finished their final exams: “She’s so lovely!”
The scene is Claridge’s and her 90th birthday – well, not exactly, since her real birthday was last year and it is now May 2025, as close to her 91st birthday as that other milestone. In fact, it’s a fundraiser organised by the photographer and protégé of Henry Moore Gemma Levine to help raise funds and awareness for lymphoedema research. This is a disease that rarely receives the attention it deserves, despite its often devastating effects. Since her own diagnosis, Levine has thrown herself into the cause with both urgency and grace, and this event was another example of how she leverages art for activism.
As part of her training, Dench was taught what is known as the Alexander
Technique, and I notice how a fluency of movement characterises her, and how a spatial awareness is still there even in someone now very near total blindness.
All of the famous have their power. In my own life, I remember the gallery of the well-known: the jauntiness of Roger Daltrey; the quiet bafflement of Andre Agassi at all the fanfare; Sting’s seigneurial good cheer.
And it’s never anything less than very bizarre.
Often I’ve seen a well-known person arrive at an event and, almost involuntarily, you flinch slightly. There’s a ritual in that moment, one which both parties know by heart: the person is recognised; the observer performs recognition. And in the eye of the storm, the famous person — that weary dancer in a dance they never quite chose — steels themselves once more.
It is sometimes possible to see her there up on the stage and think that there must be many better things in the world than to be globally famous and admired. It’s possible to study Shakespeare all your life, to devote every fibre of yourself to the transmission of language, memory, and meaning, and to find yourself paraded in public like some curious relic — an artefact of culture in a time that increasingly undervalues it.
Despite this, grace can go a long way, and as I talk to Dench while she’s being sculpted I notice that she has a considerable amount of that. I am aware too that she must be under a certain amount of stress, not being able to see, and sensing people, coming in and out of her orbit, but not knowing who they might be. Even for someone
used to being looked at, this must be difficult. Even so, there is no hint of diminishment.
For a while I must admit I’m one of those looking at her and this gives me a moment to look at the famous face, and then look at the sculpted likeness by Frances Segelman. “I can imagine what Dame Maggie Smith would say if she were alive today. How wonderful to see Judi being turned to a monument before our eyes.”
Segelman works swiftly and clearly enjoys her work. What one thinks as one watches is not just of this face: the kindly eyes, the look of earned wisdom and the quiet dignity – but of all the characters it’s also inhabited.
This is the face that has been Queen Victoria in Mrs Brown and again in Victoria & Abdul, where warmth and steel lived side by side. It's the face that was both commanding and broken as Iris Murdoch in Iris, and that brought a quiet, terrifying gravitas to M in the James Bond franchise. On stage, it’s been Ophelia, Cleopatra, Lady Macbeth – each one rendered unforgettable with that unmistakable blend of clarity, humanity, and force.
Across film, theatre, and television, Dench has worn the masks of monarchs, matriarchs, mentors, and mischiefmakers – from the imperious Queen Elizabeth I in Shakespeare in Love to the humorous and warm-hearted Jean in As Time Goes By. The face Segelman sculpts is not just Judi Dench’s; it is layered with the memories of all the lives she has brought to life – a composite of performance, power, and presence.
She has moved audiences in quieter, more intimate roles too – as the devoted Philomena Lee searching for a lost son, or the steadfast Mrs. Fairfax in Jane Eyre. Each portrayal feels deeply lived-
in, shaped by empathy and an acute understanding of human complexity. Even in smaller parts, she lends depth and nuance that make scenes linger in memory.
What Segelman captures is not just a likeness, but a legacy – the embodiment of a performer who has shaped the emotional landscape of British acting for more than six decades. Dench's face, rendered in clay, holds more than expression: it holds stories, centuries, and an enduring commitment to truth in performance.
As the speeches went on, Dench, ever the professional, dissolved the reverence with a deft quip: "I hope you’ve got my good side," she said to the sculptor, with perfect comic precision. The room exhaled.
To understand Judi Dench, one must return not just to the geography of her beginnings, but to the atmosphere. Born
in 1934 in Heworth, a suburb of York, Judith Olivia Dench grew up in a house where the arts were not some lofty ideal but part of the nature of daily life. Her father, Reginald, was a GP and medical officer for York Theatre Royal; her mother, Eleanora, a devout Irish Catholic who valued education and civility. In respect of the latter, we can imagine that Dench may have drawn on her in her most recent great role in Sir Kenneth Branagh’s Belfast. It was at this intersection of science, discipline, faith and theatre that Judi Dench was formed.
She was the youngest of three children. Her elder brother Jeffery Dench would go on to become a respected Shakespearean actor himself, and it was in watching him perform that young Judi had her first brush with destiny. She has spoken often of the moment she saw her brother playing in Macbeth at St. Peter's School, York. The line — "What bloody man is that?" — shocked and enthralled her. “Shakespeare was swearing!” she recalled, wide-eyed, even in later retellings. She was seven or eight, and she was hooked.
“SHE DOESN’T PERFORM TO SHOW OFF. SHE PERFORMS TO SERVE THE WORK — AND PERHAPS, DEEPER STILL, TO SERVE THE TRUTH.”
From those early years, she was marked not by arrogance, but by an intense, almost sacred curiosity. One of her childhood friends later recalled that Judi "seemed older than the rest of us, even when she was little. There was something in the eyes." Those eyes, which convey so extraordinarily everything from Iris Murdoch’s bafflement at her own declining powers to Lady Macbeth’s hunger for power, have been an essential part of her art ever since.
Dench's path to the stage wasn’t linear. Her first ambition was to become a set designer. It was only when she attended the Central School of Speech and Drama in London — then housed at the Royal Albert Hall — that she began to move from behind the scenes to centre stage. Her time at drama school has become semi-mythical. In her first audition, the examiner famously told her she would never work in film due to her "funny face."
And yet that face — now iconic — has gone on to inhabit queens, spies, lovers, mystics, and mothers with an emotional clarity that has moved generations. It’s a useful reminder not to listen to people who say you can’t do something – the truth is that many people have secret potential within them, and that this simply needs to be allied to the will, as it was in the case of Dench.
At Central, she trained under luminaries like Yat Malmgren and was part of a golden generation that included Vanessa Redgrave and Ian McKellen; the latter would decades later play Macbeth to Dench’s Lady Macbeth in seminal roles for them both. One of her teachers, who later directed her, remarked that Judi "listened harder than anyone I ever taught. She was completely present." It is a reminder of the importance of commitment to a task.
After graduation, she joined the Old Vic Company and made her stage debut as Ophelia in Hamlet in 1957. To this role, she brought a startling freshness and emotional directness. Though it was her professional debut, Dench was already marked by an instinctive clarity of speech and a remarkable emotional intelligence. Her Ophelia was not a fragile, ornamental figure, but a young woman whose descent into madness felt palpably real — driven not by hysteria, but by heartbreak and confusion in a collapsing moral world.
Dench avoided sentimentality, instead grounding Ophelia in a youthful
sincerity that made her unraveling all the more painful to witness. Audiences and critics noted her expressive face and voice — tools she would later wield with great power — already carrying the seeds of the control and grace that would define her career. In a role often reduced to tragic passivity, Dench offered something more searching: the quiet fury of a woman undone not by weakness, but by betrayal.
From there, she joined the Royal Shakespeare Company, where she would become a cornerstone. But it wasn’t all triumph. Early reviews were sometimes tepid. A Times critic once dismissed her Cleopatra as "too small, too northern, too polite."
And yet, she remained grounded. One former stage manager described her as "the most generous person in the green room."
What we begin to see here is a career not built on celebrity, but on trust: trust from colleagues, trust in the work, and ultimately, trust from the audience. That trust has never been broken.
There is a moment in every great artist’s life when imitation gives way to innovation — when homage transforms into authorship. For Judi Dench, that transition didn’t come with fanfare or flashing lights, but like a candle taking to flame: quiet, resolute, irreversible.
It began at the Royal Shakespeare Company — that fabled, ruthless crucible — where Dench, still in her twenties, found herself among titans. She didn’t blink. Instead, she watched. Paul Scofield, with his extraordinary presence best gauged today in A Man For All Seasons; the legendary Peggy Ashcroft; Ian Holm, flickering with intensity. She was learning not in classrooms but in the theatre itself — from how they entered a scene, how they paused, how they said nothing. Greatness was not a performance, she realised. It was an accumulation of attentiveness. It is out of the crucible of this experience that Dench’s particular kind of watchful acting was born: by
paying attention herself, she discovered over time that her acting could have exactly the intelligence of someone learning about the world. All her performances show people unusually alert to the world, and this is why we watch her so minutely – because it tracks our sense of how life might be if we were similarly switched on.
“SHE NEVER SHOUTS. SHE BARELY GESTURES. BUT SHE LISTENS SO COMPLETELY THAT EVERYONE AROUND HER BECOMES BETTER.”
One day, she was rehearsing The Merchant of Venice and faltering. John Gielgud, never one to dispense compliments lightly, murmured from the darkness: “Don’t push. The words will carry you.” That phrase — deceptively simple — became something like a mantra. She understood that the actor’s job wasn’t to impress but to channel. Not to dominate a text, but to be possessed by it.
I ask Dench what Shakespeare would have been like to meet, and she says, unconsciously echoing Scofield’s most famous film role: “A Man for all Seasons.”
Would he have been the quietest person in the room? “Perhaps,” she says, “but certainly the most intelligent.”
The anecdotes from this time are instructive. Peter Hall once stopped a rehearsal and, after a long silence, simply said, “Judi, you're not acting the emotion — you’re being it. Carry on.” And so she did. With quiet ferocity and humble genius.
Simon Callow — her later friend and sometime co-star — first encountered her as a member of the audience. He was watching television, the four-part John Hopkins masterpiece Talking to a Stranger. “She was on fire,” he said. “The camera didn’t just love her — it obeyed her.” The performance was a psychological scalpel: Dench playing a daughter navigating the wreckage of family, each episode rotating the point of view like a lens turned to focus. Even then, she had that extraordinary control — to let the emotion tremble just behind the line, waiting, coiled.
From the outset, she rejected the glitz. After curtain calls and critical raves, she would retreat. Make tea. Call her mum. "You mustn’t believe them when they say you’re brilliant," she once said. "Because then you might have to believe them when they say you’re not."
There’s something profound in that: a refusal to be made a monument while still breathing. A faith in work, not worship. And what astonishing work it was. There was Sally Bowles in Cabaret, a part so closely associated with Liza Minnelli that it might have been suicide to attempt it. But Dench was “the quintessence,” said Callow. Her
Sally wasn’t all sparkle and sin — she was bruised, human, riveting. You saw a person, not a performance.
There was London Assurance, that halfforgotten gem from Dion Boucicault, dusted off and suddenly glimmering, thanks to Dench and Donald Sinden. Critics didn’t know what to do with it. The text was antiquated, fussy — and yet she made it sing. Pregnant with her daughter Finty during the run, she joked about being wildly miscast as a dewy Gloucestershire ingénue. But her comedic timing was surgical. She made every syllable land.
These weren’t just performances; they were demonstrations of a philosophy. Dench doesn’t perform to show off. She performs to serve the work — and perhaps, deeper still, to serve the truth. Her entire career has had that sense of being in quiet alignment with something larger. She carries lines like prayers. You get the feeling she’s never said a word on stage or screen she didn’t first feel vibrating in her bones.
The genius of Judi Dench lies in her restraint. She never shouts. She barely gestures. But she listens so completely that everyone around her becomes better. Like all great artists, she seems
less interested in expressing herself than in making herself available to expression. Her mentors taught her to aim for the real. They taught her to distrust applause. They showed her how to be timeless without ever seeking to be fashionable.
And so she became something rare in British theatre: an actress whose fame does not obscure her, but clarifies her. Whose presence on stage makes everything else more visible. Whose entire life is an argument for the kind of greatness that is only possible through attention, patience, and a nearly devotional humility.
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After the sculpting had finished and the crowd had begun to disperse into
Claridge’s mirrored corridors, I found myself chatting with Finty Williams — Judi Dench’s daughter. Finty had just performed a poem onstage which she had written for her mother, and I was moved by it: I could sense that performing the poem had been hard and so asked if she wrote poems generally. “This is my only one,” she said and I expressed surprise and congratulated her on it.
“YOU DON’T WATCH DENCH IN IRIS; YOU ACHE ALONGSIDE HER.”
It was a soft moment after the spectacle, and something about Finty’s openness made it clear: she has grown used to living next to greatness — and though it has likely not been an easy life, she has
handled it well, and is now an important support to her mother. I notice when she takes me over to Dame Judi, that she whispers in her ear: “Don’t worry, it’s only me” – meaning perhaps that the evening is indeed a little bit of an ordeal for her mother.
But before that moment, I learn a bit more about Finty, who is an actress in her own right. There is a trait I pick up on too and which I often find among the sons and daughters of the well-known – a kind of deliberate downplaying, designed to ground your life in something realer and more helpful than fame. She is the sort of person who seems to know — without ever needing to say so — that the world will never quite see her without comparing her to her mother. And yet she speaks of Judi not as a figure of public adoration, but as something deeper, something quieter: her mum.
Has it had its benefits? “She’s always been just there,” Finty said. “That sounds banal, but I mean it in the best way. Always listening. Always ready. The only time I ever used Mum’s fame is when I had a huge crush on Antonio Banderas and she managed to get me along to a film premier to meet him. I was so incredibly star-struck.”
Which tells you quite a lot about the absurdity of celebrity, as it’s not too difficult to imagine Banderas in turn being star-struck by Finty’s mother. Although he may not have been, one might say that given their respective acting abilities, he perhaps should have. Finty has often offered a warmly candid glimpse of what it’s like living in the orbit of someone so globally known—both the perks and the little absurdities. She’s spoken about the moment their family went public with Tom & Geri, her mother’s beloved stage show, joking that fame became real when everyone at school started calling her “Dame Judi’s daughter.” From that moment on, everyday family life—shopping trips, casual meals—were seen through a new lens. Finty recalls her dear mum taking a deliberately normal role at home, one who adored cooking simple dinners and quietly retreating after a shoot. In these reflections, you see not the actress commanding stages and screen, but the mother coming off set, shedding roles and fame, and stepping gently back into familiar routines—always a little bit more tired but firmly grounded in the cocoon of family.
I then find myself saying that it’s a curious thing to talk to celebrities and say that it would be very interesting to ask Judi abut Shakespeare. Finty, cheerfully and kindly, says: “Well, let’s go and ask her.”
And so the career continued. It’s impossible here to survey the breadth and depth of the work. It is not that she has played many roles. It’s that she has redefined how those roles are meant to be played.
Let’s begin with Macbeth. Dench first performed Lady Macbeth for the RSC in 1976 opposite Ian McKellen. It is, by all accounts, one of the greatest performances ever given in the role. McKellen himself, not exactly prone to hyperbole, called her “demonic, carnal, and terrifying — like a woman possessed.” But what made it special was not its volume but its silence. Her Lady Macbeth did not scream for power — she whispered it into the ear of fate. And in doing so, she transformed the role from the shrill into the shrewd.
“IN A WORLD OF SHOUTING, SHE LISTENS. IN AN INDUSTRY OF SURFACE, SHE GIVES US DEPTH.”
Then there was A Midsummer Night’s Dream, where she played Titania while heavily pregnant. “I looked like a Christmas tree,” she would later joke. But the effect was anything but comical. In her hands, Titania became a force of nature — not merely a fairy queen, but a matriarch of the cosmos, wielding her magic with earthy sensuality and unimpeachable command. It is worth pausing to reflect on this: how many actresses could go from Lady Macbeth to Titania without breaking stride? And do so while working on tight budgets, in freezing rehearsal
rooms, while raising a child, while staying human.
And then came the screen years — or, perhaps more accurately, the screen’s surrender to her.
Let’s talk about Iris (2001), where Dench played the older Iris Murdoch, while Kate Winslet portrayed her in youth. In that film, the descent into Alzheimer’s is rendered not as tragedy but as bewilderment. Dench didn’t act illness. She acted the slow disappearance of language. She made you feel the theft of memory. One of the final scenes, where Iris can no longer speak but smiles faintly at her husband, was described by The New Yorker as “an education in how to act without words.” You don’t watch Dench in Iris; you ache alongside her.
And then, of course, there was M.
When Dench was cast as M in GoldenEye (1995), the franchise had just endured the end of the Cold War and was looking for reinvention. What they got, when Dench entered, was revelation. In one scene, she refers to Bond as a “sexist, misogynist dinosaur,” and you could feel the tectonic plates of cinema shift. Here was authority not as masculinity, but as intellect. As stillness. As wit sharpened like a blade. She brought ballast to Bond, grounding the fantasy with something like actual stakes.
Pierce Brosnan was so intimidated he practically wilted on screen — and it worked. Judi was the real power in the room, and everyone knew it.
She would return again and again, reprising the role until her character’s death in Skyfall (2012), in a scene so touching it reduced audiences to stunned silence. No other character in Bond had ever been allowed a farewell like that. Because no one else had earned it.
“YOU DON’T DIRECT JUDI. YOU LISTEN TO HER. YOU WATCH WHAT SHE’S DOING AND THEN, IF YOU’RE LUCKY, YOU GET OUT OF THE WAY.”
Kenneth Branagh, who directed her in Belfast (2021), said recently: “You don’t direct Judi. You listen to her. You watch what she’s doing and then, if you’re lucky, you get out of the way.”
In Belfast, she plays the grandmother — and in the hands of any other actor, that would’ve been a minor role. But with Dench, it becomes the emotional fulcrum of the film. Her eyes, framed in soft light, seem to contain all of Northern Ireland’s pain and resilience. You don’t realise until the final scene how much you’ve depended on her to keep the whole film afloat. And when she’s gone, the film dims slightly, like someone has turned down the wattage on the screen.
She’s often asked how she prepares. Her answer is always the same: “I don’t. I learn my lines, and I try to tell the truth.”
This is not false modesty. It is a reminder that acting, in her philosophy, is not about artifice but about access — access to feeling, to silence, to timing. There’s a scene in Notes on a Scandal (2006) where Dench’s character manipulates Cate Blanchett’s with the subtlest flick of an eyebrow. It’s not the words. It’s the breath between them.
Critics have tried, for decades, to name her magic. “Effortless,” they say. “Invisible technique.” “Stage presence.”
But perhaps the best summation came from Ian McKellen: “She has a soul that listens. Most actors are trying to be heard. Judi is always hearing.”
And perhaps that is the secret. In a world of shouting, she listens. In an industry of surface, she gives us depth. She is not above us. She is among us — and yet, somehow, ahead of us.
Watching Judi Dench perform is to be reminded not only of what acting can be, but of what people can be, if they choose grace over ego, truth over display, and excellence over fame.
There is a temptation, with the elderly, to patronise — to use words like “sprightly” or “sharp as a tack,” as if mental clarity after 85 were an amusing party trick. But Dench obliterates that kind of thinking. She is — and there is no better word — present. Utterly, unnervingly so. You feel it in conversation: her gaze locks onto yours like a camera lens. You say something half-clever, and she quietly raises an eyebrow — not in judgement, but in a kind of mischievous encouragement. When she speaks, it’s not about
herself. It’s about the work. About the people she’s learned from, especially Shakespeare. “He was capable of being all things, “she says, “of imagining his way into every condition or attitude of life.”
What is it which makes the work so good? “It is all to do with intelligence. If a writer isn’t intelligent then they simply can’t surprise you – and they certainly can’t create work which endures like his does. I think what we’re seeing is somebody who is always in some way ahead of us. It’s this which accounts for the richness of the work.”
So the work is satisfying down the generations because intellect is always satisfying? “That’s right – it’s something that crosses the generations and is always exciting. That’s how it seems to me – it never seems to lose interest, only to gain it, the more you understand it.”
She is looking in my general direction, and I wonder what it’s like for her to be talking to me: am I shape? A strange suggestion of an interviewer? Or can she make me out a bit.
Not everything we say is serious. I say I heard that one of the soldiers in Macbeth ended up being eaten on the toilet by the T-Rex in Jurassic Park (1993). It’s not quite that she shrieks at
Born in York, England, to a doctor and a dressmaker; raised in a Quaker household, which instilled in her a lifelong sense of social conscience and humility.
1957
Made her professional debut with the Old Vic, playing Ophelia in Hamlet across Europe and the US.
Graduated from the Central School of Speech and Drama, London. Described by her tutor as “without peer.”
Joined the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC), where she would spend decades redefining the great heroines of Shakespeare.
Starred in the seminal TV series Talking to a Stranger, which established her as a major dramatic talent and earned critical acclaim.
that but she is obviously delighted: “Yes that was a surprise ending, wasn’t it?”
It is a nice image of how her own career has alternated between high art and the popular – how an actor today might be mastering iambic pentameter one minute, then eaten alive on by a dinosaur on a commode.
But as I speak with her, I notice the precision of her speech. It was said of the tennis great Roger Federer that he always seemed to have more time on the ball: Dench is a bit like this in interview,
her answers seeming to come with a surprising immediacy and clarity. One suspects that this might be to do with the years spent caring — really caring — about each syllable of text. It’s the choice, again and again, to show up with all of yourself, whether you’re starring in a West End production or recording a radio play in a damp BBC basement.
I also get another sense. That kindness, in Dench’s world, isn’t decoration — it’s foundation. She has spent her life refusing the cynicism that so often
creeps into fame. She doesn’t wield her celebrity like a sceptre. She wears it like the shawl she is wearing on the night I meet her — something to be shrugged off when it gets in the way.
As our conversation continued, Finty hovered protectively, as daughters do, not with panic, but with love that had clearly been deeply rehearsed across years.
Appointed Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) for services to drama.
Cemented her role as M in the James Bond franchise, culminating in Skyfall — a performance that gave the role gravitas and unexpected emotional weight.
Won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for Shakespeare in Love, despite only appearing for eight minutes of screen time.
There’s a moment just before the curtain rises — the hush, the breath, the eyes adjusting to shadow. It’s the moment when lesser actors panic, when the body betrays you with sweat, tremor, or forgetfulness. Judi Dench has admitted to this feeling. “I’m always frightened,” she has said. “Always.” But she shows up anyway.
What is that? Bravery? Grit? Madness? Or something rarer still — grace?
To understand Dench, one must understand not only her performances but
the psychology beneath them. Dr. Paul Hokemeyer, the distinguished psychologist and author, has spent a career studying what he calls “grace under pressure” — and he places Judi Dench in that rare category of individuals who have mastered it.
“She speaks often about nerves before a performance,” Hokemeyer tells me.
“And yet what she delivers is brilliance with warmth and control. That’s not contradiction. That’s grit — the ability to tolerate discomfort in pursuit of something meaningful.”
Nominated for an Academy Award for her performance in Belfast, directed by Kenneth Branagh, marking nearly 60 years at the forefront of British acting.
“THE SPOTLIGHT IS NOT HOME. THE PERFORMANCE, HOWEVER BRILLIANT, IS ONLY ONE PART OF A LARGER LIFE.”
In this framing, Dench’s stage fright is not a flaw but a feature. It means she still cares. It means the work still
matters. Hokemeyer explains that highfunctioning people — whether actors, CEOs, or parents at the school gates — often experience intense emotion just before key moments. But what separates the truly exceptional is the ability to narrate those feelings without being controlled by them.
“She knows those nerves are part of the deal,” Hokemeyer says. “They give meaning to what she’s doing. And she knows that on the other side of that discomfort is something extraordinary.”
This is not just a professional skill. It is a life skill.
You see it in the way Dench handles interviews — gently correcting the questioner when they overstep, but never shaming them. You see it in the way she navigates fame — not with the hauteur of someone bored by attention, but with the amused patience of someone who knows it to be both ridiculous and, at times, useful. At one point, when I wish her Happy Birthday, she almost yelps: “But it was six months ago! This whole thing is just obscene!” But she is here, I can see, for her friend – and to do whatever she can to fight her friend’s disease.
Hokemeyer calls this ability “participant observation” — the capacity to be both in the experience and outside it, observing it. Judi, he says, has perfected this. “She can be in the moment emotionally, but also aware of how that moment fits into a larger story — the character’s, the audience’s, her own.”
It’s an emotional and intellectual feat. And it’s made possible by what Hokemeyer calls “a cultivated grace.”
“Grace is not just personality,” he says. “It can be learned. Judi Dench has it naturally, yes. But she’s also practiced it — with every line she’s delivered, every silence she’s held. She knows how to move through the world without causing
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harm. That’s the most elegant kind of power.”
In a world of overstimulation, where noise is often mistaken for significance, Dench reminds us that attention is a kind of gift. That composure is not about suppression but about alignment. That to be still is sometimes the most radical thing you can do.
Watching her, you get the sense that she’s not performing for applause. She’s not even performing for us. She’s performing for something older — perhaps even eternal. Call it craft. Call it vocation. Call it, simply, the work.
And when that work is done — when she
steps away from the stage or the screen — she does not seek validation. She seeks tea. A dog to walk. A friend to call.
This, too, is part of the psychology of grace. Knowing that the role is not the self. That the spotlight is not home. That the performance, however brilliant, is only one part of a larger life.
Hokemeyer leaves me with one final thought: “In moments of pressure, I sometimes ask my clients: What would Dame Judi do? The answer is usually to pause. To listen. To act with kindness and courage. And then — to go on.”
Go on. That’s the phrase that keeps echoing.
Go on, despite fear. Go on, despite grief. Go on, because you still have something to give.
It’s what she’s done, again and again. And it is, perhaps, the truest definition of grace there is.
What do you do when your role model is still better than everyone else?
It’s a question that young actors — and older ones too, if they’re honest — ask whenever Dame Judi Dench appears on screen. Her very presence is both galvanising and humbling: a reminder that mastery doesn’t always roar, and that longevity isn’t a fluke — it’s a form of character.
But Dench’s career also invites a more uncomfortable question: would a Judi Dench be allowed to become Judi Dench today?
Consider the landscape. Young actors today enter an industry more saturated and less forgiving. Image often trumps depth. Audiences scroll faster than they watch. Casting directors want followers, not apprenticeship. And yet — into that world, Judi Dench still stands as proof that another path is possible.
“SHE LEAVES A TRAIL NOT OF APPLAUSE BUT OF TRANSFORMATION.”
She didn’t come up through YouTube, she wasn’t "discovered" on a whim, and she certainly never danced for the algorithm. Instead, she trained. She waited. She failed. She learned. And slowly, carefully, she built something. The arts are always in crisis. This is
not new. But the current crises — of funding, of attention span, of cultural memory — have a way of making serious artistry feel like an endangered species. And yet, when Dench appears, something shifts. For a moment, we remember what we’re losing if we let the craft fall away.
She is proof that the long game still matters.
At 90, she is still working — albeit more selectively — and still changing how we understand what an actress can be. In an industry that too often discards women after 40, she has redefined late style. In an ecosystem allergic to subtlety, she’s made minimalism magnetic. And in a world that insists on categorising us — dramatic or comic, stage or screen — she has wandered freely, obliterating borders.
But more than her roles, it’s her approach that has created space for others. She is not jealous of younger talent. She praises them. She watches them. She invites them in. This generosity is not theatrical; it’s ethical. And yet she never makes it easy for them. She is, in her way, an accidental gatekeeper. Not because she excludes — but because she raises the bar. Anyone aspiring to the life she has lived must confront not only her greatness, but the path it took to get there. The hours. The humility. The discipline.
This is the quiet revolution of Judi Dench. Not in speeches, but in choices. Not in manifestos, but in presence. She has made it harder for the culture to reward laziness — and harder still for it to forget what greatness looks like.
She also reminds us that the arts, when properly valued, are not a luxury but a necessity. In every society, there are those who interpret, who translate, who empathise and echo. That’s what actors do — and what Judi Dench has done
better than most. She has reflected us back to ourselves — sometimes flatteringly, sometimes not — and asked us to look more closely.
She once told a young actor: “Don’t act the part. Be the person. Make me believe you exist.”
That advice applies just as well to the industry itself. Make us believe you exist — with integrity, with rigour, with meaning. Give us stories that hold rather than manipulate. Give us the patience to care again.
We need Dench not only for her talent, but for the reminder that real opportunity isn’t about being in the right place at the right time. It’s about staying in the game long enough to earn your moment — and then using that moment to lift others.
There is something profoundly hopeful in this.
Because if someone like Judi Dench — born in 1934 in York, in a time before television, in a country still reeling from war — could become the most beloved actor of her generation without ever compromising her values, then perhaps it is still possible.
Perhaps the next Dench is out there now — in a cramped flat, reading Shakespeare out loud to no one, wondering if it will ever matter.
And perhaps, one day, it will.
My favourite Judi Dench performance? It’s actually not quite so well-known. It’s her rendition of Send in the Clowns by Stephen Sondheim.
She performed it during a revival of A Little Night Music in the mid1990s at the National Theatre, and it is, simply, devastating. Dench doesn’t sing it with the technical perfection of a classically trained vocalist — that’s not the point. She speaks-sings it with such raw, controlled emotion that the pauses between the lines are almost as powerful as the words themselves. Every syllable is loaded with regret, affection, bitterness, and self-knowledge. It’s a masterclass in how a song can become a monologue.
What makes it so unforgettable is that Dench doesn’t perform the song — she performs Desirée’s heartbreak. When she sings “Isn’t it rich?” she doesn’t project — she almost whispers, as if the
line has just occurred to her. And when she reaches “Well, maybe next year,” the irony is like a blade. In her hands, Send in the Clowns becomes not just a torch song, but a quiet, perfectly measured collapse — one that leaves the audience breathless and utterly undone.
All of this is why, in the end, it is not the accolades that define Judi Dench — though there are many — but the effect. She leaves a trail not of applause but of transformation.
To meet her, to watch her work, to speak with those who love her, is to enter a kind of moral weather system. You find yourself recalibrating — not just what you thought about acting, but what you thought about what it means to move through the world.
At 90, she does not insist on reverence. She rolls her eyes at sentimentality. She would, one suspects, be slightly horrified by all this fuss. “I just got on with it,” she’d probably say, and she wouldn’t be lying — but she’d be omitting the miracle of how she did so.
She got on with it while reimagining Shakespeare for new generations. She got on with it while elevating every actor lucky enough to share her stage. She got on with it while grieving, while laughing, while ageing in public. And she continues to get on with it — because for her, the work is never done. Not because she’s restless. But because she’s faithful.
“JUDI DENCH HAS MADE IT HARDER FOR THE CULTURE TO REWARD LAZINESS — AND HARDER STILL FOR IT TO FORGET WHAT GREATNESS LOOKS LIKE.”
Remember again the story she tells about being taken as a child to see her brothers perform Macbeth, and that one line which caught her ear: “What bloody man is that?” And something stirred. She was, she says, “bewitched.”
The word is perfect. She has never stopped being bewitched — by language, by mystery, by the need to tell stories. And in return, she has bewitched us.
If we are lucky, we will see her again — on screen, or on stage, or perhaps just walking down a street, where someone might do a double-take, unsure whether they’ve seen a person or a statue come to life.
In truth, she is both.
Why it’s great:
Dench’s portrayal was ferocious and elemental — an interpretation that suggested not madness, but calculation and buried trauma. Her stillness was more terrifying than any hysteria.
Quote:
“She was demonic, carnal, and terrifying - like a woman possessed.”
Ian McKellen, her co-star
What it reveals:
This performance marks her full maturation in the classical canon. It also showed her ability to bring psychological realism to roles that are often stylised, anticipating her later screen performances.
Why it’s great:
She won an Academy Award for 8 minutes of screen time. Dench’s Queen Elizabeth is both terrifying and hilarious — a monarch rendered human by her own loneliness and deadpan wit.
Quote:
“A masterclass in economy… she commands the film like a general surveying troops.”
Roger Ebert
www.007.com
What it reveals:
A turning point in her screen career — from respected thespian to global icon. It confirmed that even in brief appearances, Dench’s authority is unmistakable.
Why it’s great:
Playing the novelist as she descends into Alzheimer’s, Dench gave a performance of rare vulnerability. Her expression of confusion and loss felt unbearably personal.
Quote:
“She turns every glance into a revelation. It’s like watching a great cathedral fade into mist.”
The New York Times
What it reveals:
Her ability to communicate emotional devastation through nuance, not melodrama. This is Dench at her most delicate and unguarded.
Why it’s great:
She reinvented the Bond franchise.
As M, she wasn’t just a foil to Bond’s recklessness — she was the moral centre of the films, the adult in the room.
Quote:
“The only M who ever truly made Bond feel small.”
The Guardian
What it reveals:
Her extraordinary modernity. Dench showed that a classically trained actor
could command blockbuster franchises with integrity and depth.
Why it’s great:
This was Dench in her poetic prime — lively, lyrical, and luminously comic. Her delivery of Viola’s soliloquy became legendary for its emotional transparency.
Quote:
“The most humane Viola I’ve ever seen… one felt that Shakespeare had been waiting for her.”
Harold Hobson
What it reveals:
Her instinct for language and her early ability to mine Shakespeare’s emotional truths without overacting. A young Dench with total command of verse.
Why it’s great:
As the cantankerous landlady with a taste for rebellion, Dench was acidtongued and soulful. A rare chance to see her play mischief with depth.
Quote:
“She delivers every line like a gourmet chocolate truffle — rich, dark, and unexpectedly tender.”
Peter Travers
What it reveals:
Her comic timing and emotional agility. This was the Dench who could elevate even sentimental material into something quietly profound.
Why it’s great:
Based on a true story, Dench’s Philomena is innocent, witty, wounded — and quietly seething. She navigates class, religion, and grief with total restraint.
Quote:
“She has this quality of burning from the inside — anger that’s been lacquered with charm.”
Steve Coogan, co-star
What it reveals:
An actress at ease with herself, able to strip away theatricality and focus solely on character. A late-career triumph that’s all about empathy.
Why it’s great:
A rarely discussed performance, but legendary among those who saw it. Dench’s Irish matriarch was both tragic and furious — full of bitter realism.
Quote:
“She had us laughing one moment, then left us unable to breathe the next. I’d never seen an audience so exhausted by emotion.”
Michael Billington
What it reveals:
Her mastery of tragicomedy, and her roots in working-class storytelling. This was Dench the raw character actress, not yet an institution.
Why it’s great:
Dench anchors Kenneth Branagh’s autobiographical film with stillness and memory. Her presence gives the film its soul — calm amid the chaos.
Quote:
“She says more with one look than most actors can with a monologue.”
IndieWire
What it reveals:
Her ability to function as a symbol — of home, wisdom, and loss — without ever feeling abstract. She’s still teaching us what screen acting can be.
Why it’s great:
She was heavily pregnant, barefoot, and painted in silver — and yet her performance felt ancient and magical. Titania became earthbound and divine.
Quote:
“A force of nature. She made the supernatural seem ordinary, and the ordinary magical.”
Peter Hall, director
What it reveals:
Early experimentation, daring physicality, and a deep sense of mischief. Even then, Dench knew how to hold attention by making herself utterly available to the moment.
IRIS SPARK
There is a moment in every great crisis where someone, somewhere, knew the problem was coming. But their concerns were ignored, dismissed, or buried under the weight of bureaucracy. We’re not really in a position to say this sort of thing is entirely to do with other people: we all in our lives have things flash across our desks – or even across our minds – and we think: “Might that be significant?” “Should I do something about that?” But there might be a million reasons not to: we’re tired, or there is something else pressing down on our attention, or perhaps we tell ourselves it’s not really our responsibility. Someone else will handle it. It’s only later that we realise we ought to have done something.
These things in our daily lives might be trivial enough: forgetting to renew a parking permit with the angels at Southwark Council; replying to an email; planning ahead for a birthday party.
But the problem is that this exact habit when it replicates during a senior decision-making role can be catastrophic. And we’re seeing that pattern repeat again and again. It happened with the Post Office scandal, where sub-postmasters were falsely accused of fraud due to a flawed IT system. It happened with Grenfell, where residents warned of fire risks long before tragedy struck. It happened in the Church, where allegations of abuse were overlooked to protect reputations. In each case the same pattern is at work.
It happens, repeatedly, because of one fundamental flaw in leadership: a lack of curiosity.
Dr. Paul Hokemeyer, a leading clinical psychologist, explains why those
in power often fail to ask the right questions. “People in positions of power tend not to be particularly curious because they have no reason to be,” he says. “They are either getting what they want or myopically focused on Wikipedia.org
getting what they want. Both situations diminish the leader’s motivation to stretch beyond what is in their immediate sight line.”
In other words, when things are going well—at least for those at the top—why shake things up? Why listen to the low-ranking employee waving a red flag when it’s easier to dismiss them as a pessimist?
But this isn’t just about laziness; it’s about psychology. Hokemeyer warns that “curiosity requires humility. Unfortunately, in today's ethos of authoritarian regimes, humility has been replaced with hubris. And as we know from the Greek tale of Icarus, hubris breeds destruction.”
“THE POWERFUL REASSURE THEMSELVES THAT NOTHING IS WRONG—UNTIL THE WEIGHT OF EVIDENCE IS TOO OVERWHELMING TO IGNORE.” BY THEN, OF COURSE, IT’S TOO LATE.”
It’s a damning assessment, but history backs him up. Theresa May, in her book The Abuse of Power: Confronting Injustice in Public Life, reflects on how those in charge repeatedly fail to engage with difficult truths: “The powerful reassure themselves that nothing is wrong— until the weight of evidence is too overwhelming to ignore.” By then, of course, it’s too late.
Nicky Morgan, former Education Secretary, believes curiosity isn’t just important—it’s fundamental to good
leadership. “There have been a lot of instances in the UK recently where the world would have been a lot better if the people at the top had been more curious about the problems beneath them,” she says.
Her list is long. “We’ve had the Post Office scandal, scandal in the Church, as well as Grenfell and a myriad of others.” In each case, disaster could have been mitigated, if not prevented, if those in charge had simply asked more questions.
But curiosity doesn’t just happen. Leaders need to build cultures where truth can rise to the surface. According to Hokemeyer, “The best way to maximise the flow of information from low to high is in a culture of psychological safety. The construct
was developed by Amy Edmondson at Harvard Business School and refers to a culture where people can come forward with their mistakes, uncertainty, and doubts and be supported rather than judged.
Edmondson first introduced the idea of psychological safety in the late 1990s while researching how medical teams function. She discovered that the highest-performing teams weren’t necessarily making fewer mistakes— they were simply more willing to admit them and learn from them. As she explains, “Psychological safety is not about being nice. It’s about giving candid feedback, openly admitting mistakes, and learning from each other.” In her book The Fearless Organization, she warns that in cultures where fear dominates, there’s a tendency for employees to stay silent, and for vital issues go unaddressed: “Silence is the enemy of high performance. If you don’t have psychological safety, people are afraid to speak up, and when that happens, organisations fail.”
This means no more punishing the whistleblowers. No more fostering an environment where bad news is something to be buried. Because, as Morgan points out, “The most vital information has to land on the desk of the ultimate decision-maker.” If it doesn’t, what’s the point of leadership at all?
Look at what happened at Grenfell. In 2016, resident Edward Daffarn wrote in his community blog: “Only a catastrophic event will expose the ineptitude and incompetence of our landlord.” One year later, the tower burned. As Theresa May later reflected in Abuse of Power, “Grenfell was not just a tragedy; it was a national shame. Time and again, warnings were ignored. Those in charge simply did not listen to the people they were supposed to protect.”
“GRENFELL WAS NOT JUST A TRAGEDY; IT WAS A NATIONAL SHAME. TIME AND AGAIN, WARNINGS WERE IGNORED.”
Look at the Post Office scandal. When sub-postmasters complained that the Horizon IT system was faulty, they were dismissed. Alan Bates, who led the legal fight to expose the scandal, recalls how impossible it was to be heard: “You were either lying, incompetent, or on the take.” The independent inquiry into the scandal later found that the Post Office had “repeatedly and deliberately” ignored evidence of faults, prioritising its own reputation over the lives it was destroying. It took over two decades before justice was even acknowledged.
And look at the Church of England, where the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, resigned after admitting that survivors of abuse had been failed. The Church’s safeguarding failures weren’t new. Reports had been coming in for years, but, in Welby’s words, “we simply didn’t listen.” The Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA) was damning: “The Church’s culture of secrecy and deference allowed abusers to hide in plain sight.” These aren’t just missteps; they are
systemic failures rooted in a refusal to be curious about the uncomfortable. When W.H.Auden wrote that ‘the crack in the tea cup opens a lane to the land of the dead’, he was observing that sometimes the greatest catastrophes stem from small things.
So what is to be done?
Firstly, organisations need to build psychological safety. “This, like all organisational cultures, needs to start at the top,” says Hokemeyer. “The C-suite executives must cultivate humility, strength, curiosity, wisdom, patience, and drive.” That’s a tall order, but necessary. Without it, businesses, governments, and institutions will continue to repeat the same failures – and we’ve seen enough of what that looks like.
“ FOSTERING CURIOSITY EARLY IS THE BEST WAY TO CREATE A GENERATION OF LEADERS WHO DON’T ACCEPT THINGS AT FACE VALUE.”
Secondly, curiosity needs to be embedded in education. “We need to be teaching young people not just to learn facts, but to question them,” says Morgan. She believes that fostering curiosity early is the best way to create a generation of leaders who don’t accept things at face value. “It’s not enough to say ‘this is the way things are.’ We need to encourage young people to ask ‘why?’ and ‘what if?’”
Thirdly, we need to abandon the mistaken belief that workplace culture should be "nice." As Edmondson points
out, true psychological safety is not about avoiding discomfort but about making space for honesty. “Psychological safety is not being nice. It’s about candour, about making it possible for people to speak up,” she argues.
The problem is that many workplaces conflate niceness with people-pleasing, which, in reality, leads to avoidance and stagnation. As psychologist Dr. Harriet Lerner explains, “Niceness is overrated. When we prioritise being nice over being honest, we end up betraying ourselves and enabling dysfunction.” Dr. Jordan Peterson echoes this sentiment, warning that people-pleasing is often “a deceptive strategy” to avoid conflict while allowing issues to fester unchecked. If organisations want to solve real problems, they must replace superficial harmony with a culture where respectful challenge and tough conversations are the norm.
Finally, we need to reward those who speak up. Right now, the systems we operate in tend to punish dissenters, not elevate them. That has to change. The biggest disasters of the past few decades weren’t surprises to everyone—someone always saw them coming. The challenge is making sure they are heard before it’s too late.
Because incuriosity doesn’t just lead to stagnation. It destroys careers, damages institutions, and—when taken to its worst conclusion—costs lives.
“ PEOPLE-PLEASING IS OFTEN “A DECEPTIVE STRATEGY” TO AVOID CONFLICT WHILE ALLOWING ISSUES TO FESTER UNCHECKED.”
In a quiet loft in Dacre, near Penrith, surrounded by the gentle symphony of dozens of ancient clocks marking their own rhythms, I encounter something extraordinary: a hand from Big Ben, lying casually on a workbench like a fallen giant's finger. The bronze appendage, worn smooth by centuries of London weather, seems almost alive in the stillness of Keith Scobie-Youngs' workshop at the Cumbria Clock Company.
The juxtaposition is striking. Here, in rural Cumbria, the "heart of the UK" has been transplanted. Here Big Ben's mechanism has been ticking away in their test room for two years. The famous clock that marks time for a nation has found refuge in this contemplative space, where the ancient craft of clockmaking continues its patient work.
Keith, who graduated in Horology and took the risk of setting up his own company over 30 years ago, moves through his workshop with the deliberate precision of someone who understands that good work cannot be rushed. The air is thick with the scent of oils and metals, and everywhere there are the ghosts of centuries past — pendulums that have swung for generations, springs that have coiled and uncoiled through world wars and social revolutions, gears that have meshed in perfect harmony longer than most human lives.
"The beauty of a clock like this is that you as a clockmaker become part of its history," Keith explains, his hands resting on a mechanism that has outlived its makers. "You want to leave your mark, but you also want to preserve what came before. When Big Ben's heart left our workshop, it was like a child leaving home."
"Time," Einstein once said, "is an illusion." And yet we race it daily. We "spend" it. We "save" it. We "waste" it. Western culture, in particular, seems to have entered a dangerous romance with the clock — only to find the affair joyless, our calendars full and our souls malnourished.
Why is it, then, that some move through life with easeful clarity while others feel perpetually late for everything? Is the difference cultural, psychological — or something deeper still?
The West conceives of time as linear — a narrowing corridor stretching from cradle to grave, lined with appointments, aspirations, and ever-shrinking windows. It's a commodity, and we are its employees. In the East, time is not a ladder but a wheel. Events recur, wisdom returns. The seasons spiral inward.
Dr. Paul Hokemeyer, a clinical and consulting psychotherapist who has spent decades studying the intersection of psychology and temporal perception,
explains this cultural divide with surgical precision:
"Through this Western lens of scarcity, time becomes a foe — a wild boar we must hunt or master. People with this view often have a strong external locus of control. They live in a state of unsatisfied demands and unfulfilled expectations. Rather than seeing time as a gift to savour, they view it as an obligation to manipulate."
This psychological framework, Hokemeyer argues, creates what he calls "temporal anxiety" — a condition where individuals feel like "agents in life rather than principals, bugs rather than windshields." They are seldom at ease in the world, constantly measuring their worth against the ticking clock.
He contrasts this with the cyclical understanding more prevalent in Eastern traditions:
"Time becomes a benevolent teacher. It's not something to dominate, but to embrace — an energy rather than a currency. A friend, not a foe. In Eastern cultures, where time is viewed as unlimited and abundant, people can engage with it as a nurturing force rather than a threatening one."
And in this reframing, he offers a balm for the anxious:
"To view life as constant practice — a journey rather than a destination — is to reclaim your relationship with time. It transforms our experience from one of scarcity and competition to one of growth and meaning."
Recent research has revealed disturbing truths about how our digital habits are reshaping our temporal experience. A study found that time spent on social media does, in fact, speed up time –users severely underestimate the amount of time they spend, with what feels like 10 minutes easily being 30 or 40.
Dr. Hokemeyer sees this as a manifestation of our Western relationship with time taken to its logical extreme: "Social media platforms
are designed to accelerate our sense of time passing. They create what I call 'temporal compression' — where our attention becomes fragmented across multiple timelines, notifications, and feeds. This leaves people feeling simultaneously rushed and empty, as if they're living in fast-forward while missing the substance of their own lives."
The psychological impact is measurable. Research shows that stressful and threatening stimuli produce time distortion effects, with individuals perceiving these stimuli as lasting for different amounts of time compared to a standard unit. As social media users
become more aware of stressful events in others' lives, this awareness itself can lead to higher stress.
“PEOPLE ASSUME NEW TECHNOLOGIES WILL GIVE THEM MORE TIME. BUT WHAT OFTEN HAPPENS IS THAT IT INTENSIFIES THE PACE.”
The widespread prevalence of social media notifications may contribute to the perceived acceleration of time, though through flow and meditation states, alternative perceptions of time can be experienced.
Against this backdrop of digital acceleration, there exists a quiet rebellion — those who make time, literally. Dr. James Nye, a master clockmaker, philanthropist, and time scholar, represents more than nostalgic craftsmanship. As Master of the ancient Clockmakers' Company and custodian of a nearly 400-year-old tradition, he embodies a different relationship with temporality entirely.
"I've spent most of my life trying to ensure the survival of the trade," he says. "Clockmaking isn't dying — it's just small. Like time itself, its value isn't always visible, but it's profound."
Dr. Nye's work exists in fascinating tension with our modern temporal anxiety. While most of us experience time as a source of stress, his profession requires the kind of meditative patience that Dr. Hokemeyer advocates. Every tick represents precision, every
mechanism a meditation on the nature of measured time.
"We're teaching teenagers to lovingly restore antique mechanisms," Dr. Nye explains. "There's something profound about watching a young person slow down enough to understand how a pendulum works. They're not just learning about gears and springs — they're learning about rhythm, patience, and the beauty of sustained attention."
The irony is palpable: in an age of temporal acceleration, traditional timebased crafts are experiencing a quiet renaissance. In the 2023/24 academic year, there were 736,500 people participating in an apprenticeship in England, with 339,600 apprenticeship starts and 178,200 apprenticeship achievements. While specific data on horological apprenticeships remains limited, the broader trend suggests a growing hunger for skilled, timeintensive crafts.
Recent government studies show that 85 per cent of apprentices remain in fulltime employment after completing their apprenticeship, and 6 in 10 continue working with the same employer. This stability stands in stark contrast to the gig economy's temporal fragmentation.
Keith Scobie-Youngs, whose Cumbriabased company has been painstakingly repairing the world's most famous clock as part of a secret operation while Big Ben's bongs were silent, describes the psychology of his apprentices: "They come to us from a world of instant gratification, where everything is immediate. Learning to make a clock teaches them something radical — that the most valuable things require sustained attention over time. It's counter-cultural in the best possible way."
Dr. Nye sees this trend as psychologically significant: "These young people are instinctively seeking what I call 'temporal grounding' — work that requires presence, patience, and a
different relationship with time. They're rejecting the Western model of time as commodity and embracing something more akin to the Eastern approach of time as teacher."
The apprenticeship model itself represents a fascinating alternative to our culture's temporal anxieties. Unlike university education, which operates on compressed semesters and standardised timelines, apprenticeships unfold according to the rhythm of mastery itself.
“WE TREAT TIME AS A RESOURCE TO BE MINED, SPENT, OPTIMISED. BUT TIME ISN’T A CURRENCY – IT’S A CONTEXT.”
"We can't rush the development of a skilled clockmaker," Keith explains, his hands moving with the deliberate precision that comes from decades of practice. "The hands need to learn sensitivity, the eye needs to develop precision, the mind needs to understand the intricate relationships between components. This takes time — real time, not compressed time."
The number of apprenticeship starts
from August 2023 to January 2024 rose to 200,550, marking a 2.5% increase from the previous year. This growth occurs despite — or perhaps because of — our culture's temporal acceleration.
Dr. Hokemeyer notes the psychological implications: "Apprenticeships teach what I call 'temporal sovereignty' — the ability to resist external pressure and develop according to one's own natural rhythm. This is exactly what young people need to counter the temporal anxiety that social media and competitive culture create."
Keith Scobie-Youngs speaks passionately about how clockmaking opens onto a much broader tradition of British workmanship that extends far beyond the workshop. "When people think of British engineering excellence, they often think of the great names — Brunel, Telford, Stephenson. But what they don't always realise is that this tradition of precision, of understanding how complex mechanisms work together, it all comes from the same source."
The connection between clockmaking and broader engineering prowess is more than metaphorical. From the beginning in the 15th century through the 17th century, clockmaking was considered the "leading edge," most technically advanced trade existing. The skills required — precision metalwork, understanding of gears and ratios, the ability to create mechanisms that must work reliably for centuries — these same skills built the Industrial Revolution.
"Look at Isambard Kingdom Brunel," Keith continues, gesturing toward a photograph of the great engineer on his workshop wall. "His father, Marc Brunel, was deeply involved in precision engineering and mechanical innovation. The attention to detail, the understanding of how minute tolerances affect entire systems — this is clockmaker thinking applied to bridges, railways, and ships."
Indeed, Brunel has surprising connections to horology, and his engineering approach reflected the same meticulous attention to mechanical precision that defines clockmaking. The great suspension bridges, the revolutionary railway systems, the
pioneering steamships — all required the kind of systematic thinking that clockmakers had been perfecting for centuries.
“TIME IS NOT NEUTRAL. IT’S SHAPED BY STRUCTURES OF POWER.”
"What we're preserving," Keith says, "isn't just the ability to repair old clocks. We're preserving a way of thinking, an approach to problemsolving, a relationship with materials and mechanisms that built the modern world. Every apprentice who learns to adjust a hairspring is connecting to the same tradition that gave us the Thames Tunnel, the Great Western Railway, and the SS Great Britain."
This tradition continues today. As Keith noted about their work on Big Ben: "The beauty of a clock like this is that you as a clockmaker become part of its history and want to leave your mark." But the mark being left extends beyond individual clocks to the preservation of
an entire way of approaching complex problems with patience, precision, and respect for the accumulated wisdom of centuries.
Dr. Hokemeyer's work with patients who feel "behind" in life reveals the profound psychological toll of our temporal culture. His insights go beyond simple advice, revealing the deeper structures that create temporal anxiety: "I see two types of patients struggling with time. The first are what I call 'temporal perfectionists' — people who measure their worth against arbitrary timelines. They feel behind because they're racing against benchmarks that were never meaningful to begin with. The second group are 'temporal fugitives' — people running from their own lives, always looking ahead to the next milestone rather than inhabiting the present."
He argues that social media has intensified both patterns: "Curated timelines create false standards. People see others' highlight reels and assume
they're behind in some cosmic race. But here's what I tell my patients: 'One of my favourite expressions is: early to bloom, early to rot.' We're in an era where true value lies in slowness — in the wisdom gathered over time, not merely the speed of achievement."
This philosophy aligns with emerging research on time perception. Scientists are increasingly focusing on the role that emotion plays in distorting our sense of time, with stress and anxiety making time feel simultaneously scarce and endless.
“SLEEP IS NOW CONSIDERED AN OBSTACLE TO PRODUCTIVITY.”
Meanwhile, Dr. Nye's work represents part of a broader movement toward what might be called "temporal crafts" — professions that require a different relationship with time. Beyond clockmaking, these encompass traditional apprenticeships from blacksmithing to violin making, careers that demand what Dr. Hokemeyer calls "temporal maturity" — the ability to work within natural rhythms rather than artificial deadlines. The restoration arts form another crucial branch of this movement, with conservators, antique restorers, and heritage craftspeople working with time itself, preserving objects that carry temporal weight across generations. Finally, contemplative professions including meditation teachers, therapists, and spiritual guides help others develop healthier relationships with time, offering pathways toward what might be called temporal wisdom.
Dr. Nye sees these professions as offering something essential: "We're not just preserving skills — we're preserving a way of being with time. In a world that's forgotten how to be patient, we're keeping alive the knowledge that some things can't be rushed."
Recent neuroscientific research supports both Dr. Hokemeyer's observations and James' experiential wisdom. The brain's perception of time is remarkably malleable, influenced by attention, emotion, and environmental factors.
Dr. Hokemeyer explains the clinical implications: "When people feel chronically behind, it's often because their attention is fragmented. They're not fully present in any moment, so time feels both rushed and empty. The antidote isn't time management — it's attention management. This is why contemplative practices and focused work, like clockmaking, can be so therapeutic."
The digital age has created what researchers are calling "temporal dysregulation" — a condition where our natural rhythms become disrupted by constant connectivity and artificial urgency.
“SLOW IS NOT ABOUT DOING EVERYTHING AT A SNAIL’S PACE. IT’S ABOUT DOING THINGS AT THE RIGHT SPEED.”
Against the backdrop of temporal acceleration, counter-movements are emerging. The "slow" movement — encompassing slow food, slow fashion, and slow living — represents a cultural rejection of speed-obsessed temporality.
Dr. Hokemeyer sees this as psychologically necessary: "People are beginning to understand that the Western approach to time is making them sick. They're experiencing what I call 'temporal whiplash' — the constant switching between accelerated digital
time and natural human rhythms. The slow movement is really about temporal healing."
Dr. Nye's clockmaking work intersects with this cultural shift: "We're getting inquiries from people who want to learn clockmaking not as a career, but as a practice. They want to understand how to slow down, how to pay attention, how to work with their hands in a way that connects them to different rhythms."
As we look toward the future, both Dr. Hokemeyer and Dr. Nye offer visions of what healthier temporal relationships might look like.
Dr. Hokemeyer advocates for what he calls "temporal literacy": "We need to teach people that time perception is malleable, that they have agency in how they experience temporality. This isn't about time management — it's about time philosophy. We need to help people understand that there are many ways to experience time, and the Western linear model is just one option."
Dr. Nye envisions a future where traditional temporal crafts serve as
bridges between old and new ways of being: "I see young people who are brilliant with technology but starved for something deeper. They're drawn to clockmaking because it offers what their digital lives can't — a sense of continuity, of connection to something larger than themselves. The future isn't about choosing between technology and tradition, but about finding ways to integrate both."
“ IT'S UNDERSTANDING THAT LATE ISN'T BAD — IT'S OFTEN WISER. IT'S RECOGNIZING THAT THE AGE OF TRADITIONAL GATEKEEPERS IS ENDING, AND THAT TODAY'S THOUGHT LEADERS ARE THOSE WHO HAVE TAKEN THE TIME TO COLOUR OUTSIDE THE LINES.”
Both men represent what we might call "temporal rebels" — individuals who
refuse to accept the dominant cultural narratives about time. Their work offers practical pathways toward what Dr. Hokemeyer calls "temporal sovereignty."
For Dr. Hokemeyer, this means helping people develop what he terms "temporal resilience": "It's the ability to remain centred in your own rhythm regardless of external pressures. It's understanding that late isn't bad — it's often wiser. It's recognising that the age of traditional gatekeepers is ending, and that today's thought leaders are those who have taken the time to colour outside the lines."
For Dr. Nye, temporal rebellion means preserving skills and knowledge that embody different relationships with time: "Every clock we restore, every apprentice we train, every technique we preserve is an act of resistance against the tyranny of speed. We're not just making timepieces — we're making time itself visible, tangible, beautiful."
Time, when seen rightly, is not a dictator — but a mirror. Our perception of it reveals who we are: whether we race it from fear, stretch it in service of curiosity, or sit quietly beside it, listening.
This is what both Keith Scobie-Youngs the clockmaker and Dr. Hokemeyer, the clinician, remind us: that time is not a commodity to be traded, but a context to be inhabited. It is not money. It is meaning.
Dr. Hokemeyer's final insight captures the essence of this transformed relationship: "A rich and meaningful life is a composition of experiences, lessons learned, and relationships lived over time. When we stop trying to race against time and start dancing with it, we discover that we have more time than we ever imagined. The question isn't how to manage time — it's how to inhabit it fully."
"TIME IS ONE OF THE FEW THINGS THAT UNITES THE MECHANICAL AND THE METAPHYSICAL.
Dr. Nye adds his craftsman's perspective: "Time is one of the few things that unites the mechanical and the metaphysical. Every gear teaches patience, every spring teaches resilience, every pendulum teaches rhythm. In the end, whether we measure it with Swiss precision or lose it in a Japanese tea ceremony, time asks only this: to be lived."
In the end, both the psychologist and the clockmaker offer the same radical proposition: that our relationship with time is a choice, not a given. In a world that profits from our temporal anxiety, perhaps the most revolutionary act is simply to slow down, pay attention, and remember that we are not slaves to the clock — we are its masters, if only we remember how to be.
GEORGE ACHEBE CONSIDERS THE OPTIONS IF YOU WANT A CAREER IN OUR MOST TRANSPARENT MATERIAL
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Glass is one of humanity’s greatest unsung heroes. We see through it but rarely see it. From the smartphone screens we tap daily to the wine glasses raised in celebration, from the windows that frame our cities to the fibre optic cables carrying our conversations, glass is both ubiquitous and invisible. It is an industrial workhorse, an artistic medium, and a scientific marvel—all at once.
Yet, despite its essential role in modern life, the glass industry faces profound challenges. British glass manufacturing, once the envy of the world, now finds itself at a critical juncture. The sector
employs over 23,000 people directly, with thousands more in associated supply chains, yet it must navigate an increasingly complex landscape of global competition, soaring energy costs, and urgent sustainability demands.
These challenges were front and centre at the 695th Lord Mayor’s Lecture, a high-profile online event that convened leading minds from science, manufacturing, and business to discuss the past, present, and future of glass.
Professor Tim Connell, an emeritus professor at City, University of London, introduced the session with a reflection on glass’s unseen impact. “Without
glass, we wouldn’t even be able to hold this webinar—since fibre optic cables, made of glass, are the backbone of our global communication network,” he noted.
Dave Dalton, CEO of British Glass, was among the speakers taking the audience through the scientific and practical aspects of glass. “Glass is not just a material—it is a material state,” he explained. “It’s a frozen liquid with no long-term structure, making it one of the most adaptable substances known to humankind.”
“IT’S A FROZEN LIQUID WITH NO LONG-TERM STRUCTURE, MAKING IT ONE OF THE MOST ADAPTABLE SUBSTANCES KNOWN TO HUMANKIND.”
He went on to highlight its surprising applications. “Most people think of glass as something we look through rather than at. But glass plays a fundamental role in everything from medical instruments to high-performance engines, wind turbine blades, and even space exploration.”
Richard Katz, CEO of Glass Futures, echoed this sense of boundless potential while stressing the need for transformation. “We are building a future where sustainability and innovation go hand in hand,” he said. “The glass furnace of tomorrow will be radically different from today’s— potentially electric or hydrogen-powered rather than gas-fired.”
Mark Holford, a Court Member and Charity Trustee of the Worshipful Company of Glass Sellers, underscored the material’s dual identity. "Glass is arguably mankind's most versatile material," he told The World of Glass Museum. "It's been with us for millennia, yet we're still discovering new applications and properties. What other material can be both a work of art and a critical component in quantum computing?"
Holford, who has amassed a collection of over 200 pieces of contemporary glass art, understands this duality well. His passion for glass extends beyond its industrial applications to its role in creativity and craftsmanship. The workforce in the glass sector reflects this diversity: on one end, engineers and
scientists developing new formulations and manufacturing techniques; on the other, artisans preserving centuries-old traditions of glassblowing, cutting, and engraving.
One of the biggest concerns raised at the lecture was the future of the glass industry’s workforce. Katz has long been an advocate for fostering a new generation of talent. At the Glass Focus
Awards 2023, he stressed: "The glass industry offers extraordinary career opportunities, from highly technical roles in research and development to hands-on creative positions. We need programmers and artists, chemists and craftspeople. The challenge is ensuring that these skills aren't lost as veteran workers retire."
James Badgett, CEO of the Angel Investment Network, says: “It’s an interesting point that often people don’t think sector-first when it comes to their careers – they think the wrong way round about what they’re good at. That’s
important too but in a highly disrupted economy, it’s a good idea to think of those things which are definitely going to be around. AI needs glass – so I think it’s a good sector to look at.”
Dalton has been vocal about the pressures facing UK manufacturers, particularly the rising cost of energy. In an op-ed for Manufacturing Today, he warned: "Energy costs are crippling our sector. Glass manufacturing is energyintensive—there's no getting around that fact. When UK manufacturers are paying significantly more for energy than their European counterparts, let alone those in Asia, it creates an uneven playing field that no amount of innovation can fully overcome."
At the Lord Mayor’s lecture, he reiterated the challenge. “Glass should be at the forefront of the green transition. It is infinitely recyclable without quality degradation. Solar panels depend on glass. Double and triple glazing reduces energy consumption in buildings. But manufacturing glass itself remains carbon-intensive, and transforming production processes requires massive investment.”
Some of that investment is beginning to materialise through initiatives like Glass Futures, an industry-backed research and technology organisation developing a £54 million Global Centre of Excellence in St Helens. The facility aims to revolutionise glass production, reducing carbon emissions while enhancing the UK's competitive position.
The challenges facing the UK glass sector are mirrored on the global stage, where geopolitical shifts, trade policies,
and environmental regulations add further complexity.
Katz, speaking at a Glass International panel, noted: "The glass industry is inherently global. Raw materials may come from one continent, be processed in another, and the final products shipped worldwide. Any disruption to this ecosystem has cascading effects."
Dalton, addressing a House of Lords Industry Briefing, offered a perspective on the policy landscape: "On one hand, a rollback of carbon reduction targets could temporarily ease pressure on energy-intensive industries like ours. On the other, it risks putting the US—and by extension, anyone trading with them—out of step with global sustainability trends. Short-term relief could mean long-term competitive disadvantage."
Meanwhile, China’s glass industry remains dominant, producing over half the world’s glass. As The Economist reported in a special manufacturing issue: "China’s vertically integrated supply chains allow for a level of efficiency that Western manufacturers struggle to match. While once known for lower-quality glass, China is now a leader in architectural glass, solar panels, and high-end consumer goods."
Amid these complexities, the British glass sector is searching for a path forward—one that builds on its heritage while embracing technological advancements.
Dalton sees the industry’s future in specialization: "Our future lies in specialised products, innovative materials, and processes where intellectual property and technical expertise outweigh raw production costs."
Katz envisions a synergy between tradition and modernity. "British glass has an incredible heritage of craftsmanship. When we combine that
with cutting-edge research in materials science and digital manufacturing, we create products that cannot be easily replicated elsewhere," he told Glass & Glazing Federation Quarterly.
Education will play a pivotal role in ensuring this vision becomes reality. Programs supported by the Worshipful Company of Glass Sellers aim to equip future generations with the skills needed to thrive in both technical and artistic roles.
“We need to reframe glass careers for young people,” argued Holford in a discussion with Crafts Magazine. “This isn't just about industrial jobs—it's about being at the forefront of materials science, sustainable manufacturing, and artistic innovation.”
"GLASS HAS SURVIVED FOR MILLENNIA BECAUSE OF ITS ADAPTABILITY. I HAVE NO DOUBT IT WILL SURVIVE FOR MILLENNIA MORE."
For a material that is transparent, the future of glass remains anything but clear. Yet its resilience, versatility, and continued relevance make one thing certain: this ancient material will shape our modern world in ways both visible and unseen.
As Dalton puts it: "Glass has survived for millennia because of its adaptability. I have no doubt it will survive for millennia more. The question is whether the UK will remain at the cutting edge of its production and application."
In an industry where fragility and strength coexist in perfect harmony, the same duality seems to define its future prospects.
(Unsplash.com)
In the distinguished surroundings of the In and Out Club, Claire Cummings recounts how a cup of coffee in bed on Mother's Day 2023 sparked the creation of Britain's only think tank dedicated solely to digital assets—and why she believes Bitcoin represents the ultimate democratic alternative to an increasingly authoritarian financial system. It's not often that a revolutionary idea is born over breakfast in bed on Mother's Day, but then again, Claire Cummings has never been one to follow conventional paths. As we settle into our conversation at the In and Out Club, the founder of the Centre for Digital Assets and Democracy (CDAD) reflects on that pivotal morning in March 2023 when her career took a decisive change.
"IT'S NOT OFTEN THAT A REVOLUTIONARY IDEA IS BORN OVER BREAKFAST IN BED ON MOTHER'S DAY, BUT THEN AGAIN, CLAIRE CUMMINGS HAS NEVER BEEN ONE TO FOLLOW CONVENTIONAL PATHS."
"My daughter brought me a cup of coffee in bed, and the name just came to me," Cummings recalls with evident fondness. "While I was having my cup of coffee, before I opened my presents, I just went online to Companies House and set it up."
Within hours of that moment of inspiration, Britain had its first— and still only—think tank focused exclusively on digital assets. But the story behind that Mother's Day epiphany reveals a much deeper journey through the corridors of financial regulation, commodity trading, and ultimately, a growing frustration with what Cummings sees as the creeping authoritarianism of modern financial oversight.
Cummings' path to Bitcoin advocacy began in the early days of hedge fund regulation, when European financial legislation was refreshingly simple. "When I qualified as a solicitor, the only piece of European legislation we really had to deal with was something called the Investment Services Directive, and it was about six pages long," she recalls. "If you wanted to do things in Europe, all the European nations just complied with this six-page document."
Those days of regulatory simplicity are long gone, and it is clear Cummings looks back on them with a certain nostalgia, though tempering this with an understanding that regulations need to adapt. What followed was
an avalanche of legislation—MiFID, AIFMD, and countless other acronyms that transformed the financial landscape into what Cummings describes as a "sclerotic industry that fails to properly acknowledge or use the existing laws. After all, as just one example, we have the Fraud Act."
"I can remember, almost overnight with AIFMD, clients coming in, and whereas before I'd be able to say, 'Yep, we can do that fine,' I'd have to say, 'Yep, we can do that, but first of all, we've got to do blah, blah, blah.' And it's hard to perceive how anything that came in there has protected hedge fund investors."
It was during this period of regulatory expansion that Bitcoin emerged, offering something radically different. "When Bitcoin came about and I looked at the screen showing Bitcoin trading, it reminded me very much of the commodity trading I'd understood in my legal career," Cummings explains. "But it was the decentralisation and the freedom that brought, and the lack of any central bank involvement."
The name of Cummings' think tank— the Centre for Digital Assets and Democracy—reflects her conviction that Bitcoin represents something far more significant than just another financial instrument. It's about human dignity and democratic principles, particularly in countries where these are under threat.
"When you see how Bitcoin is used in countries where there is no democracy, that's when the sun comes out and starts shining brighter," she says, her voice carrying genuine emotion. "There was a lady escaping Afghanistan who was able to take her Bitcoin with her because she had the access code in her head. Once she was safely away from the Taliban she went to an internet café, accessed her wallet, took out her savings and was able to support herself and her family because of the code she’d kept in her head."
"WHEN YOU SEE HOW BITCOIN IS USED IN COUNTRIES WHERE THERE IS NO DEMOCRACY, THAT'S WHEN THE SUN COMES OUT AND STARTS SHINING BRIGHTER."
This isn't just about individual stories of escape and survival. In Afghanistan today, there are businesses that, behind the scenes, employ women and girls and pay them in Bitcoin so there's no trace. "They haven't got to hide a piece of gold or hide any physical notes. It's all there in a wallet with a seed phrase in their heads, and they can trade secretly as long as they have access to a mobile phone."
The Regulatory Overreach
But Cummings' concerns about democracy extend beyond authoritarian
regimes to what she sees as the erosion of democratic accountability in Britain's own regulatory system. "When the FCA is given an astonishing amount of power, including to write the regulations around the legislation, you have to ask whether we are moving to a quango which is more powerful than the people that were elected? And whether that is democratic?"
This question goes to the heart of her critique of modern financial regulation. "Nobody knows how many quangos there actually are in this country," she notes with obvious frustration. "Cameron and Osborne had that wonderful idea of the bonfire of the quangos, but I don't think anybody lit any matches on that one."
The proliferation of unaccountable regulatory bodies represents, in Cummings' view, a fundamental challenge to democratic governance. “Do the elected remember that they’re servants of the people? That it’s not the other way around? This is one of the principles at the heart of whether we are a democracy or not.”
The contrast between the approaches of the UK and US governments to cryptocurrency couldn’t be more stark,
according to Cummings. "In America, they have a crypto czar who understands finance and crypto. They have new heads at the SEC and CFTC, people whose backgrounds are in finance and crypto. They've got people heading up the regulators who want to promote crypto, who want to have a level of regulation but don't want the regulation to be stifling."
"THE ELECTED NEED TO REMEMBER THAT THEY'RE SERVANTS OF THE PEOPLE. IT'S NOT THE OTHER WAY AROUND."
Cummings’ think tank is apolitical but it does make you wonder about the difference between the US and the UK. It is all a question, one feels, of practical business experience. How many people in the Cabinet would you employ? Who would you give a job to and think they could understand that at the end of every day, you've got to balance the books and pay your employees?
This lack of real-world business understanding among policymakers creates what Cummings sees as a dangerous disconnect between regulation
and reality. “I fear the civil service and the quangos may be running the country, and not anyone who is actually elected. They may screw up but at least they have to stand for re-election every four years."
Despite her frustrations with the current regulatory environment, Cummings sees opportunities for reform. She advocates for mutual recognition between UK and US regulatory frameworks, leveraging the common law heritage both countries share. "The UK and the US have similar regulators with similar principles and are both common law jurisdictions. Some mutual recognition of each other's regulations would allow for trade to be conducted more easily."
The think tank's work focuses on practical policy engagement, though Cummings admits the self-funded nature of the operation creates constraints. "I'm funding most of it myself, so it has to be staggered."
As our conversation draws to a close, Cummings returns to the human element that drives her advocacy. She speaks of Jewish friends whose parents, shaped by Holocaust trauma, always kept "a hundred pounds stuck in pockets of different jackets"—a financial grab bag for emergency escape.
"Bitcoin is the digital version of that," she explains. "That basic human dignity of providing for yourself and your family, for not living off handouts."
Whether it's women in Afghanistan trading secretly through coded wallets or individuals in democratic countries seeking alternatives to an increasingly regulated financial system, Bitcoin represents something profound in Cummings' vision: the preservation of financial freedom in an age of growing authoritarianism.
An important aspect of her education of both Parliament and the broader public is her “cryptionary”, parts of which we publish overleaf. “We were very lucky to get Lord Ed Vaizey to publish the foreword,” she recalls. “Nobody comes to Parliament fully equipped with knowledge of cryptocurrency and so it’s an important resource to take into meetings, and know exactly what quite complicated terms refer to.”
"THAT
PROVIDING FOR YOURSELF AND YOUR FAMILY, FOR NOT LIVING OFF HANDOUTS."
That Mother's Day morning in 2023, over a simple cup of coffee, Claire Cummings didn't just register a company. She declared war on financial authoritarianism, armed with nothing more than a conviction that democracy and decentralisation are the keys to human dignity. In a world where regulatory complexity threatens to strangle innovation and individual liberty, her think tank stands as a beacon for those who believe that financial freedom is inseparable from human freedom.
A SMALL SELCTION OF SOME OF THE CRYPTO TERMS EXPLAINED IN THE CUMMINGS PEPPERDINE CRYPTIONARY
The use of mathematical and statistical formulas and algorithmic trading to generate new information, recognise patterns in data and predict outcomes and their respective probabilities.
A set of computational rules to be followed in calculations and in other problem solving exercises.
Using a computer algorithm to trade financial instruments, with the algorithm determining the individual parameters of orders (such as whether to initiate the order, the timing, price or quality of the order and how to manage the order after its submission) and where there is limited or no human intervention.
The Alternative Investment Fund Managers Directive (AIFMD), an EU direction which was onshored post-Brexit and which puts in place a comprehensive framework for the regulation of alternative investment fund managers. It generally includes those trading cryptoassets via a fund.
The rules which apply to entities to prevent the exchange of money or assets that were obtained criminally for money or other assets that are ‘clean’. Money laundering also includes money that’s used to fund terrorism, however it’s obtained. The FCA is the anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing supervisor of UK cryptoasset businesses.
Information technology systems that perform functions and tasks normally requiring human intelligence. Examples of use include speech recognition/natural language processing and machine learning.
Large, well-established technology companies which provide financial products and services or products that are very similar to financial products and can include crypto products.
A Bank of England (BoE) initiative by which the BoE partners with firms to help the BoE understand how technological innovation could impact its policy objectives, and specifically financial stability. The BoE carries out proofs of concept on use cases that could enable it to function more efficiently and effectively.
The use of digital tools and information systems (such as powerful processors, software and algorithms) to generate, collect, store and process high volumes of different types of data at high velocity from different types of sources, often in real time. The FCA talks about the three “Vs”: volume, variety and velocity.
The first decentralised, digital currency. It uses open-source, peer-to-peer technology to operate with no central authority or banks. Instead, managing transactions and the issuing of bitcoins is carried out collectively by the network
A type of database that is decentralised, distributed, and self-proving, which provides a shared record of information that is maintained and updated by a network of computers rather than a central authority. It is a type of distributed ledger technology (DLT) that has a specific set of features, organising its data in a chain of blocks. Each block contains data that is verified, validated and then “chained” to the next block. Although blockchain is a subset of DLT, through popular use, it has become a generic term for all DLT projects. Its best-known application in the financial services sector is bitcoin.
A method for validating entries into a distributed database and keeping the database secure. In cryptocurrency the database is blockchain which means that the consensus mechanism secures the blockchain.
What can we say? The leading firm for crypto, fund and investment law and regulatory issues in the United Kingdom. We’re also quite good at tax and accounting. Happy to meet you here.
A means by which individuals and businesses can raise money from the public to support a business, project, campaign or individual, usually through online platforms. The business or individual seeking financing explains the project being financed in a pitch to attract loans and investment from as many parties as possible. The FCA identifies four types of crowdfunding, of which only two (loan-based crowdfunding and investment-based crowdfunding) are regulated. The unregulated two are donationbased crowdfunding and pre-payment/rewardsbased crowdfunding.
This is it. Enjoy!
A broad term used by regulators and governments to refer to a cryptographically secured digital representation of value or contractual rights that uses some forms of distributed ledger technology (DLT) and can be stored, transferred or traded electronically. They comprise a range of different forms, referred to by UK regulators as tokens. The term is also used more generally to distinguish digital currency and assets from fiat currency. The FCA has created a framework for categorising cryptoassets.
A type of digital currency that uses cryptographic encryption to validate and secure transactions. Major cryptocurrencies include bitcoin (the first decentralised cryptocurrency), ethereum, litecoin and ripple. Cryptocurrencies are sometimes unregulated tokens.
These are firms which exchange, arrange or make arrangements (whether automated or otherwise) for the exchange of money (i.e. fiat currency) and cryptoassets; or of one cryptoasset for another. They need to be registered with the FCA for this business.
These are firms that provide services to safeguard, or to safeguard and administer, cryptoassets or private cryptographic keys on behalf of customers, or which hold, store and transfer cryptoassets. They need to be registered with the FCA for this business.
Meaning decentralised autonomous organisation, a DAO is a automated and decentralised organisation which is unaffiliated with any particular nation state and runs on blockchain and smart contracts. Generally it may manage open source, blockchain-based projects or make crypto investments.
DeFi refers to an automated form of traditional financial products and services that operates using digital smart contracts which are built on the blockchain. Accessible to anyone with an internet connection, DeFi platforms use decentralised apps which are not controlled by a cental authority ("dapps")to enable transactions between DeFi participants without the need for a centralised financial intermediary (ie a broker, exchange or bank).
Also known as virtual currency. A digital representation of value exists electronically and functions as a medium of exchange, a unit of account and a store of value. They are not issued or backed by government or other public authority (unlike fiat currency) but are issued and usually controlled by their developers and used and accepted among the members of a specific
virtual community as a means of payment that can be transferred, stored or traded electronically. Digital currencies include credits for computer games used as a medium of exchange within the computer games where they are issued, as well as e-money and cryptocurrency. Although initially designed to be used to make payments, many are now held as speculative assets by investors.
A controlled, supervised space that provides successful applicants with access to a range of high-quality synthetic data assets to test and develop their propositions and a focused ecosystem to accelerate early-stage development. The FCA launched a digital sandbox to support products and services at earlier stages of development.
Novel and more radical innovations in technology that aim to disrupt established financial services markets and the business models of entities operating in these markets, or establish new markets for financial products and services. The opposite of non-disruptive FinTech, obvs.
A publicly available electronic medium of exchange that features a permissionless distributed ledger where all participants can read everything, but no single user controls the ability to write anything, and a decentralised system for exchanging value. Blockchain is one type of distributed ledger that organises data into blocks that are chained together in an append-only mode and all cryptoassets utilise various forms of DLT (blockchain or other).
The risk that a digital currency can be spent twice because digital information can be reproduced, which is in contrast to physical money. Many saw potential in Bitcoin as is solved this problem. Theft however can allow double spend.
Any token that satisfies the definition of e-money in regulation 2(1) of, and are not otherwise excluded under, the Electronic Money Regulations 2011 (SI 2011/99) (EMRs). Firms must ensure they are properly authorised and have the correct permissions under the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000 (FSMA) to carry on activities involving e-money tokens.
Tokens that are not issued or backed by any central authority and are intended and designed to be used as a means of exchange. Usually, a decentralised tool for buying and selling goods and services without traditional intermediaries. They may fall outside the FCA’s regulatory perimeter.
The Financial Conduct Authority of the United Kingdom. The FCA is the conduct regulator for financial services firms and financial markets in the UK. It is also the anti-money laundering and counterterrorist financing supervisor of UK cryptoasset businesses.
Launched in 2014, this is an initiative of the FCA as an innovation facilitator aimed to promote competition in the interest of consumers, help new and established business (both regulated and nonregulated) tackle regulatory barriers and introduce innovative financial products to the market. Innovate support and services has multiple strands such as the Regulatory sandbox and the Digital sandbox.
Also known as fiat money. Money that a government has issued and declared to be legal tender, but which is not backed by a physical commodity such as gold (which means that its value is not derived from the material from which it is made).
EU legislation which applies in the UK, this directive brought certain cryptoassets within its remit, with the FCA as the UK’s regulatory body. Specifically, providers of exchange services between virtual currencies and fiat currencies (i.e. platforms used to exchange money for cryptocurrency) as well as custodian wallet providers are within its remit and those providing these services must be registered with the FCA.
An umbrella term describing technologyenabled innovation in financial services, regardless of the nature or size of the entity providing the services, that could result in new business models, applications, processes and products.
A fork in the blocks of data which form a blockchain, a fork happens when a community makes a change to the blockchain’s protocol. The chain forks, producing a second blockchain that shares all of its history with the original, but sets off in a new direction.
The Financial Services and Markets Act 2000. The primary piece of financial services legislation in the United Kingdom, it also created the FCA as the UK’s regulator for insurance, investment business and banking, and the Financial Ombudsman Service to resolve disputes as a free alternative to the courts.
Part of GameFi, gaming guilds provide gamers with the necessary funds and tools to participate in blockchain-based online games using a “pay-to-win” model and thus provide gamers in exchange for a cut of players’ earnings.
Formally launched in January 2019, an international group of financial regulators and related organisations which includes the FCA and whose objective is to create a new framework for cooperation between financial services regulators on innovation related topics, sharing different experiences and approaches.
Unchangable, and so a key feature of blockchain technology. Immutable transactions make it impossible for any entity to manipulate, replace, or falsify data stored on a blockchain network.
Also known as a token sale or a coin sale (see Tokens). A digital way of raising finance online from the public using digital currency and DLT. The issuer issues a proprietary digital coin or token against payment in a cryptocurrency, like bitcoin or ether. The digital coin or token issued is related to a specific firm or project. It may represent a share in a firm, a prepayment voucher for future services or have no discernible value at all. ICOs vary widely in design and types and are often projects that are in a very early stage of development.
An institutional arrangement in which both regulated and unregulated entities engage with the competent authority to discuss FinTechrelated issues and clarify how their proposed or actual business models comply with the regulatory framework in place. The FCA provides direct support to business through its innovation hub.
The ability of computers to learn without being explicitly programmed, instead learning patterns from experience, for example by recognising patterns from many examples of data.
A portfolio account opened with a financial institution that is owned by one investor who then appoints a third party to manage the assets within it in accordance with a set investment strategy. The assets of a managed account are not co-mingled but remain those of the investor.
Short for “regulation in markets in cryptoassets”, this is draft EU legislation which is intended to provide an EU-wide set of rules for cryptoassets and activities in cryptoassets.
UK legislation and rules regulating markets in financial instruments (UK MiFID framework) which apply to firms providing services to clients linked to ‘financial instruments’ (generally: shares, bonds, units in collective investment schemes and financial and commodity derivatives), and the venues where those instruments are traded. Originally an EU direction, Markets in Financial Instruments Directive (2004/39/EC).
The process by which new cryptoassets enter into circulation and new transactions are confirmed by the network, performed using sophisticated hardware that solves a complex computational maths problem. When a problem is solved, the miner is awarded the next block of cryptoassets and the process recommences with a trickier problem.
AND TRANSFER OF FUNDS (INFORMATION ON THE PAYER) REGULATIONS 2017
As amended, the MLRs including the requirement to be registered with the FCA by 9 January 2021 in
order to continue to carry on business. Cryptoasset businesses which trade in the UK must be registered with the FCA before beginning to conduct business.
An interdisciplinary field of computer science, artificial intelligence (AI), and computation linguistics that focuses on programming computers and algorithms to analyse, process, and understand human language.
NON-DISRUPTIVE FINTECH
FinTech products or services that trigger incremental innovation and increase efficiency in established and often mature sectors of the financial services industry. The opposite of disruptive FinTech.
These are cryptoassets that represent the proof of title to a unique digital asset. They are digital tokens that are the equivalent of certificates of ownership for virtual (and sometimes physical) assets, such as works of art, collectibles or music.
A framework to allow banking customers to provide access to their banking data and accounts to trusted third party financial services providers (typically tech startups and online financial service vendors) through application programming interfaces (APIs).
PEER-TO-PEER AGREEMENT
Also known as P2P agreement. An agreement under section 36H(4) of RAO, where a lender (an individual or relevant person) provides credit to a borrower (an individual or relevant person) for an amount less than or equal to £25,000, and the agreement is not entered into by the borrower wholly or predominantly for the purposes of a business carried on, or intended to be carried on, by the borrower.
A demonstration intended to verify the potential of certain concepts or theories for real-world application and could be commercialised.
PROOF OF STAKE
A cryptocurrency consensus mechanism for processing transactions and creating new blocks in a blockchain.
PROOF OF WORK
A system that requires feasible amount of effort in order to deter frivolous or malicious uses of computing power.
The public key is comprised of a string of random numbers and can be used to encrypt a message, which only the intended recipient can decipher and read by using the associated private key, which is also made of a long string of random numbers. This private key is a secret key, and must remain known only to the recipient. The key pair is mathematically related so that whatever is encrypted with a public or private key can only be decrypted by its corresponding counterpart.
The Financial Services and Markets Act 2000 (Regulated Activities) Order 2001 No. 54. Among other things, the RAO sets out the activities and types of investments which fall within the FCA’s regulatory perimeter.
The adoption and use of technology by regulated financial services firms and other market participants to help them to follow and meet regulatory and compliance requirements, such as reporting, more efficiently or effectively than established legacy systems.
In the UK, tokens that fall into the category of security tokens or e-money tokens.
The regulatory perimeter describes the boundary that separates financial services activities which are regulated in the United Kingdom, generally by the FCA, from those which are unregulated.
A controlled, supervised space within which both authorised and unauthorised financial firms can test innovative products, services, business models and delivery mechanisms in the real market, with real consumers, with the support of a regulatory authority for a limited time. It offers tools such as restricted authorisation, individual guidance, waivers and no-enforcement-action letters.
Information technology applications that underpin automated advice models. Robo-advisors combine digital interfaces and algorithmic trading, including machine learning models, to provide a range of financial services advice. This may include automated financial recommendations, contract
brokering and portfolio management. Roboadvisors can be standalone firms and platforms or in-house applications run by incumbent financial institutions.
A simple agreement for future tokens, it’s all in the name. It is a contractual investment agreement in the cryptoassets between crypto developers and its investors whereby the developers seek to raise funds to further develop their cryptoasset and then sell.
Tokens with specific characteristics that give the token holder rights akin to those provided by “specified investment” in the UK like a share or a debt instrument as set out in the RAO. They must reach the RAO definition of specified investment. Security tokens fall within the regulatory perimeter and firms carrying on “specified activities” involving security tokens will need to ensure they are properly authorised and have the correct permissions under FSMA and comply with relevant rules and requirements.
A self-executing contract (created using blockchain or other distributed ledger technology (DLT)) where the terms of the agreement between the parties are written into code that exists across a distributed, decentralised blockchain network. The terms of the contract are then executed and enforced on the occurrence of specified events in the contract, which can trigger financial flows or changes of ownership, without the need for further action by the parties. The software can also be used to make and execute chains or bundles of contracts linked to each other, all operating autonomously and automatically.
A hybrid breed of cryptocurrency that is often pegged to real assets (including fiat currency). Algorithmic stablecoins do not back assets, but instead rely on mathematical rules to adjust their supply to match the demand for them. The algorithms will create or destroy stablecoins, with the aim of automatically stabilising their price against some other, typically fiat, currency. In the UK, stablecoins will only be regulated under FSMA if they meet the definition of e-money under the EMRs or security tokens.
The process of verifying cryptocurrency transactions which involves committing holdings to support a blockchain network and confirm the transactions
and thus allows participants to earn passive income on their holdings.
The use of technologically enabled innovation by regulatory authorities in their role as supervisor of financial services firms.
Events that allow regulators to gather participants from across the financial services industry and beyond to develop ideas and discuss challenges. Participants in FCA TechSprints include large financial services institutions, RegTechs, FinTechs, academics, technologists and innovators. Also referred to by the FCA as “hackathons”.
In the UK, the term used to denote different forms of cryptoassets, which may be regulated tokens or unregulated tokens. These are categorised as exchange tokens, E-money tokens, security tokens and utility tokens.
Any token that is not an E-money tokens or a Security tokens. This includes utility tokens and exchange tokens. These tokens fall outside the regulatory perimeter.
Tokens that grant holders access to a current or prospective product or service, but do not grant holders rights that are the same as those granted by specified investments. They fall outside the regulatory perimeter under FSMA. Utility tokens that meet the definition of e-money fall within the E-money tokens category.
See Digital currency.
Also known as digital wallet. A virtual currency account (equivalent to a bank or payment institution offering a payment account) from which payment in virtual currencies can be made or received to and from other wallets.
Providers engaged primarily and professionally in exchange services between digital currency and fiat currency (see Article 1(1) of the Fifth Money
BY CHRISTOPHER JACKSON
Somepeople carry the future inside them like a flame. It doesn’t flicker, though the wind may blow. It holds steady—even when the next step isn’t yet clear. When we first met Luela Figueira, she was already on fire.
A First-Class law graduate, a live TV host by 22, and a young woman raised in Guyana now navigating Britain’s job market under the ticking clock of a graduate visa, Luela had everything— talent, drive, voice. And yet, like so many in her generation, she was still waiting for the door to open.
What followed was a story not just of transformation, but of self-assertion. Through her time with Finito, Luela turned potential into power. She refined her purpose, deepened her voice, and now stands ready—not as a passive jobseeker, but as a confident, creative force for change in a world that urgently needs it.
Luela’s story begins in the town of Linden, Guyana—a place of resilience, rivers, and red earth. At just 19, she was already a radio presenter, scripting, producing, and hosting her own show. By 22, she was anchoring a daily television programme, The Café, interviewing artists, politicians, and community leaders, often live and unscripted. “I had to be quick, calm, confident,” she says. “It taught me early how to speak when it counts.”
This wasn’t youthful dabbling. It was work. Between jobs at Devine Entertainment, community leadership roles in her local youth revival group, and a growing passion for social justice, Luela was already combining media skill with public purpose. Later, that passion led her to law. She moved to the UK, studying at The University of Buckingham. Her
results were stellar: First-Class in her LLB, a Distinction in her LLM in International and Commercial Law, and awards for top performance in nearly every module.
And yet: even with such credentials, when graduation came, the next chapter didn’t immediately write itself.
Like many international students in the UK, Luela faced structural barriers. Despite her achievements, her right to stay hinged on finding a graduate-level job that paid over £30,000. This made even temporary roles a gamble—and every application a negotiation not just of talent, but of survival.
“It was overwhelming,” she recalls. “I was applying to jobs constantly and getting no response. I started questioning everything—even whether I belonged in this system.”
Finito entered the picture at a crucial moment. Through our bursary programme, supported by The Stewarts Foundation, Luela was matched with experienced mentors who didn’t just offer career advice—they listened, understood, and helped her locate the through-line in her story.
“She had all the ingredients,” says mentor Dominique Rollo. “But like so many young people, especially those with multiple identities and international backgrounds, she needed help translating her brilliance into something the job market could understand.”
At Finito, the first steps were practical: refining her CV, highlighting transferable skills, building a LinkedIn profile that reflected her range. She added new experiences, such as leading
the social media campaign for her restaurant employer during the busy Christmas season, and her volunteer radio presenting role at 3Bs Radio in Buckingham.
More importantly, she began to identify key sectors where her passions aligned with opportunity: sustainability, communications, PR, and law. She started applying more strategically— including for a role at the Global Green Growth Institute in Guyana, a perfect convergence of her legal training, writing skill, and interest in global development.
“She’s a natural communicator,” says Matt Thompson, another of her Finito mentors. “But she also has real depth. Her work on climate change and human rights shows that she’s thinking not just about her own career, but about how she can contribute to the future.”
That work includes a significant academic paper published in The Denning Law Journal, where she makes a compelling case for a human rightsbased approach to climate change in India—linking environmental degradation with fundamental legal protections. It’s serious, articulate, and ahead of its time.
Over Christmas 2024, Luela returned to Guyana. What she found stunned her.
“SHE STOPPED WAITING FOR PERMISSION. SHE STARTED SEEING HERSELF NOT JUST AS A JOB APPLICANT, BUT AS A PARTNER IN THE COUNTRY’S GROWTH.”
SOPHIA PETRIDES, FINITO MENTOR
The country, once a quiet corner of the Caribbean-South American frontier, is booming. Since the 2015 discovery of massive offshore oil reserves, Guyana has become one of the fastest-growing economies in the world. Construction cranes dot the skyline of Georgetown. Roads widen. Malls sprout. International delegations line up at embassies.
“It was surreal,” she says. “Suddenly, the place I left to find opportunity is itself becoming a land of opportunity. I realised: I could be part of that.” She began researching jobs in the oil and gas sector, legal compliance, sustainability communications, and global trade. Her mentors helped her refine her approach. She started reaching out to people—overcoming her natural reluctance to coldcall—and soon had meetings with business leaders, lawyers, and public affairs professionals in Georgetown. In early 2025, her persistence paid off when she was offered a position at The Sui Generis Law Firm, a leading law firm in Georgetown—a role that aligned her legal training with her commitment to Guyana’s development. As Finito Senior Mentor Tom Pauk wrote: “It was a richly deserved job offer and the culmination of a year’s worth of intensive mentoring, and a great team
effort. She is an exceptionally bright and personable young woman with a wide range of skills and talents. Her new employer is lucky to have her. In fact it was Luela herself who had first spotted the opening at Sui Generis on their website, and my Finito colleague James Slater and I were impressed (though not surprised) by the thoroughness of her preparation once she had secured an interview with the firm’s principal.”
“There was this shift,” says mentor Sophia Petrides. “She stopped waiting for permission. She started seeing herself not just as a job applicant, but as a partner in the country’s growth.”
One of the most moving moments in Luela’s Finito journey came unexpectedly. She was selected as recipient of the Finito Award at Buckingham—recognising a student who had shown “the greatest degree
of excellence.” The prize: a signet ring, crafted by none other than Bentley & Skinner, royal warrant holders to His Majesty the King.
“ IN A PERFECT WORLD, COMPREHENSIVE CAREER GUIDANCE WOULD BE AVAILABLE TO ALL REGARDLESS OF THEIR BACKGROUND. THE STEWARTS FOUNDATION IS DELIGHTED TO SUPPORT THE IMPORTANT WORK OF FINITO VIA ITS BURSARY SCHEME.”
STUART DENCH, CHAIRMAN, THE STEWARTS FOUNDATION
“I was shocked,” she says. “I didn’t know people were noticing me. To be given something so beautiful, so symbolic—it was like being told: you belong.”
The ring became more than jewellery. It was a reminder of her worth, and a token of her resilience. It sits now not just on her finger, but in the centre of her story.
As she prepares for her wedding in 2026 and considers her next move— whether a return to Guyana or a remote legal communications role with a US firm—Luela’s vision is clear. She wants to work where law, creativity,
and impact intersect. She wants to tell stories that matter. And she wants, always, to empower others— particularly the young women who look like her, speak like her, and might otherwise go unheard.
She’s now targeting roles in legal policy, sustainable business development, and public engagement in sectors like mining, agriculture, and energy. She has begun building a powerful "why" statement, drawing on her lived experience, her Christian faith, and her commitment to dignity through work.
She is not waiting anymore. She is building.
Luela’s mentors all say the same thing: she is more than employable. She is essential.
“Every time we spoke,” says Dominique, “I came away more impressed. Not just by what she’s done—but by the grace and intelligence with which she carries it.”
That grace is visible in everything from her poetry collection The Confessions of a Christian Girl, to her volunteer work mentoring Guyanese youth, to
her poised interventions at conferences like the International Conference on Human Rights and Climate Change. And in a world where employability increasingly means adaptability, creativity, and moral clarity, Luela offers a blueprint for what the next generation of leaders might look like—not self-promoting, but serviceminded. Not waiting for power, but cultivating it.
Luela’s story is still unfolding. She has returned to Guyana. She may find herself on global stages, leading communications for climate resilience initiatives or policy campaigns. She may become a broadcaster again—or an advocate, or a mother, or all three.
But what’s certain is that the arc of her life now bends not toward fear, but toward possibility.
Finito didn’t give her talent. That was always there. But what we did give—through conversation, belief, and guidance—was space. The space to grow, to reflect, to rise. And Luela has done just that.
BY CHRISTOPHER JACKSON
Itis a late spring afternoon when I meet Keith Mabbutt at the Beaumont Hotel. He’s early, of course. There’s something about his manner that suggests someone for whom lateness would feel like a betrayal of self-respect. When he shakes my hand, it’s with the energy of a former footballer, which he is. But there’s more to Mabbutt than sport or business. What strikes you immediately is the humility, and the sense of someone who has had to become comfortable with both devastation and grace.
"I always wanted to be a footballer," he tells me, smiling, as if the dream never quite left him. "From a very early age, it was football or nothing. People around me saw it, even in primary school. I was the one with the ball, trying to take everyone on." He laughs softly, not with arrogance but with fondness for that vanished boy.
"I ALWAYS WANTED TO BE A FOOTBALLER, FROM A VERY EARLY AGE, IT WAS FOOTBALL OR NOTHING."
And it wasn't a fantasy. Mabbutt had the talent. He was scouted by Millwall, Charlton, and Gillingham, eventually playing alongside future Premier League stars. "I was training with the likes of Scott Parker. He went on to captain England. And there I was, his teammate."
But as in many sporting stories, the dream fell apart with an injury. "Pre-season at
Charlton," he says. "A country run. I went down a pothole. My knee was never the same again." Mabbutt doesn’t dramatise it. He doesn’t need to. The facts are enough: a career derailed, a young man forced to recalibrate his dreams.
What followed was a painful drift. He found himself unable to commit to semi-professional football, haunted by the proximity of what might have been. "I’d turn up to clubs, sit in the car park, wondering what I was doing there. Six months earlier I’d been on the cusp of topflight football. Now I was trying to prove myself to people who had day jobs."
The descent from the Premier League’s
outer orbit to the amateur leagues left more than physical scars. "My confidence was shot. Mental health wasn’t something we talked about back then. But in hindsight? I was in a bad place." What happened next could have been a footnote. But instead, it became a beginning. Flicking through the Evening Standard, he came across a recruitment advert. "I went to the interview thinking I was applying for a job. Turned out they were interviewing me as a candidate to put on their books. But by the end of the meeting they said, 'We want you to work here.'"
So began Mabbutt’s second life. Starting in admin at PSD, a City recruitment
firm, he applied the same diligence and passion that once defined his football. "I just put myself about. Got to know people."
Within months, he was approached to become a consultant. "And this moment came," he says, with a certain wonder. "I said, 'Actually, I want to set up my own company.' Even now, I don’t know where that came from. It was like something outside me spoke."
"I’D TURN UP TO CLUBS, SIT IN THE CAR PARK, WONDERING WHAT I WAS DOING THERE. SIX MONTHS EARLIER I’D BEEN ON THE CUSP OF TOP-FLIGHT FOOTBALL. NOW I WAS TRYING TO PROVE MYSELF TO PEOPLE WHO HAD DAY JOBS."
What followed was, in his words, "a bit mad". With PSD’s blessing, he started out alone, renting a four-bedroom house in Kent, transforming it into both home and office. "I didn’t want a separate office. I needed to feel in it. I was literally on my own, phoning candidates, building something from scratch."
The company he founded would become The Enhancement Initiative UK, a niche graduate recruitment consultancy serving students and young people transitioning into life after their studies. "There’s this huge psychological shift," he says. "When you’re in sport, your identity is everything. When that goes, it can be brutal."
Through The Enhancement Initiative UK
and other ventures, including CVSeeMe. com Mabbutt has placed thousands of young people in meaningful careers, helping them avoid the void he once fell into. "It’s personal for me. I know what it’s like to feel lost.
"WHEN YOU’RE IN SPORT, YOUR IDENTITY IS EVERYTHING. WHEN THAT GOES, IT CAN BE BRUTAL."
I ask him how his own playing days inform his professional work. He pauses. "Sport teaches you about pressure, about reading people, about timing. But mostly, it teaches you about failure. And what you do after."
At this point, we drift into philosophy. Mabbutt’s tone changes: it becomes softer, more reflective. "I think everything you go through is preparation for something. I’m not sure I believe in luck. But I believe in grace. I believe in showing up."
It’s a rare thing to meet someone who has seen both the best and the worst of what life can offer, and who has
managed to convert that experience into something useful to others. "The best part of my job now? It’s seeing people believe in themselves again. That moment when they realise they’re not finished."
We talk about legacy. He shrugs, uncomfortable. "I don’t think about legacy. I think about impact. About helping someone get through the week. If that’s what I can do, then I’m good."
"THE BEST PART OF MY JOB NOW? IT’S SEEING PEOPLE BELIEVE IN THEMSELVES AGAIN. THAT MOMENT WHEN THEY REALISE THEY’RE NOT FINISHED."
But legacy might find him anyway. As we part ways, Mabbutt insists on paying for the tea. It’s a small thing. But maybe that’s how you build a life worth remembering: not in glory or riches, but in small, consistent acts of generosity. In remembering what it’s like to be young, full of hope, with a ball at your feet and the whole world ahead of you.
BY SARAH TUCKER
In 1932, in Billund, a carpenter called Ole Kirk Christiansen began carving toys out of wood. By 1958, his workshop had produced the Lego brick: a small, studded square capable of locking imagination into place. Since then Denmark has been exporting not just toys, but a philosophy. Forget mindfulness apps or stress-management seminars: Lego is Jung, Freud, Woolf, and Atwood in plastic.
For Jung, Lego would be archetypes you could hold in your hand; for Freud, sublimation made simple, towers built rather than neuroses untangled. Woolf would recognise in it the architecture of a room of one’s own, and Atwood might
see the dystopia you can dismantle at will. And if world leaders were made to sit down with 5,000 bricks between them? Perhaps egos would click into place and the urge to play soldiers might finally subside.
This thought comes easily in Denmark, where play has always co-existed with pragmatism. On my recent visit, I travelled beyond Copenhagen and its tourist icons into the coastal region of Kystlandet. Here Denmark reveals its true self: not the stage set of fairy tales, but a slower, more challenging landscape of weathered photographs, second-hand shops, and people who have chosen to retreat from speed without retreating from ambition. They are not stoics but
And what it teaches is that the good life requires structure—like Lego—but with space for reinvention.
I began at The Little Organic Farm Shop outside Billund, run by Karen and Ole. Both former dancers—Ole also an ex-soldier—they now farm 25 acres of vegetables, 300 hens, and an impressive side business in microgreens and mushrooms. Compost bags stuffed with coffee grounds sprout fungi like bouquets, used once, then recycled into soil. Apprentices arrive from across Europe to exchange labour for food and lodging. What they really absorb is the
choreography of resilience: two people reshaping their lives and careers with patience and generosity.
Nearby, the Brandbygegaard Winery and Distillery offered a different rhythm. Lone and Soren are polymaths who might themselves be built of Lego, endlessly reassembled. They grow vegetables, keep vineyards and orchards, distil gins and ciders, design their own labels, write cookbooks, play music, host concerts, and raise five children. Their legendary summer suppers— apple ciders, sparkling fruit wines, and food grown metres from the table— are booked out years in advance. The lesson here is that the “good life” is not about narrowing down but expanding possibilities.
“THE GOOD LIFE REQUIRES STRUCTURE— LIKE LEGO—BUT WITH SPACE FOR REINVENTION.”
Finally, I stayed at Reballegaard, a renovated estate where Tine and Magnus Svensson have transformed a former pig farm and nursing home into a serene bed and breakfast. Magnus still commutes to Copenhagen, but Tine builds furniture from floor tiles, ferments her own kombucha, and is teaching him to drive a tractor. Together they are creating a retreat that hosts yoga sessions, sound baths, and wellness workshops. Their house—fur throws, whitewashed beams, warm greys—could feature in Homes & Gardens. But the real point is not décor; it is intention. A life built block by block.
Across these encounters runs a common thread, particularly among the women of the region. They move forward without hesitation, empowered not by
ideology but by practice. Where other cultures complicate life with guilt or hesitation, here there is only action, invention, and steady tenacity. It is not less life, but more purposeful life.
Which is, perhaps, the Danish secret. Happiness is not a matter of escape but of construction. You begin by following the instructions, then break them apart and build anew. Lego, once again, provides the metaphor: both framework and freedom.
When I left Kystlandet, I thought again of Lego’s founding motto: det bedste er ikke for godt—only the best is good enough. Modest words, but radical in their implications. If Freud mapped
the unconscious, Jung sketched the archetypes, Woolf demanded space for the self, and Atwood warned of societies gone wrong, then Denmark quietly offers the missing manual. Not theory, but practice. Not conflict, but construction.
World peace may not arrive overnight, but hand the narcissists a bucket of Lego, pour them a glass of Danish fruit wine, and let them build together. Denmark suggests that happiness—personal or political—begins exactly there.
Sarah Tucker is The Boardroom Bard (theboardroombard.com) and author of travel features for national and international press.
BY NISHAD SANZAGIRI
I’dbe forgiven for thinking I never left Scotland. There were bagpipes on the boardwalk, tartan scarves in tourist shops, and a fiddler playing what might as well have been the soundtrack to Braveheart. I’d just flown nearly seven hours across the Atlantic from Edinburgh to Halifax, but as I stepped out into the crisp Canadian sun, it felt less like arrival and more like teleportation; from the Scottish Highlands to their North American echo.
The pine trees were a giveaway. So were the pickup trucks. Long flat carriageways lined with conifers,
enormous metallic cars that looked like they’d been bred to survive journeys harsher than any to be found on the other side of the pond. But the names — Inverness, Berwick, Dundee, New Glasgow — disoriented me, although they shouldn’t have. Nova Scotia, after all, is Latin for “New Scotland,” which only reinforced my long-held theory that for a people who conquered half the planet, the British showed remarkably little flair for invention. It was as though they took a map of Britain and copied it eastward in permanent marker. No wonder, then, that when I told a friend in
London I was off to Halifax, he asked if I meant the bank down the road. But this wasn’t Scotland. This was the Maritimes, one of Canada’s eastern provinces, where the people call themselves Maritimers with a charming pride that comes from living close to wind and water, and where the horizon feels just a little further away than it usually does, as if the land and the seas are caught in an eternal tussle to see who can stretch itself longer. I had come to visit a friend I hadn’t seen since high school, and in spending a week together — with her partner, in her world, surrounded by the life she
had made — I found that childhood friendships offer a strange kind of intimacy, one unmoored from time, where just a few good conversations can elevate the faded outlines of shared adolescence.
“PERHAPS THERE’S A PARTICULAR DIGNITY IN BEING KEPT AROUND FOR WHAT YOU WERE RATHER THAN WHAT YOU ARE.”
On the first evening, we drove to Peggy’s Cove, that most photographed of Nova Scotia’s postcards, complete with a lighthouse perched on saltlicked rocks. The road there wound gently, the sea peeking in and out like
a shy child behind curtains. Boats bobbed in the water that created small inland lakes from the vast ocean like freckles on a sunburnt nose. Layers of green hugged and spilled over the roads with all its shades — mossy, piney, sun-washed — and the smooth tarmac stretched on endlessly, flanked on either side with yellow lines and a sky so blue, it almost felt boastful. By the Cove, I stared at the lighthouse, wondering how many lives it had saved, of sailors and lost men at sea, before becoming an extra on tourist photos. It looked tired ... in the way old things get tired when they outlive their purpose. In 2010, the Canadian Coast Guard had declared it “surplus,” a word that sounded like bureaucracy but felt like betrayal, and I couldn't help thinking that if lighthouses had feelings, would this
one be hurt? Or bitter? Or would it be resigned, the way an elderly professor might watch the school tear down the chalkboards and still show up in tweed and tie, just in case a student needed something explained?
Standing there, I wondered if obsolescence always arrives so mundanely, with paperwork instead of drama. The lighthouse still stood, still posed for photos, still held its recently-painted form against the salt wind, but it no longer saved anyone from the rocks. Perhaps there’s a particular dignity in being kept around for what you were rather than what you are. Or perhaps, like old friendships revisited after years apart, the purpose was never as fixed as I initially thought. The lighthouse no longer guides ships through storms, but it still helps people find
their bearings, still offers a reason to drive out to the edge of things. My friend and I were no longer the teenagers who’d shared homework and heartbreaks, but weren’t we finding new coordinates for each other?
“Welcome to God’s country,” said my friend’s partner, as we crossed into the island of Cape Breton. It was a phrase his grandfather would tell him during their childhood trips, and standing there, watching the light play across the highlands, I understood why some places make believers out of skeptics. The Cabot Trail wound before us like a meditation on curves — serpentine roads that rose and fell with such drama that my stomach forgot which way was up. Each turn revealed another impossibility: mountains that seemed to lean into the sea, forests that tumbled down cliffsides like
green waterfalls frozen mid-pour, and always, always, that endless stretch of the Atlantic, changing colours like a mood ring worn by the gods.
The ocean here couldn’t make up its mind what to be. Turquoise in the shallows, navy in the depths, and at sunset — oh, at sunset — it turned the kind of red that makes you understand why our ancestors invented mythology. Standing on those cliffs, watching the sun bleed into the horizon, I thought of Hanuman, the Hindu monkey god who as a child mistook the sun for a ripe apple and leapt Icarus-like toward it. There’s something about a sunset this fierce that makes you want to reach for it too, to pluck it and take a bite, even if it guarantees a fall. It’s a rare thing, finding a place that offers both stunning views and the smooth roads to reach them — most
countries, I’ve found, make you choose between beauty and accessibility. But here, the asphalt ribboned through the highlands like it had been laid by someone who understood that the journey and the destination were the same thing. No wonder car companies flock here for their commercials; this is where machines on wheels go to look graceful.
The distances in Nova Scotia play tricks on you. It’s the second smallest of Canada’s provinces, yet the drive from Halifax to the northern tip of Cape Breton is the same as London to Edinburgh — a fact that made me reconsider everything I thought I knew about scale. Perhaps it’s the smooth roads that compress time, or maybe it’s the views that stretch it, but hours passed like minutes while minutes felt like tiny eternities. Not
having a driver’s license meant I could surrender completely to the passenger seat, watching the scenery unspool through glass. I told myself I didn’t mind not driving, though in truth, these roads made me ache to have my hands on the wheel; oh what it must be to feel the car lean into those concrete curves.
“THE CABOT TRAIL WOUND BEFORE US LIKE A MEDITATION ON CURVES — SERPENTINE ROADS THAT ROSE AND FELL WITH SUCH DRAMA THAT MY STOMACH FORGOT WHICH WAY WAS UP.”
But even paradise has its anxieties. By the time I arrived in Nova Scotia, it hadn’t rained in weeks. The forests were dry, the air was crisp, and every conversation included some mention of drought and the potential of wildfires. At a café in downtown Halifax, I had overheard someone remind their friend to turn off the tap while brushing.
In Cape Breton, all trails were closed and everywhere we went the signs reminded us of the likelihood of extreme fire danger. The drought had been going on for weeks, turning the forests into kindling and the air into something that crackled with the faint prospect of a live matchstick. It felt wrong, all that water stretching to every horizon while the land thirsted. My friend mentioned the old line from Coleridge we used to recite in school — “Water, water, everywhere, nor any drop to drink” — and suddenly the Ancient Mariner’s rime didn’t seem so ancient anymore. Climate change has a way of making
poetry feel prophetic, of turning metaphors literal.1 Here was an island surrounded by ocean, watching its forests brown at the edges, waiting for a rain that wouldn’t come.
On my last morning, we returned to the water’s edge. The fog had rolled in overnight, thick as wool. Through the mist, I could hear bagpipes again — some busker on the boardwalk, I assumed, playing for early morning joggers and insomniacs alike. The sound carried differently in the fog, and I thought about how the Scots who settled here must have felt carrying their instruments across an ocean, determined to make the new world sound like the old one.
But of course, it never quite does. The notes may be the same, but the air that carries them is different. The names may be the same — Inverness, Dundee — but the places themselves have their own stories now, shaped by different seasons, different storms, different sorrows, and celebrations. Even my friend, whom I’d known when we were both different people in a different country and a different decade, had become someone beautifully unfamiliar, rooted in this place I was only passing through.
As I drove back to the airport for my flight, past those borrowed place names and towering pines, I realized that Nova Scotia had given me something I hadn’t known I was looking for: the understanding that we’re all translations of something older, all trying to make the familiar strange and the strange familiar. The lighthouse at Peggy’s Cove may be surplus now, but it still stands, still witnesses, still helps people find their bearings even if it no longer saves them from the rocks.
“WE’RE ALL TRANSLATIONS OF SOMETHING OLDER, ALL TRYING TO MAKE THE FAMILIAR STRANGE AND THE STRANGE FAMILIAR.”
The bagpipes faded as we pulled away from the coast, but I could still hear them long after they’d stopped, the way you can still feel the waves hours after you’ve left the shore. Some echoes, I was learning, are worth experiencing, even if — especially if — they sound nothing like the original.
BY CHRISTOPHER JACKSON
There are few names in Italian design that carry quite the resonance of Turri. For 100 years, the brand has stood not only as a symbol of refinement, but as a living testament to the ways in which heritage and innovation can co-exist—sometimes even in the same curve of a chair or the sheen of a tabletop.
Founded in 1925, Turri has always been a company with an eye trained both on the craftsmanship of the past and the opportunities of the future. One does not reach a centenary by accident; it requires vision, daring, and the quiet, daily discipline of excellence. Now, in 2025, the brand celebrates its 100th anniversary—not as a resting point, but as a springboard for evolution.
Each collection this year is a declaration of intent: Turri is not content to repeat itself. It is building, questioning, reinterpreting the idea of modern luxury from the inside out.
We begin with the Vesta collection, conceived by Francesca Lanzavecchia. Named for the Roman goddess of the hearth, it reimagines the home as sanctuary—fluid forms, subtle textures, and soft geometries envelop the user in warmth, familiarity, and grace. The collection speaks in tones of intimacy: upholstery with a tactile softness, wood finishes that feel timeless yet wholly modern, and an overall sensibility that brings emotional depth to contemporary design.
From there, we move to Marco Acerbis’ trio of innovations: the Joel, Nabi, and Lynn chairs. Each offers a distinct silhouette and personality. Joel exudes quiet strength with its enveloping
backrest and tailored upholstery, ideal for both home and contract spaces. Nabi introduces a graceful asymmetry that feels almost sculptural, a conversation between void and volume. Lynn is the most delicate of the three—sleek, agile, and intentionally pared back, it embodies a purity of line that feels effortlessly elegant.
Acerbis’ Kenobi table brings further contrast and drama. With a commanding
central pedestal and a top that seems to hover weightlessly, Kenobi is at once structural and serene. The interplay between strong materials—perhaps marble or high-polish lacquer—and minimalist form evokes Japanese restraint blended with Italian sophistication. This is a table that anchors a space not through ornament, but through intention.
The Kyma collection, designed by
“THIS IS A TABLE THAT ANCHORS A SPACE NOT THROUGH ORNAMENT, BUT THROUGH INTENTION.”
Matteo Nunziati, takes its name from the Greek word for wave—and appropriately so. Here, movement is captured in material. The surfaces ripple gently, like a memory of water, rendered in the most refined woods, leathers, and lacquers.
There’s a lyricism to this collection—a harmony between stillness and motion, modernity and comfort. Kyma is where architecture meets poetry.
Nunziati’s additional work on the Atelier collection extends this dialogue between function and finesse. With elements inspired by the bespoke craftsmanship of haute couture ateliers, the collection offers meticulously detailed cabinetry, sleek upholstery, and striking material contrasts. Every element is precise: brass accents, stitched leather, and symmetrical inlays evoke the discipline of tailoring,
while remaining deeply livable.
Lastly, the Bow and Nook collections by Studio Milo offer a study in duality. Bow is extroverted—its generous curves seem to invite movement and interaction, its forms drawing the eye with a subtle playfulness. It’s a collection that brings warmth and dynamism to formal spaces. Nook, by contrast, offers moments of quietude. With enveloping silhouettes and subdued finishes, it carves out space for solitude and reflection. Together, they speak to the full emotional landscape of a home—joyful, restorative, social, and sacred.
To walk through a Turri showroom today is to feel time folding in on itself—not in nostalgia, but in continuity. The pieces are unmistakably of this moment, yet they carry within them the integrity of a century’s worth of choices.
And so, as Turri turns 100, it does not merely look back. It steps forward—with new collaborators, fresh visions, and an unwavering belief that beauty, well-made, never ages.
In the quiet triumph of a perfectly executed seam, or the bold sweep of a new silhouette, the brand reminds us: modern luxury isn’t a trend. It’s a tradition—constantly reimagined.
GOOD VIBRATIONS
Genius bruised by beauty
ACTING OUT When performers seek power 116
ARDERN WARNING Soft power, hard exit 134
There are no cathedrals left to build. This is the quiet knowledge that hums beneath the profession of architecture in our time. The days of Brunelleschi and Borromini, when an architect could spend a lifetime lifting stone to the heavens in the service of transcendence, are gone. Today’s work is different—more bounded, more briefed, more bureaucratised. And yet: there are those who persist in finding sublimity within the commission. Who, in spite of everything, still manage to make architecture do what it has always done at its best: remind us who we are.
Norman Foster turns 90 this year. He is not just one of Britain’s most successful architects; he is the consummate 21st-century builder: international, collaborative, technologically attuned, and never once interested in the kind of starchitecture that reduces the building to a signature and the city to a sketchpad. His is a practice not of bombast but of clarity. And that makes him, in some ways, the last great modernist.
“THERE
To speak of Foster is not to speak of one building, or even of many. It is to speak of a way of working, and— more importantly—a way of thinking. Foster’s buildings are often described as clean, minimal, restrained. But in truth they are generous. They believe in the future, and they place human beings at the heart of that belief. That’s why so many are places of work, of assembly, of movement. They are never precious. They are used.
He has always been interested in what it means to work—not just as an architect, but as a citizen. Look at
the Reichstag in Berlin. That nowfamous dome of glass doesn’t just let in light; it makes visible the workings of power. The visitor spirals up, the parliament sits below—an architectural metaphor rendered legible to all. Germany, so often a land scarred by the 20th century, found in that gesture a reassertion of democratic dignity. And Foster, for his part, found a symbol not of his own ego, but of restoration. He has long had a particular relationship with Germany. His office has employed many of its brightest young architects, and he is held in high regard not only for the Reichstag but for his sense of order and clarity— qualities deeply admired in a culture
that still reveres engineering as a poetic discipline. But Foster is not national. He is global in the truest sense: a student of the built world who sees in each site an opportunity not to impress, but to elevate.
“FOSTER’S BUILDINGS ARE OFTEN DESCRIBED AS CLEAN, MINIMAL, RESTRAINED. BUT IN TRUTH THEY ARE GENEROUS.”
The Commerzbank Tower in Frankfurt, completed in the 1990s, was the world’s
first ecological skyscraper. Not because it sought the label—this was long before the age of LEED certification and ESG metrics—but because it was designed to breathe. With its atria and gardens spiralling up through the structure, it was a provocation in steel and glass: could even a financial tower have soul?
It turns out it could. And that has been Foster’s gift: to find, amid the constraints of budget, legislation, and use-case, the flicker of the transcendent. That’s not easy. Today’s architects are hemmed in by regulation, by planning committees, by clients who want more and pay less. The work is rarely about vision alone. It’s about compromise, iteration, and endurance.
“THE VISITOR SPIRALS UP, THE PARLIAMENT SITS BELOW—AN ARCHITECTURAL METAPHOR RENDERED LEGIBLE TO ALL.”
But in that world, Foster has managed to do what few have done: create a language that is instantly recognisable without ever being self-indulgent.
The Gherkin—30 St Mary Axe—is a perfect example. It is often spoken of as iconic, but it is really pragmatic: shaped as it is to withstand wind loads, to minimise light loss to the street, to require less air conditioning. It is a building that teaches you, if you listen, that beauty is a by-product of intelligence.
This, too, is Foster’s genius: his intelligence is technical, not theatrical. He has always been an architect of the real. And that is no small thing in a profession often tempted by spectacle.
The reality of architecture today is not of lone visionaries but of teams. Foster’s firm employs hundreds—designers, researchers, engineers, model-makers. His research studio doesn’t just test materials; it models futures. It asks how cities will move, how buildings will age, how energy will flow. And it does this not in the hope of being noticed, but in the hope of being useful.
That word—useful—is rarely associated with art. But it should be. Particularly in architecture. Buildings are not sculptures. They must serve, support, sustain. And Foster’s do. They do not just gleam. They function.
His work at Apple Park in Cupertino is testament to that. Commissioned by the late Steve Jobs and built after his death, the building is a circle: vast, inward, quiet. It is a campus not of dominance but of meditation. Trees in its core, solar panels on its roof, silence in its design. It could have been a monument. Instead, it is a working environment—albeit one that redefines what a working environment can be.
“BEAUTY
And what of employability? That often-ignored measure of architectural success? Foster has created not just buildings but jobs. His practice has trained thousands. It has become a proving ground for the best talent from every continent. He has shown that architecture, when properly run, is not only sustainable environmentally, but economically. It is a career, not a calling. A practice, not a fantasy.
This is vital. Too many young architects emerge from university with vision but no footing. Foster’s legacy is not only in glass and steel—it is in the architects he has sent into the world: rigorous,
well-trained, realistic, yet still capable of dreaming. And in this, too, he echoes a truth larger than architecture: that the highest form of vision is that which includes others.
Turning 90 is, for most of us, a slowing. But Foster shows no sign of stopping. He is still sketching, still questioning,
still listening. His firm continues to work across every continent. It advises on city planning, on energy systems, on new ways to live. For Foster, architecture is not the creation of forms but of futures. It is not about fame, but about continuity. It is about the quiet thrill of making something that works.
And perhaps, in the end, that’s what separates him from so many of his contemporaries. He has never chased eccentricity. He has chased excellence. He has not sought to disrupt, but to clarify. And in that clarity lies something radical.
We may live in an age without cathedrals.
But if architecture still has a sacred task, it is this: to make the world more liveable. To create spaces where work can happen, where life can unfold, where democracy can be seen, and where beauty has a chance to emerge.
Foster has done that. For ninety years, and counting.
“THE HIGHEST FORM OF VISION IS THAT WHICH INCLUDES OTHERS.”
It is now three months since Brian Wilson died, and the silence around his passing feels enormous. When the news broke on a warm day in June, it seemed not just the death of a person but the last great breath of a certain kind of American dream—a dream set to music, of sun-drenched harmonies and melancholy surf, of a California that never quite existed but which, through his songs, always felt close.
The tributes came, not as a formality, but with real awe. Elton John called him the greatest influence on his songwriting. Bob Dylan, famously reluctant to praise, said only: “He was a true American original.” Paul McCartney recalled crying the first time he heard God Only Knows, calling it the greatest song ever written. Carole King, Bruce Springsteen, Barry Gibb—all found in Wilson something that transcended genre. Something not just brilliant, but necessary.
“IT SEEMED NOT JUST THE DEATH OF A PERSON BUT THE LAST GREAT BREATH OF A CERTAIN KIND OF AMERICAN DREAM.”
Wilson’s passing marked more than the end of a career. It marked the end of an era. And it forced a reckoning: who now remains from that golden lineage of American songwriters, that line stretching from George Gershwin and Cole Porter, through Sondheim, Dylan, Mitchell, Springsteen—and, yes, Brian Wilson?
In many ways, he was the most improbable of them all. Where Gershwin was urbane, Wilson was introverted. Where Porter was witty, Wilson was sincere. Where Dylan was elliptical, Wilson laid his heart bare in falsetto. Yet his genius was no less
towering. He understood harmony the way poets understand rhythm: intuitively, obsessively, almost painfully. He once said that music had started coming into his head in teenage years and had never quite left. These weren’t just tunes—they were revelations. “Teenage symphonies to God,” as he called them.
He belonged to that very rare breed of composer who seems to work not from tradition, but from compulsion. The lineage is small: Mozart, Schubert, Gershwin, maybe Lennon at his best. With Wilson, the music seemed to come from some inland sea of longing. And the fact that he made this music while enduring deep psychological pain makes it all the more astonishing. Much of that pain began at home. His father, Murry Wilson, was famously violent and emotionally cruel—a man whose ambition for his son was rivalled
only by his resentment of him. Murry beat Brian, manipulated him, sold the rights to the Beach Boys’ early catalogue behind his back. To grow up under that shadow and still emerge with a spirit intact would have been enough. That Brian emerged with such generosity of musical feeling—songs full of hope, yearning, and love—is a miracle.
“HE UNDERSTOOD HARMONY THE WAY POETS UNDERSTAND RHYTHM: INTUITIVELY, OBSESSIVELY, ALMOST PAINFULLY.”
There’s a quality in Wilson’s music that resists cynicism. It isn’t naive; it’s brave. It believes in beauty as a survival
strategy. And perhaps that is why his songs endure. When he was still barely out of his teens, he began composing what would become Pet Sounds, an album of such emotional subtlety and harmonic innovation that it left even the Beatles stunned. McCartney later said it was the record that pushed them to make Sgt. Pepper. But Pet Sounds wasn’t merely competitive—it was devotional. Tracks like You Still Believe in Me and Caroline, No contained a fragility that was rare then, and rarer now. The vulnerability was not theatrical. It was structural. It was the music.
And then, just as his powers were peaking, came the collapse. Wilson’s mind, always sensitive,
became overwhelmed. The unfinished masterwork Smile, intended to follow Pet Sounds, fell apart. The studio sessions became erratic, the ambition too great to bear. The band resisted. The drugs crept in. And so began one of the most tragic interludes in pop history: a genius silenced by the very force that had once made him great—his own brain.
For years, Wilson disappeared. He stayed in bed. Gained weight. Heard voices. Drifted. It seemed he might never return.
But here is where his story transcends the usual myths of pop. Because he did return. Slowly, haltingly, painfully. He wrote again. Recorded again. And eventually, decades later, finished what he started.
In 2004, Smile was finally released— rebuilt from memory, preserved notes, and old dreams. It was, quite simply, a resurrection. Critics wept. Musicians rejoiced. It was like watching an unfinished symphony come to life— because that’s what it was.
“THESE WEREN’T JUST TUNES—THEY WERE REVELATIONS. ‘TEENAGE SYMPHONIES TO GOD,’ AS HE CALLED THEM.”
And later still, he gave us That Lucky Old Sun, a suite that reflected not just his love of Los Angeles, but his hardwon gratitude for life itself. It was the work of a man who had survived everything: family, fame, madness, irrelevance—and still believed in song. In Wilson’s life, we find one of the most powerful examples of what real employability can look like. Not résumé polish or boardroom polish. But perseverance. The ability to keep creating even when the world has forgotten you. The choice to finish something decades after it began. The courage to stay vulnerable when it would be easier to disappear.
This is not just the story of a musician. It is the story of someone who found work—real, enduring, valuable work—in the act of imagining. That is the highest form of employment. And Wilson, with all his damage, might be the purest example we have of it.
We live in a world where youth and noise are rewarded. But Brian Wilson reminds us that the work that matters often happens in silence, in solitude, in pain. That genius is not a moment, but a practice. And that the job is never really over.
“GENIUS IS NOT A MOMENT, BUT A PRACTICE. AND THE JOB IS NEVER REALLY OVER.”
Now that he’s gone, we are left with the music. And in those songs—in the swell of Surf’s Up, the ache of Don’t Talk (Put Your Head on My Shoulder), the perfect simplicity of Wouldn’t It Be Nice—we hear the whole arc of a man’s life. The striving, the failure, the return. We hear someone finishing what they began.
In the end, Brian Wilson did more than soundtrack America. He enriched it. And in doing so, he gave us a template—not for stardom, but for what it means to keep working at something beautiful, no matter the cost.
That, perhaps, is the real job of genius.
BY LAURA KING
There is something theatrical about politics. The podium, the camera, the carefully measured pause. The cultivated charisma. The tragic flaw. In fact, one might argue that our political stage has always favoured the performer over the policy wonk—those who know not only how to speak, but how to be seen.
So it should not surprise us that, occasionally, the actor steps out of character and into history. And when they do, the lines between performance and power—between role and responsibility—begin to blur in compelling and uncomfortable ways.
“THERE IS SOMETHING THEATRICAL ABOUT POLITICS… OUR POLITICAL STAGE HAS ALWAYS FAVOURED THE PERFORMER OVER THE POLICY WONK.”
Ronald Reagan was once the President of the Screen Actors Guild, a B-movie mainstay, and the affable host of General Electric Theater. He was also the 40th President of the United States, whose tenure reshaped American economics and conservatism for generations. When he walked into the Oval Office in 1981, there were those who laughed. But Reagan—by then already fluent in the rhythms of public imagination—was not there to amuse. He was there to narrate. And, in that narration, to govern. He brought to the presidency not a detailed legislative background, but something more elusive: presence. A sense of timing. And above all, a belief in narrative. “Morning in America” was not a policy. It was a mood. It was set lighting and optimistic brass. It was cinema in the guise of leadership—and
it worked.
But Reagan was not an isolated case. In Italy, the comedian Beppe Grillo founded a political movement from scratch—the Five Star Movement— powered by protest, satire, and social media. In Guatemala, Jimmy Morales, a former comic actor who played a character named “Neto,” was elected president in 2015. He ran on an anticorruption platform. Ironically, his presidency would later be haunted by the same charges.
And then there is Volodymyr Zelensky.
“‘MORNING IN AMERICA’ WAS NOT A POLICY. IT WAS A MOOD… CINEMA IN THE GUISE OF LEADERSHIP—AND IT WORKED.”
Few stories better encapsulate the surreality of modern politics than Zelensky’s. A comic actor who once played a fictional president on television, he became—within a matter of years— the actual president of Ukraine. The initial reaction outside Ukraine was bemused indulgence: how quaint, how postmodern. But then came 2022. Russia invaded. And the actor, still in his 40s, stood his ground in Kyiv, refusing
evacuation, speaking to parliaments around the world via webcam, dressed in olive green. Suddenly, the comedian became Churchillian. The actor became an avatar of democratic resistance.
There’s a temptation to dismiss these transitions as aberrations—quirks of our distracted, media-saturated age. But perhaps they tell us something deeper about employability in the modern world. Namely, that the skills we once thought belonged only to entertainment—the ability to command attention, to distill complexity into image and story, to perform sincerity— are now central to public life.
“THE ACTOR, STILL IN HIS 40S, STOOD HIS GROUND IN KYIV… SUDDENLY, THE COMEDIAN BECAME CHURCHILLIAN.”
Zelensky’s power wasn’t just rhetorical. It was emotional. He understood that in a moment of violence, the world needed not only facts but feeling. Not only geopolitics but courage made visible. The camera that once filmed his sitcom now transmitted a war president to the world.
And isn’t that what Reagan grasped, too? That politics is not simply a matter
of law but of atmosphere? That people don’t vote only with their reason, but with their longing?
This is not to say that acting and governing are the same. They’re not. The dangers of confusing the two are real, and often catastrophic. The stage, after all, contains exits. A bad line is followed by a second take. In governance, there are consequences. Words start wars. Promises shape budgets. Missteps cannot be edited in post.
“WE LIVE IN AN AGE WHERE ATTENTION IS THE MOST PRECIOUS CURRENCY.”
But perhaps the deeper point is this: the move from acting to politics is not a betrayal of seriousness, but a recognition that seriousness takes many forms. We live in an age where attention is the most precious currency. And those who can hold it—honestly, skilfully, artfully—may be more employable than ever, not in spite of their theatrical background, but because of it.
This is not always comfortable. We expect politicians to emerge from certain pipelines: law schools, think tanks, town halls. When they arrive via the backdoor of celebrity, we feel uneasy. As if the membrane between real and fake had grown too thin.
But maybe this discomfort is useful. It forces us to ask: what do we really want from our leaders? Expertise, yes. But also empathy. Clarity. Presence. And a sense, however faint, of narrative arc. There are dangers, of course. For every Reagan or Zelensky, there is a populist showman for whom the performance never ends—leaders who govern not through substance but spectacle. The border between authentic communication and dangerous demagoguery is perilously narrow. And yet: the solution is not to sneer at actors who govern, but to demand that all who govern do so with a greater sense of the human drama.
The deeper truth is that we are all performing, in some way. Every interview, every job, every speech. The question isn’t whether you’re acting. It’s whether the act serves something real.
“THE QUESTION ISN’T WHETHER YOU’RE ACTING. IT’S WHETHER THE ACT SERVES SOMETHING REAL.”
Zelensky’s performance was real. So was Reagan’s, in its way. Both turned skill into meaning. And both remind us that careers, like countries, evolve. The theatre, like the ballot box, is a place where stories are told—and where, occasionally, lives are changed.
In the end, when the actor becomes the politician, we are left not with contradiction, but with a kind of clarity: that leadership, like theatre, is a matter of courage, composition, and presence.
And if that’s true, then perhaps the real question is not “Why do actors go into politics?” but rather, “Why don’t more politicians learn to act—with grace, with truth, with something that feels like love—for the people they serve?”
Two tiny letters that can make a massive difference to your business. Find out how we can help you to become faster, better and more profitable. A.I.
BY MARTIN PLANTINGA
There is perhaps no name more encrusted with reverence than that of William Shakespeare. The word itself is a kind of cathedral now—evoked in solemn tones, halfwhispered in the presence of genius. We study him in schools, quote him in speeches, carve him in marble. He is the writer par excellence, the Englishman beyond England, the answer we give when asked what our culture once was and still, perhaps, aspires to be.
But what if we look at Shakespeare not as a monument, but as a man at work?
He was, after all, a working playwright. A jobbing actor. A part-owner in a theatre company. A man concerned not only with verse and vision, but with audiences, earnings, and entrances. His theatre, The Globe, was also his office. His collected works are not just a canon—they are a career.
“HE DIDN’T KNOW HE WAS WRITING ‘SHAKESPEARE.’
HE WAS WRITING FOR MONEY. FOR APPLAUSE. FOR TUESDAY NIGHT.”
He didn’t know he was writing “Shakespeare.” He was writing for money. For applause. For posterity, yes, but also for Tuesday night. And therein lies the real miracle. Shakespeare wrote as one who knew the urgency of employment. Born the son of a glover in Stratford-uponAvon, his education was good but incomplete. He was not universityeducated, unlike Marlowe or Jonson. He appears in no great academic tradition. Instead, he travelled to London and found work—humble, precarious, unpredictable work. He acted in other men's plays. He edited, revised, marketed, borrowed, recycled.
Shakespeare's Globe, London, England (Wikipedia.org)
maintain.
by plague. His reputation was never fixed, always in negotiation.
And yet, through that churn of deadlines and disarray, he composed a body of work that still illuminates the deepest questions of our lives: love, power, jealousy, ambition, failure, forgiveness. Not because he stood apart from the working world—but because he stood inside it.
“NOT BECAUSE HE STOOD APART FROM THE WORKING WORLD—BUT BECAUSE HE STOOD INSIDE IT.”
Shakespeare understood employment. He understood kings and their responsibilities, but also clowns and their roles. He wrote not only Hamlet and Lear, but the Gravedigger and the Fool. He gave voice to the servant as well as the sovereign. His world teemed with professions: soldiers, merchants, messengers, courtiers, shepherds, midwives, witches, thieves, priests. Every play is a labour market
in miniature. Every scene a lesson in the economy of the soul.
Take King Lear, where the abdication of work—Lear’s refusal to do the job of reigning—leads to catastrophe. Or Macbeth, where ambition becomes employment corrupted, a job description turned into blood. Or The Tempest, where Prospero sets down his magic—his work, his art—in favour of a return to ordinary governance.
Or take Henry V, where a young king finds that the performance of leadership is itself a form of labour.
“Upon the king! Let us our lives, our souls, / Our debts, our careful wives, / Our children, and our sins lay on the king!” cries the soldier Williams. In other words: to be employed as a ruler is to be employed in everyone’s anxieties. It is a crushing contract.
“EVERY PLAY IS A LABOUR MARKET IN MINIATURE. EVERY SCENE A LESSON IN THE ECONOMY OF THE SOUL.”
Even the comedies are riddled with labour. As You Like It takes place largely among shepherds. Twelfth Night among stewards and waitingwomen. Shakespeare saw that love does not unfold in palaces, but in the break rooms and backstage areas of life. His lovers must work to be together. Mistaken identities aside, their greatest challenge is often economic.
And what of the theatre itself? In Shakespeare’s time, it was not the elite institution we know today. It was noisy, smelly, democratic. Groundlings jeered from the pit. Actors changed costumes in plain sight. The line between art and hustle was porous.
Shakespeare thrived there not because he transcended it—but because he mastered it. He was adaptable. He rewrote when needed. He gave his audience what they wanted, and then— crucially—what they didn’t yet know they needed.
Here is the key to his employability. Not just his talent, but his versatility. He moved between genres, between patrons, between moods. History one year, tragedy the next, then a comedy, a problem play, a sonnet sequence. He didn’t resist the conditions of his time—he danced with them.
This is why he remains so modern. In an age like ours, where careers twist and shift, where reinvention is constant, Shakespeare is a patron saint of creative employability. He teaches us that craft is not a fixed thing. That greatness can be improvised. That excellence is not always announced from above, but assembled from below—line by line, play by play, deal by deal.
And perhaps this is why he continues to matter in the world of work. His words enter our emails, our courtrooms, our pitches, our vows. He’s the bard of the breakroom as much as the palace. He has something to say about power and its uses. About colleagues and betrayal. About purpose and burnout. About the long day’s journey into night.
In the end, Shakespeare shows us
not how to escape labour, but how to dignify it. He dignifies the speaker, the listener, the maker, the dreamer. And in doing so, he offers us a vision of work not as drudgery, but as poetry—a place where our talents meet the world’s needs, again and again, until we, too, can say: “We are such stuff as dreams are made on.”
And then, quietly, return to the task at hand.
BY CHRISTOPHER JACKSON
I'm looking at an interesting and unusual picture. In the centre, a guitar leans against an armchair, its strings catching the light. A record player sits idle nearby, a stack of vinyl hinting at a personal soundtrack. These are ordinary objects, but something in their arrangement—the stillness, the weight of presence— suggests more. The painting is called
The Lucky Man, and though no figure appears in the scene, it feels unmistakably like a portrait.
The artist is Oscar Eagle, and it was this painting that first caught the attention of Ronel Lehmannn, CEO of Finito Education.
"When my chairman told me that he had an artist in residence, I did not believe my ears," Lehmannn says. "However, in the same breath he suggested I drive over to see what this was all about."
The studio was above the garage at Sir John Griffin's Potters Bar home—an unassuming space filled with canvases, brushes, and the unmistakable presence of a working artist. Lehmann recalls, "I saw a young man, with incredible talent and artistic brilliance. One painting caught my eye. I thought: this should hang in the Hippodrome."
That instinct proved right. He contacted Simon Thomas, CEO of the London Hippodrome. "Simon agreed before even seeing the work. The same thing happened with Liam West at Kerridge's—he committed to displaying Oscar's work in the private dining room."
This kind of response has followed Oscar Eagle throughout his emerging career. Though still early in his journey,
there is a considered maturity to his painting: a studied observation not just of interiors, but of the lives lived within them.
Sir John Griffin, the man who made Oscar's artistic journey possible, speaks
with the confidence of someone who has backed talent before. "I knew his family and find Oscar to be a pleasant young man who is a very talented musician and creative in art. He is worthy of my support," he explains. Griffin's commitment went beyond mere encouragement. "I had a snooker table above my garage. I sold the
snooker table and gave him the space," he reveals. "I admire how Oscar holds down another job and has the capacity to create compelling art."
For Griffin, Oscar's work represents something distinctive in today's market. "It is a matter of individual taste. I really like his art and see his work is going to be commercially successful. I recognise quality," he says with characteristic directness.
Having supported numerous talented individuals throughout his career, Griffin sees something special in Oscar's potential. "Yes, I have, it is so rewarding to see talent succeed. Oscar is going to be very successful. He has
what it takes. He rings the bell with me. He is going places. More and more people see it. It is a tough business to sell art. These are difficult times. I let him into my home."
Interviewed over email, Oscar explains that The Lucky Man acts as a visual journal—an exploration of identity and artistic formation." It reflects different aspects of me, both as a person and as an artist," he writes. "It's full of things I like—objects that hold meaning, things that ground me."
Oscar's creative path did not begin
in painting. He worked in the film industry, on high-profile projects such as Mission: Impossible 7, as well as music videos and advertising. "But it didn't feel right for me at that moment," he explains. "My mind was focused on art. It just felt like the right thing to do."
"I LIKE TO CAPTURE THE ESSENCE AND PERSPECTIVE OF SOMEONE'S LIFE BASED ON THE THINGS THEY LOVE,"
A key connection came through his brother, who introduced him to art dealer Frankie Shea. "Frankie took me to events and introduced me to the art scene. I liked the vibe immediately," Eagle says. "He's given me advice that stuck with me. He's inspired me to keep going."
Oscar's subject matter revolves around personal spaces, often interiors populated by objects that suggest stories. "My new collection is based on homes around the world, especially beautiful properties in the UK," he writes. "Each painting includes items people have collected over the years— things that are sentimental to them and speak to their families."
The West London Flat, one of his recent pieces, carries this concept forward. It is a study in character—of a space made meaningful through its contents. The composition is spare but never cold; it invites attention and contemplation.
"I like to capture the essence and perspective of someone's life based on the things they love," Oscar explains. "It's similar to my first collection, which was entirely about what I liked—shoes, guitars, the music I grew up with."
Another painting, Piccadilly Lounge, presents a nocturnal space. The lighting is cinematic; there's a faint nostalgia in its shadows. "It's based on scenes that catch my eye and relate to me through other people's lives," he says. "It's how I observe the world."
Music is a constant thread. "I've been playing guitar since I was seven," Oscar shares. "It's one of my biggest inspirations, and it helps when I feel mentally blocked. It centers me."
Liam West of West Contemporary brings a gallery owner's perspective to Oscar's emerging career, identifying the
qualities that set the artist apart in an increasingly competitive field.
"Recognisability," West begins when asked what initially drew him to Oscar's work. "In the information-heavy world we live in today, with constant images, artists and artworks forcing their way into our minds hundreds of times a day, it has become harder, and also even more important, for artists to have a distinctive, recognisable, unique-tothem style. In a competitive field of talented creatives, everyone is competing for the bombarded attention spans of collectors, galleries, press, public and so on."
West applies a rigorous test to emerging artists: "One true test of for an artist's appeal is if we can show an experienced collector (or even an emerging buyer) an image of a piece and they can immediately tell who the work is by based upon the style. We need them to say 'that's X artist!'. That's a hard level to find, but is a nonnegotiable step in truly building an artist to a certain level. That high-bar is one that Oscar Eagle has already begun to jump over."
The contemporary art market has evolved, West explains, with collectors becoming more discerning and demanding. "Collectors want more than just interior art now. They're sick of mass produced work and no one is buying art anymore based on a motif of 'that'll do'. Buyers have become more and more informed, which is brilliant."
"EAGLE'S WORK IS UNIQUE AND FRESH AND HAS MANAGED TO FIND A WAY TO PARADOXICALLY BE BOTH RECOGNISABLE AND EQUALLY FEEL NEW EVERY TIME YOU SEE IT."
This shift has created opportunities for artists like Oscar who offer something genuinely distinctive. "People want exceptional service and a guiding, experienced hand. They won't settle for spending their hard-earned money on any art now to fill a space. They want so much more, they want art for them—not just to decorate a wall. They want authenticated work, backed up by reputable industry players and they want unique works and low editions. They want work that feels personal or speaks to them, or feels unseen."
West sees Oscar's work as perfectly positioned for this new collecting landscape. "Eagle's work is unique and fresh and has managed to find a way to paradoxically be both recognisable and equally feel new every time you see it. The trend I see working to elevate the artist is more to do with the collecting patterns of serious patrons and their growing desires to support unique artworks by unique artists in unique editions. Oscar ticks all three boxes."
When it comes to Oscar's future, West emphasises the importance of forging an individual path. "Over my career and our experience with West Contemporary over the past few decades, we've come to see and appreciate the importance of artists carving out a personal route to achieving artistic goals—and that applies to Oscar as much as anyone. What happens next will not be the exact same path trodden by those before him."
West's advice balances learning from others with maintaining artistic independence. "It is important he takes aspects (both artistically and dare I say it commercially) of artists and careers he admires, but remains committed to finding his own way. Listening to the advice of experienced names in the industry is helpful, but adopting his own road is the only way to make this truly work. As you'll see from all my answers; unique is the key."
While cautious about adding pressure to an emerging artist, West's confidence in Oscar's trajectory is clear. "In my position, it would be unfair to over speculate and add unnecessary pressure to an emerging artist. What I will say is; Oscar Eagle is about to have a lot of eyes on his work."
Ronel Lehmann believes Oscar Eagle has all the elements required for a lasting career. "He's had the best springboard to success. He's a wise soul on young shoulders," he says. His work now hangs not only in the Hippodrome—where it sits among a lineage of visual creators like Doris Zinkeisen and Peter Blake—but also in private collections and spaces curated with purpose. The Hippodrome itself, designed by Frank Matcham and historically rich with artistic commissions, has long been a home for visual storytelling. From the illustrated programmes of
John Hassall to the war-era cartoons of Captain Bruce Bairnsfather, it has always recognised the power of images to resonate with audiences. In this sense, Oscar Eagle is a natural successor.
Asked what advice he would give other young artists, Oscar is clear: "Find your own style that represents you and what you like. Art isn't just about paint. It's everywhere—it's versatile."
And while his studio may still be above a garage, the spaces his paintings inhabit are growing larger by the day.
Inan intimate conversation at the company's London offices, Watches of Switzerland Group CEO Brian Duffy reflects on the remarkable journey of Mappin & Webb—from Victorian silversmiths to the home of the Crown Jeweller - and how strategic investment has restored one of Britain's most storied luxury brands to its rightful place.
The morning August light streams through the windows of the Watches of Switzerland Group offices as Brian Duffy settles into our conversation, surrounded by archival photographs that tell the story of one of Britain's most enduring luxury brands. As CEO of the group that encompasses Mappin & Webb, Goldsmiths, and Watches of Switzerland, Duffy has overseen a remarkable transformation. The group he oversees has posted impressive results over the past years, but we’re here particularly to discuss the heritage brand Mappin & Webb that seems to hold a special place in his strategic vision.
"Mappin & Webb has always had more potential than we fully realised," Duffy begins, his tone carrying the conviction of someone who has spent years understanding the nuances of luxury retail. "It's a very distinct brand with an amazing heritage, and for all the designs and everything that we did around either product or stores, we very much recognised that heritage and its position within the market."
From Sheffield Silver to Royal Warrant
The photographs surrounding us tell a story that spans centuries. Victorian-era
images show craftsmen bent over their work in Sheffield workshops, natural light streaming through those characteristically large windows that were essential for precision work. "Obviously, this is all manual," Duffy explains, pointing to an image of silversmiths at work. "The main thing that they use at the end of the day is pliers. You always look for natural light in watch and jewellery work—you'll find the workshops are always with huge windows."
These weren't just any craftsmen. Mappin & Webb held Royal Warrants for six consecutive monarchies, stretching from Queen Victoria to the present day. "We used to be one of the luxury brands of the world when London and the UK was such a significant centre," Duffy notes, flipping through advertisements from the early 20th century showing stores in London, Rome, Paris, Buenos Aires, Canada, Argentina, and Johannesburg.
"THE CROWN JEWELLER PLAYED AN IMPORTANT ROLE IN THE RECENT ROYAL EVENTS INCLUDING THE FUNERAL OF OUR LATE QUEEN AND THE CORONATION. "
But perhaps most significantly, Mappin & Webb is home to the Crown Jeweller — a master craftsman in making and restoring jewellery who came to the fore during recent royal ceremonies. "The Crown Jeweller played an important role
in the recent Royal events including the funeral of our late Queen and the Coronation. "
Like many luxury brands, Mappin & Webb's journey through the early 21st century was marked by financial turbulence. The brand was part of a group owned by Baugur, which collapsed during the 2008 financial crisis, leaving the business underinvested despite remaining profitable. "This business then became owned by Landsbanki, the Icelandic bank," Duffy explains. "The net result was this group was under-invested in and stayed profitable the whole time, but
really nobody was thinking long term about the group. Whatever vision or strategy that Baugur or anybody had for Mappin & Webb was put on a back shelf."
Enter Apollo Global Management in 2013, and Duffy's arrival in 2014. His assessment was clear: "My whole observation of the group was that we were under-playing the strength of the brands that we had and the brands that we represented—Rolex and Cartier and Patek and so on. The business really needed investment and elevation."
What Duffy discovered surprised even him: "This actually is the best luxury watch market in the world per capita, and domestically within Europe is by far and away the best luxury jewellery market as well. So there was a strong rationale to say, these are great markets, and they've been underserved."
Duffy's approach to luxury retail is deeply philosophical, rooted in understanding what truly motivates customers in a category where purchases are driven by desire rather than necessity. "Luxury, particularly in this market, delivered correctly shouldn't be elitist," he explains. "It should make people feel special and valued, and it should translate all the way through to the store environment, critically the way your sales people approach and interact."
His concept of luxury selling is built around partnership rather than pressure: "Our whole view of selling is that you go on a journey with a client, but you're there as partners on the journey. As soon as the client senses that you're selling to them, that you have an interest, then you've lost that magic."
This philosophy is embodied in what Duffy calls "Xenia"—ancient Greek for hospitality. "It goes back to ancient Greek civilization when there was a
responsibility of the host towards the guest, to make them comfortable and to know them and understand their needs. Our whole concept of Xenia is about know me, wow me, remember me."
"LUXURY, PARTICULARLY IN THIS MARKET, DELIVERED CORRECTLY SHOULDN’T BE ELITIST. IT SHOULD MAKE PEOPLE FEEL SPECIAL AND VALUED."
The challenge for Mappin & Webb, as Duffy sees it, lies in positioning the brand within a jewellery category
increasingly dominated by global giants. "The jewellery category now really is global, and it's dominated by the French and the Italians," he notes. "You have these massive global brands like Cartier and Tiffany and Bulgari, and then you have a lot of great, more niche brands that will be local, very product-driven, and there's not a lot in between."
Rather than compete directly with these global powerhouses, Duffy's strategy focuses on leveraging Mappin & Webb's unique heritage and its relationship with British clients. "The brand has more heritage and substance than we can fully take advantage of," he acknowledges. "It has a great deal of awareness and affection within the UK, and it's got a unique relationship with our clients."
This relationship was on full display during a recent royal visit, when King Charles III and Queen Camilla toured the company's facilities. "We knew that they would be walking upstairs, so we
didn't want them to be exhausted. On all the landings we had product that goes back many years. They were able to see all of this, and they're so good at it—just expressing what seems to be very genuine interest and intrigue."
Today, Mappin & Webb continues its tradition of royal commissions from their silver workshop in Essex, creating everything from FA cups to ceremonial pieces for the palace. "We get a lot of military commissions from the palace as well," Duffy explains, pointing to a photograph of a silver piece they created for then-Prince Charles. The company's role in major state occasions extends beyond ceremonial pieces. During the State Opening of Parliament, Mappin & Webb's Crown Jeweller plays a crucial role in the ancient ceremonies that define British constitutional monarchy.
As our conversation draws to a close, Duffy reflects on the broader challenges facing the luxury industry—from tariffs affecting Swiss imports to the changing dynamics of global luxury consumption. But for Mappin & Webb, these challenges seem almost secondary to the larger opportunity he sees in fully realising the brand's potential.
"We really focus on our stores, our clients, our client service," he says.
In Duffy's vision, Mappin & Webb's future lies not in competing with global luxury conglomerates on their terms, but in being uniquely, authentically British— the home to a crown jeweller that serves not just royalty, but anyone seeking a piece of that extraordinary heritage.
As I prepare to leave, surrounded by
those photographs spanning nearly two centuries of craftsmanship and service, it's clear that under Duffy's stewardship, Mappin & Webb isn't just preserving its past—it's writing the next chapter of a very British luxury story.
GEORGE ACHEBE ON LUKE LITTLER AND THE NEW CAREER WORLD OF THE OCHE
When16-year-old Luke Littler marched onto the stage at the Alexandra Palace in December 2023, there was something electric in the air— something the sport of darts hadn’t felt in decades. By the time the final whistle blew in the World Championship, Littler had become more than a headline. He was a phenomenon.
Wielding a composure far beyond his years and a throw that barely wobbled under pressure, Littler stunned seasoned pros and captured the public imagination. But what made the story truly remarkable wasn’t just the stats or the spectacle. It was what he represented: the changing face of darts—and the growing recognition that the sport is no longer a sideshow. It’s a career.
Darts has long been underestimated. Dismissed as a pub pastime or a postwork indulgence, it now commands stadium audiences, global broadcasting deals, and seven-figure sponsorships. The rise of Littler is only the latest proof that darts, like boxing before it, has evolved into a serious economic engine—and a legitimate route to purpose and prosperity.
The numbers tell a clear story. The Professional Darts Corporation (PDC) has transformed the game over the past 25 years into a global entertainment product, with the World Darts Championship alone drawing more than 3 million UK viewers annually and millions more internationally.
Prize money has ballooned. The winner of the 2024 World Championship walked
away with £500,000—more than the Wimbledon women’s singles finalist. Littler, despite falling just short, turned professional and soon racked up multiple six-figure cheques before even turning 17.
With televised events spanning Europe, the Middle East, and Asia, and brands eager to tap into darts’ cross-generational appeal, the sport has become fertile ground for ambitious young athletes—and for the many roles that support them:
coaches, managers, physiotherapists, data analysts, media producers, graphic designers, and social media teams.
For every Littler or Van Gerwen, there are dozens of professionals behind the scenes. Marketing agencies now tailor entire campaigns around darts stars. Analysts crunch statistics on accuracy
under pressure. Venues employ thousands on logistics and event production. Even hotels and pubs feel the ripple—every major tournament boosts local economies. Then there’s the rise of streaming and YouTube coverage. Highlight reels, training videos, and livestreamed qualifiers have broadened access and interest. For young players, this means more exposure. For creators and analysts, it means jobs. In short: darts is no longer about what happens in the pub—it’s about what happens across an entire economy.
What made Littler so special wasn’t just his skill, though that was prodigious. It was his story. A teenager with a PlayStation username, wearing a grin and firing in 180s like it was nothing, upending the established order and speaking afterwards with calm self-assurance.
The public couldn’t get enough. Littler went viral. TikTok edits, interviews, memes. He was relatable—young, grounded, effortlessly talented. His rise didn’t just revive interest in darts. It brought new audiences in: teenagers who had never watched a match. Parents who saw in him a new kind of role model.
Sponsors followed. Interviews piled up. Suddenly, darts had its first Gen Z superstar—and with it, the sense that a new career pipeline was opening.
Because here’s the thing: Luke Littler didn’t just show that a 16-year-old could make a run at the world title. He showed that if you’re disciplined, presentable, and digitally literate, darts can be a job. And not just for the player, but for an entire team.
Historically, darts has been a workingclass sport. It required no expensive gear, no academies, no elite club membership. Just a board, some arrows, and time. It’s still that, but it’s also now something more—a passport out of the everyday for those who can master its unique pressure.
The path from pub to profession has been formalised. There are academies. Youth development programs. Mentorship schemes like those run by the Junior Darts Corporation. These create ladders for kids—many from disadvantaged backgrounds—to develop not just technique but self-confidence, routine, and purpose.
It's not hard to draw parallels to boxing. Both offer a chance to carve out identity and career without traditional academic structures. Both attract kids who may not fit the standard mould. Both demand intense psychological stamina, despite the stillness of the form.
And both are now surrounded by career ecosystems far beyond the arena itself.
"BY THE TIME THE FINAL WHISTLE BLEW IN THE WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP, LITTLER HAD BECOME MORE THAN A HEADLINE. HE WAS A PHENOMENON."
Like boxing, darts is also creating roles for the non-athletes. There are data roles at the PDC, marketing positions at darts equipment companies, commentary gigs on Sky Sports, event planning jobs across Europe. Youth coaches, physios, mental conditioning specialists. One can now be employed by darts without ever throwing a dart. And then there are the new frontiers. Augmented reality is being trialled to enhance viewer experience. AI is being explored to predict player form. Brands want fresh voices to communicate to younger fans. All of this demands a new kind of talent—not just athletes, but creatives, thinkers, digital strategists. Littler’s rise has created fresh demand in
all these areas. And if you're a schoolleaver today with a sharp mind and creative drive, the darts industry might just be where your skills shine.
While Littler grabs headlines, the real power of darts lies in its grassroots. Community darts leagues across the UK continue to thrive. Local tournaments still fill pubs on weeknights. Initiatives now aim to bring the sport into schools and youth centres—providing structured paths for progression and mentorship.
The sport’s growth isn’t just national, either. Darts is surging in Germany, the Netherlands, and even China. In 2024, Bahrain hosted its first-ever World Series of Darts event. The game once seen as peculiarly British is going global. With this growth comes opportunity— not just for players, but for those who can support the game’s expansion through infrastructure, education, and communications. It’s employability, not just entertainment.
What Littler has taught us is that success isn’t just about ability. It’s about timing. He arrived at the moment darts was ready to evolve—and helped catalyse that change. But his journey also reveals what’s increasingly true across all professions: the next generation doesn’t just want to play. They want to work smart, build brands, and bring others along with them.
And that’s why darts matters in 2025. It’s no longer a punchline—it’s a pathway. From schools to stadiums, from bedrooms to boardrooms. It’s not about luck. It’s about focus, practice, opportunity.
And when the arrows fly, it’s no longer just for fun. It’s for the future.
BY BILL GATES
If you’re looking for an origin story that doesn’t rely on mythology, Source Code is a quietly remarkable read. In the first volume of his memoirs, Bill Gates strips away the caricature of tech titan and replaces it with something altogether more human: a relentlessly curious teenager who spent more time hacking traffic systems and debugging BASIC than dreaming of world domination.
What emerges is not just a portrait of prodigy, but a powerful reminder that employability is a lifelong process—one forged not in flawless execution but in feedback loops, failed ideas, and the strange, invisible scaffolding of resilience.
The book begins in early childhood in Seattle, where Gates recalls the steady influence of his parents: a civicminded lawyer father and a formidable mother who saw leadership not as title but duty. Gates writes: “I never felt expected to be great. I just felt expected
to contribute.” That ethos, gently embedded, runs through every chapter.
His fascination with software begins not with some prophetic vision of the internet, but with an Altair 8800 and a ticking deadline. His descriptions of founding Microsoft with Paul Allen are riveting not for their nostalgia, but for their candour. “We didn’t know how to run a company. We just knew we didn’t want to stop writing code.”
What’s striking is the tone: vulnerable, detailed, and self-reflective. Gates doesn’t shy away from his early missteps—missed deadlines, flubbed pitches, the arrogance that comes with being the smartest person in the room. He writes about burnout, the intensity of obsession, and the awkwardness of managing people when you’d rather be alone with a screen.
There are wonderful tangents. A whole section is devoted to his admiration for Warren Buffett, not as an investor but as a thinker. Elsewhere, he ruminates on the value of reading, confessing that The Great Gatsby still haunts him. “It’s not about wealth,” he writes. “It’s about whether you can see the future and do something about it.”
That future-orientation is central to the book’s employability relevance. Gates
doesn’t just encourage adaptability— he embodies it. He went from a kid programming at 3am to running the world’s largest software company to— eventually—reimagining philanthropy. His story is proof that careers are not straight lines. They’re circuits. Ultimately, Source Code is less about the invention of Microsoft and more about the reinvention of self. It’s about how a restless, socially awkward teenager built something that lasted—not because he knew everything, but because he kept asking the right questions.
For any young reader wondering whether they’re on the “right track,” Gates has a liberating message: there is no one track. But there are ways to build, to contribute, and to stay curious enough to matter.
BY JACINDA ARDERN
There’s a moment in A Different Kind of Power when Jacinda Ardern recounts being told—by a senior male
MP—that she was “too nice” to lead. The implication was clear: leadership requires ruthlessness, and Ardern, with her softness and empathy, didn’t fit the mould.
Her memoir is a gentle but pointed rebuke to that view. Written in the same measured tone that made her globally admired, Ardern offers not just a political narrative, but a manifesto for an alternative form of authority—one rooted in compassion, communication, and moral clarity.
She doesn’t claim perfection. From New Zealand’s early COVID response to the Christchurch mosque attacks, she often second-guesses her own decisions, inviting readers into the uncertainty that defines public leadership. But what distinguishes this book is her honesty about doubt—and her insistence that it doesn’t weaken leadership; it refines it.
“I wasn’t trying to be perfect,” she writes. “I was trying to be useful.”
For Finito World readers, the book is especially relevant. It explores how one can lead without abandoning kindness, how one can command without shouting. Ardern shares workplace insights on burnout, delegation, and the quiet power of asking for help. She confesses to struggling with imposter syndrome and encourages young professionals to see vulnerability not as a flaw, but as a form of intelligence.
There are lighter moments, too— anecdotes about her daughter, about latenight dinners with exhausted staffers, about the oddity of suddenly being recognised in foreign airports.
But at its core, A Different Kind of Power is a deeply serious book. It’s about rethinking success. About making space for decency. About changing—not just what leadership looks like—but how it feels.
For anyone entering a new job, building a team, or wondering whether they’re “too soft” for power, this is essential reading.
BY THE 14TH DALAI LAMA
In his 90th year, the Dalai Lama has gifted us a memoir of disarming simplicity and quiet moral weight. Voice for the Voiceless isn’t a chronological recounting of exile or religious instruction—it’s a human document, focused on what it means to speak when others cannot.
He reflects on his early years, the pain of leaving Tibet, and the enduring responsibility of hope. “My freedom,” he writes, “is not just my own. It is the test of whether I can help others find theirs.”
There’s no posturing here—just clarity. For readers seeking purpose in work or voice in a noisy world, his reflections offer subtle courage.
This is a book best read slowly. It invites reflection. And in a world obsessed with disruption, it gently reminds us that real influence often begins in stillness.
They left without announcing it— one by one, our lamps turned low. Suddenly we know the hush that comes when the vast has gone to ground.
Bolt ran as if joy were a law. Now the track clocks slower times.
The silence after the great storm stays, and can seem louder than thunder.
Phelps too, designed for the pool, moved water as if part of it: heaving himself up when it mattered, to stamp the collective memory.
Federer could win while seeming to dance.
Now the tournaments are a little bland –
a little Federer-less – for those who saw how it really is to play that sport.
The crowd adapts. It learns to cheer for those who make the current summit –even if that summit is lower somehow. The world rebuilds. The new ones come.
And something in the air remains— not grief, exactly, but a weight. The knowledge that such things were real and might, once more, come round again.
By Olivia Humphrey
IMMERSIVE PORTRAIT OF A COUNTRY REDEFINING CARIBBEAN TRAVEL, WITH INSIGHTS FROM COLIN C. JAMES, CEO OF THE ANTIGUA AND BARBUDA TOURISM AUTHORITY
There are places you visit. And then there are places you feel. Antigua and Barbuda—a pair of islands nestled in the warm embrace of the Caribbean Sea—offer that rarest of experiences: a destination that becomes a memory as soon as you arrive.
At first glance, it’s everything you imagine. Turquoise waters. Swaying palms. Beaches—365 of them, in fact, one for every day of the year. But look closer, and you’ll find something deeper:
a country not resting on natural beauty, but building something thoughtful from it. A country where tourism, culture, and sustainability aren’t separate threads, but woven together by design.
As Colin C. James, CEO of the Antigua and Barbuda Tourism Authority, puts it: “Antigua and Barbuda offers everything you imagine: turquoise waters, rich culture, flavourful cuisine, and unforgettable people. But what truly sets it apart is the warmth, not just of the
climate, but of the welcome.”
Each island offers something distinct. Antigua, the larger and livelier of the two, is a place of energy, heritage, and innovation. Barbuda is gentler— secluded, ecological, quietly luxurious. But together, they form a single, unified vision of what Caribbean travel can become.
“Antigua is celebrated for its rolling hills, historic landmarks, and vibrant local
life,” says James. “Nelson’s Dockyard, our standout attraction, is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and will mark its 300th anniversary in 2025—a major milestone for the region.”
While Antigua thrives on rhythm and activity—sailing, culinary festivals, cultural immersion—Barbuda offers refuge and retreat.
“Barbuda is defined by its natural beauty and sense of seclusion,” he continues. “It’s known for its untouched 11-mile stretch of pink sand and as home to the Caribbean’s largest Frigate Bird Sanctuary. With the launch of the new Barbuda International Airport, the island is now more accessible to highend travellers and poised for considered, sustainable development.”
This is a nation on the move—but doing so with purpose.
“The opening of the Barbuda International Airport in late 2024
is one of our most transformative achievements,” James says. “It marks a new era for the island and strengthens Barbuda’s position as a top-tier destination for luxury travellers.”
Momentum is building across the tourism landscape. “We recently hosted the CHTA Caribbean Travel Marketplace for the first time in May—a historic event that placed Antigua and Barbuda at the heart of Caribbean hospitality conversations,” James notes.
The islands are also making major culinary strides. “With the recent openings of Nobu Beach Club in Barbuda and The Hut on the private island of Little Jumby, we are redefining culinary luxury in the Caribbean,” says James. “These standout venues are elevating the islands’ dining scene and firmly positioning them on the global gastronomic map.”
New hotel developments are part of this
vision too. “We’re seeing momentum with new resort projects, including Nikki Beach Resort, and anticipated openings from Marriott and One&Only,” he confirms.
Even internationally, the islands are earning new visibility. “We’re celebrating our Silver Medal win at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show, marking our debut with a garden inspired by the islands’ landscapes, heritage, and regenerative future,” James says proudly. “It was a proud moment that showcases Antigua and Barbuda’s growing global voice.”
“ANTIGUA AND BARBUDA ISN’T JUST A DESTINATION— IT’S A FEELING, WHERE GUESTS CAN SIMPLY BE.”
“ANTIGUA AND BARBUDA OFFERS EVERYTHING YOU IMAGINE: TURQUOISE WATERS, RICH CULTURE, FLAVOURFUL CUISINE, AND UNFORGETTABLE PEOPLE. BUT WHAT TRULY SETS IT APART IS THE WARMTH—NOT JUST OF THE CLIMATE, BUT OF THE WELCOME.”
Environmental stewardship isn’t a trend here—it’s a principle. “Sustainability is embedded in our vision for tourism,” James affirms. “From preserving Barbuda’s precious ecosystems like the Frigate Bird Sanctuary, to launching low-impact experiences like the Coral Reef Restoration Project by The Elkhorn Marine Conservancy.”
This reef programme, he explains, supports not only marine biodiversity but longterm sustainable tourism. “It restores and cultivates underwater coral nurseries and was proudly recognised in Wanderlust’s Travel Green List Awards 2025,” says James.
Hosting the 4th International Conference on Small Island Developing States (SIDS) in 2024 was a signal of Antigua’s growing diplomatic and ecological leadership.
“Antigua proudly hosted the conference, reaffirming its role as a global voice for resilience, sustainability, and climate leadership among island nations,” James adds.
What truly distinguishes the islands is how culture is celebrated—not as spectacle, but as a living, breathing force.
“Our events calendar is strong and always on,” says James. “Antigua Sailing Week, Carnival, Culinary Month, and Art Week each offer an immersive way to experience the vibrancy of Antiguan and Barbudan culture.”
For visitors, these events aren’t just entertainment—they’re entry points into identity. “These are more than events,” he continues, “they are expressions of identity, community, and creativity. Visitors can enjoy authentic cultural experiences year-round.”
And the benefits go both ways: “They inspire pride and participation among locals, who bring each celebration vividly to life,” James notes.
Beyond beauty and biodiversity, Antigua and Barbuda have something else to offer: opportunity.
“Antigua and Barbuda is a nation of opportunity,” James states. “With a
stable political environment, forwardthinking leadership, and a clear plan for sustainable, inclusive growth, we are ready to welcome investment that respects our values and future vision.”
The invitation is serious and strategic. “We’re particularly keen to work with partners across hospitality, wellness, real estate, and green technologies,” he adds. “This is a destination where meaningful investment doesn’t just thrive—it leaves a legacy.”
For all the metrics and milestones, the essence of Antigua and Barbuda is emotional. It’s about connection— to nature, to culture, to each other.
“Whether you're dancing in the streets during Carnival, watching the sunset over English Harbour, or simply chatting with a local fisherman,” James says, “there’s a genuine connection here.”
And if he had to put it simply? “Antigua and Barbuda isn’t just a destination,” he says. “It’s a feeling—where guests can simply be.”
WE TALK TO THE DEBUT AUTHOR OF BARLEY SUGAR ABOUT HOW HE FOUND TIME TO WRITE HIS FIRST NOVEL AROUND HIS CAREER AS A PLUMBER
FW: BARLEY SUGAR IS SO ASSURED. HOW MANY NOVELS DID YOU TRY TO WRITE BEFORE YOU WERE IN A POSITION TO WRITE THIS ONE?
I’d mainly written short stories. This is my first serious attempt at a novel.
WHEN IT COMES TO WRITING ARE YOU A NINE TO FIVER AT YOUR DESK EVERY DAY OR IS IT A BIT LESS LINEAR THAN THAT?
A bit of both: I tend to be relaxed whilst I’m plotting and then more disciplined once I know where I’m going. HOW DID YOU HIT UPON TEDDY BOYS AS SUBJECT MATTER?
My father told me tales about Teddy Boys. The backdrop of the original teen rebellion and the birth of youth culture was perfect for the story I wanted to tell. Plus, the Teds come with an amazing look and soundtrack!
DID YOU NEED TO DO MUCH HISTORICAL RESEARCH TO GET THE TEXTURE OF THE FLASHBACKS RIGHT?
Yes, I wanted to get the subtleties right. Whether that be the cut of a dress or a certain song playing on the radio.
IT’S INTERESTING HOW WE BEGIN IN THE PRESENT MOMENT AND THEN GO BACK IN TIME. THE DANGER WITH THAT IS ALWAYS THAT IT CAN BE JARRING FOR THE READER TO GO OUT
OF ONE TIME FRAME INTO ANOTHER SLIPSTREAM. WAS THAT A PROBLEM YOU WERE CONSCIOUS OF? YOU CERTAINLY SOLVED IT SOMEHOW!
I tried to trust that the reader would be on the journey alongside Lewis, unraveling the depths of the story as he does. Each flashback is hopefully a welcome discovery.
RACE PLAYS AN INTERESTING ROLE IN THE BOOK. YOU HANDLE IT DELICATELY IN THE CHARACTER OF WINSTON. WAS THAT INSTINCTIVE OR WERE YOU PARTICULARLY WARY OF DRAWING THAT CHARACTER?
Winston’s strength and sensitivity, for me, are the heartbeat of the novel. His backstory, ethnicity and social class, all play parts in shaping not only the way the world sees him, but also the way that he looks back at the world. If I was wary of anything, it was of striking a balance within him that would give the eventual decisions he makes the weight they deserve.
YOUR PROSE STYLE IS POETIC BUT NEVER HOLDS UP THE NARRATIVE. DO YOU THINK THAT IS SPECIFIC TO THIS BOOK OR MIGHT WE SEE DIFFERENT STYLES IN FUTURE WORKS?
As brutal as it is in parts, to me, Barley Sugar is a beautiful story. I attempted to capture some of that in the writing. As
for future works, it’s impossible to say. Stylistically, I enjoy playing with words and rhythms, so I imagine that will always be in there somewhere.
HOW DO YOU FIT YOUR WRITING AROUND YOUR DAY JOB AS A PLUMBER?
I jot notes throughout the day and write mostly on weekends.
WHICH AUTHORS INFLUENCED THIS BOOK? IS THERE ANY ANXIETY OR INFLUENCE IN YOU AS A WRITER?
I wanted Barley Sugar to have the feel of a true crime story. In terms of tone, Lorenzo Carcaterra’s Sleepers definitely had an impact.
WHAT’S NEXT FOR YOU AS A NOVELIST?
I’m currently undergoing chemotherapy. During that time, if I can, the plan is to work on the new novel.
AN EVENING TO CHANGE LIVES
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THURSDAY 30 TH OCTOBER 2025
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