Finito World Issue 18

Issue 18

REESE WITHERSPOON WALK THE LINE

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ISSUE 18

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INTRODUCTION

Editor: Christopher Jackson Editor-at-large: Claire Coe

FOUNDER’S LETTER

It matters because Issue 18 of Finito World is, at heart, about the relationship between systems and the individuals who move within them. Whether we are looking at youth unemployment, the quiet disappearance of the cover letter, or the growing role of artificial intelligence in hiring, the same question recurs: what kind of person does the modern world reward?

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, Mark Plummer Next Gen Board: Nick Hennigan Management: Ronel Lehmann (Founder & CEO), Colin Hudson, Tom Pauk, Professor Robert Campbell Christopher Jackson, Julia Carrick OBE, Gaynor Goodliffe, Nick Pelekanos, Martin May 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, Paul Glanville, Richard Manners, Nigel Dicker Maeve Walsh, Kathie Knell, Tamsin Aston, Robert Goldsmith, Kathryn Stone OBE, Ron Boschetto Business Development: Rara Plumptre Design and Digital: Nick Pelekanos, Phil Verney Photography: Sam Pearce, Will Purcell, Gemma Levine Public Relations: Soho Communications Website Development: Eprefix Media Buying: Virtual Campaign Management Print Production: Marcus Dobbs Printers: Micropress Printers Ltd Circulation: Templar Global Registered Address: Finito Education Limited, 14th floor, 33 Cavendish Square, London W1G 0PW, +44 (0)20 3780 7700 Finito and Finito World are trade marks of the owner.

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As a prolific writer of letters to the editor, I always enjoy reading other people’s correspondence. One that caught my eye recently came from Mike Hutchinson in The Times, reflecting on insurance as a simple wager: you pay your premium, and either you or the insurer “wins”. It is a neat way of putting it, but increasingly it feels like a model under strain.

Like many SMEs, we carry a full suite of insurance: employers’ liability, professional indemnity, medical cover and more. Yet the reassurance these policies are meant to provide can feel elusive. Readers write to us about claims handled not by people but by processes, often leading to outcomes that seem misaligned with common sense.

A procedure covered in one form but not another. A minor repair escalated into a write-off. In more serious cases, individuals facing illness finding themselves navigating not only treatment but the complexity of what is, or is not, covered.

As Jack Simpson reported in The Sunday Times, even in extreme circumstances such as rare cancer diagnoses, patients can find themselves forced into fundraising alongside treatment. It is a sobering reminder that systems designed to mitigate risk can, at times, introduce new forms of uncertainty.

And yet, as Roger Flaxman puts it, insurance claims are not really about insurance at all. They are about people, and about the underlying businesses and lives affected. That distinction matters.

At Finito, our answer has always been clear. We are not simply interested in helping people find jobs. We want to help shape the kind of jobseeker who can build a meaningful career. That must begin with decency and transparency.

Nick Hennigan, who leads our new Next Generation Board, embodies this. His journey reminds us that talent alone is not enough. What matters is judgement, resilience, and a seriousness of purpose.

In a labour market where ghosting has become normalised and communication has thinned, those qualities are not just admirable, they are differentiating.

But meaningful careers are not built on character alone. They also require imagination. Which is why, in this issue, we turn for our cover story to Reese Witherspoon, who has redefined what a Hollywood career can look like.

Not simply an actress, but a builder of platforms, a curator of stories, and an entrepreneur reshaping her industry. It is a reminder that careers today are not always linear. They are constructed.

So we return, in a way, to where we began.

Systems matter. Structures matter. But ultimately, it is people who determine how they function and what they become.

As Nick Ross used to say at the end of each BBC Crimewatch: “Don’t have nightmares. Do sleep well.” It was good advice then – and it still is today.

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ISSUE 18

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ISSUE 18

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LEADERS

CHOSEN, NOT PLACED T

he government’s latest attempt to tackle youth unemployment suggests ministers understand that something serious is happening in Britain’s labour market. Nearly a million young people are now classed as NEET – not in education, employment or training.

The acronym sounds vaguely positive but in reality is anything but. It means that roughly one in eight people aged between sixteen and twenty-four are in a dire situation. For a developed country, that figure should trouble anyone who cares about economic vitality or the prospects of the next generation.

In response, ministers have unveiled a suite of measures designed to draw young people back into work. The headline policy is a £3,000 “Youth Jobs Grant” for employers that hire 18–24-year-olds who have been on benefits for six months or more. Alongside this sits an expanded Jobs Guarantee, subsidising six-month placements for those out of work longer still. Apprenticeship funding, meanwhile, is being reshaped to favour younger entrants and sectors such as engineering, artificial intelligence and clean energy.

The rhetoric is, in many ways, the most striking element. The Work and Pensions Secretary has framed these reforms as part of a shift from a “welfare state to a working state”, emphasising work not simply as income but as identity, dignity and purpose.

In this, the government is surely right.

Work is not merely a transaction. It is one of the first arenas in which a young person feels taken seriously by the adult world. It is where the loose promise of childhood begins to take shape as something more concrete: a role, a direction, a life.

But if the diagnosis has merit, the treatment deserves closer scrutiny.

What has been announced is not a single policy but a ladder of interventions. After six months on benefits, an employer 6

may receive £3,000 to take a chance on a young person. After eighteen months, the state steps in more directly, subsidising a placement. Alongside this, the apprenticeship system is being nudged towards areas aligned with Britain’s future economy.

There is a logic to this layered approach. It seeks to intervene earlier, to prevent drift, to catch young people before inactivity hardens into habit. And yet a deeper question remains unresolved: do subsidies create careers?

they risk becoming a revolving door: movement without progress, activity without trajectory.

On apprenticeships, the reforms are more

structural. Funding is being redirected away from certain management courses – often used by existing employees – towards

younger entrants in sectors aligned with national priorities. The instinct here

is sound. Apprenticeships should be a

gateway into skilled work, not a line item in corporate training budgets.

Temporary incentives can open doors. But the most meaningful jobs rarely begin with a government payment attached to them.

They begin when an employer looks at a candidate and thinks: this person could genuinely help us build something.

But even here, the central issue is not

At Finito Education, where we work with young people preparing to enter the workplace, this distinction is clear.

Those who thrive are not simply placed somewhere. They are chosen. And that sense of being chosen matters enormously.

It signals that someone has seen value in them – not just availability, but potential.

The job is not an act of policy. It is an act of belief.

reliability, direction – these are often the

Subsidised roles can act as a bridge to that moment. But they cannot replace it.

funding. It is readiness.

The barrier many employers face is not reluctance to hire young people, but uncertainty about whether they are

prepared. Confidence, communication,

missing pieces. When young people arrive equipped with those habits, employers are keen to take them on. When they do not, no subsidy can compensate for the gap.

This is where the conversation about youth unemployment should truly begin. The

challenge is not only to create opportunities, but to ensure that young people are ready to seize them.

Government can help open doors. But

There is also a quieter, more practical question that accompanies such schemes: would the job have existed anyway?

Economists call this the “deadweight” problem. If an employer was already planning to hire, the grant may simply reduce the cost of a decision already taken.

In that case, public money has moved, but no new opportunity has been created.

the deeper work – helping a young person

The government has not yet fully explained how it intends to avoid this. Nor is it clear what happens when the six-month placements come to an end. If these roles do not evolve into sustained employment,

important threshold: from being supported

understand their strengths, develop

discipline, and present themselves as

someone worth investing in – happens long before any hiring decision is made.

If these reforms succeed, it will not be

because a £3,000 payment has reshaped

the labour market. It will be because more young people have crossed a quieter, more to being needed.

Work, after all, is not something one is given. It is something one grows into.

LEADERS

T

THE DEATH OF THE COVER LETTER

here was something faintly Victorian about the cover letter.

You announced yourself. You expressed admiration. You implied diligence. If you were ambitious, you hinted at a future in which your talents and the firm’s fortunes might align. It was formal, slightly artificial, occasionally even moving.

Now it is dying.

Not with drama, but with indifference.

Recruiters admit they rarely read them properly. Hiring managers skim.

Applicants, meanwhile, quietly feed a prompt into a generative model and receive, in seconds, prose that once took an anxious evening to produce.

The result is not liberation. It is inflation.

When everyone can generate a polished letter, polish stops signalling anything at all.

This is more than an administrative shift. It tells us something about employability now.

The cover letter was always a hybrid. At its best, it demanded clarity: why this job, why now, why you? At its worst, it was theatre – a genre of exaggerated enthusiasm and

O

discreet omission. We all knew the phrases: “I am passionate about…”, “I thrive in fastpaced environments…”. Sincere, perhaps, but ritualised.

AI has not corrupted the cover letter. It has exposed it. If authorship is uncertain, the document loses weight. A well-turned sentence might reflect talent. It might reflect a well-crafted prompt. The recruiter cannot tell – so the recruiter stops caring.

And that matters, especially for younger applicants. For those without polished CVs or prestigious credentials, the cover letter was a way into the room. It allowed for context, explanation, personality.

Remove it, and the process tilts towards what is already visible.

Employers are responding by looking for harder signals: work trials, technical tasks, referrals, live interviews. In many ways, this is better. A short project can reveal more than a page of prose ever could. But it is also more demanding. The burden shifts from narrative to demonstration.

The lesson is not that writing no longer matters. It is that surface fluency has become

cheap. And when something becomes cheap, we look for something rarer.

Judgement is rarer. Reliability is rarer.

The ability to collaborate under pressure is rarer. The capacity to learn quickly is rarer. All these things are now the test the prospective employee rightly faces.

What we are witnessing is not the death of discernment, but its migration. Hiring is becoming more experiential. You are less likely to persuade in advance and more likely to prove yourself in miniature.

That has consequences, and not all of them bad. For candidates, the centre of gravity shifts towards visible output. Build something. Write publicly. Accumulate evidence rather than adjectives. Everything moves away from abstraction into tangibility.

For employers, there is a risk that as trust in documents declines, reliance on networks increases. Referrals feel safer than cold applications. But networks are uneven. The quiet graduate without connections can disappear.

NEXT GENERATION

ne of the risks for any organisation working in employability is that it begins, slowly and almost imperceptibly, to speak about young people rather than with them. The language can remain fresh, the intentions good – but the signal drifts. What young people actually want, fear, and respond to evolves faster than most institutions can track.

At Finito, we have long been aware of that risk. Which is why we are introducing a new Next Generation Board: a group of younger voices who

will help ensure we remain closely aligned with the reality of entering the workforce today.

This board will be led by Nick Hennigan, a recent Finito bursary candidate and now an assistant to a private banker in London. Nick brings something rare: not only ability, but judgement. His path – from a state comprehensive in Aberdeen to a firstclass degree and a front-office role in private banking – has given him a clear-eyed understanding of how uncertain and non-linear early careers can be.

More importantly, he combines that with a seriousness of purpose. Having navigated significant personal adversity, Nick carries himself with a steadiness that is unusual at 23. He understands both the ambition and the anxiety that define this stage of life.

The purpose of the board is simple: to keep us honest. To test our assumptions. To ensure that what we build reflects not only what we think young people need, but what they actually experience. If Finito is to continue opening doors, we must also keep listening at them. www.finito.org.uk

ISSUE 18

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ISSUE 18

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CONTENTS

THIS ISSUE 3 FOUNDER'S LETTER

Wikipedia.org

6 LEADERS 12 DIARY Alexander Hoare 14 MEET THE MENTOR Tom Pauk on ghosting

p18 Tony Blair

COLUMNS

FEATURES

18 T HE FORMER PRIME MINISTER

52 HELLO SUNSHINE

Sir Tony Blair 20 THE NOVELIST Zadie Smith 22 THE MUSEUM DIRECTOR Sir Tristram Hunt 24 THE PHILOSOPHER Naomi Klein 26 THE POLYMATH Sarah Tucker

The rise and rise of Reese Witherspoon

64 THANK YOU, YOUR MAJESTY 50 years of the King’s Trust 72 PET SHOCK How the vet industry is evolving 74 THE BOOK OF GAGE Joanne Rees on her mentor’s biography

p26 Sarah Tucker

86 NEXT GEN NICK How Hennigan is changing Finito 88 CLASSICALLY SOCIAL David Zazo 90 CHANGING PROMISES Roger Flaxman on the Insurance sector

78 WOW! CENTREPIECE How tech is altering design 82 CARD OF DREAMS How to buy from Harrods

30 A QUESTION OF DEGREE Sir Anthony Seldon 34 R ELATIVELY SPEAKING Simon Cundey 38 T EN THOUSAND HOURS Waze founder Uri Levine 40 TOMORROW’S LEADERS Felicity Syfret 42 THOSE ARE MY PRINCIPLES Rt. Hon Robert Halfon 46 LATEST EVENTS Finito hosts Critics’ Circle Theatre Awards 2026 10

p46 Critics’ Circle Theatre Awards

p86 Nick Hennigan

CONTENTS eesesbookclub.com

p52

Legally Successful: How Reese Witherspoon built an empire ART, CULTURE & BOOKS 94 ROSE-TINTED SPECTACLES At the RA’s Wylie exhibition

100 GREEN PICTURES Sustainable art

110 DESIGNING EDUCATION

126 IMPERSONATION Charles Haslett 130 LETTER FROM ARGENTINA Polly Cecil 132 LETTER FROM DORDOGNE

The Architects changing schools

Sarah Tucker reports

118 UNCANCELLABLE MUSIC

134 BOOK REVIEWS

The one and only Michael Jackson

The latest non-fiction

Premier Padel

Wikipedia.org

p136 Anyone for Padel?

p144 Robert Ettinger

136 ANYONE FOR PADEL? The sport with all the momentum 140 COSTEAU The £14 sandwich 144 CLASS DISMISSED Robert Ettinger

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ISSUE 18

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DIARY

ALEXANDER HOARE

I

The legendary banker gives his insights on the banking industry and what it takes to keep it in the family have found myself thinking lately

about my father. He was a banker,

as was his father before him, and he never spoke about clients. That was

simply understood: discretion was the job. Only after he died did I begin to

meet people he had helped. They spoke of him with a kind of quiet reverence,

often about moments I had never heard of. It struck me that the true work of banking is rarely visible at the time.

It reveals itself later, in other people’s memories.

M

Alexander Hoare, www.hoaresbank.co.uk

ore than once, I have been

asked to distil twenty years of

experience into a few neat conclusions.

The only one I really trust is this: ownership matters. If you want

something to last, it must be small

enough and simple enough that the next generation will actually want

to take care of it. If it becomes too large, too complicated, it ceases to

feel like something to be stewarded and becomes something to be sold.

Affection, in the end, is as important as strategy.

I

tend to fall back on a couple of

simple mantras. “Keep it simple” is

one. The other is “small is beautiful,” which is often taken the wrong way.

It isn’t a sentimental attachment to smallness. It is a recognition that

systems work better when they remain comprehensible, when people can

still see themselves in what they are

doing. Once things become too large, it becomes very easy to forget that people are the point of the whole exercise.

12

T

here is also something

unfashionable, perhaps, in the

T

he question of time comes up

repeatedly. Not in the abstract,

idea of restraint. We do not try to do

but in how decisions are actually

deal of time deciding what not to do.

increments, you behave one way; if

everything. In fact, we spend a good

Complexity has a way of creeping in

by degrees—one new system, one new product, one new exception—and

before long you are running something

no one fully understands. It takes effort to resist that drift, but without that

effort, longevity becomes very difficult.

M

uch of what we do, in practice, is say no. We turn away

perfectly reasonable opportunities with some regularity. That sounds

counterintuitive, but the aim is not

to maximise activity; it is to preserve

made. If you are thinking in five-year you are thinking in generations, you

behave quite differently. The difficulty

is that most modern structures reward the former while depending, quietly,

on the latter. That tension is not easily resolved, but it is worth at least being aware of it.

I

sometimes think modern capitalism has become slightly confused about

what success looks like. There is an assumption that scale is inherently good, that growth is always the

quality over time. We are trying

objective. I am not convinced. Small

difficult periods, not something that

things cannot. The deeper problem,

ago, we adopted—half seriously, half

are made with the next quarter in

“potentates.” It cost us in the short

thinking decades ahead, even if they

to build something that survives

things can endure in ways that large

merely prospers in easy ones. Years

perhaps, is time: too many decisions

not—a rule to avoid what we called

mind, when in reality most people are

term. It proved rather useful later.

don’t say so.

DIARY

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C A R P E T S

A N D

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MELANGE Collection – Glassy Greens

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Deirdre Dyson is a registered trade mark of Deirdre Dyson. www.finito.org.uk ISSUE 18 13

MENTORING

Meet the Mentor:

TOM PAUK Our Senior Mentor tackles the rising problem of employers ghosting applicants From your perspective as a Senior Mentor, how widespread is the

Tom Pauk

phenomenon of ghosting now — and how does it compare to even five years ago?

Regrettably, ghosting by employers has become the “new normal” compared with five years ago. And it’s not just confined to employers. We’ve seen plenty of examples of recruitment

consultants meeting candidates to discuss a career brief or a specific role but then disappearing mid-

conversation, despite repeated efforts to contact them.

applicants they’re not progressing an

Ghosting can of course occur the other

application (months, in some cases)

to advise an employer that they’ve

to ghosting; in effect, applicants are

way around, ie. when an applicant fails

that the prolonged delay is tantamount

found a better opportunity elsewhere.

held in limbo, never quite knowing

“Ghosting by employers has become the ‘new normal’ compared with say f ive years ago.”

not, been definitively rejected.

whether their application has, or has What do you see as the primary

causes of ghosting by employers at different recruitment stages,

from online tests to final-round interviews?

Some employers claim that the sheer number of applications they receive

Regardless of who is doing it,

prevents them from responding to

ghosting, whatever its implied or

that they won’t be progressing the

our position here at Finito is that

every candidate, if only to advise

stated justification, is unkind, unfair

application.

and unhelpful, with an invariably negative impact for those on the receiving end.

It’s also worth adding that some employers take so long to notify 14

or no communication coupled with diminished accountability.

It may also be that some employers

prefer not to deliver bad news, hoping, presumably, that candidates will "get the message" by not delivering any news at all.

At Finito we’ve also noted the

growing tendency of employers not

to provide candidates with feedback alongside a rejection. And where

feedback is provided, it's often so generic (ie. general reflections on

why some applications were preferred over others) that there's nothing of practical value to be gleaned that

might strengthen a candidate’s future applications.

Other factors may include an ever-

How does prolonged silence

submissions at the expense of human

psychologically, especially those

increasing reliance on automation of interaction; and a growing shift

towards remote hiring leading to poor

from employers affect candidates entering the workforce for the first time?

MENTORING

There’s an obvious loss of morale and

could be more closely aligned with

What responsibility do large

of candidates apply for multiple

size does not fit all.

ghosting — and what would best-

motivation. And as the vast majority

opportunities, the ongoing silence can have a cumulative, crushing impact;

each role applied for; remember, one

Do you think employers fully

employers have to guard against

practice communication look like?

appreciate the emotional and

All employers, big and small,

deeply personal, even when it patently

ghosting, or is this still a blind spot

applications, as soon as practicable,

candidates feel as if there’s a dark

cloud hanging over them, ie. that it’s

reputational damage caused by

should undertake to respond to all

is not.

in hiring culture?

and ideally with granular feedback as

Are there particular personality types

A blind spot. I’m hopeful, however,

vulnerable to the effects of ghosting?

from the current corrosive state of

At Finito, how do you help

Anecdotally, my sense is that

empathetic recruitment process.

being repeatedly ghosted?

or backgrounds that seem especially

candidates who are prone to self-

that we may, over time, move away

affairs towards a more personalised,

to why a given application was not progressed.

candidates rebuild confidence after

doubt and anxiety are likely to be

Have you seen cases where ghosting

We’re always scrupulously honest and

than others. An obvious example is

leave their chosen sector or rethink

the get-go, reminding them that the

more impacted by being ghosted

directly caused talented candidates to

realistic with our candidates from

the current generation of job seekers

their whole career path?

road to meaningful employment will

whose education was most impacted by successive pandemic lockdowns.

Having said that, none of us likes

to be ignored, especially when we’ve

invested so much time and energy in applying for a job.

Sadly, yes. A cumulative loss of morale and self-esteem can prompt a (as

yet thankfully small) proportion of

candidates to give up their long-held career aspirations. Some mentees question why they should bother

be a challenging one, that they’re

increasingly unlikely to hear back from employers let alone receive feedback, even after securing an interview or attending an assessment centre or vacation scheme.

What practical steps can candidates

applying for a job when chances are

And so it all comes back to building

— both to protect their mental

alone receive any feedback. Although

and momentum; dusting oneself off

productive?

resilience in the face of rejection is

take when they’ve been ghosted

they’re unlikely to ever hear back let

wellbeing and to keep their job search

I’ve some sympathy for this sentiment,

First, keep on reminding yourself that

essential in the pursuit of employment.

it’s NOT personal, that in these most

Does AI-driven recruitment

job has become a lottery, compounded

distance between employers and

challenging of times securing a new by the increasing use of Artificial

Intelligence recruitment tools that

process applications in a microsecond.

Try not to take algorithms personally (after all, they don’t take you personally!)

Second, do try and extract whatever learnings you can from applications that did not progress. Ask a trusted

colleague or friend to read your CVs and cover letters, consider how they

resilience and maintaining energy

from the most recent rejection and preparing thoroughly for the next

application ... and the next, and the next after that, as often as it takes.

exacerbate ghosting by increasing

Each (inferred or explicit) rejection

candidates?

experience for the candidate. To this

Self-evidently, yes. We now find

ourselves in the curious position of candidates using AI to apply for jobs (drafting cover letters,

personal statements and CVs) only

represents, nevertheless, a learning

end we work with them on improving their game, eg more compelling cover letters, CVs that are more closely

aligned to each role applied for, and more rigorous interview practice.

to be rejected (either explicitly or

I remind my mentees that one day,

technology. In effect, no human being

they’ll reflect back on the process

by being ghosted) by the very same

has been involved at either end of the application!

after they’ve secured that elusive job, with satisfaction, perhaps even with a degree of nostalgia!

www.finito.org.uk ISSUE 18

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COLUMNS Our regular writers on employability in 2026 38 | WAZE OF TRIUMPHING How the entrepreneur made it big

Uri Levine (Wikipedia.org) 16

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20 NOVEL OPINIONS Zadie Smith on her life as a writer

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HUNT FOR THE TRUTH V&A director on culture and politics

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HALFON ON TOLKIEN Bilbo Baggins, apprentice

COLUMNS

The Former Prime Minister

SIR TONY BLAIR The longest-serving Labour leader on what he learned at the very top

H

ere’s one thing I’ve learned about politics, and not just

from the time I was Prime Minister

but from working with governments around the world: you’ve got to

have a clear governing project. It’s the only thing.

Especially today, you’re operating

in a media environment that is raw and difficult. So if you’re trying to

follow where opinion is going, you’re going to be going all over the place, because it’s going in many different directions at once. That means

you need to start with a very clear

analysis of what you think is wrong and how you put it right.

“If you’re trying to follow where opinion is going, you’re going to be going all over the place, because it’s going in many different directions at once. That means Sir Tony Blair (Wikipedia.org) you need to start they struggle, is that they’re never out there and clear, even if they with a very clear quite sure what direction they want. don’t agree with you: that’s far better And therefore your tactical decisions, than to seem not quite sure what analysis of what if you’re not careful, collide you’re going to do on any given day. you think is wrong with what you say your strategic If voters see that, then they lose objectives are. So you end up not confidence. and how you put it saying anything clearly, and people I always say to people that true right.” lose confidence.

The problem for governments, when 18

People prefer you to be strong and

leadership starts with policy: that’s

the true catalyst. The politics can all

COLUMNS

be layered on top of that, but if the

policy is wrong, you’re not going to

Donald Trump (Wikipedia.org)

succeed.

And here’s the reality: once you take decisions, you divide. People always

complain; that’s in the nature of the

job. The moment you take a decision, someone is going to be displeased

about it. You’re not going to avoid that, so it’s better just to accept it. Leadership involves making

decisions that people disagree with.

“People prefer you to be strong and out there and clear, even if they don’t agree with you: that’s far better than to seem not quite sure what you’re going to do on any given day.”

others, which is there to translate

the difference. You can’t resolve

practical. And then beneath that

you can create a structure in which

that direction into something

again, you’ve got a specific executive focused on the particular situation.

So you’ve got layers. You’ve got

the political leadership at the top, the executive capacity beneath it, and then the operational focus

underneath that. The whole point

every underlying disagreement, but people operate, in which they share

responsibility, and in which they can pursue their objectives peacefully.

Of course, we must be realistic too.

I’ve also learned that plans always

collide with reality. You can have a

of it is to create coherence, to create

plan, but when events unfold, the

develop a certain resilience. Things

Without that structure, you don’t get

to it, or whether you replace it with

are aware of all the people depending

you don’t get results.

Because you do need a plan. Without

All of this means that a leader must

a structure that can actually deliver.

question is whether you can hold

go wrong. Life gets troublesome. You

alignment – and without alignment,

something better.

on you. But you need to almost

“Leadership is develop a certain insensitiveness to that – though not in a hard-hearted not about having way. The truth is if you spend too much time contemplating that, it can a perfect plan overwhelm you. So you have to be and sticking to able to carry on and act. it regardless. It’s What we’ve been trying to do in the situations I’ve been working on in about having a clear the Middle East together with the direction, and then Trump administration is to construct a viable framework. You have, at being able to adapt the top, what’s called the Board of without losing that Peace, consisting of senior leaders of countries, providing the overall direction.” direction. Underneath that, there’s an executive board, which I sit on with

I hope this framework will make

a plan, you have no direction. But

you also need the ability to adjust.

So leadership is not about having a perfect plan and sticking to it

regardless. It’s about having a clear direction, and then being able to

adapt without losing that direction.

So in the end, that’s what leadership comes down to. You need clarity

about what you think is wrong. You need a plan for how to put it right.

You need the willingness to take

decisions. And you need the ability

to hold your course in a very difficult environment. Those are the things that matter.

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The Novelist

ZADIE SMITH

I

The author of White Teeth and The Fraud on writing essays, neighbourhood and the transcendence of Sally Rooney

remember writing my essay ‘Fascinated to Presume’ and

Zadie Smith Photographed by Sebastian Kim

thinking, even as I wrote it, that I

didn’t really want to be making that

argument. I hated writing it exactly for that reason, because it was a

claim of rights, and I was so tired of the competition of everyone else’s

rights that some part of me thought, well, I’m a writer, I have rights, and

so I wrote a piece about the rights of us as a group.

I’m glad I wrote it, but I wish I didn’t have to defend what we do on the basis of rights. For me, when I’m

defending writing, I don’t want to defend it on the basis of rights or

on the basis of a global idea. I think writing is local and particular in

itself. And actually, the older I’ve got, the more I want my life to be local and particular.

“For me, it’s in the idea that human beings suffer and that death is coming.”

I think there’s a better way of looking at our shared life which has nothing

to do with rights. It rests instead on the facts.

For me, it’s in the idea that human

awareness that death is real and that pain happens.

That’s the basis on which I think

most of our writing depends. The

beings suffer and that death is

ethics of it is this awareness that

the humanist, the existentialist, the

The last one is absolutely universal.

don’t have faith, that is the basis

everybody experiences pain, but

coming. Those two things unite

death is real and the pain happens.

socialist and the Christian. If you

The second one is partial. Not

on which you are operating. The

almost everybody. And that’s the basis

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on which you build your characters.

I don’t enjoy polemics. Personally, I try not to write them. But I felt

in that moment that writers I love

and appreciate were taking up arms

against the very word human, or the very word empathy. I felt that was a

moment of extremity, and I felt a little bit embattled, and I wanted to try and defend the realm of the human.

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But I’m also able to recognise, as

that young people have nothing but

buy Sally Rooney. The sales of those

messy business to attempt to make

language has been abused by creative

books are transcendent.

Pope Francis did also, that it’s a

relations with anybody. My students, for instance, often feel this sense of despair. One of the things the

algorithm tells you is that the world’s problems are your problems every

day. And if that’s the case, you can’t do anything about them, because

you’re nineteen years old. So you feel completely defeated by eight in the morning.

Whereas personally, for my

own mental health, I’ve tried to

engage locally. I live back in my

suspicion for this language, because writers and politicians – in fact, by everybody.

So part of the task is saying to them there’s a difference between an ideal and a practicality, and the ideal is still meaningful, but we have to

show them that these ideals can be

animated by reality, not just discourse.

That’s hard.

All of this means that the biggest

struggle is to answer the question of how we create unity with diversity

books are miraculous, and those

There is an idea of transcendence within them, and a religious idea within them, I think. But I don’t

think the readers would express it that way. I think they think those books are about something else.

They’re about human intimacy and

the idea of a transcendent experience.

And millions of people have

responded to those books for that reason.

within it. Some of this is to do with

I often feel really excited about

a nineteenth-century village kind

In front of the gates of my kid’s

question for me is, how come we

known my whole life. This gives me

languages spoken. You are aware

experience, or to defend that idea of

don’t believe in vaccination, and

always flatten it?

neighbourhood. I’m back on the street I was born on, so I live in

of way: the people around me I’ve

a sense of agency. I can do something

here. I can do something in my street, amongst my people.

And of course, my people in my

discretion.

reading because of that. But the

school, you really do have a hundred

don’t have a language to describe that

that you are talking to parents who

reading and what it does. Why do we

some parents who have beliefs very far from your own. Watching those

neighbourhood are very varied. My

people speak together, Muslims, Jews,

from all over the world. So it’s easy

of caution. They know what to say

of them.

They know where they can speak

neighbourhood is hundreds of people

Hindus, black, white, they have a kind

for me to say “we,” because I mean all

and what not to say.

But I also recognise that people live

together and say, well, we all want to

from that kind of contained place of

agree on. That’s because our shared

that idea as something that is coming

a species.

in monocultures, and write novels

be safe. There’s a basis here we can

rights. You don’t have to conceive of

humanity is that we’re death-facing as

for you.

They approach those conversations

For instance, I love writing essays.

But when I talk to readers, quite

often they would prefer to read an

essay than a novel. But I think novels contain more mystery. An essay is

an argument, and a lot of people feel

more comfortable with an argument, because that’s the kind of discourse they engage with all the time.

But when I’m reading a novel, I have a completely different feeling. To

me, it’s deeper and more profound.

Not because novels are better than

At the same time, I am totally aware

with this delicacy. They’re aware

been multiply abused over hundreds

aware there are differences within the

the very first American statement

to each other without it becoming

the people, it meant some of the

We need a language for all this.

an essay perfect. I think there’s a clue

that it’s miraculous people still go

that difference is the reason we need

essays. Most novels are bad, including

that this language of universalism has

that they’re a community. They’re

of years. That began happening from

community, but they’re able to speak

to write. There’s always something

“We the People,” which didn’t mean

purely a binary argument.

Whereas an essay, you can really make

people, and people like me were three fifths of a person.

So it’s absolutely comprehensible

mine. Novels are a really hard thing wrong with them.

When it comes to reading, I agree

there about the difference – and in

out and buy books, still queue up to

novels.

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The Museum Director

SIR TRISTRAM HUNT

The historian, former MP and current director of the Victoria and Albert Museum surveys the cultural landscape

I

have been thinking a great deal about the relationship between art and

Sir Tristram Hunt (Wikipedia.org)

the future of Britain, less as an abstract question and more as a practical one.

For all the noise of contemporary

politics, this remains one of the quiet

determinants of what kind of country we are, and what kind of country we might become.

It is easy to forget that the institutions we now take for granted were born

not out of confidence, but anxiety. The Victoria and Albert Museum, where I

now serve as director, traces its origins to the Great Exhibition of 1851. We often

remember that moment as a triumphant display of imperial prowess, Britain as workshop of the world, basking in its industrial supremacy. In truth, it was

something closer to a national moment of self-doubt. Prince Albert was deeply concerned that Britain was falling

behind in design, manufacturing and the

applied arts. The Exhibition was intended

This, I think, is where we have lost our

not always the case. Conservative

expose British industry to the superior

There is a tendency, particularly in the

a much clearer sense of the relationship

to force improvement.

extra. Something pleasant, something

not to congratulate but to provoke, to

way in contemporary political thinking.

workmanship of others, and in doing so,

centre, to treat culture as an optional

From that act of nervous self-reflection

came a collection that has grown from a

handful of objects into millions, spanning thousands of years of human creativity.

Yet the founding purpose has remained remarkably consistent. The museum is

not simply there for passive enjoyment.

It exists to inspire, to provoke the next

worthy, but not quite essential to the

business of governing. That is a mistake.

If you look across Europe, or indeed to

the United States, it is often the populist right that has most clearly grasped

the importance of culture as a tool of politics. Ministries of culture are not

afterthoughts. They are instruments of

generation of makers, designers and

power. They shape narratives, identities,

Culture, in that sense, is not decorative. It

Britain, by contrast, has been oddly

thinkers into producing something new.

and the sense a nation has of itself.

is functional.

hesitant. And yet historically this was

22

governments, in particular, have often had between culture and national identity

than they are sometimes given credit for.

Harold Macmillan’s willingness to sweep away Victorian architecture in favour of modernism was not merely an act

of vandalism, but an attempt, however

flawed, to project a vision of a new Britain.

Margaret Thatcher, for all the ideological battles of her era, had a strong sense of the symbolic importance of culture, of

how power should look, how it should be staged, how it should be experienced.

Even more recent governments, though less coherent, have understood that

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culture can be politically potent. The

can achieve. In a multipolar world, where

around what is remembered and what

of soft power matters enormously.

debates around statues, around heritage, is removed, are not incidental. They are arguments about national identity. The problem is not that culture has been

politicised, this is inevitable, but that

it has too often been done in a shallow

or reactive way, as a kind of short-term

skirmish rather than part of a sustained governing vision.

All of this matters not only for reasons

of identity, but for reasons of economics.

influence is increasingly diffuse, this kind And yet there is a more intimate

dimension to all of this. We are on the

cusp of a technological transformation driven by artificial intelligence that

will fundamentally alter the nature of

work. It is not implausible that within a

generation, many people will work fewer hours, whether by choice or necessity.

The question then arises: “What fills

the space that is left? What gives shape

The creative industries are one of the few

and meaning to lives that are no longer

They generate well over one hundred

Here, again, culture becomes central.

grow. They are flexible, innovative, and

of engagement, reflection and fulfilment.

sectors in which Britain genuinely excels. billion pounds a year and continue to

disproportionately attractive to young people entering the workforce. In an

era where growth is elusive, this is not a marginal advantage. It is a central one.

“In an era where growth is elusive, this is not a marginal advantage. It is a central one.”

But creative industries do not exist in isolation. They depend on a broader

ecology of education, institutions and

public investment. If you hollow out arts education in schools, if you allow local

museums and cultural spaces to wither,

you are not merely cutting costs. You are

undermining one of the most productive sectors of the economy.

organised entirely around employment?”

Not in a didactic sense, but as a means

There is a growing tendency to speak of

the arts in therapeutic terms, of museums as sites of wellbeing, of galleries as spaces of mindfulness. I am slightly sceptical

film and television, these are global

assets. They shape perceptions of Britain

far beyond what any diplomatic initiative

nation. These are not questions that can

be answered definitively, but they must at least be asked.

Because without that, policy becomes

reactive, piecemeal, incoherent. You end up lurching from one controversy to

another, from one funding crisis to the

next, without any underlying framework to guide decisions.

offers a way of structuring experience,

of Britain’s cultural landscape is its

be struck. One of the great strengths

of making sense of the world, that is not

relative independence. We do not have a

easily replicated elsewhere.

tradition of heavy-handed state direction

None of this is to deny the policy

of the arts, and that is something to be

Local authority museums face severe

of freedom, of unpredictability, of dissent.

challenges. They are considerable.

cherished. Creativity thrives on a degree

financial pressure, caught between rising

But independence does not mean

demands for social care and constrained

budgets. Libraries, galleries and regional institutions are often the first to feel the squeeze. There are difficult questions

about funding models, about whether

free entry to national museums remains sustainable, about how best to allocate resources in a low-growth economy.

of empire, around what it means to hold

museums, our music, our literature, our

What role should it play in the life of the

underlying intuition is sound. Culture

hard power, military strength and

influence remains extraordinary. Our

sense of purpose. What is culture for.

There is, of course, a delicate balance to

There are also more contentious debates,

economic leverage, but Britain’s cultural

What is required, above all, is a clearer

of some of this language. But the

There is also the question of Britain’s

place in the world. We often talk about

“Culture can be both reflective and transformative. It can tell us who we are, and it can suggest who we might become.”

around restitution, around the legacies

global collections in a national institution.

These are not always issues that resonate

indifference. The state still has a role to play, in setting conditions, in providing

support, in articulating a broader vision.

The question is not whether culture should be part of a political project, but how.

If there is a lesson to be drawn from the history of institutions like the V&A, it

is that culture can be both reflective and transformative. It can hold up a mirror

to society, and it can also help to reshape it. It can tell us who we are, and it can suggest who we might become.

widely with the public, but they are

At a moment when Britain is searching,

heart of how Britain understands its past,

seems to me not a peripheral concern,

nonetheless important. They go to the

and how it presents itself to the world.

once again, for a sense of direction, that but a central one.

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The Philosopher

NAOMI KLEIN The Doppelganger author on the speed of progress we see all around us

I

t is a very large question, perhaps too large to answer cleanly, but

Naomi Klein (Wikipedia)

one feature of this moment stands

out with unusual clarity: the speed at which transformative technologies

are being deployed without anything like the level of public debate they warrant.

Listen carefully to the people building

these systems and a definition emerges.

Artificial general intelligence, they say, arrives at the point where the majority of human economic activity can be

performed better by machines. Taken at face value, that threshold ought to prompt a pause. It ought to open a

serious, collective conversation about whether we want to replace most of

what we do with automated systems.

The implications are not abstract. They go directly to the question of how

people earn a living, how economies

function, and how meaning is organised in everyday life.

Yet that conversation is continually

deferred. The reason most often given

surveillance. The algorithm teaches

scale and persistence of student protest

the risk of falling behind, that if one

an early age, you are encouraged to

least because they are unfolding under

another will accelerate. This framing

to curate your actions in anticipation

space for democratic deliberation and

constant and familiar: do not post

inevitability.

employer to see. The result is a kind of

is urgency. We are told that we are in an arms race, that hesitation carries

you to see yourself as a brand. From

country or company slows down

imagine how you will be perceived,

has a predictable effect. It narrows the

of future judgement. The advice is

recasts political choice as technical

anything you would not want a future

Against this backdrop, it is worth

looking closely at how younger people are navigating the pressures of the present. For years, the dominant

story has been one of internalised 24

temporal dislocation, a life lived partly

in the present and partly in a projected future where every action is assessed.

What is striking now is the extent to

which that logic is being disrupted. The

movements have been surprising, not conditions of heightened scrutiny

and real consequence. The risks are

not hypothetical. They are immediate and tangible. And yet participation continues.

“The algorithm teaches you to see yourself as a brand.”

There were reasons to expect a different

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outcome. The dramatic increase in

institutions. That may be true in some

continues at pace. The systems that

debt, and the economic precarity

reality. Moral leadership does exist. The

and highly influential. But within those

tuition fees, the growing burden of faced by many students all seemed likely to act as disciplinary forces.

If education requires extraordinary

financial sacrifice, it is reasonable to

assume that students would become

more cautious, less willing to jeopardise their prospects. That assumption has not held.

“Every action risks becoming content.”

Instead, what has emerged is a level of

respects, but it risks obscuring another issue is not simply its absence, but our

willingness to recognise and support it.

guide behaviour are deeply embedded

constraints, choices are still being made.

“The future is not choices about whose voices are amplified being shaped solely by and whose actions are legitimised. In the the systems we build, current moment, many individuals are stepping into roles that involve significant but also by the ways personal risk, often without institutional in which people choose backing or protection. Their visibility may be limited, but their influence is not to live within and negligible. against them.”

Recognition is not neutral. It is shaped by

How movements are described also

risk-taking that is difficult to ignore.

matters. There is a pattern in which

Those choices matter because they

pressure, and doing so without

individual performance. Activists are

is not only what kinds of systems are

accompanied high-profile activism.

interested, or driven by personal gain.

are being formed within them. Are

itself functioned as a reward. Media

It reduces political engagement to a

self-management, image control,

a form of celebrity could attach to

idea of solidarity.

space for forms of action that involve

primary dynamic here. These actions

persuasive. There is a growing capacity

Students are organising, sustaining

collective action is quickly reframed as

speak to a deeper question. The issue

the kinds of recognition that once

characterised as attention-seeking, self-

being built, but what kinds of people

There was a period when visibility

This kind of framing is not accidental.

individuals primarily oriented towards

attention, public recognition, even

form of narcissism and undermines the

and risk calculation, or is there still

political engagement. That is not the

Yet this framing is not always

are not being widely celebrated in

to distinguish between actions

There is no simple answer. The

those grounded in a broader sense

self-surveillance are real and powerful.

This is not to suggest that participants

crucial, because it shapes how solidarity

younger people, complicates the

of digital culture. Social media

In an environment structured by

behaviours and suppresses others.

to individualise experience. Every

sacrifice, commitment, and a sense of shared purpose?

motivated by self-promotion and

pressures towards conformity and

of responsibility. That distinction is

But the evidence, particularly among

are untouched by the broader dynamics

is understood and practised.

more pessimistic accounts. It suggests

remains a system that amplifies certain

algorithms, there is a constant pressure

mainstream culture. In some cases, they

are actively marginalised or condemned.

And still they continue.

It can reward conformity, intensify

group dynamics, and create its own

hierarchies of attention. It would be a mistake to idealise any movement

operating within that environment. But it would also be a mistake to overlook what is genuinely distinctive.

action risks becoming content. Every

that even within highly constrained environments, there remains the

capacity for resistance, for solidarity, and for moral courage.

statement can be folded into a personal

That capacity does not guarantee

presentation. What is notable in some

settle the debates about technology,

narrative of branding and self-

of the current organising is a refusal

of that logic. There is a willingness to

act collectively without clear reward, to

At the same time, the question of

take risks that are not easily converted

a recurring claim that we are living

This does not resolve the larger

particularly at the level of large

remain acute. Technological change

leadership is being reframed. There is

into personal advantage.

through a crisis of moral leadership,

structural tensions. Economic pressures

any particular outcome. It does not economics, or governance. But it is

significant. It indicates that the future is not being shaped solely by the

systems we build, but also by the ways in which people choose to live within and against them.

That, at the very least, is worth sustained attention.

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The Polymath

SARAH TUCKER The writer and advocate of lateral thinking on the ego trap and why power makes people thick Sarah Tucker

26

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C

onsidering what has unfolded globally over the past few years,

politically, economically, culturally, it feels like the right moment to

talk about the ego. Not as a moral

flaw or a personality quirk, but as a

structural problem in thinking. One that narrows perception, hardens positions, and quietly sabotages

decision-making at scale, particularly in entrepreneurial, corporate, and

investment environments where the

cost of bad thinking compounds fast.

Ego doesn’t announce itself. It arrives disguised as certainty, experience,

seniority, success. It says: I’ve built this

before. It says: I know how this market works. It says: Rules are for people who haven’t earned discretion.

“Ego doesn’t announce itself. It arrives disguised as certainty, experience, seniority, success.”

defensive. Carl Jung understood this

men. Women who attach themselves

a centre of identity, but deeply

often inherit the same rigidity,

well. He saw the ego as necessary, limited. When it becomes over-

identified with power, track record, or perceived expertise, it turns the psyche into a fortress. Everything unfamiliar is treated as a threat.

Everything challenging is reframed as naivety, insubordination, or “lack of commercial understanding.”

Nietzsche, in his more surgical

moments, noticed the same thing.

Those who believe themselves superior

too closely to existing power structures mistaking proximity for independence, influence for insight. Status is

contagious. So is its blindness.

The result is a culture where

performance replaces curiosity, where

optics matter more than outcomes, and where being seen to decide decisively outweighs deciding well.

Why This Isn’t Machiavellian Thinking

often become brittle, not strong. They

At this point, someone usually raises

for understanding. They stop listening

Isn’t this all just power? Isn’t managing

mistake dominance for depth, control not because they are malicious, but

because listening would require them to risk rearranging the furniture of their own self-image.

Machiavelli.

perception, exploiting leverage, and

outmanoeuvring competitors simply strategic intelligence?

Thick thinking is not slow thinking.

“The ego’s primary function is defensive.”

reputation. Laden with past wins.

No. And this distinction matters.

costs and defend identity.

optimises within a fixed value system:

This is where thinking becomes thick.

It’s heavy thinking. Laden with

Laden with the need to justify sunk

Machiavellian thinking is linear. It

moving, even as markets, technologies,

And it is extraordinarily common at

control, advantage, survival. It doesn’t

Long before it became fashionable to

The Boys’ Club Isn’t Strategic — It’s

And once it takes hold, thinking stops and customers do.

the top of organisations.

critique power, this pattern had already

Predictable

early insights came from Edward de

networks, boys’ clubs, and closed

been observed. One of the clearest

Much has been written about elite

Bono, who noticed something curious

power circles in business and finance.

not in formal strategy sessions but

over dinners, the Albany dinners of the “good and the great.” The more

influential the people in the room, the less flexible their thinking became.

Status didn’t sharpen intelligence; it fossilised it.

This wasn’t incompetence. It was

something more interesting and more dangerous.

When the Mind Becomes a Fortress The ego’s primary function is

What’s less often discussed is how

boringly repetitive their thinking is.

Same assumptions. Same benchmarks.

Same playbooks. Same blind spots.

This is why ego is such an efficient

trap. It creates the illusion of mastery while producing intellectual laziness.

Once you believe you are above the

rules, you stop examining them. Once you believe you are the system, you stop improving it.

And crucially, this isn’t confined to

question the frame; it sharpens

execution inside it. It assumes scarcity.

It assumes opposition. It assumes

people are pieces to be moved, not systems to be redesigned.

What emerged from lateral

thinking traditions was something

fundamentally different and far more relevant to founders, operators, and investors navigating complexity.

He wasn’t interested in winning

within the game. He was interested in changing the game, not ideologically, but structurally. His work focused

on breaking patterning systems: the

grooves into which thought naturally falls. Ego thrives on grooves. It likes precedent. It likes authority. It likes being reinforced.

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True creative thinking does the

altering values is far more difficult

(though often they are), but because

enough to allow new configurations,

cling to moral identities even more

with complexity. They can’t adapt fast

opposite. It destabilises the self just

new business models, incentives, and structures to emerge.

Which is precisely why ego resists it.

Why Big Egos Are Easy to Outsmart (But Hard to Confront)

Here’s the paradox: people with

inflated egos are not formidable

thinkers. They are predictable thinkers.

Their fear of losing face makes them

conservative. Their attachment to image makes them risk averse. Their need

to appear competent prevents them

from exploring uncertainty, even when uncertainty is where the upside lives.

This is why direct confrontation rarely works in organisations. It triggers

defence. Committees form. Titles get invoked. Lawyers appear.

The smarter approach is oblique.

Lateral thinkers have long argued for moving “sideways” not attacking a

belief head-on but creating conditions where it becomes unnecessary. You

don’t burst the balloon; you change the

environment, so the balloon deflates on its own.

For example: • Introduce a pilot or skunkworks

project that bypasses hierarchy rather than challenging it.

• Reframe a strategic problem so that

preserving status requires adaptation, not resistance.

• Shift metrics and incentives so that

old displays of dominance no longer deliver reward.

Ego doesn’t respond to argument. It responds to environment.

Values Are Harder — But Not Impossible

It has long been acknowledged that 28

than altering thinking patterns. People fiercely than intellectual ones. ESG,

innovation, and sustainability are often treated as badges rather than systems, signals to broadcast rather than architectures to build.

As explored elsewhere, values without

structural imagination quickly become

they are inefficient. They don’t scale

enough. They collapse under their own certainty.

The future belongs not to the loudest voices or the most impressive titles, but to those capable of re-seeing

problems repeatedly without needing

theatre. The same applies in business

to protect their self-image.

“right” position is not the same as

entrepreneurial discipline: the

and entrepreneurship. Declaring the building the conditions that make it commercially viable.

This is where flexible thinking

becomes essential. Not to persuade, but to reconfigure incentives. Not

That requires a particular

willingness to unsettle oneself.

Or as Jung might put it, the courage

to let the ego loosen its grip without dissolving entirely.

The most aggressive displays of

“The most aggressive displays of conf idence often mask the deepest fear.”

fear. Fear of irrelevance. Fear of

of lateral approaches. They don’t

by someone younger, faster, or less

shame. They reframe.

to shame, but to make outdated behaviours uncompetitive.

Why the Biggest Bullies Are the Most Afraid

There’s an uncomfortable truth here. confidence often mask the deepest

That, ultimately, is the quiet power

exposure. Fear of being disrupted

overthrow. They outgrow. They don’t

invested in legacy.

This is why bullying, gatekeeping,

and performative toughness are so common at the top. Not because

And in doing so, they expose the central weakness of ego-driven systems:

power corrupts, but because power

They only work if everyone agrees to

higher the perch, the further the fall,

And fewer people, in markets, in

amplifies unresolved insecurity. The and the more frantic the grip.

Understanding this doesn’t excuse behaviour. But it does make it navigable.

You don’t defeat fear with force. You

dissolve it by removing the conditions that sustain it.

Thinking Beyond the Ego Era

pretend.

organisations, and in culture, are pretending now.

For readers interested in exploring lateral thinking beyond its business applications, Love Laterally (Aurora Metro) by Sarah

Tucker offers a strikingly human portrait of Edward de Bono, not as a guru, but

as a restless thinker. It’s a reminder that

We are entering a period where old

lateral thinking was never meant to be a

Not simply because they are unethical

the grip of certainty.

dominance models are visibly failing.

technique alone, but a way of loosening

BRITISH LUXURY LEATHER WWW.ETTINGER.CO.UK

BY APPOINTMENT TO HIS MAJESTY THE KING MANUFACTURER OF LEATHER GOODS G ETTINGER LTD LONDON

www.finito.org.uk

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A Question of Degree

SIR ANTHONY SELDON

AI is accelerating – but education is lagging. Sir Anthony Seldon in conversation with Edward de Bono biographer Sarah Tucker, explains why imagination is now a strategic advantage.

T

here is a piece of ground in Ilford, Essex, that quietly

Sir Anthony Seldon

exposes one of the great strategic failures of modern society.

Today, it is home to Sir Isaac Newton Academy, a school preparing young

people for a future shaped by artificial intelligence. One of its teachers is

Sir Anthony Seldon’s son, working at the educational frontline of the

2020s. The same ground once held

Gearies Boys’ School, where my father, Norman Tucker, served as deputy

head. Different era. Different tools.

Same underlying problem: how do you prepare young people for a world that will not wait for them to catch up?

“Education systems have spent decades optimising precisely the wrong things.”

“Education is fundamentally about

“Look, exams are not the end.

transmission,” says Sir Anthony.

Accountability matters. Targets

That question has animated Sir

investors, and builders, that framing

Anthony Seldon’s professional life for decades. A historian of politics and

education, former Head of Wellington College, former Vice-Chancellor of the University of Buckingham, and

one of Britain’s most influential public thinkers on schooling and leadership,

human flourishing, not just knowledge For Finito World’s audience, founders, should feel immediately familiar.

an organisation without them knows what drift looks like.

But systems have a habit of

judgment collapses under pressure,

count.

lack information; they fail because

worshipping what they can easily

because incentives distort behaviour,

“Too often exams have become not the

because resilience, ethics, imagination

he has observed institutional change

rarely comes from ignorance. It comes

systems, Sir Anthony argues, have

control for progress.

wrong things.

At the centre of his thinking is a

Artificial intelligence has now exposed

closely enough to know that failure

when conditions change. Education

from hesitation, and from mistaking

spent decades optimising precisely the

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matter. Anyone who has tried to run

Start-ups rarely fail because founders

or collaboration prove insufficient

deceptively demanding premise.

They’re a means to an end,” he says.

that imbalance.

means to an end, but the end itself,” he adds.

AI collapses that illusion overnight.

When a machine can produce flawless coursework in seconds, assessment

ceases to function as proxy. Education is forced, finally, to answer the

question it has deferred for years: what

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are we actually trying to produce?

Sir Anthony’s answer is consistent and unapologetically unfashionable.

“We need to develop the head, the

hand and the heart, not just the head,” he says.

This is not nostalgia. It is strategy.

accelerating cognitive output. What

“Drama builds confidence, trains

are secure identities, moral judgment,

other than their own, what Edward

they cannot replicate, at least not yet, embodied confidence, empathy

de Bono called OPV, Other People’s

work meaningfully with others when

identity and place,” he says.

And yet, for years, education policy

They are foundational. They are also,

under pressure, and the ability to

Views, and gives students a sense of

outcomes are uncertain.

These are not ornamental skills.

“AI collapses the illusion that exams are the end.

Education is forced, f inally, to answer the question it has deferred for years: what are we actually trying to produce?”

moved in the opposite direction.

For entrepreneurs, this distinction

Sir Anthony is blunt about what was

matters deeply. Machines are

young people to inhabit perspectives

Successive UK governments

not coincidentally, core founder capabilities.

have spoken eloquently about

Research I conducted at Cambridge

managing them like overheads rather

teachers are more likely to be cited

Curricula were narrowed in the

peers. Not influencers. Not content.

resisted tidy measurement was quietly

Which is precisely what concerns

the importance of teachers while

University supports this intuition:

than investing in them like talent.

as role models than either parents or

name of efficiency. Anything that squeezed out.

Drama was one of the first casualties.

Not because it lacked value, but because it was inconvenient. lost.

People.

Sir Anthony most about uncritical technological immersion.

“We can see from the work of

Jonathan Haidt and many others that immense damage can be done to the

formation of secure identities through over-reliance on machines,” he says. www.finito.org.uk

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He is careful, as a historian, not to

where leadership is unlikely to come

“We don’t yet have reliable data.

“The ideas will not be generated by

over-claim.

Causality is very hard to establish,” he notes.

Even so, his intuition is clear.

from.

central or local government,” he says.

“They’re too busy fighting

themselves, trying to get headlines

“If you take people away from

the next day.”

and substitute that with technology,

will sound uncomfortably familiar.

natural, healthy, caring relationships

For entrepreneurs, this diagnosis

this will not help secure personality

Innovation rarely comes from the

formation,” he says.

centre. It emerges from people closest

“We are moving into deeply

to reality, responding to constraint

this right.”

Which brings us back, inevitably, to

dangerous territory if we don’t get

with imagination.

that ground in Ilford.

“Machines are My father never spoke the language accelerating cognitive of strategy decks or governance frameworks. But he understood output. What they something essential: education was about forming people who could cannot replicate are stand upright in the world. secure identities, Sir Anthony is explicit. moral judgment, and “Change will come from the front the ability to work line, the teachers,” he says. meaningfully with “ The ideas will others when outcomes not be generated are uncertain.” by central or local This is why he argues that schools government. They’re must actively protect non-digital space: reading and reflection, physical too busy f ighting exercise, time in nature, responsibility, friction, real human consequence. Not themselves, trying to as a rejection of AI, but as a condition get headlines the next for using it wisely. day.”

In 2023, Sir Anthony co-founded AI and Education with Alex Russell, a multi-academy trust leader, to help schools collaborate rather than compete as they navigate

this transition. The initiative is deliberately practical, focused

on teachers rather than policy statements.

Because Sir Anthony is clear about

done precisely that.

Looking twenty years ahead, Sir Anthony naturally slips into the historian’s register. By the early 2030s, society may pass through Artificial General Intelligence into superintelligence, possibly even into early forms of transhumanism.

Future historians, he suggests, will ask an unforgiving question.

“Did education rise to meet the age of AI, or retreat into caution when imagination was most needed?” he asks.

“In an AI-accelerated world, wisdom, not capability, is the ultimate competitive advantage.”

They may ask who was thinking not about scale and efficiency alone, but about humanity, especially the most disadvantaged. They may ask why teachers were praised rhetorically while being structurally constrained. Sir Anthony remains, characteristically, a cautious optimist.

“I think humans will win,” he says.

But not because governments

This is where governments

suddenly found vision. If humans

about education as infrastructure

happened at ground level, on the

consistently miscalculate. They talk while treating its most important

agents as costs to be controlled rather than assets to be developed. No

venture capitalist would build a highgrowth company while systematically de-skilling its talent. Education has

do win, it will be because of what same ground, with different tools, led by teachers who understood that in an AI-accelerated world, wisdom, not capability, is the ultimate competitive advantage. www.finito.org.uk

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Relatively Speaking

SIMON CUNDEY

An exploration of how Henry Poole & Co has navigated 220 years of history by treating bespoke tailoring not as a fashion business, but as a generational inheritance of trust, standards, and self-possession.

T

here are businesses, and then there are inheritances. At No. 15

Simon Cundey

Savile Row, the two have never quite

been separable. When I talk to Simon

Cundey, Managing Director of Henry Poole & Co, it is in the midst of a year that feels less like a celebration than

a reckoning: 220 years of continuous

tailoring, and still very much a family concern.

“It’s a big year,” he says, with the

understatement of someone used to long timelines. “Two hundred and

twenty years. You start to think about what that really means. Not just the

history, but the relationships. The links to customers, what it takes to run a firm like this today.”

Those links, as it turns out, are the story.

“Bespoke tailoring, at its highest level, is not about fashion at all. It is about continuity.”

Henry Poole’s origins are unusually well preserved, almost novelistic in their clarity. James Poole arrives in

London as a draper, learns his trade

through military uniform, and finds himself in the orbit of a man who

The result, formalised with the firm’s

parallel history of power, seen through

chain of patronage that would stretch

“It’s always been international,” Simon

first Royal Warrant, set in motion a across Europe and beyond. Edward VII followed. Then a web of royal households, from Scandinavia to Russia.

would become Napoleon III. “He was

But what is striking is not simply the

corps,” Simon explains, “and Napoleon

Churchill, of course, remains the most

become Emperor. He spotted him.

like J.P. Morgan and Vanderbilt, rulers,

making uniforms for the volunteer

scale of the clientele, but its continuity.

was trying to get back to France, to

famous. But alongside him sit financiers

That’s where it began.”

diplomats, industrialists. A kind of

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cloth.

says. “Seventy per cent of our business is overseas. We couldn’t survive on

London alone.” The modern version of

this is the trunk show, fittings conducted across continents, orders placed for

seasons ahead. Yet the principle remains unchanged. The relationship begins in person, and it endures.

If the customer base has shifted, the method has not.

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“The journey starts with purpose,” he

experience you narrow it down. You

together.” The second is refinement.

then what do they want from it?” From

There are three fittings. The first is

details.” The third is what he calls, rather

Where the button sits, the width of

suit is finished, worn, inhabited. “You

tells me. “What is this suit for? And

there begins a process that is as much education as transaction. “We might have six thousand fabrics, but with

guide them.”

“The shape, the drape, the smaller

architectural. “Posture, stance, balance.

beautifully, the “blessing period”. The

the lapel. It’s mathematics and the eye

shouldn’t feel anything but comfort.” www.finito.org.uk

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My two sons are coming into it,” Simon says. “And we try to bring through the

next generation of coatmakers, cutters.

That’s part of our DNA. It’s how we survive.”

There is a quiet resistance here to the logic of modern branding. “When

companies are taken over, values can be diluted,” he says. “Being a family business allows us to pursue what

matters to us. We look to our own

history. We look at how Poole dressed people. Not to magazines.” “It’s not

just about the family, it’s also about the generations of cutters and tailors who have never deviated from our vision, What he describes is less a purchase than an initiation.

“The satisfaction is when someone comes in with a blank canvas, and leaves understanding what they have. They wear it, they’re noticed, they’re admired.”

“The satisfaction,” he says, “is when

someone comes in with a blank canvas, and leaves understanding what they have. They wear it, they’re noticed,

they’re admired. That’s the reward. But

more than that, they trust you. And you build something over time.”

That word, trust, comes up repeatedly.

It is the quiet currency of the place.

Over years, sometimes decades, a

wardrobe accumulates. “You’re building something that lasts ten, twenty years,” Simon says. “Something that might be passed on. Sons, grandchildren.” It is a reminder that bespoke tailoring, at its

highest level, is not about fashion at all.

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It is about continuity.

Which brings us, inevitably, to family.

Henry Poole is still, in the most literal

sense, one. “My wife is in the business.

and always worked as a team.”

It is a philosophy that extends beyond Savile Row. In Italy, Simon recently visited a mill with which Henry

Poole has collaborated to produce

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a commemorative cloth for the

anniversary year. If Cundey represents

seven generations, his counterpart there represents fourteen. “Another level,”

Simon says, admiringly. “But the same feeling. The same heritage.”

“Being a family business allows us to pursue what matters to us. We look to our own history. We look at how Poole dressed people. Not to magazines.”

The cloth itself is a kind of historical echo. A “superfine blue” recorded in

both archives in the nineteenth century has been reimagined as a lightweight flannel, understated but precise.

“I’m wearing it today,” Simon notes.

“Most flannels are twelve ounces. This is nine. It gives you a lift. You feel upright.”

It is tempting to see all this as

anachronistic, a world of ceremony preserved against the tide. But the

numbers suggest otherwise. “We’re

seeing a return to suits,” he says. “For a

while, it was sports jackets. Now people are dressing up again. For work, for evening.”

It is an interesting formulation, and

perhaps the key to understanding the place. In an age of self-expression,

He tells a story of a young

Henry Poole offers something more

and jeans, found himself in front of

suit does not announce. It aligns.

realised something needed to change.

connection to family lies. Not simply

entrepreneur who began in T-shirt

subtle: a form of self-possession. The

rooms of two hundred people, and

And perhaps that is where the deeper

“He became a diplomat. Now he

in ownership, but in transmission.

wears tailcoats. It’s about representing yourself.”

Knowledge passed down. Standards

maintained. Relationships sustained

Better, as Simon puts it, “to be blended

across time.

like a sore thumb.”

in the end, less a milestone than

in sometimes, rather than stand out

Two hundred and twenty years is,

a test. That a business can remain recognisably itself across that span suggests something more than good management. It suggests a set of values that have been quietly, persistently, kept intact.

As we finish, Simon returns, almost unconsciously, to the customer. “They get to know you, and you get to know them,” he says. “That’s the whole thing, really.”

It sounds simple. It rarely is. www.finito.org.uk

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Ten Thousand Hours

URI LEVINE

By Candice Krieger

F

ew are better placed to answer than Uri Levine, the two-time

unicorn builder and co-founder of

Waze, the go-to navigation app used by millions of drivers worldwide. Yet according to the serial entrepreneur, it’s neither. “There’s no doubt that

the team is the most important,” says Levine, and specifically, the CEO. Levine founded Waze in 2007 to deal with congestion in Tel Aviv,

his hometown. The app became well known for helping drivers avoid

troublesome jams by refining routes

using real-time information from its users. Google acquired the company

in 2013 for $1.15 billion. Then came Moovit, a king of Waze for public

transport, which was bought by Intel

in 2020 for $1 billion (£830 million).

“Fall in love with the problem, not the solution.”

Building and selling companies at that

level would be enough for most people to retire happy. But not Levine. “I

want to continue adding value to the world,” he says. “Solving problems is the way to do this.”

Today, Levine is invested in around

ten active start-ups, including Pontera, a fintech platform that helps financial advisers manage and optimise clients’ retirement accounts - a business he believes has the potential to reach unicorn status. Earlier this year,

Levine launched his Double Down

fund, alongside long-time friends and business partners Ariel Sacerdoti and 38

Uri Levine (Wikipedia)

Pasha Romanovski. The fund, designed

turned teacher, Levine now spends

portfolio companies, is targeting a

coaching CEOs and lecturing at

to invest in his most promising

total size of around $30–40 million, and plans to close its first round in January.

And while he continues to build and

invest, he is just as focused on helping others navigate their own journey to success.

A serial entrepreneur turned investor

much of his time mentoring founders, universities. He has also distilled his approach into Fall in Love with the

Problem, Not the Solution: A Handbook for Entrepreneurs, designed to guide others as they build highly valued firms. The book draws directly on

Levine’s experience, offering readers access to his advice and hard-won

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lessons.

Some of his key takeaways: focus on

the problem, stay close to the people

building the solution, and be prepared

to make uncomfortable decisions early.

Asked what consistently separates

founders who succeed from those who don’t, Levine says: “There are very

few behaviours that really make the difference.”

The first is persistence. “Never give up.

Never leave.” Building a company, he argues, is not about avoiding failure

but surviving it. “As long as you keep

going, you will keep failing. That’s part of the journey.”

“People don’t like to make hard decisions.

But if the CEO doesn’t make them, you end up keeping people who shouldn’t be there.”

The second is decision-making,

particularly when it’s uncomfortable.

Founders often know early on when something isn’t working, but delay acting. “People don’t like to make

hard decisions,” Levine says. “But if

the CEO doesn’t make them, you end up keeping people who shouldn’t be there.”

“If the answer is yes,” he adds,

“tell them they’ve exceeded your

expectations. And give them more

equity.” Clarity, in either direction, is what keeps organisations healthy.

The third behaviour, Levine says,

is leadership, not as a title, but as a

expensive, and it’s hard to be successful.”

Instead, he often advises starting in markets where it’s easier to gain traction and learn quickly. “Pick a market that’s easier to win,” he says,

set of actions. “It’s about building

pointing to countries such as Spain,

he says. “That means creating an

first, then expand.”

awesomeness into the organisation,” environment where strong people

stay, trust each other and adapt as the company evolves. If the management

team trusts each other, they’re strong.

If they don’t, nothing else matters.”

Adaptation is a theme Levine returns to when talking about technology,

particularly AI. Waze itself, he notes, was built on AI long before many people had even heard the term.

What’s different now is the pace and scale of change. “You can do a job

today five to ten times faster using

AI,” he says. “If you’re not using it, you will lose to your competition, regardless of the space.”

Still, Levine is cautious about overpromising. For now, he believes the

most effective systems are supervised

- AI that accelerates work but remains under human oversight. That balance, he says, will evolve over time, much

like autonomous vehicles. “Ten years

ago, everyone was talking about selfdriving cars. Now we’re seeing the

beginning of it and in ten years’ time, all cars will be driverless. There’s no

Italy, Mexico or Brazil. “Build there

“ You can do a job today f ive to ten times faster using AI. If you’re not using it, you will lose to your competition, regardless of the space.”

These days, Levine divides his time between Madrid, Israel and the rest of the world, moving between boardrooms, lecture halls and meeting rooms, alongside time with his family.

A father of five, the Waze co-founder shows no signs of slowing down, remaining driven by a desire to create value and make a difference.

“I don’t want to stop,” he says. “My purpose is about value creation.”

To counter that instinct, he advises

doubt we’ll have fewer casualties on

Even after building and selling two

someone new, put a reminder in your

When it comes to scaling globally,

focused on the journey ahead and

yourself one question: knowing what

founders, he says, default to the

founders find their way.

a simple rule. “When you’re hiring

the road because of it.”

calendar for 30 days later and ask

Levine is equally pragmatic. Many

you know today, would you hire this

person again?” If the answer is no, he

says, “then fire them.” Waiting longer only makes the decision harder and more damaging.

biggest markets first, usually the US

or the UK, without appreciating how

unicorns, Levine remains firmly on helping the next generation of Uri Levine is the founder of Waze and

competitive they are. “The UK is not

author of Fall in Love with the Problem,

is high, customer acquisition is

Entrepreneurs

easy to win,” he says. “Competition

Not the Solution: A Handbook for

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Tomorrow’s Leaders

FELICITY SYFRET

W

How to move from drift into purpose – via a long stay in Italy hy is it that I can recognise myself in a photograph,

and yet struggle to render even a half-decent self-portrait? Every

feature becomes warped. I know the

contours of my face, the straightness of my nose, the shape of my jaw, and yet I cannot bring myself to life. It is the same with words. Asked to

describe who I am, what I have done, what I am passionate about and what I would like to change in the world, my mind goes blank.

my textbooks. For a time, I did

become something of an authority on Georgette Heyer.

After the summer, I enrolled at a local sixth form college to study

art, but mostly played truant before dropping out completely, doing

my best impression of a sulking, uncommunicative teenager. My

mother threatened to send me to a Swiss boarding school to teach me some manners.

feeling overwhelmed by the pressure

“We should all be subject matter experts in our own lives... Yet I, perhaps due to deep-seated inhibitions, f ind myself reduced to two-dimensional lines with no depth.”

the right A-levels, for the right

Switzerland, but Florence. Six

absurd weight at such a young age.

deep love for Italy, its language, its

flying out to Afghanistan and a sense

reading A Room with a View and I,

We should all be subject matter

experts in our own lives, able to

detail the course of our growth and development. Yet I, perhaps due to deep-seated inhibitions, find

myself reduced to two-dimensional

lines with no depth. Hopefully, this attempt will bear a truer image.

To attempt that, I must start

somewhere. School feels like the natural place.

At fourteen, I vividly remember

of having to pick the right GCSEs,

As it happens, I was not sent to

undergraduate degree. It felt like an

months in the city instilled in me a

Add to that close family members

history and its rhythm. I remember

of not fitting in, and it made for a difficult adolescence.

Unsurprisingly, I dropped out of

school after completing my GCSEs, which were surprisingly acceptable

given I had spent most of my revision time reading anything other than 40

Felicity Syfret

At least, that was the idea.

No amount of Italian inspiration

could replace a work ethic, and I fell back into a pattern of intermittent

attendance. I enjoyed my lessons Louise Houghton while I was there but often choosing a new book over completing

coursework. After two years, I

scraped by with three A-levels and

an intervening three-month trip to India.

At twenty, I still had little idea of

what I wanted and felt the pull of

Italy again. I found a job as an au pair in Lecce, Puglia, and moved within weeks of interviewing.

“Drifting, even Claudius while lying in warm patches willingly, is still of the Boboli Gardens. drifting. Eventually, When I returned home, I felt inspired to try again. At eighteen, I enrolled it became clear that to study A-levels in Philosophy, something was History and Literature. I would be a Renaissance woman. missing.”

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I spent the next five years in Italy.

something, sadly, absent in

women’s spaces, and in the unique

family, I moved to Florence, to a

government seems to be making a

After leaving the Army in 2023,

After ten months with the Console room just off Santo Spirito, and

completed a TEFL course. I did occasional tutoring but mostly

worked in hospitality, the ubiquitous Irish pub and similar places. My favourite job was at a late-night

Italy. Though I note our current

decent attempt to replicate the chaos.

Looking back, I can see that much of my early life was spent in pursuit of

meaning. Why was I here? What was I good at? What was I meant to do?

club, dubiously named Blob, which

The answers did not come all at once.

and closed at five in the morning.

decisions that led me down a path I

opened at around 10 o’clock at night

They emerged gradually, through

Fellow bartenders would finish their

was not conscious of choosing.

shifts and arrive to take their turn as demanding customers.

In my free time, I played for the local women’s rugby team, Le

Medicee, which gave me the honour of representing Tuscany. Through my teammates and colleagues,

I developed a good grasp of the

language, which still serves me well.

My advice to anyone wanting to

learn a language is simple. Go where it is spoken, and persist, however embarrassed you may feel.

“Being one of only a few women in a unit of around six hundred men is not easy... It reinforced my belief in the importance of both men’s and women’s spaces, and in the unique strengths of either sex.”

A few paragraphs cannot do justice

to those years. It was by no means a grand tour, but a formative chapter that left me a lasting appreciation

for efficient bureaucratic processes,

“I want to be part of that f ight, not out of restlessness or abstraction, but because I now understand what I value and why it matters.”

But drifting, even willingly, is still

drifting. Eventually, it became clear that something was missing.

In 2019, I joined the infantry. There, I learned discipline and a form of

respect that went beyond common courtesy.

strengths of either sex.

I obtained my Close Protection

Licence and moved into the security industry. While still operational,

I now work as a Client Relations Manager for a security company.

The team is largely ex-military, and I remain amused that I work alongside a former Brigadier, whom I call by

his first name and resist the urge to salute.

I enjoy the work, particularly when I

can see tangible results from decisions shaped by my experience, practicality and empathy.

“I want to be part of that f ight, not out of restlessness or abstraction, but because I now understand what I value and why it matters.”

In my free time, I reflect, especially

during times like Lent. I read, and I

stay connected to the land. Recently,

I served alongside people whose

I visited my family’s farm, where the

own. One had grown up as the child

flower and celandine had begun to

succumbing to that life, chose to

lambs.

my perspective.

education, in faith, in freedom and

lives bore little resemblance to my

first wild garlic, bluebells, cuckoo

of a heroin addict and, instead of

emerge, alongside the arrival of new

serve. Experiences like that changed

Looking ahead, I see challenges in

There were good times and difficult

in our relationship with the land. I

isolated. Being one of only a few

of restlessness or abstraction, but

hundred men is not easy. Some

value and why it matters.

I did not. It reinforced my belief in

perfect, perhaps a little smudged, but

ones. I also found myself increasingly

want to be part of that fight, not out

women in a unit of around six

because I now understand what I

women thrive in that environment;

So here it is, a portrait in words. Not

the importance of both men’s and

recognisable to me.

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Those are my Principles

RT HON. ROBERT HALFON The Executive Director of Make UK. Former MP for Harlow and Apprenticeships & Skills Minister on what Tolkien's final tale tells us about spotting talent

I

n 1967, a 75-year-old J.R.R. Tolkien published his last ‘faery’

tale. Smith of Wootton Major runs to 60-odd pages in its original

edition, yet it contains everything he understood about talent, prejudice, and the passing of gifts between generations.

because they learned through doing.

Because their qualifications don’t fit conventional moulds. Because their backgrounds make establishment gatekeepers uncomfortable.

Some apprentices I’ve met carry

Alf ’s story in their experience. The

assumption that practical learning is

The story begins when the old Master

inferior to academic theory. The need

apprentice named Alf. Though Alf

because they chose a different path.

training, when his master departs, the

a fay-star that a blacksmith’s son,

Cook retires and brings back a young

to prove themselves twice over simply

receives three years of excellent

Hidden in Nokes’s Great Cake is

villagers refuse to trust him with the

Smith, accidentally swallows. On his

position. Tolkien’s explanation cuts to the bone: Alf “had grown a bit taller, but still looked like a boy” – and was not one of their own.

“Some brilliant people are overlooked not because they lack ability, but because they learned through doing.”

tenth birthday, the star appears on his forehead, granting him passage to the Faery Realm for twenty-four years.

Smith lives a double life: working

at his forge by day, but walking in

Rt Hon, Robert Halfon

arrived at Exeter College, Oxford, in 1911, he at first found Classics

difficult and nearly came unstuck in his early examinations.

realms of wonder that transform his

Yet the example and scholarship of

His work becomes exceptional. His

his intellectual path. In a letter written

and danger that few mortals ever

importance of Wright’s books: “It was

understanding. The star changes him.

Professor Joseph Wright helped shape

vision deepens. He experiences beauty

years later, Tolkien acknowledged the

witness.

your works that came into my hands

When Smith’s time comes to

surrender the star, he meets Alf again.

by chance as a schoolboy, that first

revealed to me the philology I love.”

The overlooked apprentice—now

Wright’s story deserves its own telling.

as the King of Faery. Alf takes the star

work at age six as a “donkey-boy” in

another child to find. Smith returns to

the smithy. With very little formal

The gift passes. The cycle continues.

write at fifteen, became fascinated

conversation about skills education.

The Professor’s Apprenticeship

to study in Germany, and eventually

not because they lack ability, but

own academic formation. When he

Instead, they appoint Nokes, an idle local man who spends his

tenure taking credit for Alf ’s work

and wasting the apprentice’s talent on absurd tasks, such as stoning

raisins. That sentence haunts every

Some brilliant people are overlooked

42

Master Cook—reveals his true identity

Born in 1855 in Yorkshire, he started

and bakes it into a new Great Cake for

a quarry, leading a cart of tools to

his forge to teach his craft to his son.

schooling, he learned to read and

Tolkien understood this through his

by languages, saved enough money became Professor of Comparative Philology at Oxford.

COLUMNS

Tolkien in the 1920s (Wikipedia)

www.finito.org.uk

ISSUE 18

43

COLUMNS

The Fay-Star The fay-star in Tolkien’s tale represents something profound about how

knowledge transfers. Smith doesn’t own it permanently. He receives

it, benefits from it, grows through

it—then surrenders it willingly so another can experience the same transformation.

This matters for apprenticeship

policy. We’re building pathways

where expertise transfers deliberately, where masters teach knowing their apprentices will eventually surpass

them. Smith returns to his forge to

teach his son, carrying forward what he learned.

Degree apprenticeships represent

that Fay-Star in modern form. They

provide university-level qualifications through employer-led training,

while apprentices earn competitive

salaries. No student debt, guaranteed

employment, and academic credentials open international opportunities.

The UK now has over 50,000 degree apprenticeship starts annually, with cumulative participation

exceeding 300,000 since 2017.

Nearly 90 universities deliver these When Tolkien applied for

will. That level of trust says everything.

the Rawlinson and Bosworth

“The question faces every generation: Will we create pathways for talent to flourish, or will we maintain barriers that serve no purpose other than preserving outdated hierarchies?”

Professorship in 1925, Wright wrote: “I have known Professor Tolkien

intimately since the beginning of

his undergraduate days at Oxford, and have greatly admired his keen

interest in the philological study of

Latin, Greek, and more especially the Germanic languages.”

Master and apprentice. Experienced practitioner developing emerging talent. Someone who recognised

potential when conventional measures suggested failure. Tolkien named

Wright as one of the executors of his 44

programs. According to analysis,

99% of employers agree that degree apprenticeships positively influence organisational performance.

Apprentices achieve median salaries

of £34,620 one year after completing Level 6. From Level 2 to degree

and higher apprenticeships, earnings outcomes are strong, with median

salaries rising from just over £24,000 to almost £50,000 one year after completion

Yet we still encounter Nokes figures— people who dismiss apprenticeships because they don’t match their

narrow definition of education. Those who assume academic credentials

COLUMNS

automatically signal greater worth than demonstrated competence.

Recognising the Overlooked The most powerful moment in

Tolkien’s tale comes when everyone

finally understands who Alf truly is.

The humble apprentice cook reveals himself as royalty. The overlooked

young man possessed more knowledge and power than anyone in Wootton Major imagined.

the letters after your name.

Tolkien called Smith of Wootton Major “an old man’s book, already weighted with the presage of bereavement.”

Was he thinking about legacy—what we leave behind, how we ensure the

next generation receives what we were given?

That question faces every generation:

Will we create pathways for talent to flourish, or will we maintain barriers that serve no purpose other than

Tolkien wrote about another

preserving outdated hierarchies?

Samwise Gamgee started as an

Smith’s journey matters because he

apprentice in The Lord of the Rings. apprentice gardener. He helped Frodo

deliver the Ring to Mount Doom, was eventually elected Mayor of the Shire

seven times, and became advisor to the King.

The Gift Continues understands when to let go. He doesn’t hoard the star until it loses its shine.

He surrenders it at the right moment,

Tolkien understood this profoundly.

same wonder. Then he returns to his

final tale, condensing everything he’d

ensuring another child receives the forge to teach his craft to his son.

“The apprentice The work continues. The knowledge transfers. The forge stays lit. model works when “Let others follow it we let it, when we who can! Let them a recognise talent wherever it emerges, journey new begin.”

As Bilbo Baggins says in The Return when we stop of the King: “Let others follow it who demanding that can! Let them a journey new begin.” brilliance arrives only That is the spirit of apprenticeship: not merely preserving a craft, but through conventional entrusting it to others to continue, renew, and pass on. gates.”

I’ve watched Councillor Dan

Swords progress from parliamentary apprentice in my previous office as

MP to Leader of Harlow Council— reportedly, when elected, the

youngest council leader in British

political history. I’ve seen countless young people transform their lives

through apprenticeships, proving that

dedication and skill matter more than

Bilbo Baggins Tolkien illustration (Wikipedia)

He lived it. He wrote about it in his learned about recognising others’ worth.

The fay-star still waits in the Great Cake. The question is whether we’ll provide a ladder of opportunity to the child who finds it, or overlook them because they don’t look like “one of our own.”

In Smith of Wootton Major, Alf became king. Smith discovered wonder and passed it on. Wright transformed a

struggling undergraduate into one of Oxford’s finest professors. Samwise became Mayor. The apprentice

model works when we let it, when we recognise talent wherever it

emerges, when we stop demanding

that brilliance arrives only through conventional gates.

www.finito.org.uk

ISSUE 18

45

EVENTS

Latest Event

FINITO SPONSORS THE NATIONAL CRITICS’ CIRCLE AWARDS AT THE NATIONAL THEATRE Jeremy King

Ronel Lehmann with winner Ruby Ashbourne-Serkis

F

inito Education stepped up this year as headline sponsor of the

Critics’ Circle Theatre Awards, and the effect was rather in keeping with the

day itself: a sense of things being taken seriously, but never solemnly. Theatre, after all, resists solemnity when it is alive.

Hosted with easy assurance by Mark

Lawson, the ceremony at the National

Theatre gathered that particular mix of 46

polish and unpredictability which only

the moment when both are most fragile

were big names, certainly, but also the

that prize went to Ruby Ashbourne

the stage seems able to produce. There

quieter pleasure of seeing new ones arrive.

and most full of possibility. This year, Serkis for her performance in Indian

For Finito, the headline sponsorship

Ink, confirming her as one to watch,

has long supported the Most Promising

recalled to Finito afterwards that the

something pleasingly consistent in

rehearsals by Zoom and amused the cast

direction and potential backing precisely

jokes.

was a natural evolution. The company

and sooner rather than later. She fondly

Newcomer award, and there is

late Sir Tom Stoppard had joined

that: an organisation concerned with

by smoking and laughing at his own

EVENTS

Nia Towle and Lucy Karczewski

Hayley Atwell winner of Best Shakespearean Performance for ‘Much Ado About Nothing’ presented by Simon Trewin and Tim Bano

Tom Fletcher and Jessica Swale for Best Musical ‘Paddington’

David Harewood

Diego Andres Rodriguez

Paapa Essiedu - Best Revival of a Play or Musical ‘All My Sons’ presented by Sarah Hemming www.finito.org.uk

ISSUE 18

47

EVENTS

The evening itself had no shortage of established triumphs. Brendan

Gleeson took Best Actor for The Weir, a production that managed the neat trick of winning over critics while somehow

eluding the Olivier nominations. All My Sons, directed by Ivo van Hove, secured Best Revival as well as Best Director, reminding everyone that Arthur

Miller’s moral machinery still runs with unnerving smoothness.

There were multiple wins for Into the Woods, with Tom Scutt recognised

for design and the production taking the inaugural Best Ensemble award,

while Paddington: The Musical carried off Best New Musical, which feels, in its way, entirely right. One suspects

Michael Bond might have approved.

New writing was well represented. James Graham won the Michael Billington

Award for Best New Play for Punch, and Ava Pickett was named Most

Promising Playwright for 1536, a Tudor drama already making the leap from

Almeida to West End and on, inevitably, to television.

In the acting categories, Rosamund

Pike won Best Actress for Inter Alia, a

performance of considerable control and intelligence, while Hayley Atwell took Best Shakespearean Performance for

David Newborn and Kathy Latham winners of the Empty Space Peter Brook Award (In Memory Of Blanche Marvin) for Red Rose Chain in Ipswich

seeing off competition that included

and Dolls as a young man, and the way

also recognition for the not-for-profit

quite left. It was a simple point, but a

of the Empty Space award, a reminder

he said, comes from the heart.

Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing, her co-star Tom Hiddleston. There was

it fixed something in him that never

company Red Rose Chain, recipient

persuasive one. The company’s support,

that innovation in theatre is often as

That, in the end, is what made the

much about where it happens as what is staged.

If the winners told one story, the tone of the event told another. In introducing the newcomer award, Finito’s chief

executive Ronel Lehmann spoke not

as a sponsor but as an enthusiast. He

recalled his first encounter with Guys 48

sponsorship feel apt rather than

imposed. There is always a risk, at events like these, that the commercial presence

sits awkwardly alongside the artistic one.

Here it did not. The alignment was clear enough: a belief in talent, in beginnings, and in the curious, enduring power of a stage to change the direction of a life.

“A belief in talent, in beginnings, and in the curious, enduring power of a stage to change the direction of a life.”

EVENTS

James Graham with The Michael Billington Award For Best New Play ‘Punch’

Ivo van Hove with the 5RB Award For Best Director ‘All My Sons’

Rosamund Pike, winner of The NLP Award for Best Actress for ‘Inter Alia’ collected by Suzie Miller presented by Nick Curtis

Nick Hennigan, Judy Naake MBE DL, Ronel Lehmann and Amelia Griffiths (Credit Edward Lloyd)

www.finito.org.uk

ISSUE 18

49

FEATURES Deep dives into the issues that matter HM King Charles III (Wikipedia)

64 | PRINCE OF CHARITIES The King’s Trust at 50

50

72 VETTING PROCESS How a sector is changing

78 WOWSERS The Design Centre Chelsea returns

86 NEW BOARD, PLEASE Nick Hennigan on next gen

COVER STORY

EXCLUSIVE:

REESE WITHERSPOON Christopher Jackson

Alamy.com

52

COVER STORY

I

t is the Global Citizen Summit in New York, autumn 2018. Reese

Witherspoon is at the podium, and she is telling a story about a third-

grader. The third-grader is herself.

A teacher asks the class what they

want to be when they grow up. Most children, at this age, give answers

calibrated to adult approval: astronaut, doctor, teacher. Reese Witherspoon

author, and the person who has probably

must learn about technology lest they

decade to shift the economics of female-

written by any brand-conscious celebrity

done more than anyone else in the past driven storytelling in Hollywood. Her net worth is estimated at over $400

million. She has been named to the

Time 100 most influential people. She is one of the most recognised faces in the world.

is serious. Because the point she is

"It's great to speak up, but what I really think is: you've got to do something."

though it is about that — but about

produced all of this is not, in its

announces that she intends to be the first female president of the United States of America.

The story is offered with self-

deprecating humour, but the undertow making is not really about ambition —

And yet the career trajectory that

the stories that are available to young

essentials, a story about talent

women and what happens when those

stories are inadequate. "I have seen the same twenty people making the same movies about the same sort of things over and over again," she tells the

assembled dignitaries and campaigners.

"We deserve better." And then, in the sentence that will be quoted back at

her for years: "It's great to speak up, but what I really think is: you've got to do something."

recognising itself and ascending. It is a

story about a person who hit the limits

of what was available to her, understood those limits clearly, and then went

around them. That is a different kind

of story, and for the readers of Finito World, a more instructive one.

The Zoomed-In Moment I have been spending a disproportionate

This is a good place to start with Reese

amount of time on Reese Witherspoon’s

the quality that makes her story

one can be by turns impressed and

impressive. She is not, primarily, a

with approximately 30 million other

Witherspoon, because it captures

Instagram page. It is a place where

genuinely interesting rather than merely

ever so slightly manipulated along

person who makes speeches. She is a

person who takes stock of a situation, identifies what is structurally wrong with it, and then — unusually, in an

industry full of people who speak with

great fluency about change while doing very little to bring it about — does

something. The something, in her case, has turned out to be considerable.

At 49, Witherspoon is an Academy

Award-winning actress, the founder of a media company valued at $900

million, a New York Times bestselling

people. Every post has its relentlessly

commercial logic promoting her movies and other endeavours, although like

almost any public figure alive today she can get herself into hot water.

Take, for instance, a much covered post on AI. This is instructive because it

reveals something about Witherspoon that sits uncomfortably alongside her

genuine achievements: she is, in many of her public pronouncements, remarkably boilerplate. The Instagram caption –

“the AI revolution has begun,” women

be "left behind" – could have been

with a team of advisors scanning trend reports. The backlash was swift and

predictable: accusations of being paid

by AI companies, concerns about data

centres and intellectual property theft,

the environmental costs of training large

language models. Witherspoon's follow-up was equally predictable: “no one is paying me to talk about this,” “I'm just a curious human,” an acknowledgment of “valid

concerns” paired with a determination to “learn as much as possible.”

What is notable here is not the controversy itself – celebrities

misreading the room on technology

is hardly news – but rather how it fits into a broader pattern. For someone

who built her success on identifying structural problems and solving

them with clear-eyed pragmatism, Witherspoon's public politics are

curiously unexamined. She occupies

that vast, comfortable middle ground of Hollywood progressivism where certain positions are adopted not because they have been rigorously thought through,

but because they are what people in her position are expected to believe.

Take her support for Kamala Harris's (Finito World Issue 5) presidential

campaign. Witherspoon was effusive in her enthusiasm, posting carefully

curated content, attending fundraisers, lending her considerable platform to

the cause. There was nothing surprising about this – Harris represented

everything that would appeal to a

certain kind of successful, progressiveadjacent businesswoman: a woman of

colour, a prosecutor-turned-politician, someone who spoke the language

of empowerment while maintaining acceptability to corporate interests.

That the campaign was, by virtually

any measure, disastrous – a candidate www.finito.org.uk

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53

COVER STORY

who failed to connect with voters, Alamy.com

getting good roles, so she produced

succeeded by being honest about what

primaries before being installed as vice

driven stories weren't being made, so she

the system was failing her, and strategic

who flamed out spectacularly in the

president through circumstances rather than popular support – seemed not to prompt any public reassessment. The

Hollywood playbook doesn't really allow for that kind of reflection. You support the approved candidate, you post the

approved messages, and when it doesn't work out, you simply move on to the next approved cause. Witherspoon

supported her again in 2024, and I’ve seen nothing to suggest she wouldn’t again in 2028.

"She is not, primarily, a person who makes speeches. She is a person who takes stock of a situation, identifies what is structurally wrong with it, and then... does something."

The pattern here is of a certain

kind of successful person who has

made it within the system and now

those roles herself. She saw that femalebuilt a company to make them. These are tangible problems with tangible

solutions that benefit from her particular skills.

A few months ago, a short video

appeared on Witherspoon's Instagram that has since accumulated almost a

her job and looking to make a change.

Witherspoon asked her: what are

your talents? There was a long pause.

Witherspoon treats this pause as the heart of the matter.

speaking directly to camera with the

this kind of content long enough that it

no longer registers as performance. "You don't chase your dreams, you chase your

talents. Everybody has dreams. It doesn't mean you're gonna be that thing. You

are supposed to do what you're talented

at. It's your job in life to figure out what your specific unique talents are and go chase them."

also make it within the system. It's

a political scientist but a little more

particularly coherent. But it is very, very

distinction she is drawing — between

Witherspoon's genuine achievements

are genuinely equipped to do — is not

not a radical critique. It's not even

seriously as a career mentor. The

Hollywood. And it sits oddly alongside

what we dream of being and what we

— because those achievements required

a counsel of limitation. It is a counsel of

precision. The dreams, she is suggesting, are too vague to be useful. The talents are specific, actionable, and yours.

Witherspoon is exceptionally good at

What makes this advice interesting

directly and solving them through sheer

is that her own career is a case study in

force of will and business acumen. She saw that women over forty weren't 54

actually good at – is difficult to come by, and most educational systems are not

designed to help young people develop it.

Back to Nashville

a young woman who is unhappy in

making sure more people like them

identifying problems that affect her

not just what you want but what you are

ease of someone who has been making

conversation she has recently had with

might be taken with a pinch of salt as

Perhaps the disconnect is this:

Self-knowledge of this kind – knowing

“This is very, very important,” she says,

her posts do. In it, she describes a

It may be then that Witherspoon

actively working to change it.

about how to use what she had.

"It is a story about a person who hit the limits of what was available to her, understood those limits clearly, and then went around them."

quarter of a million likes – as all of

believes the solution to inequality is

not accepting the system as it was, but

she was good at, honest about where

coming from Witherspoon specifically exactly this kind of precision. She did

not succeed by following a dream – she

Reese Witherspoon was born Laura

Jeanne Reese Witherspoon on March 22, 1976, in New Orleans, Louisiana,

though she would not remain there long.

Her father, John Draper Witherspoon, was a military surgeon and lieutenant colonel in the US Army Reserve, and the family spent her earliest years in Wiesbaden, West Germany, before

settling in Nashville, Tennessee, where she would grow up. The Southern

heritage would stay with her – literally, in the end: she named her fashion

and lifestyle brand Draper James after her grandparents, Dorothea Draper

and William James Witherspoon, and returned to Nashville as her base after

her divorce in 2023. One of her children is called Tennessee.

What kind of life was it for her?

Her parents were both accomplished professionals. Her father became a

successful otolaryngologist – a word

nearly impossible to pronounce that basically means an ENT doctor.

COVER STORY Reese Witherspoon and Jennifer Aniston in the morning show (Alamy.com)

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COVER STORY Reese Witherspoon, The Man In The Moon, (Alamy.com)

Alamy.com

Her mother, Betty, held a PhD in

makes my heart beat hard because I

At eleven, she won first place in the

Vanderbilt University. This is the context

the statement of someone who reads

she auditioned for a minor role in The

paediatric nursing and was a professor at in which to understand the nickname her parents gave her: “Little Type A.” It was not, by the sound of it, entirely affectionate — it was an observation about a quality of driven, organised, achievement-orientated energy that

was visible in her from childhood. She graduated from the all-girls Harpeth

Hall School in Nashville, where she was a cheerleader and high achiever, and

described herself, with characteristic accuracy, as “a big dork who loved reading loads of books.”

want to buy everything.” This is not

because they are supposed to; it is the

statement of someone for whom books are a primary experience of the world.

And it is the through-line that connects the Nashville schoolgirl to the adult who built a business empire on the

back of a book club. Reese's Book Club,

which she began as an Instagram feature and which has now attracted millions of followers and turned over thirty of its selections into New York Times

bestsellers, is not a marketing exercise

with literary pretensions. It is the natural

Incidentally, she is not physically

extension of a person who has been

Leanne Morgan who starred alongside

excitement her whole life.

remotely big. The stand-up comedian

Witherspoon in You’re Cordially Invited said she is about the size of a glass of water.

The reading matters. “I get crazy in

a bookstore,” Witherspoon says. “It 56

reading seriously and with genuine

At seven, she was selected as a model for a local florist's television advertisements — the first hint that her particular

combination of presence and Southern charm translated readily to screen.

Ten-State Talent Fair. At fourteen,

Man in the Moon, directed by Robert Mulligan, and was offered the lead

instead. She was fifteen when the film

was made, and the reviews were strong enough that what followed — the

early 1990s, working actress, Nashville to Hollywood, the full machinery of

a nascent career — felt like a natural progression.

After high school, she enrolled at

Stanford as an English literature major.

A year later, she left to pursue acting full-time. This is presented, in most accounts of her life, as the obvious

decision of someone who already had a career. But it is worth pausing on.

Stanford is not a place you walk away

from lightly. The decision to leave – to

back herself, at nineteen, in preference to one of the most prestigious educational

institutions in the world – took a kind of

COVER STORY

self-knowledge that most nineteen-year-

repeat with increasing exasperation,

What Witherspoon did next is the

had already identified her talent. She

which "the girl turns to the guy, and

the one that makes her story most

olds do not have, or do not trust. She was going to chase it.

there would always come the scene in she says, “What do we do now?'” And

In 2017, she revisited her old dorm, an

she would read it and think: “Do you

Instagram content: "Surprise! While re-

absolutely no idea what to do?”

dorm room...and met its newest tenant,

women involved in their creation,” she

encounter which straightaway became

know any woman in any crisis who has

visiting @Stanford, I popped by my old

"I dread reading scripts that have no

Caitlyn!" Witherspoon wrote. "She was

told Glamour's Women of the Year

so nice; she even welcomed me in!" The student in question told Inside Edition: “My jaw dropped.”

Hitting the Wall The career that followed was, by any

ordinary measure, a triumph. By the late 1990s and early 2000s, Witherspoon was one of the most commercially

successful actresses in Hollywood.

Election (1999), in which she played the terrifyingly determined Tracy

Flick, earned her first Golden Globe nomination and established her as

something more than a conventional blonde ingénue. Then came Legally

Blonde (2001) — the role that defined

her in the public imagination, and about which more later — and Sweet Home Alabama (2002), which grossed over

$127 million in the US alone and made her one of Hollywood's highest-paid

actresses. Her Oscar for Best Actress in Walk the Line (2005) — her portrayal

of June Carter Cash is one of the more

underrated performances of that era — confirmed a stature that went beyond commercial appeal.

But underneath the success, something was hardening into a specific

frustration. Hollywood, as Witherspoon encountered it in her thirties, had very little interest in the kind of story she wanted to tell. The scripts that came

her way followed a narrow template.

The female lead was decorative, reactive, or both. In one formulation she would

Awards in 2015, “because, inevitably, I get to that part.” The speech is worth

reading in full, because it is sharper and

angrier than the polished surface usually indicates: "I grew up watching movies

with people like Barbara Stanwyck and, sometimes, I get frustrated that there

aren't a lot of great female characters out there that young women can look at and go, 'I want to be like that.'"

"She did not continue to pitch. She did not write articles about the problem. She went and bought the power for herself."

central act of her professional life, and worth studying. She did not continue to pitch. She did not write articles about

the problem. She went and bought the power for herself.

Pacific Standard In 2012, Witherspoon merged her own

production company, Type A Films, with Bruna Papandrea's Make Movies banner to create Pacific Standard. The name

was neutral, professional, forgettable –

which was, almost certainly, part of the point. What it was not was an actress's

vanity project. It was a company with a

specific investment thesis: that there was an enormous, largely unserved audience

for stories centred on complex, difficult,

fully realised female characters, and that the industry's failure to provide them

was a market inefficiency waiting to be exploited.

The thesis was tested almost

immediately. Pacific Standard produced Gone Girl (2014), directed by David

Fincher, from Gillian Flynn's novel — a film in which Amy Dunne, played

She took the problem to the people

by Rosamund Pike, is one of the most

She went, she has recounted, to the

in mainstream cinema history, and

female-driven material, and was met with

Witherspoon was already becoming a

points and by various people, that there

also had her fame to draw on. Wild

material.” She was told that women could

based on Cheryl Strayed's memoir about

these things were wrong – demonstrably,

the collapse of her life – and earned

prove – but they held the power, and

Best Actress and demonstrated that

comfortable with itself. When the world

in which a woman's inner life was the

would prefer it not to since their very

Then came the first season of Big

who could fix it. It didn't go well.

morally complex female characters

Hollywood studios with pitches for

which grossed $369 million worldwide.

incomprehension. She was told, at various

businesswoman of some note, but she

“just wasn’t a market for female-driven

(2014) saw her join up the dots. This was

not carry a box office. The people saying

hiking the Pacific Crest Trail alone after

empirically wrong, as she was about to

Witherspoon an Oscar nomination for

their wrongness was the kind that is very

audiences would turn out for a film

is about to change there are many who

entire subject.

positions are at stake.

Little Lies, adapted from a perfectly www.finito.org.uk

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COVER STORY

competent airport novel by Liane

genuinely frightening because the

allowed glances, pauses, oceans, school

something far stranger, sadder and more

dependency, shame and ritual. The show

hands. It discovered that the material’s

Moriarty and transformed into

beautiful than its source material had

any obvious right to become. This was not a good novel. It was structurally clever, commercially astute, highly

readable in the way modern publishing

prizes readability, but its psychology was

often schematic and its prose functional.

Yet the television series became one

of the defining cultural events of the decade. Why?

Partly because television, unlike

literary fiction, is collaborative in a

way that allows mediocrity to become

transcendence if enough gifted people

gather around the same fire. The novel

supplied a skeleton: wealthy Californian mothers, secrets, status anxiety, violence hidden beneath wellness culture. But the series understood that the real

subject was not plot. It was female

loneliness under late capitalism. It was

performance. It was the endless pressure to appear curated while internally collapsing.

What made the show extraordinary was

tone. Almost nothing “happens” for long stretches, and yet everything vibrates

violence emerges out of eroticism,

refuses simplification. It understands

that people remain inside destructive

systems because those systems answer needs as well as inflict damage.

Meanwhile Witherspoon plays control

itself: a woman trying to organise reality

assemblies, wine glasses, trembling

true language was not literary prose but image and rhythm. What on the page could feel like clever plotting became

onscreen something closer to a dream

of violence and guilt unfolding beneath Californian sunlight.

through force of personality. Laura

The market, it turned out, was

Wagnerian opera. Her performance

Witherspoon that women couldn't carry

Dern turns school-gate politics into should not work. It borders on absurdity.

Yet somehow she locates the tragic

core beneath the satire: the terror of

social exile among people who claim enlightenment.

"There is no false modesty in that statement, and no reason for any. It is an accurate inventory of capabilities, offered by someone who has spent years using them."

enormous. The people who had told

stories had been, in the technical sense,

making things up. She later reflected on

this period with characteristic directness: "Betting on myself. I know what to do.

I know every producer in Hollywood.

I know how to get a movie from book to script to screen, and I know how to market it."

There is no false modesty in that

statement, and no reason for any. It is an

accurate inventory of capabilities, offered by someone who has spent years using them. It is also, incidentally, a precise

illustration of the advice she would later give that young woman about chasing talents rather than dreams. She knew what her talents were. She went and chased them.

with dread. The sea itself becomes a

The genius of the series is that it

matters as much as the dialogue. The

prestige television often forgets:

Building at Scale

Big Little Lies is funny. Often very

Sunshine – a media company built

kind of Greek chorus. The sound design houses are too beautiful. The light is

too clean. Monterey is filmed almost as a hallucination of affluence. Everyone is insulated from ordinary life and

therefore trapped inside themselves.

And then there is casting, which

television critics often underestimate

because it sounds unserious to say that beautiful famous people staring at

each other can produce art. But it can.

Nicole Kidman gives one of the great

understood something contemporary seriousness does not require solemnity.

In 2016, Witherspoon founded Hello

funny. The pettiness of the parents,

around a single, clear, and at the time

the absurd competitive intensity

around children, the passive-aggressive

warfare of wealthy liberal communities: all of this is observed with almost

anthropological delight. The series

knows these people are ridiculous. But it also knows ridicule alone is cheap. The deeper achievement is compassion.

performances of modern television

Most of all, though, the adaptation

not merely terror but confusion. Her

removed the need for explanation. The

because she understands that abuse is scenes with Alexander Skarsgård are 58

improved upon the novel because it book tells you too much. Television

still somewhat unfashionable idea: that stories centred on women's experience

were not a niche market or a gesture of social responsibility but a fundamental commercial opportunity that the

industry had systematically failed to develop.

The company was structured from

the start as something larger than a

production company. Hello Sunshine was built around a book club, a social media presence, a podcast network,

COVER STORY

Legally Blonde film scene (Alamy.com)

a lifestyle brand, and a portfolio of

Book Club selection became, virtually

Ng's novel and co-produced with Kerry

by the central proposition that there

valuable endorsements in publishing –

one of Hulu's most-watched series.

content in development – all connected was an audience of women who wanted to see their lives and experiences taken seriously on screen, and who would

organise their cultural consumption

around content that did so. The CEO

she brought in, Sarah Harden, described the goal as building “a consumer-

facing brand with 55 million social

touchpoints” – not the industry-facing model of a traditional production

house, but something more like a direct relationship with an audience.

overnight, one of the most commercially comparable in its effects to an Oprah

recommendation, and achieved through a combination of genuine literary

taste and the scale of Witherspoon's

platform. The company evaluates more

than a thousand books, original scripts,

pitches, and life-rights documents each year, looking for material that fits the

template: stories with women at their centre, commercial enough to reach

a broad audience, literary enough to deserve serious attention.

The book club was the engine.

The content output matched the

each month on Instagram, with a

in which Witherspoon stars alongside

Witherspoon announced a new pick brief personal endorsement of the

kind that reads as genuinely felt rather than algorithmically optimised. The

effect was immediate and remarkable: of the first fifty-four selections, more

than thirty went on to make the New York Times bestseller list. A Reese's

ambition. The Morning Show (2019) – Jennifer Aniston in a drama about a

morning news programme rocked by a #MeToo scandal – became one of

Apple TV+'s flagship original series and earned Witherspoon a Screen Actors Guild Award. Little Fires

Everywhere (2020), based on Celeste

Washington's Simpson Street, was

Where the Crawdads Sing (2022), the

company's first major theatrical release, grossed over $170 million worldwide.

The pattern was consistent: books with

complex female characters, bought early, adapted for the screen, and marketed to the audience Hello Sunshine had been building for years.

In 2021, Blackstone's Candle Media

purchased a controlling stake in Hello

Sunshine for $900 million. Witherspoon retained her stake and a seat on the

board. The price raised eyebrows in the entertainment industry – the company had only become profitable in 2020

– but it reflected something that pure

financial metrics can miss: the value of a

brand that has genuine consumer loyalty, a clear mission, and a proven ability to identify material that audiences will

show up for. “Today, we're taking a huge step forward,” Witherspoon said at the www.finito.org.uk

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COVER STORY

REESE WITHERSPOON: 1976

1991

Born March 22 in New Orleans, Louisiana; raised primarily in Nashville, Tennessee.

Cast in her first feature film, The Man in the Moon, at age 14, marking the practical beginning of her professional education in acting.

1994

Graduates from Harpeth Hall School, an all-girls private school in Nashville, where she was a high academic achiever.

The Man in the Moon (Alamy)

Reese Witherspoon/Instagram

1994–1995

Early 1980s

Enrols at Stanford University as an English literature major.

Educated in Nashville; develops a strong interest in reading and literature from a young age.

Reese Witherspoon/Instagram

1976

1980

1984

1988

1992

1996

2000

time. The understated language was

strategically. She correctly identified

relationship between that film and

extraordinary exit for a company she had

heading before much of Hollywood did.

obsessed blonde sorority girl who gets

characteristic. It was, by any measure, an founded five years earlier.

where female cultural power was

scale empire. But she is in the first-tier

"It is impossible to write about Reese Witherspoon without addressing Legally Blonde."

probably best understood as upper

Witherspoon without addressing

The scale of the achievement financially is quite extraordinary. She isn’t quite in that first tier of Spielberg and Lucas

though she may be one day. Nor is she

quite in the absolute Kardashian/Jay-Z/ Swift category of global consumerstrategically. Reese Witherspoon is second tier financially, but first tier 60

It is impossible to write about Reese Legally Blonde, and the specific

its star. Elle Woods — the pink-

into Harvard Law School and proves

everyone wrong — is one of the most consequential characters in recent

popular culture, and the relationship between Witherspoon and her most

famous role is more complex and more interesting than it first appears.

The film was made in 2001, when

Witherspoon was twenty-five. The

conventional reading of her career is that Legally Blonde made her a star, and that

COVER STORY

EDUCATION TIMELINE 1995

Leaves Stanford after one year to pursue acting full-time, following early film success.

2007

Forms her own production company (Type A Films), signalling a shift from performer to decision-maker in the industry.

2016

Wikipedia

1999 Gains critical recognition with Election, establishing her as a serious dramatic actress rather than a conventional ingénue.

Founds Hello Sunshine, a media company focused on femaleled storytelling, expanding her role into entrepreneurship and content strategy.

Reese Witherspoon as Tracy Flick in Election, 1999.

(Paramount Pictures/Photofes)

2021–present

Sells a majority stake in Hello Sunshine in a deal valuing the company at around $900 million, cementing her status as one of Hollywood’s most financially successful and influential figures, widely reported to have reached billionaire-level wealth through her business ventures.

Wikipedia Vatican Media

2004

2008

2012

2016

2020

2024

the roles she subsequently chose — or

her intelligence is of a kind that the

wanted to make did not have a market.

that she was more than Elle Woods. This

register. She is dismissed as decorative,

consistently, by people who thought they

created — were a way of demonstrating is not quite wrong, but it is not quite

right either. Witherspoon has always

been clear that she loves the character: “Like Elle Woods, I do not like to

be underestimated,” she said at the

Glamour Women of the Year Awards — a line that got a loud response, because the connection between the fictional

character and the real person is obvious and deliberate.

Elle Woods works as a character because

people around her consistently fail to

She was underestimated, repeatedly and

then turns out to be brilliant. She

understood the business better than she

encounters her, and then proves them

company on the back of proving them

is underestimated by everyone who

did. And then she built a $900 million

wrong in ways they cannot argue with.

wrong.

is but by deploying it more completely

Facing Difficulty

She succeeds not by changing who she than anyone expected.

There is something of this pattern in

Witherspoon's own career. She was not taken seriously as a producer by the

studios. She was told the content she

In 2018, Witherspoon published

Whiskey in a Teacup, a book about

Southern living, food, entertaining, and the particular texture of the culture

she grew up in. It sold well, made the www.finito.org.uk

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COVER STORY

bestseller lists, and was not — it is

she repeatedly challenged the police

around female stars. Male actors

It was a lifestyle book, which is a

appeared agitated, and was eventually

almost instantly into the mythology

important to note — an autobiography. different thing, and its subject was not her career but her values: hospitality,

tradition, the specific pleasures of a life

in which you know your neighbours and where your food comes from.

This might seem like a digression from

officer, asked “Do you know my name?”, charged with disorderly conduct after refusing instructions to remain in the car. She later pleaded no contest and

apologised publicly, describing herself as embarrassed and frightened. Toth pleaded guilty to DUI.

have had far worse incidents vanish of “difficult genius” or “bad boy

excess.” Witherspoon’s comparatively minor lapse became a kind of moral referendum because her image

depended upon composure. Audiences are often harsher when a performer’s

the main narrative, but it is not. The

On paper it is trivial by celebrity

brand is based on control rather than

Sunshine brand are all expressions

No grand scandal. Yet culturally it

There is something interesting about

the audience Witherspoon was trying

that point represented a particular

entertainment. They were looking for

Southern polish, controlled charm,

experience seriously, for a platform

not a chaotic star. She was not tabloid

book, the book club, and the Hello

standards. No violence. No destruction.

transgression.

of the same underlying insight: that

mattered because Witherspoon at

how tiny humiliations can harden public

to reach was not simply looking for

American archetype: hyper-competent

connection, for content that took their

professionalism, discipline. She was

that understood that women's lives are

interesting in their fullness rather than only in their extremity.

Any profile of Reese Witherspoon

that confined itself to her professional triumphs would be incomplete, and a little dishonest. Her personal life has not been without difficulty. Her first

marriage, to Ryan Phillippe — whom

she met on the set of Cruel Intentions and married in 1999 — ended in

divorce in 2007. They have two children together, Ava and Deacon. In 2013, she married talent agent Jim Toth, with whom she has a son, Tennessee. In

2023, she and Toth divorced after eleven years, reportedly citing irreconcilable differences.

The arrest of Reese Witherspoon and her then-husband Jim Toth

in 2013 became one of those tiny

Hollywood incidents that lingered

disproportionately because it punctured a very carefully managed public image.

material. She projected managerial order.

And therefore the incident fascinated people because it briefly revealed the machinery underneath the persona.

Hello Sunshine is explicitly a missiondriven company – its stated goal is to put women at the centre of stories – and it sold for $900 million.

What emerged in those few minutes of bodycam-era friction was not

wickedness so much as entitlement

colliding with panic. Her “Do you know

my name?” line became famous precisely because it sounded like someone

instinctively reaching for hierarchy

when ordinary reality suddenly asserted itself. Hollywood status failing to work on a roadside policeman. The moment

The facts themselves were not especially

had symbolic power because America

on suspicion of drunk driving after

deeply enjoys seeing it fail.

the passenger seat. During the stop

something unfair about the culture

dramatic. Toth was stopped in Atlanta

simultaneously worships celebrity and

weaving lanes. Witherspoon was in

But I think the reaction also revealed

62

figures into their next form. The arrest did not destroy her because there was no true darkness there. If anything,

it briefly humanised someone whose

image had become almost excessively curated. What survived was not the

embarrassment itself but the sense that

beneath the bright professionalism there existed ambition, pride, fear, irritation, ego: in other words, an actual person.

What the Career Teaches The structure of Reese Witherspoon's

career contains a number of lessons that are worth making explicit, because they are not the ones that are most easily drawn from it.

The first is about the relationship

between talent and infrastructure.

Witherspoon's acting ability was

never in doubt; what was in doubt was

whether the industry would provide her with material that allowed her to use it

properly. Her response – to go and build the infrastructure herself – is unusual

in its ambition and directness, but the

underlying principle is widely applicable.

If the system you are operating within cannot accommodate what you have

to offer, the question is not whether to

accept the system’s verdict but what you can do to change the conditions. She

identified the problem, assessed what it

would take to solve it, and went to work.

COVER STORY

Reese’s Book Club

The second lesson is about the

would work on screen, how to see the

“I will be a storyteller till the day I die,”

money. Hello Sunshine is explicitly a

and what audiences wanted, how to

to do.” This sounds like the language

relationship between mission and

mission-driven company – its stated

goal is to put women at the centre of

stories – and it sold for $900 million.

These two facts are not in tension. They

are connected. The mission clarified the investment thesis, focused the content

strategy, built the audience loyalty, and

created the brand equity that made the company worth acquiring. The people who told Witherspoon that femaledriven content had no market were

making, among other errors, a category

mistake: they were confusing their own lack of imagination with a structural reality.

The third lesson is about the importance of self-knowledge of the specific, not

the vague kind. Witherspoon knew she was good at acting. That is the vague

kind. But she also knew she understood

gap between what was being produced move material from page to production

to marketing. That is specific knowledge, developed over years of professional

experience, and it was the foundation of everything else.

The fourth lesson – the one she is still making explicitly, in Instagram videos

and in conversations with young women who are unhappy in their careers

of vocation, but it is also the language

of talent identified and honoured. She was born into a family of readers. She grew up in a culture that understood narrative. She went to Stanford to

study English literature. She became an actress, and then a producer, and

then an entrepreneur — and at every

– is about the distinction between

stage, the common thread was story.

we imagine ourselves doing, filtered

though all of these followed.

dreams and talents. Dreams are what through desire and aspiration and the images of success we have absorbed

from the culture. Talents are what we are actually good at, demonstrable,

learnable, deployable. The gap between

Not Hollywood. Not fame. Not money, In the end, the most useful thing about the Reese Witherspoon story is not

that she became very famous or very

rich, though she did both. It is that she

the two is where most careers go wrong.

understood, at a relatively early age, that

crucial juncture, because she was honest

to be written for her. She would have to

Witherspoon's career went right, at its

Leo with President of Brazil Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in October 2025(Wikipedia.org)

story – how to identify a book that

she has said. “It’s really what I was born

about what she could actually do.

the story she was living was not going write it herself.

www.finito.org.uk

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PHILANTHROPY

THE KING’S TRUST AT 50: A CELEBRATION Brian Duffy is the CEO of the Watches of Switzerland Group and has been deeply involved in the charity’s work. Here he reflects on how to deliver philanthropy and what it means to change lives. He is joined

by Human Resources Director Philippa Jackson who also has much experience in working with the King’s Trust. We also hear from three mentees at The King’s Trust about how their lives were transformed by the charity’s mentorship.

HM King Charles III (Wikipedia)

FW: You’ve supported The King’s

long-term commitment to the Group’s

been central to The Foundation's

reaching over 11,000 young people

giving was meaningful, but it was not

King’s Trust felt aligned with our

The Foundation as we stepped up our

feel incredibly passionate about and

Trust for more than a decade,

directly. At what point did this move from being a corporate initiative to something that felt central to the

identity of the Watches of Switzerland Group?

BD: The Watches of Switzerland

Group Foundation was created in 2021 Christian Church (Unsplash.com)

to bring greater structure, focus and 64

charitable work. Before this, our

formally coordinated, so we established contributions in line with what we felt were the priorities for our business.

Our partnership with The King’s Trust was a core part of this.

A focus on education and supporting

disadvantaged young people has always

strategy, so a partnership with The identity from the start. It’s an area we through our work with The King’s Trust we have been able to support young

people in so many ways - from creating pathways into careers, including

apprenticeships and work experience, to supporting programmes such as

the Change a Girl’s Life campaign,

PHILANTHROPY

which helps young women overcome

barriers and reach their potential and raising vital funds through colleague engagement, events and awareness

campaigns. Wherever possible we use the Watches of Switzerland Group’s

platforms to help amplify the stories and achievements of young people supported by the Trust.

“It has been incredibly rewarding to see these initiatives grow year on year, with engagement from our colleagues in our showrooms and support offices.”

It has been incredibly rewarding to

Fearne Cotton, Shauna Tiffany, Brian Duffy

many cases support through initiatives,

FW: What originally drew you —

Programme or the Change A Girl’s

to the work of the Trust?

such as The King’s Trust Enterprise

Life campaign, can truly change the trajectory of a young person. But it

can also be as simple as a conversation with a mentor that has an impact. I

see these initiatives grow year on year,

believe at the heart of this is instilling

in our showrooms and support offices.

them believe in themselves when

partnership with The King’s Trust

Unlocking that confidence so a young

with engagement from our colleagues

confidence in young people. Helping

All of this, underpinned by our close

they don’t always see it in themselves.

through the Watches of Switzerland

person can take action is so important.

Group Foundation has enabled our

support to feel truly embedded within our business.

FW: There’s often a gap between

philanthropy and real impact. What

have you learned, over those 13 years, about what genuinely shifts a young person’s trajectory?

PJ: Real impact is at the heart of the

work of our Foundation and we know from our partnership with The King’s Trust that impact can be felt in many ways by young people, depending on

their unique circumstances, stage of life or individual needs.

It could be supporting a young person

with tools or advice they need to move forward, or giving them hope for what the future could hold for them. In

FW: You’ve personally received the Trust’s Individual Impact Award.

What did that recognition mean to

you, and did it change how you think about leadership?

BD: Receiving the award was an incredible honour, but for me the recognition reflects

all the work of the Watches of Switzerland Group and our partners. It reinforces my belief in long-term, committed

philanthropy that is grounded in evidence

personally, not just professionally — BD: What initially drew me to The

King’s Trust was its focus on unlocking potential in young people who may

not have had the same opportunities as others. The idea that the right support, encouragement or intervention at the right moment can completely change someone’s trajectory is incredibly powerful.

Over the years, what’s kept me

engaged is seeing that impact first-

hand. Meeting young people who have overcome significant barriers and gone on to build careers, businesses and

confidence in themselves is genuinely inspiring. A central principle guiding all our work is helping young people turn disadvantage into advantage -

ensuring barriers such as poverty, lack

of confidence or limited access do not define future opportunities.

and focused on genuine social outcomes.

FW: The 'Change a Girl’s Life'

business leaders have a responsibility to

focus. Why that emphasis, and what

for those in need and communities. More

convinced you it was necessary?

partners and the young people they support.

with us because it focuses on addressing

The award strengthens my conviction that

campaign has become a major

use their platforms to create opportunity

have you seen on the ground that

importantly, it validates the work of our

BD: The campaign resonated strongly

Their resilience is the real inspiration.

barriers that still disproportionately www.finito.org.uk

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PHILANTHROPY

From left to right – Tyler West, Kai McGuirk, Brian Duffy and Anna Williamson.

affect young women - whether that’s

overlooked and helps provide practical

problem-solving, adaptability and

financial hardship or limited support

employment.

this do brilliantly is help channel

confidence, access to opportunities, networks.

“Through our partnership with The King’s Trust, we’ve seen first-hand how targeted support can make a lasting difference.”

Through our partnership with The

King’s Trust, we’ve seen first-hand

pathways into education, training and

ambition. What programmes like

FW: When you meet young people

those instincts into confidence and

what strikes you most about them?

leaders can recognise elements of their

coming through these programmes, BD: Their resilience. Their bravery.

opportunity. I think many business

younger selves in that environment.

Their spirit. They are remarkable young

FW: Luxury retail and social mobility

meet with so many of them across the

How do you connect the world of

people and having the opportunity to

don’t always sit naturally together.

programmes we support is incredibly

high-end watches with the realities

rewarding.

faced by the young people you’re

FW: The Trust’s Enterprise Challenge

supporting?

you recognise anything of your own

very different worlds, but at the heart

introduces business thinking early. Do

BD: At first glance they may seem like

early instincts in those participants?

of our industry are skills, craftsmanship,

how targeted support can make a

BD: Absolutely. What stands out

creativity and people. There are

women with enormous talent and

and willingness to think differently -

and watchmaking that many young

encouragement and belief in their

and leadership.

believed were accessible to them.

raise funding, it creates visibility

in Enterprise Challenge already

lasting difference. We’ve met young

most is their creativity, resilience

meaningful careers within luxury retail

ambition who simply needed access,

qualities that are essential in business

people may never have considered or

potential. The campaign doesn’t just

Many of the young people involved

Part of our role is helping break

around challenges that are often

demonstrate entrepreneurial instincts:

pathways into the industry - whether

66

down those perceptions and opening

PHILANTHROPY

through work Hindu God,apprenticeships, Ganesh Chaturthi (Unsplash.com)

commitment to responsible business.

- colleagues often feel inspired,

different career opportunities. Social

and their response continues to be

purpose of the business. It reinforces

experience, mentoring or exposure to mobility improves when industries actively widen access and invest in

Our colleagues are naturally generous, incredibly inspiring.

“Some of the most future talent. successful people at FW: Has the partnership changed how you think about talent — where it the top of business are comes from and how it’s recognised? those who came from PJ: It’s reinforced what I know about talent. Some of the most successful nothing and built life people at the top of business are those skills and resilience who came from nothing and built life along the way.” skills and resilience along the way.

One of the most important aspects of The King’s Trust is that talent is everywhere but opportunity is not always evenly distributed.

We’ve met young people with

incredible potential who simply lacked confidence, support networks or access to opportunities. As a large employer, we already look beyond traditional

pathways and recognise qualities like

resilience, determination, adaptability and emotional intelligence alongside

traditional experience or qualifications.

FW: Inside the business, how do you ensure this doesn’t become a

“CSR silo” but something employees actually feel part of ?

BD: Colleague engagement is vital.

When our people get involved

- whether through fundraising,

volunteering, mentoring or advocacy

- the impact multiplies. We encourage participation by supporting colleagueled initiatives, creating meaningful

FW: You operate across both the UK and the US. Do you see differences in how young people engage

with programmes like Enterprise Challenge in those two contexts?

BD: While there are naturally different social and economic challenges across regions, what’s remarkable is how universal ambition, creativity and

potential are amongst young people.

In both the UK and the US, we see

young people responding positively to opportunities that build confidence,

develop skills and provide mentorship.

As our business grows internationally, we want our community partnerships to reflect that footprint while still remaining locally relevant and impactful.

FW: To what extent do your

colleagues get directly involved —

mentoring, judging, coaching — and what effect does that have on them?

opportunities to engage, and ensuring

BD: Our colleagues are involved in a

their involvement makes.

judging competitions to fundraising,

our teams understand the difference

Importantly, this is not something that

number of ways, from mentoring and volunteering and supporting events.

sits separately from the business. Our

That direct interaction is incredibly

actively involved, and our charitable

connection between our teams and the

our people strategy, culture and broader

It also has a powerful impact internally

Board and Senior Leadership Team are

valuable because it creates a genuine

partnerships are closely connected to

young people the programmes support.

energised and more connected to the the idea that everyone can play a role in creating opportunity for others.

FW: Events like Palace to Palace and

the King’s Trust Awards have a strong public profile. How important is that visibility in driving real impact?

BD: These campaigns increase visibility for the issues young people face and

bring together colleagues, clients and

partners in a shared cause. Their scale helps drive fundraising, but equally important is the awareness they

build - spotlighting the challenges of disadvantage and the role businesses

can play in addressing them. They also

strengthen our partners’ ability to reach more young people. Importantly, these programmes provide our teams with

meaningful opportunities to participate and contribute.

FW: Do you think businesses

underestimate the value of long-term partnerships in this space?

BD: Long-term partnerships are

incredibly important because meaningful impact rarely happens overnight. Trust,

consistency, and sustained investment allow programmes to grow and evolve in ways that short-term initiatives often cannot.

FW: Have there been moments over

the past 13 years where you’ve had to rethink or reset the approach?

Over the years we’ve absolutely adapted our approach - whether responding to

changing economic pressures, evolving community needs or learning where

we can have the greatest impact. The pandemic, for example, highlighted

how quickly circumstances can change for vulnerable young people and

communities. What has remained

constant is our commitment to listening, learning and evolving alongside our partners.

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PHILANTHROPY

FW: How do you measure success in a

I then explored voluntary roles and came

partnership like this — is it numbers,

across the Mosaic education programme.

outcomes, or something more

The structure really suited me. It’s one

intangible?

day a week for eight weeks so it felt

BD: Impact measurement is important,

manageable. I completed the training, met

so outcomes and data certainly matter.

Sonya, who was amazing, and went into

We look at indicators such as young

my first session as a complete nervous

people entering employment or

wreck. Over time, I went from needing

training, participation levels, and the

lots of one-to-one support to now being

reach of programmes we support.

However, there’s also a more human side to success that can’t always be

captured in numbers alone. Confidence,

in a position where I can support other mentors. That progression has been

SALEEMAH

personal stories directly from young

B

that meaningful change is happening.

seizures at 19, sometimes having

aspiration, resilience and self-belief are transformative qualities, and hearing

people is often the clearest indication FW: Has working with the Trust

changed the culture of the business in any noticeable way?

PJ: People love people stories and our colleagues feel proud to be part of

initiatives that create real impact and

support young people in meaningful ways.

It has also encouraged greater

collaboration and engagement across

teams because these programmes bring people together around shared values.

Over time, that contributes positively

to culture, morale and a stronger sense

of connection to the wider community.

FW: In an industry built on heritage and craftsmanship, do you see

parallels with the Trust’s focus on skills and self-belief ?

BD: Indeed. Watchmaking, jewellery craftsmanship and luxury retail are

industries built on dedication, expertise, patience and continuous learning.

Confidence in your own ability is

essential - whether you’re learning a craft, leading a team or building a business.

That’s why the Trust’s focus on skills

development and self-belief resonates so strongly with us. Helping young people 68

efore joining The King’s Trust, I was at the lowest point I had ever

been. I was struggling with my physical health after suddenly developing

between 10 and 18 a day, while still

trying to work. At the same time, my

mental health was suffering, and I had lost my uncle, who was a major father figure in my life.

Eventually, my mum arranged for me to speak to someone from The King’s Trust, and during that call I enrolled

on the Get Started course. While the

course itself wasn’t exactly right for me, it became a gateway into The King’s

Trust. What I gained from it; confidence,

incredibly rewarding.

At its core, mentoring is about having

conversations. It’s about taking an interest in young people’s lives, finding out what they enjoy, and building from there.

Sometimes it’s the smallest things, like noticing a change or giving a

genuine compliment that help break

down barriers. Those moments spark

conversations and help young people

come out of their shells, allowing them to fully engage with the Mosaic sessions.

The first session is led by a King’s Trust lead, and after that mentors take turns leading

sessions. Teachers provide a list of potential topics, select the ones they feel will benefit their students most, and mentors each choose a session they’d like to deliver.

communication, making friends again,

Each mentor then leads their chosen

fearing disappointment. It reignited my

their own experience and perspective to

and putting effort into something without motivation and helped me get my life back on track.

After that, I explored what else The King’s Trust could offer and realised the Team

Programme was exactly what I needed to

rebuild my confidence, skills, and routines.

That experience showed me that this was the type of work I wanted to be involved in long-term.

After the Team Programme, I started looking into job opportunities within

programme delivery, but because of my

disability and not having a driving licence, full-time roles weren’t accessible for me.

session during the programme, bringing the group.

Even if young people take away just one thing, that’s enough. During my own

Team Programme, a lead once said to me, ‘Just one more,’ and that stayed with me throughout the twelve weeks.

For me, it means trying one more day when things are difficult or making

one more attempt after a setback. Life

isn’t linear - it has ups and downs - but

having a positive mindset makes all the difference. That’s what I hope young

people take with them after the eight weeks.

PHILANTHROPY

ZUBAIDAH

B

efore joining The King’s

Trust, I was a

graduate student and felt quite lost. I didn’t know which

direction to take

and was exploring lots of different

options without clarity. Joining their employability course really helped

Ruth Benford, Brian Duffy, Philippa Jackson

recognise their own potential is often

FW: Looking ahead, what would you

"Very often, what determines a young person’s future is not ability, but access— access to support, guidance, confidence and opportunity."

in another ten years’ time?

FW: Many of the young people the

trajectory of their lives. If we can

the first step towards long-term success.

Trust works with face structural

barriers. What role do you think business can realistically play in addressing those?

BD: Business cannot solve these

challenges alone, however it can play a

meaningful role by creating opportunities, investing in communities and widening access to careers and development.

Companies have platforms, networks

like this partnership to have achieved BD: I’d like to see the partnership

continue growing in both reach and

depth - supporting even more young

people while creating lasting, measurable outcomes.

Most importantly, I’d hope that in

another ten years we can look back

and see thousands more young people who have gained confidence, skills

and opportunities that changed the continue helping young people turn

disadvantage into advantage, then that will be a legacy worth building.

FW: And finally, if you had to distil it,

what have these 13 years taught you about opportunity — who gets it, and why?

BD: These past 13 years have reinforced

that talent and potential exist everywhere - however, opportunity does not.

me by giving me clear guidance and direction.

The main challenges were CV writing and interviews. I didn’t understand

the UK CV format or what employers in my industry were looking for.

I received a lot of conflicting

advice online and needed guidance from someone with real industry experience. Interviews were also

difficult, as I lacked confidence and struggled to prepare effectively.

My mentor Claire gave me practical, detailed feedback on my CV and

helped tailor it to industry standards.

She also supported me with mock

interviews before real ones. She was always available, responsive, and

supportive, especially when I felt

discouraged after receiving rejections.

Her support made a huge difference.

She helped reduce my imposter

syndrome and encouraged me to

keep applying even when I felt like

and resources that can help remove

Very often, what determines a young

through mentoring, apprenticeships,

access - access to support, guidance,

or simply opening doors that may

why partnerships like this matter so

My life has changed significantly,

conversation or opportunity can

now in a more stable position.

in life.

has grown. Having meaningful

giving up. Her reassurance and belief

barriers for young people - whether

person’s future is not ability, but

funding, education programmes

confidence and opportunity. That’s

otherwise have felt closed. Real

much. Sometimes a single intervention,

particularly financially, as I’m

completely change someone’s direction

More importantly, my confidence

progress comes when businesses, charities and communities work

together with long-term commitment.

in me helped build my confidence throughout the job search.

www.finito.org.uk

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PHILANTHROPY

King Charles III (wikipedia)

Philippa Jackson

Brian Duffy 70

PHILANTHROPY

because there was someone there to sort of guide you through it and give you a wee bit of background.

That was all transferrable when I

when I moved to music, it was all very

about what original stuff am I doing, if

into that.

I met my mentor Adam when I finished

M

so I teach music. But that wasn't what I saw myself doing when I first came across The King's Trust. I actually

approached The Trust with a business

selling dog clothes. I would craft them in my house and basically make like

custom dog clothing for customers. I

really loved doing that because I have a wee dog who I love. I'm obsessed with animals. But as the time went on, I

realised that music was actually where my heart was and The King’s Trust

supported me to make that sort of shift from retail and crafts into the music

sector and that's been me since about 2024. It was very exciting.

I think for music, it's a very competitive

industry and it's quite tight knit as well.

So, for me, the main thing was meeting

people. Networking was a big, big thing.

You just need to know people in order to get music and if you're starting off and

you're outside of the circles, that's really hard.

Also, as a creatively minded person,

usually your strengths aren't as business focussed in the sense of managing

money and time and writing invoices

and stuff. So that was something that I

definitely struggled with and something that going through the Enterprise programme really helped me with

We met up every month or so, and it would just keep me on track and keep

transferrable and good for me to carry

y business at the moment is as a singer-songwriter and a teacher,

in a different direction.

started with Enterprise. I used all that with my previous business and then

CAITLIN

give me permission to chill out and go

the course part of the Enterprise

programme and he became my mentor to help me navigate actually running my business. The first time we spoke

my whole career shifted because I'd just

been grinding out with the dog clothing business and the way things were going, it was just a lot, a lot, a lot of work. It

was one of those things if I don't, put down everything and go straight into this business and only focus on that

then it wasn't realistic as a full-time job.

It would have to be a 24/7 thing and

I'd have to cut out a lot of other things from my life.

When I went for that meeting with

me really motivated. He talks to me I was booking gigs, and try to connect me to people. It was really lovely. It was a nice sweet relationship and so we still follow each other on TikTok and support each other on there. But yeah, he's a great guy. It really helped me out.

Adam just sort of gave me permission to stop stressing about something that I didn't need to stress about. And I think it was a voice of wisdom to me. He was able to see things from an outside perspective and guide me in the right direction. What I needed at the time was for someone to look at me from an outside perspective and be like: ‘Okay,

Adam, I think he just sussed out that

you're stressed. This is what you want

feeling 100% with the business. He

there.’

something was up with me and I wasn't asked me about it and I came clean to

to do so this is how we're going to get

him. I told him that it's a lot more work

My confidence is so much higher than

I can only see myself putting more and

a long road to build up. But I persistent

than I thought it was going to be and more work into it if I carry it on. He

was like ‘right, what else are you doing

it was when I began and it was a bit of with it and having a support system was

in your life?’ I said I do music. I studied

really key to getting me where I am.

that I've loved my whole life and.

like I'm doing what I'm meant to do

music at university and it's something He and I just sat, talked and basically

came to the conclusion that it's time for

Now that I am able to do that, it feels with my life.

me to do music instead because that's

It just feels right and I wake up every

sense. Which was so lovely because

not like I'm dragging myself out of bed

where my heart was. It just made more it was like a massive weight I'd been

carrying around, trying to run a whole

completely different business for a while, so it was really nice to have someone

day and I'm happy to be working, it's to a job that I don't want to do. I'm genuinely doing what I really love and it can be tiring, but it's well worth it. www.finito.org.uk

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FINANCE

THE VET BILLS SHOCK AND THE ALDI MOMENT COMING FOR ANIMAL CARE IRIS SPARK

T

here is a particular kind of bill that lands differently from others. A vet’s

bill often arrives in the middle of fear.

Your dog is struggling to breathe. Your cat has stopped eating. The animal is part of

the family, and the decision must be made quickly. Few owners are in the mood to negotiate.

Stories like this have become increasingly

common. Over the past decade veterinary costs in the UK have risen dramatically — around 63% between 2016 and

2023, according to the Competition and

Markets Authority. That rise has been far faster than inflation.

And yet the vet industry itself insists the story is more complicated than simple profiteering.

At one level they are right. Veterinary medicine has advanced enormously.

Procedures once unimaginable for animals — airway surgery, advanced imaging,

oncology treatments — are now routine.

They are also expensive.

The public’s relationship with pets has changed too. Half of owners now say they view their animals as children.

Social media is filled with “pet parents”.

When an animal becomes emotionally equivalent to a family member, the willingness to pay rises.

But economics rarely stops there.

Over the same decade another

transformation has occurred quietly

inside the veterinary industry. Corporate consolidation.

In 2013 only about one in ten vet 72

Freepik

practices in Britain were owned by

structure of the market has changed —

figure is closer to sixty percent. Many

often drift upward.

large corporate groups. Today the

neighbourhood surgeries still look

reassuringly local, but ownership often sits within a handful of large companies.

To pet owners facing rising bills, the connection seems obvious.

and when markets concentrate, prices

Now regulators are circling. The CMA’s investigation into the veterinary sector is expected to recommend greater

transparency over pricing and ownership.

At present, most vet websites reveal little

To vets working inside those organisations,

about costs. In fact, the watchdog found

they feel squeezed between clinical

pricing information online at all.

the pressure is different. Some say

that more than 80% of practices display no

care and financial targets set by distant

For a consumer facing an emergency,

management. One vet who recently

opened an independent practice describes becoming tired of being told by someone

“sat behind a desk” that the clinic was not generating enough revenue.

Whether corporate ownership directly causes higher prices is debated. What seems harder to dispute is that the

London (Unsplash.com)

that opacity matters. The regulator is

also expected to push for easier access to medicines through online pharmacies,

which could undercut some practice mark-

ups. Yet even that reform has complications: many of those pharmacies are themselves

owned by the same corporate groups that dominate veterinary clinics.

FINANCE

more time with animals — potentially lowering costs.

But structural change will not eliminate

the uncomfortable reality that healthcare is expensive. In Britain the NHS shields people from the true cost of their own medical care. Veterinary treatment

offers no such illusion. The surgery, the

equipment, the training, the staff — all must be paid for directly by the client.

That creates difficult conversations about what level of treatment is appropriate.

Some breeds, such as pugs and French

bulldogs, come with known respiratory issues. Certain cats suffer predictable genetic problems. Owners are often surprised by the scale of medical intervention their pets require.

"Their healthcare is beginning to resemble human medicine in complexity and expectation."

Veterinarians increasingly speak about “contextualised care”: treatment that balances animal welfare, medical

Freepik

Competition policy, as ever, can produce

sometimes describe the opportunity

possibility lies elsewhere — the arrival of

moment”.

unexpected winners. The more interesting new entrants determined to disrupt the model entirely.

Some independent practices are

experimenting with subscription-based care, borrowing ideas from dentistry or private healthcare. For a monthly fee,

owners receive check-ups, preventative care and certain treatments bundled

together. The logic is simple: predictability

for the owner, stable revenue for the clinic.

Others are focusing on transparency,

publishing clear prices and deliberately

positioning themselves against the large chains. Veterinary leaders themselves

in familiar retail language: the “Aldi

The supermarket comparison is revealing.

For decades grocery retail was dominated

by a handful of large brands. Then discount chains entered the market with simpler

possibility and what owners can

realistically afford. That phrase hints at

a deeper cultural shift. Pets have moved from the farmyard to the sofa. Their healthcare is beginning to resemble

human medicine in complexity and expectation.

operations, lower costs and aggressive

The market is struggling to keep up.

fundamentally reshaped the sector.

regulation, new entrants, technology or

pricing. Within a generation they had Veterinary care may be approaching

a similar inflection. Technology could accelerate that shift. Telemedicine

Whether the solution comes through

consumer awareness remains uncertain.

But something in the veterinary economy is clearly moving.

consultations are emerging. Artificial

Rising prices have exposed a tension

workloads and diagnostic time. If vets

Where that tension exists, insurgents tend

intelligence may reduce administrative spend less time on paperwork, they spend

between compassion and affordability. to appear.

www.finito.org.uk

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LUXURY

LUXURY INTERVIEW

JOANNE REES DISCUSSES A LANDMARK NEW STUDY OF ELIZABETH GAGE Finito World interviews the CEO of Elizabeth Gage on a landmark study of the influential and revered jeweller The book traces a remarkable journey

from Elizabeth’s early life through to a sixty-year career. Looking back, what

do you feel were the defining moments that shaped both the designer and the business?

Several moments feel formative. The

first was Elizabeth’s early childhood,

when long periods of illness encouraged a deep inner world shaped by history, storytelling and visual imagination.

The second was her decision to pursue goldsmithing seriously, and to build technical mastery at Sir John Cass College rather than follow a more

conventional path. A third defining

moment was her exposure to the British Museum, where she encountered

jewellery not simply as ornament, but as a language of symbolism, permanence and power. Then there were the major business milestones: the early Cartier

commission, the establishment of the

London studio, and later the opening of the Albemarle Street showroom.

Together, those moments shaped

both the creative identity and the

commercial foundations of the brand.

There is a strong sense that Elizabeth’s work emerged from a very personal vision rather than following

prevailing trends. How conscious was that decision at the time, and how

important has it been to the brand’s longevity?

74

Elizabeth Gage

It was deeply conscious, even if it may not have been expressed in

those exact terms at the beginning.

Elizabeth’s work came from a very

personal visual and intellectual world: antiquity, mythology, art history,

architecture rather than from fashion

cycles. That independence of vision has been crucial to the brand’s longevity.

Because the work was never trend-led, it has not dated in the way trend-led jewellery often does. The brand has

built recognition through a distinctive design language rather than a logo or a seasonal aesthetic and that is a very powerful foundation for enduring relevance.

The early commission from Cartier

seems to have been a pivotal moment.

How did that change the trajectory of the business?

The Cartier commission was pivotal because it provided early external

validation at the highest level. Elizabeth had already developed her own

creative language but receiving a major commission from Cartier New York in

the late 1960s immediately her Londonplaced (Unsplash.com)

work in an international luxury context.

It signalled that her ideas were not

simply interesting or unconventional, but commercially and creatively

significant. That kind of endorsement changes visibility and trajectory all at once. It helped establish momentum

early and positioned the business for

the international outlook it would go on to maintain.

LUXURY

The book highlights the transition

How important has that independence

Maintaining high-level craftsmanship

on design and building a team. How

commercial control?

investment and long-term commitment,

from making pieces herself to focusing

been to maintaining creative and

in England requires skill, patience,

It has been enormously important.

particularly at a time when so much

protect its own pace, its own standards

globalised or cost-driven. But it is also

been no pressure to dilute the design

its integrity. The value lies not only in

it is also the shift that enables a creative

product, or chase scale at the expense of

continuity of knowledge, quality control

stepping back from personally making

but it also matters commercially, because

keeping creation close to the heart of

design direction, Elizabeth was able to

brand has remained deeply personal,

of what clients are responding to when

and build a team capable of carrying

itself and that would have been far

The archive now spans tens of

of the brand. It unlocked continuity,

corporate model.

of those early craftspeople remain an

craftsmanship and making everything

difficult was that shift, and what did it

Independence has allowed the brand to

production in luxury has become

and its own point of view. There has

central to what gives Elizabeth Gage

trust, delegation and transmission. But

language, over-commercialise the

where something is made, but in the

practice to become a lasting name. By

identity. That freedom matters creatively,

and workmanship that comes from

every piece and focusing more fully on

clients respond to authenticity. The

the brand. It is demanding, but it is part

scale the business, deepen the archive,

intellectually coherent and recognisably

they buy Elizabeth Gage.

forward the standards and sensibility

harder to preserve inside a more

growth and ultimately legacy as many

There is a strong emphasis on

integral part of the workshop today.

in England. In practical terms, how

unlock in terms of growth?

That is always a difficult shift for a true maker because it requires moving from total personal control into a model of

Elizabeth Gage has remained

challenging is it to sustain that model

dominated by large luxury groups.

It is undoubtedly challenging.

independent in a market increasingly

today?

thousands of designs. How do you

balance that extraordinary heritage with the need to remain relevant to new generations of clients?

The archive is not a constraint; it is a source of vitality. We do not

treat heritage as something static or

nostalgic. The Elizabeth Gage archive www.finito.org.uk

ISSUE 18

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LUXURY

offers an immense body of ideas that

community of collectors who respond

connection. The channels have changed,

recontextualised for a new moment.

craftsmanship and individuality.

The book makes clear that storytelling,

can be revisited, reinterpreted and

Relevance comes not from abandoning heritage, but from presenting it

with clarity and confidence to a new

audience. Younger clients are often very drawn to authenticity, individuality and meaning and those are qualities the archive offers in abundance.

The business has always had an

international outlook, particularly

with strong links to the United States.

How has that global perspective evolved over time?

It has evolved from early recognition

abroad into a genuinely international sensibility. The Cartier New York

connection came early and the United States has long been an important

market for the brand. Over time, that international outlook has become

less about expansion for its own sake and more about cultivating a global 76

to the same values: boldness, intellect, Elizabeth Gage remains very British in spirit, but it speaks to a cosmopolitan

client with an instinct for substance over trend.

The “One Woman Shows” were clearly instrumental in building the brand.

Do you see an equivalent model today, or has the way high jewellery is sold fundamentally changed?

but the fundamentals have not.

history and symbolism sit at the heart of the designs. How important is that narrative dimension to clients today?

It is absolutely central. Clients today

are surrounded by products, but they

are still searching for meaning. What distinguishes Elizabeth Gage is that

the jewellery carries an intellectual and emotional life: references to ancient

The market has changed significantly,

civilisations, mythology, symbolism

the same. The “One Woman Shows”

dimension gives the work depth and

personal connection and a focused world

something far more personal than

is found in intimate collection

resonate strongly with collectors.

private appointments and digital

distinctive, confident clientele. Has

but the underlying principle remains

and personal stories. That narrative

were powerful because they created

memorability. It turns jewellery into

around the work. Today, the equivalent

adornment alone, and that continues to

previews, highly curated presentations,

Elizabeth’s work has attracted a very

storytelling that extends the reach of

that customer profile changed over

those experiences. Jewellery is still sold through emotion, trust and personal

time, or is there a consistent “Elizabeth Gage woman”?

LUXURY

There is certainly a consistent spirit,

even if the customer has evolved across

generations. The Elizabeth Gage woman is confident, independent-minded and

drawn to jewellery with presence. She is rarely looking for something generic or

purely decorative; she wants something

with character. What has changed is that this sensibility now reaches a broader age range and a more international

audience. But the core attraction —

strength, individuality and substance has been remarkably consistent.

The business has successfully navigated several decades of economic cycles.

What have been the most challenging periods, and what has enabled the company to endure?

Any business that lasts this long will have lived through multiple difficult

periods. What has enabled Elizabeth

Gage to endure is the combination of a

clear identity, loyal collectors, exceptional product, and the discipline that comes

with independence. When a brand knows exactly what it is and does not need to

reinvent itself every few years it is much

Has the rising cost of gold changed

Looking ahead, what does the next

Gold prices have been particularly

way, either in terms of what they buy or

both creatively and commercially?

remain elevated. How has this affected

investment?

better placed to weather volatility.

customer behaviour in any noticeable

volatile in recent years, and in 2026

how they think about jewellery as an

both pricing and design decisions

Not in any fundamental way. Our clients

within the business?

are well informed and understand

chapter of Elizabeth Gage look like, The next chapter feels like one of

stewardship and renewal, about making the brand’s legacy relevant and long

lasting. Creatively, it is about continuing

Elevated and volatile gold prices

that when gold prices rise, the price of

to draw from the extraordinary archive

across the industry and 2026 has

is a level of acceptance around that,

desirable and resonant for our existing

kind of volatility forces any serious

used to thinking long-term. If anything,

about deepening relationships with

on pricing, margin management and

worthwhile investment. They recognise

and beyond, while preserving the rarity,

intrinsic material value, but also with

the brand. The opportunity is not to

collectability. So rather than deterring

forward what is most distinctive about

that what they are buying is both

The book is available to buy here: https://

inevitably affect pricing discipline

new pieces will naturally follow. There

while ensuring the work remains alive,

been especially turbulent. That

particularly among collectors who are

and future clients. Commercially, it is

jewellery brand to be more precise

it reinforces their view of jewellery as a

clients in Britain, the United States

stock decisions. Creatively, it tends to

that they are acquiring something with

individuality and integrity that define

enduring design, craftsmanship and

become something different but to carry

purchases, it often deepens the sense

Elizabeth Gage.

meaningful and lasting.

elizabeth-gage.com/publications

encourage even greater intentionality:

every design choice has to justify itself, and there is often a stronger emphasis

on pieces where craftsmanship, design

distinction and emotional value clearly outweigh raw material cost alone.

www.finito.org.uk

ISSUE 18

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DESIGN

THE INVISIBLE HOUSE

HOW TECHNOLOGY BECAME THE QUIET STAR OF WOW!HOUSE 2026 Christopher Jackson is impressed by WOW!house 2026 and sees a new trend towards innovative technology

Martin Moore Kitchen with Samantha Bartlett

T

here was a time when the “smart home” announced itself loudly.

Wires, panels, blinking lights, the

faint sense that you were living inside a gadget rather than a home. That

moment has passed. At WOW!house

2026, returning for its fifth year at the

Design Centre, Chelsea Harbour from

2 June to 2 July, technology is no longer something you see. It is something you feel.

This is the real shift. Not more technology, but better hidden 78

technology. Not novelty, but integration.

Not spectacle, but atmosphere.

“Technology has become the secret ingredient that elevates WOW!house from a design showcase to a true sensory experience.”

“Technology has become the secret

ingredient that elevates WOW!house

from a design showcase to a true sensory experience,” says Claire German, CEO

of Design Centre Chelsea Harbour. Last year’s debut media room hinted at the direction of travel. This year, the idea

has been absorbed into the whole house.

Fifteen rooms, each different, each

designed by leading names, all working

to the same principle: the digital should

be invisible, but its effects unmistakable.

That principle is what makes

DESIGN

buildings, particularly with listed and sensitive country houses, both the

architect and client are engaged in an act of stewardship,” he says. Energy

performance is no longer secondary.

Heating, cooling and efficiency are central to conservation.

What matters is how these systems are introduced. “This must always be done in a way that is integrated, discreet,

and future proofing… You shouldn’t be able to detect the architect’s hand. The atmosphere, the spirit, and the soul of

the house should remain entirely intact.”

That idea of invisibility recurs

throughout WOW!house. Technology succeeds precisely when it cannot be seen.

Nucleus Media Room by Russell Sage Studio

WOW!house 2026 feel less like an

role in high-end residential projects, this

A glimpse of how homes will look,

commitment to working closely with the

exhibition and more like a prototype. sound and behave in the near future.

The End of Bolt-On Technology For years, technology in homes arrived late. Designers created the space;

engineers came in afterwards to fit

screens, speakers, controls. The result

was compromise. At WOW!house, that hierarchy has been reversed.

CEDIA, the Association for Smart

Home Professionals™, is the official

technology sponsor, and its involvement signals something important. More

than half of WOW!house visitors are

high-net-worth individuals, and what they are seeing here is not gadgetry

but a new standard of living. Designers and technology specialists are now collaborating from the outset.

“WOW!house represents the very

Choreography, Not Hardware

partnership reflects CEDIA’s ongoing

Nowhere is this more striking than in

design community.”

Sage Studio, powered by Nucleus AV

The language is telling. Collaboration,

the Nucleus Immersive Room by Russell and L-Acoustics.

not installation. Integration, not

“The system we are implementing in the

longer those with the most features, but

is about choreography between design

addition. The smartest homes are no

those where technology disappears into the architecture itself.

“The smartest homes are no longer those with the most features, but those where technology disappears into the architecture itself.”

The House as a System

best of design excellence and cross-

That shift is perhaps most clearly

Griffiths, Senior Vice President

Darren Price of ADAM Architecture,

at CEDIA. “As smart home technology

frames it as a matter of responsibility.

disciplinary collaboration,” says Wendy

articulated at the level of architecture.

Membership & Global Development

responsible for the Size Group façade,

continues to play an increasingly integral

“When adapting and restoring

house is not just about technology; it and engineering,” says Durgesh Sinh of Nucleus. “Audio, lighting, shading and control have been conceived as architectural elements.”

The distinction is subtle but profound.

Technology is no longer equipment. It is part of the room’s language.

L-Acoustics, whose systems underpin everything from Adele’s Las Vegas

residency to the Philharmonie de Paris, brings concert-level sound into the

domestic sphere. But the ambition is not volume or spectacle. It is presence.

Where conventional home audio plays music, this recreates the experience of being there. Scale, depth, emotional weight. And yet, visually, it recedes.

Russell Sage describes the space as

“not just a room—it’s an experience… a sanctuary for memory, emotion, and www.finito.org.uk

ISSUE 18

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DESIGN Studio Duggan - Black Edition for Romo Speakeasy Salon by Studio Duggan - Portrait

with Samantha Bartlett, the emphasis

is on rhythm. The space shifts between sociability and solitude, responding to

time of day, light, and use. Materials age, surfaces soften, and technology supports rather than interrupts. It is a kitchen

that learns the habits of its occupants.

“The system we are implementing in the house is not just about technology; it is about choreography between design and engineering.”

Even traditionally static spaces are

changing. Libraries, drawing rooms, bedrooms, salons: each incorporates

lighting, acoustics, or environmental

control in ways that alter how the room is experienced rather than how it looks.

Technology and Wellbeing Underpinning much of this is a

growing focus on wellbeing. Jeff

Hayward of CEDIA outlines the emerging logic.

Lighting systems now mirror natural

daylight patterns, supporting circadian

rhythms and improving sleep. Acoustic design reduces noise and creates calm. connection.” That language of feeling, rather than function, is becoming the

dominant way of talking about domestic technology.

The Rise of Sensory Design Across the house, that philosophy plays out in different ways.

In the Samuel Heath Primary Bathroom

by Rigby & Rigby, technology becomes part of wellbeing. “Homes can be both high-tech and high-touch,” says Jason

Stewart, “where wellbeing, comfort, and 80

style are enhanced by innovation that is as discreet as it is powerful.”

Bathrooms, once defined by

disconnection, are quietly evolving.

Studio Mark Andrew’s THG Paris

Powder Room imagines a space that

responds to mood and voice, turning

daily rituals into something closer to a hotel experience. “Bathrooms used to be where we unplugged… now we’re quietly weaving in technology.”

In the Martin Moore kitchen, designed

Environmental controls manage air quality, temperature and humidity.

Security systems operate quietly in

the background, offering reassurance without intrusion.

Perhaps most importantly, these

benefits are no longer confined to dedicated “wellness spaces”. They extend throughout the home.

This is a subtle but significant shift.

Technology is no longer about

convenience alone. It is about how a

home makes you feel. Calibre Climate will join as WOW!house’s official AC

DESIGN

partner. Offering aesthetically discreet, energy-efficient air conditioning solutions to keep visitors feeling

refreshed as they journey through WOW!house this year. They have

recently launched Inversa by Calibre which is a system that removes your

heat and recycles it into your hot water and under floor heating. Though the system isn’t being fitted at WOW!

the partnership is a reminder that air conditioning can be sustainable.’

“The technology is everywhere and nowhere.”

The New Luxury What WOW!house ultimately

reveals is a redefinition of luxury. It

is no longer about visible opulence or overt technical capability. It is about effortlessness.

The best rooms in the house share a

common quality. They respond. Light adjusts without being noticed. Sound fills a space without visible source.

Temperature, air, atmosphere all align with the occupant’s needs before they are consciously expressed.

The technology is everywhere and nowhere.

Lalique Home Bar by Elicyon

Samuel Heath Primary Bathroom by Rigby & Rigby_WOW!house

A Roll Call of the Future

specialists makes it possible. Powerplant

Across the fifteen rooms, this philosophy is interpreted in different ways: the Size Group façade with ADAM Architecture and John Cullen Lighting; the Turnell & Gigon Drawing Room by Albion Nord; the Lalique Home Bar by Elicyon; the Shepel’ Library by Róisín Lafferty; Sara Cosgrove’s Morning Room; Salvesen Graham’s Primary Bedroom; Studio Duggan’s Speakeasy Salon; Martin Kemp Design’s Parlour; Henri Fitzwilliam-Lay’s Bedroom Suite; De Rosee Sa’s bathroom; Max Rollitt’s dining room with candlelight effects.

Home Automation provides digital

Behind the scenes, a network of

system, every material, every integration

screens. Tewke delivers electronics and

lighting systems. Lutron supplies LED lighting. Integrators such as Equippd, Tillman Domotics, Homeplay and

others ensure that each element works as part of a whole.

The effect is cumulative. Room by room, the house reveals a new model of living.

The House of the Near Future WOW!house 2026 is not speculative.

Nothing here is theoretical. Every exists now.

What is new is the way they are

combined. Technology has moved from the edges of the home to its centre, and then, quietly, out of sight altogether. It

has become infrastructure, like plumbing or electricity, but far more responsive.

The result is a house that anticipates

rather than reacts. A house that supports mood, behaviour, and wellbeing. A house that feels, in a word, alive.

And that may be the most striking thing of all. Not that the house is smarter, but that it is more human.

www.finito.org.uk

ISSUE 18

81

CORPORATE SERVICES

THE GIFT OF CHOICE

HOW THE HARRODS GIFT CARD BECAME A LUXURY EXPERIENCE IN ITS OWN RIGHT Christopher Jackson interviews head of Corporate Service Tracy Finn about a development in their client experience

I

n an age when corporate gifting can often feel transactional, the

enduring appeal of the Harrods Gift Card lies in something more emotional: anticipation. A sense that what is being given is not simply purchasing power, but entry into a world.

82

For businesses looking to reward employees, retain clients or elevate

at Harrods, who has watched the

evolution of gifting from practical perk

loyalty programmes, the Harrods Gift

to experiential luxury.

Card has quietly become one of the

“The Harrods Gift Card is the stand-

most sought-after gestures in premium gifting. Behind that success is Tracy Finn, Head of Corporate Service

out choice with our corporate partners whether it be to drive employee

retention, promote customer loyalty

CORPORATE SERVICES

or thank valued associates,” Finn says.

now: over a million square feet of retail

“They often pre-plan the experience

the freedom they give recipients to pick

twenty-one restaurants and an ever-

day of it with friends or family. It

“Gift cards are always popular thanks to the items they truly desire, while the

Harrods name shows just how much the recipient is valued.”

That sense of value matters. In a

crowded luxury market, Harrods

possesses something few retailers can replicate: mythology. Since opening on Brompton Road in 1849, the

Knightsbridge store has become less a

department store than a global symbol of aspiration. The gift card functions

almost like a passport into that world.

“It’s a legacy of distinction,” Finn

explains. “The Harrods Gift Card provides recipients access to the

breadth and depth of the most soughtafter brands and specialist services

within Harrods. Our world-famous

Knightsbridge store is home to over

5,000 brands and seven floors of luxury.”

The scale remains astonishing even

theatre, more than 330 departments, changing rotation of activations,

pop-ups and seasonal experiences. Yet

what is striking is how often recipients treat their first redemption almost ceremonially.

“The Harrods Gift Card is the standout choice with our corporate partners whether it be to drive employee retention, promote customer loyalty or thank valued associates.”

carefully, sometimes making a

becomes memorable and experiential,

incorporating a day out in London with loved ones.”

One begins to understand why the

card performs so strongly in corporate environments. A bottle of wine

disappears; a hamper is consumed.

But a Harrods visit becomes narrative.

People remember where they ate,

what they bought, which floor they discovered unexpectedly.

The experience itself is part of the gift.

For first-time visitors, the store is designed to overwhelm in the most pleasurable sense. Shoe Heaven. Fine Watches.

Jewellery. The famous Food Halls.

Bespoke tailoring. Afternoon Tea at The Georgian. Personal shopping. Wellness

“The consistent trend we’ve identified

and Beauty consultations. Even the pause

receiving the card,” Finn says.

“The first visit is an immersive

is that recipients visit shortly after

between purchases becomes curated.

www.finito.org.uk

ISSUE 18

83

CORPORATE SERVICES

84

CORPORATE SERVICES Tracy Finn

strong adopters of the gift card,

that celebrate simplicity, craftsmanship

generic rewards can feel impersonal or

demand for sensory-led gifts like scent,

especially at senior levels where uninspired.

“There is particularly high engagement around employee incentive

programmes and executive-level

rewards,” Finn says. “For conferences with international attendance,

Harrods Gift Cards invite delegates into the Knightsbridge store and discovery of the store’s brand and

offer a cultural interlude alongside

intersperse shopping with lunch or

memento.”

like Personal Shopping or Wellness and

involved a multinational company

service offer,” Finn says. “Customers

the freedom to select a personal

afternoon tea, and many access services

One especially successful campaign

Beauty for the first time.”

celebrating a landmark anniversary.

“The Harrods Gift Card provides recipients access to the breadth and depth of the most sought-after brands and specialist services within Harrods.”

Harrods created personalised gift cards

that luxury now extends beyond

loaded with anything from £10

accessories, alongside non-digital gifts such as notebooks, literature and poetry books.”

“The first visit is an immersive discovery of the store’s brand and service offer.”

It is a fascinating development. In a hyper-digital age, many luxury consumers are gravitating back toward objects with permanence and

simultaneously to 800 employees

remembered.

a message from the CEO, distributed worldwide.

“The alignment with a globally

recognised premium brand created emotional connection,” Finn says.

“Our Corporate Team project

texture. Gifts that can be held, used, Harrods is evolving accordingly. Later this year, the company plans to launch a digital version of the Harrods Gift Card, broadening accessibility while

managed the programme from

preserving the prestige of the physical

delivery.”

“The physical gift card and the

inception through to seamless

The flexibility helps. Cards can be

products into atmosphere and feeling.

to £10,000 and arrive in premium

immersion, discovery and curation

cashmere blankets and beautiful home

featuring the company branding and

Importantly, Harrods understands

Modern consumers increasingly want

and provenance. We’re also seeing

branded packaging, complete with

personalised messaging and company

experience. experience of receiving a tangible gift will always have a place,” Finn says.

“But the convenience of digital gifting will scale the business to new heights.”

logos. Recipients frequently spend

And perhaps that duality says

seasonal touchpoints and retail theatre

choosing long-desired purchases or

perpetually modernising while

experience,” Finn says. “Through

anniversaries or engagements.

committed to first-class service, world-

to a shift in what luxury itself means.

rather than mere acquisition.

“Brand partnership activations,

beyond the initial value, often

all provide a dynamic and elevated

commemorative pieces for birthdays,

perpetual evolution, Harrods remains

Increasingly, too, Harrods is responding

leading creativity and showcasing the

The age of loud logos and maximalism

defined by convenience and algorithms,

quieter, more tactile and emotionally

giving someone the chance to walk

“Clients are leaning into quiet luxury,”

Brompton Road and choose something

globe’s greatest brands.”

Corporate clients appear to agree.

Financial services firms, travel

businesses and executive reward

platforms have become particularly

something about Harrods itself: remaining unmistakably rooted in ritual, glamour and occasion.

Even now, in an economy increasingly

appears to be giving way to something

there remains enormous power in

resonant.

through those famous doors on

Finn says. “They’re looking for gifts

memorable for themselves. www.finito.org.uk

ISSUE 18

85

BURSARY

BURSARY CANDIDATE NICK HENNIGAN ON HIS APPOINTMENT TO HEAD UP THE NEW FINITO NEXT GEN BOARD

Nick Hennigan

Could you tell us a bit about your

Ikigai, which is the “reason for being”. It

You’ve been through the Finito bursary

your thinking most over the past few

passion, vocation, mission, and

give you, and how did it change your

background – and what has shaped years?

is an interesting concept as it intersects:

profession. In essence, it provides clarity

I am originally from Aberdeen and have

over what someone is good at, what

for the past 2 years. The challenge

can be gained. For me, I have a passion

not to be underestimated; I found it

and thrive in social and professional

and purpose. I studied a broad degree

career in being a Banker. This is what

which meant that I had lots of options

few years, but hard work, determination,

specific direction calling out to me. I

is what will help me get to where I want

been living and working in London

brings someone joy, and what benefit

for young people post University is

for finance, I really enjoy networking

incredibly challenging to find my path

environments, and I can see a successful

– International Business Management –

has helped shape my focus over the past

which is a positive, but there wasn’t a

and a positive can-do mindset above all

also believe in the Japanese concept of 86

to be.

scheme – what did that experience trajectory?

I am grateful to Finito and my bursary

donor for providing me with the careerready mentoring which has led me

onto a path which I feel is not only well suited, but one which will be incredibly rewarding for me personally and

professionally. The sessions are delivered by mentors with perspective of what it

is to have had successful careers within

different disciplines, and how to navigate the opportunities and challenges on

their journey to the top of their field.

BURSARY

This kind of insight is invaluable and

and their offerings, and the rise of

What do you think makes a

Ronel always says that “we never let go

Finito helps graduates navigate this

successful one?

doesn’t stop once you have found a job. of our students” which is exactly what I experienced. Finito helped to channel my thinking and offer perspective on

what may be a suitable path for me to

follow, which was exactly what I needed especially as I was navigating my way

through the challenges of my last role

apprenticeships, so it’s imperative that changing environment.

From your perspective, what do organisations most often

misunderstand about young people

today? And how can employers better engage with their young workforce?

with my previous bank, and helped me

I think that there are some obvious

next role to be.

here, not least an increased awareness of

to decide where I should focus on my

The next gen board is a new initiative for Finito. What do you think its

purpose should be, and what do you want to achieve over the next 12 months?

This is an incredibly exciting initiative, and one which I think is positive for

Finito. As this is an organisation which helps young people, it’s imperative that

young voices are at the heart of Finito’s decision making to constructively

challenge and ensure that it’s fit for

purpose, and provides the best possible outcomes for candidates. This is also a way for Finito candidates to connect

with each other, reconnect with Finito

mentors, and demonstrate the power of networking and what this can provide

to the next generation of candidates of

Finito. I am hopeful that the Next Gen Board can help to spearhead a sense

of lasting community that should be associated with being involved with

Finito, be that as a beneficiary, mentor

or as a donor. My priority over the next year is to recruit a strong and diverse group of young talent to the Board,

including past Finito mentees, to ensure that we can have as much debate and impact. Finito recently celebrated its 10th anniversary, which is a terrific

milestone, but the graduate market is different to what it was 10 years ago with the introduction of AI within

workplaces, expansion of universities

inter-generational examples I could cite diversity, equity and inclusion (DE&I), wellbeing in the workplace, flexibility of working from home, and of course young people never knowing a world

without technology. It’s important to

recognise some of the positive progress achieved by organisations on these

topics, but the real challenge I think

that young people have in workplaces is being seen and supported to progress,

sometimes without structure. The path

to progression is seldom structured and beautifully presented to young people

with clarity, which can be discouraging, lead to disenfranchisement, and

meaningful career, as opposed to just a I think that the difference between just a successful career and one which has meaning is how much of an impact

that an individual can have on others.

Being successful is more of an individual measurement, be that through achieving a promotion or reaching a salary

threshold, but being able to inspire

those around you, and to be a mentor

for them, is what really carries meaning.

Having the ability to positively influence those who are from the next generation, and to instil in them the values and

lessons from a successful career, thus promoting a tangible legacy, is what

makes a meaningful one. This is why,

in my opinion, Finito is such a valuable

organisation, as it promotes the concept of mentorship and the knowledge

transfer between successful individuals with those who, despite being at the

early stages of their career, are aspiring for greatness.

ultimately the loss of good talent for

Finally, what advice would you give to

seen. Organisations should support

direction right now?

organisations in the pursuit of being and encourage their young talent to rise up within an organisation, and

progress into more senior roles. I don’t

think anyone would disagree with that

statement, and most organisations would say that they do. The challenge is when

timescales are misaligned, which is often because there is a divergence of interests between management and the young

other young people trying to find their I think that all young people need to

find their USP, which can be focused

using the concept of Ikigai (as explained

previously) to channel their energies into finding the purpose they have within a

certain role, organisation, and profession.

I also am a firm believer in the idea that no conversation is wasted as you never

person themselves. I think it’s worth

know what may come from having a

hard, and proving the individual value-

The idea of patience I brought up in a

organisation should always prevail, and

an opportunity may not be immediately

promote from within and support junior

the future one may be as a result of

mentioning that being patient, working

conversation in an open-minded way.

add a young person can have on an

previous answer, and I believe that while

I would encourage organisations to

presented, you never know when in

talent when they show promise. In

presenting yourself well and (hopefully!)

essence, back them or lose them.

impressing.

www.finito.org.uk

ISSUE 18

87

STORIES FROM THE FRONT LINE

FINITO CANDIDATE DAVID ZAZO ON FOUNDING CLASSICALLY SOCIAL

C

lassically Social began as a response to something my business partner,

Noah, and I had both noticed and observed for years.

Over time, what began as a simple

experiment has grown into a broader,

community-driven cultural project. At a Classically Social event, long-time

London has one of the richest classical

classical music lovers sit alongside people

of it feels locked behind formality,

performance. Many guests arrive straight

you need prior knowledge to belong.

environment that feels unpretentious

between younger audiences and the

flows before and after the music,

- not because of a lack of interest, but

evening unfolds at a relaxed pace. That

being presented.

social ease - has become central to our

music scenes in the world, yet so much

attending their very first live classical

convention, and an unspoken sense that

from work, looking to unwind in an

We felt that there was a real disconnect

yet thoughtfully designed. Conversation

highest level of classical performance

friendships form organically, and the

because of how and where the music was

balance - artistic excellence paired with

We founded Classically Social as a means

identity.

to bridge that gap. Our aim was never

Each event centres around a live

but rather to change the context around

leading young pianists, many of whom

to dilute the music or make it 'lighter',

it. We wanted to create nights out that

felt social, relaxed, and welcoming, while still presenting world-class classical

musicianship at the highest possible

standard. At its core, Classically Social is about reinvigorating nights out and rethinking how people experience

classical music - using it as a catalyst for genuine human connection in a

city that can often feel fragmented and impersonal.

performance by one of the world’s have recently won prizes at major

international competitions. These are musicians who would normally be

encountered on the most prestigious stages, yet at Classically Social they perform just a few metres from the

audience, in intimate and unconventional venues. This format is made possible

with the support of our technical partner, Markson Pianos, who help us to provide grand pianos to venues not traditionally

David Zazo

evolving, and alive rather than fixed into a routine.

A typical evening begins around 7pm, with time built in for arrivals, drinks, and informal conversation. The live

performance lasts roughly an hour, often with a short interval, before the night naturally opens back up into post-set

socialising. Thanks to extended licenses at many venues, guests often stay well into the night. The music remains the centrepiece, but never feels isolated -

instead, it becomes the spark that fuels conversation and connection.

From the outset, we imagined an

equipped to host classical performances.

For many attendees, the most striking

a concert and a social gathering. By

variety of venues all over London, from

of our audience has never experienced

into informal, carefully curated settings,

clubs and pirate ship themed bars, spaces

proximity. Sitting just a few metres away

the National Liberal Club for a one-off

- without the physical and psychological

experience that sat somewhere between

Recent events have taken place at a wide

element is the intimacy. A large portion

placing exceptional live performance

hotels to independent venues like comedy

classical music of this calibre at such close

we offer an alternative to the traditional

inside Battersea Power Station, and even

from an internationally recognised pianist

concert hall - one that feels premium but never intimidating, and that encourages people not only to listen, but to talk, meet, and connect.

88

semi-formal evening. We deliberately

avoid repeating venues consecutively each event is designed to feel distinct,

distance of a concert hall - can be

overwhelming in the best possible way.

We regularly see reactions of genuine

STORIES FROM THE FRONT LINE

astonishment, and are reminded of how powerful this music can be when it’s presented in the right environment.

"At its core, Classically Social is about... using music as a catalyst for genuine human connection in a city that can often feel fragmented and impersonal."

That intimacy matters just as much to the artists. Classically Social gives performers the chance to engage with audiences in a

more human, organic way. The traditional performer-listener divide dissolves musicians speak with guests, answer

questions, and feel the immediate impact

of their playing. In doing so, they become active participants in building new,

curious communities around classical music.

Alongside our core social events, we are now expanding into complementary formats. One is a more traditional

concert series aimed at dedicated classical audiences, with an emphasis on headline

performers, creative programming, and

spaces, private venues, or hospitality

in February with a Chinese New

flexible in format and timing - from

themed evenings. This series launched Year concert, and was followed in

March by the world premiere of a new

transcription of Rachmaninoff ’s Second Piano Concerto for solo piano. These concerts maintain our commitment

to originality and artistic excellence,

while offering a more focused listening experience.

We also offer bespoke corporate and

private events, positioning Classically

Social as a high-end cultural and client entertainment solution. Provided that there is access for a grand piano, we

are able to bring world-class classical performance directly into corporate

programmes. These events are highly lunchtime conference sessions to

evening receptions or live action as part of multi-day events - and are designed to create a memorable experience that

clients are unlikely to have encountered before.

Classically Social was founded by the

two of us (David Zazo and Noah Zhou) - former schoolmates - combining

complementary backgrounds. I operate primarily on the commercial side of the business, with a background in Philosophy and Finance. Noah is

the first ever British-born Laureate of the Rachmaninoff International

Piano Competition and a graduate of the Royal Academy of Music,

where he received the Sir Elton John Scholarship. His performance career includes top prizes at over fifteen

national and international competitions, and early recognition from the Royal

Philharmonic Society of Great Britain.

Together, we have built Classically Social as a project that sits at the

intersection of cultural excellence, social connection, and contemporary lifestyle - reimagining how classical music can exist, be experienced, and ultimately thrive in modern-day London. www.finito.org.uk

ISSUE 18

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SECTOR ANALYSIS

LIFE’S PATHWAY: AN ANALYSIS OF THE INSURANCE SECTOR Roger Flaxman THE REASONS The insurance industry has changed out of all recognition from what it was in

the 1970s. So too, of course, has every other walk of life. Advancement in

technology and the incursion of post-

WWII American commercial influences in the UK financial services sector

have been the primary motivators for

change. The unintended consequences, particularly of time and cost saving

initiatives, have left the financial services sector bereft of humanitarian values and

quality control. Banking and insurance generally, were highly regarded

professional services in which to be

engaged. Every person involved in a

customer transaction was personally

accountable for their part in the process.

Ordinarily, senior employees had ‘started in the post room’ and gradually been

promoted through all the key stages of

the business before becoming a director in their mid-fifties. Are you beginning to yawn? Stick with it.

Progress in commerce, industry and the invention and development of

Roger Flazman

eliminated the room for customer care.

other changes, removed personal

alone and unable to communicate, Aarifah Karim

of customer pressure and regulation but

customer process. Therein lies the root

ubiquitous Teams or Zoom meeting

crave will only be delivered if future

There is no one to take responsibility

reintroduce them to the core culture of

of course confined to the insurance

conduct. It became a ‘numbers game’

and shareholder value and profit motives

technology has, perhaps above all

Things are slowly changing as a result

accountability from any part of a

even in an emergency. The now

the humanitarian values that customers

of customer frustration.

is a permanent reminder of enforced

generations of leaders in the sector

and no one to speak to. This is not

their businesses.

industry. It is common to all walks of

separation and polarises the difference that we experience when we are in the room with fellow mortals. It matters to all of us.

life and fond memories of my early

Insurance is an economic necessity;

In 1969 commerce (including all

with pot plants on the window sill and

economies cannot function. We are

People Paper and the Postman. We were

oodles of cakes and biscuits will never,

within five working days of receipt; and

customer demand for fair treatment

COMPARABLES

1970s days in smoke-filled offices

insurance business) was conducted by

the twice daily ‘tea lady’s’ trolly with

expected to reply to a customer’s letter

ever return; not that they should; but

we thought that was a tough call.

has to start somewhere; within the

Every letter coming into the company was read by the directors before being

distributed to the ‘staff ’ to deal with it

business, not in remote complaints and appeal processes.

and every letter leaving the company was checked for accuracy, politeness

ENFORCED ISOLATION

and spelling by the office manager

before it was sent. The best form of

We all learned, in the Covid lockdown period, the cost of being isolated and

90

for everyone. Without it the world’s alone and powerless without the

money to repair, rebuild and start

again. Few people have sufficient spare cash or investments to repair their

home or car after a serious loss, let

alone recover from a business loss that stops trade in its tracks, for a year or

more. These are everyday events in the insurance sector but unless you have

been a victim of serious loss it may not register just how devastating it can be to lose everything.

SECTOR ANALYSIS

INSURANCEAN UNIQUE COMPLEX AND EVER DEVELOPING INDUSTRY

and property insurances that make up

Whilst ‘careers’ are not considered ‘cool’

insurance sector there are many more

most people and it requires the ability

The insurance industry is unique and it

technology, oil and energy, cyber risks

is a fascinating and increasingly complex industry to be a part of. Motor, travel, home, health and life insurances are

what most people think of to be ‘the insurance industry’ but that is only

because we all see it and hear about it

as part of ordinary living. The world of insurance touches every aspect, nook

a large part of the ‘visible’ day to day specialist areas of insurance eagerly

awaiting the enquiring young mind’s contribution to their future. Space

and security, medicine and healthcare,

corporate and professional, construction

and development, political risks, product risks, drug trial and innovation, banking and financial services; reinsurance; and

more. There is something worth doing in insurance, for almost everyone.

Sustainable living and built environment

AI AND TECHNOLOGY VS HUMANITY

seams waiting for insurance products to

or ‘bots’ as the future of modern society

and cranny of industry, commerce and everything in between.

projects are currently creaking at the

AI is much talked about as are robots

be designed and built to insure against

but as the lockdown showed us it is the

potential losses that have not even

been considered before now; because new technologies and methods of

decarbonisation, for example, have not a proven science or track record by which

the insurance underwriters can measure and price, the risk.

The benefits, conveniences, attributes and facilities that technology and

science can offer a modern society

are infinite. Moreover, they are highly attractive to the concept of labour-

saving and providing opportunities

for less time at work and more time at leisure. But when technology breaks

down or is hacked or destroyed - what

then? Insurance companies cannot help, except to provide the money to pay for help, but in an increasingly unskilled

society who will take over, manually, the tasks of the computer?

PLANES TRAINS AND AUTOMOBILES These are the just the tip of the iceberg in the insurance industry and together with homes, health, life, pets and vets

and the ordinary commercial business

ordinary common humanity of family

any longer a long life is the aspiration of to earn sufficient money to pay for it

and to pay for the cost of treatment and

resources when things go wrong, as they usually do in the course of a lifetime.

A pathway to consecutive secure

employment and the investment in knowledge, skills and reputation is

what every parent would wish for their

child. It is the bedrock of what makes a

person fulfilled, with a purpose in life, a contribution which brings recognition

and self-esteem, and the opportunity to

be secure and enjoy life and its pleasures with one’s own family and friends.

FULFILMENT The insurance industry has given me that opportunity and the invested

friends and neighbours that matters

knowledge and skill acquired over fifty

to, who has the knowledge skill and

has provided a purpose in later life that

most- and having someone to talk

five years by myself and by my team

authority to help when help is needed.

makes a difference to a lot of people, and

As Finito knows so well the personal attributes of all of us are infinitely

varied. Some people are arty, others

sporty, some science and technology

minded, others social science, medicine and welfare inclined but we all need to

talk and to communicate when the chips are down.

The art of communication, person to

person, has been frustrated by the advent of the email, text and digital technology

that enables worldwide communication, wanted or unwanted, at a nano second’s convenience; but its unintended

consequences are causing harm to

society that will require people with

interpersonal human communication skills, specialist knowledge and the

ability to take responsibility and make

to all of us.

OPPORTUNITY Insurance is not about technology and money, alone. It is the foundation of a secure economy. It requires people

of significant educational quality and

ability to take control of its unique and essential contribution to society and a

healthy economy. The ability to foresee the future of loss and measure the risk

to create a resource that can put people back into the same financial position

after their loss and misfortune as they

were before it beckons to the cream of educational success.

Roger Flaxman, Chartered Insurance

Practitioner | Academy of Experts Accr. Expert Witness

decisions for ourselves and for people

CEDR Solve Panel Accr. Mediator

business, leisure and friends and family.

Resolution

that want or need to rely upon us in

| CEDR Accr Negotiator - Dispute

www.finito.org.uk

ISSUE 18

91

CULTURE The lighter side of employability 118 | NOT AT ALL BLACK AND WHITE

The uncancellable Michael Jackson

Wikipedia.org Martin Amis (Alamy.com)

92

100 SUSTAINABLE ART Gallery des Bois

Alam y.c o

m

110 SHIFTING LIGHT How do you build for the future?

P1 P ade l

138 PADEL, PADEL The fastest growing sport

ART

IT'S NEVER TOO LATE

ROSE WYLIE AT THE ROYAL ACADEMY

By Christopher Jackson

I

once spent an afternoon with Rose Wylie at her cottage in Kent. This

was some years ago, when she was

already in her mid-eighties and had only recently become famous — a

sequence of events which, in itself,

tells you almost everything you need to know about her. The garden, I

remember, was aggressively untamed.

This was not neglect but philosophy.

“I like wild daffodils,” she told me.

“They grow and you can leave them alone; you don't have to nurture

them – they're completely glorious.”

It seemed, at the time, a precise

description not just of her garden

but of her art: something that had

been left to grow in its own direction, stubbornly, gloriously, without

reference to what the neighbours might prefer.

What I remember most vividly,

though, is this: she stood for the entire 94

interview. Not briefly, not for the first

moment: the Royal Academy was

for the whole two hours — standing

hundred and fifty-eight years to get

half hour while we warmed up, but among the canvases in her studio,

under the rafters, on a floor covered in newspaper to catch the falling paint.

I was, by the end, considerably more tired than she was. She was in her mid-eighties. I was not.

founded in 1768. It has taken two here. The delay tells us something

about the institution, certainly. But it

also tells us something about Wylie –

about the particular, obstinate, entirely her own trajectory that her career has taken, and about why that trajectory

“The work is what it is because of the life, not in spite of it.”

matters to anyone thinking seriously

I thought of that afternoon recently,

paper, tracing a practice that spans

standing in the Royal Academy's main galleries, where Wylie's largest ever

exhibition – The Picture Comes First

– has taken over the whole space. She is 91. She is the first British female

painter ever to have been given a solo

exhibition in the RA's main galleries.

That fact is worth sitting with for a

about how a life can be lived and what a career can look like.

The exhibition brings together more than ninety paintings and works on four decades of sustained, peculiar,

exhilarating work. Walking through it, you are struck first by the scale – the

canvases run almost the full width of the walls, figures tilt and lean across enormous surfaces of unprimed

canvas, words are written directly into the paint in Wylie’s signature block

ART

capitals. Then you are struck by the

ordinateness of the sacrifice, the way

of having had it taken away can

marble busts provide a setting that

thousand small accretions of domestic

What happened next was a very long

energy. The RA’s gilded cornices and should, by rights, seem incongruous with Wylie’s cartoonish anarchism.

it was made not dramatically but by a necessity.

“This is not the art grandeur of the rooms becomes a kind of a young person of joke that the paintings are in on. discovering the To understand why the Rose Wylie story matters to readers of Finito world. It is the art World, you need to know the life of someone who has behind the art. It is, in outline, familiar enough: a talented woman trained, had the world for a diverted, returned, and eventually very long time and is recognised. But the specifics are extraordinary. not remotely f inished Wylie was born in 1934 in Hythe, with it.”

Kent. She studied at the Folkestone Instead, somehow, it works: the

and Dover School of Art in the early

In the mid-1970s, in her early forties,

and figurative painting in the old-

And in 1981 — when she was forty-

the painter Roy Oxlade, and for

MA at the Royal College of Art. Her

painting largely stopped. She raised

the language and status of drawing.

continued; hers did not. This is not

start. She was a serious artist who had

1950s, learning anatomical drawing

she began returning to her practice.

fashioned way. In 1957 she married

six years old — she completed an

the next several decades her own

dissertation, characteristically, was on

three children. Her husband's career

She was not a student making a late

an unusual story for women of her

generation, which is precisely what

makes it worth examining — the sheer

already formed her sensibility, and

who was now returning to it with the

kind of focus that only the experience

produce.

slow burn. Through the 1980s and

1990s, Wylie worked. The paintings accumulated. A first major series — Room Project, made between

2002 and 2003 — began to attract

attention: large canvases in which cats, paper dolls, Olympic swimmers, and

figures from her own life drifted across

expansive surfaces. The scale was there, the looseness was there, the peculiar

vividness was there. But the world was not yet paying attention in the way that the work deserved.

Recognition, when it came, was

sudden and comprehensive. In 2010,

she was the only non-American artist included in Women to Watch at

the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington. In 2012, a

retrospective at the Jerwood Gallery

in Hastings. In 2013, a BP Spotlight

show at Tate Britain. In 2014, election as a Senior Royal Academician. By the time I met her, she was selling

work for six figures, P. Diddy owned

a painting, and Germaine Greer was a public admirer. Roy Oxlade — www.finito.org.uk

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Cloud Study: Stormy Sunset, 1821-1822 (Wikipedia.org)

her husband, the painter who had

can defang terror by making it sound

Thierry Henry, and the Duke and

marriage — died in 2014. Rose Wylie

Kent, and there is something very

series, tracking her obsession with

been better known for most of their continued.

absurd. She grew up in Hythe, in

specific and very English about the

Duchess of Argyll. Her Film Notes cinema, features scenes from Kill Bill

The show opens with a group of

way she processes history: not with

memories of the Blitz. In Park Dogs

slightly incredulous attention.

Kensington Gardens while Spitfires

moves through the full range of

Lilith — the mythological figure she

canvases depicting Nicole Kidman on

appears alongside a Gucci fashion

dress rendered in Wylie's deliberately

not random. They follow the logic of

and Inglorious Basterds processed

works drawn from Wylie's childhood

solemnity, but with a kind of amused,

& Air Raid, oversized dogs stalk

From the wartime rooms, the show

force rather than their narrative logic.

and Messerschmitts lock in combat

her preoccupations. A series of four

has labelled "the first feminist" —

a red carpet — the actress's backless

show attendee. The juxtapositions are

overhead. The word "doodlebug"

recurs across several canvases — the British nickname for the German

V-1 missile, and a perfect example of

Wylie's instinct for the way language 96

flat, deliberately imprecise style — shares space with Peter Crouch,

entirely through memory and

reassembled according to their graphic

a very particular and very alert mind,

one that sees connections and rhymes

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and collisions where most of us would see only category distinctions.

One of things she told me all those

years ago was her particular dislike for Leonardo da Vinci, and every room

tells us that the Renaissance possibly shouldn’t have happened – and

maybe so far as Wylie is concerned,

didn’t happen. It is as if by describing in any faithful way we start to do

violence to the quiddity of our own

perception and our own memory of that perception.

knowledge that I didn’t; Wylie did.

The show closes with four large

than when you arrived. For a painter,

by applying paint directly with her

“It seemed, at the time, a precise description not just of her garden but of her art: something that had been left to grow in its own direction, stubbornly, gloriously, without reference to what the neighbours might prefer.”

monochrome animal paintings, made hands. A bird, a lemur, an elephant,

a horse — the names written loosely beneath each figure, almost as if

she doesn't quite trust the image to

identify itself. The surfaces are thick and physical, and the effect is one

of blunt, unapologetic presence. The image comes first. Meaning follows later, if at all.

It’s an interesting insight – sometimes

The curator Katharine Stout has

definitely true. A treacherous thought

work shine, and largely it does. The

I wonder looking at Wylie if it’s

occasionally enters my head, which reminds me of an indignant Larry

David asking in an episode of Curb

Your Enthusiasm of a modern artist: “If I can do it, is it art?” That’s the

treacherous thought which pursues

me through the hallowed halls of the RA: “I think I can do this”. Against that notion, jostling with it, is the

You leave the RA in a better mood

described the goal as letting the

word most heard at the opening

was "exuberance" — and while that is accurate, it risks underselling

what Wylie actually achieves. The

Financial Times put it better: it is her ability to create collisions between

wildly different things that is most

remarkable, and most likely to take

up permanent residence in your mind.

this is not a small thing.

So what does the Wylie story

essentially amount to? It is not simply that she is old and still working,

though she is. It is not simply that she

became famous late, though she did. It is that her lateness is inseparable from www.finito.org.uk

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her particular quality as an artist —

pick up images all the time,” she has

finished with it. It’s the same energy

what it is. Had Wylie not spent those

photography and art books.”

years ago when I wanted to sit.

from the thing that makes her work

decades raising children, not returned

said, “because of newspapers and

which insisted on standing all those

“You have to know where to start, “This is the kind where to go on, and where to stop,” experience of a full life behind her, of artistic courage she told me, that afternoon in Kent. not developed her art quietly and that is very diff icult “It's very difficult to do something like stubbornly across two decades before the world decided to pay attention, this when 99 per cent of the world will to sustain without she would not be the artist she is. The say, ‘What's she doing? It's ghastly!’” a certain depth of work is what it is because of the life, This is the kind of artistic courage not in spite of it. self-knowledge — that is very difficult to sustain without Consider what she brings to the without having lived a certain depth of self-knowledge — canvas. Her cast of characters spans having lived enough to know Elizabeth I and Nicole Kidman, enough to know what without what you believe and to be willing Marilyn Monroe and Serena Williams, you believe and to be to act on it even when most of the Snow White and Lilith. She has lived world would prefer you didn't. It is through the Blitz, through the postwar willing to act on it the courage, specifically, of someone reconstruction of Britain, through even when most of the the sexual revolution and secondwho has waited long enough that the wave feminism, through the collapse world would prefer opinions of others have lost some of of the art market and its various their power. you didn't.” subsequent reinventions. She watched to her practice in her forties with the

her husband's career flourish while her

This is not the art of a young person

Rose Wylie: The Picture Comes First ran

remembers everything, and everything

someone who has had the world for

House, Piccadilly, London W1J 0BD,

own was paused. She returned. She is available to her paintings: “I can 98

discovering the world. It is the art of

at the Royal Academy of Arts, Burlington

a very long time and is not remotely

until 19 April 2026.

ART

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BIG ART INTERVIEW

CLAIRE JULIA-HILL, DIRECTOR AND OWNER OF GALLERY LES BOIS Finito World meets the visionary leading the way on sustainability in the art world You’ve described Gallery Les Bois

as London’s first sustainability-led commercial gallery. What did you

feel was missing from the traditional gallery model that made this necessary?

What struck me, both while studying Art History at Cambridge University and later working in the commercial gallery world, was a profound

disconnect between the urgency of

environmental conversations happening elsewhere and their relative absence

in the gallery model. In architecture,

engineering, and design, people were already discussing circular systems, life cycle assessments, and net zero

thinking with real seriousness. In the art world, by contrast, sustainability

was often either absent or treated as peripheral.

That felt increasingly untenable.

The global art market is worth over $65 billion a year, yet it remains

extraordinarily resource intensive, from shipping and packaging to storage

and climate control. It is an industry that speaks the language of beauty, vision, and cultural leadership, but

has historically been remarkably slow to interrogate its own environmental impact.

What was missing was a model that treated sustainability not as a side 100

Founder and Director Claire-Julia Hill. Courtesy of Gallery Les Bois.

note, nor as a curatorial theme alone,

“sustainability” in the arts can become

structure and ethics. I founded Gallery

structural change. How do you ensure

but as part of the gallery’s underlying Les Bois in 2024 to address precisely that gap. I wanted to build a gallery

where sustainability, conceptual rigour, and aesthetic excellence were not seen

as competing priorities, but as mutually reinforcing ones. On a personal level, I also became increasingly aware of

and enquiring about the provenance of existing artworks.

conviction: if the art world has the

signalled?

Portrait of John Vanbrugh (1664-1726) (Wikipedia.org)

At Gallery Les Bois, sustainability is

embedded at two levels: in the artists we represent through our curatorial

gallery operates. On the artists’ side, every artist provides a sustainability collectors about the nature of their

Founder and Director Claire-Julia Hill. Courtesy of Gallery Les Bois.

help shape a more responsible future.

There’s often a suspicion that

embedded rather than simply

statement, and we are transparent with

power to shape cultural imagination, then it also has the responsibility to

that, at Les Bois, it is genuinely

programme and in the way the

collectors requesting sustainable art

At heart, it came from a simple

aesthetic branding rather than

practice, including whether they are fully sustainable or environmentally conscious. That distinction is

important, because it allows us to

maintain clarity and integrity. In the

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case of artists such as John Sabraw,

reduce waste across the lifecycle of an

process, and context. To pretend

work itself, his pigments are created

logistical, but they are precisely where

At the same time, if you abandon

sustainability is inseparable from the from pollution extracted from acid mine drainage in Ohio, thereby

transforming environmental damage

into vibrant paints. With Sienna Martz, sustainability is equally embedded in

her material language. She works with

plant-based fibres, recycled fabrics, and second-hand textiles, refusing to use

wool, leather, or animal products, and

demonstrating how discarded materials

artwork. These decisions may appear meaningful change takes place.

We do not approach sustainability as a fixed state or a badge of perfection. It is a framework for responsibility and continual improvement. Structural

change is built through consistency, transparency, and the discipline to

ensure that values are reflected in the

day to day mechanics of the business.

can be reimagined into works of real

otherwise would be reductive.

distinctions altogether, the term loses meaning. So, for us, the

language matters. A fully sustainable artist is someone whose practice is fundamentally built around

sustainable materials and methods.

An environmentally conscious artist

may still work with more traditional

materials, but is actively making serious efforts to reduce impact, rethink

sourcing, or engage critically with

sculptural depth and beauty. For

ecological responsibility.

our artist duo Volcan, they

Crucially, there are also

explained “our work hold

structural limitations

history, stories, and

within the industry

experiences, and by

itself. In some

reclaiming them,

cases, the

we challenge the

sustainable

traditional art

equivalent of

making process

a material

that often

simply does

overlooks the

not yet exist

value in what is

at the quality

discarded. Our

required

aim is to give these

for serious

materials new life,

contemporary

transforming them

practice. Rather

into art that connects

than accept that

the past to the present.

as a fixed constraint,

Sustainability in the art

we see it as an area for

world is usually seen from an

active engagement. We are

environmental perspective, but we

believe it’s also about questioning the systems that shape how art is made.”

On the operational side, we apply the same level of rigour. We work with carbon tracked shipping, prioritise lower impact transport wherever

possible, minimise waste in installation

and packaging, and align ourselves with suppliers who share our environmental values. That includes working with

Rokbox reusable art shipping crates,

which replace the industry’s reliance on single use packaging and significantly 102

in ongoing dialogue with art

You

make a distinction between “fully

sustainable” and “environmentally conscious” artists. How do you

navigate that line without diluting the integrity of your mission?

We introduced that distinction very deliberately, because I wanted to

preserve both clarity and honesty.

Sustainability in artistic practice is

rarely binary. It exists on a spectrum shaped by material access, medium,

material suppliers, pushing for the

development of alternatives that meet both environmental and aesthetic

standards. A simple example would

be something like a recycled plastic

bottle canvas, which exists in principle, but not yet at the level of thickness, durability, and surface quality that

painters require. Our aim is to help

drive the creation of materials that are

not only sustainable, but also desirable to work with.

I do not see this approach as diluting

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the mission; I see it as creating a more

to reshape the market within the next

the goal is genuine change in the art

for a rising generation of collectors,

rigorous and workable framework. If

world, then we need to make space not only for those already operating at the furthest edge of sustainable practice, but also for those moving the dial in

meaningful ways, and for the systems around them to evolve in parallel.

Integrity, to my mind, comes from transparency. We make those

distinctions visible so that collectors

can engage with them thoughtfully, and

decade. That indicates to me that

environmental responsibility is not an

abstract concern. It is part of how they understand legacy, taste, and cultural relevance. I also note (Neilson) that

66% of global consumers are willing

to pay more for sustainable brands and

rest of the system eventually follows.

To what extent does sustainability

impose limits on artistic practice, and to what extent does it open up new creative possibilities?

It does both, but I would argue that its creative possibilities are far more compelling than its limitations.

34 % of Boardrooms now discuss ESG

All meaningful artistic movements

15% in 2020.

constraint, whether material, political,

at every board meeting whereas it was

have emerged through some form of

or conceptual. Sustainability introduces a new kind of constraint, one that asks

so that progress is acknowledged

not only what is made, but how

without collapsing important

and with what consequence.

differences.

When approached seriously,

Many collectors

that does not diminish

still prioritise

artistic practice; it

provenance,

sharpens it.

prestige, and return. Are

What is particularly

a real shift

how this plays

interesting is

you seeing

out at the level

in collector

of material

behaviour

transformation.

towards

John Sabraw’s

sustainability, or is the

practice is a

market still

powerful example.

catching up?

He works with

scientists and

There is absolutely

environmental engineers

a shift, although

to extract iron oxide from

it is not yet universal.

polluted waterways caused by

Provenance, prestige, and

acid mine drainage. The process

return remain deeply important,

itself is as significant as the outcome,

particularly at the upper end of the

market, and rightly so. But increasingly, sustainability is entering the equation

I often say that collectors are no longer

value rather than an external moral

are also asking, “How was it made?

as an additional dimension of

asking only, “Is this a good work?” They

consideration.

What values does it embody? What

What is especially striking is the

mindset of younger collectors. The Art Basel & UBS Report 2024 showed

does owning it say about the future I

want to be associated with?” That is a very real shift.

contaminated water is neutralised,

cleaned, and returned to the ecosystem, while the extracted pollutants are

refined into rich, complex pigments.

These pigments are then used to create

paintings of remarkable luminosity and depth. The work is not simply about representing environmental issues,

that 62% of millennial collectors factor

So yes, the market is still catching up in

it is materially entangled with them.

Deloitte has reported that 70% of

is moving faster than many people

damage and a mechanism of repair.

sustainability into acquisitions, while

collectors under 40 expect sustainability

structural terms, but collector behaviour

The painting becomes both a record of

assume. And once demand changes, the

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Claire Julia-Hill

differently, but with equal

intentionality. Her sculptural forms are constructed entirely from plant based fibres, recycled textiles, and

second hand materials that would

otherwise have been discarded. There is a quiet discipline in her practice, a

refusal to rely on newly manufactured or animal derived materials which

results in works that feel both intricate and deeply considered. The process is slow, tactile, and accumulative.

Each piece carries the memory of its previous life, reconfigured into

something that feels organic, almost

ecological in its structure. It challenges ideas of permanence and value, while demonstrating that restraint can

generate extraordinary visual richness.

Jasmine Pradissitto’s work moves yet further, into the realm of functional

material innovation. Her sculptures are

created using a pioneering material that actively absorbs nitrogen dioxide from the air. These are objects that operate 104

almost as environmental systems,

“What struck me...

The work collapses the distinction was a profound between sculpture and infrastructure. disconnect between It raises a more radical question: can art move beyond representation the urgency of and become an active participant in environmental environmental repair?

What unites these practices is not conversations simply that they are “sustainable,” happening elsewhere but that they expand what artistic materiality can be. Sustainability, in this and their relative sense, is not a restriction placed on the absence in the gallery artist, it is a reorientation of attention.

It forces a more conscious relationship model.” responding to pollution in real time.

with process, with sourcing, with impact.

Far from narrowing artistic possibility,

it opens entirely new material languages and conceptual frameworks. It asks

artists to consider not just the finished object, but the chain of decisions that

Your operational model includes carbon-tracked shipping and

environmentally aligned suppliers.

Has that made the business materially more complex, or has it sharpened your sense of purpose?

bring it into being, and in doing so,

It has certainly made the business more

responsibility of the work.

sense of purpose immeasurably.

it deepens both the meaning and the

complex, but it has also sharpened our

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When you choose to operate in a more

being younger meant having to prove

Gallery Les Bois is absolutely part of

quickly realise that many of the easiest

consistently.

work that carries not only aesthetic

environmentally responsible way, you systems are also the most wasteful.

Lower impact transport often requires

more planning. Responsible packaging

requires more thought. Supplier choices become more deliberate. There are fewer off the shelf solutions.

But that complexity has a clarifying

effect. It forces you to interrogate each part of the business and ask whether it aligns with your values or simply

reflects inertia. Over time, what initially feels like friction becomes a form

of coherence. The operations begin

to mirror the curatorial ethos of the

gallery, and that alignment creates a much stronger sense of identity.

So yes, it is more demanding. But

it is also far more purposeful. And I would rather build something with

that depth of integrity than inherit an

easier model that no longer reflects the realities of the world we are in.

You founded the gallery at 26, which

is unusually young for the commercial art world. Has that helped you

challenge conventions, or created additional barriers to being taken seriously?

Both, unquestionably.

Founding the gallery at 26 gave me a

certain freedom, because I was not yet so deeply conditioned by the industry that I assumed its structures were

fixed. That made it easier to question

inherited norms and imagine a different model. Sometimes youth can be an

advantage precisely because it allows

you to be less deferential to convention.

At the same time, the commercial art world is still a relationship

driven sector, and credibility is often

measured through age, experience, and established networks. So of course, there have been moments where

seriousness more quickly and more

that wider shift. We are interested in

That said, I have found that clarity

power, but also material consciousness.

you are deeply informed, operationally

be didactic. Quite the opposite, some of

something distinctive, people eventually

they are rooted in an understanding

founding the gallery young made the

inseparable.

want simply to enter the art world as

a broader, richer definition of value,

of vision cuts through a great deal. If

That does not mean every artwork must

committed, and genuinely building

the most powerful works are subtle. But

respond to that. In some ways, I think

that time, responsibility, and legacy are

mission more urgent to me. I did not

I think the art world is moving towards

it was, I wanted to help shape what it

one that includes not just what a

could become.

“We do not approach sustainability as a f ixed state or a badge of perfection.

It is a framework for responsibility and continual improvement.”

There’s an interesting parallel between sustainability and storytelling in your work, the idea that materials carry

histories. Do you see Les Bois as part of a wider cultural shift in how art relates to time and responsibility?

Very much so. I think one of the most interesting cultural shifts underway is a growing recognition that materials

are never neutral. Every pigment, fibre,

work means symbolically, but what its

making tells us about how we live now.

Art schools often practise

sustainability out of necessity, through reuse, improvisation,

and constraint. Do you think the

commercial art world has something to learn from that ethos?

Absolutely. Art schools often foster a kind of material intelligence that the commercial art world can lose

sight of. When resources are limited, artists become inventive. They learn to improvise, to reuse, to question

assumptions about what is necessary.

That can produce extraordinary experimentation.

There is a humility in that ethos which I think is valuable. It understands

that constraint is not the enemy of ambition, and that ingenuity often

emerges precisely when abundance is not taken for granted.

surface, and process carries a history

The commercial art world has much

consequence.

in a moment when inherited habits

of extraction, labour, geography, and That changes how we look at art. A

work is no longer understood solely as

to learn from that mindset, especially around production need rethinking.

Not everything needs to be maximal,

an autonomous object, but also as the

disposable, or endlessly expanded.

that sense, sustainability and storytelling

aware approach produces work of

us to think about origins, systems, and

I also think fibre art is a wonderful

visible endpoint of a series of choices. In

Sometimes a more considered, resource

are deeply connected. They both ask

greater originality and depth.

what has been hidden from view.

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foregrounds process. It makes labour visible. Historically, it has often

been marginalised or misread, yet

today it is at the centre of some of

the most urgent conversations about

sustainability, ethics, and responsibility.

“Integrity, to my mind, comes from transparency.

We make those distinctions visible so that collectors can engage with them thoughtfully, and so that progress is acknowledged without collapsing important differences.”

How do you approach pricing in

a sustainability-led gallery? Does

environmental responsibility add a

premium, or is part of the mission to normalise it within existing market expectations?

contemporary art.

That said, pricing always reflects

curiosity, and cultural ambition than

the work, the scale of the practice,

“The work is not simply about representing environmental issues, it is materially entangled with them. The painting becomes both a record of damage and a mechanism of repair.”

multiple factors, the quality of

the artist’s career trajectory, rarity,

demand, and so on. In some cases, more responsible processes may

involve additional cost or labour, but I do not think sustainability should

be understood primarily through the language of premium. It should be

understood through the language of value.

What we are trying to help reshape is the market’s understanding of what value includes. If provenance tells

one story about an object’s history, then material and environmental

responsibility tell another. Over time, I believe those dimensions will become increasingly inseparable.

To what extent do you see regulation, whether environmental or financial,

shaping the future of the art market?

I think regulation will become

increasingly important, particularly around transparency, reporting,

and accountability. The art world has long operated with a degree of exceptionalism, but it is not

insulated from broader economic and environmental realities forever.

Part of the mission is absolutely to

We are already seeing other sectors

I would be wary of positioning

supply chains, emissions, and

moral surcharge, because that risks

that the art market will face growing

responsibility is exceptional rather

expectations, financial compliance,

create a niche category of worthy

effectively function as a form of market

to demonstrate that work grounded

That said, regulation tends to codify

international stage with the same

more interesting question is whether

normalise it.

adapt to increased scrutiny around

sustainability as a kind of rarefied

responsible practice. It seems inevitable

reinforcing the idea that environmental

pressure, whether from environmental

than essential. Our goal is not to

or shifting collector demands that

but commercially separate work. It is

regulation in themselves.

in sustainability can stand on the

change rather than originate it. The

conceptual depth, aesthetic excellence, and collectability as any other serious 106

the sector move through leadership,

the art world can evolve before it is forced to. I would much rather see

through reluctant compliance alone.

But one way or another, the future

will require greater transparency. And

I think that is healthy. If art is serious about legacy, then it must also be serious about responsibility.

There is sometimes a tension between global reach and environmental

responsibility, particularly with art fairs and international collectors.

How do you reconcile those competing pressures?

It is a very real tension, and I do not think there is any serious value in

pretending otherwise. The art world

is international by nature, and global

exchange has always been part of what

gives it vitality. But global reach comes with environmental consequences,

especially when it relies on habitual air freight, excessive packaging, and relentless circulation.

For us, reconciliation begins with

intentionality. We try to consolidate shipping, prioritise lower impact transport where possible, think

carefully about what genuinely needs to travel, and make decisions that weigh cultural value against environmental cost.

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Artist Sienna Martz. Photo: Joy Masi. Courtesy of Gallery Les Bois.

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transport, and the wider environmental implications of ownership and display.

Not in a hectoring way, but in an intelligent and expansive one.

Collectors are often far more receptive to these conversations than people

assume. Many are already asking the questions. They want to understand

not only the aesthetic and conceptual dimensions of a work, but also its

material life and what it stands for in a broader sense.

For me, the gallery’s role is to make that conversation richer. Not to

prescribe virtue, but to widen the frame through which value is understood.

Do you think sustainability will

become a baseline expectation in the art world, or will it remain a

differentiating feature for certain galleries?

In the long term, I believe it will

become a baseline expectation, though probably unevenly and not without resistance.

At present, sustainability still

differentiates certain galleries because

the sector as a whole has not yet caught up. But I do not think that will remain

Oliver Akdeniz, Clarity I (2023). Courtesy of Gallery Les Bois.

the case indefinitely. As collector

I am also interested in the broader

What role do you think galleries

evolve. We already think about

not just about artists, but about

question of how the market might

provenance, rarity, and condition as central to value. It is not difficult to imagine a future in which

carbon tracking becomes part of that conversation too, where the

environmental life of a work is seen as

part of its story rather than something external to it.

should play in educating collectors, the environmental implications of collecting itself ?

I think galleries have a significant

responsibility here. We are not merely

intermediaries facilitating transactions, we are context builders. We shape how collectors understand works,

artists, and, increasingly, the systems

Global reach still matters enormously,

surrounding them.

a more thoughtful and selective form of

beyond the usual art historical and

expectations change, as regulation

increases, and as environmental literacy

becomes more embedded across culture, the idea that a gallery can ignore these

questions altogether will become harder to sustain.

What may begin as a differentiating feature often becomes the norm.

We have seen that happen in other

industries, from architecture to fashion to finance. I suspect the art world will

follow the same trajectory, albeit in its own slower, more idiosyncratic way.

but I think it must increasingly become

That means education must go

My hope is that sustainability becomes

global reach. Expansion at any cost is

market framing. It should also include

ceases to be a novelty. At that point,

no longer a credible model.

108

conversations about materials, process,

so integral to the market that it

the conversation will no longer be

SUSTAINABILITY

whether responsibility matters, but how

representing exceptional artists, and for

enacted.

conversation in a lasting way.

thoughtfully and ambitiously it is being

having helped shift the terms of the

If you look ten years ahead, what

More broadly, success for the art

for Gallery Les Bois, but for

longer being treated as a niche concern

would success look like, not just

sustainability in the art market as a

market would mean sustainability no

responsibility.

Ultimately, the question of success is also a question of legacy. The art

market has always been concerned with what will outlive us. Ten years from

now, I hope we are in a position where

or a branding exercise, but as part of

collectors, galleries, and institutions

For Gallery Les Bois, success will

understood. It would mean a sector that

separated from the conditions we leave

only ethically serious, but curatorially

its operations, more materially literate,

Art has always asked humanity a simple

production, and more willing to align

leave behind?” Today, that answer has

whole?

mean proving that this model is not

and commercially enduring. I would want the gallery to be known for a

programme of real artistic rigour, for

how quality, relevance, and legacy are

understand that legacy cannot be

has become more transparent about

behind.

more thoughtful about transport and

but enduring question- “what will you

cultural prestige with environmental

never mattered more.

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ARCHITECTURE

THE ARCHITECTS OF TOMORROW

HOW REDESIGNED SCHOOLS AND UNIVERSITIES ARE SHAPING THE FUTURE OF WORK

By Christopher Jackson

T

here is a school in Ørestad, on the outskirts of Copenhagen, which

from the outside resembles something closer to a tech campus than anything from our own memory of education.

The Ørestad Gymnasium, designed

by 3XN Architects and completed in

2007, is essentially a single enormous open space wrapped in a glass facade, its interiors arranged around a

central atrium in which students

from different year groups mingle,

collaborate, and argue. There are no

corridors in the conventional sense,

no rows of closed doors behind which teachers declaim to seated rows. The

building is a philosophical statement rendered in concrete and glass: that

learning is social, that knowledge is

not transmitted but constructed, and

that the environment in which young people spend their formative years

is as powerful an influence on their development as any curriculum.

I mention this not because Ørestad

is unique — increasingly, it’s not — but because it is so brazen about its

intentions. Most buildings prefer not to announce their ambitions. A Victorian school, with its martial corridors and

high windows, designed so that children could not see out and be distracted, tells us exactly what its builders thought about human nature and about the 110

Ørestad Gymnasium (Wikipedia.org)

ARCHITECTURE

Vittra Telefonplan school in Stockholm (archdaily.com)

purpose of education: compliance first,

urgently need – creativity, collaboration,

most of us grew up in was shaped, in

Gymnasium makes the opposite

precisely those which traditional

of the early nineteenth century – a

learning as a byproduct. The Ørestad

argument with equal force. Its message

is that the future of work looks nothing like an assembly line, and therefore the future of education should not either.

“The building is a philosophical statement rendered in concrete and glass.”

lateral thinking, adaptability – are educational environments most systematically undermine.

The result is a wave of educational

architecture that is genuinely trying to

think ahead. What does a building look like if its purpose is not to transmit a

fixed body of knowledge, but to develop a disposition toward learning? What

does a university look like if its goal is not merely to provide credentials for

its essentials, by the Prussian system system designed, quite deliberately,

to produce reliable, orderly, obedient

citizens capable of staffing an industrial economy and, when necessary, an army.

The classroom as we know it – rows

of desks facing a blackboard, a single

authority figure at the front – is not a natural feature of the universe. It is a

design choice, made for specific reasons, which have long since ceased to apply.

This is the conversation that is now

a young person going forwards, but

You can see this inheritance everywhere.

controversially – in architecture firms,

first century economy actually needs?

1980, and the architecture tells you,

attempting to answer them deserve

authority flows in one direction. The

happening – often quietly, sometimes

to create the kind of person a twenty-

Walk into most schools built before

government education departments, and

These are large questions. The architects

without a word being spoken, that

more attention than they usually receive.

teacher's desk is elevated, or positioned

university planning committees across

the world. A generation of architects has concluded that the spaces in which we

learn are among the most consequential we will ever inhabit. And a parallel

The Problem with the Past

generation of employers has begun to

To understand what is happening now,

are listening, that the skills they most

The model of educational space that

say, loudly enough that institutions

it helps to understand what came before.

centrally. The windows are high. The

corridors are narrow and supervised.

The message is legible: you are here to receive, to comply, to reproduce. The

building is an argument about power, and it is made in bricks and mortar www.finito.org.uk

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must, to quote Walt Whitman, contain multitudes.

“The classroom as we know it... is not a natural feature of the universe. It is a design choice.”

Bosch has developed a vocabulary of

what she calls “learning landscapes” –

an approach that identifies six distinct

modes of engagement: the cave (solitary,

focused work), the campfire (large-group instruction), the watering hole (informal peer exchange), the studio (creative,

hands-on production), the mountaintop

(presentation and performance), and the laboratory (experimental, exploratory investigation). Her designs try to

embed all six into a single coherent

environment, creating a school that can flex between them as the day demands.

Even a sceptic about modern trends in

education will have to acknowledge that the results are visually extraordinary — her Vittra Telefonplan school in The Jordal School in Oslo (archdaily.com)

rather than language, which makes it all

Bosch. The Danish designer – she

The architects now leading the way

intersection of architecture, interior

they are not merely choosing materials

spent the past two decades developing a

the more difficult to question.

describes herself as working at the

in educational design understand that

design, and social innovation – has

and floor plans. They are making

philosophy of educational space that has

claims about human nature, about

the relationship between teacher and

influenced projects on every inhabited continent.

Stockholm, for example, looks less like a school than like a particularly ambitious art installation, with slides connecting different levels, multi-coloured

sculptural forms functioning as seating and workspace, and a total absence of

traditional classrooms. But Bosch is at pains to emphasise that the aesthetics are secondary. What matters is the

student, about what knowledge is and

Her starting point is deceptively simple:

pedagogy that the architecture enables.

best of them so interesting: they are

different kinds of space. It sounds

beings,” she has said, “and then let that

implications are radical. If a child needs

The question of what employers make of

but needs physical movement and social

is one that Bosch has thought about

how it moves. This is what makes the

simultaneously architects, pedagogues, and philosophers.

Meet Rosan Bosch Few names come up more frequently in conversations about the future of learning environments than Rosan 112

that different kinds of learning require

“We have to start with the human

obvious when stated baldly, but the

define the architecture.”

quiet concentration for mathematics

graduates formed in such environments

interaction to absorb history through

roleplay, then a single classroom cannot serve both needs. The building must

be differentiated, flexible, responsive. It

carefully. Her answer is pointed: the

skills that employers most consistently say they cannot find – people who can

work collaboratively without being told

ARCHITECTURE Dyson Institute of Engineering and Technology

which young people can imagine futures for themselves that their circumstances might otherwise prevent them from envisioning.

“A signif icant proportion of the most important learning... happens outside formal teaching sessions.”

This is more than a rhetorical flourish.

Snøhetta's school designs consistently

emphasise transparency – literal, physical transparency, through the extensive

use of glass – as a means of breaking

down the hierarchies that conventional how, who can tolerate ambiguity, who can move fluidly between different modes of engagement, who can

both lead and follow as the situation

requires – are precisely the skills that

conventional educational architecture

suppresses and that learning landscape architecture is designed to develop.

secondary schools, is rooted in what its

architects describe as “the social contract of the building.” Every building, in their view, makes an implicit promise to the

people who use it. A hospital promises

safety. A museum promises significance.

A school, they argue, should promise possibility – it should be a space in

school architecture reinforces. When a student can see the art room from the

science corridor, when the school library bleeds visually into the cafeteria, when

teachers' workspace is visible rather than sequestered, something changes in the implicit understanding of what school is for. It becomes less like a series of

distinct subject-silos and more like a Dyson Institute of Engineering and Technology

Snøhetta and the Norwegian Experiment

If Bosch works primarily at the scale

of individual schools, the Norwegian

firm Snøhetta has been thinking about what it means to redesign an entire

educational culture. Snøhetta is perhaps best known for its public buildings — the Oslo Opera House, the National September 11 Memorial Museum

Pavilion in New York — but over the past decade it has turned increasing

attention to the relationship between

architecture and learning, with results

that are attracting attention well beyond Scandinavia.

The firm's approach, articulated most

clearly in its work on Norwegian upper www.finito.org.uk

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single community of inquiry.

The firm's Jordal School in Oslo,

completed in 2022, is a case study in this approach. The building is

structured around what the architects

call a “knowledge landscape” – a central, multi-level shared space that links every

part of the school and that is designed to be used for everything from large-scale

performances to small-group study. The message, again, is about the nature of

knowledge itself: that it is not owned by individual departments, not dispensed by individual teachers, but collectively constructed by everyone present.

The University Rethink The conversation happening in schools is also, with different emphases and different constraints, happening in

universities. Here the stakes are in some ways higher, because universities are

explicitly in the business of preparing people for professional life, and the

gap between what universities produce and what employers actually need

has become one of the more publicly

uncomfortable facts of contemporary education.

The response from a number of

universities, working with architects

who understand the problem, has been

to try to design spaces that are explicitly oriented toward the future of work

rather than the conventions of the past.

This has meant, above all, thinking seriously about interdisciplinarity — about creating environments

in which students from different

boundary between education and work

should be as thin as possible – students

spend half their time in academic study and half working on live engineering projects for Dyson. The architecture

reflects this: there are no spaces that feel distinctly “educational” in the

conventional sense, no lecture theatres designed for passive reception. The

buildings are workshops, laboratories, and collaborative spaces, and the

students who use them are treated, by

the design, as young professionals rather than as pupils.

“Architecture can create the conditions for good teaching.

It cannot, by itself, produce good teachers.”

What is interesting about the Dyson Institute is not its particularity but its generalisability. The principle that education and work should interpenetrate – that the best

preparation for a career is not a

simulation of professional life but

actual professional life, encountered

under conditions of appropriate support and guidance – is one that the best

educational architects are now trying to

embed into their buildings. The question is no longer whether this is a good idea, but how to do it well.

The British Context In Britain, the architectural practice

building makes it natural.

the most thoughtful practitioners

Allies and Morrison has been among

The Dyson Institute of Engineering

of what might be called “purposive

by WilkinsonEyre, is one of the more

not merely functional but that embed

is designed on the principle that the

spatial organisation.

and Technology in Wiltshire, designed

educational design” – buildings that are

striking recent examples. The campus

specific educational values in their

114

Exeter's new Forum building, and

more recently on a series of school

projects for academies and free schools, reflects a consistent preoccupation with the relationship between space and

behaviour. The question they return to

repeatedly is: what does a building invite you to do? Not what it permits, but

what makes it feel natural, obvious, easy?

Because the difference between what a

building permits and what it invites can be enormous, and it is in that difference that the real educational work happens.

The Forum at Exeter, completed in

2012, was one of the first major British university buildings to treat the space between formal academic activities – the corridors, the cafes, the informal gathering points – as educationally serious. The building was designed

around the insight, now widely accepted but then still controversial, that a

significant proportion of the most

important learning that happens at

a university happens outside formal teaching sessions. Conversations

between students, chance encounters with ideas from different disciplines,

the gradual accumulation of a sense of intellectual community – all of these

require space, and space that is designed to encourage rather than discourage them.

The Forum does this through a kind of

generous informality: its central atrium is vast enough to contain a multiplicity of activities simultaneously, its spaces

departments encounter each other not by administrative fiat but because the

Their work on the University of

grade from very public to very private without hard boundaries, its visual

connections between different parts of the building create a sense of the

university as a single community rather

than a collection of departments. It is, in this sense, a profoundly social building — and its success has influenced a

generation of subsequent educational projects.

ARCHITECTURE

University of Exeter: The Forum

Henning Larsen One of the less frequently discussed

thinking about educational buildings through the lens of wellbeing – an

dimensions of educational architecture

approach that encompasses everything

central — is the relationship between

daylighting to the provision of spaces for

of the people who use it. The evidence

of educational buildings in Denmark

is now substantial and growing; the

what they describe as “the quality of the

actively support it, is equally well-

in a building, as opposed to its formal

— but one that is becoming increasingly

from acoustic performance and

the built environment and the wellbeing

solitude and rest. Their work on a series

that poor buildings damage learning

and beyond has consistently prioritised

corollary, that well-designed buildings

daily experience” – the texture of being

established.

characteristics.

The Danish firm Henning Larsen

This matters for the future of work in

Architects has been at the forefront of

ways that are not always immediately

obvious. The skills that the most

thoughtful employers now say they most need – resilience, emotional intelligence, the capacity for sustained concentration, the ability to manage one's own energy and attention – are not necessarily

always acquired through instruction.

They are developed through experience, and they are supported or undermined by the environments in which people

spend their time. A school that is loud, poorly lit, physically uncomfortable, and aesthetically impoverished does

not merely fail to teach resilience – it www.finito.org.uk

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ARCHITECTURE

actively works against it, by making the

spaces positioned at points of natural

picture without acknowledging its

ordeal.

from public areas – they happen more.

that is genuinely ambitious is also

daily experience of learning a minor

congregation, workspaces that are visible

complications. Educational architecture

Henning Larsen's educational buildings

Applied to educational buildings, this

expensive — often prohibitively so, for

the architects call “restorative” – spaces

principles: minimise the amount of

need it. The schools that are investing in

maximise the amount of space that

are, for the most part, well-resourced

position formal learning spaces in

funded Scandinavian state schools. The

are consciously designed to be what

in which the nervous system can find equilibrium, in which the pressures of academic and social life can be

temporarily set aside, in which young people can encounter themselves in something like quiet. This sounds,

perhaps, impossibly idealistic. But there

is a substantial body of evidence linking environmental quality to academic

performance, and the architects who

take this seriously are doing something practically important, not merely

something aesthetically pleasing.

Designing for Collaboration The American firm NBBJ – whose

portfolio spans healthcare, technology

campuses, and educational buildings –

has developed one of the more rigorous frameworks for thinking about how physical space shapes collaborative

behaviour. Their research, conducted in partnership with several major

technology companies who were trying to understand why some of their office environments produced more creative work than others, has had significant implications for educational design.

Their central finding – unsurprising

once stated, but surprisingly rarely acted upon – is that collaboration does not

happen because people are instructed to collaborate. It happens because

the physical environment makes it

feel natural, low-cost, and rewarding.

When people have to traverse long

corridors and navigate closed doors to

reach a colleague, they do so less often.

When chance encounters are built

into the fabric of a building – through shared circulation routes, common 116

insight produces a specific set of design

the schools and universities that most

space dedicated to single-use functions,

Rosan Bosch-style learning landscapes

can support multiple modes of activity,

private institutions or generously

relation to informal gathering spaces so that the transition between them

is easy and natural, and create visual

overcrowded Victorian schoolrooms that most need redesigning are also the least likely to get it.

connections that remind people of the

There is also a genuine pedagogical

to.

learning environments. The research is

breadth of the community they belong

“The buildings that are genuinely changing educational culture are those built around a coherent view of human learning.”

NBBJ's work on the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation headquarters in

Seattle, and on a series of university

science buildings in the United States,

has demonstrated that these principles

can be implemented at significant scale without sacrificing the acoustic privacy or the focused concentration that

serious intellectual work also requires.

The key, as their designers explain, is

understanding that collaboration and

concentration are not opposites. They

debate about the merits of open, flexible mixed: some studies suggest that highly open spaces can be overwhelming

for certain learners, particularly those with attention difficulties or sensory sensitivities, and that the removal of

structure can disadvantage children who come from home environments that

offer them little. The advocates of open learning landscapes are not wrong, but neither are the critics who point out

that structure and routine have their own value, and that not every child

thrives in an environment designed for spontaneity.

The most thoughtful architects — Bosch among them — acknowledge this

explicitly, and it is why the best learning

landscape designs include a full range of environments, from highly structured to highly open. The point is not to abolish the desk and the blackboard, but to

make them one option among many rather than the only option on offer.

are complementary — and the best

There is also the question of teacher

offering a gradient of environments from

designed building is not sufficient

with easy movement between them.

who understand how to use it,

educational buildings support both,

training and pedagogy. A brilliantly

the deeply social to the deeply solitary,

on its own. It requires teachers

The Complications It would be dishonest to present this

who have been trained to facilitate learning in environments that are less hierarchical than those they

themselves were educated in, and

ARCHITECTURE

Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation headquarters in Seattle

who are prepared to tolerate the

visually striking. Rosan Bosch's work is

There is a moment, walking through the

genuine collaborative learning involves.

– though it does – but because it is built

trying to work out what it reminds you

messiness and unpredictability that

Architecture can create the conditions for good teaching. It cannot, by itself, produce good teachers.

interesting not because it looks exciting

around a serious engagement with what learning actually is.

Ørestad Gymnasium, when you stop

of and simply accept that it is something new. The students moving through the

Third, that the conversation between

central atrium – working alone, in pairs,

becoming genuinely productive in a

in stillness – look, in some undeniable

First, that the movement away from

growing recognition, on all sides, that

future that has not yet quite arrived.

real and gathering momentum. The

happens in a school building matters to

trusted with the complexity of the

emerging pedagogical research,

environments we give young people shape

it.

relationship between environment and

workplaces they will inhabit and create.

architects, educators, and employers is

in clusters, in large groups, in movement,

way it has not always been. There is a

way, like people being prepared for a

the Victorian classroom model is

these questions are connected – that what

They look like people who have been

forces driving it – employer demands,

what happens in an economy, that the

world, and who are learning to manage

a growing understanding of the

the adults they become and therefore the

Whether the buildings they are

learning – are not going to reverse. The

And fourth, that the architects leading

Amidst all these complications, what

can we say with confidence about where educational architecture is heading?

question is the pace and the equity of the transition.

Second, that the most important

innovations are not primarily aesthetic but philosophical. The buildings that are genuinely changing educational

culture are those built around a coherent view of human learning and human

development, not those that are merely

this work deserve to be understood

as something more than designers of

beautiful spaces. They are, in the most serious sense, shaping the future. The

buildings they create will outlast them;

the people formed in those buildings will

shape the world that follows. It is difficult to think of a more consequential kind of work.

educated in will ultimately produce the

outcomes their architects intend remains

to be seen. Education is too complicated, and too dependent on factors that

architecture cannot control, for any

building to guarantee results. But the

ambition – to create environments that take human beings seriously, that trust them with freedom and support their

development toward it – seems to me worth whatever it costs to pursue it. www.finito.org.uk

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MUSIC

BACK TO MICHAEL JACKSON George Achebe on Genius, Fame, and the Impossibility of Cancellation

Wikipedia

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MUSIC

I

magine one of those talent shows — Pop Idol, Britain's Got Talent,

any of them — running their usual

procession of hopefuls and heartbreak.

The judges sit there with their

rehearsed severity, their measured

enthusiasm for the competent. Now imagine Michael Jackson walking

onto that stage. Not the diminished

figure of his later years, not the tabloid caricature, but Michael Jackson in his

pomp: 1983, say, or 1988. Imagine him

in the sequined jacket, the single glove

catching the light. Imagine him taking his position, the music starting, and then — the moonwalk, the spin, the

voice that could slide from a whisper to a scream and back again without ever losing its centre.

You might as well end the show. Simon Cowell — or whoever is playing the

role of arbiter — would have no choice but to declare him an instant winner.

The competition would be over before it began, rendered absurd by the sheer

gulf in talent. It would be like watching Usain Bolt race against enthusiastic

amateurs, or Mozart sitting down at

"mechanical storytelling," a portrait

career remain, even now, barely

it leaves one unsettled." One reviewer

November 1982, spent 37 weeks at

"so vacant of nuance or substance that notes that the film "clearly loves Michael Jackson and his music, but it's painfully

uninterested in understanding him." The production history tells its own story: a clause discovered in a legal settlement

led to references to the 1993 child sexual abuse allegations being removed, the third act revised, twenty-two days of

reshoots. What emerged is less a film

than a commemorative souvenir booklet, a greatest hits compilation that offers

spectacle — Jaafar Jackson's performance as his uncle is universally praised for

its uncanny physical accuracy — but precious little insight.

surpass others; it made comparison itself

worldwide. Fans describe it as "pure

Jackson's gift was such that it didn't just

film has grossed over $430 million

seem faintly ridiculous.

entertainment," "the closest thing to a

the sheer, overwhelming magnitude of his talent. Everything else — the

allegations, the eccentricities, the tragedy — exists in the shadow of that fact.

And now, with Antoine Fuqua's biopic Michael arriving in cinemas, we find

ourselves forced once again to confront what we do with genius when it comes attached to a deeply troubling life.

The film itself, as has been widely

For a period, it sold a million copies

a week. The album eventually became

the first in RIAA history to be certified 30 times multi-platinum in the United States – over 30 million copies sold

domestically alone – with worldwide

sales estimates ranging from 70 to 100 million copies. It produced seven top

ten singles. Seven. From a single album.

At one point, during the height of

Thriller's dominance, it was selling like "a household staple," in the words of biographer J. Randy Taraborrelli.

Jackson's total career sales exceeded

one billion records worldwide. He had

And yet the audiences have come. The

with when we discuss Michael Jackson:

number one on the Billboard charts.

“The scale of Jackson's 13 number-one singles. He holds 39 official Guinness World Records. At gift was such that it age 11 years and 5 months, as the lead didn't just surpass vocalist of the Jackson 5, he became the youngest person ever to front a numberothers; it made song ("I Want You Back" in comparison itself seem one 1970). The scale of these achievements becomes even more staggering when faintly ridiculous.”

a school piano recital. The scale of

That is the first truth we must reckon

comprehensible. Thriller, released in

Michael Jackson concert," an experience that left them ready "to revisit every album, every era, every sequined

glove." The split between critical

reception and audience enthusiasm is itself revealing. The critics want

understanding; the audience wants the music, the moonwalk, the magic. They want to remember why they fell in

love in the first place, and they are not

particularly interested in wrestling with complications.

written about, is a study in evasion.

One cannot entirely blame them. The

assessment of its sanitised approach.

consider.

Critics have been merciless in their

complications are genuinely painful to

The reviews speak of "utterly sanitised,"

The numbers around Michael Jackson's

one considers they were accomplished across just six solo albums released

between 1979 and 2001 — Off the Wall, Thriller, Bad, Dangerous, HIStory, and Invincible. That final trio — Bad and

Dangerous — joined Thriller as the top

three best-selling solo albums of all time by 1993.

We speak casually about “the best,”

about “the greatest,” but with Jackson the superlatives are not rhetorical

flourishes. They are statistical realities.

Quincy Jones, who produced Off the

Wall, Thriller, and Bad, once remarked: "Michael's magic was in how he gave himself to every note." The producer spoke of Jackson's focus during the

filming of The Wiz: “He’d get up four

hours before everyone else to get these prosthetics on his face, and then he'd stand there, very, very diligently and www.finito.org.uk

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The machinery of celebrity was less

Wikipedia

democratised. There was no internet to

fragment attention across infinite niches.

If you wanted spectacle, if you wanted transcendence through performance, there was Michael Jackson, and then

there was a very long distance to anyone else.

“We speak casually about ‘the best,’ about ‘the greatest,’ but with Jackson the superlatives are not rhetorical flourishes.

They are statistical realities.”

It is hard to appreciate today the scale of Jackson's fame in that era, and therefore how destructive it must have been. He

was not merely famous; he was a global phenomenon, a singular figure whose

presence could shut down city blocks, whose appearance on television could draw over 100 million viewers. The

Thriller music video, which premiered in 1983, was a cultural event. MTV disciplined. He knew everybody's

Jackson insisted it was essential – it was,

steps, everything. I mean I'd never

want to dance. Jones relented, though

lines, he knew all the songs, all the seen so much focus in my life.” Of

their creative partnership, Jones said:

“The combination of the two of us was perfect. I cannot dance... That's what

Michael is a genius of. He's attentive; he gets all the details. He looks at Sammy

Davis, James Brown, Fred Astaire, Gene Kelly; he didn't miss nothing.”

There exists a telling anecdote about

Jackson's creative process. When he first brought Quincy Jones the demo for

"Billie Jean," Jones's immediate reaction was not enthusiasm. He thought the 29-second intro was far too long.

120

in his words, “the jelly” that made him he admitted years later he thought

Jackson had “lost his damn mind” at the time. History, of course, proved Jackson

right. That intro is now one of the most

recognisable openings in popular music.

was going to pass on airing the Billie

Jean video until CBS Records president Walter Yetnikoff threatened a boycott and openly called out the network for not seeing a Black artist fitting their vision. The video's subsequent heavy rotation — alongside Prince's work

— opened doors for Black artists at MTV. Jackson's videos weren't just

The only current comparison, in terms

promotional tools; they were short films

be Taylor Swift. But Swift inhabits a

memorised.

people — athletes, actors, fellow

isolates. It warps perception. When

of sheer cultural omnipresence, might

that people watched repeatedly, studied,

landscape crowded with other famous

This level of fame is corrosive. It

musicians, influencers of various

you are Michael Jackson, normal

stripes. In the 1980s, when Jackson

was at his zenith, the field was far less

crowded. Politicians were duller, greyer.

human interaction becomes impossible.

Everyone wants something: a

photograph, an autograph, a piece of

MUSIC

you. Everyone is performing for you or around you. The pressure to maintain

that level of success, to follow Thriller with something even greater — the very thought is almost comic in its

impossibility, yet that is precisely what was expected of him. And somehow,

impossibly, he delivered Bad, which sold

over 35 million copies and produced five number-one singles.

Michael Jackson, precisely when the world's attention was focused on Jackson and the boy. Jurors described the mother’s testimony as “rambling, incoherent, and at times combative.”

One juror stated: “There wasn't a shred of evidence that was able to show us or give us any doubt in voting guilty. It was pretty obvious there was no other way to vote other than not guilty.”

“The extent of without addressing the allegations.

Jackson's genius They hang over his legacy like a stain that will not lift, no matter how many makes him, in a times we wash the cloth. In 1993, Jordan practical sense, Chandler, then 13 years old, accused Jackson of sexual abuse. Jackson denied uncancellable. The the allegations. The case was settled in work is simply too civil court for a reported $23 million, with Jackson maintaining his innocence. good, too influential, No criminal charges were filed. Then too deeply embedded came 2005, and the trial that would define the latter part of his life. in the culture.”

But we cannot discuss Michael Jackson

The 2005 trial centred on accusations from Gavin Arvizo, who was 13 at

the time of the alleged abuse. Jackson faced ten charges: molesting a minor, intoxicating a minor to molest him, attempted child molestation, and

conspiracy to hold the Arvizo family captive. The prosecution called

85 witnesses. The case attracted

international media attention on a scale that bordered on hysteria. When news

of the raid on Neverland broke, channels switched to 24-hour rolling coverage.

Networks produced re-enactments using look-alike actors.

The jury deliberated for about 32 hours over seven days. On the initial vote,

nine jurors voted to acquit; three voted

guilty. On June 13, 2005, they returned a verdict of not guilty on all charges.

The jury found the prosecution's case weak. They described the timeline as

problematic — the alleged molestation

supposedly occurred after the broadcast of the documentary Living with

The defence had been devastating in its dismantling of the prosecution's case. During the weeks the family claimed they were being held hostage at Neverland, they were taken on allexpense-paid shopping sprees and spa treatments. After these outings, they willingly returned to Neverland — three times or more. The conspiracy charge collapsed under the weight of its own implausibility. The jury foreman later said: "We looked at all the evidence and we looked at Michael Jackson and one of the first things we decided was we had to look at him just as another person and not a celebrity." In a 2017 episode of the true crime series The Jury Speaks, four featured jurors said they would still vote to acquit.

After Jackson's death in 2009, Martin Bashir – whose documentary had triggered the investigation – told ABC News that he never saw any wrongdoing on Jackson's part. FBI files released posthumously noted there were no

outstanding leads or credible evidence items.

And yet. And yet the allegations

continued to affect Jackson's career and permanently damaged his reputation.

Despite selling out concerts in 2009, he was unable to find sponsors or

merchandise partners. A judge observed

in 2021 that “the fact that he earned not a penny from his image and likeness in 2006, 2007, or 2008 shows the effect

those allegations had, and continued to have, until his death.”

These are the facts as we know them:

accusations made, trial held, acquittal

delivered, career damaged beyond repair.

What we make of these facts is where the difficulty begins.

Which brings us to the question the

film raises by its very existence, even if it refuses to engage with it directly: Is Michael Jackson cancellable? And if

he is not — if his music continues to play at parties, if his videos continue

to be studied, if his influence remains inescapable — what does that tell us

about how we navigate the relationship between art and artist?

We have become, in recent years, quite comfortable cancelling mediocrity.

When a moderately talented actor or a middling comedian is revealed to have behaved poorly, the calculations are

simple: the loss to culture is minimal,

the moral stance costs us nothing. We can feel righteous without sacrifice.

Kevin Spacey, for all his skill, operated at a level where his removal from our

screens felt manageable. House of Cards could be ended early. All the Money in

the World could reshoot his scenes. Life, and cinema, went on.

But Michael Jackson? What would we actually be cancelling? "Billie Jean"?

"Thriller"? "Man in the Mirror"?

These songs have become part of the

infrastructure of popular culture. They www.finito.org.uk

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MUSIC

Semite whose writings influenced Nazi

Wikipedia

ideology, yet his operas continue to be

performed, his innovations in harmony

and orchestration continue to be studied.

Picasso treated women abominably;

his paintings hang in museums around the world. Miles Davis was physically abusive to his partners; Kind of Blue

remains one of the most revered albums in jazz history.

I would not want Charles Dickens to marry my daughter – but I will never

tire of his books. Or consider the Earl of Rochester, John Wilmot, the 17thcentury poet and libertine. He was,

by any reasonable standard, a terrible

person: alcoholic, dissolute, responsible

for numerous sexual assaults. Yet Harold Pinter championed his work. His poetry continues to be read and studied. The gap between the man and the work

is accepted as a simple fact of literary history.

Roman Polanski — convicted of

unlawful sexual intercourse with a

minor, fled the United States to avoid

sentencing — won the Academy Award for Best Director for The Pianist in exist beyond Jackson now, woven into

the culture. And this ought to make us

a reference point for physical grace. The

would rather not answer.

the collective memory. The moonwalk is Thriller video is a touchstone for anyone who makes music videos. His vocal

techniques — the hiccups, the breathy gasps, the ability to shift registers —

have influenced everyone from Justin Timberlake to The Weeknd.

“Art matters because it transcends the individual who made it.”

The extent of Jackson's genius makes

him, in a practical sense, uncancellable.

The work is simply too good, too

influential, too deeply embedded in 122

uncomfortable. It raises questions we

The film whitewashes him, of course.

That was always going to be the case with the family members serving as

executive producers. But then, we have always known how to separate art

from artist when it suited us. We do it

constantly, often without even noticing.

Consider Caravaggio, who killed a man in a brawl and spent his final

years fleeing from justice, painting

masterpieces while on the run. We do

2002. The film world has continued

to work with him, celebrate his films,

accept his artistry. Woody Allen faces

accusations from his adopted daughter; his films continue to find funding, distribution, audiences.

The pattern becomes clear: we are

willing to accept terrible behaviour

from artists when the art itself is too

valuable to discard. This is not a new phenomenon. It is not a bug in our

cultural operating system; it is a feature we have relied upon for centuries. The

question is whether we are comfortable acknowledging it.

not tear his paintings from gallery walls.

Does this make us hypocrites? Perhaps.

not diminish the power of The Calling

complicated. What we are confronting

The fact that he was a murderer does of St Matthew or Judith Beheading

Holofernes. Wagner was a virulent anti-

But I suspect the truth is more

with Michael Jackson — and with every artist whose personal conduct troubles

MUSIC

complicated relationship with genius

itself. Pure, transcendent talent makes us uncomfortable. We do not quite know how to process it. It reminds us that

human beings are not, in fact, created equal — at least not in their abilities.

Some people, through accident of birth or neurology or circumstance, simply have gifts that others do not.

Michael Jackson was one of those

people. He was born with something

— some combination of perfect pitch,

physical grace, emotional intuition, and

relentless drive — that made him able to

do things other people could not do. Not with practice. Not with training. Simply could not do. This is hard to accept. It violates our democratic instincts, our

belief that effort should be rewarded,

that anyone can achieve anything with enough work.

things take on lives of their own. They

“Pure, transcendent talent makes us important enough, we find ourselves unwilling to make that sacrifice. uncomfortable. We do This is where the film's evasions become not quite know how telling. By refusing to engage with the allegations, Michael attempts to preserve to process it.”

own experiences, our own meanings.

spectacle. It offers audiences permission

Wikipedia

us — is a fundamental tension in how we engage with culture.

Art matters because it transcends the

individual who made it. A great song, a great painting, a great film — these

become vessels into which we pour our "Billie Jean" is no longer just a song

Michael Jackson wrote about a woman claiming he fathered her child. It is

And when the work is good enough,

Jackson as pure artist, pure genius, pure to love the work without wrestling

with the man. And audiences, by and large, have accepted this permission

now a song about paranoia, about fame,

gratefully. They fill theatres. They dance

movement. It belongs, in some sense, to

moonwalks and music videos, not about

about being pursued, about rhythm and

in their seats. They leave talking about

everyone who has ever heard it.

legal settlements and allegations.

This does not erase Jackson's agency

Is this wrong? I am not certain we can

of anything he may have done. But it

I do know is that it is human. We want

of cancellation. When we “cancel” an

want to believe in the magic without

The person is often beyond our reach

talent is as overwhelming as Jackson's

to public opinion. What we are really

There is something else at work here,

in creating it. Nor does it absolve him

answer that question definitively. What

does complicate the simple narrative

the moonwalk. We want "Thriller." We

artist, what exactly are we cancelling?

confronting the darkness. And when the

— dead, in Jackson's case, or indifferent

was, we find ways to make that work.

cancelling is our own access to the work.

something we rarely discuss openly: our

And so we fall before such talent. We worship it. We make it superhuman.

And in making it superhuman, we

create the conditions for its destruction.

Because humans cannot bear the

weight of being treated as gods. The

pressure distorts them. It isolates them.

It prevents the normal processes of

socialisation that might have created guardrails, boundaries, a sense of proportion.

Jackson's childhood was stolen from

him. He was performing professionally before he could read. By the time he

was a teenager, he had experienced more fame than most people experience in a

lifetime. His father, Joe Jackson, pushed his children relentlessly, famously with physical abuse. Michael's escape from www.finito.org.uk

ISSUE 18

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MUSIC

this was not into normalcy but into even

and the testimony of those who worked

But for those of us who write about

demands. He never had the chance to

made it more visual, more dance-

professionally, the film's evasions feel like a

greater fame, even greater performance develop a normal relationship with the

world, with other people, with himself.

This does not excuse anything. But it does help us understand how a person might

become so warped, so unable to maintain

appropriate boundaries. Fame of Jackson's

with him. He changed popular music, oriented, more globally integrated.

He broke racial barriers at MTV. He

pioneered the music video as an art form.

His vocal techniques remain influential.

His performances set standards that others still chase.

magnitude is destructive. It breaks people.

Michael Jackson was also a deeply

Garland, Whitney Houston, Prince. The

and childhood trauma in ways that

also mark them for tragedy.

and concerning behaviour. Whether

We see this again and again: Elvis, Judy

troubled person, damaged by fame

very gifts that make them extraordinary

manifested in increasingly eccentric

And we, the audience, play our part in this tragedy. We demand the

performance. We create the fame. We

buy the albums and attend the concerts

and watch the videos until the person at the centre of it all becomes something

other than human in our eyes – an icon, a brand, a commodity. And then, when that person inevitably cracks under the pressure, when their humanity asserts

itself in troubling or destructive ways, we act surprised. We act betrayed.

Let’s be clear. None of this lets Jackson

off the hook, if indeed there is a hook for him to be let off from. He was acquitted in a court of law. He maintained his

innocence until his death. These are facts.

The allegations are also facts, as is the

damage they did to his reputation and

career. The discomfort we feel when we

listen to his music now, the questions that arise – these too are facts.

What we are left with is a situation that resists simple moral conclusions. We

cannot undo his influence on music. We cannot erase the pleasure his songs have

brought to millions. We cannot resurrect him to face further questions. What we

can do – perhaps all we can do – is hold multiple truths simultaneously.

Michael Jackson was a genius. This

is not hyperbole; it is observable fact,

documented in sales figures and influence 124

that behaviour crossed the line into

criminal conduct was tested in court and found not proven. But the allegations

themselves — the pattern of surrounding himself with young boys, the admission of sharing beds with children, the

settlements and trials — these create a permanent stain.

Both things can be true. Both things

are true. And perhaps our discomfort

with this dual truth is itself instructive.

We want our heroes pure. We want our villains irredeemable. We want clear

categories and simple judgments. Life,

and people, rarely cooperate with these desires.

The film Michael, for all its flaws, for all its evasions, serves one useful purpose:

culture, who think about these questions

missed opportunity. Because the real story of Michael Jackson is not just the story of

extraordinary talent. It is the story of what we do with such talent. How we worship it. How we exploit it. How we break it.

And how, when it is broken, we must

decide whether to preserve what remains or discard it entirely.

Seventeen years after his death, Michael Jackson's music still plays. His videos still circulate. Young artists still study

his techniques. He remains, in the only

way that ultimately matters for an artist, alive. Not in the sense that we condone everything about him, or that we have

resolved our complicated feelings about his life. But in the sense that the work

continues to exist, continues to matter, continues to influence.

Whether this makes us hypocrites or

simply human beings trying to navigate an impossible situation is a question

each person must answer for themselves.

What seems clear is that Michael Jackson — for better and worse, in triumph and

tragedy — will remain with us. His talent was simply too great, too foundational, too impossible to ignore.

it reminds us of the scale of what we are

That talent does not erase the allegations.

captures something essential about his

Both are part of the legacy. Both shape

his charisma. The recreations of iconic

Jackson, but how we understand genius,

anniversary special, the Bad tour — these

sometimes demand from those who give

in the first place.

The moonwalk remains perfect. The

discussing. Jaafar Jackson's performance

The allegations do not erase the talent.

uncle's stage presence, his movement,

how we understand not just Michael

performances — the Motown 25th

fame, art, and the terrible price we

remind audiences why Jackson mattered

us beauty.

And perhaps that is enough. Perhaps

questions remain unanswered. And

offered to those who want to remember

these two facts, we find ourselves still

a sanitised celebration of the artistry,

somewhere in the space between

the moonwalk without confronting the

listening, still watching, still trying

allegations, serves a purpose. It gives permission for joy without forcing resolution of the unresolvable.

to make sense of a talent so bright it blinded us to everything else — and perhaps was meant to.

MUSIC

Alamy

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CULTURE INTERVIEW

CHARLES HASLETT

THE MAN WHO BECAME MANUEL (AND A KING) Christopher Jackson meets a delightfully talented impersonator and hears his remarkable story

F

or more than three decades, Charles Haslett has been slipping

into other people’s skins. Guests at weddings, corporate dinners and society events may think they’ve hired a lookalike, but what they

get is something more immersive: a performer who doesn’t simply

resemble a character, but inhabits it completely.

Best known for his portrayal of Manuel from Fawlty Towers – and more

recently for his striking impersonation

of King Charles III – Haslett occupies a curious space between acting,

improvisation and social theatre. Since turning professional in 1994, he has

built a career on spontaneity, physical

comedy and an almost anthropological understanding of how people react

when fiction suddenly walks into their lives.

“I was never just interested in looking like someone,” he says. “The whole

point is to bring them to life in the room.”

What distinguishes Haslett, he insists, is precisely that difference.

“I don’t like being called a lookalike,”

he says. “A lookalike stands there and

resembles someone. I impersonate – I

become the voice, the mannerisms, the thinking. That’s the craft.”

Haslett’s route into performance was anything but conventional. His story begins not on stage but in the RAF, 126

where an offhand nickname would quietly reshape his future.

first episode of Fawlty Towers aired in

“I was christened ‘Manuel’ at nineteen,” he recalls. “It was the same night the

offbeat sense of humour – and that was

1975. I had the moustache, I had the it. I was never called Charles again.”

CULTURE INTERVIEW

work – on the condition he trained as

a waiter. Haslett accepted. By 1994, he

was performing professionally, starting with a wedding in Yorkshire.

“I was scampering around, doing visual antics, building confidence,” he says.

“And people loved it. That gave me the belief to advertise myself.”

From there, the bookings followed.

Agents came on board, Equity

membership formalised the career, and a sideline became a livelihood.

The art of “getting it wrong” What makes Haslett’s Manuel so

effective is not imitation in the narrow sense, but a deep understanding of what drives the character.

“Manuel is a vehicle,” he explains.

“He allows me to express my natural

sense of the ridiculous in a way people applaud rather than frown upon.”

The essence of the performance lies in deliberate misunderstanding.

“When someone shows you the correct At the time, it was less a blessing than

“I was nervous because no one had seen

did little for career progression, and

props –just black trousers, white shirt,

a hindrance. Being known as “Manuel” Haslett eventually bought himself

out of the RAF. What followed was a period of travel and work abroad, including time in Hong Kong and

Saudi Arabia – experiences he now sees as formative.

“They gave me a sense of diplomacy,

tolerance, and also how to read people,” he says. “Which, looking back, is exactly what I needed.”

Still, performance wasn’t yet a

me do it before,” he says. “No jacket, no and a real moustache.”

“I don’t like being called a lookalike.

A lookalike stands there and resembles someone.

I impersonate.”

profession. That turning point came

The reaction was immediate and

almost by accident.

overwhelming.

The moment it “brought the house

“It brought the house down,” he says.

down”

The first time Haslett performed as Manuel was on a skiing holiday in Austria, entertaining friends.

“Even the Austrians recognised the character and laughed.”

Encouraged by the response, a

restaurateur in Poole offered him

way to do something, I immediately see how to do it the wrong way,” he says.

“That’s where the comedy is.”

This instinct aligns perfectly with

the original creation by John Cleese

and Connie Booth. Manuel’s appeal, Haslett argues, lies in a particularly British sensibility: affection for the underdog.

“He’s the hapless figure trying his

best under a tyrannical boss,” he says.

“Audiences empathise with him. They

recognise that dynamic from their own lives.”

In performance, however, Haslett

adapts this dynamic. Without a Basil

Fawlty on hand, he turns the audience themselves into characters.

“I use everyone in the room,” he says.

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CULTURE INTERVIEW

It’s mental dexterity. You’re not just

Theatre without a script

Basil the Rat and the joy of surprise

Unlike traditional acting, Haslett’s

Over the years, Haslett has developed

reacting – you’re constructing the

audience configuration.

Chief among them is Basil – a squeaking

Each character draws on a different

work has no script, no set, and no fixed “I can’t recreate scenes from Fawlty

Towers,” he says. “There’s no script, no other actors. Every venue is different.”

Instead, he builds each performance from scratch.

“You might have 300 people standing

with champagne glasses at a corporate event,” he says. “You have to enter,

create intrigue, get validation – and

his own embellishments to the character.

absurd in real time.”

toy rodent carried in his pocket.

part of his skillset: Manuel the physical

“He comes out at tables and causes

absolute chaos,” Haslett says. “People scream because they think he’s real.”

Alongside the rat is a waiter’s tray, used

variously as prop, percussion instrument

says.

“I don’t change anything fundamental,”

“He said I would have passed the

elements.”

everything.”

Manuel, who gave his blessing.

he says. “I just enhance certain

audition,” Haslett recalls. “That meant

From Manuel to royalty – and beyond

He also briefly met the then Prince

While Manuel remains his most

recognisable role, Haslett’s repertoire

extends further. His impersonation of

King Charles III – and, perhaps more

Charles, backstage at a performance marking the royal’s 50th birthday.

“He asked if I was gathering material for my act,” Haslett says. “I said, ‘Yes, sir.’”

unexpectedly, Inspector Clouseau –

There have been brushes with other

the performance.

the strange permeability of his

reveals the technical precision behind

character, and it builds from there.”

actually quite simple. Remove the

“Eight people around a private dining

imitates – or those closest to them.

He met Andrew Sachs, the original

“How can Manuel also be King

be even higher.

him face to face with the figures he

departures from the original but

“Someone will say, ‘Is it him?’ And

At smaller gatherings, the stakes can

one-man repertory company.

Haslett’s work has occasionally brought

extensions of it.

then I join their group, speak in

Together, they form what is, in effect, a

“Have tray and rat – will travel,” he

“When someone shows you the correct way to do something, I immediately see how to do it the wrong way.” until recognition dawns.

mind.

Encounters with the real thing

These additions, he insists, are not

silently, relying on physical comedy

presence, Clouseau the improvisational

and comic device.

then you’re away.”

Sometimes that means starting

comedian, the King the controlled

Charles?” he says with a smile. “It’s moustache, adjust the make-up, add a toupee, stand taller, refine the voice – and you’re there.”

figures, too – moments that underline profession. At one event, a well-

known actress greeted him warmly in

character, only for him to respond with aristocratic hauteur.

“I said, ‘I’m sorry, who are you?’” he

recalls. “Then – ‘Ah, Miss Collins.’ She loved it.”

his method.

“Eight people around a private dining table can be harder than two hundred in a ballroom.”

“You have to read everything: the

Clouseau, by contrast, demands

“The best moment is when people

appropriate and what isn’t,” he says.

“That’s my favourite,” he says. “Because

he says. “That’s very flattering.”

table can be harder than two hundred

in a ballroom,” he says. “You can’t afford even one person not to like you.”

That sensitivity – to mood,

to hierarchy, to the unspoken

expectations of a room – is central to

client, the class of event, what’s

something different.

“It’s instinct, but it’s also discipline.”

it’s about thinking like Peter Sellers.

128

A career built on reaction If there is one thread running through Haslett’s career, it is the reaction of

audiences. Whether it’s recognition, disbelief or sheer laughter, those

responses are both the reward and the raw material of his work.

genuinely think I’m the real Manuel,” Some reactions have been more

CULTURE INTERVIEW

memorable than others. He recalls,

for instance, a client who booked him

twice – once for her wedding, and again for her second marriage.

“With experience comes the understanding that you have to commit fully. You can’t do this halfway.”

“She joked that my performance had

caused the divorce,” he says. “Luckily

she’d checked her new husband’s sense of humour more carefully.”

At other times, the comedy sharpens.

“I remember one corporate event where a senior executive spoke down to me,

assuming I didn’t understand,” he says.

“So I stood up straight and replied

in perfect English that I understood everything – I was just there to entertain.”

He pauses.

“That changed the dynamic quite quickly.”

Why Manuel endures Nearly fifty years after Fawlty Towers

“Every performance is different,” he

“You step into the room, and for that

touchstone. Haslett believes the reason

the laughter – that’s constant.”

“That’s what people want. That’s what

first aired, Manuel remains a cultural

lies in the depth of the writing and the universality of its themes.

“It’s quintessentially British,” he says.

“It captures class, frustration, absurdity – all of it.”

At its heart is a simple dynamic: the

says. “Every audience is different. But “You have to commit” After more than thirty years in the business, Haslett shows no sign of

slowing down. If anything, his approach has become more refined.

underdog versus authority. It is a

“With experience comes the

and context.

fully,” he says. “You can’t do this

time, you are the character,” he says. they remember.”

In an age of digital entertainment

and fleeting attention, Haslett’s craft

feels almost old-fashioned – rooted in physical presence, human interaction

and the unpredictable chemistry of live performance.

structure that transcends time, culture

understanding that you have to commit

And yet, as his enduring popularity

“People relate to Manuel,” Haslett says.

halfway.”

that continues to resonate.

“They always have.”

For him, that connection is what sustains the work.

suggests, it is precisely this immediacy

It is perhaps the defining principle of

After all, there are many lookalikes. But

a bumbling waiter or a future king.

www.charleshaslett.co.uk

his career: total immersion, whether as

very few who can make a room believe.

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INTERNATIONAL

LETTER FROM BUENOS ARIES

B

uenos Aires rejects classification.

Walk three blocks in any direction,

By Polly Cecil

and you pass through what feels like

several continents stitched together.

A wide, tree-lined Parisian boulevard, flanked by elegant apartment blocks with wrought-iron balconies, gives

way mid-block to Italianate symmetry and arched windows. This, in turn,

merges into the austere, whitewashed

walls characteristic of colonial Spanish architecture before the street suddenly opens into a kaleidoscope of boutique cafes and dimly lit bars reminiscent

of Manhattan. And yet none of it is a

direct translation. Everything is thrown slightly off kilter.

A change in the sun’s beam exposes the reptilian skin of the Parisian mansion

block: blistered, broken, its peeling paint flaking like dandruff. Campaign posters

and political protest announcements are plastered across Italianate stonework like a tattoo sleeve, indifferent to the

elegance that lies beneath. Black cables scrawl across Colonial facades with

the messy abandon of a child let loose with a marker pen. The city has been

performing one identity, and then, as if it can’t be bothered to keep up the

Unsplash.com

pretence, the mask crumbles, revealing

years had passed since the military coup

disappeared: faces peering out from the

genuine. So is the grit. Splendour and

power and began what would become

were the faces of pregnant women

another underneath. The grandeur is

struggle exist together, unresolved, on

the same walls, in a city chiselled from political trauma, economic instability and inherited grief.

In Buenos Aires, history rarely feels

that brought Jorge Rafael Videla to the bloodiest period in Argentine

history: seven years of dictatorship

during which the armed forces detained, tortured and disappeared an estimated thirty thousand people.

distant. Stepping out of the metro, on

That afternoon, amid the tidal wave

air pulses with drums, the rhythm fusing

to hold high placards bearing the

the 24th March at Plaza de Mayo, the

grief and rage into a collective roar. Fifty 130

1970s, frozen in time. Among them

who had been detained and gave birth in captivity, their babies seized and

handed to other families. Beneath the

photographs, the words – ¿Dónde están?

Where are they? – held aloft in a sea of unanswered grief.

of chanting protesters, people strained

Nunca más – Never again. Against a

black-and-white photographs of the

disappeared rather than buried, records

system designed to erase itself – bodies

INTERNATIONAL

Unsplash.com

burnt, babies given false identities – the

bar had dragged a television onto the

fifty years on.

road, enormous flags hanging from every

plaza still shakes with grief and rage

The plaza that had shaken with grief shook, weeks later, with a bassline.

pavement, chairs spilling out onto the window frame, the streets humming with anticipation.

Portuguese priest Guilherme Peixoto

When Boca scored, the crowd erupted

a tribute to Pope Francis – attended

and yellow. Children in Boca shirts so

hosted a free electronic music show – by more than 120,000 people. Vast

screens projected clips of Pope Francis

before a constellation of glowing halos,

techno beat drops infused with spiritual messages. Trading placards for halos,

Buenos Aires inhabits its contradictions, transforming a square where a nation

mourns its disappeared into a dancefloor.

In this city, collective identity feels fierce, joyful and defiant, forged amid decades of political trauma and instability, as

though belonging has been seized where the state failed to provide it. Nowhere is that more apparent than in La Boca on match day.

into a single heaving mass of blue

oversized they draped like dresses were hoisted onto their fathers’ shoulders,

each one grinning with unselfconscious joy. A city with this much to grieve is somehow fiercely alive.

a different kind entirely: gauchos in

voluminous trousers tapered at the ankle, high leather boots and soft woollen

berets, moving with the bowlegged gait of someone who has spent more time

on a horse than on foot, each carrying mate as though it were an extension

of their body. Beside them sauntered their children, carbon copies of their

fathers, cowboy boots clattering across

tethered to the gaucho traditions on

oversized Boca shirts – identity worn

national identity. At Caballos 2026

Buenos Aires should not hold together.

fashioning, Buenos Aires remains

eyes, not unlike the children in their

which Argentina built much of its

before the body has grown into it.

at La Rural, an equestrian exposition

in Palermo, riders put horses through

movements of extraordinary precision: lead changes, sliding stops, fast pivots.

Competition masked in a festive smile.

where Boca fans were banned from

into the arena, tasered beforehand to

itself into the stadium instead. Every

The porteños were outnumbered by

the gravel, hats slipping down over their

Outside, the cattle-sorting trials were

attending, the barrio transformed

cow lurching and panicking.

For all the city’s cosmopolitan self-

Given the match was being played at River Plate’s ground across the city,

slamming against the animal’s flanks, the

underway. A single cow was released

rile it, and a pair of riders on horseback had to guide it toward the exit, horses

It is a city assembled from fragments

– European facades, gaucho traditions,

political fury, electronic music in a plaza still burning with grief. Grandeur sits

beside decay, aspiration beside instability, trauma beside celebration. And yet,

Buenos Aires coheres not despite its

contradictions but through them, bound together by a collective spirit: unruly, unresolved, unapologetically itself. www.finito.org.uk

ISSUE 18

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INTERNATIONAL

LETTER FROM DORDOGNE Sarah Tucker

Wikipedia

T

here is a particular stretch of road in southwest France where

Returning now, at sixty, alone, I find I

dramatically, this is not a place for grand

built, and why some of them endure.

time begins to behave differently. Not

gestures, but subtly, until you realise you are no longer entirely in charge of it.

The Dordogne does that.

am less interested in being impressed

and more interested in how things are You drive here. That is part of the point.

The roads slow you down, sometimes

literally. Traffic lights appear only if you

The first time I came here was forty

exceed the speed limit, briefly halting

an earnest boyfriend whose principal

system based less on punishment than

knowledge of wine. This ended, or at least

in that.

years ago. I was twenty, travelling with

you, then releasing you again. It is a

ambition was to impress me with his

on correction. There is probably a lesson

began to, when he ordered Sauternes as

I began near Limoges, at La Chapelle

though it were Sancerre, prompting a

waiter to lean in and say: “It is sweet, sir.

As in dessert wine.”

We finished lunch. The relationship did not last.

132

Saint Martin (www.chapellesaintmartin.

a series of decisions that suggest a

tolerance, if not an appetite, for risk.

Frescoes by a Congolese artist cover the exterior walls. Inside, nothing aims for neutrality. Even the porcelain is local,

Limoges, she told me, because if you are here, it should be from here.

It would be easy to overreach. She

doesn’t. The creativity is held in place by discipline, most notably in the kitchen, where her husband Gilles, a Michelinstarred chef at 24, does not allow the food to drift.

com), about fifteen minutes outside the

During lockdown, they introduced

who has taken what could have been a

Sensible adjustments, now permanent.

city. The hotel is run by Aude Bauliataux,

bee hives and picnics across the estate.

conventional rural property and made

Adaptation without dilution.

INTERNATIONAL

In Limoges itself, the Cité du Cuir

shared understanding that neither works

parallel. A traditional craft, extended

This is not growth in the conventional

(www.citeducuir.fr) offers a useful

into new territory, fashion, materials, applications, without abandoning

its core skill. It is not nostalgia. It is evolution.

From there, it is one hour and forty-five minutes to Trémolat.

Le Vieux Logis (www.vieuxlogis.com)

operates on a different principle entirely.

particularly well without the other. sense. It is continuity.

From Trémolat, the distances are short, ten

minutes to Limeuil, twenty-five to Souillac,

thirty-five to Bergerac, but the pace remains measured. Nothing here rewards urgency.

Another fifty minutes brings you to Château de la Treyne (www. chateaudelatreyne.com).

"There is a particular the second about stewardship, this one is about time as strategy. stretch of road in Stéphanie Gombert and her husband took southwest France it on in 1992 and spent ten years restoring it. Ten. In most businesses, that would where time begins to be considered unworkable. Here, it is the behave differently. Not foundation.

The estate includes over four hundred dramatically, this is oak trees cultivated for truffles. Again, not a place for grand not a short-term decision. The chef has been here for twenty-eight years. Staff gestures, but subtly, stay. Systems hold. until you realise you are This is a model built on patience.

Nearby, Rocamadour and the Gouffre de no longer entirely in Padirac (www.gouffre-de-padirac.com) sit within twenty to twenty-five minutes of charge of it."

If the first hotel is about creative risk, and

Estelle Lévêque did not buy the hotel.

It was given to her by the original owner when his son chose not to continue.

What she inherited was not just a

business, but a responsibility, to maintain something without freezing it.

There was renovation to be done. But she

kept his chair. The one he used to sit in. It

the château, spectacular, well-known, and entirely secondary to the rhythm of the place itself.

Because that is the point.

The Dordogne does not overwhelm. It

recalibrates. It removes the unnecessary and leaves you with something simpler: time, properly used.

remains. There are photographs too, him

Forty years ago, I came here to be

difficult not to feel that he would approve

Now, I find that what matters is

She met her husband here eighteen years

built, how they are sustained, and how

He now runs it as a Michelin-starred

And, occasionally, the quiet satisfaction

with clarity, men with stars, and a

understand wine.

as a boy, till present, still observing. It is

impressed.

of the balance she has struck.

something else entirely, how things are

ago, she a waitress, he in the kitchen.

rarely those two are given equal attention.

chef. One notices a pattern: women

of no longer needing to pretend you

FACT BOX La Chapelle Saint Martin www.chapellesaintmartin.com Location: 15 mins from Limoges Rooms: 14 Standout: Congo artist frescoes, Limoges porcelain, bee hives & picnic gardens Nearby: Cité du Cuir (20 mins), Limoges cheese cellar & La Table du Couvent

Le Vieux Logis www.vieuxlogis.com Location: Trémolat village (1h45 from Limoges) Rooms: 25 Standout: Entrusted ownership, original owner’s chair & photographs remain Nearby: Limeuil (10 mins), Souillac (25 mins), Bergerac (35 mins)

Château de la Treyne www.chateaudelatreyne.com Location: 50 mins from Trémolat Rooms: 18 Standout: 14th-century château, 10-year restoration, 300-acre estate, truffle oaks Nearby: Rocamadour (20 mins), Gouffre de Padirac (20–25 mins)

www.finito.org.uk

ISSUE 18

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BOOK REVIEWS

BOOK REVIEWS

Uplifting Books For Challenging Times Rath’s answer is that human meaning will increasingly reside in contribution rather than credentialism. He argues that the

people who flourish will not necessarily

be those with the most technical mastery, but those capable of helping, connecting, encouraging and improving the lives around them.

There is something refreshing about a

book that does not tell readers to “follow their passion” like a lost backpacker in Bali. Rath instead suggests purpose

is built incrementally, through habits

and service. The book’s core idea is that

What’s the Point?

Turning Purpose Into Your Daily Superpower TOM RATH

There is a particular kind of American

self-help book that treats life as a giant

mirror: optimise yourself, maximise your potential, curate your happiness. Tom

Rath has always been suspicious of that tradition, and in What’s the Point? he

pushes against it directly. The argument here is almost unfashionably simple:

purpose is not found by staring harder at yourself, but by becoming useful to somebody else.

That may sound pious. In Rath’s hands it becomes oddly practical.

Rath’s timing is clever. As artificial

intelligence begins swallowing the more

repetitive parts of modern work, millions of people are quietly wondering what

exactly will remain valuable about them.

134

“small daily actions” matter more than

The CEO's Compass. not merely as acquisition of skills, but as How to navigate usefulness to society. your team through Rath writes with the polished efficiency of somebody who has spent years turning turbulent times grand declarations. It is a very Finito-ish proposition in that sense: employability

research into airport-readable wisdom.

Occasionally one wishes for a little more mess, a little more doubt. But perhaps that would miss the point. This is not

philosophy in the abstract; it is guidance for people trying to survive Tuesday morning.

The most striking thing about the

JONATHAN BOWMAN-PERKS MBE

When a book has "CEO" in the title, a finance professional or CFO could be forgiven for not picking it up – think twice.

book is its insistence that meaning

In an era defined by volatility and

personal branding, Rath quietly asks a

deliver both performance and purpose,

is relational. In an age obsessed with

more difficult question: who is better off because you were here?

That lands harder than many books three times as clever.

As Rath puts it, purpose is created

“by making a meaningful difference

in someone else’s life.” It is the sort of

sentence that sounds obvious until you

realise how rarely modern culture actually behaves as though it believes it. CJ

increasing complexity, on leaders to

The CEO’s Compass arrives as a timely

and compelling guide for anyone charged with steering an organisation through uncertainty. As a finance leader who

has led teams across international retail, global consumer brands, I found this

book not only insightful but grounded in the realities of modern day leadership.

Bowman-Perks draws on military,

management and coaching experience to

BOOK REVIEWS

build a framework for navigating leaders from calm to choppy seas. The compass metaphor is simple, sticks and can be

easily applied. It is a practical framework for leaders to re orient themselves,

and their organisations when the path

Attenborough at 100

CFOs actually operate in – operational

By Philip Fallow-Smith

ahead is uncertain. In the environments challenges, performance delivery,

uncertainty, rapid change – this book is deeply relevant.

Three things land well from my

perspective. First, his treatment of clarity:

He came here to describe continents:

most execution failures are not strategy

He walked into homes, talking of beauty.

Second, psychological safety reframed

Of competition. Of cleverness.

necessity and it can be detrimental to

He spoke of what is hidden in time.

failures, they are translation failures.

not as cultural nicety but as operational performance and growth if not resolved at the core. Third, that technical competence

He spoke of the denouement of human crime

The finance leader who can only speak

It had in the end to do with duty.

combines financial rigour with authentic

He was never without cantankerousness

navigate through challenging times under

Preferring animals, it was said, to us.

Jonathan challenges the myth of

Let it be said that when he spoke,

champions vulnerability, authenticity,

Oceans felt themselves cleaner,

assets. For finance leaders, this message

Eagles squinted, their eyesight keener,

is the entry ticket, not the differentiator.

in numbers will be limited. The one who human leadership and the ability to

pressure is a different animal entirely. the infallible executive and instead

and emotional intelligence as strategic is particularly relevant. We are often seen as the guardians of financial

discipline, but in reality, we are also

And even God considered the scale of the joke:

culture setters, connectors, and stewards

That freedom should come to this.

reinforces this message where we can

That the last Cassandra shout be his –

of organisational trust. Jonathan’s work combined judgement with data and performance and humanity.

It provided me with a powerful tool for self-reflection, whilst wanting to taker deep dive into certain areas. For any

And the elderly sage joined with the young, To make together, a sacred terrified song.

finance leader thinking seriously about

stepping up, or needs a framework to take a step back and consider how to drive

performance further, this could we what

you are looking for. Jonathan Jacobs MBE www.finito.org.uk

ISSUE 18

135

SPORT

ANYONE FOR PADEL?

We catch up with Alex Mills, Head of Marketing - International, Sela, a leading player in a new sporting phenomenon Padel seems to have gone from a niche

Delfina Brea Senesi (Premier Padel)

sport to a major global phenomenon in a relatively short period. What, in your view, has driven that acceleration?

In the UK, padel has been growing as

a participation sport exponentially for

a few years now. I think this is due to a

couple of things: firstly, the accessibility of the sport. It’s quick to learn, rallies

start almost immediately, and beginners

can have fun from their very first session rather than spending weeks trying to

master the basics. Many of the clubs

opening across the UK have been built with today’s audience in mind - not

just as places to play sport, but places to meet friends, spend time together and

be part of a community. There’s music,

atmosphere, fast points and a real sense of energy around the sport.

Why do you think padel has resonated so strongly compared to more

established racket sports like tennis or squash?

I think padel has arrived at exactly the

right moment. People increasingly want activities that are social, energising and

easy to fit into busy lives. Compared to

some more traditional racket sports, padel feels less intimidating and more dynamic.

It gives people competition, fitness and social connection all in one experience,

which is exactly what modern audiences are looking for.

How would you describe the current

stage of development in the UK market?

Are we early, mid, or already at a point of real maturity?

It still feels early – but early with

momentum. The LTA data released last 136

month shows that the participation

What role is Sela playing in shaping

last year, which is a strong sign the sport

like London Premier Padel P1?

numbers in the UK have doubled in the is still in its breakout phase rather than anywhere near maturity. Padel court

numbers have doubled, yet in certain

parts of the country it is still difficult to

find a court. Bringing London Premier

that growth, particularly through events Sela is new to padel in the UK, and we

see this as both a tremendous opportunity and responsibility. We want to accelerate the sport’s growth by creating moments

Padel P1 to the UK is the next logical

that bring new audiences in and give

response to ticket sales has been hugely

to rally around. London Premier Padel

genuine appetite not just to play padel,

competition. It is a chance to put padel on

step in the sport’s development here. The

existing fans something truly world-class

encouraging and shows there is now

P1 is about much more than one week of

but to watch the world’s best players live.

a bigger stage, raise awareness nationally

SPORT

and show people how exciting, dynamic and entertaining the sport can be.

Unsplash.com Agustin Tapia (Premier Padel)

It will also play an important role in

the elite pathway. Seeing the world’s best players compete live can inspire

the next generation of British talent to

believe they can reach the Qatar Airways Premier Padel Tour one day. Through

our partnership with the Lawn Tennis Association, we are also able to offer

wildcard opportunities into the men’s and women’s draws, helping create tangible opportunities for homegrown players now and in the years ahead.

To what extent is padel a participation story versus a spectator sport? Do you

see it evolving into something with real broadcast and commercial scale?

Right now, in the UK, padel is primarily a participation story - the growth in people playing the sport has been remarkable.

But in markets across continental Europe and Latin America, padel has developed passionate fanbases, strong event

attendance and growing media interest.

Sela is a global sports and entertainment business, so we are always looking at where sport and culture are heading next. Our decision to partner with

Premier Padel was based on commercial

opportunity. We are realistic that growth

ecosystems. A large player base drives

when you look at other countries, such

events and future fans.

development of infrastructure boomed

demand for courts, coaching, equipment,

as Scandinavia, where the growth and

What are the biggest barriers to

and went bust, a more sustainable

fans, positive momentum in ticket sales

infrastructure, awareness, or something

for the UK market in the long term.

on board. That gives us real confidence

As an event operator, we would be

investors and developers. What does a

both a major participation sport and a

club operations or facility development,

like in 2026?

takes time, but the early signs are

growth in the UK right now? Is it

trajectory could ultimately be healthier

and commercial partners already coming

else?

There’s clearly strong interest from

in padel’s long-term potential to become

cautious about speaking definitively on

successful padel business model look

but from what we can see awareness is

Our expertise is primarily on the events

encouraging, with strong interest from

meaningful spectator proposition in the UK.

rising quickly, supported by the latest

One of the striking things about padel

Lawn Tennis Association participation

that to its long-term success?

Anecdotally, from discussions I have had

is its accessibility. How important is

Hugely important. It is no coincidence that the biggest participation sports in

the world are often the ones that go on to build the strongest and most sustainable

data.

with people in the UK padel industry, it can be a challenge to find sites for

new clubs, so this will certainly have an

impact on the speed of growth. However,

side, so we would be careful not to

overstate views on club operations or the wider facility market, where the

economics can be quite different. The

business model for a major professional event is very different to that of a club,

coaching venue or everyday participation business.

www.finito.org.uk

ISSUE 18

137

SPORT

How do you see the relationship

partnership between Oysho and London

It certainly ticks a lot of boxes for

evolving? Complementary, competitive,

modern, style-led activewear brand with

international footprint, compact facilities

between padel and traditional tennis or something else?

Premier Padel P1. It brings together a

one of the most anticipated new events on

There will naturally be some overlap,

the UK sporting calendar. That feels very

facilities and participation choices, but

around the court can be just as important

complementary than competitive.

Looking ahead, what does the next

dynamics, experiences and audiences, and

and where does the UK fit within that

particularly around leisure time,

natural for padel, where what happens

overall, I see the relationship as more

culturally as what happens on it.

They are distinct sports with different

five years look like for padel globally,

there is room for both to thrive.

Are we seeing a particular demographic driving growth, or is the appeal genuinely broad-based?

The appeal is genuinely broad, but like any fast-growing sport there are still barriers

to address. Right now, demand for courts is outstripping supply and the cost of

developing facilities remains high, which can make participation more expensive

than some other sports. As more courts

picture?

The sport is already well established in

parts of Europe and Latin America, so I think the next major growth market

looks set to be the US, where momentum is building quickly. Events such as Miami P1 show the scale of opportunity when participation growth is matched by

world-class events and growing audience interest. More broadly, I think we can expect continued expansion into new

modern Olympic sports, gender equality, etc. But does padel need to be an Olympic

sport to sustain its continued growth? I am not so sure, I think it is doing pretty well at the moment without it.

From your perspective, what would

“success” look like for Sela in this space?

Our ambition is simple. We approach all events with the same mentality: to

produce incredible live experiences for fans. We passionately believe in the

enduring value - and fundamental human need - for live experiences. As more of

our lives become digital and increasingly synthetic, the desire for authentic,

shared moments continues to grow.

Audiences are seeking experiences they

can truly feel, events that surprise, capture attention and imagination, and bring

cities, stronger broadcast reach, bigger

people together in meaningful ways.

What is encouraging is the work being

global fanbase. It is hard to see the sport

padel events in the world and ensure

in an inclusive way. Organisations such

Do you think padel has the potential

the unmissable events on the UK sports

work to bring more women and girls into

what would that mean for its trajectory?

Finally, for someone who hasn’t yet

come online, we would expect access and affordability to improve.

commercial partnerships and a deeper

We hope to establish one of the leading

done across the UK to ensure padel grows

slowing down anytime soon.

that London Premier Padel P1 is one of

as Empower Padel are doing excellent

to become an Olympic sport, and if so,

the sport, while the Jason Manford Padel Academy is helping introduce young

people from all backgrounds to the game.

That kind of work is vital to ensuring

padel remains broad-based rather than becoming exclusive.

What have been the most interesting commercial partnerships or brand

opportunities emerging around padel so far?

One of the most exciting aspects of

padel commercially is the breadth of brands it can attract. The sport sits

at the intersection of performance,

lifestyle, fashion and culture, so it creates opportunities beyond traditional sports sponsorship categories.

A strong example of that is the 138

calendar.

Of course it has potential. There wouldn’t

played, what is it about padel that tends

wasn’t possible. The International Padel

Padel hooks people because it’s fun

be the noise around this story if it

Federation is doing strong work to grow

the sport internationally, and if it believes Olympic inclusion is right for padel’s future, I am sure it will continue to pursue it.

One of the key questions is the continued internationalisation of the elite level.

Today, the sport’s top end remains

heavily concentrated, with around 83

of the world’s top 100 players coming

from Argentina or Spain. That reflects the sport’s heritage and strength in

to hook people so quickly?

straight away. Padel gives people

something many sports take longer to deliver - instant enjoyment. Within minutes, you are involved in rallies,

covering the court, celebrating good

points and laughing at the chaotic ones.

Most importantly, people usually leave

the court feeling better than when they arrived - energised, challenged and

wanting another go. That combination is what brings people back so quickly.

those markets, but broader global

The London P1 Padel event is coming to

Olympic case further.

Buy tickets at: www.ticketmaster.co.uk

representation would only strengthen the

London, Olympia on the 4th - 9th August.

SPORT

Arturo Curello (Premier Padel)

www.finito.org.uk

ISSUE 18

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FOOD & DRINK

COSTEAU

THE TYRANNY OF THE £14 SANDWICH

T

here is a moment – and it comes now with suspicious regularity –

when you stand at a counter, glance up at a menu, and realise that a sandwich has quietly become a decision – and

perhaps a decision with a certain sharp humour attached to it.

Fourteen pounds. Sometimes fifteen.

Add a drink and you are north of

twenty. The hesitation is brief – nobody

else is outwardly protesting the pricing – but it’s a definite aspect of the situation.

You tap the card anyway, and move on,

but something in you has registered that a line has shifted.

It would be easy to dismiss this as

generational grumbling. But something more precise has happened. The first stage of this story is not moral, but economic. Costs have genuinely

surged. Food inflation over the past

few years has been extraordinary, and

hospitality has been hit even harder –

labour, energy, rents, taxes all rising in a way that has forced operators into a defensive crouch.

Even the most hard-headed voices in the industry have said as much.

Tim Martin, the founder of J D

Wetherspoon, has been blunt: trying to hold prices steady in the face of rising

costs, he warned, could be “catastrophic”.

So far, so reasonable.

But inflation has a second act, and this is where things get interesting. Once

the initial increases are absorbed – once

“what must we charge?” to “what can we get away with?”

And this is how you arrive at the £14 sandwich.

customers accept that £9 is the new £7

It is not that every operator is cynical.

less about necessity and more about

systems. If one café pushes to £11 and

– something changes. Pricing becomes

Far from it. But markets are social

possibility. The question shifts from

customers keep paying, the next one

140

notices. If £11 holds, £13 does not feel

like a revolution. Before long, an entirely new normal has emerged, and the extraordinary becomes routine.

The effect on behaviour is already visible.

People are eating out less often. They are making sharper choices. They are beginning – quietly – to notice value again.

FOOD & DRINK

And yet – despite all that – he insists

"Wetherspoons has made on holding the line where he can. His stated aim has been to “keep price a bet about customer increases to a minimum,” even as those pressures mount. psychology that much That is not altruism. It is strategy. of the rest of the Because Wetherspoons has made a bet industry seems to have about customer psychology that much of the rest of the industry seems to have forgotten: people are loyal to places that forgotten: people are feel fair. Not perfect. Not exceptional. loyal to places that feel Just fair.

And fairness, in a pricing environment fair. Not perfect. Not like this, is incredibly powerful. exceptional. Just fair." There is also a kind of brutal clarity Which is why a place like The Fox on the Hill in East Dulwich feels almost disorienting. The other day I had a burger there for £8.50. It was fine.

Entirely fine. But more than that, it

felt like time travel. Like the 1990s had briefly reasserted themselves.

The place was packed.

This is where the Wetherspoons model begins to look less like a curiosity and

more like a challenge. Because it is not magic; it is structure. Large premises,

high turnover, tight cost control, ruthless simplicity. They operate close to 800

pubs, employ over 40,000 people, and

generate more than £2 billion in revenue — but the underlying logic is almost

old-fashioned. Sell more, charge less, keep it moving.

Martin himself has always been

unusually explicit about the mechanics.

Pubs, he points out, operate under far

heavier cost burdens than supermarkets – higher taxes, higher staffing ratios, higher overheads. Labour alone can

in their model. They accept lower

margins per pint or per burger because they expect volume to compensate.

They fill large rooms. They turn tables quickly. They eliminate friction. It is

not glamorous, but it is effective. One industry observer recently noted that their low prices are not the result of

corner-cutting, but of bulk buying and slimmer profit margins — the oldest trick in retail.

The contrast with the £14 sandwich economy is stark. There, the model

is inverted: fewer customers, higher

margins, a more rarefied atmosphere

sorting the market. Not dramatically.

Not angrily. Just steadily. Choosing the

places that feel sustainable over the ones that feel extractive.

So the question is not whether the £14 sandwich can exist. Clearly it can. The question is whether it can endure.

"Once a customer begins to feel that they are being gently overcharged, something changes in the relationship. The spell breaks. The next time, they hesitate longer.

Eventually, they simply do not come."

Because there is a deeper shift underway here. Eating out used to be a habit. Now it is becoming an occasion again. And when that happens, frequency drops.

Volume matters more than margin.

Loyalty matters more than theatre.

perhaps, maybe a more intricate

Which brings us back to that £8.50

And sometimes – often – it works.

remarkable. But it did not need to be. It

narrative. It is dining as positioning.

But it carries a risk. Because once a

customer begins to feel that they are

being gently overcharged, something

changes in the relationship. The spell

burger in East Dulwich. It was not

answered the only question that matters in the long run: would you come back tomorrow and order it again without thinking?

breaks. The next time, they hesitate

Markets, over time, tend to reward the

come.

is yes.

longer. Eventually, they simply do not

places where the answer to that question

account for roughly a third of sales in

And this is where we may be now:

The £14 sandwich still has its audience.

in retail. Even a modest wage rise adds

correction.

dangerous: scrutiny.

costs, he says, are among the highest

us. The second – opportunism – is still

But it has also acquired something

pubs, compared with a fraction of that

somewhere between inflation and

materially to the price of a pint. Energy

The first phase – necessity – is behind

And once people start doing the maths

in the world, and they ripple through

playing out. But the third is beginning:

future tends to belong to whoever still

everything else.

selection. Customers are quietly re-

– properly, quietly, in their heads – the makes sense without explanation. www.finito.org.uk

ISSUE 18

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PREVIEW OF COMING ATTRACTIONS

NEXT ISSUE 1 LEADERS

Wikipedia.org

Wikipedia.org

p12 Lord Toby Young

p27 Ian McEwan

4 FOUNDER'S LETTER 7 DIARY Professor Nadey Hakim 8 MEET THE MENTOR Sam Pearce

COLUMNS

FEATURES

12 THE INTELLECTUAL

30 THE DONALD

Lord Toby Young 13 THE EDUCATOR Johanna Mitchell 14 THE ACTRESS

Trump’s hyperactive second term

54 AMERICA AT 250 Where are the United States headed?

65 FANCY A SABBATICAL?

Mid-career breaks and where they lead

74 HAVE WE DEFEATED WOKENESS? Alan Halsall 80 BURSARY UPDATE Harvey Hounslow

88 LETTER FROM THE MIDDLE EAST

Kim Ghattas

Hayley Atwell 15 THE BUSINESSMAN Lord Cruddas 19 THE POLYMATH Sarah Tucker 20 A QUESTION OF DEGREE Jazmin Atkins 25 RELATIVELY SPEAKING Andrew Pierce

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p14 Hayley Atwell

p27 Lin-Manuel Miranda

27 TEN THOUSAND HOURS Lin-Manuel Miranda 27 TOMORROW’S LEADERS Shauna Tiffany 27 THOSE ARE MY PRINCIPLES Ian McEwan 142

PREVIEW OF COMING ATTRACTIONS Alamy

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The Trump Jobs Agenda How has Donald 2.0 affected the workplace?

ART, CULTURE & BOOKS 96 WINSTON AT THE WALLACE COLLECTION Churchill the painter 98 A BRIEF HISTORY OF HIP HOP The sound of the streets 121 BUILDING AMERICA

An interview with Jeanne Gang

126 NOT FOOTBALL, SOCCER

Reporting from the 2026 World Cup

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130 UPDIKE, ROTH, BELLOW

144 CLASS DISMISSED Kedge Martin

What happened to the great American novelists?

132 BOOK REVIEWS The latest workplace tomes

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128 LAKESIDE HARBOUR Celia Imrie 140 COSTEAU The invention of the hamburger

Issue 18

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ISSUE 18

143

CLASS DISMISSED

ROBERT ETTINGER THE LEATHER GOODS CEO ON RUNNING A FAMILY BUSINESS, THE FORMATIVE NATURE OF SKIING, AND FACE TO FACE MEETINGS YOU GREW UP AROUND ETTINGER. AT WHAT POINT DID YOU REALISE IT WASN’T JUST THE FAMILY BUSINESS, BUT SOMETHING YOU WANTED TO LEAD? I was about 25 at the time and had been working on and off within the family business. Although the company was already well established, I felt there was considerable opportunity to further develop both the business and the Ettinger brand.

YOU SPENT YOUR EARLY TWENTIES AS A SKI INSTRUCTOR. WHAT DID THAT PERIOD TEACH YOU THAT STILL INFLUENCES HOW YOU RUN A COMPANY TODAY? As a ski instructor, one of the most enjoyable aspects of the job - aside from the days on the slopes, of course! - was the people. Whether that was meeting new people or supporting them through their lessons, it taught me important skills that have served me well when dealing with customers, but more importantly, when managing my team.

People make a business.

YOUR FATHER FOUNDED THE BUSINESS. HOW DO YOU BALANCE RESPECT FOR HIS LEGACY WITH THE NEED TO EVOLVE AND MODERNISE? My father left a very solid business and taught me a lot about etiquette and respect within the industry, but all businesses need to move forward, especially nowadays. Despite making modernisations to the ways we work, 144

we have never been a trend-led business and have always maintained a focus on quality and British manufacturing, which I believe continues my father’s legacy.

ETTINGER REMAINS ONE OF THE FEW BRITISH LUXURY LEATHER GOODS MAKERS STILL PRODUCING IN THE UK. WHY DOES THAT MATTER, AND IS IT GETTING HARDER TO SUSTAIN? Our factory, based in Birmingham, England, is still hugely important to the business. Our customers value and respect British manufacturing, and we choose to maintain that integrity over profit margins. As more and more companies have moved their manufacturing overseas, it has become harder to find people with the right skills, but we’re very fortunate to have a fantastic, long-standing team at our factory who are committed to passing on their knowledge to the younger generation.

YOU’VE SEEN THE SHIFT FROM FAX AND TELEPHONE TO EMAIL AND ZOOM. HAS ANYTHING BEEN LOST IN THE SPEED OF MODERN BUSINESS COMMUNICATION? Email and Zoom are great and certainly help improve business efficiency!

However, I still feel that there’s nothing better, especially when it comes to relationship building, than face to face meetings. It’s for this reason that I still travel to many of our markets worldwide personally to either meet with buyers or press.

Robert Ettinger

WHAT DOES “GOOD CRAFTSMANSHIP” ACTUALLY MEAN TO YOU IN PRACTICE? Good craftsmanship to me is welldesigned products, beautifully made, by people that care.

IF YOU WEREN’T RUNNING ETTINGER, WHAT WOULD YOU BE DOING? That’s a hard one! I would likely still be running a business if I’m honest. I have always had a passion for entrepreneurship, and my father definitely nurtured that within me, encouraging me to work in other industries and really get a feel for how a business was run in my early twenties, before joining the family business.

WHAT’S ONE PIECE OF ADVICE YOU’D GIVE SOMEONE CONSIDERING JOINING A FAMILY BUSINESS — ESPECIALLY IF THEY’RE NOT SURE IT’S THEIR OWN PATH? Definitely work for other companies first! Get a feel for different industries and understand how they’re run. The more experience you have in different departments, the better equipped you will be to oversee them.

For over two centuries, our tailors have perfected the art of bespoke suiting, hand cut and made on Savile Row since 1806. Each piece tells a story of craftsmanship, heritage and timeless style. henrypoole.com | @henrypooleco | +44 (0)20 7734 5985