Issue 13

NARENDRA MODI

THE INDIAN CENTURY

UK’S NUMBER ONE

DESTINATION

FOR LUXURY WATCHES & JEWELLERY

Proud supporters of The King’s Trust

Editor:

Christopher Jackson

Editor-at-large: Claire Coe

Contributing Editors:

Emily Prescott, Meredith Taylor, Lord Ranger, Liz Brewer, Dr Paul Hokemeyer

Advisory Board:

Sir John Griffin (Chairman), Dame Mary Richardson, Sir Anthony Seldon, Elizabeth Diaferia, Ty Goddard, Neil Carmichael

Management: Ronel Lehmann (Founder & CEO), Colin Hudson, Tom Pauk, Professor Robert Campbell Christopher Jackson, Curtis Ross, Julia Carrick OBE, Gaynor Goodliffe

Mentors:

Derek Walker, Andrew Inman, Chloë Garland, Alejandra Arteta, Angelina Giovani, Christopher Clark, Robin Rose, Sophia Petrides, Dana JamesEdwards, Iain Smith, Jeremy Cordrey, Martin Israel, Iandra Tchoudnowsky, Tim Levy, Peter Ibbetson, Claire Orlic, Judith Cocking, Sandra Hermitage, Claire Ashley, Dr Richard Davis, Sir David Lidington, Coco Stevenson, Talan Skeels-Piggins, Edward Short, David Hogan, Susan Hunt, Divyesh Kamdar, Julia Glenn, Neil Lancaster, Dr David Moffat, Jonathan Lander, Kirsty Bell, Simon Bell, Paul Brannigan, Kate King, Paul Aplin, Professor Andrew Eder, Derek Bell, Graham Turner, Matthew Thompson, Douglas Pryde, Pervin Shaikh, Adam Mitcheson, Ross Power, Caroline Roberts, Sue Harkness, Andy Tait, Mike Donoghue, Tony Mallin, Patrick Chapman, Amanda Brown, Tom Pauk, Daniel Barres, Patrick Chapman, Merrill Powell, Kate Glick, Lord Mott, Dr Susan Doering, Raghav Parkash, Marcus Day, Sheridan Mangal, Mark Thistlethwaite, Madhu Palmar, Margaret Stephens, John Cottrell, Victoria Anstey, Stephen Goldman, Patrick Timms, James Meek, Dominique Rollo, Tracey Jones, Alan Urmston, Duncan Palmer, James Slater, Charles Hamilton-Stubber, Catherine Wood, Guy Beresford

Business Development: Rara Plumptre, Khalid Dadoush

Design and Digital: Nick Pelekanos, Ankita Agrawal, D’Arcy Lawson Baker

Photography: Sam Pearce, Will Purcell, Gemma Levine

Public Relations: Pedroza Communications

Website Development: Eprefix

Media Buying: Virtual Campaign Management

Print Production: Marcus Dobbs

Printers:

Micropress Printers Ltd

Distribution: Emblem Group

Registered Address:

Finito Education Limited, 14th floor, 33 Cavendish Square, London W1G 0PW, +44 (0)20 3780 7700 Finito and FinitoWorld are trade marks of the owner. We cannot accept responsibility for unsolicited submissions, manuscripts and photographs. All prices and details are correct at time of going to press, but subject to change. We take no responsibility for omissions or errors. Reproduction in whole or in part without the publisher’s written permission is strictly prohibited. All rights reserved. Registered in England No. 9985173

FOUNDER’S LETTER

Eighteen months ago, I was a guest for lunch at The Garrick Club. Although I am not a member of any club, I have been fortunate to be invited to a fair few over the years. This visit was more unusual, as from the moment I entered the main entrance, I was immediately whisked up the grand staircase by a sommelier who waxed lyrical about my host’s choice of vintage red wine from the cellar. You can imagine my growing excitement not to have a chance to ask whether he had tasted the wine before decanting, before being warmly greeted by Martin Landau holding forth in the Bar. Lunch was a banquet, and I was impressed by the 1982 Chateau Margaux. He was so interested in what Finito is doing, and I had to pace myself as the waiter took pride in topping up my glass.

It turned out to be a farewell encounter and one which I will never forget. I must have been away when the sad news of Martin’s passing reached me. We pay tribute to a giant of property and someone who did so much to give back to those less fortunate during his lifetime. In previous issues, we have championed bursary pupils from the Landau Forte College Derby, as they transition to the world of work. Those students will always remember his name. Hospice UK has been warning for some time about the challenges facing the community of more than 200 hospices it represents. The charity has warned of the worst financial year on record - and has been actively lobbying the new government. Hospices are set to take another hit when Employers

National Insurance goes up April, with no exemption offered by the Treasury. Just before Christmas, the government recognised the urgency of the situation, announcing £100m of capital funding for hospices in England. But the underlying position remains fragile, and Hospice UK is now looking to the government's NHS ten year plan to provide some long term security for these vital organisations.

With the highest predicated GDP growth of any major nation in 2023, India’s status as a global superpower is rising exponentially. In 2022 the country overtook the UK as the world’s fifth-largest economy. In 2023 its population overtook China’s. Since the dawn of the 21st century, global political and business leaders such as Amazon’s Jeff Bezos have identified this as India’s Century, just as Great Britain dominated the 19th century and the United States the 20th.

Narendra Modi is serving his third term as Prime Minister of India and recently stated that he has no reasons to worry that India-US relations would not prosper under Trump.

The advent of a UK-India trade deal could provide over 300,000 new jobs in this country and over a million in India. It takes courage from international business leaders with demonstrable record of achievement to get this over the line. One such man is Dinesh Dhamija, who has worked tirelessly to promote the benefits to our two nations. As a mark of our respect, we have titled this issue after his book which he authored which makes for compelling reading. If our politicians cannot get the trade deal done, I say “send for Dinesh.” His business leadership, resilience and diplomacy skills would ensure that a deal is finally reached.

If you have an idea for a front cover feature or other article, we would like to hear from you. A New Year toast to you all and absent friends.

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A NEW YEAR’S RESOLUTION

This isn’t a magazine dedicated to philosophy, but as 2025 kicks into gear there is no harm in considering the work of Emanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772). Swedenborg’s work continues to attract a small but dedicated following across the globe. The Swedish philosopher’s contemporaries knew him as a scientist, who made remarkable early predictions of the double helix structure of the gene, and described the function of the neuron well before his time. He also produced early prototypes of a flying machine and a submarine – among many other things.

But he is known now most of all for his theological work, especially Heaven and Hell (1758) which provides a description of what he calls a Heaven of Use. In short he states that everything - and therefore everybody – has been created for a reason. Our goal as human beings, it might be said, is to discover what another philosopher Wilson Van Dusen called ‘the gentle root of one’s existence.’

This is a very interesting question to ask oneself in respect of our careers, and in respect of our lives. What am I really created to do? To the frustration of many career-seekers, this can often be easier to discover in others than in oneself. This in turn is part of the power of mentorship: to shine a light on us which we can’t quite angle rightly towards ourselves.

Usually when somebody is discussing what they love, their voice becomes tender, and their expression changes. We all know the music-lover is different when they discuss music; the film-lover will gesticulate passionately when the Oscar nominations are talked about; and the born entrepreneur will be unusually animated when the conversation comes round to Elon Musk.

Yet despite the fact that the signals can often be reasonably clear, there are a remarkable number of people out there who don’t follow their passion. Sometimes this can be a question of sincerity: they never went inwards sufficiently really to ask themselves what usefulness might mean in their case.

In other instances, people are aware of what they love but the notion of doing it for a living seems almost too good to be true. They don’t pursue it out of some strange inner tendency to stymie themselves.

It is for this reason that Baroness Nicky Morgan when she was Education Secretary during the Cameron administration placed such emphasis on resilience. Sometimes, we can be strangely circumspect about what we love, and part of education should be to toughen ourselves mentally against the naysayers within as well those without.

And yet the real point of Swedenborg’s theory of use is that it needn’t always be glamorous. There is pleasure to be had in fulfilling a humble function. In fact banal tasks can be a good place to start in terms of performing use: clearing our work space, going through our emails, being sure to respond in timely and thorough fashion.

This might be why Morgan at a recent Finito event emphasised the importance of curiosity when it comes to our roles. How much better would the world have been had, say, Justin Welby performed his tasks with more thoroughness? How much better would it have been had Paula Vennells investigated with a real sense of her use what came across her desk?

It is a small point in the scheme of things but in each instance it would have been better not just for the victims but for Welby and Vennells too. We have all had to face up to the reality that

the Archbishop of Canterbury felt the appearance of his function was more important than the function itself.

Of course, all this works too at the political level. Democratic elections bequeath mandates and it is wise to see these as permission to conduct use. Too often hyperactive politicians go outside their mandate; when they do so it might be said they are breaching the laws of use.

We have seen in the past few months two clear examples of this. I can’t remember Donald Trump mentioning the potential American acquisition of Greenland with much volubility on the 2024 campaign trail. It took the presidential transition for that topic to come up.

Similarly, the Starmer administration is equally culpable when it comes to tax. Here again, the sudden post-election discovery of a so-called ‘black hole’ in the public finances led to large National Insurance rises on employers. Again, all this materialised as a prospect after and not before the election. This will mean that as the cost of borrowing escalates, and fiscal rules are inevitably broken, the electorate will be less likely to give the Chancellor Rachel Reeves the benefit of the doubt. She has violated the doctrine of uses.

The truth can sometimes be better, though often a bit more prosaic, than human beings tend to make it. Many human beings are very resourceful and smart: most likely the job in front of you at the moment is one you can do very well – and better than you could imagine if you were to give it your full respect and attention. But human beings also dream outside their scope – and insodoing limit their effectiveness.

To be quietly useful is therefore as good a New Year’s Resolution as any. Besides, not to be useful can come back to you quicker than you may imagine, as Reeves and Trump may well discover.

AGAINST IMMOBILITY

It’s quite difficult running businesses. It goes without saying that you have to sell a lot of whatever you’re selling, while also meeting tax requirements, keeping and ideally expanding your workforce, and creating a desirable workplace culture.

As the huge number of bankruptcies each year attest (around 2,000 per month in 2024), a lot has to fall into place for that to happen in the best of times. And these past years have, to put it charitably, not been the best of times. From Brexit to Covid to inflation and beyond, stuff keeps happening.

So spare a thought for those who try to do all the difficult things above – and also to do it with a

social conscience, and make sure they employ people from disadvantaged backgrounds.

Finito World recently heard of a top recruitment firm in London which has always had a bursary scheme in place for recruiting people from impoverished backgrounds. It was part of the ethos of senior management to want to do this.

Now that Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner has mooted the notion of unfair dismissal on day one the scheme has had to be curtailed. The firm can’t take the risk of litigation which would undoubtedly ensue should they have to let people go . “It could be a week of poor performance and then a no-win no-fee lawyer. We

can’t commit to that,” the chairman told us.

Such are the unintended consequences of what is surely well-meaning legislation designed to promote the rights of employees.

At the heart of the issue is the question of trust. Can businesses be trusted to make genuine efforts off their own bat to tackle social mobility? The answer will be yes or no on a case by case business. But the suspicion remains that a bit of freedom can go a long way – and its curtailing usually means litigation. That will create, as night follows day, a society of lawyers. Sir Keir Starmer of all people might be expected to know that – he used to be one after all.

IN DEFENCE OF MOHAMED AMERSI

The other day we spoke to an employee of the philanthropist Mohamed Amersi. “Every day he does incredible things nobody hears about.” This magazine can attest from its long friendship with Amersi that this is true.

Amersi’s list of philanthropic endeavours is indeed extraordinary, and are detailed in his autobiography Why? which we review in our books pages in this edition.

But to read the mainstream media you’d not know that, since Amersi has for years now been regularly ambushed by Charlotte Leslie, Tom Burgis, David Davis and Margaret Hodge. He has had to watch himself be turned into a

caricature, though he hasn’t let up one bit in his hard work for the causes he believes in.

But is the tide beginning to turn? What makes Why? such an extraordinary read is Amersi’s absolute refusal to be polite. This puts him in breach of an unwritten rule of the British Establishment – and especially of the Conservative British establishment. It also makes the book stand out from all the careful and selfserving memoirs one ordinarily reads.

Here is a man who refuses to mince his words, and it’s refreshing. Amersi in fact comes across as a sort of quirky Hercules clearing the Augean stables. Insodoing he also shows the raw emotion which actually surrounds

power, and which is always simmering beneath the surface at Westminster. It couldn’t be more different from the genteel Etonian calibrations of those who until recently held the reins of power.

Kemi Badenoch could do a lot worse than read Amersi’s book: it shows a man who dearly wanted to do good, but who wasn’t prepared to put up with the nonsense that nowadays pervades the Establishment. It is immensely to his credit that instead of pretending it was all okay, as everybody else does, Amersi calls it what it was: a complete mess that needs to be fixed.

THIS ISSUE

p20 Fatima Whitbread MBE p36 Sir Michael Morpurgo

p114 Selena Gomez

Jimmy Choo

JON SOPEL

THE

LEGENDARY BROADCASTER ON JANUARY 6TH 2021, THE STARMER ADMINISTRATION – AND WHY HE LEFT THE BBC

Iam sometimes asked about why I left the BBC. I remember the corporation went through this spasm of asking themselves how to attract the young. The editor of the 6 O’Clock News was thinking about how we get more young people. Do we need younger presenters? Or do we need old people like me talking about young people’s issues? This was at a time when LPs were making a comeback. We sent a young reporter down to Oxford Street, and said to a teenager, holding up an LP: “Hello, I’m from the Six O’Clock News. Do you know what this is?” The teenager replied: “Yes, it’s an LP. What’s the Six O’Clock News?”

Thinking back to January 2021, I can’t forget the day after the inauguration when Joe Biden was finally President. Washington DC was a garrison town, the place was absolutely sealed off. There were rolls and rolls of barbed wire because of

what had happened on January 6th. I will never forget the shock of that.

January 6th is also inscribed on my mind. I’ve been in situations where I’ve faced greater personal danger, but I’ve never seen a day more shocking than January 6th when the peaceful transfer of power hadn’t happened. The Capitol had been sealed off by razor wire and I went as close as I could, and went live on the 6 O’Clock News. There were lots of Trump supporters around and they heckled me throughout. It soon morphed into a chant: “You lost, go home! You lost, go home!” I was trying to figure out what that meant. At the end of my live broadcast I said to this guy: “What on earth does this mean?" He poked me in the chest and said: “1776.” I thought: 'Do I explain that my family was in a Polish shtetl at that stage?"

Jon Sopel (Wikipedia.org)

“THEN YOU’D GET PESKY PEOPLE LIKE TONY BLAIR WHO COME ALONG AND REMIND THEM IT IS ABOUT POWER. ”

It’s always seemed to me that the Labour Party finds power a really inconvenient thing to happen. They much prefer it when they're forming Shadow Cabinets and discussing the National Executive. Then you’d get pesky people like Tony Blair who come along and remind them it is about power. The Conservative Party was always the ruthless machine of

government: there is an element in which the Conservative Party is in danger of going down the Labour Party route. It was the Conservative Party membership, for instance, who gave us Liz Truss, the patron saint of our podcast The News Agents. We launched in the week she became Prime Minister - and my God, she was good for business.

What would Britain look like if there were 10 years of Starmer? He’s done the doom and gloom, and how everything is the Conservatives’ fault. That's fine - but so far, he’s not set out what the future is going to look like under him. Is it Rachel Reeves’ vision of the growth economy? Or is it Rayner’s vision of increasing workers’ rights. I think Starmer is an incrementalist and simply doesn’t know. If he has any sense at all he will look at the centre of political gravity in the electorate and go for growth because that’s what the country needs.

Jon Sopel was talking at a Finito event given in aid of Hospice UK. To donate, go to this link: https://www.hospiceuk.org/support-us/donate

Meet the Mentor: SHERIDAN MANGAL

FINITO WORLD MEETS SHERIDAN MANGAL, A MENTOR WITH A PARTICULAR LINE IN CAREER CHANGE MENTORING

Can you talk a bit about your upbringing and early career choices and how they shaped your work as a mentor for Finito?

Born in 1961, I am what many would refer to as a baby-boomer, but also first UK-born from the ‘Windrush’ generation. Raised in East London, progressing through primary and secondary school was a bumpy ride, but was equally the origin of my developing interests and ambitions. Once I realised that being a striker for Chelsea FC required some football talent, I turned my attention elsewhere…the City.

So how did you make your way in your chosen field?

After doing well at Brooke House Secondary, the intent of a temporary summer job prior to sixth form education turned into a permanent career decision. A City opportunity arose and at 16 years wrapped in sharp suit, my 16 year career at the London Stock Exchange began. This presented many challenges regarding steep learning curves, but also the unpleasant social ills of the time that crept into the workplace. After some years and despite the work experience gained, it is here that I always felt few steps behind those entering via the graduate intake.

Notwithstanding the lack of confidence, I pressed on, supported by great parents. Effectively, they were my first mentors. As my career progressed, the challenges persisted, but maturity, experience and simultaneous education

enabled a response mechanism and positioned me as source of advice for others following.

This triggered my interest in mentoring. After many years of alliances with youth charities, schools and colleges, often deploying self-designed initiatives, my interest has never waned. Hence, my involvement with Finito, where I can draw on many personal and professional experiences that equate with entry-level candidates as they build and apply their career plans.

Did you have a mentor growing up or early on in your working life?

Apart from parental guidance, I had no mentor as such. Indeed the concept of mentorship was unfamiliar and unrefined compared to today. I often say my professional navigation of financial markets through the 70s, 80s and 90s was predominantly by combat rather than design: responding to ad-hoc opportunities as opposed to proactively seeking the next logical step.

Against this backdrop. I can certainly appreciate the benefits of guidance from someone who has already travelled my journey. It would have saved some considerable pain, particularly at the junctures of indecision and plain fear. The anxiety was debilitating. Hence, I am here today with Finito, offering my stories and knowledge that I trust can be useful to those who are apprehensive, lacking direction or facing obstacles that appear insurmountable.

You’ve worked for a long time in the financial and hedge fund sectors. What is it you think that mentees ought most to know about those sectors?

Understanding the dynamics of the securities industry is crucial. Heavily regulated and often driven on market sentiment, the financial markets space is broad and deep, with a variety of instruments and strategies for those of low to high risk appetites.

As an entrant, my advice would be to know the target sector’s current and emerging states and trends. This includes the leaders and their respective strengths, the established and rising boutiques and the general issues the chosen sector is facing.

This is particularly so with asset management. The adoption of AI and algorithmic strategies is pervasive as is the growth in passive investing. Regarding employment, candidates must be aligned with entry

Sheridan Mangal

programmes including ‘off-cycle’ routes.

Mentees should also ensure applications focus on value offered at the earliest opportunity, from the perspective of the employer. Furthermore, the objective shouldn’t be for a particular role, but to just get into the industry or sector and navigate to where your developing strengths are needed.

It’s astonishing to see your passion for the law come through on your CV. What is it that drives your passion for the law and your desire to keep on learning?

Further to my active interest in financial markets, I have always held a curiosity for the legal implications and general application of the law.

Quite late in my career, I decided to take this further and embark on my legal qualifications while working, culminating in my bar exams during Covid. There were several drivers; my increasing interest in commercial law, unpicking an issue with legal reasoning and the gravitas of becoming a lawyer. More importantly, proving to myself that I could actually do it was the strongest motivation.

The distillation of a problem into a legal case, concurs with my pattern of detailed thinking regarding outcomes, the inherent dependencies and viable strategies. Indeed I am always curious about a variety of subjects, incidents and histories, some exciting and astonishing, many quite dull, but revealing.

Nonetheless, I have a constant thirst for learning, teaching and testing myself, albeit through new formidable social and business challenges ….or simply the latest FT cryptic crossword while on the 0659 from Eastbourne to Victoria.

You’ve been doing a lot of mentoring for Finito. What’s the most common mistake you’re seeing when it comes to young people when they choose their career paths and start out on their career journeys?

I have been mentoring for over 20 years, recently with Finito. Socially, I remain active volunteering within the context of addressing youths within or vulnerable to negative lifestyles.

Concurrently, due to my varied experience and knowledge areas I am seen as a source for career advice. Within both settings however, there are similarities. Mentees often are unaware of their real value to an employer. Moreover, they know their abilities, but cannot translate them into something compelling for an employer. This shortfall often arises when networking and when writing to recruiters.

For example, the narrative is often, “I am good at workflow mapping as seen on project x”. This is incomplete. There needs to be the outcome in terms of “and this helped the company to achieve a faster compliance process”. Another mistake is goal-setting that tends to be too narrow.

Despite the submission of numerous applications, the candidates perceived success is the ideal one or two employers and/or seeking a post that is far too sophisticated for an entry-level candidate. This can dilute the positives and motivation for alternatives.

Career change mentoring is a huge growth area for Finito at the moment. What’s your sense on why that is, and what sorts of trends are you typically seeing in this area?

I look at my experience, having traversed financial markets, teaching/lecturing

and the law. Also, the voluntary aspects, including mentorship. Many changes in focus, that draw on different skillsets.

The bridges I have had to cross have not always been a choice, and the mix of excitement and trepidation was often difficult to grasp so guidance at these moments is invaluable.

In my view, career change mentoring is a growing need due to the pace at which industries are changing. This stems from changing work patterns, the abundance of AI architectures and the shift to platform based solutions.

Many candidates, young and more experienced are attuned to a better work-life balance and as such, are less hesitant to take a leap of faith and restart with something new. This is especially so for those wanting to start their own enterprise.

Who are your heroes who have most inspired you in your career?

These come from several perspectives. Generally I would call on historical figures who despite immense social challenges, took the helm and instigated positive change.

This served as a character building platform for fearlessness and pushing through. Career-wise, there were those with similar backgrounds to mine, that blazed a trail; footballer Viv Anderson playing for England in 1978 (one year after I began my City career), Baroness Patricia Scotland becoming Attorney General in 2007. Also Sir Damon Buffini in the 1990s, as a major force in private equity.

The underlying inspiration from these figures was collectively, their talent, drive and belief in achieving success.

COLUMNS

Our regular writers on employability in 2024

34 | GRACE HARDY: SPREADSHEET QUEEN

E2E’s Shalini Khemka CBE 19 Wikipedia .org

THE NETWORKER-IN-CHIEF

26 Wikipedia .org

BIT OF BEEF

Sir Ian Botham’s swashbuckling career

REMEMBERING STANLEY KUBRICK

Malcolm McDowell recalls the Clockwork Orange director

SIR MARTIN SORRELL

THE CHAIR OF S4 CAPITAL ON TRUMP – AND WHERE THE DEMOCRATS WENT WRONG

There were two clear issues in the 2024 US election: firstly, as James Carville put it, it’s the economy, stupid. Secondly, it was the immigration question, though there were some signs in the exit polls that the future of democracy was also important.

The Democrats got it wrong – and the pollsters did too. But then I think Trump, for the second time out of three, has conducted really tactically interesting campaigns. In 2016 he used a San Antonio agency called Giles-Parscale which was run by a guy Brad Parscale with only about 100 employees. It was the days of Cambridge Analytica and personalised data: they ran an extremely effective campaign in 2016.

In 2024, the Democrats outspent the Republicans very heavily. In 2016 they had new media; in 2024, they had a “new-new” media. They only had a staff of about four people; the Democrats had about 100. It’s ironic that the Democrats are left with a bill for £20 million for three celebrity concerts which they’re unable to pay for: I think Trump has offered to pay off the debt.

I thought Trump would win until the last few days. Then I thought the issue with the comedian Tony Hinchcliffe calling Puerto Rico an ‘island of garbage’ in the warm-up at the Madison Square Garden comment – I thought that wouldn’t go down well. I also wondered whether the comments he made about Liz Cheney would have a negative impact on his prospects.

But fundamentally, it doesn’t matter what Trump says. When he once said he could shoot somebody on Fifth Avenue and not lose any votes, he was right. In 2024, he hit the nail on the head over and again and was very disciplined, especially when he

repeated the Reagan line: “Are you better off than you were five years ago?”

He was also very disciplined on the advertising. The Democrats used the “new-old” media: Facebook and Instagram and so on.

Nevertheless, it was a surprise that Trump took the seven swing states, as well as the House and the Senate: it was the scale of the victory more than the victory of itself which came as a mild surprise.

All of this means that Trump is in a very strong position, particularly for the first two years, since there’s usually a reaction in the mid-terms. The stock markets have welcomed the win and Treasury yields have risen slightly and so there are some natural concerns now surrounding inflation. We’ll also see what the impacts of the proposed tariffs are going forwards.

On the Democrat side, I don’t know if it would have made a difference if Biden had pulled out of the race earlier, and if the Democratic Party had had an open convention. I don’t think Tim Walz was a good pick as Vice-President – Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro would probably have been better, but perhaps Kamala was worried about the competitive element there. She didn’t want a strong personality. Going down into the results a little, the Republicans managed to engage with Latinos, with young blacks, and with less college-educated young whites. The other surprise for me was that the Roe v Wade decision and abortion was not as prominent as we expected: women didn’t react as aggressively as we thought they would do.

Of course, Trump’s rallies and speeches were extremely dark. Kamala’s rallies were the opposite, with her smiling a lot – but there was a lack of content. That left a

gap for Trump to make some shrewd moves: to take tax off Americans living abroad; and to take corporation tax down from 21 per cent to 15 per cent as well as lowering income tax. All these were far more substantive than anything the Harris campaign said.

I saw a TikTok of a young black woman with a massive apple in her hand. She said to camera: “Do you know how much this apple costs?” It was a massive apple, about the size of a pomegranate. She said: “I thought it was one or two dollars – but it was seven dollars!”

At the end that was the thing which swung it: the economy.

And going forwards? Trump has put into place a Cabinet and advisors who very much represent what he was going to do.

People say he didn’t expect to win in 2016. This time around, it’s not a surprise and he has the four years of experience. He is somewhat controversial, to put it mildly. But he has firm views.

Whatever business said before the election, deep down they wanted Trump because he stands for low tax and low regulation. Overall, Trump is good for business and good for North America.

Sir Martin Sorrell

SHALINI KHEMKA CBE

THE CHAIR OF E2E ON WHY IT’S IMPORTANT FOR ENTREPRENEURS TO KEEP AN OPEN DIALOGUE

We live in a world where there’s always a route to market. A lot of entrepreneurs talk about experimentation: it’s important to explain what works and what doesn’t. It’s about execution, marketing, getting the funding in, and tenacity. Some people know how to build large businesses, and some are better at running smaller organisations.

Experimentation is so important: those who explore differing products, services and strategies do well, because they’re flexible and recognise that the world can change. Some entrepreneurs have a tendency to procrastinate and are quite stubborn as individuals: it goes back to being surrounded by the right people. You have to have a good community to talk to – and that’s what we’re trying to do. We’re all wired slightly differently, and so you’ll always get a fresh viewpoint.

It’s even simple things, and you might be doing a legal contract and talking to the right lawyer is important. The right legal advice – a small tweak in one clause in a particular contract – can make a massive difference. If you stay insular and stick with the same person you’ve always known, you might not be getting the breadth of advice you need.

Another example is that by listening to the right corporate finance boutiques a business might able to raise their sales price by 20 to 30 per cent. If they’ve experimented in the market they’ve managed to get a better price and better knowledge about how to exit. One of the things I’m really focused on is that we’ve got to be out there and not sitting behind a screen, especially post-Covid.

I think when it comes to selling, it’s about clarity and being honest with yourself as to whether it’s the right term. You have to ask yourself if you were to continue where could you take the business. You also need to be honest about whether you have the financing to do what you want to do, and whether you can get outside finance if you end it. Sometimes it’s worth riding that wave to take your company to the next level.

I find myself advising more companies at the moment. The lack of certainty around taxes, and especially capital gains tax, might make it more prudent to sell sooner rather than later. We’ve gone from 20 per cent to 24 per cent for bigger business, and from ten to 18 per cent for smaller – and I think it’s going to keep going up.

The message which the government is sending is: “The UK isn’t a good place to be wealthy.” A lot of our members are thinking about ways to go offshore and they’re already moving to Dubai and Saudi Arabia. With Trump coming in, I suspect many will move to America too.

On the question of outside investment, I’m very fortunate as I have amazing investors. They have more confidence in me than I have in myself. If you can do it through organic growth it might take a few years longer, but it's a much more straightforward journey on your own. If you’ve got a good enough product you should be able to sell it, and if you can sell it you should be able to make money.

It can be quite dangerous as you end up thinking you have more money than you actually do: you have to know if

your product is selling. One thing a start-up founder has to know is that their product is desirable and that the pricing is right. I remember talking to Gerry Ford, the founder of Caffe Nero. It was very interesting: he started his first shop in South Kensington and he didn’t open his second one until he knew the first one was making money, fully funded and making profits.

I’m a believer in going back to basics: don’t raise money if you’re not sure you can sell. Outside investment changes the dynamics and it changes you as a person: there’s a different level of stress when you have external funders. You’ve got other people’s money in your hands: it can be romantic at the beginning, but it’s a big psychological shift which entrepreneurs shouldn’t underestimate.

I would say it’s a good idea to accept money only once you’ve proven to yourself that you can sell – then you can go to other jurisdictions, with other products.

Shalini Khemka CBE

FATIMA WHITBREAD MBE

ONE OF BRITAIN’S GREATEST ATHLETES EXPLAINS HOW SHE GAINED AN EDGE IN COMPETITION

Looking back I was prepared to do whatever I could to gain an edge. First of all, you are what you eat. For me, when I was a competing athlete I was constantly working hard in the gym – three times a day training. I wasn’t that tall: I’m five foot three and most of my competitors were six foot. The important thing was I needed to be sure I was technically very sound.

I realised my diet had to be right – I was losing weight from the training and needed to maintain a certain weight. In the build-up to my being World Champion I was on a diet of about 8,000 calories a day. That’s a huge amount because on average women consume 3000 calories a day – but I was burning it all off. The diet I took was properly designed for me to have lots of iron: so I took in lots of offal, and had a special drink with raw eggs, banana and milk in a blender. I made sure it was all protein-based.

It was basically body-building and sculpting: it was about eating the right kinds of food – and then in training making sure you’re the right shape to maximise performance.

Back then we didn’t have the tools we have now. VHS was the main recorder. I would record everything I saw with regard to technique. I could analyse the footage mechanically and technically as to the different shapes and sizes of the different athletes I was competing against. I could observe their speed and velocity, their leg movement, the position of the hand, and the position of the javelin.. It all varies from athlete to athlete.

For me it was all about learning in that level of detail, and I suppose I was doing it way before my time. I really did my homework. When I’m passionate, I don’t hold back.

I always saw the javelin as a weapon of war: kill or be killed. When you step into the arena, you’re going back to Greek ancient times. The need to step on the runway was about claiming my territory: if I didn’t claim that and own that, then why was I there? The idea was to be able to know everything you needed to know and have a close affinity – a sort of love affair – with your javelin. It was a passion: to become the best in the world, you need to know everything that can be known about javelin-throwing and the disciplines you engage with.

I started as a pentathlete in the early days and trained very hard. I would sprint with Daley Thompson: as a young man, he was incredibly dedicated to his work. My mum was a javelin coach. I also did sprint training with our then golden girl Donna Hartley. It was a fantastic era for track and field, I suppose partly because it was a period when there was a lot of trouble with football and hooliganism. We became the number one sport.

It’s mind over matter. Ninety per cent of the mind application is based on preparation and training. As an athlete I understood there are two championships going on: with yourself and in the arena himself. Rory McIlroy at the 2024 US Open when he missed that crucial putt, was battling with himself. I could always sense what was going on in the arena in terms of psychological warfare: I never let that distract me. When you’re doing

sport at that level you have to have tunnel vision to keep your focus on what you’re doing.

You’ve got six throws and every throw counts. I taught myself the skill of being able to perform as well on my last throw as on my first: I might often win a championship on my last throw. Anyone can do an amazing throw – and suddenly perform out of your skin.

The press might tell you that you are number one and should win. But if you think like this, and start to wonder if you’re going to get gold, silver or bronze, you’re in the wrong mindset.

There’s always great expectation – from friends and family, from yourself and from the public. It’s fairly easy at the start of your career when nobody expects anything of you. Then the expectation and the pressure starts to creep in. The only way to cope with that is mind application and doing your preparation and being able to fall upon your experience.

Visit www.fatimascampaign.com

Fatima Whitbread MBE

SIR BERNARD JENKIN

THE VETERAN PARLIAMENTARIAN CHARTS

HIS ILLUSTRIOUS CAREER

Istartedmy career having decided I wasn’t going to be a musician. That was what I went up to Cambridge intending to do – but I got drawn into politics and in the end studied music for a year but took my degree in English Literature. I then went into business. I joined Ford Motor Company for four years and then spent six years in the fledgling private equity business.

A big influence in my life had been my father who had been in Margaret Thatcher’s Cabinet. Much to his surprise I chose a political career. I got elected at the tender age of 33. I was keen, diligent and ambitious. I immediately ran into difficulty because I opposed the Maastricht Treaty, which didn’t endear me to the Major administration.

After a period in the Shadow Cabinet, including two years as Defence Secretary, I rather fell out with David Cameron. It was over the conduct of candidates: he was determined to bring in all-women short lists. I kept telling him: if you do this, you won’t get it through the party, and secondly it’s probably wrong in principle. We’re a Conservative Party.

Then I went on the Defence Committee and started a new phase of my career. After 2010, I became the chair of the Public Administration Select Committee. I’ve always been interested in Whitehall and why it doesn’t work as well as it should. In Defence, I had become interested in who writes the UK’s grand strategy. I had bumped into the Chief of Defence Staff at the time Jock Stirrup and I asked him that question. He said: “That's easy: nobody.” The first enquiry was into that question.

It got immediate pushback from the establishment. David Cameron said he didn’t want strategy, but wanted to remain flexible. He didn’t understand the difference between strategy and a plan. There’s the old adage: no plan survives first contact with the enemy. We did a series of reports in strategic thinking in government. There was increasing dialogue with the likes Cabinet Secretaries Jeremy Heywood and Mark Sedwill about how Whitehall can work better. In 2019, the House appointed me Chair of the Liaison Committee. To start with I was very wary – there was a degree of resentment over the manner of my appointment as I’d been appointed by Resolution of the House instead of being voted in by the Committee.

I had to tread carefully, but as my term progressed, people understood that I was being consensual. During this period I formed the Strategy Group, which I coshare with George Robertson the former NATO Secretary-General and former Labour Defence Secretary,

Much of the discourse about the civil service is negative and destructive. If you just call it a blob, frankly you just annoy everyone. I say to ministers: the system’s not going to work for you unless officials feel engaged in what they're doing, and if they feel undervalued and dismissed it won’t work. Margaret Thatcher wasn’t brilliant all the time at motivating the civil service to her advantage. In those days, before open recruitment, it was much easier to plan people’s careers. Ministers could make sure the right people were in the right place. Today there is a lack of continuity and expertise in Whitehall.

This engagement with the senior civil service led to another report on Strategic Thinking this time by the Liaison Commitee. This report, released just before the 2024 election, makes a number of recommendations to the government. So that the civil service can better understand the concept of strategy. This is what they do in the Armed Forces, which is one of the reasons they’re so effective.

You always get some pushback from the civil service when there needs to be change. Actually, there needs to be far more red-teaming and tabletop exercises of scenarios – and not just in foreign policy but in other areas too: in energy policy for instance, or education or health.

This idea that there is some magic policy that’s going to fix Whitehall is false. Many civil servants have seen it so many times. I’ve talked to civil servants who say: “New minister, new crisis – I just dust off the old paper I did five years ago!” Change will take time and patience, but it is achievable.

Sir Bernard Jenkin

AHPO, 115M, LURSSEN, 16 GUESTS

LUXURY travel REDEFINED.

WFRANCES D’SOUZA

THE FORMER SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE OF LORDS GIVES AN UPDATE ON THE SITUATION IN AFGHANISTAN

hat one doesn’t realise is how avid girls are for education. What we do at Marefat is to make sure that every now and then we have a Zoom meeting with our pupils in Afghanistan. We run empowerment sessions which are run by Aziz Royesh from Washington and the girls crowd into their rooms.

Recently we had the girls speak about what a difference being able to access education has made to them. It was emotional and heart-warming. These are girls aged 14 and 15, and they said things like: “We thought our lives were finished and we were going to be married off.” Now they have hope – and they know that hope is tied to education.

Our goal is to get these girls educated at secondary level and then put them up for scholarships, some of which Lord Dennis Stevenson may consider funding. The goal of Marefat is to educate a whole cohort of women so that they can come back and be in the major professions: Afghanistan needs journalists, lawyers and surveyors. In fact, quite a lot of them want to do engineering too.

Since the Taleban came back we aim to teach in cells – or cluster education as it’s called. That will be quite difficult – and especially difficult to teach science. The project envisages girls gathering at abandoned schools. It could be cost-effective because there won’t be expensive school buildings to maintain but textbooks and teachers’costs have to be covered.

Education is the magic bullet of development. If you can educate John Arlott (Wikipedia.org)

girls, you get development in terms of later marriage, and fewer children. Wherever you see education beyond the primary school level of girls you see significant change in that society.

Of course, the events of 2022 were devastating for these girls. But all is not lost. What some of these girls are doing is teaching their parents or their younger siblings how to read. If you educate a child, you educate a village.

More broadly, if you help someone, you don’t just help that one person: you help that entire ecosystem. We should be enjoining development agencies to support those strategies which people employ in vulnerable societies at times of hardship: these methods are typically highly intelligent and based on attuned survival instincts.

Often what we see in these societies is diversification of income. A woman I know in Southern Africa brews beer, grows crops and makes baskets for the market. She sends her children off to work and builds transactional relationships with relatives in nearby towns. This creative networking and pluckiness serves them in good stead.

We need to have respect for what works. We understand that it’s very important in these countries to teach the practicalities of life. What first attracted me to Marefat was its vocational training: there has always been this emphasis on mechanics and electrical engineering as there were some who didn’t go onto academic careers.

It’s important that we learn the lessons domestically. In the wider

world, we should all be supportive of apprenticeships. We must ask ourselves what the point is of our children going to a minor university and doing a degree in media studies. The experience of university might be useful, and it may teach you how to think. But it’s so much better to be an apprentice.

It really gladdens one’s heart to see children being able to take pride in creating and making things. We don’t have enough emphasis on this. Fashioning a ceramic pot is useful and non-useful. One thinks of the beauty of some pots – the attention to detail and the way the clay is treated. It is exciting to think about all there is to learn.

I sometimes think about how we teach beauty. Sometimes you see something and it’s complete and beautiful: everything’s in its right place. The world isn’t like that, as we know – but my passion is to do what I can to make it better.

Frances D'Souza

The Cricketer SIR IAN BOTHAM

SIR IAN BOTHAM’S JOURNEY OUGHT TO BE VERY INSPIRING TO THE NEXT GENERATION, WRITES GEORGE ACHEBE

Inperson, Ian Botham is utterly solid, calling to mind a rugby prop forward more than England’s greatest cricketing all-rounder. Botham is a famous wine enthusiast, and hunched over his lunch as if he could easily eat one’s own meal as well, it would be a lie to say one can’t see that he’s enjoyed himself from time to time.

Botham is one of those very few sportsman whose achievements carry across the generations. Sport is really to do with the dramatic maximisation of the present moment: we are rarely quite so conscious of life as when we watch closely to see whether a ball has nicked a bat. Especially because there is so much of it, little sticks in the mind.

1981 AND ALL THAT

Something about Botham did: it was to do with the fearlessness with which he played the game, allied always to a certain laddish humour which is still in evidence today. Especially Botham is known for the Ashes in 1981 now forever known as Botham’s Ashes, when Botham’s swashbuckling 149 not out at Headingley began an unlikely set of events. Not until 2005 would cricket come alive in this country to anything like the same extent.

When we think back on that test match, it should really be Bob Willis’ test, since it was Willis, who died of cancer in 2019, that took 8-43 to bowl out the Australians. Willis hangs over lunch, since Botham is here to raising money for the Bob Willis Fund which raises money for better prostate cancer research.

Botham tells a wonderful anecdote

about that storied day in 1981: “Australia needed a 130 to win. The Australians were 50-1. Bob comes on, and turns to Briers [Mike Brearley, the then England captain] and he said: ‘Any chance I could have a go down the slope with the wind?’ He steamed in and took 8-53.”

This led to an amusing administrative issue over the unexpected celebrations which Botham, as the world knows, enjoyed more than anyone. “We had this young lad – Ricci Roberts, a 140 year-

old: he was over from South Africa as a runner. I said to him: “Look we haven’t got any champagne, because obviously we thought we weren’t going to win the game.” The Australians thought they would. I said to Ricci: “Go and knock on the Australians door, and be polite and just say: ‘Could the England boys have a couple of bottles of champagne, please?” He did exactly that, but added on the end: ‘Because you won’t be needing them’.”

Ian Botham (Alamy)

“COULD THE ENGLAND BOYS HAVE A COUPLE OF BOTTLES OF CHAMPAGNE, PLEASE?”

The Australians may not have reacted well. Botham continues: “Ricci came through the door horizontal. He had one bottle in each hand and he didn’t spill a drop. Ricci Roberts went on to be Ernie Els’ caddie in all Ernie Els’ major wins. That was down to what we taught him –and how Bob taught him to pour a pint.”

THE TWO GEOFFREYS

At Lord’s, alongside the extraordinarily likeable Geoff Miller, Botham gave a jovial tour through his career, joking that Geoff Miller was ‘the livelier of the two Geoffreys I played with’ referring to his long-running grudge against Geoffrey Boycott, who Botham famously ran out in Christchurch in 1978. On that famous

occasion, Boycott was batting at his usual glacial pace when the situation required runs. Botham picks up the story: “I was asked by Bob, who was then the vicecaptain, to run him out and I said: “I’m playing my fourth game and he’s playing his 94th.” Bob replied: “If you don’t do it, you won’t play your fifth.”

It is impossible to not feel nostalgic about the fun of those times. Botham has come a long way. In fact, when Botham recalls his upbringing, as is usually the case with the extraordinarily successful, his story comes into focus in all its glory and improbability: “My father was in the services in the Navy and was serving in Northern Ireland on active duty. When his wife Marie, my Mum, was due to give birth, they sent us over to Heswall in Cheshire.”

CRUNCH TIME

The family then moved down to Yeovil and Botham, having shown exceptional sporting prowess, had a difficult decision to make by the age of 15. “I had to make a choice between soccer and cricket. Crystal Palace offered me an apprenticeship. I had just signed at 14

with Somerset – I registered with them and when it came to the decision, I sat down with my dad. He said: “You are by far a better cricketer”. I listened to him – for once.”

Botham then transferred to Lords for a year and half, before being called back to Somerset at 18. It didn’t work out too badly, did it? Botham smiles: “Not too bad.”

“THE WAY THEY DID IT IN THOSE DAYS – WELL, LET’S JUST SAY IT WOULDN’T HAPPEN

NOWADAYS.”

Botham recalls his first test match. “The way they did it in those days – well, let’s just say it wouldn’t happen nowadays. You’re driving down a motorway. At three minutes to 12 you turn into a layby and switch the radio on and wait for the 12 O’Clock News. And the

Ian Botham batting vs_NZ, February, 1978 (Wikipedia)

England team to play Australia is…And I thought: ‘Yes, I’m in’.”

That sent Botham up to Trent Bridge, where another lovely anecdote occurs. “We lined up at the start of the game and it was the Queen’s Jubilee. The Queen went down the England line, and wished me luck on my debut. Then she went over to the Australia line, and came to DK Lillee [the great Australian fast-bowler].

“Dennis pulled out of his back-pocket an autograph book. “Ma’m, would you sign this?” She said: “I can’t do that now.” But clearly the Queen had remembered the encounter. Botham continues: “When Lillee got home from the tour six or seven weeks later, through the letterbox there came this envelope with the Royal seal and there was a picture of the Queen. It now sits on his mantelpiece.”

MERV THE GREAT

It’s a lovely story – and the more time you spend in Botham’s spell, the more the stories keep coming. Merv Hughes

also gets the Botham treatment. “In 197778 we toured Australia, one of my first tours. We were sponsored by a company called JVC Electronics. They decided in their infinite wisdom that on the rest day morning at about 10 o’clock – when most of us had only been in bed 10 minutes – we’d go to a shopping mall in north Melbourne to mingle. None of us were particularly excited about that prospect.”

So what did Botham do? “I hid behind this tower. This young lad came up in a tracksuit and said: “Good day, Mr Botham. Mate, I want to be a fast bowler have you got any advice for me?” I wasn’t feeling great so I said: “Mate, don’t bother – go and play golf and tennis.”

Fast forward to 1986: the first test at Brisbane. Botham recalls: “Merv Hughes makes his Ashes debut in that game. In Brisbane, you could see this little black line, that in about 30 minutes became a thunderstorm – hailstones the size of golf balls. Hughes bounces it in, then the gigantic hailstones. Merv wasn’t happy as I’d hit him for 22. We weren’t

going to play anymore, the ground was covered with these golf balls.

“One of the lads brought me a beer. Merv comes out and I say: “Congratulations on your first Ashes.” He said: “You know we’ve met before.” I said: “No. Where?” “At the shopping centre in Melbourne.” I was that kid who came running up to you, and you told me not to be a fast-bowler but to play tennis and golf.” He said: “What do you reckon now?” I said: “I was bloody right.”

Beneath the swagger of the public persona, there is his immense generosity as a philanthropist and his life as a family man. His grandson, James, is following in Botham’s footsteps as a sportsman. Botham speaks with evident pride: “He’s had a couple of years with injuries. His confidence is back – he played very well against South Africa at Twickenham. James was born in Cardiff and said: ‘I’m playing for Wales’. He’s got a task on his hand and we’ll see.”

A DECISIVE DIFFERENCE

But it’s the philanthropy which really brings a tear to the eye. “I’m very proud of it,” says Botham. “In 1977, I was playing against the Australians and stepped on the ball and broke a couple of bones in my foot. In those days you didn’t stay with the England squad, you got sent back to your mother county. Mine was Somerset. So I get to Musgrove Park Hospital in Taunton, the club doctor’s waiting for me. To get to the physio department you had to go past the children’s ward.”

This turned out to be a fateful walk since it would change many peoples’ lives.

“You can see children who are obviously ill – tubes sticking out, and their feet up. There were four lads sitting round the table playing on the board games. I said: “Are these guys visiting?” He said: “No, they’re seriously ill.” I said: “But they look fine.” He replied: “You’ve got

eight weeks of intensive treatment to get it right for the tour. Those four lads in all probability will not be there when you finish your treatment. True enough at the end, all four of them had passed away.”

It made a deep impact on Botham who found he couldn’t stand by and do nothing. “What the hospital used to do was give them a party, whether for one of their birthdays or for Christmas. And they were so drugged up with painkillers. As I was leaving the hospital, I said: “Is there anything we can do to help?” He said: “Well, you’ve now seen four parties. We don’t get any funding for those.” I said: “I’ll stick my hand up and pay for the parties.”

By mid-1984, Botham wanted to do something more substantial. “I was flicking through a magazine which someone had left on the train – a colour supplement. There was an article about a certain Dr Barbara Watson, who lived on the south coast. Every summer she

would get on the train and go to the most northerly part of the UK, John O’Groats and meander back. I thought: “Right, I’m going to do a sponsored walk. I’m going to do John o’Groats to Land’s End. My geography wasn’t great. Four hundred miles to the English border, then 600 miles to the Land’s End.”

“BY THE END OF THE WALK WE GOT OVER £1MILLION. THAT WAS USED IMMEDIATELY TO BUILD A RESEARCH CENTRE OUTSIDE GLASGOW.”

It was a huge learning curve for Botham who had never walked like this before, but he managed to do the walk in 33

days. “You couldn’t do PayPal: you had to physically collect. By the end of the walk we got over £1million. That was used immediately to build a research centre outside Glasgow.” Then the conglomerates came behind us. “When we started the walk, there was a 20 per cent chance of survival for kids with leukaemia – a few years ago we announced it is now 94 per cent.”

It’s an astonishing story of how something so innocent as being good with a bat and ball can lead with the right heart and mindset to genuinely consequential change. Botham’s is a reminder to us all to start with what we’re good at – but to keep an eye out for what we might do for others along the way.

Lord Botham was talking at an event at Lord’s Cricket Ground in aid of https://bobwillisfund.org/ https://www.beefysfoundation.org

A Question of Degree DAVID LANDSMAN OBE

ARE LANGUAGE DEGREES USEFUL? DAVID LANDSMAN ARGUES THAT THEY’RE HIGHLY UNDERESTIMATED

In Britain we often like to play down our skills and achievements (except perhaps in sport). There’s nothing wrong with a bit of modesty. But I’m not sure we do ourselves – or the next generation – any favours if we end up boasting about how bad we are at something or another. We rightly admire those who have overcome, say, dyslexia to achieve academic success and a great career. But it’s decidedly odd how people make light of not being able to do maths (“not really my thing, thank goodness for calculators”). I’ve never heard anyone in Asia, for example, boasting about being functionally innumerate…

We’re also a bit too ready to shrug off

being monolingual in what is, without doubt, a multilingual world. Pretty well everywhere you go, you’ll meet people who take speaking multiple languages for granted. I once visited a village school in Eastern India: the schoolgirls, aged from 8-12, spoke to me in reasonable English, one of the five languages they could communicate in. In many countries, people speak one or two “home” languages, but I’m not sure our culture values these skills highly enough. I remember asking a South African lady how many languages she spoke. Her initial answer was “just a bit of French from school [in addition to English]”. After a few more questions, she admitted that she spoke a couple of African languages, but hadn’t thought it worth mentioning…

My own story with languages, like most, started at school, in my case with French and Latin, followed a year or so later by Ancient Greek. I recall my teacher saying that the best thing about the ancient languages was that they had no practical use – probably not the best motivational talk for a twelve-year-old boy!

But what I found exciting about Greek and Latin was their sheer “otherness”: new words, new grammar (and lots of it) and new ways of expressing yourself, for example in Greek you express the idea of “if only…” with a whole new piece of grammar (the optative mode for anyone who’s interested). The puzzles that you have to solve in order to decipher complex constructions are the classics’ answer to a tough computer game or Sudoku.

It was, in my case, the language puzzles rather than the ancient history or archaeology that persuaded me to opt for classics at university. But before starting my degree, I spent a few months in Greece, which without making me change my degree plans, ultimately changed everything. Within a minute of landing in Athens, I realised that the linguistic skills which had landed me my place at Oxford wouldn’t let me read most of the signs at the airport, still less order a beer.

That’s when I decided to spend as much as possible of my time in Greece learning the modern language which, apart from being of more use in the bar, also got me fascinated by how the language had evolved. I took this fascination with me to university where I studied philology (the history of languages) as part of my degree and with that went on to do a Masters

David Landsman OBE

and PhD in linguistics (the structure and behaviour of languages), focusing naturally on Modern Greek.

I can’t say that my languages were an essential part of my path to the Diplomatic Service, but they certainly helped me once there. The British Foreign Office doesn’t require candidates to speak foreign languages before they arrive, but instead uses a (pretty reliable) language aptitude test to find out who’s best suited to being trained in the most difficult languages.

In my own case I soon found myself being sent off to fill a gap in the Embassy in Greece, belying the old joke that if you speak Russian, they’ll send you to Brazil. Later I learned Serbo-Croat and Albanian for postings in Belgrade and Tirana; I also took a course to improve my French which is still a key diplomatic language; and have acquired along the way varying amounts of German, Turkish and Hungarian, though not as much as I would like.

Today, after over a decade in business, I’m still at it, trying to improve my German (an important wedding to attend next year) and taking an online course in Russian with a brilliant teacher, just because I can. I’m a strong believer in the BOGOF principle of languages: learn one, get another if not actually free, much “cheaper” as every language you learn trains your mind to learn the next one.

There are so many ways to learn languages, and different things you can be good at. I’ve got quite a good ear, so sometimes my pronunciation can be deceptive and give the (dangerous) impression I know more than I do. On the other hand, I’m no artist, which always put me off languages like

Chinese and Thai as I’m sure I couldn’t master the elaborate writing systems. You can learn by reading classic literature if you like, but if you prefer the news, or social media, or films, it’s your choice. My wife has to put up with me listening to songs in whichever language I’m focusing on at the time.

But is it really worth learning languages, when “everyone speaks English”? First, it’s good for you. There’s plenty of evidence that language learning staves off Alzheimer’s because it’s a great form of gymnastics for the mind, which makes sense even if you’re far too young to worry about losing your memory.

“IF YOU TALK TO A MAN IN A LANGUAGE HE UNDERSTANDS, THAT GOES TO HIS HEAD. IF YOU TALK TO HIM IN HIS LANGUAGE, THAT GOES TO HIS HEART.”

Languages are an excellent way to understand quite how differently it’s possible to think. Take colours, for example: some languages don’t distinguish between “blue” and “green” and have a single word covering both. On the other hand, Greek and Turkish have completely different words for light and dark blue. So if you’re speaking one of these languages, you’ll see light and dark blue as differently as we see, say, red and pink.

This opens up a new world of understanding difference, going well beyond colours to the essence of people and civilisations. And when you

understand better, you can communicate better. Nelson Mandela might have been talking to diplomats when he said: “If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his language, that goes to his heart.” But it’s not just diplomats who need to communicate. As former German Chancellor Willy Brandt is reported to have said: “If I’m selling to you, I speak your language. If I’m buying, Dann müssen Sie Deutsch sprechen”. Prosperity depends on trade, and trade depends on dealing with abroad. Language learning isn’t just an academic exercise. I’d like to see more businesspeople, not just teachers, speaking up for language learning.

If I were back at school today, what would I want to study? To be honest, I’m not sure it would be classics (maybe my old teacher had a point). But perhaps it wouldn’t be a pure languages degree either. I was talking recently to students about languages at a secondary school in London and was struck by how many were thinking about taking a course combining a language with another discipline. There are many more such courses today and they look to be well worth exploring. You choose law or business or maths, while getting all the benefits of studying a language at the same time. You prove that you can acquire a valuable real-world skill while giving your mind two different types of gymnastics at the same time. And don’t worry if you can’t decide which language to study: once you’ve tried one, there’s always BOGOF (buy one get one free).

David Landsman is a former British Ambassador and senior executive. He is now Chair of British Expertise International and the author of the Channel your Inner Ambassador podcast.

DR VANESSA HERDER

THE VET WHO BECAME A SCIENTIST EXPLAINS WHY ACADEMIA IS A GREAT PLACE TO WORK

Kid,do what you like. Choose what you want.” This was the career advice my parents gave me during my last year at school. Ok, then. I want to become a vet. They were delighted and my mum painted pictures in her mind of me being the local vet in a small village somewhere. All neighbours would come and bring their pets to me and she could be involved in the romantic life of the female version of James Herriot. But it turned out to be very different.

Now as a scientist, my latest research project is studying the differences in the immune response of patients with a Covid-19-induced pneumonia. We investigated in SARS CoV-2-patients which immune response determines the disease severity. This study is a large collaborative project with scientists form the UK, Malawi, Brazil, USA, France

and Switzerland and published in the journal Science Translational Medicine. How can a vet be involved in this project?

“MY PASSION FOR STUDYING DISEASES WAS IGNITED.”

During my vet degree I realised quite quickly that my original idea of working with horses would not be happening. During my first lecture of pathology while learning about disease mechanisms in tissues my passion for studying diseases was ignited. On that day, I knew horses will always be a hobby for me. My fascination about understanding how diseases evolve in the body grew from day to day. Studying diseases does mean to understand what health is.

How a virus infects the host, causes damage and how the body is able to fight this infection successfully is not only interesting, it is dependent on the orchestration of so many factors. It fascinates me. I finished my first PhD studying virus infections in the brain and a second PhD followed to characterise a newly emerging virus infection in animals which caused stillbirth and brain damage in ruminants.

As a vet, I knew how close we are to our pets or farm animals, and my research always focussed on aspects of the OneHealth approach: Diseases which are transmitted from animals to humans. To strengthen my research I decided to stop doing diagnostic and teaching vet students and started a full time post as a scientist. For years, I was studying which immune reactions determine that some

Dr Vanessa Herder

hosts show a severe or lethal outcome in virus infections and why some show a mild course of disease. I developed all the tools to address this question, and worked in the high containment lab with a virus, which can only be handled under these conditions.

Then the pandemic hit, the government stopped all our virus work. Only SARS CoV-2 from now on. The joint and focussed research activities were used to study the pathogenesis of Covid-19. I applied all the skills I developed before the pandemic, including being trained for the high containment, on the Covid-19 response to contribute as much as I could. Visualising the virus in the lung, which had never been done before, was one of my tasks, and it was a tough one. It took several months. At this time, I realised how valuable it was that the PhDs I made not only taught me science.

Most importantly, the PhD teaches grit and endurance as well as creativity. The perseverance of starting and finishing a PhD, which lasts four years, requires scientific depth and dealing with all the challenges along the way. In short, you need to have a very long breath. This helped me to keep going with the initially unsuccessful virus detection attempts in the tissues. I finally made it and will never forget the sunny

afternoon on a Saturday during the hard lockdown, when the virus finally was visible in the lung.

Like all projects and publications in excellent research, the people involved are key to success. Interdependence of independent people working together is the heart of the work. Only efficient priorisation with well-developed communication and the perfect alignment of different expertise make it happen. In this study, every co-author of this manuscript did what she or he could do best and contributed it. The efforts were organised and managed from Brazil to Malawi, Switzerland, USA and France to the UK and required a smart project management system. Science connects people, cultures and experiences and this makes academia a beautiful place.

During my time in academia I had the pleasure to work with so many driven and smart students, which is a joyful experience and which taught me so many valuable life lessons. I am fortunate to have great mentors pushing me to do the best work, opening doors for others and myself and allowing me to see further with their experience. Thanks to the diversity of my work, I know people in so many countries of the world, who became friends and part of my life.

“SCIENCE CONNECTS THE DOTS OF KNOWLEDGE AND UNITES PEOPLE.”

And it’s the people who drive the research to the next level. The most rewarding aspect of working in academia is to be part of the career path of the younger generation, seeing them succeed and choosing the work they want. Eventually, progressing from a job to a profession leading to a passion. Each student is a special person in my life as they trusted me with being part of their academic career and there is nothing better than meeting these people after years again and reflecting together on our journeys.

“I AM LIVING THE ROMANTIC LIFE OF A SCIENTIST WHO CAN TRAVEL THE WORLD FOR PRESENTATIONS AND CONFERENCES.”

I am not living the romantic life of the female version of James Herriot. I am living the romantic life of a scientist who can travel the world for presentations and conferences, and works with researchers in places like India, Africa, Europe, USA, China and the Middle East. Basic research is the joy of answering questions in unknown territories combined with an unparalleled work ethic. Understanding diseases is understanding life – in animals and humans alike.

Dr Vanessa Herder

GRACE HARDY

CONSIDERING AN ACCOUNTANCY CAREER? SUCCESSFUL

ACCOUNTANT GRACE HARDY GIVES HER ADVICE

Growing up with dyslexia wasn’t easy. School was often a frustrating experience for me. I struggled with reading, writing and spelling, which made traditional learning environments incredibly challenging. I often felt like I couldn’t keep up with my peers, and my confidence took a hit.

The thought of spending another three or four years in a similar environment at university filled me with dread. I couldn’t afford to go to university without getting a job on the side and I was worried that doing a degree wouldn’t set me apart from others when I’d eventually have to find a graduate scheme after.

During this time of uncertainty, my mum introduced me to the world of apprenticeships. I’ll be forever grateful for her suggestion because it opened up a whole new realm of possibilities for me. The apprenticeship route appealed to me because it offered a different way of learning – one that suited my needs better. It promised hands-on experience, practical skills, and the opportunity of earning money while learning. Plus, the prospect of no student debt was certainly attractive!

“I SECURED AN APPRENTICESHIP WITH A TOP 10 ACCOUNTANCY FIRM, AND IT WAS A GAME-CHANGER FOR ME.”

I secured an apprenticeship with a top 10 accountancy firm, and it was a gamechanger for me. At 18-years-old I was on

a £20,000 salary; I was over the moon. This gave me the financial stability I had been craving. From the very first week, I was working on real client projects and given responsibilities that expanded my portfolio and experience. Despite having no prior accounting knowledge, the firm provided comprehensive training and created a nurturing environment for me to learn and grow.

As I progressed through my apprenticeship, I began to see the inner workings of different businesses. This exposure was invaluable and sparked my entrepreneurial spirit. I realised the skills and the knowledge I was gaining could potentially be used to start my own accounting practice one day.

After completing my apprenticeship and gaining my AAT qualification, I decided to take the plunge and start my own firm, Hardy Accounting, at the age of 21. It was a scary but exciting move!

The transition from employee

came

challenges. Suddenly, I was responsible for everything – from finding clients to managing finances, and from marketing to delivering services. But the foundation I had built during my apprenticeship proved invaluable.

“I DECIDED TO TAKE THE PLUNGE AND START MY OWN FIRM, HARDY ACCOUNTING, AT THE AGE OF 21.”

One of the most liberating aspects of starting my own business was the ability to work in a way that suited my neurodiversity. I could structure my work environment and processes in a way that

to business owner

with its own set of

Manar Dabbas and Ronel Lehmann

Grace Hardy

played to my strengths and mitigated the challenges posed by my dyslexia.

For instance, I leveraged technology heavily, using speech-to-text software, dyslexia-friendly fonts, and other tools to help me work more efficiently. I also found that my dyslexia gave me a unique perspective on problem-solving, which often proved beneficial in finding innovative solutions for my clients.

Whilst growing my business I quickly became aware of the fact that a very small number of my clients had any understanding of financial literacy – a key element of running a successful business. This was the seed that later blossomed into a full passion for the topic of financial education.

After looking into how financial education is integrated into the UK curriculum (or how it really isn’t) I quickly realised that the situation was much worse than I originally thought. An inquiry by the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Financial Education for Young People found that over two-fifths of secondary school teachers surveyed did not know that financial education was a curriculum requirement.

In addition to this, only two-in-five (41%) young adult respondents were considered financially literate, showing the impact that a lack of childhood education has down the line. Almost two-thirds (61%) of young adult respondents confirmed they did not recall receiving financial education at school – that math adds up pretty clearly.

Those who were receiving financial education lessons in the UK were taught for an estimated 48 minutes per month on average instead of the recommended 30 hours. These findings made it clear that something needed to happen. In response, I started to lobby the Government for legislative change on financial education. This initiative became a crucial part of my journey, combining my accounting expertise with a mission to improve financial literacy across the board for the better of our communities, economies and people’s every day lives.

“I WANTED TO CREATE A FIRM THAT WASN’T JUST ABOUT NUMBERS.”

In my business my goal was simple: to provide personalised, tech-savvy accounting services to small businesses and startups, helping them navigate their financial journeys with confidence. I wanted to create a firm that wasn’t just about numbers, but about building relationships and helping to educate business owners about finance so they could understand the ins-and-outs of their businesses.

The accounting industry is on the cusp of a major transformation. As we move forward, I see a future where accounting is more than just bookkeeping and tax preparation. It’s about being a strategic partner to businesses and providing insights that drive growth and success. The future accountant will need to be part financial expert, part technology guru, and part business strategist.

Artificial intelligence is also revolutionising the accounting industry. From automating routine tasks, to providing predictive analytics. In my firm, we’ve embraced AI tools to enhance our efficiency and accuracy. This allows us to focus more on providing valuable insights and strategic advice to our clients. However, it’s important to note that AI isn’t replacing accountants; it’s augmenting our capabilities. The human touch – our ability to interpret data, understand context, and provide tailored advice –remains crucial. The successful accountants of the future will be those who can effectively leverage AI while maintaining personal connections with clients –allowing it to maximise our talents rather than replace them.

For young people looking to follow a similar path in accounting, there are several key pieces of advice I’d offer. Being yourself is the best thing you can do. There are many business owners and everyone

has their own approach, therefore it’s key to find something that makes you unique. What is your unique selling point (USP)? Developing soft skills such as communication, problem-solving, and leadership is equally important as technical accounting knowledge.

“KNOWING THAT FAILURE IS NOT SOMETHING NEGATIVE IS VITAL.”

Seeking mentorship from experienced professionals can provide valuable insights and guidance in this respect. Being adaptable is vital in the constantly evolving accounting field, ready to learn and adapt to new methodologies and regulations. Lastly, knowing that failure is not something negative is vital. In the entrepreneurial journey, setbacks are not just inevitable; they’re invaluable. Every failure is a stepping stone to success, offering crucial lessons that shape your path forward.

These experiences, though challenging, provide unique insights and foster resilience – essential qualities for any entrepreneur. Embracing failures as opportunities for growth and learning is what often sets successful business leaders apart from the rest.

Being self-employed has opened a realm of possibilities for me. I have since started the Unconventional Podcast and have launched the Unconventional Academy to help other young people start businesses and learn about financial education. In addition to this I am in the midst of my campaign to get legislation passed through Parliament to improve financial education throughout our school system – building for a better future, now.

The road might not always be easy, but with determination, the right support, and a willingness to learn and adapt, you can achieve great things. Your journey is just beginning, and I can’t wait to see where it takes you!

Ten

Thousand Hours

MALCOLM MCDOWELL

ROBERT GOLDING HEARS FROM MALCOLM MCDOWELL

ABOUT HIS CAREER IN FILM

Malcolm McDowell is talking to me from what looks like a spacious octagonal attic, the dark at the window behind him shows no stars. He is wearing splendid Ronnie Barker specs and a black hoodie, his white hair tufted behind a domed forehead.

It’s not that far in the scheme of things from Christmas and he is immediately

humorous about the predicament. “My God, I’ve seen enough of those. Here we go again!” Then he lets a pause go by which wouldn’t be out of place in a Harold Pinter play. “But the kids love it, don’t they?”

He’s happy to discuss his work, and understanding when A Clockwork Orange (1971) immediately comes up: ” I am

thrilled to talk to fans – about anything really, but especially that film which I suppose you might say is the jewel in the crown of my career.” He says this without a trace of pomposity, even somewhat humorously: he seems to be one of those rare actors who doesn’t necessarily consider himself the centre of the universe.

In the same vein he continues sincerely: “Without the fans, I wouldn’t have a career: neither would any of us. The fans are very important and I always have time to say hello to fans.”

His list of notable credits, of course, is far greater than just A Clockwork Orange and includes Caligula (1979), Cat People (1982), Star Trek Generations (1992), and The Artist (2011).

But it’s A Clockwork Orange which has most endured, partly due to its sheer quality, and also because it’s the work of what we might call mid-period Stanley Kubrick, at a time when his films become scarcer and therefore more precious.

McDowell is exceptionally forthcoming and relaxed about talking about something which he will have been asked about numerous times. He will be no stranger to being asked about the scene where Alex and the droogs kicks the poor tramp. It is the film’s anarchic streak which has endured: its author, the polymathic Anthony Burgess, intuited that the brakes on traditional morality would been an outpouring of violence, which we see on our screens now day in day out.

But did McDowell ever meet Burgess?

“After we shot the movie and it opened, I went during the first week of the opening

to New York. That was when I met for the first time with Anthony Burgess who wrote the book.”

So he hadn’t ever met him on set. McDowell says: “I’d never met him before – I wasn’t allowed to meet him. I guess Stanley didn’t want me to be influenced by the writer. Writers on film are really just complications we could do without.”

This is a lovely detail about Kubrick, who was famously meticulous in the compilation of his movies. One can certainly imagine that a literary titan on set might be one titan too many. It is a window to the hierarchy of the movies which may look topsy-turvy for Burgess fans.

Then McDowell launches into an astonishing anecdote: “I asked Burgess in New York about the phrase ‘a clockwork orange’ and how he came upon the title.”

“HE’S AS QUEER AS A CLOCKWORK ORANGE.”

I am craned forward, faintly astonished to be hearing this little piece of literary history unbidden. McDowell continues: “He told me he was in an East End pub in London and he was sitting next to a friend of his and they were chatting. Suddenly the door opened and this

strange-looking guy comes in and his friend looked at him and said: “He’s as queer as a clockwork orange.’”

Many people think authors should look up in a deep trance from their desks to find inspiration, and perhaps that is sometimes the case. But McDowell’s anecdote reminds us they should also go down the pub.” Burgess said : ‘I just loved the sound of that phrase and I thought it would make a good title for a book some time.’ Which indeed it did.”

That’s some understatement but McDowell isn’t finished yet. He finishes: “So I said to Burgess: ‘Yeah but what does it mean? He said: “I don’t know. I think it just means look at this guy, he’s really strange and odd – as queer as a clockwork orange.”

Having changed my understanding of a small but important nook of 210th century literary history, McDowell finishes. “So there you are, you have it from the chief orange himself.”

It was Henry James who said a writer should be the sort of person who notices things. This can be the case. But young writers should know that what you really need to do is be able to identify a certain charge which useful things have –sometimes things will leap up and say they want to be a name in your novel, a setting, a scene – or perhaps a title to the book you may just get around to writing one day.

Malcolm McDowell as Alex DeLarge in Stanley Kubrick's 1971 film A Clockwork Orange. (Wikipedia.org)

Those Are My Principles

SIR MICHAEL MORPURGO

THE WRITER OUTLINES HIS RELATIONSHIP TO ANNE FRANK, AND ISSUES A CALL FOR PEACE

Iama war baby, born on 5th of October 1943. Anne Frank probably died on 31st of March 1945. We shared this world for only a few months.

Whilst she was hiding away in an attic with family and friends from the Nazis, while she and they were finally being betrayed and taken away to Bergen Belsen concentration camp to be murdered in the Holocaust like millions of others, I was being looked after in my grandparents’ comfortable house in Radlett, outside London, with a garden, surrounded by family, under threat of the war of course, but I knew nothing of that. I knew nothing of the concentration camps either. I did not know about the evil that men do, that sadly does live after them, if we allow it to.

When Hitler sent over the V2 rockets to do their indiscriminate killing, I was evacuated 300 miles north, well out of range. During my early childhood, the war, the history and the myth of it, was ever present, from the bombsites we played in – playing war games mostly –from the photo of my Uncle Pieter on

the mantelpiece who had been killed in the RAF in 1941, aged 21, from the soldier with one leg often begging on the street corner near my school, I thought of war as a sort of killing game. It took me a while to realise that it wasn’t a game, that war destroyed houses, flesh and uncles. But I think I only began to comprehend the depth of the tragedy of it when I saw my mother crying over the death of Uncle Pieter, her beloved brother. I caught her sadness, I think, and came to miss the uncle I never knew, and so began to understand the pity of war very young. But I must have been 11 or 12 when I first knew anything of Anne Frank or the Holocaust. My family knew about it of course, but never told me. Like millions of my generation and in the generations to follow, I learnt about it through reading Anne Frank’s Diary. Her face was on the opening page looking out at me.

She wrote directly to me, confiding in me, telling me how it was to be her, how she was enduring her imprisonment in her attic in Amsterdam, the tedium, the frustration, the dread, the anger, the memories, the friends and relations, the hope, the longing to be free again, for liberation to come. It was her living testimony. And it lives on today.

Anne Frank’s talent was brutally cut short but she remains famous as a source of inspiration to people everywhere. The last page of her diary is the last we hear of her. She is simply not there any more. We knew before we ever read it that she had died, that these were to be her last words. Once read it is never forgotten.

It was of course not written to be read by

others. She did not know that this was to be her testament, the most personal insight into the life of a spirited but ordinary girl whose name and face was one day to be famous all over the world, was to represent for so many all the wickedness and the waste, horror, the tragedy, shame and pity of the Holocaust.

For ever afterwards, her life and her death has given me, us, some way of beginning to understand the Holocaust. She was the one of the six million we all came to know. Her short life and death remind us of man’s inhumanity to man, of the depth of cruelty and depravity we are capable of, of the power of prejudice so easily aroused to fuel hate.

“ANNE ALSO GIVES US HOPE, THE HOPE SHE HAD, THAT ALL CAN BE WELL AGAIN, IF WE MAKE IT WELL.”

But Anne also gives us hope, the hope she had, that all can be well again, if we make it well. Her words, her suffering, her death, give us the determination to right the wrongs of antisemitism and prejudice of all kinds, to create a world where kindness, empathy and understanding rule.

Because of Anne, scribbling away up in her crowded attic room, I have had her story and her fate, and the iniquitous and vile Holocaust in my head for much of my life. It’s no accident then that I have written my own stories about it, stories like The Mozart Question. This story and so many others were, I

feel sure, originally inspired in part by a family friend I had grown up with as a child and known well – Mac, we called him, Ian Mcloed. He was amongst the very first British soldiers in the Royal Army Medical Corps to enter the concentration camp at Bergen Belsen, on the 15th of April 1945, where Anne Frank had died just a week or two before. A young man, a teenager at the time, Mac witnessed the horror of Belsen with his own eyes, and suffered from the effects of that terrible experience all his life.

His life, his being there at the liberation of Bergen Belsen, was the first of many personal connections to the Holocaust that have echoed through my own life, in so many ways.

For instance, growing up I was unaware of the Jewish origins of my step family. My birth name is Bridge, my father an actor, Tony Van Bridge, but my mother left him in 1946, to marry one Jack Morpurgo, from a Jewish family that emigrated to London in the early 20th century. So aged 2, I became a Morpurgo. It is a Jewish name from northern Italy, well respected there. Many many Morpurgos I later discovered had died in the camps. And there was the violin. Go to the Violins of Hope Museum in Tel Aviv, and you will find amongst all the violins played in the concentration camps, the Morpurgo violin. It belonged to one Galtiero Morpurgo, a survivor of the camps, who was still playing the violin until he died aged 97. His family donated his violin to the museum.

Strangely, I did not know about this Morpurgo violin when, 20 years before, I wrote a story of mine I called The Mozart Question. It is to me perhaps my most important book. By this time I had of course read Primo Levi, I had known and become a good friend with Judith Kerr, fellow children’s writer, and author of Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit, based on her family’s escape from Germany in 1933.

And I had discovered that a great teacher of mine, Paul Pollock, who had taught me classics at school, had been a child on the last train of Jewish children to leave Nazi occupied Prague in 1939, one of hundreds saved from the Holocaust by the wonderful Nicholas Winton. Mr Pollock was a devoted and eccentric teacher known and much respected for his extraordinary intelligence and famous for his withering remarks, his cutting barbs.

His barber was once overheard asking him: “And how would you like your hair cut today, sir?” “In silence,” Mr Pollock replied. He died only six months ago, at over a hundred years old. And we never realised when we were boys what he had been through, how he had no family but us. They’d all gone. He was alone in the world.

I have his story and Mac’s story and others in my mind as I am talking to you

today. They connect me to the Holocaust. They all lived on. But Anne Frank was the first and most important of these connections, and she did not survive.

“IT IS PRIMARILY THEN BECAUSE OF ANNE’S ENDURING STORY, THAT I AM HERE, HONOURED TO BE BE TALKING TO YOU TODAY.”

But the diary she wrote hiding away in her attic room in Amsterdam is for so many millions around the world the first and most lasting connection to those times, to those lost millions of the Holocaust, each of whom was a living breathing precious human being, a daughter, a son, a mother, a father.

Anne Frank in 1940, while at 6. Montessorischool, Niersstraat 41-43, Amsterdam (the Netherlands). Photograph by unknown photographer. (Wikipedia.org)

It is primarily then because of Anne’s enduring story, that I am here, honoured to be be talking to you today. Like her, I’m a storymaker too, a writer – and what books she might have written had she lived, can you imagine? I write under my given name.

I am here in part because of my Morpurgo name. And I am here because of Mac, Ian Mcloed, the medical orderly at Bergen Belsen, whose story I knew growing up; and it is because of the discovery of the story of the Morpurgo violin in Tel Aviv, and of my friendship with Paul Pollock, my teacher, and dear Judith Kerr – two of those who escaped the Holocaust and came to live and do so much good for us in their adopted country. For me all these people and all these circumstances conspired to bring me here today.

It is because of all this, because of them and all they lived through, that I know as we all do that prejudice has to be fought, that prejudice is a disease that can so easily become an epidemic of hate, a pandemic that can overwhelm us, if we ignore it or look the other way. It is a pandemic against which we have to be vigilant, and that has to be confronted. Historical awareness, and stories can help in this struggle.

I’m firmly convinced that unless we know and remain aware of where prejudice can and does lead, unless we know the history of the Holocaust, then it can happen again, again and again. And I’m also convinced that it is stories that can keep us vigilant, that all of us growing up have to be made aware, generation after generation.

That’s why I have written my stories of those times, of war and oppression, of occupation, and of the Holocaust in particular in Waiting for Anya and my story of a violin in the concentration camps, The Mozart Question , in which the power and beauty of violin music can and does overcome brutality and evil. We owe

it to them, to those who died in the Holocaust, to Anne Frank, and to those who survived, to go on telling the story.

“I’M FIRMLY CONVINCED THAT UNLESS WE KNOW AND REMAIN AWARE OF WHERE PREJUDICE CAN AND DOES LEAD, UNLESS WE KNOW THE HISTORY OF THE HOLOCAUST, THEN IT CAN HAPPEN AGAIN, AGAIN AND AGAIN.”

And, we owe it to them surely to do more, to seek peace and reconciliation, to create the kind of world I discovered on my visit to Israel and Gaza, ten or so years ago, with Save the Children. I was taken to a village and to a school called Neve Shalom, Oasis of Peace, Wahat

A Salam, the only place, so far as I know, where Jew and Arab go to school together.

We made kites together, flew kites together, made music together. Such a place, such a spirit, such children and families, and teachers will put the world to rights. There was hope there, there was peace there. Hope springs eternal, and hope brings peace.

Let there be peace.

This speech was delivered at the Anne Frank Trust UK annual lunch and is reprinted in full with the kind permission of the Trust.

The last known photograph of Anne taken in May 1942, taken at a passport photo shoot. (Photo collection Anne Frank House, Amsterdam. Public Domain Work) (Wikipedia.org)

Passport photographs of Anne Frank, 1939. Polyfoto (Wikipedia.org)

TIM CLARK LAUNCHES HIS LATEST EDUCATION REPORT

THE FORMER HEADMASTER SPOKE ABOUT SEND EDUCATION AT THE GUILDHALL AT THE LAUNCH OF HIS THIRD EDUCATIONAL REPORT, WHICH WAS ATTENDED BY FORMER SCHOOLS MINISTER DAMIAN HINDS MP, SIR BERNARD JENKIN AND FORMER CHAIR OF THE EDUCATION SELECT COMMITTEE NEIL CARMICHAEL.

My third educational report is on special educational needs and disability (SEND). There is nothing in my report that is radical or revolutionary. Instead it’s an attempt to try and help policy-makers to understand what the issues are around delivery of special needs policy.

I was the head of two state schools. This is written from the point of view of people who have to deliver SEND education. There are issues around funding, delivery, working with external agencies and issues around the identification of special needs.

In my view the single best thing we can do to support children with SEND – and it happens to be the same thing which we can do to support children without special needs – is to provide every child with enough well-qualified, motivated, experienced teachers. The recruitment and retention crisis with teachers at the moment is the single biggest issue facing schools: not money, not curriculum, it is the difficulty of finding enough wellqualified, well-trained teachers.

I’ll use two statistics to prove this point. Last academic year 40,000 teachers –more than nine per cent of the workforce

– quit for reasons other than retirement. Now this is made worse, because about 20 per cent of the workforce are over 50 and so are nearing retirement soon. But over nine per cent of the workforce walked out last year.

In the same timeframe, one half of all teacher training places were left vacant. If you put those two statistics together then that is a crisis. The current government and the previous government did not seize this issue with the urgency which it needs to be seized with.

The 2024 Conservative manifesto talked about offering bursaries, which may well

Tim Clark

But we have a shortage of teachers – and in any case, there is plenty of evidence to suggest that money doesn’t retain teachers. If you look at the strikes last year, which were predominantly about money, one half of teachers didn’t even bother to vote in the ballot.

I’m not saying that teachers shouldn’t be paid more money – they absolutely should. But it’s not the key issue. Of greater influence is poor pupil behaviour, weak leadership which fails to deal with bad behaviour, workload, a lack of respect for the profession and continual change imposed by people who have little or no experience of how to teach young people or of how to run a school.

Meanwhile, what have the Labour Party promised? They repeatedly state that they will create 6,500 new teachers but they don’t say where they’re going to come from and they also don’t say

how they’re going to be retained. That’s important because the other alarming statistic is that one third of new teachers quit within five years.

We also need to look at the maths here. How far would 6,500 new teachers really get you? There are more than 20,000 schools in England. If you get 6,500 teachers that equates to one new teacher for every three schools. But then think of the 40,000 who have just left – that equates to almost two for every school.

In one sense, the number of teachers we have is not necessarily a crisis –the latest workforce report by the Department for Education says we have 300 more teachers this year than last year. The only problem is there are 74,000 more kids than the previous year.

That number also includes more overseas-trained teachers – that’s not

necessarily a bad thing. What really concerns me is that that number also includes a huge explosion in unqualified teachers. When I was qualifying, I went the traditional route. In my day, they were talking about making the PGCE two years and nowadays there are many allowed to teach with very few qualifications at all. Teaching is a skilled profession requiring more than just subject knowledge: it requires specific knowledge, skills and expertise.

We have got to resolve for the benefit of all children the recruitment and retention crisis. In our last two reports, we looked at how this can be resolved. The really good news is that this can be resolved at very little cost to the Treasury and the taxpayer.

For more info please visit: www.timclarkeducation.co.uk/reports

Neil Carmichael and Ronel Lehmann

Neil Carmichael and Caroline Haines

Sir Bernard Jenkin, Tim Clark and Damian Hinds

Jess Harris, Quintessentially Education

FEATURES

TRUMP 2.0

The view from Washington D.C.

Jeweller Elizabeth’s greatest hits 78

HIGH END ENGAGEMENT

A TIMELY SUCCESS

Watches of Switzerland’s Brian Duffy 82

The Official Photograph of the Prime Minister, Shri Narendra Modi. This file or its source was published by Press Information Bureau on behalf of Prime Minister's Office, Government of India under the ID 54227 and CNR 56998.

NarendraModi is wearing one of his trademark Nehru jackets. This one is grey, to match the flow of his beard. A microphone is neatly clipped on to his lapel. His body is poised – one might almost say, coiled. It is an energy I have seen before: that of someone confident in his power. Obama in his heyday used to have it; Trump 2.0 has it more than his 2016 incarnation. Among UK PMs, nobody has really had it since Tony Blair. It has to do with suitability to office, and is slightly different to entitlement, though it may dovetail with it.

Among world leaders, some are simply better at the job than others. “Modi is in the front rank of world leaders at the moment,” Sir Martin Sorrell tells me.

To look at Modi is to sense that he knows this. It’s to do with a knowledge of what power is, and what it can do. In the interview context, it is to do with what can be implied, and what can be said. Modi’s words come with a kind of fine calibration, which has to do with the confidence which only experience can give.

Asked about the role of women in India’s economy, he says: “We have a perception in India that women are householders. This is not the reality. Look at the agricultural sector. Even today, I’d say 60 per cent of economic activity is carried out by women. Women carry out a lot of economic activity, but this is not known to the world at large.”

It is an image of an India altering rapidly – more rapidly than most people understand. World leaders talk about change all the time, but few come to really enact it as Modi has done. Modi is synonymous with transition, historic shift –change whether you like it or not. There is a certain irreversibility about Modi’s India: it’s a point which he rams home repeatedly through choppy hand actions. His body remains solidly at rest in the chair as he speaks – as if to imply that he will occupy power for a good while yet.

He continues, the master of his brief who knows he will not be interrupted by the India Today interviewers: “Even today 15 per cent of commercial pilots are women from India. Now this didn’t happen overnight.”

There’s undeniably something controlled about the environment in which Modi is evidently used to speaking. The atmosphere is deferential – greatly different from the somewhat boilerplate hostility of a UK interviewer. In some ways, that’s refreshing for the UK viewer, even though there is something uneasy about it all: we are witnessing the sort of power which isn’t easily challenged.

Modi goes on to state that the fact that people do not know about the vibrancy of the female contribution to the economic sector, shows that the country is “the victim of a certain ideology.”

He then talks of a recent meeting with the President of Egypt Abdel Fattah El-Sisi who Modi reports as saying: “Western countries talk about female empowerment. Here in India I’m really seeing it.”

“WESTERN COUNTRIES TALK ABOUT FEMALE EMPOWERMENT. HERE IN INDIA I’M REALLY SEEING IT.”

Modi drives the point home, wagging his unusually long index finger. He talks of women who used to sell wadi in the villages who have become drone pilots; he talks of the women who stage his rallies (“that is a decision by me and my Party”); he tells of his mandate to give Anganwadi workers uniforms.

As he talks the interviewers nod with pleasure; it is as if they have come to listen to this clipped and confident man, not to interrogate.

THE MODI DEBATE

So who is the man who has ruled India now for over a decade? Out there in the country, and in the world, it would be naïve to expect a major leader of a country of over a billion people to be without controversy. He has undeniably raised GDP, but he has raised racial tensions too; he has made huge structural changes across the judicial, banking and taxation systems but India may have lost some of its uniqueness as a result; and in foreign policy terms, he commands great respect on the global stage, but some wonder if he can continue to be friends to both the East and the West.

When I speak to Mohamed Amersi, the philanthropist and author of Why?, he tells me: “Modi is from Gujarat. Gujaritis are known for their drive, their ambition and their business acumen. Overall he has been a terrific leader for India. He has won elections outstandingly and put India on the world stage.”

But Amersi adds a nuance to this: “India’s beauty was that it was the largest democracy in the world, accommodating such diversity and ethnicity of people. Unfortunately under Modi this picture of India has been shaken. It seems there is a very strong Hindu nationalistic side to him, which has negatively impacted the view of India as a whole. Likewise complacency set in during the recent elections, and the results were not great.”

For this article, I talked to a wide range of figures including those who have known Modi personally, and worked closely with him, as well as those affected by his decisions, in order to understand where India is really going under his leadership.

One thing’s for sure: his effect on the young has been considerable. The academic Christophe Jaffrelot who has written extensively about Modi tells me: “He relates to the young the way he relates to others to a large extent, by

inviting them to celebrate the greatness of the Indian past, culture, achievements, future… However, he speaks also to every category of the Indian society separately. Vis-à-vis the youth, for instance, he will urge them to study and will give them advice before the exams season. He uses his monthly radio program there, Mann ki Baat.”

So we have before us a figure of gigantic stature, one whose true impact is yet to be felt. That’s because like every great leader his identity is now inextricably bound up with the destiny of the country he leads. The great philanthropist, businessman and commentator on India Dinesh Dhamija

has called ours the Indian century. If that’s the case, it’s also the Modi century, and we may well be discussing the most consequential leader of our times.

Modi is continuing. “When I rebuilt homes after the Gujarat earthquake I dedicated them to women. When I came to Delhi, I made it a rule that when a child enters school, they not only sign the name of the father in the register but of the mother too.”

As he speaks my eye drifts to the pictures behind him on the wall. There is one which looks like it might be the straits of Mumbai and my mind rotates back seven years to my last visit to India, and a particular bridge.

THE BRIDGE

For many people India is personal, and if that’s the case Modi is likely to be personal too.

I first went to India in 1998, an 18-yearold who knew nothing of the world, and still less of India. It all came as a shock: the sheer bustle of Mumbai, the magnificent sweep of a country where cities you’d never heard of were bigger than London, and the helter-skelter joy of its people. It was a place then of nascent Internet cafes, of inevitable dysentry for visitors getting used to the food, and a quirkiness about the people which I would later discover in literary form in the novels of RK Narayan: everyone on the up – or with the potential to be so.

India in those days still opened up onto a world of difference – a place so unlike home with its taken-for-granted modernity. It was preparing itself even then to be Modi’s India – but perhaps it took a major leader like Modi to make it happen so fast, and seemingly all at once.

“SOMETHING IS ALWAYS SACRIFICED WHEN PROGRESS HAPPENS. THE PIECES OF LIFE REARRANGE FOR GOOD.”

Something is always sacrificed when progress happens. The pieces of life rearrange for good – and it would be hard-hearted if we held no affection for what is lost.

Former justice minister Lord Wolfson recalls his own visit to pre-Modi India in 1995: “My connections with India go back to when I got married,” he tells me at an event to celebrate ties between

Prime Minister Modi at Sri Venkateswara Swamy Temple. (Government of India)

the Jewish and Indian communities in London. “We spent our honeymoon in India. I bought my first property when staying at a hotel in Varanasi. We stayed there because the hotel advertised that they had a fax machine so the contract could be faxed to us. Those who know Varanasi in 1995 will realise that the fax machine turned out not to be in the hotel but in a shop about two miles away, owned by someone who I think was distantly related to the man who owned the hotel.”

The year after my first visit to India, the foundation stone was laid for the Bandra–Worli Sea Link. When I returned two decades later, Modi had been power for three years, and it had already been built, all 5.6 kilometres and eight lanes of it. There can be few more dramatic drives in the world than the one across from the airport towards the Taj where I was lucky enough to be staying the second time around. It felt like more than a drive towards the hotel; it felt like a journey into the future: the future in all its excitement, its dizzying numbers and its inevitable complications.

It was David Renwick who once wrote

of former President Barack Obama that the country’s first black President was a bridge from one set of realities to another: in this case the metaphor was to do with race. But in reality Obama’s policy achievements were relatively thin, and it is a far better metaphor for Modi.

At any rate, nobody could have guessed when I left in 1999 that a little known volunteer in the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) with no executive experience would in two years’ time become Minister of Gujarat, and then in time be instrumental in the creation of a billion metaphorical bridges into a future which we share with India.

Sometimes, the world could see the shape of India’s likely impact. In 2002, Lord O’Neill of Gateley coined the phrase “the BRICs” in order to refer to a future defined by then developing economies. O’Neill recalls: “We deliberately called that ‘Dreaming with BRICs’. People forget that we wrote about what could happen if every country fulfilled its potential. Of course, in reality the idea that every country in the world would reach its productivity potential is crazy. The idea that they’d all do it at the same time is completely absurd.”

So what happened? Well, Brazil got sidetracked by Bolsonaro, Putin invaded Ukraine with results we’re all familiar with, and China continues to plough forward in dystopian fashion under Xi Jinping. O’Neill continues: “In reality, what has happened is that China has become so big that it’s twice the size of the other three put together. So when it comes to discussing the BRICs as an economic or political group, China completely dominates. Because of that, it still means that the various assumptions we made about the BRICS becoming bigger than the G6 in the future, actually could still happen – despite what has been a very disappointing decade for Brazil and Russia.”

Even so, China continues to be a place one doesn’t exactly admire. In its totalitarianism, its lack of cultural capital, and its sinister vision of the future, it feels in fact redolent of past dictatorships and one party states. One could argue that India, by electing Modi three times, fared best of all.

“Overall, China and India look as though they’re going along the central path that we assumed,” O’Neill continues. “Meanwhile, Brazil and

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Prime Minister’s ‘Mann ki Baat’ on All India Radio. (Government of India)

Russia have proved that they suffer from the so-called commodities curse. They can’t seemingly adjust their economies from being excessively dependent on commodity price swings. They keep having these violent economic cycles.”

All of which means that India under Modi has managed the opposite: we never talk of commodity price swings in respect of India, and nor do we talk of violent economic cycles. This is perhaps why the former Chancellor of the Exchequer Nadhim Zahawi is so cheerful and bullish when he says to me at a recent Finito event: “Modi is fantastic. Buy India!”

BACK TO GUJARAT

But when we’re buying the 74-year-old Modi, what exactly are we buying? The man I see in front of me, who we might imagine to be on display in some sense, is in fact an enigma.

I speak to Chandrakant Babubhai Patel, known as CB Patel. Patel is a friend of Modi’s, having known him 40 years. Patel is known for Asian media publications, and Modi mentioned him in his electrifying 2015 speech at Wembley Stadium in front of 65,000 people (with billions more watching at home). There is no doubt, incidentally, that Modi is the best orator on the world stage since Barack Obama: the cadences rise and fall with the same hypnotising inevitability and Modi is fortunate in his voice, which booms confidently.

So what was he like as a young man?

“I’ve known Modi since about 1976 or 77,” Patel tells me, “when he was a young man. I read his poems and stories when he was in his early twenties. I was moved by his idealism, though I remember thinking perhaps that it was wishful thinking.”

It is difficult through translation to gauge the calibre of Modi’s poetry, but there are signs that he has a genuine poetic mind, as in this poem ‘Calamity’:

The river, once graceful, a maiden in her first flush of youth

Is today a snarling lioness. In spate, she lurches in insolence

Loses her inhibitions, pours out her anger Sweeping away all in her path.

This is a poem which exhibits a pragmatic feeling for the moods of nature which is especially interesting given that Modi, as we shall see, has sometimes been charged

with dealing with natural crisis.

CB Patel tells me of Modi’s early years and how they impacted his outlook.

“Modi left home when he was 17. He’s best understood as a self-taught man, although of course he has done study. When he was at Gujarat he had no house. He had to go from village to village – lunch today here, and dinner there. He must have eaten in thousands of places. This background taught him tolerance and respect.”

It is difficult to think of any modern leader with this kind of itinerant phase in their young manhood, but in CB Patel’s opinion this meant that Modi was able to gain a unique understanding of the predicament of India, which is one of the reasons, besides innate ability, why he has been so successful in providing solutions to its problems. Patel says that it is a ‘doctor-patient relationship’ where the doctor (in this analogy, Modi) must know what ails

the patient (poor education, healthcare, housing) before applying any remedy. In his youth, Modi carried out a thorough examination of his country.

Patel continues the story of Modi’s early life: “He worked for almost 30 years as a volunteer with Hindu-nationalist group RSS, travelling all over the world and established tremendous rapport with the people. He understood people’s mindset and problems.”

The impression is of the man of destiny, almost Abraham Lincoln-esque, who emanates in some way out of the people – as a sort of precise embodiment of what the people happens to need. Naturally, this view has been challenged from time to time.

Modi’s detractors are, for instance, not entirely sure what studies Modi carried out and where. Modi has claimed to have secured a BA in political science from Delhi University and his subsequent MA from Gujarat. But

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Christophe Jaffrelot tells me: “There is some confusion about his degree: he could never produce his diplomas.”

I ask Jaffrelot if Modi had any mentors growing up: “The mentors Modi mentions occasionally are RSS men and religious figures. Unsurprisingly, as a young volunteer, he joined the RSS when he was an eight year old child. He has been influenced by full time cadres of the organisation known as pracharaks before becoming one himself. This

influence was particularly strong because he used to live, as a young man, in the RSS office in Ahmedabad. Subsequently, his other mentors came from religious orders, including the Ramakrishna Mission (that he discovered in Belur Math, near Kolkata) and the Swaminarayan movement (a sect of Hinduism based in Gujarat).”

And is Modi now a mentor to anybody? “Modi has disciples, but mentoring requires a certain empathy - and is very time-consuming. He has always been a solitary figure and, for a long time, an organisation man. His disciples are mostly impressed by his charisma as a national-populist since the 2000s.”

Certainly, Modi’s Hinduism is not in doubt and is even attested in the following poem:

I feel proud as a human, as a Hindu. When it wells up, I feel vast, an ocean My faith is not at the expense of another’s

Christophe Jaffrelot (Wikipedia.org)

Photo by Jose Antonio Gallego Vázquez on Unsplash

It adds to the comfort of my fellow man.

This is again interesting, because Modi stands accused, as we shall see shortly, of favouring Hinduism over other faiths –indeed practising it to their detriment. It can sometimes seem as though his poetry is pre-emptively answering his later critics.

“HIS FUTURE WAS ALWAYS DESTINED TO BE POLITICAL AND NOT POETIC.”

Modi’s poetry might attest to a busy and wide-ranging mind, but his future was always destined to be political and not poetic. CB Patel continues the story: “When he became chief minister in Gujarat it was in very tragic circumstances. On 26th January 2001, there was a horrible earthquake in Gujarat which killed almost 26,000 people. RSS decided to send Modi, as Chief Minister. Remember: he had never held any executive posts, he was just a volunteer. But he had prepared himself, and he did a tremendous job in rebuilding, rescue and so on. That was the start of his journey as a government minister.”

What followed would be over a decade of leadership of Gujarat. One possible parallel here is President Lyndon Johnson who spent a long time mastering the senate before he became President. This period might be thought of as a sort of laboratory for Modi’s method of governing. Fortunately, Jaffrelot’s masterful Gujarat Under Modi examines this question over 900 dense pages. His argument is that all the political techniques which Modi deployed there are now being replicated on the bigger national stage which he now inhabits as PM .

So how did Jaffrelot go about working on his book? The work had its origins in one of the most controversial episodes in Modi’s career, which

occurred in Gujarat in 2002, early on in his tenure as Minister.

There remains huge disagreement over what exactly happened here. An argument broke out in a train carriage on the way to Ahmedabad leading to a fire and the tragic deaths of 58 Hindi men, women and children, many of whom had been returning from a Hindu festival. In the aftermath of the train incident, violence broke out across Gujarat, and the casualties were predominantly Muslim, though many Hindus were also affected. It is argued by his detractors that by labelling the initial incident on the train an act of terrorism Modi may have increased the likelihood of a violent response against the Muslim population. Certainly the US State Department for a while refused Modi the right to travel to the US due to the perception that he’d failed to quell the violence.

The Supreme Court would later clear Modi of any wrongdoing. Nevertheless, Jaffrelot is among those who aren’t convinced by that verdict, which is what motivated him to write his book.

“I have visited Gujarat every year, at least twice, between 2001 and 2020. I saw the traumatic effect of the 2002 anti-Muslim pogrom and started to meet and interview survivors, NGO activists, journalists, academics. I had to tell this story and the strategies of Narendra Modi to retain power,” he tells me. “I followed the 2007 and 2012 election campaigns; I saw the rise to power of Gautam Adani, in the wake of Modi; the ghettoization process of Muslims; the growing inequalities; the capture of institutions, including the police and the judiciary. I had to testify. But I am an academic and, therefore, to write a book was my natural inclination – and to do it with some theoretical framework. This is why I analyse Modi’s Gujarat as an example of ethnicisation of democracy, national populism and electoral authoritarianism - these concepts have been used in other contexts.”

This then is another Modi: the Modi who has used power in ways which ought to alarm us, not least because his modus operandi continues to this day. “Narendra Modi is governing India the way he governed Gujarat,” Jaffrelot continues. “Certainly he did not have any previous national executive experience when he became Prime Minister. But he did not have any executive experience at all when he became Chief Minister. He had never been elected. He was an organisation man. He has invented a political style as Gujarat Chief Minister that he has retained when he became Prime Minister.”

This sounds like an accusation, but perhaps it is not so surprising that a leader would need to invent a style: all leaders must do this or not do the job at all. Nevertheless, I ask what the Modi style consists of. “This style relied on four pillars: first, the polarisation of the voters along ethno-religious and xenophobic lines, a strategy that culminated in the 2002 pogrom and that hate crimes (including lynchings) and hate speeches routinised subsequently.”

Similarly, many readers will remember Modi’s claim that ‘infiltrators’ would take away the country’s money were the Congress Party to win the 2024 election – a remark which many interpreted as anti-Muslim, though this was an accusation the BJP strenuously denied. Like many populists, Trump especially, Modi uses language in a way which can feel designed to poke and cause a reaction.

Jaffrelot continues: “Second, the capture of key institutions, including the police and the judiciary, a process that has been made easier by the ideologisation and the moral as well as material corruption of some policemen as well as lawyers.”

In this second point, the accusations against Modi feel reminiscent of the squabbles surrounding the Supreme

Court in the US : it opens up onto the notion of democracy being silently dismantled from within by a mixture of reinterpretation of old laws, and of new laws designed to create a Hindu majoritarian state.

Jaffrelot continues with his rap sheet: “Third, the making of a special kind of political economy implicating a form of populist welfarism relying on growing inequalities and crony capitalism - note here that the number one oligarch who grew in the shadow of Modi in Gujarat - Gautam Adani - has become the richest man in India under Narendra Modi’s prime ministership.”

There are indeed unsavoury elements here. Mohamed Amersi tells me: “One of Modi’s main supporters has been the Adani Group. Unfortunately the Adanis find themselves mired in corruption allegations in the US. If the charges are proven, the matter may go to the heart of the Modi administration.”

And fourthly? Jaffrelot concludes: “The national populist repertoire of Modi who learned how to saturate the public space in Gujarat by resorting to social media, memes etc. and who started to adopt a sarcastic, provocative register to cultivate emotions like fear, anger and plebeianism.”

All of this is a damning indictment, and it certainly goes to show that Modi is very far from perfect. It reminds me a little of the Irish novelist writer James Joyce, who once read a bad review of his book Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. He acknowledged

that the criticism had hurt, but added: “However, even allowing for the idea that what he says is true, is it even ten per cent of the truth?”

NOTES TOWARDS

A REBUTTAL

Dinesh Dhamija, author of The Indian Century, doesn’t accept Jaffrelot’s critique. “It is a case of the glass half full or half empty. Christophe Jaffrelot has looked at Modi with the latter view.”

Dhamija, one of our leading entrepreneurs who successfully built up and sold Ebookers, has a pragmatic approach to the Modi question. Firstly, Dhamija is keen to point out the essential importance of economics, and I doubt if even Jaffrelot would disagree with this. “Ask Jaffrelot to show you India’s GDP for the 10 years before 2014 when Modi came to power and the 10 years after,” he writes to me over email. The graph opposite does indeed show a sharp acceleration under Modi, though it also shows a longstanding upward trajectory dating back to the 1970s. Dhamija adds: “People need food and shelter. Modi has provided these. The comparison has to be with 60 years of the Congress Party rule.” Indeed, if one looks at that longer span of Congress rule then it makes clear how considerable the acceleration has been under Modi.

“PEOPLE NEED FOOD AND SHELTER. MODI HAS PROVIDED THESE.”

For Mohamed Amersi, it also worth noting that Modi has been helped in achieving his ascendancy by the historic weakness of the Congress Party itself: “In a way his premiership may also have benefited tremendously from the fact there was no real viable opposition because the Congress Party has been

and is in decline.”

For Dhamija, Jaffrelot also omits other important points. “The US did not give Modi a visa to visit the US and thus the United Nations until 2014. This was because the Indian government run by Congress told the US that he is a criminal in relation to the pogrom of Gujurat. Since then the Supreme Court has vindicated him.”

CB Patel is among those who defend Modi over the Gujarat Riots, noting that the Muslim population had sometimes, though not always, been ‘violent’ and adding that Modi is a strong leader.

Dhamija isn’t convinced either whether the talk of pogroms is especially helpfully. He says: “There are 220 million Muslims in India. Modi has not been good to them, but by and large fair. For example, he banned the Muslim divorce law of talaq, talaq, talaq, where a man can just say these three words and divorce his wife. Muslim women voted for him in droves in the Uttar Pradesh elections.

I also agree with him on Kashmir, where he abolished Article 370, which integrated the laws with the rest of India. Furthermore, the calibre of people in his government are far better than when the Congress Party was in power.”

So has Jaffrelot’s opinion of Modi altered at all since writing the book?

“There is one thing that I had underestimated till I wrote my two books on Modi, Modi’s India and Gujarat under Modi: his contribution to the development of infrastructure. He has prioritised the building of roads and energy plants in particular. This is a very revealing choice: in Gujarat, this investment prevailed over education and health. This is revealing of his supply side economic orientation that explains the kind of jobless growth India (and Gujarat in particular) is experiencing. India is not creating enough jobs partly because its entrepreneurs promote highly capitalistic activities and because the

Dinesh Dhamija

NARENDRA MODI EDUCATION

1950

Narendra Damodardas Modi was born on 17 September 1950 to a Gujarati Hindu family of Other Backward Class (OBC).

c.1958-1964

Modi works infrequently in his father’s tea business on the Vadnagar railway station platform.

1958

Joins the RSS and begins attending its local shakhas, or training sessions.

manpower is not sufficiently qualified.”

So in Jaffrelot’s view, Modi might be a bridge into the future – but it is irresponsible to build bridges themselves.

Not surprisingly, CB Patel has a different view: “Modi has been absolutely transformative. In four years of his tenure, India opened 500 million bank accounts and that is very important. He then introduced a VAT equivalent which makes a vast amount of money in indirect taxation, and then spent that money very wisely and

1967

Completes his higher secondary education in Vadnagar. Displays a talent for theatre at school but is otherwise perceived to be an average student.

1970

www.wikipedia.org

After a period of travel across northern and north-eastern India heads to Ahmedabad working in his uncle’s canteen at Gujarat State Road Transport Corporation.

1971

Leaves his uncle’s employment to become a full time pracharak (campaigner) for RSS.

efficiently. They have built almost 40 million toilets – as well as making major strides in health and education. But he can’t be popular all the time. When you’re PM of India, some people will support you and others will be against you, but a democracy like India is a country of contrasts. Modi has given India legacy.”

Dhamija adds: “What explains Modi’s popularity? One factor is Modi’s appeal to women. They turn out in huge numbers to vote for the BJP, thanks to policies such as the Swachh Bharat

(‘clean India’) mission to improve sanitation. This has improved not only standards of hygiene across India but security for women and girls. A welfare system that delivers benefits directly to women, rather than via their husbands, is equally valued.” While accepting many of Jaffrelot’s points, I find it hard not to accept Dhamija’s and CB Patel’s too.

CHECK A TRADE

Of course from the UK perspective there’s huge interest in the kind of economy which Modi is building because, post-Brexit especially, the UK

Shri Narendra Modi seeks blessings from mother after victory in 2014 Elections. (Wikipedia.org)

EDUCATION TIMELINE:

1978

Receives a Bachelor of Arts in political science from the School of Open Learning at the Delhi University

1983

Receives a Master of Arts degree in political science from Gujarat University

www.wikipedia.org

2001

Becomes Minister of Gujarat despite having had no prior executive experience

www.wikipedia.org

2014

Prime Minister of India, going on to win three terms.

2018

Wins Seoul Peace Prize.

www.theweek.in

wants to be a part of it. Dhamija has been especially prominent in terms of arguing for an India-UK trade deal, and was disappointed by the failure of the Johnson and Sunak administrations to get a trade deal over the line.

There is, of course, a curious role reversal here: the former colonial power needs a trade deal rather more than its former subjects. During my second visit in 2017, I recall visiting the rundown British Residency in Hyderabad, a palace once owned by the East India company. It has recently been restored

but I shall always remember the rundown version as a symbol of the decay which often happens to Empire – and which certainly happened to the British Empire.

Part of what makes the UK-Indian trade talks so compelling is the way in which the dynamics of history are playing out, and the emotions which go with that. “India in 1700 had 23 per cent of the world’s GDP, and was the richest country in the world,” Dhamija tells me.

“When the British left, India had three per cent of the world’s GDP. In 250

years, it went from riches to rags.”

Is there a psychological difficulty then, I ask, for Modi’s India when it comes to doing a trade deal with their former colonial rulers? Dhamija is philosophical. “One thing about history is that as time passes, you forget things. History is written by the victors. When I was doing A-Level history in the UK, we never learned about what was happening in the colonies good or bad.”

So are the elites who forge trade deals liable to take a relaxed view of the past? Dhamija takes a nuanced view:

Prime Minister's Office, Government of India

“It depends on the politics. From the Indian point of view, they’re going to say: ‘We’re not going to sell ourselves down the river.’ Or they’ll say, ‘We need something back’. You might also hear history professors say that the UK took $45 trillion dollars of money out of India in today’s money – but if you only pay heed to such voices, then you’re never going to have a trade deal.”

The former Northern Ireland secretary Theresa Villiers also takes an interest in UK-India relations: “Despite the positive legacies of empire, we should not be naïve about the colonial era,” she tells me. “In their near 200 year involvement with India, the British authorities frequently adopted approaches which would be unacceptable in the modern era. Tragedies such as the 1919 killings at Jallianwala Bagh, when soldiers opened fire on a crowd of unarmed protesters, still cause pain and grievance even today.” Even so, like Dhamija, she thinks it is time for the Modi and Starmer administrations to come together in the name of future prosperity: “But 77 years on from the departure of the British from India, the contested aspects of our shared past should not prevent us from capitalising on the huge amount that we have in common,” she tells me. “We should also remember that influence has never been a one way street between our two countries. We may have left India

a rail network and a legal system, but they gave us the numerals we use today, including the crucial concept of zero.”

Villiers adds: “Without Indian maths we might never have emerged from the Middle Ages in Europe. India’s massive cultural, mathematic and scientific influence on the world dates from as far back as the Greek and Roman era. There should be a much greater awareness of this, and I welcome William Dalrymple’s effort to put that right in his recent book The Golden Road.”

So it’s a two-way street – and one we should all be happy to walk down. What chance does Jaffrelot think there is of a comprehensive trade deal between the two nations during Modi’s last term? “I would rephrase the question and ask: what will be found in the FTA that both countries are bound to sign - because the stakes are too high for not reaching some agreement?” comes the reply. He adds: “By the way, the same thing can be said about the EU-India trade negotiations. In both cases, there are big bones of contention, in the context of rising protectionism and xenophobia. The most damaging one may concern visas: India would like the Europeans to give visas to many citizens of the country (including IT engineers) but in the West (the US is no exception here), anti-immigration policies are the order of the day, in the context of the rise of the far right. So there’s this major paradox: nationalpopulists like Modi and Trump have a lot in common (including their rejection of liberalism), but they want their country to be great again – at the expense of the other, inevitably.”

And the desire for greatness is naturally shared by Great Britain too.

THE VIEW FROM LONDON

So how does Modi really view UK relations? Is it a priority for him?

Jaffrelot tells me: “The main difference with his predecessors pertains to the

way he has tried to relate to the Indian diaspora, and to its Hindu component in particular. He relies on the groundwork, the Hindu Sevak Sangh, the local version of the RSS, the British branch of the ABVP (the students union created by RSS), the VHP-UK and The Friends of BJP, another UK-based organisation related to his party. Narendra Modi has engaged the diaspora by organising mass meetings in iconic places like Wembley stadium. Cameron and other Conservative leaders who were Indians themselves or of Indian origin (including Priti Patel) have helped him - and been supported by Hindu voters in return.”

Modi, then, is not from the UK perspective a remote presence, primarily of relevance within (admittedly strengthened) Indian borders. Jaffrelot explains: “This scenario is not at all specific: the equation between Modi and Trump relied on the same modus operandi. But in the US as well as the UK, other diasporas – including Muslims and Sikhs – are making things more complicated because of tensions between the Modi government and these two communities. To some extent, India has exported to the West some of its domestic conflicts, as was evident from the Leicester riots in 2022.”

Given the importance which Jaffrelot gives to the diaspora I am keen to investigate further. Arguably the most prominent British-Indian today is the shadow Foreign Secretary Dame Priti Patel who is prepared to talk at length about her relationship with Modi and with India.

For Patel, the economic benefits have been resounding: “In 2013, I had the privilege of being appointed as the first UK-India Diaspora Champion by the then Prime Minister David Cameron as the Government commenced a new effort to strengthen ties between our two countries. I have been proud to play a role in fostering those relationships that have led to the value of trade doubling to around £40 billion and greater cooperation in fields including medicine,

Theresa Villiers (Wikipedia.org)

research and science.”

Patel is clear about the context of this push: it was to do with the need to deepen ties in the face of accelerated change. “With the world an increasingly uncertain and unstable place, our relationship with India can be a source of stability, strength and success in the years ahead,” she adds.

So what is her view of Modi himself?

“Under Prime Minister Modi, India has taken great strides forward to fulfil its potential as a leading economic power,” she replies. “He is a leader with a clear set of values and is motivated to increase the wealth and prosperity of India and elevate his country to play a stronger role on the world stage. Over the last decade, we have seen India embrace a further programme of economic reforms to foster new opportunities for investment and it is vital that Britain maintains a position

at the front of the queue.”

I ask Patel what it’s like to be in the room with the Indian Prime Minister.

“In my discussions with Prime Minister Modi, it was good to hear of his commitment to working with Britain, especially given the links between our country and the strength of the Indian diaspora here. No-one will forget his visit to London in 2015, where he addressed tens of thousands at Wembley, especially as there are not many world leaders whose inspirational words can fill a national stadium. Those links need careful and thoughtful cultivation to build on the benefits we have achieved over the last decade.”

Patel is at pains to point to the great talent which India possesses. “With its growing working aged population and middle class, India is becoming a strong consumer of goods and services as well as a fertile ground

for entrepreneurialism to flourish. That presents us with continuing opportunities to support growth in India with our financial services investing in its infrastructure and key industries to further enhance the partnerships we’ve already established. There are so many areas where we can strengthen our partnership with India covering renewables, manufacturing, AI and new technologies, and medicine and pharmaceuticals. While in Government, the Conservatives recognised this. As well as the engagement with Prime Minister Modi, we also agreed a roadmap with India to boost our bilateral relationship in the years leading up to 2030, with a plan to deepen collaboration on trade, defence, climate and health. Importantly, we were working towards deepening the ties needed to enhance cooperation on joint security challenges, which included our armies training together in recent years.”

Modi and Priti Patel. (Alamy.com)

Patel argues that a great deal of progress was made during the 14 years of Conservative-led government. “The last Conservative Government was also working towards establishing a free trade agreement with India, which had the potential to boost trade and cooperation with India being a key market in the Indo-Pacific region for Britain and with us being a key market in Europe for India, “ she tells me. “Unfortunately, while progress was being made, agreement could not be reached by the time of the General Election this summer and we wait to see how the new Prime Minister, Sir Keir Starmer and his Labour Government will approach this issue. So far, however, the signs have been negative.”

“LABOUR

WANTS TO TAKE BRITAIN BACKWARDS AND ARE PRIORITISING THE EU.”

What is her take on the start of the Labour government? Unsurprisingly perhaps for a shadow foreign secretary, it is far from rosy: “Instead of capitalising on the benefits of Brexit and building on our work to establish a free trade deal with India and other growing economies, Labour wants to take Britain backwards and is prioritising the EU. While our friends and neighbours in the EU continue to be an important market for Britain, as a trading bloc, the EU is suffering from slow growth of barely one per cent a year, compared to India exceeding six per cent. That’s why Britain must be global in our approach so our businesses and investors can stimulate and share in the growth, entrepreneurial spirit and success that India and other growing economies offer.”

I approach the Department for Business and Trade for a comment on Patel’s remarks. A spokesperson comes back: “The Prime Minister announced that UK-India trade talks will relaunch

early this year, following a bilateral meeting with Prime Minister Modi at the G20 on 18th November 2024. Work is under way across government to prepare for negotiations with India. The UK is pursuing a twin track approach to trade, negotiating free trade agreements with India and the GCC, while simultaneously resetting the relationship with our European friends. This approach will strengthen ties and tackle barriers to trade with the EU and the world’s fastest growing economies including India, deliver economic growth, higher wages and new investment, and make working people better off.”

As with all governments, the proof will be in the pudding. But while governments can sometimes seem to move at a sluggish pace, thereby frustrating the likes of Dhamija, business is more responsive. In many cases they’re already making up their minds about Modi’s India. They’re already voting with their portfolio allocations and their geopolitical footprint. By and large the result is positive and they agree with Patel’s rosy assessment of India.

THE BUSINESS CASE

When I speak to Sir Martin Sorrell, the legendary chair of S4 Capital, he echoes Zahawi’s injunction to: “Buy India!”

“I’ve always been bullish on Modi and India,” says Sorrell. “I’ve spent a fair amount of time there, I’m there often.

Just look at the population statistics –India talks of going from 1.4-2.8 billion – on that basis it’s quite clear which direction it’s going. Modi has done a great job, but the last election wasn’t so good for him. He stimulates a little bit of controversy but all strong leaders are controversial,” he laughs.

So what’s his read of the immediate trajectory of the Indian economy? “The economy is slowing down, but we’re still seeing very significant GDP growth which we’d give our eye teeth for here. You can’t criticise that. Of course, India has been a beneficiary of the Taiwan risk in China: clients and companies are concerned about the risk associated with China. If you look at the maths, China is $18 trillion out of a global $106 trillion GDP so you should look to have around 15 to 20 per cent of your sales there. So if you’re a big company, an Apple or a Tesla, you don’t really want more than that sort of percentage of your sales to come out of China – so you need to look at alternatives in the region.”

Sorrell continues. “In respect of China, supply chains have been disrupted by what’s been happening on two counts: one is security or defence and the other is climate change. Manufacturing is now not the vogue; it’s more about building resilient supply chains with alternatives. If you’re looking at Asia, and if you’re big in China, unless you want to be bigger –like Unilever at nine per cent – then the number one alternative is India.”

Theresa Villiers agrees: “India is wellpositioned to take advantage of the growing realisation in the west that over-dependence on China poses serious risks to our prosperity and security. The Covid pandemic starkly demonstrated the pressing need to diversify global supply chains and reduce reliance on China. That makes India a more important partner than ever before.”

But Sorrell also has this to say in respect of Modi’s India. “It’s not an easy country to navigate. You have strong entrepreneurial talent, like the Mittals, Mahindra and

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others. All these people are outstanding entrepreneurs in India and are flexing their muscles elsewhere: look at Sunil Bharti Mittal here with BT.”

All that is to the good, but there’s a warning coming. “I think having said that there are also issues surrounding tax, the courts, and rule of law. I remember going to a dinner – I won’t say who it was, but a leading Indian entrepreneur who was very bullish – and the Chairman turned to another speaker who was an exRussian oligarch, and said: “Would you invest in India?” The reply came: “No.”

The reason was that the US still offers relative stability in terms of the rule of law and taxation.”

In that sense then India might be viewed as just one alternative. And the others? “Beyond India, there’s Indonesia, Vietnam, Thailand, and the Philippines as well as Singapore and Malaysia.”

So what will the situation be by 2050? “By 2050, it will be the world’s third largest economy after the US and China, followed by Indonesia and Germany.” And

how does he view Modi in this sense? “He’s a very strong leader with firm points of view, and people who have firm points of view create contrary points of view. In the last election because of those issues, it caused him some electoral difficulty.”

“BY 2050, IT WILL BE THE WORLD’S THIRD LARGEST ECONOMY AFTER THE US AND CHINA.”

But not every commentator is quite so positive about Modi’s India as Sir Martin Sorrell. Gurneet Singh, the founder of Sterling Rose Capital, tells me: “India is a sleeping giant. Politically, I get the feeling they’ll be good but they’ll disappoint. This is an intuition. They’ll be the third or fourth largest economy. But there’s something about India that’s tricky. There’s a billion cultures, and it’s a highly bureaucratic culture and it’s not as harmonious as China which has this amazing top-down process to push businesses along.”

Singh is impressed however by how Modi is playing the geopolitical game.

“India is a friend of the West and there are tonnes of influential Indians in the West. And the whole history of the Commonwealth helps, but it’s also very strategically important in the US. They’ve also played Ukraine very well. Saudi and India are playing this well – in the sense of their own interests.”

Here then is another sense in which Modi is a bridge – not just from past to future – but between East and West. Modi has shown himself as comfortable talking to the diaspora in Wembley Stadium as he is when talking to Putin’s Russia or Xi’s China. Dinesh Dhamija agrees: “Far from ostracising India over its neutrality over the Ukraine war, or for buying Russian oil, the G7 regards Modi as an honest broker in global affairs, the leader of a fast-modernising democracy and their best hope for a consensus of like-minded nations in the face of Chinese and Russian aggression.”

CB Patel agrees, citing Modi’s handling of the Middle East. “Modi is the only

foreign leader who one day can go to Jerusalem and the same day go to Ramallah in Palestine. He must be able to communicate properly with both Jewish people and the Arab people in order to do that.”

So will this be the Indian century? Singh says: “They’ll be a force – one of four, with the others being the US, China and the EU if it can get its act together. India’s military prowess is strong. They’ve got nuclear, and their soft power is far in excess of China. It’s interesting to note there’s almost zero cultural influence coming out of China. But with India, you’ve got Bollywood, cricket, the food, the music – there’s a lot of connective tissue and I think they’ll have influence for that reason as well.”

ON THE GROUND

This connective tissue means that there are more of us living and working in India than ever before.

And it’s only when I speak to an international entrepreneur in the healthcare sector, who asks that his comments be anonymised in case he ever wants to apply for an Indian passport, that I find the complexity of Modi beginning to crystallise into images I feel I can grasp. The danger when discussing a figure like Modi is that we resort to generality because the country is so big and the political achievement so large.

“There’s a lot of polarisation in terms of what he’s up to,” he explains. “Some people think of a fascistic figure, who’s been gaining more and more power. But Modi to a lot of Indians is a bit of a hero as he’s pulling them out of economic hardship, although he is also locking them into certain structures which won’t be reversed. So they get to have their mobile phones, and they get this and that – but it all comes at a price. They now have to be banked and taxed. India before was lots of local markets, bartering of trade and goods.”

That sounds happy. “Yes I think it

was. There was lots of happiness, and connection to their various gods and goddesses. I think he is slowly stripping all that way and commoditising everything, building malls, selling the Western lifestyle, and accruing more and more power.”

This feels just: there is nuance here. But it doesn’t end there: “There’s a lot of fear among minority groups: among Muslims, and in the gay population. Goa is obviously different in that respect, but you sometimes hear the sentiment in the country that things are going the wrong way in terms of openness, and it’s certainly a tough country to live in if you happen to be a Muslim. In Delhi, all of the monuments now are Hindi only.”

The entrepreneur paints a picture of a harsh country, where a strengthening central government can sometimes appear as if from nowhere. He says he’s seen this in Goa too. “There’s a lot of corruption. There’s a massive building site near where we’re staying. It’s a gigantic house and they’ve been trying to build it for a very, very long time. It’s some finance director’s holiday home. These types of people have holiday homes all over the country, they plough money through them and out the other side. A lot of money gets washed into Dubai. Wealthy entrepreneurs in India can do a transaction in ten minutes: their money in India will end up in a bank account in Dubai with a deduction fee.”

For all that, the entrepreneur enjoys living in Modi’s India. “It’s an amazing time to be in India. There’s this optimism and opportunity which is hard to match. Along with that, there’s a lot of greed and corruption and a lot of strong-arming by the government. So for example, there are family homes in this nice town called Assagao,, where property developers want to build villas. They’ll turn up at a family home which has been in that family’s home for decades – and they’ll kick them off saying they’ve got a note from central

government saying it’s theirs. They’re like orcs from Lord of the Rings: they come and they just consume. They’re fat and unhealthy and greedy and rude and they just grab everything they can. So they may not like him in Goa – but people in Delhi love him. There he’s brought economic prosperity, education and opportunity. They’ve learned how to use computers and they’re getting paid.”

In a sense, we’re primed to think that someone like Modi is either good or bad. We want to say yes or no to him, just as we do to everything else.

My feeling is that we need to say yes and no to him. The India of 2047 is likely to have 1.5 billion internet users, half a billion electric vehicles and a financial system processing 300 billion transactions annually; the main individual responsible for that scenario will be Narendra Modi. We may as well say yes to that – not least as it won’t be something we can control. Amid all this there may be things we don’t like: prosperity can lead to greed in the same way as hardship can lead to crime. Likewise, a sincere joy in Hinduism and festivals which CB Patel highlights for me, has plainly its corollary in a sense of disenfranchisement among minority groups. But it is unrealistic to expect this scale of transformation to be unaccompanied by the negative side of human nature.

I watch Modi in the studio again, and realise that he is a figure on a gigantic scale. There is huge skill here. I remember CB Patel’s descriptions to me: “His memory is fantastic. He will remember you, and anything connected with you. He has astonishing communication skills. Before he meets you, he will prepare thoroughly. He wakes up early in the morning. He spends time planning his day. He knows what he wants to do two years from today – five years from today. He is that prepared.”

It occurs to me that whatever we think of the India he’s building, and whatever we plan to do with our own lives, we can at least emulate Narendra Modi in that.

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IRIS SPARK

Iam sipping a cup of coffee. This is not an unusual thing. In fact, if I am not sipping a cup of coffee first thing in the morning I would argue that something has gone cataclysmically wrong with my day.

Without coffee, I am not much. I have discovered that without coffee, I am some sort of half-creature – a maggot of some kind. If some disaster happens to me without coffee – a bad business call, or a calamity with one of the children or the dog – I am unable to cope. But with it, I will roll up my sleeves and manage.

Obviously I am not alone: coffee is, more than wine, beer, or even tea, our global drink. The high streets of southeast London, for instance, have a very fraught pizzeria scene: you enter that market knowing that a lot of people eat pizza, but not so many that you can’t fail. But our appetite for coffee feels of a different scale and of another kind: it’s hard to open a coffee shop and not find the customers.

There are so many of us who need coffee and who are prepared to pay for it. So prepared to pay for it that we didn’t especially notice when the price of a coffee went up to its present average of £3.40 a cup, making a £10 billion industry in this country alone, with the global market more like £100 billion.

Coffee doesn’t seem to be particularly bad for you – except if you have far too many per day. “There’s not much in it,” says leading nutritionist Lucy Epps, “Ground coffee is rich in polyphenols, which act as very important antioxidants in the body. In fact, coffee beans are so rich in polyphenols that for regular coffee drinkers they can provide a major source of these dietary compounds, and importantly, at physiologically relevant levels.

“As well as increasing antioxidant activity, polyphenols can also downregulate inflammation and provide

beneficial effects on vascular, metabolic and cognitive health.”

That all sounds like excellent news. But there’s more. Epps continues: “Scientific research, including metaanalyses (a study that combines and evaluates data from several similar studies) have found that those who habitually consumed one to three cups of coffee a day, had a significant reduction in risk for mild-cognitive impairment, potentially conferring benefits for brain health over the long-term. In studies that looked at coffee intake and cardiovascular health, one to three cups of coffee a day was associated with a 21 per cent lower risk of stroke.”

“ONE TO THREE CUPS OF COFFEE A DAY WAS ASSOCIATED WITH A 21 PER CENT LOWER RISK OF

STROKE.”

Epps also argues that there are even more benefits than people typically realise. “We are also beginning to uncover the beneficial effects that regular coffee consumption can have on our commensal gut bacteria,” she explains. “These bacteria metabolise polyphenols in the large intestine, in turn producing by-products that are not only key locally for colon health, but have consistently been shown to have far reaching benefits on other areas of our health, including the immune system, hormones and the heart. Over 100 bacteria species have been linked to coffee drinking - both caffeinated and decaffeinated - it's thought, due to the relationship between polyphenols and gut bacteria.”

This all seems like good news for the habitual coffee drink. And Epps is not alone in extolling coffee. The former World Champion javelin thrower

Fatima Whitbread tells me: “A lot of people say you shouldn’t drink too much coffee because of the caffeine –but if you believe everything you read, you’d never do anything at all.”

COFFEE JOBS

That all sounds positive, and of course it means that there are many job opportunities at every part of the supply chain. All the people I meet in the coffee sector are passionate about their work: they seem to have that same passion which sommeliers have but without quite so many burst capillaries.

Matt McDonald is the procurement manager at Café Direct. He obviously loves his role which he describes for me. “I manage the quality of the coffee but also the buying function, and I also purchase directly from cooperatives. I also handle the pricing side of things –I love it.”

So how did he get into it? “It was a very obscure route. I worked in China for 10 years – nothing to do with coffee. But I gained a good understanding of supply chains and moved into a role on the supply side for Café Direct. But then the opportunity came up to move into the buying side of things, and so over the next few years I was learning on the job.” There seems to be an element of falling into the coffee world, and this in itself speaks to the accommodating, and cheerful nature of the industry.

It’s also an industry which asks for some interesting qualifications. “I had to become a Q grader, which is a qualification for judging arabica coffee; an R grader which involves judging Rubica coffee. It was a very structured method of tasting, and it’s best if you learn with someone who really knows what they’re doing. You have to be there every day in the roastery, and in the cupping lab.”

Did he worry about his caffeine intake? “I try to limit my caffeine intake. I try not to have too much for work. When

you taste it, you spit it out and don’t swallow it.”

So how does he set pricing? “The price is linked to the quality but it’s not the sole defining factor for the price. There are several other components: there’s the stock market price, and then there’s the new stock exchange price which is the base price when you’re buying a container load. In addition to this countries attract different pricing premiums linked to the cost of production locally.”

Since many of the countries which produce coffee are also less developed economies a lively conversation has arisen in the industry around fair trade. “With fair trade,” explains MacDonald, “you have a minimum trade and we’re well above it. If the price falls below that point, you pay a premium. We’re about 60 per cent fair trade organic –and to be organic you pay an additional premium.”

It all strikes me as fascinating and I begin to see that the role is exciting

because it includes a product he obviously loves – but the economics are also intellectually challenging, and in addition open up onto moral concerns. This is an industry which, partly due to geopolitical considerations, and also due to climate aspects, is having to reinvent itself – and fast.

THE FAIR TRADE QUESTION

I talk to Edward Harvey at Fair Trade, who is on the frontlines of this conversation. “I joined Fair Trade in our programmes and partnerships team,” he recalls. “Initially I worked on developing fund-raising proposals which we took to donors like the UK government requesting funds to implement projects in fair trade supply chains. Our bread and butter is fair trade certified supply chains to help businesses to source on fair trade terms. Recently I’ve been supporting on coffee, and am a senior supply chain manager which is a really interesting experience.”

What are his impressions of the coffee sector? “There’s lots to be excited about and some challenges. The fact remains that a lot of coffee producers still live in poverty,” Harvey explains. “Coffee is a commodity which supports a lot of people. It’s roughly 125 million worldwide – of those there’s about 12.5 million smallholders. Coffee’s a crop which is largely produced by smallholder farmers with small plots of land. They’ll sell their beans to a cooperative who will sell to a trader and then ship to the consuming country. The position of a smallholder farmer in that supply chain is quite fragile.”

Why is their position so fragile? “They can be vulnerable to changes of price – coffee as a commodity changes price every three minutes. Changing weather patterns can very quickly change the price of coffee. At the moment it’s very high – there are a few reasons for that. Some of it is to do with conditions in Brazil. Frosts impacted the volume they’d normally expect to export.

The Ukraine war has also affected the availability of fertiliser and the number of shipping containers. That effects things on the ground. High prices aren’t necessarily good – it leads to uncertainty.”

So what are the longer term trends? “The price of coffee is quite historically low. Even though it can jump in the short term – in the longer term it is falling. The way Fair Trade approaches it is through its standards which cooperatives have to meet to be Fair Trade certified. The approach of Fair Trade is that companies that buy Fair Trade coffee have to pay a Fair Trade minimum price at a fair trade premium. It’s a safety net for farmers: when the price of coffee falls, it protects them from volatility.”

What incentivises the companies to take part in Fair Trade? “A lot of different things. For a lot of consumers they want to know the coffee they’re buying is sustainable and supporting farmer incomes. Twenty-five per cent of coffee sold in the UK is on fair trade terms. For businesses, there’s a strong connection and Fair Trade is known as the gold standard.”

Have the big chains signed up?

McDonald lists Starbucks, Gregg’s and Leon as some of Fair Trade’s bigger partners. “The goal is to say that growing coffee is difficult and that the farmers are often overpaid and intervention is needed.”

What about companies who opt out or perhaps haven’t yet come in?

“There are ways we can persuade them. The UK market has a long term relationship with fair trade; there are also fair trade towns and schools and faith groups in the UK: there’s a wide network here which we can tap into. These networks are supportive of fair trade and so we want to talk about that broad willingness we already have.”

And the challenges? “The challenges

are through the costs, but we talk back through the impacts we do have.”

AT THE ROASTERY

I’m keen to see how this supply chain works and so head down to Cafe Direct’s roastery in Hoxton where I meet with Dariel Petrov, who is a Senior National Account Manager at Café Direct, and Sam Harlow, roastery manager. Cafe Direct is a fair trade partner. I am immediately offered a coffee and chat to Dariel next to an industrial blender surrounded by coffee. So do they like coffee? “It’s more of an addiction than anything,” says Sam, laughing. “Coffee is on the rise and we have a very developed supply chain. It felt right for us to really go for fair trade. My mind is blown away when I taste different coffees. I think more people should know about the coffee sector. Not enough people think of it as a possible option.”

Sam and Dariel make sure I go home with a bag of coffee and my own coffee-making apparatus. It’s Sam’s job [though since being interviewed he has moved to a new role] to create the subscription package for Café Direct subscribers: “The concept behind it is that you subscribe and receive a menu through your letterbox, and it tends to be higher quality than what you find in your supermarket. They’re premium quality and often you can go back to the farmer who’s produced it. There’s traceability here. We aim to broaden the horizon of our producers.”

This strikes me as being exactly what I need to take my coffee addiction to the next level. Petrov explains: “We discover too. We’ve had coffees from Papua New Guinea and Indonesia – we know what’s good at the time of year and we know which origins will work well. We have an idea of flavour.” Is it satisfying to do this job? “The most fun is to find the importers, get the samples in, and to find stuff in our price range. Then when it comes into the roastery

for the first time – it’s quite a special process.”

So how do they know what options there are from the countries of origin? “Each country has its harvest. So we know through experience when to start looking. We also have good relationships with importers whose job is to find, store and bring it to the UK. Sometimes we’ll try it at origin – we have pre-shipped sample and arrival sample. Between those two there can be a three to six month gap. It’s important to cup in the UK at origin.”

As ever, the role comes with a dose of pragmatism and is partly also to do with relationships. “Sometimes it’s a case of going to an importer and seeing what’s good.”

Petrov adds: “This table here turns into a big tasting table. You’ve got 10 parameters by which you can measure a coffee: depth, sweetness, acidity, body, flavour – and that leads into balance. Balance is what makes or breaks an exceptional coffee. You can have amazing flavour but the body is watery and it tastes like tea.”

The coffees are then scored, and need to come in over 80 in order to make it onto the menu. Anything above 85 is a really high score. A good instant from Cafe Direct will be 82. How much will an unpleasant Tesco instant coffee score? Petrov and Harvey both wince, but they soon recover. “That bad quality coffee needs to be sold somewhere, so every coffee – even pre-dried – has its place,” they say, without directly answering my question.

CLIMATE CONCERNS

However, despite the enthusiasm of all the coffee professionals I meet, there are signs too that the current rate of consumption is unsustainable – coffee regularly comes in just after beef as one of the chief perpetrators of carbon emissions. This is something of which the sector is acutely aware – it’s an

anxiety I encounter throughout the supply chain.

But is the problem soluble? I ask Dr Claudia Araujo, a plant scientist at the Natural History Museum, what the sector needs to do to make sure it plays its role in the biodiversity and climate change conversation. “I believe the starting point is to understand how plants work and how they interact within the ecosystem (or vegetation) to which they belong and have evolved, alongside other organisms. It is also paramount to bear in mind that living organisms are always evolving,” she explains.

“Plants interact in many ways with other plants, animals, fungi and bacteria. They exchange favours in order to survive. When we extract portions of a natural ecosystem, we are not only putting at risk the future of the species directly affected, we are jeopardising the system that they have built over millions of years, which works well because it is balanced.”

What’s worrying is that, according to Araujo, we can continue for a good while without really noticing the harm we’re doing. “At first, we won’t notice the difference much because nature is resilient, it tries to reinvent itself, cure itself, forms a scar. However, in nature everything is linked, like in an engine, and once we remove one key player the rest may fall apart. Imagine if you built a tower of flats and right in the middle someone decides to make an open space in their flat removing an entire wall? If several people decide to do a similar thing then at some point the building will collapse.”

The problem is really the finite nature of the planet. Araujo continues: “Humans clear vast areas of the planet for crops. In doing so, we are eliminating the system that regulates the ecological functions of the area. It is not just the ‘green’ that is disappearing, it is everything else that we cannot name because we don’t see or even

know it exists or how it functions and affects our ecological ‘engine’.”

Araujo continues: “We know plants purify the air while producing ‘sugars’ (energy), capturing carbon dioxide and returning oxygen. Plants also breathe and transpire. In performing these processes of photosynthesis, respiration and transpiration, plants bring water from the soil to the air, which accumulates, travels and falls as rain elsewhere. But water is becoming scarce. Forests are a mass of plants, of different sizes and shapes, each producing a network of roots that act like a sponge when it is the rainy season.”

It is all an exquisitely calibrated system which we have got into the habit of disrupting: “Branches delay the fall of rain to the soil, roots above the ground trap water and roots below ground help the plant to absorb water efficiently and the excess travels to the water table. Saturated with water, plants transpire and the cycle is maintained. But in the dry season the plants have the reserve of a full water table. In this process plants help regulate the weather over the short term and the climate over the long term. Also important is the nutrient level of the soil, which comes from bark, leaves, flowers and fruits falling to the ground and being decomposed by fungi, worms and bacteria.”

And this process, which Araujo describes with such passion and wonder, is of course happening in coffee too. “Now, coffee like any other crop needs to have natural vegetation cleared to create the space for it to be grown – that is the first issue. Because it is a small tree, like other trees such as avocados and almond, coffee demands large areas of rich soil and regular rainfall.” That sounds bad in itself, and I am already beginning to feel guilty about my coffee consumption. Unfortunately when it comes to describing the scale of the problem, Araujo is only just getting started: “The biodiverse area that previously

had many species was supplanted by a crop that demands too much of what the area can no longer provide. To start with the coffee grows well, but the more coffee we plant, the poorer the soil becomes, and the poorer the soil is, the greater the need to advance into areas where remnants of forest still stand, and thus more forest is felled. Eventually there will be nowhere suitable to plant coffee.”

It is as if we were enacting in plain sight the plot of Dr Seuss’s The Lorax. And it is all happening at a scale which we might vaguely intuit, noting all the coffee shops on our High Streets, but to which most of us are turning a blind eye. “Coffee is the world’s second largest traded commodity by volume after petroleum,” Araujo explains. “But the plant takes about five years to bear its first full crop of beans and will be productive for only 15 years. Harvest is picking by hand because this is selective. Between collecting and preparing the ground coffee there is a long process: the wet method requires reliable pulping equipment and adequate supply of clean water.” So that’s another issue? According to Araujo, it certainly is: “The dry method involves freshly harvested fruits being spread on clean drying yards and ridged once every hour, which takes 12–15 days under bright weather conditions –and the weather pattern is changing.”

All of this makes coffee production extremely expensive. “It needs financial investment in certain areas to protect the industry. But the fear is that for the industry this investment will be wrongly read as ‘losing’ money, instead of investing. The price of producing coffee would be higher and will be sent straight to consumers instead of the increase being shared between producers, the industry and consumers. So, in my view, the major obstacle is changing perceptions within the industry. I might be wrong; I hope I am and find there is someone out there trying to make the necessary changes.”

So what exactly would Araujo recommend in order for this change to come about? “The sector needs to invest in creating and maintaining prime natural vegetation in an untouched state – particularly where the wild species of the genus Coffea (Rubiaceae) are found. Wild varieties can be a source of new cultivars that can produce crops quicker, demanding less resources. I am not advocating that the industry should own natural vegetation for their own advantage but support the maintenance of existent protected areas and advocate for new ones to be created.” Araujo adds that the sector also needs to “support local communities alongside local scientists to supervise the collection of surplus seeds from natural vegetation and try to re-create or boost natural vegetation in areas that have long been deprived of it.” She adds: “Again, I am not suggesting planting coffee trees in forest remnants but rather to let the forest retake the areas of crop and try to keep both at bay.”

THE ROAD AHEAD

All of which makes this a fascinating career where everyone I meet seems professionally fulfilled.

So would all the interviewees for this article recommend this career route?

Ed Harvey says: “I definitely think it’s a rich and interesting career. My sense is that there is a long supply chain and very different and varied jobs on that supply chain. The traders are an example of that, then in retail and in branding, finance, and in fair trade certification. There’s lots of diversity there, and sustainability has come into the conversation too.”

And what would Dr Araujo advise young people who are interested in going into the coffee sector but also mindful of the environment? She is highly enthused: “Get involved! Have an open mind. Do your research. Maintain a healthy scepticism: don’t

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take everything at face value. The 21st century gives the young mind the privilege of global communication, so use it wisely. Also, you may be in the crop production industry or hospitality sector or be a farmer and became a volunteer for a scientific group like ours or become a ranger in a protected area or national park that you know of.

Araujo continues: “Give yourself the opportunity to hear what the ‘other side’ has to say, try to have empathy, listen to a different opinion – you don’t have to accept it but give yourself the opportunity to improve/boost your

knowledge on the subject. Knowledge is power. When you know the different sides of the same truth you are closer to finding a reasonable solution. It is all about knowledge and compromise.”

Whenever I meet people who work in industries like this, I am struck by their happiness at what they do. “It’s a narrow pond, but deep,” as Dariel Petrov puts it. The generalist and the possessor of the portfolio career sometimes think they have it all. I’m not so sure – sometimes, when you focus on one little thing you love, you can find the whole universe enters in.

LETTER FROM WASHINGTON D.C.

MARTIN PLANTINGA

Washington D.C. was never considered a particularly auspicious site for a capital city. For a start, you have to be a fairly unpleasant river to generate your own diseases. The Potomac which runs through the nation’s capital was always considered disease-ridden. Even today, veterinarian manuals tell us all about the symptoms of Potomac horse fever. Today, the notion of Washington D.C. as being in some way pestilential still percolates in the language: numerous presidential candidates have come here speaking of their intention to ‘drain the swamp’.

To those who lived early on in the Republic, it would have been expected that the capital city would be New

York, as indeed it was when George Washington, the first US President, was sworn in.

Like so much else at the start of the American journey, the decision to locate the capital in Washington D.C. is attributed to the country’s first Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton. Hamilton was arguably the most gifted of the Founding Fathers and, until LinManuel Miranda got his hands on the subject matter, the least well-known.

In Hamilton, that great opera of our times disguised as a musical, the central song ‘The Room Where It Happens’, shows Hamilton brokering a deal to get his financial plan through Congress by making the capital city of the country Washington and not New

York. ‘Wouldn’t you like to work a little closer to home?” James Madison says to Thomas Jefferson. “Actually, I would,” replies the third president.

Now we have, for the second time, the most outsidery president of them all: Donald Trump Jr. The last time I was in town I had a good-ish steak in the then Trump International Hotel just down from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. The place was full of visiting dignatries: no doubt you wouldn’t want a meeting in the Oval Office to begin on an awkward note if the President of the United States asked where you were staying and you had to give the wrong answer.

Of course, Trump is a New Yorker even more than he is an honorary Floridian. Florida is where he often happens to

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be: New York is what made him who he is. The same of course was true of Hamilton himself who in all his rambunctious energy, and wild drive, is the archetypal New Yorker.

Perhaps Trump’s win in November 2024 over Kamala Harris might be deemed a sort of reclaiming by New York of Washington itself. Trump, so often caricatured by his millions of detractors as a sort of confederate, is really a Hamiltonian: the author of The Art of the Deal believes in accommodations just like the one Hamilton cut with Jefferson over 200 years ago.

But Trump found during his first tenure that Washington’s inertia isn’t easily undone. That’s because the swamp is an ecosystem: its inhabitants have their own survival instincts. Glad-handing Joe Biden was one of them, and Biden modelled himself to some extent on Lyndon Johnson who, according to his biographer Robert A. Caro, was the Master of the Senate. Johnson understood better than anyone the culture of shady compromises which tends to mark – and mask – modern politics.

It is possible to make a distinction between the sorts of deals Trump excels at and the ones which Johnson used to cut. Trump’s business deals, however crass they can be, usually have a clear outcome: almost always some kind of building. Washington is murkier: you’re never quite sure, to quote Miranda again, ‘how the sausage gets made’. Quite often you’re not sure what the policy is, who really drove it forward, and why it was enacted in the first place. This is from Hamilton again:

We dream of a brand new start

But we dream in the dark for the most part.

That uncertainty regarding what is really going on beneath the surface can easily lead the gullible in the direction of conspiracy theory. Obama wasn’t born in the US. Trump colluded with the Russians. Each is as untrue as the other

– and most people in this country at one time believed one of them while at some other point deeming the other patently absurd.

But this doesn’t mean that suspicion about the political classes isn’t sometimes appropriate. It isn’t gullible to be suspicious of something which doesn’t work for you – and it’s that suspicion now which has come to define the American attitude to its politics.

Much has been written about how 2024 was a repudiation of Obamaism – and to the extent that this is true this city has changed. On the surface at least, Washington D.C. is a sort of electoral chameleon which seems to reflect the tenor of the times. The removal men come for the last lot; the next administration come in.

Obama was the most talented politician of his generation; his gifts of eloquence, humour and communication still seem almost spooky. But there’s no use denying it: he was clearly blindsided by Trump’s election victory in 2016. In a sense it was a classic tale of hubris. The 44th President mistook the pull of his charm for popularity at what he actually enacted as president. Once he was no longer on the ticket, the limited appeal of his Party was exposed. Obama is quoted as talking about Trump to his aides after the surprise 2016 win:

“I’m trying to place him in American history.” One can hear a bafflement in the reported cadence – a rarity for a man so certain of his gifts.

“2024 WAS A REPUDIATION OF OBAMAISM.”

By 2025, one can begin to see Obama’s presidency more in the rearview mirror –for better and for worse. Was it Obama’s error to view history as something which might conform to his sort of template? It might be a weakness in a writerpresident to presuppose narratives like this – and then find that life isn’t a story, but more chaotic than that. Trump, full of what the rapper Kanye West called ‘dragon energy’, was the polar opposite of cerebral Obama, and for that reason Obama didn’t see him coming – and not once, but twice.

At any rate, Trump’s strange zest for politics, his talking to the gut, and his talent for the media cycle, all seem to be preferable for millions of Americans to the intellectualising Democrats.

In 2024, America showed the world that it is allied now more firmly than ever before to the brazenness of Trump if it leads them somewhere different to where Obama, through Biden and Harris, was planning on leading them.

It’s as if the electorate were saying: “We’ll take our chances. This looks more fun.” What’s not clear is for how long this will be fun.

It can sometimes seem that the name most uttered here isn’t that of Trump but that of Elon Musk. My suspicion is that it’s Musk, famed for his demonic mode and his epic fallings out, who will cause the 47th President his first problems. Musk is simply too rich to be accountable to anyone – and besides it’s not clear that he cares about people anyway. In Walter Isaacson’s authorised biography he recounts Trump visiting Musk in 2020 in electioneering mode, and saying as he walks into SpaceX: “So who’s for four more years?” As Isaacson recounts it, Musk rolls his eyes and

simply ignores him. The time will come when he will do so again.

But even if he doesn’t, the Trump movement is just as vulnerable as the post-Obama Democrats were, to what in business is known as ‘key man risk’. Trump, in wildly different ways, is just as much an unusual man as Obama, and will leave just such a gap should he retire in 2028/9 as the Constitution says he ought to do.

But in the meanwhile, Washington D.C. knows that it has witnessed the most remarkable of political comebacks. The Trump Organization sold its Washington property to the CGI Merchant Group in 2022: it felt symbolic at the time, a sort of strategic retreat. Nevertheless it probably netted

him around £100 million in profit. We now know a little more about Trump’s resilience than we did in 2020: perennially underestimated, he knows how to make money, just as much as he knows how to manipulate the media. Nobody on the left foresaw that the Twitter ban would lead to Truth Social –not least because they can’t see Trump’s appeal to his supporters.

Nevertheless, Washington D.C. is never going to be Trump country. Ninety per cent of the District of Columbia voted for Kamala Harris in 2024. It remains a city of erroneous chatter and strained gossip, all carried on in the Dupont, and in Oyamel Cocina Mexicana, where punters hope to catch a glimpse of Obama eating at his favourite restaurant. Londoners tend to feel at home in Washington. Its great buildings have that imperial look which we see in the National Gallery and the British Museum. This is borrowed from Rome, and Rome in turn borrowed it from Ancient Greece. It is a place of Corinthian pillars, and imposing façades: it can seem so sure of itself as to its external appearances, yet as time has gone by, some seasoned observers are coming to suspect a certain fragility to it all. The plaster is cracking.

That’s partly due to 6th January 2021 of course – a bad day for American democracy, when Trump, at his petulant worst, did all he could to prevent the certification of Biden’s victory. It is an astonishing fact that 6th January 2021 didn’t destroy the career of Donald J. Trump Jr.

In fact, 2024 arguably shows how little America cares about American democracy if it doesn’t deliver improvements in their own lives. We now know for sure what we suspected in 2016: there is another America out there in the small towns and in suburban areas which not only dislikes Washington D.C. but actively loathes it. Why did Trump manage to ride out

January 6th? One possible explanation is that people are beginning to wonder whether the Union has definitely turned out to be a good thing. Over the years I’ve begun to wonder whether Washington D.C. has some sort of falsity in it: the Union is something hallowed to Americans but it is certainly an unwieldy coalition. It is hard to think, for instance, of a single thing which Gavin Newsom’s experiments in California have in common with, say, the Florida of Ron De Santis. Heavily centralised government leads to great concentration of power, and this in turn can create the refusal, or inability, to address local issues – and even in many instances to even know what those issues might be.

We quite often think of local issues as being of no importance: they are, in our current parlance, of lesser importance than the national interest, and even than the direction of the species globally. Yet most of us visit and revisit the same parts of our local environment. If the money isn’t there from the centre to help make them better, things sour quickly.

In America, at the centre of this argument, is the immensely mysterious figure of Abraham Lincoln. The city leads you by a process of time-travelling logic from the Hill, down past the Washington Monument to the Lincoln monument.

Lincoln is without question one of the strangest men ever to live. He is one of the few people I can think of who Trump hasn’t been rude about – and Obama of course reveres him. He said many wonderful and wise things, but presided over extraordinary carnage. His public persona is loveable, and nobody is any doubt about his brilliance as a politician who knew all about timing.

I have always loved his speeches, especially the Second Inaugural Address, though I have also often found his anecdotes and prairie jokes somewhat tedious. His decision to emancipate the slaves was an act of statesmanship

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which isn’t easily matched in the annals of political history – and yet I am never sure of his motives for anything. A deep sadness was lined on his face, and it coursed through his being. There never seems to be a decent reason for it. Something ailed him.

A deep study of Lincoln’s life and speeches can lead you to surprising conclusions.

All the evidence is that Lincoln’s motivation to end slavery sprang from his love for the Union, and yet what is never stated is why he loved the Union so much. We think of the Union as an inevitable thing, but it could easily been otherwise had Lincoln reacted differently to secession. It is easy, for instance, to imagine the American continent as a number of states living in harmony where slavery had been ended over time in the south without the need for the civil war which Lincoln insisted upon.

If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that.

There is something chilling about the logic of Lincoln’s words. Furthermore, it’s clear that by 2025 we have failed to get government by the people, for the people and of the people as Lincoln envisaged at Gettysburg: what we have is a system which works to such a limited extent that people will vote for a narcissist like Trump in the hope he might change, in preference to the highly centralised and stagnant status quo which was the inevitable result of Lincoln’s decisions. If on some fundamental level Americans have turned against America – this country which is, according to surveys of its people, perennially on the wrong tack –then we must also understand that they have turned against Lincoln’s America. Yet Lincoln remains their saint.

Saint or not, the simple fact is that around 620,000 people died during the Civil War, and Lincoln was absolutely clear that they didn’t die for slavery but for the Union. That is to say that they died for an abstraction which he was always very careful not to go into too much detail about.

So why was Lincoln so keen on the

Union? The frightening answer which comes out of the silence is: “Because it made him President and kept him there.” Without the Union, he would have been President of a lesser nation and I don’t know that this would have matched the ego which one sometimes sees lurking underneath the folksy persona.

“I AM THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES, CLOTHED WITH IMMENSE POWER, AND I EXPECT YOU TO PROCURE THOSE VOTES.”

“I am the President of the United States, clothed with immense power, and I expect you to procure those votes,” he is meant to have said to Congressman James Alley when it came to securing the 13th amendment, which would forbid chattel slavery.

Alley recalled it 23 years later but ever since Steven Spielberg had Daniel Day Lewis say it so memorably in his film Lincoln (2012), it has been an uncomfortable moment for Lincoln lovers. Naturally, there has been a desire to claim that he never said it, or that he said it differently. But what if he said it? What if, deep down, he was like that?

It is a big question for any American to face. This is why the real Lincoln hardly gets a look in in Washington D.C. Instead we have a presiding saint and buildings which keep the tourists coming. There are fine art collections, important-looking buildings, and of course the White House.

It’s rare in the US to find churches of any particular interest but across from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, you find St John’s Lafayette Square. It has a fine gospel choir and at the back a pew

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Lincoln is meant to have come and sat down in during the Civil War.

We’ll never know what really animated Lincoln deep down, how he would have felt when he came to pray here, if he prayed at all. History is essentially psychological. It matters hugely what our presidents are like internally: the meaning and intent of actions is more important than anything. Furthermore, as we change, our perception of history changes too: my sense is that Trump, despite his appalling flaws, is a far more consequential figure than Obama since he marks America’s move away from Lincoln’s America towards a more fluid, chaotic, and hopefully energetic nation. It was this which made the Trump

assassination attempts, especially the first one., so significant. It humanised Trump, as well as showing his courage. But it was more than that: it made voters think he might yet be a better man, and undergo some kind of transformation – or metanoia, as the Greeks called it. They felt this at the same time as knowing that he could articulate their concerns, however goofily, far better than Harris, Biden and Obama.

The decline of the power of Obama is far from certain: nobody should underestimate his gifts of persuasion and rhetoric. The extent to which his wife is an asset has also grown over the years: Michelle is often deemed more popular even than Barack.

which

But something has shifted irrevocably in this country – and what’s perhaps most notable is that Washington doesn’t seem to know it yet.

Biden and Obama both won around 92 per cent of the vote there: results which would gratify Vladimir Putin. Either Washington D.C. is sorely mistaken about the nation it is meant to be governing, or else it is in possession of some sort of absolute truth which it isn’t effectively communicating yet to the other 49 states.

This unruly and questing energy simmering beneath the surface of imperial structures has its origins in history. The first to arrive here were enterprising seekers, prepared to imagine another life for themselves – a new frontier. That spirit persisted enough to create an original nation, ruled from the centre. Ever since the main question has been: how loose and free is central government to be?

Hamilton’s answer to the question hinged on the fact that the nation was also born in debt: it would require a strong Treasury in order to get the nation into credit and to secure its longterm future – a future which turned out to be Lincolnian.

And is our future now therefore Trumpian? All that depends on the strength of the Lincoln legacy, however much it might seem to fraying. In one sense it’s personal, to do with a myth – just as Britain’s contemporary sense of itself rests on the Churchill myth. Everything in this country keeps coming back to Lincoln, that strange man who spoke so cryptically, and occasionally beautifully. It doesn’t matter that he was a far more inept war leader than is usually taught in school – what matters is that his myth at a certain point in time, and partly due to the circumstances of his death, was accepted by the vast majority. The more you study him the more you realise that Lincoln worship has in some way stagnated the country because it prevents us from seeing the Union and slavery as different things.

They inhabit different categories. Slavery is for most of us a clear moral question to do with personal freedom. When it is financial or to do with employment it is, we hope, easy enough to point out and therefore to eradicate. It might even be worth fighting a war for – though even there I would prefer the William Wilberforce route to Lincoln’s. The underestimated British Prime Minister Theresa May has made modern slavery her most important cause. She could hardly have found a better one.

But the Union simply isn’t of this nature: its proper place is in political philosophy and in notions of good and bad government. It is an institutional question and it is possible to imagine a highly centralised government full of superb and caring officials who did a good job for their citizens. It is possible to imagine a less centralised government doing the same: it would depend on individual motivation.

“IF WE TAKE SOMEBODY’S FREEDOM WE DO SOMETHING VERY FUNDAMENTALLY EVIL TO THAT PERSON.”

Slavery is not like that to the same extent. If we take somebody’s freedom we do something very fundamentally evil to that person.

What happened was that two different kinds of questions became conflated: the political structures of the country and the moral evil of slavery. Historical circumstance did this, in that the two questions were live at the same time; it was up to Lincoln to unpick them, but he ended up yoking them together as intertwining aspects of his own myth.

It was a brilliant balancing act. He was able to state that he was primarily

motivated by the Union question, while simultaneously hinting that it was all to do with the slavery question really in his heart of hearts.

Conversely, when he emancipated the slaves, he was able to say at the same time that he was doing it primarily to win the war.

Quite likely, like every other politician, he just wanted to be President. When that was achieved, he wanted to be President of the most powerful country within his grasp. Having done that he wanted to go down in history as the best President of that country, by also saying some memorable things. He was unusually gifted and so he did all that.

But what are we left with? America was built on the ambition of a few men talented enough to enact their dreams. The American dream which they bequeathed has now become unobtainable for many since power became concentrated, and to add insult to injury, slavery never entirely went away.

Will Trump change this? It is quite possible that he is a sort of bizarre John the Baptist figure sent to loosen structures and that some later President, less weird than he is, will pick up his political project and really give new life to this exhausted land. Trump certainly won’t be the President we need him to be without some internal shift: he would need one feels to become rapidly kinder and wiser.

My sense is that he likes power just as much as all his predecessors, though I sometimes think he sees its silliness a little better than many of them. It isn’t much to cling to, but this vast cacophonous country has a curious way of enduring.

WHY DO WE TAKE DRUGS?

GEORGE ACHEBE TOURS A FINE NEW EXHIBITION

AT THE SAINSBURY CENTRE ABOUT THE MANY WAYS

DRUGS IMPACT OUR LIVES

After reading about the death of Liam Payne in Buenos Aries recently, one felt a sense of grim recognition. It was another story of a famous person with a bleak ending up, where the prime mover in the tragedy was drug addiction. This followed on from Matthew Perry‘s sad death the previous year.

But you don’t have to look far in recent history to find others: Amy Winehouse, Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison, Michael Hutchence. It is a grim roll call of squandered talent. The trouble with talent is that it all too often distracts you from learning how to live. Know thyself, was the injunction above the entrance to Plato’s Academy.

Drugs certainly can prevent that process, but the Sainsbury Centre has embarked on a larger mission: to consider drugs from many angles and therefore to arrive at a deeper sense of what drugs have meant to the species recreationally, socially, politically, in healthcare, as well as artistically and even spiritually. The results are shown in a series of exhibitions, and also in an accompanying book which is both wellwritten and beautifully designed.

It was Gore Vidal who, in his usual lordly manner, said he’d tried each drug and rejected them all. He settled in the end on alcohol as his main source of recreation and it didn’t do him a huge amount of good, especially in his old

age. But most people in their forties and fifties today will have dabbled in some form of drug, usually when too young to know precisely what kind of self they were supposedly meant to be experimenting with.

“THIS HAS WITHOUT QUESTION HUGELY CONTRIBUTED TO THE MENTAL HEALTH CRISIS WHICH WE SEE ALL AROUND US.”

SOUTH AFRICA. Johannesburg. Katlehong. 2015. Bathing in Katlehong after a long day.

My Addiction, Graham MacIndoe

SOUTH AFRICA. Johannesburg. Thokoza. 2015. Thabang waking up in the early hours of the morning.

This has without question hugely contributed to the mental health crisis which we see all around us. It manifests all too often as an employability problem, but this is ordinarily a symptom of addiction and not a cause. There is much in this exhibition to warn us off drugs, with heroin singled out as a particular disaster area. This was the tipple of the great Nick Cave, and he got through by the skin of his teeth to his present incarnation as a musical seer and global agony uncle.

Cave always made sure he was at his desk at 9am, and wrote some of the great songs of this or any age while in

the clutches of this particularly brutal drug. The section of the exhibition called Heroin Falls makes it clear that the high-functioning heroin addict is likely to be an extremely rare phenomenon. One such is Graham MacIndoe who chronicles his own addiction in photos of raw power. MacIndoe wasn’t robbed of agency by his addiction – or not entirely – and found that the drug made him focus with considerable obsessiveness on lighting his pictures.

And yet heroin remains a grim topic whatever spin you put on it. That’s even more the case when you consider the current trend in South Africa for

Nyaope, known as ‘poor man’s heroin’. This is highly addictive and can contain anything from detergent to rat poison or antiretroviral medications. Anybody who has been to Johannesburg knows that it can be hell on earth: and here’s why.

But the Sainsbury Centre frequently points out that drug use hasn’t always been this destructive. The message is that, as with anything in life, it helps to know what you’re doing. There still exist today peoples in South America with a positive relationship to Ayahuasca.

These pictures show another setting to drug exploration: we are in the great

Richard Evans Schultes, The Cofan Family that met Schultes at Canejo Rio Sucumbios, April 1942

outdoors where drugs really originate. Quite simply, they grow in nature, and it is a relief to the viewer to be out of the urban setting where drug addiction so often goes badly wrong, into landscapes where the existence of drugs has a saner context.

As interesting as they are, they rather pale in comparison to some of the images of visionary art in this exhibition, the best of which is Robert Venosa’s Ayahuasca Dream, 1994.

All one can say about this picture is that if this is how the world looks on ayahuasca, you’d be a bit crazy not to want to try some. This is why people take drugs: they sense that the external world might be an end effect of something larger and that drugs might be a way to move towards that cause. Venosa’s picture, with its sense of a drama we can’t quite grasp conducted involving figures whose identity we only vaguely know will touch a chord with many. It is impossible to look at something of this scale and beauty, and feel that drugs can be of no benefit to humankind.

Most people suspect that their mind is operating at a very low percentage as they conduct the rote tasks which the modern world can sometimes seem to require of them. They know they’re capable of more.

I think it’s more than possible to do all that in a state of sobriety, and that route will be better in the vast majority of cases, simply because so many people lack the willpower not to fall into perennial addiction. Who can sort the real drug mentors in the Amazon jungle from the charlatans?

But the Sainsbury Centre has done a great thing by tackling this subject in such an encyclopaedic fashion to remind us that though we each have our inner Amy Winehouse where everything can go badly wrong, we also potentially have a sort of Sergeant Pepper Lonely Hearts Club Band within as well – a new level to go to, whoever we are.

For more information go to: www.sainsburycentre.ac.uk

“ALL ONE CAN SAY ABOUT THIS PICTURE IS THAT IF THIS IS HOW THE WORLD LOOKS ON AYAHUASCA, YOU’D BE A BIT CRAZY NOT TO WANT TO TRY SOME.”

Robert Venosa, Ayahausca Dream 1994

AN ENGAGING BUSINESS

THE TEAM AT ELIZABETH GAGE PICK THEIR FAVOURITE ITEMS AND TELL US WHY THEY LOVE THEM

Elizabeth Gage remains one of the leading businesses in the luxury space. Elizabeth’s designs continue to be attractive as collectors’ items. In this article, her team pick their favourite items and tell us why they love them. What emerges is a portrait of a business driven forwards by a shared love of an artistic vision which has no equals in contemporary design.

AGINCOURT RING

Elizabeth’s Agincourt ring is a thing of great beauty and exquisite design. Elizabeth made her first Agincourt Band Ring in 1968 and that ring is now in the Victoria and Albert Museum. With one of her later Agincourt designs she won the prestigious DeBeers International Award in 1972, and her ring was hailed an engineering masterpiece. It was unusual for a woman, at that time, to win such a prestigious award – in a male dominated industry. And it was an important step in establishing Elizabeth Gage as one of a new group of designers who challenged traditional jewellery designs with her bold and creative designs.

Elizabeth’s Agincourt rings are unique and immediately recognisable as one of her designs. Unlike most other rings her Agincourts are flexible which means in addition to being beautiful they are extremely comfortable to wear. Over the years Elizabeth has made many different designs of the original and one of my favourites is the DeBeers winning piece and a more recent Persian Carpet. The latest one was based on Elizabeth’s original idea of creating a ring that resembled a Persian carpet.

Joanne Rees, Managing Director

THE ASLAN PIN

I’ve chosen this piece because it represents all the craftspeople attaining the highest levels of achievement in a single jewel.The stone carver of the bi-coloured tourmaline lion’s head, working away to reveal the

noble character of Aslan from what is to begin with, an inanimate material. The enameller’s talent of cutting interlocking patterned recesses and painstakingly enamelling each cell with black vitreous enamel. The goldsmiths art of raising and shaping gold from a flat sheet, to form the ‘body’, with sinuous curves, terminating in a playful lion’s tail detail. Also the golden collar that is set with alternating shapes and stones gives Aslan a regal air. Finally, Elizabeth’s designers eye capturing the essence of a subject, guiding the individual artisans from start to finish. The results of such work are a perfect example of the well-known phrase ‘The whole is greater than the sum of its parts’ (Aristotle). The whole piece is beautifully proportioned, a balance of detail and the confident use of spaces between the elements, with the final flourish of a South Sea pearl to the base drawing the eye down the Pin.

Andrew Behennah, Head of Production

BLACK TOURMALINE NECKLACE

It’s a very difficult choice. Having worked at Elizabeth Gage for so many years, I’ve seen jewellery that has quite literally taken my breath away. Elizabeth’s designs are truly one of a kind - unmistakably distinctive, with each piece exuding its own unique character. It’s impossible not to fall in love with them! One of my all-time favourite pieces was the black tourmaline necklace. Elizabeth designed around the exquisite black tourmaline slices, adding molten gold with such elegance - a touch that transformed the piece into timeless, wearable art that was wonderfully versatile.

Christiana

Duarte-Savvides, Head of Marketing

The Aslan Pin

The original ring Elizabeth Gage made in 1968

PEACOCK STYLE ENAMEL RINGS

My favourite pieces are the rings with the peacock style enamel on the shank. Technically these are quite hard to engrave in the space and also enamelling cleanly keeping the colours separate and in the correct cells isn’t always easy. The colours used looked great and once finished there’s quite a lot of satisfaction seeing the finished piece.

Paul Munn, Engraver and Enameller

THE CABOCHON CHALCEDONY STONE

Having worked at Elizabeth Gage for a number of years I have seen an array of amazingly beautiful creations. Choosing a favourite piece was always going to be a huge task. How can one pick just one piece. I could genuinely choose at least 100. I decided to take a more personal route in my favourite piece and opt for a ring that I personally commissioned several years ago.

It began with a stock ring that arrived in the showroom and quickly ended up

with its perfect owner. I was so taken with this ring, its perfect balance of simple 18ct yellow gold shank, home to the most beautiful stone, a stone that literally changed colour from light to dark purple, tone, mood and appearance in the lighting around it and in my opinion, how you wear it. The stone in question, the gorgeous cabochon Chalcedony. I couldn't stop thinking about this particular ring. It was so classically Elizabeth Gage in its bold design, choice of stone, a striking coloured, violet, light purple beautiful sugar loaf cut stone that my thoughts quickly bordered on obsession, and I decided to commission my own version.

Black Tourmaline Necklace

Chalcedony and Enamel Ring

Peacock Tapered Templar Ring

Peacock Tapered Templar Ring

With the addition of subtle colour contrasting enamel decoration on the ring shank that Elizabeth added, after several weeks I welcomed this ring into my life and onto my finger. People are transfixed when I wear this ring and it is one of my most beloved pieces from Elizabeth Gage. A wearable, personal showstopper.

James Rosenberg, Head of Sales Elizabeth Gage

TANZANITE AND HERMATITE RINGS

When Elizabeth Gage asked me to write about my favourite piece of her jewellery

I was quietly reluctant. How do you make that choice?

There are so many innovative, striking designs in her collection that you could spend hours flip flopping favourites between the clarity of the stones encased in bold molten gold and the quieter, delicately carved, engineered pieces. Ideally you would have many pieces to match your shifting moods!

To make a final decision I asked myself which piece I would wear every day… and just to prove my point there are two!

The first is this fabulous Tanzanite ring. The

clarity and depth of colour in the stone is stunning and tonal range is amazing, it just dances as the light changes. The ridged gold surround is the perfect frame for the stone.

I like big, bold and relatively simple designs which brings me to my second choicethe Hematite molten gold ring. I love the carving on the band and its organic feel. The Sasanian hematite bead enhances the antiquity of the piece. I could almost believe it’s a find from an ancient Roman site!

Kate Stevens, Photography Art Director

Visit: www.elizabeth-gage.com

Tanzanite Ring

Hematite Ring

Diamond Agincourt Ring

Persin carpet Agincourt

Watches of Switzerland CEO Brian Duffy: “NEVER TAKE ANY SITUATION FOR GRANTED”

CHRISTOPHER JACKSON MEETS AN IMPRESSIVE BUSINESS LEADER AT THE TOP OF HIS GAME, AND FINDS OUT HOW HE DID IT

WhenI think back on all the people I’ve interviewed across many sectors, I sometimes think I see a single common denominator of what made them successful: time. All of them, from the hedge-funder who lamented about our interview (‘I’m going to have to set aside my time’) to the internationally famous businessman who introduced me to the phrase ‘hard stop’, understood its allencompassing importance. All of them made sure they made every minute of every day count.

Watches then are more than just a luxury item – they symbolise our relationship with our most precious commodity. A watch is a thing of substance; it is luxurious but it is very far from trivial. And the best in the business is Watches of Switzerland, led by its redoubtable CEO Brian Duffy.

Duffy tells me about his upbringing, which didn’t necessarily seem to signpost him towards a luxury career.

“I am from a very much working class background in Glasgow,” he tells me.

“I lived in various housing schemes in Glasgow and attended a regular state school. Growing up, I couldn’t even have told you what luxury meant to be honest. Mappin & Webb have been in Glasgow forever and I do remember looking in their window and saying to myself: “How could anybody ever afford to go in there and shop?” It’s now part of our portfolio.”

I say that a person in his position might easily have gone the other way and harboured resentment at high end

products. Duffy is frank: “I tend not to be envious: I feel today – and I think I felt it back then – that people are entitled to spend. The desire to own a watch is a couple of hundred years old and jewellery several thousand years old. As a species I think we have always enjoyed having these symbols of emotional investment and financial investment. I never harboured negative feelings of envy or anything. In fact I probably had more aspiration and desire than resentment.”

So did Duffy have mentors to help put him where he is today? I half-expect a story of a charming Glaswegian teacher who saw his potential early – but the opposite turns out to be true. “No –

there was nobody. But I always had ambition and a personal confidence that I could be successful.”

Duffy then is a self-made man. How did his career start? “My route into what became my career was simple. Back then, you had a careers officer that you did 20 minutes with – and the careers officer asked me what I particularly liked. I was very much a generalist at school. I was good at languages and science, and I also loved history and the humanities. Since I was particularly good at maths and science, they said: ‘You should be an accountant’.”

As so often with successful people, there was a bit of luck involved. “It turned

out that I was in the very last year where you could start accountancy in Scotland straight from school. After my year intake, you had to be a graduate. I did a five-year apprenticeship that included one year full time at Glasgow University but the rest of it was part time education. That meant I became a chartered accountant very young because I started my apprenticeship at 17: at 21 I was a chartered accountant, qualifying with KPMG as it is now.”

After a short stint at Polaroid (‘they were a big employer near Loch Lomond’), Duffy was headhunted into the ladies’ underwear sector. It was to be a fast rise. Duffy became CFO of Playtex at 28 and then European CFO at the age of 30, which meant a relocation with his wife and three young kids to Paris. “My accent was very thick Glaswegian Scottish and so nobody could understand what I was saying.” Evidently, he made himself understood one way or another, as he was soon

promoted to worldwide CFO of Playtex at 34, an appointment that precipitated a family move to Connecticut.

Back then Playtex was, says Duffy, a heavily indebted business. This turned out to be an opportunity: “I got the chance to invest in the business as a management buyout which turned out well. After three years they sold the business to the Sara Lee Corporation at a handsome capital return and it changed our life financially. Up until that point we were borrowed to the hilt with mortgages and credit cards: but from that day onwards I never borrowed another cent.”

Duffy moved across at the same time to general management, and found that by nature he was “more of a brand marketeer naturally than an accountant.” The family wanted to return to the UK, and so Duffy returned as CEO of Playtex. In 1991, he managed to negotiate the return of Wonderbra to the Sara Lee Corporation which led

to a famous ad campaign with Eva Herzigova which I can remember growing up: I would have been 11 at the tme.

It is a tale of success upon success –and all carried on very young. By this point Duffy was financially secure but continued to work. I ask him about his motivation to keep going. “I enjoy work. I enjoy leadership. I enjoy accomplishment. I should have been retired 10 years ago but I am still working as hard as ever. Besides, I feel a strong sense of responsibility to both shareholders and colleagues.”

All this is not to say it’s been plain sailing. Duffy had a fallout with the Sara Lee Corporation (‘a big strategic disagreement’) and decided to go to the Guildford Academy of Contemporary Music to play guitar during the career hiatus which ensued. “Whenever I talk to students, I always say: ‘If you find yourself between jobs as I did, do something productive with your time,

and find something that makes you feel good about yourself every day’. To me it was music. I told myself this was a wonderful opportunity of getting good at guitar that I would never have otherwise. I had played it all my life very badly so I really used the time productively and kept my spirits high. If you use between time wisely, it also means that you have good judgment: you won’t be inclined to jump on whatever comes along because you want to get busy again. If you are doing something you enjoy and you are filling your time, you are going to have to think about what comes along, which is what happened in my case.”

So did Duffy keep in touch with the outside world? “I did. Eventually what came along was Ralph Lauren and the opportunity to be the president of Ralph Lauren in Geneva. So I never finalised my degree in contemporary music but I got the first year of what was a two year course.”

Ralph Lauren marked the second stage in Duffy’s career. “I had 10 years at Ralph Lauren, but I was travelling like crazy and wanted to be more settled.” It seems to have been a very happy time. “I loved those 10 years working with Ralph, and getting to know fashion was a wonderful education. I spent a lot of time with Ralph discussing product and being mentored by him. I lived in Switzerland for a year so there is an element there of understanding the Swiss and what makes them so accomplished at what they do.”

The time Duffy spent in Switzerland would help him understand his next opportunity with Watches of Switzerland, which came up through private equity in 2014. “We were a £300 million business when I started and today we’re almost £1.8 billion equally spread between the US and the UK. We listed on the stock exchange in 2019 and so we are now a public company.”

So to what does Duffy attribute his success? “Like everything you have to

meet it with the same positive attitude when things don’t go your way,” he tells me. “All the way along, I had a healthy dose of personal insecurity and it was probably my biggest motivating factor. All the way through I wanted to make sure that I proved to myself first of all that I was going to be successful. I would never take any situation for granted. With the role I am in, you have got to work harder and be more hands on and more committed than anybody if you are the boss. I think part of that comes from this disproportionate need to constantly prove your worth.”

“WE WERE A £300 MILLION BUSINESS WHEN I STARTED AND TODAY WE’RE ALMOST £1.8 BILLION.”

I mention that he seems to be responsive to events, and skilled at waiting to see what comes along next. “I never had a five-year plan,” Duffy agrees. “Fortunately the opportunities did come. I was never in a rut at any time. Most of it was right place, right time. But looking back, in those companies I would always be pushing like crazy to the point where I cringe: I was always banging on the door either for promotion or for more money –probably for more money more than anything. I would be in there saying: ‘Look at what I am doing. Look at the value you are getting. I am not getting my fair share’.”

So would Duffy advise young people to emulate this approach? Not exactly. “When you are negotiating salary or you do have a problem and you think you are not getting fairly treated, really think it through – really rationalise it. I always say: ‘You are probably among 90 per cent of the population that don’t think they are fairly treated. So I’d suggest

you really test it in your mind and when you have got a strong rationale for it, whether it’s the market or the work you are doing or the accomplishments you have or whatever, then come in and present them as objectively as you can. One way or another, keep your boss on side.’. If you are pushing your boss and they say: ‘I hear what you are saying, and I want to help,’ then that’s a good situation to be in. You are partnered on it together and you will get somewhere but if you say, ‘That’s not good enough. I want more,” and you tick them off, you are going to find it very difficult.”

At the other end of the scale, what advice does Duffy have about being a CEO? He explains that it’s important to realise your blind spots. “You take the world I am in today. The buying of beautiful watches and jewellery is a really fun thing to be doing – and the selling is a really fun thing and the marketing of it and advertising. But as a CEO you are responsible for everything: you cannot completely delegate accountability. It’s not for everybody and you never escape. If you do want to go home and switch off completely then probably being a CEO is not the ideal role.”

Does Duffy have any tips about hiring and the best way for business leaders to go about that? “Fundamentally, to be good as a CEO or a senior person in any organisation comes down to judgment: that’s where your success or failure is going to come from. Are you going to have the experience and instincts and a blend of the two to make those right calls?” Duffy says it’s also important to look at past mistakes. “Part of success is auditing what you have done in the past. I hired that guy and it never worked out. How did I miss that? How did he manage to convince me he was worth hiring? Why was I misled by his charming outward personality and I never got behind what was there? You just have to learn from that and go back.”

Duffy adds that your retrospective analysis should also work the other way: “Equally look at your success stories and say: ‘Okay - that worked out well’. I still get things wrong. Some people really do interview very well and then turn out to be different. The great thing about the areas I am in –consumer goods and retail – is that they are great sectors for genuine meritocracy because it’s all about the numbers, right down to the question of why a given shop did better in the afternoon than in the morning. At Ralph Lauren, I discovered that the most valuable time to get the sales people together was immediately after the selling season – that is, just after they had been through the programme of selling. That’s because they were very raw but enriched with the numbers they had made or something they believed in that never came through. The value you get from their judgment at that point was at its highest.”

Does his background still inform his attitudes in business? “What I hate in life and businesses is people who feel entitled. I often say to young people

when I talk to them, that I think the biggest advantage in life can be a disadvantaged upbringing because you don’t feel entitled to anything, you feel that you have got to fight for it and you will get half as much for being twice as good – but that’s okay. In the world of retail, the meritocracy is naturally applied from how people perform.”

“I THINK THE BIGGEST ADVANTAGE IN LIFE CAN BE A DISADVANTAGED UPBRINGING BECAUSE YOU DON’T FEEL ENTITLED TO ANYTHING.”

But at the centre of it all is Duffy’s passion for the product. “I love what

we sell. If I could summarise my talent, I do understand the psychology of the consumer and I can match the product to what I know will be the consumer preference at the end of the day. Watches are 90 per cent of what sell. Its more or less a Swiss monopoly. People often say: ‘Why are people spending £10,000 on a watch when they could get one for a couple of hundred?’ This misses the point completely: I call it rational indulgence. Functionally, you could buy something that would do the job a lot less but you are buying a product that has got intrinsic value that will retain value and could well appreciate in value – and in addition to that, it’s liquid. If you ever decide you get tired of it or want to do something else with it then you could sell the product. “Inevitably people don’t buy watches frequently, but will buy them when something special happens in their life: a graduation, anniversary, or business success. Once I’ve understood this, I then need to ask myself: ‘What are the trends with regards to case size or dial colour or materials or functionality?’ They might

appear straightforward, small products but there is a lot of different things that can represent the watch functionally and aesthetically.”

It’s infectious listening to someone talking about what they love – and it’s infectious listening to Duffy discuss the history of watches. “I can’t imagine any other culture in the world could have done in the world of watches what the Swiss have done,” he enthuses. “And it all came down to John Calvin, who was the de facto ruler of Geneva when it was a city state. He would tell everybody how to lead their lives: he was very austere and he banned the wearing of jewellery which he said was ostentatious and frivolous. So that all of a sudden, goldsmiths and silversmiths had a product they couldn’t sell – and so they turned their hand to watch making and clock making.”

So what does the future hold for Watches of Switzerland? “We have had phenomenal growth but we have equally said to the stock market that we plan to double our business again in the next three to four years. But it’s really focused on high growth in the US: we feel the watch market in the US is underdeveloped. Not only that, but we have already proven it to be the case and have created a billion-dollar business in six years.”

So which parts of the US is he referring

to? “We are in 18 states in America. Our head office is Florida where our biggest concentration is. The next would be New York and the next would be Las Vegas. Bur we are also in Cincinnati, we are in Minneapolis, and we are in California in a small way. We are in Colorado, and Connecticut. We are dotted around but there is a lot more that could be done to increase our presence.”

He is realistic but relaxed about the prospect of a Trump administration: “Obviously you have Donald Trump saying he will be imposing tariffs and so on – so that obviously would have an implication on everything that would come into the country. But we deal with an aspirational consumer. The big thing in America is that everybody says in the year of the election the consumer pulls back and as soon as the decision is known in November they start spending again whichever direction it is. People can handle anything except uncertainty.”

That would presumably mean that the last decade in British politics hasn’t been all that helpful either? “Brexit affects the market and clearly what happened in the latter years of the Conservative administration impacted the market. Because of Brexit we pulled out of VAT free shopping and we are the only country in the Western world that doesn’t offer tourists the chance

to shop VAT free. In our category that just seems like madness; it makes us uncompetitive.”

“IN OUR CATEGORY THAT JUST SEEMS LIKE MADNESS;

IT MAKES US UNCOMPETITIVE.”

And all this uncertainty has culminated in Rachel Reeves’ budget. What’s his reaction to the early moves of the Starmer administration? ”Inevitably if people have less income, one way or another it’s going to impact how they spend. The most important thing is some degree of stability and certainty. We all do well when the country is doing well and you hope for peace and stability and a better balance in the country, which I do think is what we can expect from this government.”

It’s a remarkable career built on a phenomenal work ethic, a wry sense of humour, and an increasing commitment to social purpose. “I am managing a company today I am proud of. We have a broader sense of responsibility and our foundation is a big part of that. We have dedicated resources to environmental matters as well, which we were doing beforehand and there is a natural pressure as a public company to do that. We believe as a company you have got a bigger role in society than just looking after your shareholders: having that proper balance and sense of responsibility is very important to me and our organisation.”

I find myself pleased to have met Duffy, and to have understood a little more of what it takes to build a successful career in this sector. His goals over the next year are highly ambitious but given his resolve, imagination and quiet authority, I certainly wouldn’t bet against him achieving them – and more.

FINITO HELPED ME AIM FOR “DYNAMIC, HIGH-IMPACT SETTINGS”

Sometimes, it helps to look at the bursary scheme from the perspective of the donor. The Finito bursary scheme has been active since the inception of the broader commercial business, using the name and experience of advisory board member Dame Mary Richardson. Ever since, it’s been an integral part of what we do.

One interesting relationship came along during an interview for this magazine, when the great philanthropist and businessman Andrew Law was asked how it is that he knows his money has been put to good use?

I could see that Law took the question very seriously, and gave it some thought before answering: “My starting principle on philanthropy has been that philanthropists should focus on areas that governments can’t or won’t do.”

I asked Law for examples. “A brilliant example of that is the education reforms started by Andrew Adonis under Tony Blair with academies and which then continued relentlessly under the Cameron government. That was essentially a partnership between the public and private sectors. In that instance, the government found private individuals to be sponsors of the place where they’d been born or had an affiliation with. They would have to bring at least £1m of their own money, typically multiples of that, plus other resources. These were typically add-ons to the school day, whether it be sports facilities, or debating clubs, and then would make connections between their own network and institutions. You get the government to do its work for it.”

Law continued, pointing out that one of his principal interests is social mobility and employability. He argued to me that a degree isn’t an outcome –it’s in many respects a starting point. Likewise, academic results can only take you so far. “You have to look at impact measurement,” Law continued. “There’s no purpose in having a school which has great academic results – because when you go for your interview at Oxbridge or job interview, guess what everyone else in the waiting room has got?”

Law is referring to that extra mile which people need to go to nowadays. “You need something else. In the education world, that something else is social

capital. It’s the ability to think and be interested and not just to be good at rote learning. You need the social capital to fit in with people and get on in your environment and you need a broader curriculum – typically it’s what people who went to private school have in their family environments, and what we need to do is create that for people from less well-off backgrounds. The ability to think only comes from lessons and tutorials where there are proper debates in schools and universities. It’s about assessing how those young people developed – not just the universities they got but the jobs they got at the end of it.”

Khadra Osman

I found myself liking Andrew enormously and told him a little about our bursary scheme. To our delight at Finito, Andrew decided to sponsor three students at Trinity High in Manchester through the Law Family Charitable Foundation.

The first student which Andrew sponsored – and we shall be reporting on other students in these pages in subsequent issues – is Khadra Osman, and we could hardly have had a better beginning to our important work with Andrew.

Osman is a likeable and confident young woman who Trinity High earmarked as having particular promise. So what was Osman’s early life and education like? “Growing up, I attended state schools, which provided a fulfilling educational experience. I always felt supported and truly enjoyed the opportunities available to me. I was actively involved in extracurricular activities such as the science club, football team, and athletics, which greatly enhanced my time at school. I also attended sixth form, achieving two A* grades and a B.”

This shows in its beginnings what Law calls ‘that something else’. It is the CV of someone who might do many things: Osman, in short, struck the school and us at Finito Education as someone who would be worth investing in. But there

was also an early sense that Osman’s options needed to be whittled down: when we are interested in lots of things, it’s sometimes difficult to know what in the end we’re really going to do with ourselves.

That’s why at Finito we’re sometimes looking for that thing which a person talks about with a particular note of delight and even wonder: this is likely to be their leading love – the thing to which they’re meant to devote their lives.

In the case of Khadra, it would become increasingly clear that her leading love was sport. “Growing up I admired many sporting heroes, including Ian Wright, Serena Williams and Ade Adepitan, and inspirational figures beyond sports, such as Emmeline Pankhurst,” she tells me. It was a clear indication of where her interests lay.

At Finito, one of our first tasks is to photograph the candidate to make sure that they understand their importance to us. It is a form of validation. Osman recalls: “Sam was incredible and made my first photoshoot a smooth and enjoyable experience. Her professionalism and friendly demeanour helped me feel at ease, and her guidance made the entire process much more approachable and fun.”

For her part, Pearce remembers: “It was

a cold and wet day in Manchester and we struggled to find a dry spot to do the photos. But Khadra was immediately infectious and kind. It is an interesting part of the process, photographing a candidate at the start of their journey. You know that they are embarking on life, and you hope for great things. In Khadra’s case, I was delighted that she had been chosen as she had that right attitude which can make such a difference.”

The next part of her preparations included LinkedIn training with Amanda Brown (“extremely enlightening and it significantly enhanced my LinkedIn profile”) and then presentational training with Merill Powell.

“A DELIGHTFUL CANDIDATE WHO RATTLED THROUGH HER PRESENTATION AT A CANTER , IF NOT A GALLOP!”

Powell’s attendance note gives an excellent account of Osman: “A delightful candidate who rattled through her presentation at a canter , if not a gallop! So that was where I began. Pace, diction, clarity.” A few further things needed working on: “Her academic record is truly impressive so she lets herself down with sloppy grammar, and chewed diction. She remedied this

Stuart Dench

Merill Powell

Andrew Law

immediately after I had explained the problems which was amazing.”

It was another sign that Osman was shaping up to be a very promising candidate. Powell continues in her note: “We worked on answering questions she failed a previous interview on and learned how to back up words with proper examples, pace the answer, emphasise power words etc. read proper papers on sport not just social media, to up her game.” Powell’s conclusion? “Started off badly but ended the session leaps and bounds ahead. A really worthwhile session.”

“HELPED ME REFLECT ON MY EDUCATIONAL AND CAREER JOURNEY, IDENTIFYING MY STRENGTHS AND AREAS FOR IMPROVEMENT.”

It was the beginning of an exciting momentum for Khadra. From there, Osman chose three mentors, with the first being Talan Skeels-Piggins, who is a Paralympian in not just one but two sports. Osman says that Skeel-Piggins “helped me reflect on my educational and career journey, identifying my strengths and areas for improvement.”

For his part Skeels-Piggins recalls: “I arrived in a noisy cafe in Manchester, so not an ideal place, but was looking

forward to the session. Khadra said she wanted to get into sports media. She’d had internships but these had all been voluntary and now she wanted to get into work. I briefly mentioned the idea of creating her own blog or podcast to begin the brand and skillset needed for sports media, but Khadra wasn’t too sure of the exact type of sports media she wanted to focus on.”

At this point, Talan began to realise that there was a slight vagueness about Khadra’s ambitions which needed to be tackled head on. “There was a need to identify the exciting and driving factors of sports media. So we agreed that Khadra would spend time identifying exactly what it was that excited her about sports media.”

The pair also discussed her personality traits: this is the sort of rounded mentorship which we value at Finito, making sure that no stone is left unturned. What must be avoided at all costs is a false motivation. Talan recalls: “With personal reflection she admitted to not being too compassionate to herself and can often advise friends but does not take the same advice. This can lead to a degree of self-criticism. I asked Khadra to try and put aside some time every day for silent reflection, beginning with breathing exercises to bring her into the ‘present moment’ and then slowly going through the day, the previous day or the week’s experiences to see how things might have turned out differently if a different approach was taken.”

In addition, Khadra met with two other Finito mentors Mike Donoghue and Marcus Day, who has 25 years’ experience in sports management. Donoghue, says Osman, “provided guidance on preparing for marketing interviews and reviewed my interview presentations to ensure they were polished and impactful.” Day meanwhile “connected me with key contacts, including professionals from marketing agencies, expanding my network and

opportunities in the industry.”

Day recalls: “We started with introductions and getting to know each other. Khadra gave me her ‘story so far’ and how she got to this point in her journey. I explained my career in the sports industry which started in a similar way to Khadra’s by following my passion for sport.”

It was an important chance for Osman to get a profound view of the sector she wished to enter through the eyes of someone who had managed over 60 golfers including Justin Rose and Adam Scott.

“IN MY EXPERIENCE, IT IS EASIER TO MOVE DIRECTION INTERNALLY ONCE YOU HAVE IMPRESSED AND GOT TO KNOW PEOPLE IN THE ORGANISATION.”

“We talked about the sports industry in general and then events relating to Khadra’s focus on the Production Management area as her preferred job,” Day recalls. “I emphasised that the difficult part is getting a role at a sports marketing or events company and that she should prioritise this over the actual role she desires as, in my experience, it is easier to move direction internally once

Talan Skeels Piggins

Marcus Day

you have impressed and got to know people in the organisation. “

Day, like Skeels-Piggins and Donoghue, could see considerable promise in Khadra: “She had achieved good work experience and is clear that she now wants to find a paid role which is understandable. Having said that, she is open to internships if they are with a high level brand in the sports industry as it will provide valuable experience and added value to her CV.”

Day continued: “After digesting everything Khadra had told me, I was able to share with her some job opportunities that I am aware of that I can pass on so she can explore these further. For example, there is a Red Bull internship, and one on The Legends Tour. I will also enquire if my contact who has worked on several Olympics over the past 20 years with Coca Cola would be willing to offer advice and guidance to Khadra.”

Day also noted certain gaps in Osman’s knowledge which he sought to remedy: “Interestingly, Khadra was not aware of any of the sports recruitment agencies. In my opinion, these are vitally important so that you are on their radar and can be made aware of roles. Recruitment in the sports industry is driven a great deal in this way, since it is such a niche sector. I have offered to make email introductions for Khadra to these agencies.”

Day was also impressed by Osman’s desire to get out there and network. He recalls: “Khadra expressed an interest in attending any sports networking events. I agreed with this approach as it’s a great way to meet people in the sports industry. I will let her know of any opportunities. However these are mostly in London so may not be logistically so easy.”

Each mentor had provided something different: Skeels-Piggins had gone into depth about Osman’s motivation; Donoghue had worked hard on her presentation; and now Day was

Amanda Brown

connecting her.

In time, an opportunity came up for a paid role as a Sports and Events Marketing Activator at Greenwich Leisure Limited (GLL), the country’s largest social enterprise delivering leisure, health, cultural and community services. It seemed the perfect fit for Osman and so the entire bursary team went into action helping her to prepare.

“IT WAS A VERY PROUD MOMENT AT FINITO WHEN WE DISCOVERED THAT KHADRA HAD GOT THE JOB.”

In time the big day came: the interview. So what was the process like? “ The interview process had two stages: a presentation showcasing marketing ideas on how to improve a holiday programme and presenting a marketing plan for a summer programme,” Osman tells me. All the work which Osman had done with Finito paid off: it was a very proud moment at Finito when we discovered that Khadra had got the job. So how is the role going? Osman says: “The role is enjoyable and diverse, offering a range of responsibilities that

keep things interesting. As the first person to hold this position, I have the unique opportunity to shape it according to my vision. This allows me to explore new areas and take on challenges that align with my personal and professional growth goals. I can identify areas for improvement, implement innovative solutions, and continually develop my skills in a dynamic environment.”

And what are her goals for the future? “My goal is to advance my career by working on major sports events worldwide. I aim to enhance my professional expertise and personal skills by embracing new challenges and opportunities for growth in dynamic, high-impact settings.”

Khadra continues to illustrate that ‘something else’ which Andrew Law spoke to me about some years ago when he was first told about the bursary scheme. She has worked to help deliver the Wimbledon tennis championships and the 2024 Champions League final in London. In both cases, her posts show someone with an undimmed enthusiasm for sport, and for the joy of the big occasion.

Philanthropy sometimes delivers happy results – and we look forward to reporting further on our work with our Manchester cohort.

“INSIGHTFUL AND

YOUNG GRADUATE OTTIE BURGESS RECALLS MEETING

SIR MARTIN SORRELL

OTTIE BURGESS IS STARTING OUT ON HER CAREER IN PR. FINITO WORLD WERE DELIGHTED THEREFORE WHEN SHE CAME ALONG TO SIT IN ON AN INTERVIEW WITH PERHAPS THE GREATEST AD MAN OF THEM ALL. HERE ARE HER IMPRESSIONS OF THE EXPERIENCE.

In late 2024, I had the privilege of meeting Sir Martin Sorrell, whose extensive experience in advertising and business strategy offered profound insights into geopolitics, leadership, and emerging trends. Our discussion ranged from India’s economic prospects to the evolving media landscape, political dynamics in the United States, and his perspective on identifying talent in today’s competitive environment.

Sir Martin expressed a strong optimism about India’s future, describing himself as "bullish on India." Having spent considerable time studying the country’s growth trajectory, he highlighted its significant population growth and economic expansion as pivotal to its global influence. He commended

Prime Minister Narendra Modi for his achievements despite facing setbacks in recent elections. While acknowledging that Modi is a polarising figure, Sir Martin suggested that controversial leaders often bring firm governance, a characteristic he believes Western countries, particularly in Europe, could learn from.

India’s rapid GDP growth, according to Sir Martin, is a remarkable achievement that Western economies envy. However, he also emphasised that doing business in India is not straightforward due to the strong entrepreneurial culture and the country's growing global assertiveness. Beyond India, Sir Martin highlighted Ottie Burgess

Southeast Asian nations - Indonesia, Vietnam, Thailand, and the Philippines - as rising stars worth monitoring for investment opportunities, reflecting their dynamic markets and strategic importance.

Turning to the U.S., Sir Martin analysed the current political environment, particularly the presidential elections. He identified two key issues that dominated voter concerns: the economy and immigration. He observed that exit polls revealed a misstep by the Democrats, who underestimated voters' concerns about democracy - an issue Republicans have successfully framed as being under threat.

Our discussion then turned to the critical role of media in political

campaigns. Sir Martin emphasised the shift from traditional media to what he termed “new-old media” (Facebook and Instagram) and “new-new media” (TikTok and influencers like Theo Von). He highlighted how Donald Trump’s campaign leveraged these newer platforms more effectively, in contrast to the Democrats, who spent heavily but failed to resonate in the same way. This new-media strategy has been instrumental in shaping political narratives, particularly among younger audiences.

Interestingly, Sir Martin compared Trump’s rallies, which he described as “dark,” to Kamala Harris’s more cheerful yet less substantive appearances. He believes this contrast highlights the

shifting ways in which politicians engage with their audiences. He also noted that Trump’s business-friendly policies are advantageous for North America, with potential spill-over benefits in South America due to the region’s growing ties with China.

“HE SEEKS INDIVIDUALS WITH DETERMINATION, DRIVE, AND BROAD INTERESTSATTRIBUTES THAT OFTEN REVEAL THEMSELVES THROUGH HOW CANDIDATES SPEND THEIR SPARE TIME.”

Towards the end of our conversation, Sir Martin shared his philosophy on hiring graduates. He seeks individuals with determination, drive, and broad interests - attributes that often reveal themselves through how candidates spend their spare time. He values those who actively pursue their passions, take on meaningful travel experiences, or engage in activities that demonstrate initiative. Learning languages, he suggested, is becoming increasingly critical for young professionals in a globalized world.

Meeting Sir Martin Sorrell was both insightful and thought-provoking. His perspectives on India’s growth, the transformation of media, and the qualities that define exceptional talent offered a fresh lens on leadership and strategy in today’s interconnected world. I found his breadth of knowledge inspiring, it spanned complex geopolitical issues, emerging markets, and evolving media trends.

Sir Martin Sorrell

LORD ELLIOTT ON THE JOBS FOUNDATION: “WE WANT TO BE AROUND FOR DECADES TO COME”

BY CHRISTOPHER JACKSON

Lord Elliott greets me in the lobby at his offices, his manner as ever meticulously polite. In Alan Halsall’s memoir Last Man Standing there is this description of Elliott: “You could see him always working three or four steps ahead – he reminds me of a chess grandmaster in that respect.”

Elliott’s name is rightly respected in Westminster, not just for his masterminding – alongside Dominic Cummings – of the successful Vote Leave campaign in 2016, but for his work on No2AV and the TaxPayers’ Alliance, among many other things.

His latest project is the Jobs Foundation. I ask him how it started. Elliott speaks very carefully often pausing to fish out the right word from the ether; he is an extremely considerate and subtle interviewee. “I have always had a big belief that business plays a hugely important role in society and providing for our country’s prosperity but also for family prosperity,” he tells me. “In some ways it is frustrating for me that business gets such a bad rep when it does so much good.”

Elliott is keen to point out that business is predominantly a benevolent force: “Of course there are bad apples in business –as in all walks of society whether it’s the public sector, charitable bodies, schools or religious organisations. You always have that. But if you look at attitudes towards the business community, business leaders and entrepreneurs are held in lower regard in the UK compared to most other Western countries.”

So what does business particularly contribute to our society? “Without businesses you wouldn’t have four in five jobs in the private sector created – and

frankly, you would haven’t one in five jobs in the public sector. They wouldn’t be there because essentially every pound that gets into the Exchequer at some point started with a business through corporation tax or business rates or VAT. Or it’s their employees paying the income tax or NI that’s all originated thanks to the work of a business.”

It’s an important point – and seems especially important now that the NICs have been raised so dramatically in Rachel Reeves’ first budget. So how did the Jobs Foundation start? “Together with Georgiana Bristol, my co-founder, I started thinking about a form for the Jobs Foundation. We wanted to focus on jobs and the importance of work –and getting people from disadvantaged backgrounds into work, and helping them with social mobility through that. We thought: ‘What is the key thing that is missing in this area?’”

“BUSINESS LEADERS AND ENTREPRENEURS ARE HELD IN LOWER REGARD IN THE UK COMPARED TO MOST OF THE WESTERN COUNTRIES.”

Elliott and Bristol surveyed the terrain and saw much to applaud. “You have some absolutely brilliant businesses who excel at this at the moment. There are many examples whether its Timpson’s with ex-offenders or whether its Itsu or

Pret who work with homeless people. What nobody had done is to actually work out what’s the best practice in this area. So if you are a business who wants to make a special effort in terms of helping people into work rather than going through the trials and tribulations of setting something up from scratch, then we are the charity who will be at the heart of all that.”

For Elliott, this is a cross-party endeavour, and especially relevant under the still relatively new Starmer administration. ”One of the priorities of the new government is to get two million people from worklessness into work. This would mean reducing the worklessness of the UK from the current level of 25 per cent to 20 per cent – and if you can get those people into work, then there might be the need to reform the role of Job Centres for example. I am sure that is part of the solution – but we also need to recognise that that won’t happen without businesses playing their role. That’s a conversation we want to champion.” What is emerging is a charity with support

Matthew Elliott, Baron Elliott of Mickle Fell. (Wikipedia.org)

from all sides of the political spectrum. It’s often forgotten how good Elliott is at forging consensus – the chair of the Brexit campaign, for instance, was Gisela Stuart a Labour MP. At the Jobs Foundation, Nick Tyrone (“he is quite vocal on Twitter and still an ardent Remainer”) is leading on policy. “All of us come together with the central belief that business has a hugely important role to play in terms of social mobility,” Elliott says.

So how will it work and what progress has been made so far? “We launched the charity in September 2023. We then went into a building phase, purposefully keeping below the radar because we wanted to build the organisation and not get dragged into political debate during the General Election campaign that everybody knew was coming up. We stayed below the radar and during that period we have been doing three things. The first thing is building our network and we want to reach 1000 people by the end of 2024: we are more than half way there at the moment.”

Elliott continues: “Secondly we have been doing our foundation research which is headed by Nick Tyrone. We are going into four parts of the country to really get into the detail of the contribution that business makes to those local communities. We have picked a city, Sheffield; a town, Loughborough; a coastal community, Hartlepool; and a more rural area, Pembrokeshire to take a deep dive in all of those areas. That has never really been done before. Once that is published and once we have reached 1000 people at the end of the year we will have reached the end of what we call our phase 2.”

And phase 3? “In 2025 we will enter the public domain. By that point we will then have the idea of that best practice for getting people from poverty into work. This means that when it comes to us engaging in the policy debate in Westminster and Whitehall, we are not just talking from theoretical experience or having read some polling. We will have

actually got a deep understanding about any government proposals and be able to make constructive observations. It doesn’t really matter which party is in power: we want to be around for decades to come.”

So what kind of insights is the research currently producing? “Two key things. The first point is we found a huge desire and pride among the business leaders we spoke with about what they do in this area. Many of them don’t have specific schemes to take people out of poverty and unemployment; they do this naturally as part of what they see as being their social good as a business. But they want to do more: and that’s where the Jobs Foundation comes in.”

And the second point? “We have found that by looking at four separate areas that often when you hear policymakers from all parties and all political dimensions talk about the role of business in specific communities they talk about it with a one size fits all approach. What we have found is that, for instance, in Sheffield the role of the two universities is very important. But you don’t have that in, say, Hartlepool which is a very different ecosystem. At the Jobs Foundation we want to go down into the detail of local areas.”

Over time, Elliott expects the Jobs Foundation to look at every side of the equation of jobs including socioeconomic groups (“we will have a focus on getting young people to work”) as well as sector analysis.

I ask where Elliott stands on the apprenticeship levy? “This has come up in most of the conversations we have had with businesses over the course of the past year. What’s interesting is that at the general election politicians spoke with such clarity and force about it, but the tenor of the political debate doesn’t represent on either side the nuance that we have had from those conversations. Some businesses rave about the levy: they love it and think it’s a brilliant scheme and really want it to continue in its current form. Other business leaders rant about and say it’s a terrible scheme and

it doesn’t help one bit and they see it as being an additional tax which is no use to them whatsoever. It strikes me we are still on the learning process on this. It is probably now time to look into it more deeply and find out which bits work, and which bits don’t. That’s not a bad thing in policy terms.”

I ask what it was which sparked Elliott’s interest in politics and business. “I remember in the 80s when I was growing up sitting around the Sunday lunch table and hearing debates between my grandfather and my dad. They were both very fine men. My grandfather was an ardent Thatcherite. He had set up a small business after the war and he worked for Schofields which is now part of John Lewis.”

And his father? “My Dad was a social worker and very involved in difficult aspects of peoples’ lives. He was a trade union rep as well which sounds like he was part of the militant faction of Labour, but he wasn’t. It was a clash of two wellmeaning people but two very different outlooks on the world. That really sparked my interest in politics overall. It was my grandfather with his passion for business and setting up a small corner shop after the war and working his way up through Schofields which sparked my interest in the role of business in society.”

It is an image in microcosm of Britain: entrepreneurial and socially conscious all at the same time. When these things clash it can lead to the Punch and Judy politics which every political leader has derided once in a while. But what if the two tendencies could somehow be resolved, and become a fruitful conversation?

That’s what is happening here and there’s no doubt that the Jobs Foundation is set to be a fascinating chapter in the career of one of our most influential political figures. As 2025 unfolds, you can expect Elliott and Bristol to be front and centre of a conversation we desperately need to be having.

This interview was conducted in September 2024.

MANOJ K. RAUT

FINITO WORLD TALKS TO THE SECRETARY-GENERAL AND CEO OF THE INSTITUTE OF DIRECTORS, INDIA

You have been with the Institute of Directors in India since 2000. Can you talk about how the organisation has changed during that time?

When I joined the Institute of Directors (IOD) in November 2000, it felt like stepping into a powerhouse of potential. From the very beginning, IOD had already established itself as a trailblazer, setting unparalleled benchmarks with visionary initiatives such as the prestigious Golden Peacock Awards. At that time, there was an unmistakable momentum towards a quality-driven movement, one that transcended borders, where trade and business were rapidly evolving on the global stage. It was within this vibrant atmosphere that the Institute unveiled its first-ever International Conference on Corporate Governance, a groundbreaking moment that not only reinforced its leadership but also ignited a wave of

innovation and thought leadership in the corporate world.

These early achievements were not just milestones - they were signposts pointing toward a bold future.

Fast forward to today, and IOD has evolved into a global force, uniting over 30,000 senior executives from government, public, and private sectors. But it is not just about numbers - it is about the ripple effect of our impact. Take the Masterclass for Directors, for example. Launched in 2003, this flagship program has certified more than 10,000 corporate directors as its IOD alumni, equipping them with the tools and knowledge to master boardroom complexities and lead with confidence.

Innovation has been our constant companion on this journey. In 2013, we introduced the IOD Directors Databank - a treasure trove for companies seeking top-tier board talent. By 2020, we had launched the IOD Blog, creating a

vibrant platform for sharing insights and thought leadership. Our conventions in India, UAE and London have become crucibles for change, bringing industry titans and policymakers together to tackle challenges like governance, sustainability, and inclusive growth.

Leadership has been a guiding light for IOD, thanks to the visionaries who have steered the ship. Under the stewardship of Lieutenant General Jagdish Singh Ahluwalia and Lieutenant Surinder Nath, we have pushed boundaries and redefined what leadership development means. As Editor of Director Today, I have had the privilege of shaping conversations that resonate across boardrooms and influence corporate policies worldwide.

At its heart, IOD’s journey has been about staying true to a higher purpose: building the boards of the future. We have championed a holistic approach to corporate leadership, aligning economic goals with social and environmental

Mr. Manoj K. Raut addressing the distinguished audience at the 2024 Annual Directors' Conclave of the Institute of Directors (IOD) in New Delhi.

responsibilities. Over the past two decades, we have transformed challenges into opportunities, ideas into actions, and visions into realities.

Today, IOD stands not just as an organisation but as a movement - a beacon for governance excellence, innovation and leadership that continues to light the way forward.

You hold a Post Graduate Diploma in Business Management as well as Law – can you talk about how this dual educational background has helped you in your career?

My dual background in Business Management and Law has been the cornerstone of my leadership philosophy, guiding me through every challenge and success.

As Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam wisely said, "The best way to predict the future is to create it." The Post Graduate Diploma in Business Management equipped me with the strategic vision, innovative thinking, and financial insights necessary to shape the future of organisations. It taught me how to drive growth, create value, and adapt in a competitive marketplace.

Meanwhile, my legal education grounded me in the principles of ethics, governance, and responsibility - ensuring that every business decision aligns with regulatory frameworks and upholds the highest standards of integrity.

Believing firmly in the power of innovation, I was nurtured in the journey of IOD through transformative growth from 2000 to 2010, and took over as the CEO and Secretary General in 2011 driving iconic initiatives like the Golden Peacock Awards and the Masterclass for Directors.

At IOD, this unique blend of business acumen and legal expertise has allowed me to champion ethical governance while pioneering new frontiers in

leadership. By aligning economic goals with social responsibility, I am proud to help shape a future where leadership and integrity not only coexist but thrive together.

Did you have a mentor growing up who shaped who you are?

I am deeply grateful to have been mentored by two remarkable individuals - Late Dr. Madhav Mehra and Lt. Gen. J.S. Ahluwalia - whose teachings have profoundly shaped who I am today.

The impact of my mentors, Late Dr. Madhav Mehra and Lt. Gen. J.S. Ahluwalia, has been nothing short of transformative. They did not just teach me lessons - they shaped the very core of who I am today and how I lead in every sphere of my life.

Dr. Madhav Mehra’s mentorship was like a compass guiding me towards ethical leadership. He instilled in me the belief that leadership is not about authority, but about responsibility. His teachings on accountability and transparency have stayed with me throughout my career. I came to understand that true leadership lies not in the titles we hold, but in the trust we build and the positive impact we

have on others. His influence continues to guide my approach to governance, reminding me daily that success is measured not by profit alone but by the integrity with which we serve others.

Lt. Gen. J.S. Ahluwalia, with his military precision, imparted invaluable lessons on resilience, discipline, and strategic foresight. His mentorship taught me that leadership is not about avoiding adversity but about how we navigate through it - steadfast, focused, and with an unwavering sense of integrity. His lessons on resilience have been pivotal, especially in challenging times, allowing me to maintain clarity of thought and confidence in decision-making.

Today, as I continue my work at the Institute of Directors (IOD), I see the echo of their teachings in every decision I make. Their wisdom has shaped my perspective on leadership, governance, and resilience, grounding me in the values of ethical leadership, strategic thinking, and social responsibility. Their mentorship is not a chapter in the past - it is the driving force that fuels my commitment to create lasting value, foster innovation, and lead with purpose. Every step I take is a reflection of the lessons they imparted, and I carry them forward with the same dedication they showed in their own journeys.

Mr. Manoj K. Raut with late Dr. Madhav Mehra, Founder President of the Institute of Directors (IOD), alongside Justice M. N. Venkatachaliah, National Chairman of the Institute of Directors (IOD) and former Chief Justice of India.

What is your view of Narendra Modi and the current direction of travel of India?

As someone who has closely observed India's evolution, both from a leadership and governance perspective, I have great respect for Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s vision and the direction he is charting for the country. He represents a leadership style that is pragmatic, visionary, and deeply committed to transforming India into a global economic powerhouse.

A new era of innovation and self-reliance has dawned on India, thanks to the visionary leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. His mantra of Atmanirbhar Bharat (Self-reliant India) has ignited a spark of indigenous innovation, economic sustainability, and global competitiveness. Through initiatives like Make in India and Digital India, PM Modi has seamlessly merged India's rich cultural heritage with the demands of a rapidly evolving global economy, driving the nation forward with digital innovation, economic reforms and infrastructure development. His vision extends beyond economic progress. With Viksit Bharat (Developed India), he aims to transform India into a fully developed nation, focusing on inclusive growth and the welfare of every citizen. PM Modi’s philosophy of Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam - “The world is one family” - emphasises India’s leadership in global cooperation and environmental sustainability. His One Earth, One Family, One Future initiative advocates for a collective, global effort to protect the planet.

PM Modi’s leadership is also marked by his flagship initiatives for women’s empowerment, including Beti Bachao Beti Padhao, which has significantly increased women’s participation in education and the workforce. His ability to turn dreams into reality, from infrastructural projects like Bharatmala to space exploration missions like Chandrayaan and Mangalyaan, has set India on a path of holistic development.

His governance has redefined transparency, with landmark reforms like the Companies (Amendment) Act, 2017 and the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code (IBC), enhancing business transparency and improving India's ease of doing business ranking globally.

As India continues on its transformative journey towards becoming a global powerhouse, the Institute of Directors is honored to have played a pivotal role in this monumental growth story with our the Golden Peacock Awards. A symbol of excellence, these prestigious awards represent a unique and visionary model that has become synonymous with setting the industry standard across countries. Our Annual London Convention, centred around the India-UK Free Trade Agreement, has also served as a dynamic platform, bringing together illustrious thought leaders, policymakers, and prominent business figures not only strengthening India’s position in the global marketplace but also laid the foundation for a more interconnected and prosperous

future between India and the United Kingdom. Moreover, our esteemed Global Members Community stands as a testament to the thriving ecosystem of corporate governance we have nurtured. It is within this vibrant community that the principles of transparency, accountability, and ethical leadership are not just taught, but lived.

With PM Modi at the helm, the nation is poised to become not only an economic superpower but also a global leader in ethical governance, innovation, and sustainable development. India's story is one of ambition, resilience, and transformation – a narrative that is still unfolding, but promises a brighter future for India on the world stage.

You work with many businesses across your extensive network. What do you think makes the difference between success and failure in the business world?

In my experience, the delicate balance between success and failure in business often hinges

Mr. Manoj K. Raut in a formal meeting with the IOD’s Hon’ble Patron in UAE, His Highness Sheikh Nahayan Bin Mabarak Al Nahayan, Hon’ble Cabinet Member and Minister of Tolerance & Coexistence, Government of the UAE at his Palace in Abu Dhabi.

on three core ingredients: vision, resilience and adaptability. Vision acts as the guiding North Star, illuminating the path ahead even through the fog of uncertainty. It is not merely about navigating the present; it is about anticipating and shaping the future. Without a clear vision, businesses risk losing their way, swayed by fleeting trends and short-term distractions.

Resilience, however, is where the true magic lies. It is not just about recovering from setbacks - it is about embracing failures as badges of honour, learning from them, and using them as stepping stones toward greatness. As my esteemed mentor, the late Dr. Madhav Mehra, once wisely said, “Learn to wear failures like badges of honour.” This mindset transforms obstacles into invaluable lessons, propelling businesses to innovate rather than falter.

Then, there is adaptability - the fine art of thriving in a world that never stands still. The most successful companies are not just adapting to change; they are leading

the charge in disruption, continuously evolving and reshaping their industries.

When these three elements - vision, resilience, and adaptability - are harmoniously intertwined, businesses do not merely succeed; they redefine the future.

What are the most common mistakes you see among young entrepreneurs?

Young entrepreneurs are often brimming with energy and ambition, but patience is key to success. Building a business is a journey that takes time and perseverance. The road to growth is filled with challenges, and it is the steady, consistent effort that leads to lasting success, not quick wins or instant rewards.

In a fast-paced world, it is easy to chase short-term gains, but this can undermine long-term sustainability. Rather than focusing on immediate profits or fleeting momentum, young entrepreneurs should

prioritise building a strong foundation. A business grounded in strategic planning, persistence, and foresight is better positioned to thrive through market fluctuations and emerge resilient in the face of challenges.

Failure is an inevitable part of entrepreneurship, but it should not be feared. In fact, it is often the most valuable teacher. Each setback provides an opportunity to learn, adapt, and improve. Embracing failure as part of the journey allows entrepreneurs to build wisdom and resilience, transforming adversity into an essential tool for future success.

Maintaining a work-life balance is crucial to avoid burnout. Entrepreneurship often demands long hours, but without proper rest and time for personal reflection, energy and creativity can drain quickly. Nurturing relationships, pursuing passions, and taking time for self-care ensures a healthier, happier life, fueling long-term professional success.

Seriousness in the professional arena cannot be understated. While entrepreneurship offers freedom and innovation, it also requires discipline, focus, and accountability. Running a successful business means approaching work with professionalism and integrity. Building a reputation of trust, reliability, and respect within your organisation and the business community sets the stage for sustainable success and growth.

What is your feeling about a possible UK-India trade deal? Why do you think it hasn’t yet happened?

A UK-India trade deal is far more than a mere economic agreement - it is a transformative partnership, a living bridge that unites two vibrant, dynamic economies, each uniquely poised to lead the charge in global trade. During my recent travels to London for the Annual London Global Convention, I had the privilege of witnessing firsthand the immense potential of this collaboration. It is not simply about

Mr. Manoj K. Raut with late Lt. Gen. J. S. Ahluwalia, the then 2nd President of the Institute of Directors (IOD), India.

reducing tariffs or negotiating market access; it is about seamlessly aligning India’s burgeoning growth aspirations with the UK’s unmatched financial expertise to forge a partnership of unparalleled significance.

Crafting this deal is akin to perfecting a finely crafted recipe - achieving the delicate balance between India’s pressing need for skilled workforce mobility and expanded agricultural market access, and the UK’s priority focus in financial services and manufacturing.

What struck me most during these discussions was the shared, unwavering commitment to growth, sustainability, and ethical governance. Issues such as intellectual property, labour standards, and sustainability are not mere obstacles; they present a golden opportunity to create a trade agreement that transcends economic goals, fostering trust and responsibility.

Though progress may seem gradual, I am unwavering in my belief that a UK-India trade deal is not just a possibility - it is an inevitable, momentous step forward. This deal will lay the foundation for a cooperative model that the world will look to not as a compromise, but as an innovative and ethically-driven blueprint for the future. If it has not yet come to fruition, it simply means that something extraordinary, something monumental, is poised to unfold soon.

Can you talk a bit about the benefits of networking for business people?

For me, networking is one’s real net worth. Networking I believe is the lifeblood of business success, and as I have often observed, it is not just about what you know - it is about who you know and, more importantly, who knows you. For business leaders, networking is far more than a handshake or a business card exchange; it’s the foundation of opportunities, partnerships, and innovation.

In my journey with the Institute of Directors, I have seen how meaningful

connections can transform challenges into opportunities. Networking creates a web of trust and collaboration, where insights are exchanged, solutions are found, and synergies are built. For instance, our Annual Global Conventions, be it in UK, UAE or Singapore have become hubs where policymakers, industry leaders, and innovators gather to discuss and deliberate critical boardroom agendas. These are not just events-they are catalysts for groundbreaking ideas and collaborations.

Ultimately, networking is the delicate fusion of professional goals and human connections, where relationships become the catalyst for mutual growth. It is a ripple effect that nurtures not just businesses, but entire industries and societies. Through these bonds, opportunities blossom and innovation thrives, enriching the world for all.

Can you tell us a bit about your relationship specifically with the UK? What is your perception of the UK economy as a place to set up or to invest at the moment?

Our relationship with the UK has been significantly strengthened through the Annual London Global Convention, an integral part of our journey since 2011. This event has offered us a frontrow seat to witness the UK’s ongoing evolution in the global market. While the country faces challenges such as postBrexit adjustments, its economy remains remarkably resilient, showcasing an unwavering ability to adapt and innovate - a true testament to its enduring strength as a global business hub.

Through our interactions, particularly with like-minded organizations, MoU partners, and our esteemed Global Members Community, we have observed firsthand the UK’s open, forward-thinking approach to fostering international collaboration. Despite the complexities of the current global landscape, we are confident in the UK’s immense potential

to flourish as the world’s financial capital. It continues to be a place where businesses can not only grow but prosper and flourish.

What stands out most to us is that the UK is not merely defined by stability - it is a land of boundless opportunity for those willing enough to embrace its evolving future.

Where would you like to see IOD India in 10, 15 and 20 years’ time?

Looking ahead, I would like to see IOD India becoming a central force in shaping the future of Indian businesses, taking them to global forum while helping them stay ahead of global trends while staying grounded in ethical practices. By 2030, IOD will be a trusted “Think Tank,” guiding companies to align with the Sustainable Development Goals and ensure that India’s businesses are not just competitive but also resilient and responsible.

By 2040, as IOD celebrates its Golden Jubilee, we will be globally acknowledged for helping industries navigate a world that demands climate resilience, sustainability, and cybersecurity in the boardroom. We will be at the forefront of this shift, empowering businesses to stay ahead through innovation and ethical governance. By 2047, as India celebrates 100 years of independence and pursues a $25 trillion GDP, IOD will play a critical role in guiding businesses through this economic revolution-helping them lead with purpose, innovation, and responsibility. The dream of Viksit Bharat (Developed India) aligns perfectly with IOD's vision of becoming a global corporate governance body, fostering ethical leadership and sustainability across industries.

It is exciting to think about where we are headed, knowing that IOD will be at the forefront, shaping the future of business in India and beyond. As India rises to global prominence, IOD will continue to guide businesses toward a future of growth,

Handmade in Italy

INTRODUCING 21C DIGITAL TEACHING

FINITO WORLD SAT DOWN WITH MARTIN HOSZOWSKI THE CEO TO DISCUSS AN EXCITING NEW VENTURE IN THE ED TECH SPACE AND TO LEARN HOW THE BUSINESS IS REVOLUTIONISING MATHS AND SCIENCE EDUCATION.

QTell us a little about how you got involved in 21C? What was it that particularly motivated you?

AI joined 21C with a clear purpose: to tackle the challenges young people face in British schools today. Teacher shortages are critical, particularly in maths, with the Department for Education reporting consistent shortfalls in recruitment targets over the past five years. These are not just numbers - they reflect the genuine struggles of children who may miss opportunities simply because they do not have access to the proper support.

Education has always been the foundation of a strong society, but traditional methods alone no longer meet the needs of today's students or teachers. What drew me to 21C was its mission to create personalised, scalable solutions that ensure every child, regardless of their background, has the chance to succeed. As a British company, we are uniquely positioned to uphold the values of our education system while embracing innovation.

When used thoughtfully, I have always believed that technology can help teachers inspire students and make learning feel less daunting. 21C's focus is not on replacing teachers but on equipping them with the tools to support students in meaningful and lasting ways. It is about ensuring every childwhether in a bustling city classroom or a rural school - feels seen, supported, and capable of achieving their potential.

Q21C is focused particularly on maths. What is it about this subject which makes it so challenging to teach?

AMaths opens doors to countless careers - from engineering and finance to healthcare and technology. Yet, for many young people, it feels like an insurmountable hurdle. Nearly 40% of UK students fail to achieve a Grade 4 in their GCSEs, significantly limiting their options for the future. Often, because maths is cumulative, a missed concept early on can leave students struggling for years.

Unlike other subjects, which may allow for creative interpretation, maths

requires a precise understanding of methods and principles, which can feel overwhelming to students. For many young people, struggling with maths is not just about exams - it can affect their confidence and how they see their abilities overall. Engaging students is another challenge. Traditional teaching often fails to show how maths applies to real life, leaving it abstract and irrelevant.

The UK also needs more specialist maths teachers, compounding the issue. According to the National Foundation for Educational Research, 50% of maths teachers leave the profession within 10 years, leaving many schools relying on non-specialists to fill the gap.

Martin Hoszowski, (Photo: HOSZI aparatka)

21C bridges these gaps by creating interactive, student-focused tools. Step-by-step explanations, gamified challenges, and instant feedback engage students while building their confidence. For teachers, real-time progress tracking ensures early intervention and targeted support. This approach helps students understand maths and shows them its relevance to their future.

QThe business aims at addressing the teacher shortage through digital solutions – can you explain a little how it would work in the classroom? Could this help Labour deliver their four-day week?

A21C’s digital solutions enhance efficiency and quality in classrooms, directly addressing the challenges posed by teacher shortages. Our AI tools act as virtual teaching assistants, offering students instant feedback, tailored exercises, and personalised lesson plans. This allows teachers to focus on the human aspects of teaching, like mentoring and guiding struggling students.

For example, while a teacher leads group instruction in a maths class, the platform ensures that each student has tasks suited to their level of understanding. Teachers can also track progress, identifying and addressing gaps before they become barriers.

Research from the Education Policy Institute reveals that British teachers work some of the most extended hours in Europe, much of which is spent on administrative tasks rather than teaching. 21C reduces this burden by automating marking and tracking, giving teachers more time to focus on meaningful interactions.

While such policies require broader structural changes, 21C’s tools could play a pivotal role in maintaining education quality even with fewer

classroom hours. By providing realtime student support and reducing teacher stress, our approach ensures continuity and care remain at the centre of education, regardless of external challenges.

QHow is it that British education struggles so much to move into the 21st century?

AWhile respected globally for its rigour, the British education system faces significant challenges in modernising to meet the needs of today’s students. One key issue is an overreliance on traditional methods, which have not evolved significantly in decades. These approaches often fail to prepare students for the digital, fast-changing world they will enter as adults. At the same time, there is a persistent gap between policy ambition and practical implementation. Funding constraints, inconsistent infrastructure, and a lack of digital training for teachers have slowed progress. This creates a cycle where schools need help to adopt innovative solutions, students miss the benefits of modern learning tools, and teachers feel unsupported in embracing innovative technologies. The OECD ranks the UK highly in some areas of education but notes significant disparities in digital readiness compared to

countries like Estonia or Singapore. For example, only 37% of UK teachers feel confident using EdTech tools, according to a 2023 Education Technology survey.

21C is helping to bridge this gap by developing accessible, teacher-friendly platforms that integrate seamlessly into existing curriculums. By focusing on ease of use and measurable outcomes, we ensure that teachers can confidently adopt new methods without feeling overwhelmed. The goal is not to replace what works but to enhance it, making teaching more effective and engaging for today’s learners. With the right tools and support, British schools have the potential to lead globally in educational innovation.

Q How did you create the avatars for the AI teachers?

ADeveloping 21C's AI avatars was a collaborative process involving educators, designers, and psychologists. We began with the goal of creating avatars that would be relatable and supportive, especially for students who may lack confidence in maths. Drawing on Cambridge University's EdTech Lab research, we prioritised features that foster engagement, such as approachable

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voices, culturally inclusive designs, and adaptive teaching styles.

The avatars are not just about delivering content; they are about building trust. For example, they use encouraging language and positive reinforcement to create a safe learning environment. Technologically, they are powered by advanced AI algorithms that can adjust to individual learning speeds and styles. For instance, if a student struggles with a specific concept, the avatar can provide step-bystep guidance or alternative explanations tailored to the student's needs.

Importantly, these avatars are designed to complement, not replace, human teachers. They handle repetitive tasks like drilling key concepts or providing immediate feedback, allowing teachers to focus on creative and interpersonal aspects of teaching. Combining human expertise and digital efficiency ensures students receive the best of both worlds.

These avatars represent the future of personalised learning - accessible,

adaptive, and built to complement the unique strengths of every teacher and student.

QYou’ve been piloting the software with schools. Can you tell us a bit about the effects on children’s learning?

AOur pilot programmes have shown consistently positive results, particularly in improving student engagement and comprehension. In one UK school, students using 21C tools achieved a 25% improvement in their maths test scores within a single term. Teachers highlighted how the platform's instant feedback feature helped students address mistakes in real time, preventing misconceptions from taking root.

Beyond academic performance, the pilots also revealed improvements in students' confidence and enjoyment of maths. Gamified challenges and interactive visuals made the subject less intimidating and more approachable. The shift from feeling "left behind" to actively enjoying maths has been transformative for many students.

Teachers have reported that the technology allows them to identify struggling students earlier and provide targeted support, enabling better classroom outcomes. These findings align with research from Oxford University, which highlights that personalised, tech-driven learning fosters better academic and emotional outcomes. By addressing the educational and emotional barriers to learning, 21C is not just teaching maths but helping students build skills and attitudes that will serve them for life.

QThe technology is also designed to help SEND students. Can you explain how this has been tailored to help those with learning difficulties?

ASupporting special educational needs and students with disabilities requires a tailored approach, and 21C's platform has been developed with inclusivity at its core. Every feature is designed to adapt to the diverse needs of learners, ensuring that every student is included.

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For instance, text-to-speech functionality helps students with dyslexia, while customisable fonts and layouts clarify visual processing difficulties. The platform also incorporates pacing controls, allowing students with ADHD to take breaks between tasks or revisit sections as needed. Research from the British Journal of Special Education shows that digital tools, when designed with accessibility in mind, can significantly improve engagement and outcomes for SEND students.

We have taken this insight further by including gamified elements that make learning interactive and fun, which helps maintain focus and reduce anxiety for students who may find traditional methods overwhelming. Teachers have noted that 21C's SEND features allow them to provide more effective support, as they can monitor progress and identify challenges in real time.

By reducing the stigma often associated with additional help, our platform empowers SEND students to learn at their own pace, building confidence alongside skills. For these students, having tools that adapt to their needs is not just about better results - it is about feeling capable, included, and valued in the classroom.

QSchools aren’t your only target market, but parents too. Can you describe how 21C will work in the home?

A21C's platform is designed to create a seamless learning experience that bridges the gap between school and home. For parents, it offers an intuitive dashboard to track their child's progress, access personalised activities, and receive insights into areas that need extra attention. This transparency is precious for parents who want to stay actively involved in their child's education but may need more time or expertise to assist directly.

21C PRODUCTS

EXPANDING THE

21C PORTFOLIO

As 21C continues to redefine EdTech, its product portfolio showcases innovative solutions tailored to distinct markets, ensuring impact across classrooms, homes, and beyond.

21C SCHOOL (B2B)

Designed specifically for schools and institutions, 21C School addresses critical educational challenges, such as teacher shortages and learning gaps. The platform enables personalised lesson plans, automated marking, and real-time progress tracking by combining advanced AI tools with intuitive teacher dashboards. Its accessibility features cater to SEND learners, ensuring no student is left behind. For schools, this means reduced teacher workload and improved student outcomes.

POCKET MATHS (B2C)

Targeted at parents and students, Pocket Maths bridges the gap between school and home. The platform offers engaging, gamified lessons and adaptive exercises to build confidence and reinforce

classroom teaching. Parents benefit from a user-friendly dashboard that tracks progress and highlights areas needing attention, making it an invaluable tool for GCSE preparation and independent study.

POCKET GAMES (B2B2C)

Set to debut at BETT London this month, Pocket Games represents 21C’s latest leap in combining education and entertainment. This innovative product offers interactive learning games tailored for school and home use, reinforcing key concepts while keeping students engaged. By bridging the B2B and B2C markets, Pocket Games creates opportunities for schools to enhance engagement while offering parents additional support tools.

LOOKING AHEAD

Whether through its focus on schools, direct engagement with families, or innovative gaming solutions, 21C demonstrates a commitment to addressing the evolving needs of education. By targeting diverse markets with scalable and impactful products, the company continues to establish itself as a leader in modern learning solutions.

For more information, visit www.21c.digital

The platform provides engaging, gamified lessons that complement students' learning in school. Features like real-time feedback and adaptive exercises ensure that home learning is productive and tailored to each child's level. This is particularly beneficial for students preparing for critical exams like GCSEs, as it reinforces classroom teaching while helping to build study habits.

A study from the University of Birmingham highlights that academic outcomes improve significantly when parents actively engage in their child's learning. 21C leverages this by giving parents the tools to support their child effectively, whether guiding revision or encouraging independent study.

This transparency supports learning and alleviates the stress parents often feel when trying to assist their child's education without clear guidance.

QDo you have plans to roll this out internationally?

AWhile our primary focus is British schools, we recognise the potential of 21C's solutions to address global challenges. Teacher shortages are a growing issue across Europe, Asia, and Africa. According to UNESCO's 2024 Global Education Monitoring Report, the world will need 69 million additional teachers by 2030 to meet demand.

Our platform is well-suited to international markets that align with the IGCSE framework - a globally respected British qualification. By localising content and adapting tools to reflect cultural and linguistic nuances, 21C can deliver the same quality and impact abroad as it does in the UK.

That said, our commitment to British schools remains central to our mission. By first supporting UK teachers and students, we aim to set

a global example of how EdTech can transform education. International expansion builds on our belief that British innovation has the power to lead nationally and globally, setting new standards for how technology can revolutionise education.

QWhat would you most wish to say to government about the future of education?

AEducation is at a crossroads, and the government has a unique opportunity to shape its future. The teacher shortage, declining student outcomes in key subjects like maths, and rapid technological change all demand urgent action. My message to policymakers is simple: invest in EdTech as a core component of education reform.

Countries like Estonia and Singapore have demonstrated how integrating technology into education can transform outcomes, improve efficiency, and bridge gaps in access. The UK can and

should lead this effort, particularly given its strong tradition of educational excellence. By funding digital infrastructure, training teachers to use EdTech effectively, and incentivising innovation, the government can ensure that British students are prepared for future challenges.

At 21C, we have proved that technology can make a tangible difference. Our platform reduces teacher workloads, personalises learning, and simultaneously boosts engagement, addressing multiple challenges. However, for these solutions to reach their full potential, they must be part of a larger, systemic strategy. By prioritising EdTech, the government can future-proof the education system and ensure that every child, regardless of background, is equipped to thrive in an increasingly complex world.

Visit: www.21c.digital

CULTURE

The lighter side of employability

122 | LA CRÈME DE LA CRÈME: Notes on Rafael Nadal’s retirement

118

KING CHRISTOPHER On Coldplay’s Moon Music

BEYOND NOWHERE MAN Nadeem Chughtai’s next chapter

138

WONDERFUL WALES A trip to Bodysgallen Hall

THE UNDERESTIMATION OF COLDPLAY

ROBERT GOLDING

Every now and then I find myself considering the fine margins between major and minor success. I remember, for instance, a gig I attended at the turn of the millennium at the Nottingham Arena performed by the band Travis. In those days, like their rivals Coldplay, they could easily fill a stadium of 10,000 people. We may have turned up with a certain scepticism but ended up shouting out the lyrics to ‘Sing’, our cynical side assuaged by the fun of the evening.

Today, rotating on Apple Music, Travis’ songs have a power of nostalgia which the songs of more successful bands like, say, Oasis lack. ‘Wonderwall’ has never really gone away. Travis, by contrast, have had a quiet few decades: this fact creates

the gap in our experience which can make for a genuine revisiting not quite possible with the Gallagher brothers. And Travis’ songs stand up reasonably well. ‘Why Does it Always Rain on Me?’ ‘Driftwood’. ‘Flowers in the Window’. They probably deserve a comeback.

But had you asked me in the year 2000 which band, Travis or Coldplay, would in 2025 break the record for the most consecutive gigs played at Wembley Stadium, I would have probably plumped for Travis. Coldplay at that time were mainly known for ‘Yellow’, which, lovely as it was, seemed to be a melancholic dead end. Travis’ songs seemed to have more complexity: they even sounded a bit like standards. One could imagine people covering them: there was more to explore.

I would have been wrong, of course. I’m not sure if Travis can still fill Nottingham Arena, but I know that it would be too small a venue for Coldplay. When A Rush of Blood to the Head came out in 2002, I was on the frontlines of the backlash, feeling that Coldplay represented not something new and lasting, but some form of decline from the greater cleverness of Blur and Pulp, those high spots of Britpop. Coldplay, I felt confident, represented the blandification of the British scene.

I now see I was wrong in this reasoning – and wrong perhaps precisely because I would have been reasoning and not experiencing the emotion of the music.

All this came back to me recently when Coldplay returned to my life

by the usual series of accidents. Our family’s enjoyment of ‘Something Like This’ in the car on holiday, led me to the Coldplay Essentials playlist on Apple, and via that to a discovery of all that Coldplay had been up to in the intervening decades when I had loftily decided that they would have no future. I note also that I never bothered between the years 2002 to 2024 to check in on whether my predictions had proven false or not.

At least I am not alone. As I read the other reviews of Moon Music, the album recently released to an almost Swiftian excitement, I realise that others too have underestimated Chris Martin and all his works.

Almost any broadsheet review of a Coldplay album will begin with some disclaimer, making it reasonably clear that though the reviewers themselves have not written ‘The Scientist’ – or indeed any song of any description – that they are obviously above the task which has befallen to them: namely to review the latest Coldplay album. Usually, there will be some sniping at the lyrics, and a general keening about Chris Martin’s perennial failure to be Gerard Manley Hopkins. From here, the reviewer, having restored themselves to intellectual respectability, will then go onto what I suspect might be their real feelings: namely, a few carefully caveated points of praise. It turns out that one or two of the songs are actually ‘not bad’ or in fact, in some cases, surprisingly good. It is then sometimes observed that this is true of most and perhaps all Coldplay albums. The eventual rating – usually three stars – seems to conceal a certain embarrassed enthusiasm.

If we take the typical reviewer’s estimation at face value that there are, say, two good songs on each album then it must be pointed out that this still amounts at this point to around 20 songs which even the naysayer would wish to preserve.

What is often forgotten is that this in

itself is a high number. If we look at the amount of a celebrated pop act’s catalogue which we actually want to keep, it usually turns out to be very small. We would probably be content with rescuing around 10 of Fleetwood Mac’s songs, and Fleetwood Mac is an excellent band. I’ve often thought the Rolling Stones really amounts to around 20 songs (they have released hundreds). It’s only when we get into the major acts, the Beatles and Paul Simon that we top 50 songs – and only in relation to Bob Dylan that we clear 100.

All this is to say that even if we take a negative estimate of Coldplay’s output then the band’s work is to be approached with respect and not derision.

Of course, one shouldn’t have to say this - and one wouldn’t have to say it at all if it weren’t for the peculiar way in which the 20th century turned out in terms of art. Really, it is an inheritance of modernism where people began to feel that things must be complicated, and even incomprehensible, to be good. What appears to have happened by 2024 is that we’ve realised more or less unanimously that we quite dislike modernism – and wish to keep it at a safe arm’s length. We want to enjoy life, and that for most of us, means not reading The Wasteland or listening very much at all to Schoenberg.

“MOON MUSIC IS FULL OF AGELESS POETRY: IF WRITTEN DOWN, THE LYRICS CAN INDEED BE BANAL.”

This is not to say that Moon Music is full of ageless poetry: if written down, the lyrics can indeed be banal. Furthermore, Martin retains his addiction to falsetto choruses, and there is indeed a whiff of corporate banality here and there. But then this album never claims to want to

Paul Joyce, Banana Study

be experienced too seriously: it claims instead to be joyful – and joy-inducing –music.

This has two ramifications at the level of the lyrics which are worth examining. One is the propensity for simple and grand statements which at the level of language, a child could write. In the third single of this album ‘All My Love’, the lyric reads:

You got all my love

Whether it rains or pours, I’m all yours

You’ve got all my love

Whether it rains, it remains

You’ve got all my love

If T.S. Eliot were writing that as poetry we can say that he might be having an off day. Bob Dylan, a different kind of songwriter to Martin, especially when writing in the 1960s, would if writing this song no doubt cram in additional internal rhymes in around ‘pours’ and ‘yours’ with available words being ‘floors’ ‘pause’ ‘cause’. He would glut the listener with ideas – and with every idea crammed in one can imagine it getting significantly less likely that the song would ever be sung in a stadium. The song would become more intellectual –would become another kind of song. Martin doesn’t do this, and I think at this stage in his career we must give him the benefit of the doubt that he does it deliberately.

Given the deliberate nature of his music, what is it which Martin is trying to do with a song like ‘All My Love’? With this kind of thing, the effect comes down to the sincerity with which it is sung. Sometimes, reviewers will accuse Martin of issuing song lyrics which are like Instagram self-help posts. This is intended to wound him, and perhaps it does.

However, even if it is part true, there are still two kinds of platitude: that which is meant sincerely and genuinely designed

to help people, and that which isn’t really intended to help at all but which is really a kind of show, and therefore a sort of con.

Having listened to Moon Music for the last few days, I don’t think it is at all the latter. Martin is someone who genuinely cares about his fellow human beings, and his music is, by and large –with admitted peaks and troughs which are entirely human – a fair method of conveying what he feels about life. It was Emmanuel Swedenborg who wrote of insincere feeling that it were as if ‘a liquid were, on the surface, like water, but in its depths putrid from stagnation’. A certain kind of commercialised pop music is like this: it is, in its depths, false.

The impression one has of Coldplay is different. Probably it wouldn’t catch so many people, and cause such widespread delight, if it weren’t. The correct measure of true feeling can overcome a lot of limitations. Moon Music is full of what we might call

surmounted cliché. If I sing that I feel like I’m feeling falling in love, and I have no real inner sense of what that feeling means, I will fail to convey that feeling with sufficient experience. Such songs can easily be immature and self-pitying.

“IF I SING THAT I FEEL LIKE I’M FEELING FALLING IN LOVE, AND I HAVE NO REAL INNER SENSE OF WHAT THAT FEELING MEANS, I WILL FAIL TO CONVEY THAT FEELING WITH SUFFICIENT EXPERIENCE.”

But if I sing, as Martin does on the second track here ‘feelslikeimfallinginlove’, about falling in love with full consciousness of what that means – the fear as well as the joy, the vulnerability as well as the force of it – then the words, simple as they are, come hitched to meaning. In that scenario, the music has some sort of potential which exists completely independently of what has been written down on the page.

Similarly, if I pray for a better world as in the third track here ‘We Pray’ and I really do wish for peace for my fellow human beings, and feel the genuinely awful corollary of war and all its disasters as I sing it, then I am able to bypass the literary concerns of even a music journalist for The Independent around a line like “Pray that I don’t give up/pray that I do my best’. That journalist may write at length that I am praying for a better future in a cliché, but we might miss the fact that in pop music, if I mean what I sing, and see peace in my mind’s eye as I

sing it, it simply doesn’t matter. In this art form, to mean what one says is a defeat for the naysayer because no matter what an intellectual musical journalist might say, peace is really a very important thing, and praying for it is a worthwhile thing to do. At a certain point, Martin realised he could do this sort of thing again and again and that people hugely needed it. He is not Dylan or Cohen, and never intended to be. Musically, his chord progressions are extremely simple, especially when compared with, say, that other great player of stadiums Freddie Mercury. Mercury’s musical vocabulary was borrowed from jazz and classical. A song like ‘All My Love’ with its straightforward chord sequence from Am to D7 to G and Em shares nothing musically with Mercury’s ‘My Melancholy Blues’ with its complex diminished chords. In fact, Mercury’s songs would generally be considered outside Martin’s ability as a piano-player.

But again, in a world of difference, there is no need to fret about any of this if the music can be made to convey good things honestly. It might all be summed up by the presence of an emoji of a rainbow as a track title on Moon Music. It’s not a particularly interesting track. Even so the point remains. A rainbow might be a cliché – but I know few people who don’t pause and point when they see one in nature. A rainbow then, like peace, or love is not just a cliché. They are also vital things which need to be reexperienced.

There has been a lot made about Martin’s saying that there shall only be 12 Coldplay albums. With this being the 10th, we are therefore approaching the end of the band’s career. We should remember that it’s a career that has caused enormous amounts of pleasure to many people because of a certain fearlessness about finding ways to refresh us in relation to the obvious.

Wikipedia.org

“MARTIN EXPLAINED THAT HE WAS GOING THROUGH A HARD TIME DEALING WITH THE INHERITANCE OF AN EVANGELICAL UPBRINGING.”

How has he done this? I think he has done it by trusting to the origin of his songs. A few years ago, Martin explained that he was going through a hard time dealing with the inheritance of an evangelical upbringing. One’s sense is that like so many in the Western world,

his struggle has been with the structures of religion – what we might call its exoteric aspects, and that he has found peace by instead travelling inwards. Coldplay might seem an unlikely messenger of some sort of revolution of the inner self. They don’t take themselves sufficiently seriously for that to be possible – and yet, maybe it’s the sheer fun of it all which frees people up. In Coldplay, a woman dreams of ‘parapara-paradise’ – and for many this brings paradise itself nearer than a Eucharist or a monk’s chant.

It would be a shame to miss out on all this in the mistaken belief that a song is a poem, and that a pop concert is meant to be an opera. Life isn’t like that, and I think we owe more to Chris Martin than many realise for not only knowing this but for enacting this knowledge.

CULTURE ESSAY:

WHY IS 'ONLY MURDERS IN THE BUILDING' SO GOOD?

RAYMOND HAVEL ASKS WHY ONLY MURDERS IN THE BUILDING IS SUCH A HIT

In one sense Only Murders in the Building – known to fans as OMITB – is just another TV show. It’s well-made, and moreish. It takes its place among umpteen other binge possibilities on Disney Plus and the other streaming channels.

Yet there’s something so clever about it that makes one want to make claims for it. One wants to call it culturally significant and see if the label fits.

Put simply, why is Only Murders in the Building so good?

ALL-STAR CAST

Well, the show stars Steve Martin, Martin Short and star of the moment Selena Gomez, and has just been renewed for its 5th season. The location of the show is The Belnord on West 86th Street, a building whose residents have included Marilyn Monroe and Martha Stewart.

This location is a clever choice since it creates a set of structures – dramatic laws even – which make the sure admirably tight. For instance, a murder has to take place in the building for it to qualify. This means that we get to know its layout, and its regulations and the people who live there. There’s a sort of cosiness to this – something almost familial.

It’s a good tip for young writers to consider exploring a location as OMITB brilliantly does. A place will engender characters – and sometimes do so better than our imagination. Once you’ve chosen a communal

building, then you have the janitor, the receptionist, the chairman of the building board.

So who lives in the building where all these murders take place? Steve Martin plays Charles Hayden-Savage, a slightly has-been actor. HaydenSavage probably has enough money to live there by virtue of having bought his apartment before Manhattan became unaffordable to anyone but the superrich.

Martin’s character is, like so many he has played in the past, eager to

please but with a tendency to put his foot in it. He aspires to goodness, but something about that trait means he’s romantically alone, but that unexpected friendship comes to him.

That’s true too of Oliver Putnam, played by Martin Short, a namedropping Broadway director whose failures – especially his disastrous musical Splash – are far more memorable than his successes. Putnam can begin to grate a little by the fourth season, but he is essentially loveable, a fantasist who thinks the next big thing

Steve Martin at the premiere of Baby Mama in New York City at the 2008 Tribeca Film Festival. (Wikipedia.org)

Selena Gomez (Wikipedia.org)

is round the corner – and also that his past is more illustrious than it was. He has a sort of Tourette’s when it comes to other people and can be delightfully rude about them to their faces because everybody knows he doesn’t quite mean anything he says.

AGE GAP

Finally, Selena Gomez’s character Mabel Mora is only in the building at all because her aunt lets her live there. It’s this age gap which provides much of the comedy. Mabel isn’t sure who she is yet, but it turns out – as so often – that who she is will be determined by the relationships she makes – in this case, the two older men.

At one point Mabel says: “A murderer probably lives in the building, but I guess old white guys are only afraid of colon cancer and societal change.” At another point, a walk-on character thinks Mabel is Hayden-Savage and Putnam’s carer.

Early on in Season One, Martin hilariously signs off a text to Gomez with ‘Best regards, Charles HaydenSavage.” Her smile as she reads this is marvellous, full of the knowledge one generation cannot convey to the next. This show tells us that the world moves fast – but also that on another level, the human heart is a realm of possible stability if we can manage to be open and kind.

In fact, the reason the show works so well is precisely because of the intergenerational nature of the humour –and also because audiences inherently enjoy unlikely friendships.

There is a sense in all of us that only befriending people of our own age narrows us somehow: it is as if, deep down, time doesn’t feel entirely linear and we want to teach it that lesson by striking out in surprising directions.

CLOCKWORK PLOTS

But all this would be incidental if the plots didn’t work. Murder is hard, not because it isn’t inherently interesting. It’s hard, because it’s so interesting it’s been done every which way a million times. When you write a murder mystery you’re up against Edgar Allen Poe, Arthur Conan Doyle, GK Chesterton and Agatha Christie for a start – and they’re just the headliners.

“THE BEST FOR ME IS MARTIN, BECAUSE YOU DON’T NOTICE HE’S ACTING.”

Added to that, because the audience is reliably dedicated, they’ve seen every plot-twist. So you need to be extremely clever to surprise people likely to tune into a murder mystery: you have to secrete your clues carefully, you have to feint to the wrong killers plausibly, and you have to get your pacing right.

OMITB does all these things, and for the most part fabulously. It’s also brought together by acting which it can be easy to underestimate. The best for me is Martin, because you don’t notice he’s acting. But the main three all combine a genuine off-screen friendship with on-screen rapport.

WALK-ON PARTS

In fact, the first season gives you the best possible measure of that when

Sting appears as a cameo playing himself. Sting is a great musician, and an okay actor – but what makes him only okay at the latter is that you can see him trying too hard.

The camera loathes exaggeration – and Sting slightly strains for effect. In his day job, and especially in his heyday, he doesn’t know how to make a clumsy chord change. But this isn’t his day job.

It’s Martin’s though, and you can see that he’s always been much more than just a comedian. Nothing he does draws attention to the fact that he is trying to convey it; he becomes that emotion, that predicament.

“THIS IS WHAT LIFTS OMITB – ITS ABILITY TO KEEP YOU ENGAGED IN THE STORYLINE WHILE PROVIDING LAUGHS, AND ALSO MOMENTS OF SURREAL DRIFT.”

This is what lifts OMITB – its ability to keep you engaged in the storyline while providing laughs, and also

Meryl Streep (Wikipedia.org)

Martin Short (Wikipedia.org)

moments of surreal drift. In the first episode, Putnam tells us that in New York City we sometimes fall down only to bounce back up again.

It’s a metaphor but we end up seeing this enacted, as he falls off some stairs and floats dreamily upwards when something promising happens to him at the end of the episode. The famous White Room episode in Season 3 provides a similar moment for Martin. In this scene, Martin corpses and enters a strange parallel dimension: a white room where he is walking with a wonderful manic grin on his face. When he wakes, he is without his trousers and everybody is traumatised. It’s the funniest scene in the show.

MORE THAN WHIMSY

It’s whimsy, yes, but there’s something more solid about OMITB than that. Twin Peaks made a habit of such playfulness, and perhaps in the end didn’t quite know what it was. OMITB has stronger delineation, since everything which happens in some way

serves the mystery. To do this while offering up brilliant one-liners is a rare achievement.

The show is also a good indicator of where society is now. This is a world dominated by new media – the murders all revolve around a podcast which the three main characters are producing, and which becomes a surprise hit.

But while it has its finger on the pulse, it’s a show that also knows that the latest thing is just the latest thing: the age gap between the main characters shows us how we all react to the modern world at a slightly staggered pace, according to what we wish to assimilate, and what we can manage to accept.

“NEVER

BECOME TOO GOOD AT A

JOB

YOU DON’T WANT.”

Along the way there are nuggets of

wisdom. In Season 2, Episode 6, Tina Fey’s recurring character says: “Never become too good at a job you don’t want.” She doesn’t add that if you do that you can wake up halfway through your life with your options narrower than you’d ever thought possible: she doesn’t have to because the dialogue is so taut.

THE HERE AND NOW

Ultimately, the show is to do with a sort of light touch unity. Why is Only Murders in the Building so good?

Perhaps for the reason that good art always is. It says, cleverly, even tangentially: the world’s like this now.

But it also knows in Martin and Short’s characters that now will soon be then. To say that without being portentous or preachy, and to make you laugh and tell a story at the same time is a rare achievement.

The Belnord in Manhattan, New York, seen in June 2022 (Wikipedia.org)

ROGER FEDERER’S FAVOURITE

ARTIST NADEEM CHUGHTAI: “I’M BLOWN AWAY BY THE

POSITIVE REACTION.”

CHRISTOPHER JACKSON

There used to be a dead tree in Ruskin Park in South-East London, which always struck me as somehow sculptural. The other day I saw that it had fallen. I had grown so fond of this particular tree, it’s optimistic reach towards the skies, that I was bereft when I saw it had collapsed. But this probably minor development in the history of my local parklands makes me all the more delighted that this same tree is still standing in the work of a remarkable artist Nadeem Chughtai. Chughtai’s recent exhibition A Liminal State has people talking in Peckham, which as everybody knows is also the artistic centre of the universe. Chughtai used the tree as a basis for his picture There’s This Place On The Edge of Town (2020).

One of the most basic requirements of an artist is power: Chughtai’s images always have an immediacy which nevertheless lets

you know that your first impression is only the first part of your journey with that work of art. In this picture we see how we have become mechanised in ourselves, and how this can only lead to stunted growth. But the beauty of the tree, which looks like it almost wants to be an upwards staircase, suggests potential.

“IT REALLY WAS ART ALL THE WAY FOR ME.”

It’s a brilliant conception, like all Chughtai’s pictures. So was it always art for him, or did he toy with other careers? “It really was art all the way for me,” Chughtai tells me. “Ever since I was very young I’d draw. Encouraged by my mum and influenced by a beautiful framed pencil drawing my dad made of my mum in the 1960’s. However, I did loads of jobs before going full time with an art

publishing contract which set me on my way. Before that I always kept myself in the minimum wage positions for fear of committing myself further down other career paths.”

Chughtai has had some major successes, with some celebrity clients including Roger Federer who chanced upon his work in Wimbledon village one year. Chughtai is particularly well-known for Nowhere Man, his character which he gave up at the start of the pandemic. These pictures, taken together, amount to a vast dystopian opus which tell the viewer unequivocally what we all sense: we are not headed in the right direction as a species.

We never see Nowhere Man’s face. Sometimes there’s more than one of him. It is also possible to say that Nowhere Man is always in a negative setting, beset by the circumstances of modern life: alarming architecture, the trippiness of

There’s This Place on the Edge of Town

drug culture, the terrifying ramifications of contemporary uniformity.

I also note that they’re always dramatic force in these pictures, and I related this to the career Chughtai had on film sets, with his work including the Bourne series and Love Actually. Did that experience impact the way he paints now? “Yes, I always mention my scenic art days. I call it my apprenticeship. It was absolutely magical to be working on those film sets at Pinewood and Shepperton Studios,” Chughtai recalls. “I originally went there to try and make films after losing my way with drawing and painting after college, but as soon as I saw the huge painted scenery backdrops surrounding the sets I was sucked back in.

“I had hands on experience of painting pictures on giant canvases, off scissor lifts using strings, hooks and chalk to draw our lines. I learnt about so many aspects of painting as well as the cameras eye. The big one was perspective. Learning about that was enlightening for me.”

I ask Chughtai if he has had any artistic mentors, and his answer also dates to this time: “Well, I always mention Steve Mitchell, the scenic artist who I assisted over a five year period from 1999- 2004. He’s still doing it at 70 and we’re still in touch. He’s one of the world’s top scenics. I can’t tell you what I learnt over those scenic years and how it got me back into the art of painting.”

I can tell how passionate Chughtai is about his calling, but the melancholy of these pictures is always there. It seems to cry out for some kind of remedy. Is Chughtai pessimistic about the human

race and its future? “I believe we are not only on the path to a dystopian future but within it now. Just look at all the horrific and unnecessary human suffering going on all over the world and right down to our own neighbourhoods. However, I remain an eternal optimist and have every faith that the human race will unite to overcome this and bring about the necessary change required.”

The new pictures, with their liminal greens, seem to be the start of some new potential. Here we see Green Park as it might be seen in a dream, or in the hypnagogic state between sleep and waking. The journey to the centre of town to make these pictures is

perhaps indicative of an interior shift in Chughtai. The new pictures also mark a big change away from character towards some other kind of painting which feels like it is yearning for mysticism – maybe even a metanoia away from despair.

“I BELIEVE WE ARE NOT ONLY ON THE PATH TO A DYSTOPIAN FUTURE BUT WITHIN IT NOW.”

I Dream of a World That the Capitalist Philosophy Will Never Make Possible. Oil on three canvases (2017)

Was it hard to give up Nowhere Man?

Might he ever experiment with another character? “It was very hard to shed the Nowhere Man. I doubt there would ever be another character. For me it represented humanity. If I ever need a central character again I’m pretty sure I’d call him up.”

Humanity then is for Chughtai somehow passive and faceless – asleep perhaps. This makes the notion of an exploration of the liminal all the more important; it is to do with exploring what Seamus Heaney called ‘the limen world’, that curious borderland of the unconscious. I have a sense that these recent works are a necessary transition period and that it may in time lead to some sort of reconciliation between Chughtai and the damage of the world – a more optimistic vision perhaps.

How did these new paintings come about? “The works exhibited recently at the Liminal State exhibition are exactly that; Liminal, as in kind of between or on the threshold. For me personally, up until just before lockdown in 2020 I was creating paintings with a central anonymous figure – the Nowhere Man. Sixteen years through the eyes of this character, so, shedding that to allow the next body of work to arrive has taken these last four years, and counting… The title, A Liminal State can also have numerous interpretations and could additionally refer to many other aspects; mentally,, physically, technically, artistically, societally… liminal.”

These then are between states, and that means flux – in Chughtai’s art certainly, and therefore, since artists are their art, in his life. I ask Chughtai about his

method of composition. Is it evolving?

“It’s evolving and continuing its journey. I’ve changed the approach, technique, materials used and so much more since 2020. In fact, almost everything – but still the work has naturally evolved through different states to where it is now.

"It is a continual fluid journey. I have also been developing an artistic theory and putting that into practice. It involves perspective and the way the eyes see and the brain interprets an image. It’s great testing a science based theory on my artistic practice… and it actually works.

My most recent painting entitled, Turn Left. (2024) shows the theory in practice in its most developed stage to date, and I was blown away by the positive reaction it got when exhibited for the first time at the show.”

This again, seems to me like a dream

Turn Left, 2024

where the dreamer is sometimes given clear but mysterious indications of what to do – strange snatches of disembodied advice. To look at these pictures after immersing oneself in the Nowhere Man corpus is to see a kind of hope peeping through, because the world seems to be acquiring a kind of charge, groping towards some form of meaning. My sense is that this makes the next few years of decisive importance for Chughtai’s art. If we follow that sign, where does it lead? This new work has also sent Chughtai on a rewarding course of study. “Over the last four years I have really delved deep into studying and expanding my artistic learning. Visiting the London galleries on a weekly basis and getting to understand the philosophies of some of the great painters, while also educating myself about the amazing artists from around the world and their histories.”

So who are his heroes? “I have to mention Van Gogh, I just love. His pencil drawings, they make me wanna scream. I would say that more recently I have been appreciating 20th century Western heavyweights such as Bacon, Klee, and Rothko who’s section 3 of the Seagram murals brought me to tears on more than one occasion. It was during a particularly emotional time for me personally whilst simultaneously looking to move my work along an different path. That painting allowed me to see within it what I wanted to do with my own work.”

“WELL, YES, IT IS A BUSINESS – IF YOU DO IT FULL TIME FOR YOUR LIVING. SO IF YOU DON’T HAVE THE LUXURY OF FINANCIAL SECURITY, YOU WILL NEED TO SELL YOUR WORK.”

Chughtai has been going strong for a long time. So what are his tips for young artists about the business side? “Well, yes, it is a business – if you do it full time for your living. So if you don’t have the luxury of financial security, you will need to sell your work.

“This predicament will most likely influence the type of work you produce and therefore could involve compromise. That’s the tightrope. It can work in your favour but can also be a hindrance if not deterrent, which is a real shame because then we miss out on hearing and experiencing the voices from within those walks of life. So, believe in what you’re doing, put the time in and keep on making your art.”

And would Chughtai recommend the art fair route? “I love going to art fairs. It’s where it all started for me. Like our society, the art world is very hierarchical, but whether you’re at the bottom rung or at the very top, when all is said and done they’re markets with their stalls out. It’s great because people can stand in front of the work in the flesh, which is how I feel

art works are best experienced… and there is so much under one roof. Art fairs are a great way to spend an afternoon… if you can afford the entrance fee, of course.”

That’s often the problem for young artists. Has the conversation around NFTs affected him at all? “I did look into NFT’s a little some years ago but it seems to have gone quiet on that front so I am unaware of where it currently stands. The whole digital thing is obviously a direction the art world is going down and there are many possibilities to explore. However, my focus and studies are with oil paint and a canvas because there’s so much more to come from there and that will always be ahead of any artificial intelligence.”

Chughtai is an artist of rare talent, who is doing something very valuable: he is pursuing his vision where it leads. It takes courage to do that. Every artist can learn from somebody who has chosen his path so decisively then pursued his craft with such passion.

For more information go to: www.nadeemart.com

Maxted Morning, 2024

RAFAEL NADAL: A MEMBER OF “THE ELITE OF THE ELITE OF THE ELITE”

WHY IS RAFAEL NADAL SO IMPORTANT? AS THE GREAT TENNIS PLAYER RETIRES, IT IS CLEAR HE INHABITS VERY RARE COMPANY, WRITES IRIS SPARK

It is the humility of Rafael Nadal which is part of what makes him so magnificent. Retiring from professional tennis in mid-November 2024, he described himself as ‘just a kid who followed his dreams’.

He was that, of course. But his great rival Roger Federer came closer to the mark when he wrote in his moving statement marking Nadal’s departure from the sport: “You made Spain proud. You made the whole tennis world proud.”

In fact, Nadal – like Federer himself – comes from a very small group of sportspeople who make the whole world proud. They are a credit to their species. Part of living in an era whose defining obsession is sport is to find a dramatic increase in the type which we might call the elite of the elite of the elite.

The group I am describing is not made up of number ones – though all of the people I would put forward for this category have been at one time or another the best in the world at what they do. But being number one in the world doesn’t automatically get you entry to this club. Being the best in the world here is a mere starting point to being perhaps one day somewhere near this conversation.

Anyhow, you need to be world number one for a long time to qualify. You have to be world world number one over and over and over – but even that doesn’t get you there. Rory McIlroy has been

Rafael Nadal (Wikipedia.org)

the number one golfer time and again, but he isn’t in this category: he isn’t actually particularly close. The English swing bowler James Anderson is closer, but not quite there either.

“TO BE IN THE ELITE OF THE ELITE OF THE ELITE YOU NEED TO DO THINGS NOBODY ELSE CAN DO.”

To be in the elite of the elite of the elite you need to do things nobody else can do – in fact, you need to perform at a level to which nobody else has ever performed. And you need to do it in a certain way. We can call this genius, or magic.

In the first place, it has partly to do with ease of doing – or apparent ease. When we watch Simone Biles

performing her floor routine we can see that she is doing much more than the relatively prosaic thing of winning her gold medal. She is reinventing that sport: she is qualitatively different. The same used to be true of Federer when he would waltz through a Grand Slam without dropping a set. It wasn’t just the ease with which he did it – it was the beauty with which he did it.

Usually the elite of the elite of the elite express themselves in memorable moments – moments where time itself might seem to slow down, to expand, or to become elastic in some way. Furthermore, these moments will usually be tied to some form of necessity: they therefore represent necessity surmounted, or responded to with unusual skill and awareness.

These are the moments which send a shiver. One thinks of Michael Phelps in the Beijing Olympics in the 100m breaststroke. Going for his seventh gold medal – to tie the Mark Spitz record which he subsequently beat – he

was looking tired coming down the stretch against Milorad Cavic. Then something happened. Nearing the finish, Phelps summoned some last ditch strength, and rose out of the water with a sudden show of speed, to tap 0.01 seconds ahead of his rival. He rendered himself above an impossible moment.

Michael Phelps (Wikipedia.org)

Tiger Woods (Wikipedia.org)

“ USUALLY THE ELITE OF THE ELITE OF THE ELITE EXPRESS

THEMSELVES IN MEMORABLE MOMENTS

.”

Tiger Woods was able to do the same. At the 2005 US Masters, Woods needed a birdie on the famous 16th hole. His drive went left down a precipitous slope. Viewers at home tend not to know how difficult the greens at Augusta National are: it’s like putting on glass. Woods, as every golf fan knows, lofted the ball up and it ran down the slope. It teetered on the edge of the hole then toppled in. Woods went on to win the tournament. He needed to do something nobody had ever done before and he did.

The presence of someone who is in the elite of the elite of the elite doesn’t always need to come in moments when their backs are to the wall. It can also show itself with a certain ease of doing which can lend itself to a sort of inverse drama: it is the drama of things not being close at all.

In this category one thinks of Usain Bolt at the 2008 Beijing Olympics already celebrating about 80 metres in as he broke the world record by a vast margin. He looked almost as if he was flying. Nobody else has ever looked like that. In Bolt’s case it was tied together with a sense of theatre which in retrospect had to do with an extra awareness about the nature of the occasion: the nature of the occasion being that he was very likely to win and so could afford to lark about a bit.

Michael Jordan is another example. When we watch reels of him hanging in the air before dunking a ball, it really can seem as though he has a different relationship to the essential physical structures of life to everybody around him.

“ IN TEAM SPORTS SOMETIMES WE FIND A CERTAIN HEIGHTENED SENSE OF STRATEGY AND INVENTIVENESS .”

In team sports sometimes we find a certain heightened sense of strategy and inventiveness – the ability to conduct

surprising situations with a certain innate virtuosity. In this category we find the great footballer Pele. I have always been fond of the last pass that leads to Carlos Alberto’s goal against Italy in the 1970s World Cup Final. Pele looks like he’s playing against children. He collects the ball with his left foot, cradles it briefly, and then with a kind of infinite laziness sends it off to Carlos Alberto, who rifles into the net.

Some of my favourite Pele moments have almost a kind of silliness to them. The attempt to score from behind the halfway line against Czechoslovakia in the group stages of the 1970 World Cup. The ball misses, but its sheer audacity opens up onto a whole realm of possibilities about how we might play football.

Similarly, in the same tournament against Uruguay, Pele is running towards the box and the keeper coming towards him, both towards a cross coming from the left wing. Instead of trying to poke it past the keeper, Pele lets the ball go and circles back on himself while the goalkeeper flounders. That he then misses the goal doesn’t matter: he’s shown that there are another set of possibilities for the people to come after him to explore.

Usain Bolt winning the 100 m final 2008 Olympics.(Wikipedia.org)

Sometimes the elite of the elite of the elite can create moments which enter national folklore: inherently patriots, they can have a heightened sense of what their country requires of them. In 2008 Sachin Tendulkar, batting against England in the wake of the appalling Mumbai attacks, needed to produce a century to lift his country’s spirits, and he did. There can be something solicitous about the elite of the elite of the elite: they do what we need to them to do on our behalf.

Clive James used to tell a story of Joe DiMaggio towards the end of his career. One of the greats of his sport, he was asked why he was warming up so hard when the game didn’t matter all that much in the context of a hugely successful career. “Because there’s a kind out there who hasn’t seen me play before,” came the reply.

When this top flight of sportspeople are obstinate, their obstinacy can take on infinite proportions. Shane Warne, another member of the elite of the elite of the elite, was once asked who was the best batsman he’d ever bowled against. He replied: “Tendulkar first, then daylight, then Lara.” Asked why, he recalled how during one particular tour Tendulkar had found himself getting out to the cover drive. Unprepared to accept this reality, he simply cut the shot out of his repertoire all day long. Warne was shocked and delighted at the sheer determination of the man.

Warne shows another example of the way this rarefied group can respond to circumstances. In Warne’s case, everything he did was characterised by a certain adventurous humour. During the 2006-7 Ashes, Warne was provoked by Ian Bell’s sledging to produce his highest test score. Bell, who Warne had been calling the Shermanator throughout the series, chose to answer back.

Warne pointed his bat at Bell who was in the slips and said: “You mate, are making me concentrate.” Warne went on to score 71 from 65 balls. The

implication is that he was so good he could stand in the great arenas of his sport, and not need to concentrate. But if you ever provoked him to do so, he could be as much a batsman as a bowler.

Nadal reached these heights not because it was easy for him, but because he managed to balance extraordinary effort with profound humility. It was this which made him seem, as commentators frequently said, of another planet.

That perhaps is what really unites these great sportspeople: they feel separate from us – they seem to resemble gifted visitors. One is sometimes left with

the impression that the gulf between us and them is too great for it to be possible to learn anything from them. And yet at other times, it seems as though they have everything to teach. What makes it all a little easier to swallow is that time and again they teach the same sorts of things: hard work, humility, endeavour, a mysterious depth of commitment and even humour. We will need all those things in our own lives: we won’t go far wrong if we make the Nadals and the Federers of this world our mentors.

Shane Warne bowling for the Rajasthan Royals against Middlesex at Lords in 2009 (Wikipedia.org)

THE ART OF THE CELEBRITY INTERVIEW

CHRISTOPHER JACKSON NEVER SET OUT TO INTERVIEW CELEBRITIES –BUT OVER THE YEARS HE’S LEARNED SOME LESSONS THE HARD WAY

Irememberthe week I met Sting was the same week I met the Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams. It was to be a lesson in the strange quirks of the celebrity interview. I arrived in Cambridge to meet Williams, and walked past Pembroke to the Master's House. The door peeled back and there was Williams, at least a foot taller than me. At such times, one feels slight bewilderment at the accuracy of television, together with something else: a vague sense of what it doesn't tell you.

In Williams' case, the famous face was here, assembled in the atoms of reality more or less exactly as the pixels of my television had done so for me before. But there was something else here: a nervous energy which I hadn't been expecting at all.

In time I would discover a very simple explanation for this: Rowan Williams was worried because he anxious about missing his train to London. A certain realisation would follow from this: that an Archbishop of Canterbury worried about being late for his train strongly resembles anyone else worried about being late for his train.

But Williams was polite. I remember a high hallway, with a horizontal balcony beyond it hinting at recesses of space. The setup was too cerebral to be called luxurious but there was an undeniable sense in which one could see that being the Archbishop of Canterbury is a solid career move.

Over years of doing these interviews, I’ve been struck by the little details. Seeing Rowan Williams preside over Easter in a cathedral, one doesn’t necessarily think of him owning a Nespresso machine. But I happen to know he does.

interview went fine, though Williams was evidently anxious due to the fact that he was worried about being late for a talk he was scheduled to do at the British Library. Trains do not wait for Archbishops of Canterbury. When I got him to sign one of his books which had once been my grandfather’s, the Archbishop’s desire to be rid of me was both palpable and understandable.

A few days later, it was snowing in Battersea as I presented myself at the 16th floor of Sting’s apartment. I knocked on the door and it peeled back to reveal a long dark corridor and a sense of unexpected hush.

Somebody with a clipboard went past me and said nothing – exactly as figures sometimes do in dreams. I was sent through to a kitchen where not one but

two private chefs were rustling up for Sting and Trudie what looked to be a Michelin-level dinner.

They also said little, and I began to fear that I had entered a regime whereby everybody was terrified of speaking in case Sting flew in in some kind of temper.

I needn’t have worried: in fact, Sting and Trudie were doing a radio interview in the living room. While I waited, I studied the pictures which seemed to be of industrial sites in the north.

Then I was ushered through to the living room to find Sting and Trudie, as with Williams a few days before, looking awfully like themselves. There is a level of wealth nowadays which leads to multiple houses across various continents. In Sting’s case, there’s the Battersea house, the main house in Wiltshire, an

The

Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams. (Wikipedia.org)

apartment in New York, and a gorgeous Tuscan house: Villa Pallagio.

The existence of an extensive property portfolio can sometimes create a sense that none of the properties are really being lived in, and perhaps the Battersea apartment had the impression of a work in progress.

The long parquet floor had a triple aspect view of Putney to the west and Parliament to the East: there was an exercise bike on the balcony which you can still see from the train on the journey from London Victoria to Denmark Hill. But Sting himself had a certain rooted energy which made me think that he has in some way more internal power than

Rowan Williams. This might perhaps be because trains – or more likely private planes – do wait for Sting. He has more money and can arrange his life around his moods. The rest of us, whether we preside over high-profile Eucharists or not, have to fit in with National Rail and the M25.

But there was something else too: an inner confidence which had to do perhaps with being ratified over and over again by the world but to have retained a soul somehow. This is a difficult achievement and I have seen it from time to time.

In the years since I have sometimes said to people that talking to Sting was like

interviewing an oak tree. Afterwards, he showed me the apartment, and then explained the photographs I’d seen in his kitchen. He said they reminded him of growing up in Newcastle.

You have to remember this when you meet well-known people: they have their backstory, which, except in the case of Royals, is usually a time when they weren’t famous. In a way your job as a journalist is to access that person – that essence. It has to do with what they were before celebrity came to them, which may be something they’re trying to be again now that everybody knows their name.

WRITING

CRICKET BATS

All of this is what makes journalism such a curious job: it opens up onto such curious juxtapositions, of peculiar doors opening. Sometimes they open in a strange order which can feel designed to tell you something.

Looking back over the early part of my career, it would have all seemed very surprising starting out. Perhaps that’s partly because the wish to write and the wish to be a journalist are often separate wishes. Many writers get sidetracked by journalism – and some get sidetracked again into PR and never really write what they suspected they had in them.

Others fail to get sidetracked and never earn a penny and so get discouraged and oddly protective of their unpublished masterpieces. As usual some sort of middle ground is probably best: you need to find your way while also retaining some core sense of what needs to be written by you, for the simple reason that it needs to be written and nobody else can write it.

For young writers generally, probably at some fundamental level you simply want to write. That is an ambition to be respected within oneself, but often its provenance and even its meaning can be very vague. It leads to a series of questions. Write what? Write, how exactly? Every day or just when the mood

takes? And also when? Am I ready yet? Do I need more life experience? For so many writers, the answer they arrive at in relation to the question of when can be an all perennial: tomorrow.

The answer needs to be: today. How do you learn to write a novel? The answer is so banal as to seem almost absurd. Try writing a novel again and again and again until you know how.

But journalism I think is different. It isn't only to do with oneself and the keyboard. It comes instead with all the institutional structures of magazines and websites: editors, magazine staff, circulation, reach, clout, costs – these are parameters, and parameters might be deemed limitations.

That’s because they open up on to the very important question of who will actually be prepared to talk to you. This will be determined by your usefulness to that person – and that will be determined by brand, audience, and sometimes personal connection.

It can be a chicken and egg problem for a new magazine. If you happen to be running a magazine like this one, then your magazine will claim more readers if famous people will talk to you. That's partly because of the largely regrettable fact that we live in a celebrity-obsessed era.

I never particularly planned to interview celebrities. It comprised no part of my motivation to begin writing. I was interested in poetry primarily – the sound of words.

I felt a jolt of recognition when I read Henry's speech in Sir Tom Stoppard's The Real Thing:

"This [cricket bat] here, which looks like a wooden club, is actually several pieces of particular wood cunningly put together in a certain way so that the whole thing is sprung, like a dance floor. It’s for hitting cricket balls with.

"If you get it right, the cricket ball will travel two hundred yards in four seconds, and all you’ve done is give it a knock like knocking the top off a bottle of stout, and it makes a noise like a trout taking a fly.

What we’re trying to do is write cricket bats, so that when we throw up an idea and give it a little knock it might travel…"

I still think that's sufficiently true to be worth quoting at such length. Stoppard was someone who I'd interact with a bitand I would have pinched myself then if I'd known how that would go.

But always for writers there’s the question of money. This simply isn’t true for, say, people with a deep hankering to be a lawyer. In such blessed instances, it’s understood that money will take care of itself. In writing, that’s not the case: unless you can be the first person to come up with a young adult novel with a bespectacled wizard called Harry, money categorically will not take care of itself. You could commit to a lifetime of writing cricket bats if you wanted, but would anyone pay you for it?

But they'd pay you for journalism – not very much, but maybe enough. And that was something - and it was that which led me to the celebrity interview.

RAY OF LIGHT

I remember my first assignment which had anything to do with celebrities. It was a somewhat bizarre event at the Sanderson Hotel behind Oxford Street. It was sponsored by Rolls Royce who had taken it upon themselves to create an occasion whereby new models had been made and matched to an existing rock star.

I didn't quite understand the concept – and still don't. But my then editor noticed that two of the celebrities were Roger Daltry and Ray Davies and I was sent down to try and get a diary story out of it. Diary stories are perhaps the hardest form of journalism insofar as you

Winston Churchill (Wikipedia.org)

Roger Daltrey. (Wikipedia.org)

are likely to go to great lengths to secure a mere eighty words. I’ve known people who did the diaries for the nationals week in week out, and never understood how they didn’t go mad.

I remember as I arrived I was walking next to the hotel and noticed someone coming up behind me walking faster to me and to my left. I turned around to see that this rapid walker happened to be Roger Daltry himself. Nowadays, knowing it was a press event anyway, I would state my name, and politely request that I might ask him a few questions. If he said yes, I'd try and keep him talking for as long as possible. Who knows maybe I might make a feature out of it.

Back then, in my salad days, I wasn't sure if that was appropriate. Which is why I find myself years later writing an article to tell young journalists not to do what I did: journalists must learn to be unabashed and realise that they have nothing to lose. I seem to remember I grimaced out a smile and said nothing: the exact opposite of what should be done. In reality one should just ask: very occasionally, a celebrity will be unpleasant. Usually they're not - and always they're just people, even if they are.

A few moments later, a car pulled up and Ray Davies, far more infirm than I had expected, sort of hobbled out. Daltry, who clearly knew him, said: "Is this guy the future or what?" It was a lovely thing to witness the laughter and the electricity of it all.

But I remember looking past Davies at the crowds of people watching him, and thinking: “But they have their lives too? Who decided these two were important and the rest of us not?” The answer to that is that nobody in the immediate vicinity besides Davies had thought to write and perform ‘Lola’ and ‘Waterloo Sunset’.

But I still think there’s something in the thought. Who knows what people are really like on the inside anyhow? It might be this which caused the great philosopher Maurice Nicoll to call life a drama of visibility and invisibility. I heard years later that Davies wasn’t always nice to people he worked with – and I feel sure that when it comes right down to it, his celebrity is no excuse for that.

But that electricity stayed with me – and of course I had a story to tell friends and family. I still think that the fun of it all is a joyful aspect of doing celebrity interviews - but it is also something to be wary of. As the years went by, I began to meet people who were either well-known in their industry, and sometimes those who were well-known nationally - and then, though not all that often, those who were known the world over.

An early insight came doing legal journalism. It was Jean-Jacques Rousseau who claimed that if we were able to look into the heart of mankind, we’d more often want to travel down the scale than up. Rousseau was seeking to idolise the poor and as was so often the case with him, he had things completely the wrong way around.

I remember one of my early roles was to interview those exalted lawyers who argue regularly before the US Supreme Court. Without any exception, they were polite and delightful to talk with. But it was also my beat to cover the East Midlands market for debt recovery – a far less rarefied world. And there I did sometimes meet with surliness.

John Donne observed that sometimes riches and fame are a sign of some sort of bestowed blessing: we shouldn’t, he

Andre Agassi. (Wikipedia.org)

argued, go around demonising the rich. Maybe they’re rich for a reason. Of course, it’s not always so simple as that. Over the years it’s seemed to me that celebrity confers an enormous opportunity for the enactment of good deeds and noble purposes. Of course, it also contains a sort of temptation: if you’re well known you can usually get away with being fairly awful, and we’ve seen some of those people flushed out by the #metoo movement.

But in the happier first category was Andre Agassi, one of the greatest of all tennis players, who I met at Wimbledon one year.

It was a bit of a journalistic jamboree. Sometimes, very well-known celebrities will try to deal with their press in one big go, and on such occasions, sometimes you and about 30 others are given 10 minutes with a star. It’s easier for them that way. That was the case for Agassi whose reason for being had to do with an agreement he’d reached with Lavazza coffee. Lavazza would support Agassi’s education initiatives on the West Coast of the US, and in return he’d do a day for them at each of the major tennis tournaments.

The trouble was that Lavazza had just launched its new range of coffee cocktails: something to do with coffee, gin and champagne. I was told Agassi would be there in half an hour, but in the end he was three hours late.

Soon, I was four or five cocktails down. I suspect Agassi must have wondered when he met me who this red-faced and strangely confident journalist was. I seem to remember I in fact forgot to press the record button at the start of the interview. “Hey, man, is that even recording?” asked Agassi. Then we began laughing, and fortunately the wonderful photographer Graham Flack was over the other side of the room to catch the moment of realisation.

That turned out to be an education in transcribing your interviews as soon as

possible, or at least uploading them to the cloud. A few days later, my recording only half-transcribed, I was at my niece Georgia’s second birthday party around a pool. I watched her with interest and then with mounting anxiety from the other side of the pool as I saw it occur to her that she could swim without armbands.

Needless to say she couldn’t, and when I jumped in to pull her out again in all my clothes, I had forgotten to take my phone out of my pocket with the Agassi interview on it. Young journalists beware.

THE RISE OF THE EA

But what mattered then was that I could see Agassi was a kind man, determined to

use his fame to help with the educational needs of people from impoverished backgrounds.

Sometimes, of course, a celebrity will do a lot of good very quietly, as the world discovered after the death of the late George Michael. Michael was compulsively kind – and he had the money to enact his kindness.

I would say that on balance over the years I’ve been pleasantly surprised by the people I’ve ended up meeting. There was one mega-famous TV star who has a saintly reputation who turned out to be rather rude, and then was rude to a member of my editorial team, as if to confirm to us that he really was that way. But in general, I’ve found the staff that

Sir Tom Stoppard (Alamy)

crop up around well-known people more difficult than the celebrities themselves. There was the impressive and formidable henchwoman of a former prime minister, who asked for about five exploratory calls before the interview only to raincheck for vague reasons.

Then there was the right hand man to an internationally famous actor who was in an almost permanent state of crisis. Before interviewing his boss, I had arrived at the conclusion that he was destined to be terrifying and had braced myself for some sort of grilling, and even wondered whether the interview might lead somehow to my death.

He turned out merely to be very particular, but at heart kind beyond expectation. What had happened was that his executive assistant had got himself into a state about things potentially happening which didn’t bother his boss in the least.

Still, all these bodies around a wellknown person can be bewildering to comprehend. A filmmaker friend of mine once worked with Robbie Williams. I asked him how it was. He said: “The trouble is that Robbie Williams can’t walk in any room without being flanked by seven other people.”

My friend pointed out that the difficulty is in actually talking to Robbie while simultaneously trying to figure out who all these other people are.

But looking back, the most wonderful thing is when you get to meet or interact with your heroes. Two of mine were Clive James and Sir Tom Stoppard. Clive is no more now, and it was a bit of a race against time to get to interview him for The New Statesman towards the end of his life. Clive was in many respects a changed man by the end, humbled by media exposure over his extra-marital affairs.

I made sure I asked the right questions, and even permitted myself slightly longer questions than usual, though I subsequently edited out my bits, reasoning that the reader would be far less interested in my questions than in Clive’s answers.

This meant that to interview him was to have a sort of brief tango together –tango being the dance he most loved. I was delighted when afterwards I received an invitation to his house to the launch of his last epic poem The River in the Sky.

Sadly I couldn’t go as I had committed to a press trip with my family and wrote the poem which appears opposite about my predicament. Years later I got to tell Douglas Murray about this, and received his kind amusement at the poem. “But you should have sent it to him!”

Murray incidentally was less famous than he is now, but delightful to talk to for around three hours. He was also one of those people I met too early as I didn’t fully understand the importance of his work – as he could almost certainly tell. But sometimes this is preferable to not meeting people at all. Journalists may end up cringing at interviews, but overall to fear cringing is ultimately not to live fully and so one is better off risking an encounter you feel you might not be up to, and learning to live with your mistakes. Cringing is to do with a pride we’re still feeling now: journalists need to get over that – as we all do.

I think about his comment about my Clive poem sometimes – and it reminds me that after the Rowan Williams interview I walked around Cambridge and found myself next to Clive’s house. I stood briefly outside; it was just another house on just another street. But it was special to me because Clive wrote what he wrote in it.

We meet each other so fleetingly here – one’s journalistic career seems to be full of strange fragments like a dream. Sir Anthony Gormley using the word

Clive James (Alamy)

‘orthogonality’ at an interview at the First Site Gallery in Colchester. Henry Blofeld forgot his hat and I ran out to give it him; he gave me that grimace we do when we’ve forgotten our hat and will likely not see again the person who’s just restored it to us. Jonathan Agnew, whose wife had recently recovered from cancer, was very kind when he heard about my own wife’s MS. When we went our separate ways he said: “Now look after yourself” in a way which struck me as very kind.

Sir Tom Stoppard and I had a few emails over the years – his kind and fascinating, mine overly voluble. My publisher and I decided that since I was talking to him I might ask him for an endorsement for my book An Equal Light. I wrote to him at what I now think of as ridiculous length that I was rather embarrassed to ask for an endorsement. “Don’t be embarrassed, let me be that,” came the lovely reply. We worked it out in the end – and the endorsement we ran mentioned Clive.

Overall, the celebrity interview has its pitfalls: you mustn’t become a namedropper – and I say this knowing that for many years I definitely was, and of course, have had to be so again in order to write this article. And perhaps that’s another lesson – it’s fun to namedrop a little bit, provided you never think that by meeting interesting people you’ve necessarily become more interesting yourself. You may, in fact, have become a bore without realising it. But in general, there’s a binding fragility about us all, which we saw at the start of this year with the fires in Los Angeles. When you meet someone you’re meeting them in time, their time ticking at the same pace as yours. In fact, it is an astonishing thing to find oneself occupying the time of someone wellknown – entering their story, when they had already entered yours by their deeds. There’s a privilege about it all which makes it worth its while if your career happens to go in that direction.

DIARY CLASH

For Clive James, on having been unable to attend his book launch for The River in the Sky at his home in Cambridge

It was no disaster, but I didn’t make the party.

I’d come to know brightness, and not light. I knew the poet better than his verse; politician better than policy. Handshakes are really a kind of curse: the original reason for celebrity is superior to fame’s look. And success can be a dreary sight: the faces all togetherness-brightened at the symposium I was too France-bound to attend are worth a modicum of any one section of their best books.

It’s fine not to have made that soirée. It’s true that in deferential encounters I’ve seen more than fame’s weird glow: an eye-gleam in the interviewee –like the pertugio amid the Inferno, the spark that made them noteworthy and deserving of renown –and been grateful to know such apertures. But I very diligently doubt that there’d have been much more than misery at that party which I was out of the country for:

I imagine a congregation of frowns. It’s good – on this one occasion –not to make that launch: to have been, say, harangued in Villefranche-sur-Mer by an indignant attendant when, parked by the solemn barrier, I couldn’t read the instructions in that treacherous ticket machine. Everything that happens teaches meaning: now I see how the written word certainly never prospers amid fuss, and poems don’t need the folly approval which stems from the tremendous absurdity of a convening.

Anyone who asks, tell them I’m alright about having missed it: say that my wife is formidable; my friends kind. You may add that after the famous car strife my boy paddled toward the pebbly sand, and in the celebrating light briefly showed that he could swim.

But let’s be clear, I’m in a little pain –and ever since, have been somewhat sad at being so bound up in obligation and space as not to travel at a whim to watch you bask in finishing a poem which is slated to last when this feeble lament of mine is past. What I need now is for it not to happen again.

BOOK REVIEWS

UPLIFTING BOOKS FOR CHALLENGING TIMES

THE LYRICS - PAUL MCCARTNEY

EDITED BY PAUL MULDOON

I once commissioned Paul Muldoon for a poem for a magazine where I was editing the poetry section. He was very responsive to the idea that the readers of a high end luxury magazine ought to have some poetry in their life. I made it clear I would pay £100.

Muldoon sent a poem which was really a song lyric and I still remember it’s refrain: “It’s been an uphill battle to go downhill all the way.”

Incidentally, when I tried to pay Muldoon he went mysteriously dark. But his home address in New York was on his email. When I was next in town, I took a hundred dollars down to his apartment on the Upper West Side, and gave it to his wife, Muldoon being away I discovered in New Jersey.

I later discovered that he was financially secure many times over due to his marriage. He simply didn’t need the money and wasn’t interested in it. In that he was a strange kind of poet. I

didn’t know then that this was the same apartment which Paul McCartney had begun occasionally visiting in order to have the conversations which make up this book. Had I known, I might have stayed around a bit.

This book, writes McCartney in the foreword, was a far more feasible project than a straight autobiography: the songs, in any case, tell the story of his life better than a prose book. The book is the product of a series of enviable conversations between Muldoon and McCartney, but with Muldoon’s contributions elided.

In some respects, this is a shame as I expect the back and forth would in some ways have been more interesting. Muldoon is one of the greatest poets of our time, and would be greater still if he could always bring himself to write comprehensibly. I expect some of what we have here would be more exciting if we could hear the pair of them sparking off each other. By then dividing the conversations into song-based chapters, some of them can seem a bit perfunctory.

For instance, the reader is given only a couple of pages for ‘A Day in the Life’, that remarkable work, about which books could be written. There is much that could be said, and which isn’t said here, about McCartney’s contribution in the second part of the song after the titanic crescendo of the orchestra.

McCartney has in the past said the bit which begins ‘Woke up, fell out of bed/ dragged a comb across my head’,) was a song he’d had lying around. It would have been interesting to know when he wrote it, why he abandoned it, and how it was he realised that it belonged here, and the process by which the two were yoked together.

But perhaps talking about one’s own songs is really a mug’s game. The truth is,

for most of the time in songwriting, the songwriter is in receipt of forces he won’t understand and there is a sense in which McCartney can sometimes seem a baffled visitor on his own songwriting past.

“ WE SHOULD BE GRATEFUL FOR THIS BOOK: MCCARTNEY IS A WORLDHISTORICAL FIGURE WHO IS FAR BUSIER THAN WE ALL ARE, AND IT’S GOOD THAT HE FOUND THE TIME FOR US AT ALL .”

But this is to carp about what we don’t have instead of to celebrate what was actually managed. We should be grateful for this book: McCartney is a worldhistorical figure who is far busier than we all are, and it’s good that he found the time for us at all.

Besides there are some moments of real insight. For instance, in ‘All My Loving’, McCartney points out that it is an epistolary love song in the vein of Fats Waller’s “I’m Gonna Sit Right Down and Write Myself a Letter”. But it is also to do with being on the road and not being able to see your love. That makes Lennon’s triad chords in the rhythm guitar all the more suitable because it mimics train tracks, and the rickety motion of transport.

I’ve always liked McCartney. Lennon could be cruel in a way unthinkable for his songwriting partner, and cruel to

McCartney too. I think the tensions in their relationship probably stemmed from their different work ethics. Lennon had a sort of lazy streak which probably irked McCartney who, born with a gift which often seems to emanate from some other dimension, felt a duty to be true to that gift. There’s an arbitrariness about Lennon’s decision to be a musician: he could equally have been a poet, an artist or a writer. McCartney could only have been a musician. I suspect Lennon knew this, and probably envied it.

McCartney’s still hurt, of course – and we probably forget what a terrible wrench Lennon’s death must have been for McCartney. Had Lennon lived – he was only 40 when he died – their relationship would have healed with maturity. On the other hand, McCartney acknowledges that things turned out better than they might have with Lennon: at least they weren’t actively warring with each other when Lennon was murdered on 9th December 1980. Apparently they had a nice conversation on their final meeting about baking bread.

Strange forces brought these two together. It continues to feel marvellous that in Liverpool at that time, these four boys were thrown together, that their music found its audience, and that an entire historical epoch was built around that happenstance.

We are only just beginning to understand what it was The Beatles gave us. It was freedom: the freedom to experiment and to find out who and what one loved. And it was love, as McCartney has often pointed out, which underpinned it all. Over eight wonderful years, ‘Love Me Do’ became ‘And in the end/the love you take/is equal to the love you make’. After that, McCartney got lucky domestically with Linda Eastman, and here the music falls off in quality far more than this book is willing to admit. That seems to be a law of popular music: the energy of youth can only come once. It is an invisible aspect of those simple chord sequences which gave us ‘She

Loves You’: there is a primal urge driving it forward which we can’t see.

But we know when it’s not there, as has, if we’re honest, been the case for most of McCartney’s career after The Beatles broke up. Sometimes in the 1970s a magnificent song would come along: ‘Maybe I’m Amazed’, ‘Band on the Run’, and much later, ‘Beautiful Night’.

But something went out of McCartney’s life forever when John, with the malicious glee which sometimes characterised him, announced that he was leaving the Beatles. It appealed to John’s wrecking ball nature to destroy the thing he loved.

It never appealed to McCartney – and still doesn’t. Every time we have a new initiative with the Beatles today – such as the AI project Now and Then, you feel that McCartney is the driving force. He wants to be back in Abbey Road again. Since he’s wealthy and famous, we miss the heartbreaking reality: he misses his best mate.

Yet we must also admire his resilience: optimism has always marked McCartney –a sense that somehow or other everything will be alright. His songs almost always insist on a good outcome, sometimes amidst sadness. Jude will make it right. We can all learn to let it be. Even Yesterday, on the face of it a very sad song, seems to resolve that sadness by the end: the feeling of melancholy has been dispatched because the chords have been so cleverly resolved.

This book probably should have been done differently: it would have been better to have published the transcripts of their conversations as Seamus Heaney did in Stepping Stones and as Nick Cave did with Faith, Hope and Carnage.

But it’s good to have this book. It doesn’t really alter McCartney’s reputation too much since he was already in the stratosphere anyway: it simply proves that genius can sometimes go hand in hand with geniality and humility. And if that’s the case with McCartney, it certainly had better be the case with us who, whatever our virtues, never had it in us to write ‘’Eleanor Rigby’. CJ

WHY?

BY MOHAMED AMERSI

If you want to understand the current condition of the Conservative Party the very last thing you should do is read the memoirs of any of the PMs or Cabinet ministers of the period. These are usually self-serving, the prose ghost-written and burnished, and the anecdotes banal.

The same cannot be said of Mohamed Amersi’s memory Why? Here, in adamant and often ferocious terms is the raw, unplugged version of events. I think it contains more truth in it than all the neatly packaged biographies published by the so-called Big Six publishers, put together.

In fact, it is probably one of the most unusual books I’ve read. This is an author who will not hide emotion. These pages make us see in black and white the resentments, the passion, and the ugliness of high politics.

And Amersi did reach the heights. Born in Kenya to a wealthy family, he had a successful career as a corporate lawyer both in London and in the Middle East. Over time, he found that he enjoyed the process of deal-making and crossed over from law to deal-making itself. He found he was good at that too.

The early chapters about his upbringing are nostalgic and moving and let us know that the British Empire, now so often derided, could sometimes be a wonderful place to live. Amersi was also very lucky in his parents who made sure he travelled wildly, had his own bank account young, and most of all, understood the importance of the philanthropic spirit. Amersi comes across in these chapters as kind, thoughtful and eager to do good. Kenya also taught him tolerance: "Our street was home to every kind of religion, and everybody was treated equally: our neighbours included Hindus, Israelis, Christians and other Islamic sects, distinct from our own Shiite practice."

These lessons were not to be forgotten, but first Amersi needed to make his way in the world. The middle chapters of the book read like a sensible business memoir, where we learn a lot about the importance of reacting to opportunities and of following one’s instincts.

Once his wealth was made, Amersi admirably began his philanthropic work and the reader of Why? is left in no doubt that this came from a deep place within him. It was to do with his family ethos, but the scale of ambition of the Amersi Foundation was also individual to him.

Amersi is rightly proud of his achievements. He is probably one of the most travelled men in the world, and a natural curiosity and gregariousness means that he has obtained a unique worldview. His is a bird’s-eye view: the reader ends up thinking of him in the skies, travelling from one place to the next. He is a man who understands how the world works.

In a sense, Amersi is an outsider: meticulously presented and wellmannered, he has an essential seriousness which you don’t usually find in British high society.

As the book goes on, Amersi is given an education in how the elites work in the UK – and he is given it the hard

way. What somebody growing up in Kenya might not know about the elite in Britain is its essential duplicitousness. It is a world where everything has several meanings. Sarcasm, irony, doubleentendre: this is the nature of life at the famous private schools and at Oxbridge. Those who attend these institutions carry on their banter at Court and in Westminster.

If you want an archetype of this, then you would have to adduce the former Prime Minister Boris Johnson. For Johnson, everything is a bit of a game. Other people matter a bit but not as much as the maintaining of a certain essential light-heartedness.

Usually, too, everybody drinks – partly because the British way of discourse is a bit tiring to uphold and it can help to unwind and loosen one’s tongue from time to time. True friendship in British life is often forged over too many glasses and the mutual decision to forget impropriety for the sake of some broader but possibly meaningless propriety.

Over time Amersi discovered he was an outsider. He is a teetotaller and unlike most of the people who run the Conservative Party, genuinely minds about injustice and genuinely wants to change it.

What readers of this book will discover is how deep the rot is. It opens up not so much onto the failure of a few leaders to do their jobs properly, but onto systemic failure. In fact, a few prime ministers come out reasonably well from the book: especially Gordon Brown (‘the only Labour politician who hasn’t asked me for money’) and Theresa May who at one point berates Amersi for his thin skin.

Once Amersi made his money, he became able to help some very important people, not least the future King Charles III who also comes out very well in these pages – and far better than his slippery advisors.

But the real Rubicon was crossed when Amersi decided to give money to the

Conservative Party. Anybody who knows how that went for him will find themselves yelling at the page: “Don’t do it!” But he does.

Why did he do it? It’s clear that Amersi felt that by becoming a player in the Conservative Party he would be able to meet people with similar reach. Working together with well-meaning types like himself, he would be able to achieve more.

Sadly, in time, Amersi began to fall out with the Conservative Party. Amersi had the idea that he might set up a group COMENA which would help the Conservative Party to deepen its ties with the Middle East and North Africa. Amersi expected nothing particular in return – he certainly didn’t need the money by this stage.

But there was a catch. A group already existed called CMEC, which was chaired by a former MP Charlotte Leslie. If one were authoring Amersi’s story as a novel you couldn’t think up a more suitable antagonist than Leslie. Having been to Oxbridge, and being at ease in the establishment, she is everything she’s not. At one point, Amersi ruminates on how he would have liked a classical education; well, Leslie has that too.

Here the tone of the book shifts and things get very ugly. Leslie decides she doesn’t want Amersi to set up CMEC, and it isn’t really clear why takes such a firm position. Amersi suggests throughout that it was in Leslie’s financial interest to keep him at arm’s length. Leslie then writes memos to senior people in the security services and various sitting parliamentarians, in which she expresses concern that Amersi is corrupt and therefore a security threat. Amersi is furious and his anger comes off every page. In fact, his anger is somehow touching because by the time we get to it, we already have the nostalgic opening chapters by which to measure him.

The last 4o pages of the book are in a different style. They are as if

Pope’s Dunciad had been written on psychotropic drugs. Some villains emerge: Dame Margaret Hodge who misunderstands Amersi’s intentions in querying a report written about him by Kings College; David Davis MP used the shelter of parliamentary privilege to lambast him; Tom Burgis writes various articles and book Cuckooland portraying Amersi in an unflattering light; and Bob Seely MP, defenestrated to Amersi’s delight in the 2024 general election, muscles in as well.

Then there is Leslie herself, who, it seems, is a far smoother media operator than Amersi had expected. The book has many unanswered questions which investigative journalists might pick up. It’s not clear really why Leslie wrote the memos, or how many there were and what her precise motivation was for writing them.

What’s interesting about the book is that Amersi lets his anger show. He doesn’t try and call it something else: the book has a sort of magnificent honesty to it which almost any PR advisor would have argued against.

Most valuable of all, it shows a Britain which is in sore need of reform. In Amersi’s telling parliamentary privilege is too often used for slander and many MPs have no notion of the Nolan Principles. Academia is ignorant. The courts meanwhile are expensive and slow, and sometimes the judges are corrupt. But his most withering criticisms are reserved for the media, and especially Burgis. Usually, they can’t understand the complexities of the topics they are called upon to write about.

One might dismiss this as an eccentric screed had it not all been ratified to a large extent in the 2024 general election. If Kemi Badenoch really wishes to change the Conservative Party, and return her party to power, she will need to read this book, warts and all.

RL

SABBATICAL

Quite frankly, you’d had enough. Britain was a dystopia You’d take some time off –and head to Ethiopia.

Not for you a life of grandkids watching Brave or Zootopia No: this is what you did. You went to Ethiopia.

The Ancients once thrived there before we became dopier and dopier, and fell to despair. And so: Ethiopia.

I’ve not seen you since. With the world ropier And ropier, it’s easy to convince Me that your trip to Ethiopia

Was a necessary phase, Designed to help us cope with a Certain pervasive malaise. Will you be back from Ethiopia?

They say they need you at the office They say that they hope you are Alive – in one piece. We want him back, Ethiopia! Yasmin Blake

BODYSGALLEN HALL

CHRISTOPHER JACKSON REVIEWS A FINE HOTEL ON THE NORTH COAST OF WALES

It is always a curious thing to arrive somewhere at night: we experience a world without contours and landmarks – a dense dark which really could be anywhere, and yet we also know we are entering somewhere new.

We arrived in northern Wales just in time for a storm to lambast Conwy, just as storms have been doing for millions of years. My main memory is of watching the windscreen wipers seeking in increasing desperation to rid the windscreen, as if seeking some slightly higher setting than the maximum.

We arrived up a long winding drive, unimpressed sheep crossing the pathway in their own time to move out of the way of our car. As we emerged from our vehicle, our bags immediately weeping with rain, we were greeted by an avuncular night porter named Marion. As I glanced at the décor of Bodysgallen Hall – the fireplace, the 17th century

panelling, the venerable portraiture – I thought: “Well, this is a whole lot better than the M6.” Better than the M6, and indeed better than any hotel I’ve stayed at, as it would turn out.

We were shown upstairs to a warm upper room, and learned from Marion that the building was initially constructed as a tower house at some unspecified point in the Middle Ages, to serve as support for Conwy Castle, that marvellously preserved place overlooking the bay: from Bodysgallen you can replay how a signalling system might have worked between this place and Conwy. One imagines Irish ships, a flame of warning, and then the bustle of preparation for whatever came next. What came next is what always comes: invasion, conquest, resistance, peace –the known variations of human life. It is, in fact, a marvellous place for a spa, as the history here is so rich you know

precisely what it is you’re seeking to get away from.

I had just enough time before I drifted into sleep to learn that Bodysgallen had once been a place where Cadwallon Lawhir, King of Gwynedd – the name means ‘long-fingered’, when a luxurious sleep enveloped me.

The following morning, the first amazing thing I did in what was to be an entirely enchanted day was to open the curtains. This isn’t normally a particularly marvellous aspect of life in London: my curtains usually reveal, Southwark Council branded bins and houses opposite which look precisely like the house I have just woken in. At Bodysgallen Hall, the experience is very different: you look out onto an unbroken glory of horticulture, leading onto a still more beautiful and dreamy landscape. It must be admitted that

Wales probably gets about three days of delightful sunshine per year. It was therefore a joy difficult to measure when we got one of them in late October.

“ THE LIGHT WAS SO STRONG THAT CONWY SEEMED IN SHADOW, AND EVERYTHING HAD A SORT OF CARAMEL GLOW.”

It was a day of bronze light, bursting out of a horizon. The light was so strong that Conwy seemed in shadow, and everything had a sort of caramel glow. Our first move was to eat a breakfast of champions, which we duly did: a full English exactly as it should be done –heartily, and without any unnecessary complications.

After that, we walked down into the gardens. The medieval folly can be seen in the distance, and it’s possible to walk up there for a better view of the coastline beyond the Orme and Little Orme headlands. The garden has a long and remarkable history. The original garden design dates from 1678 and is credited to Robert Wynn, son of Hugh Wynn, who was the first of that family to come into ownership of the Hall.

The sundial bears the date 1678. In those days, everything was in the Dutch fashion: with high walls which make you want to know what lies beyond them. There is also a topiary maze, a rose garden which was still giving out a beautiful scent even in mid-October. The herb garden produces herbs and vegetables which form part of the menu in the first-class restaurant.

Everywhere you go is beauty – and this was an unusually beautiful day. One

could really spend a week walking these grounds, and not be near the end of them, but our time was more limited.

“ EVERYWHERE YOU GO IS BEAUTY – AND THIS WAS AN UNUSUALLY BEAUTIFUL DAY.”

Bodysgallen Hall is known also as a spa, and so we went down to that place where the newspapers had been laid out in civilised fashion. The spa itself consists of a warm swimming pool, a jacuzzi, steam room and sauna. My eight year old boy splashed around in children’s hour, which wasn’t quite long enough for him, and one sometimes wishes there weren’t such severe regulations around jacuzzi use when it comes to children.

Nicky

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CLASS DISMISSED JIMMY CHOO

WORLD-RENOWNED FASHION DESIGNER JIMMY CHOO CAME TO LONDON IN THE LATE EIGHTIES FROM HIS HOME IN MALAYSIA.

HOW DID YOU GET YOUR START IN FASHION?

I guess it was meant to be. I was born into a shoe-maker family, and that influenced my career path: I decided to follow suit. Since I was young, I knew I wanted to be a designer, so I moved to London to study at the Cordwainers Technical College and three years later, in the early 80s, I opened my first shop.

DO YOU HAVE A FAVOURITE DESIGN?

I feel especially fond of the ‘Fetto’, which is a classic sling-back style that Princess Diana wore in the 90s. She wore her first pair to a performance of Swan Lake at the Royal Albert Hall in June 1997, just a few months before her death.

WHAT WAS DIANA LIKE TO WORK WITH?

She was always very kind to me – she cared so much about other people. That’s the sign of an admirable person – when they’re good to people when they don’t have to be.

HOW DID YOUR FATHER HELP START YOUR JOURNEY WITH SHOES?

I was immersed in the shoe-making process from a young age, and it came naturally to me to take up my father’s passion. He taught me how to make a shoe and guided me to create my first pair when I was 11, which I know seems young but I was impatient to get started well before then. You have to remember that this was before

internet and mobile phones. We did everything with our hands. I’ve been doing it one way or another ever since. Now at the JCA London Fashion Academy, I want to give back a little of what I’ve learned.

HAVE YOU HAD ANY OTHER MENTORS?

My father was my most important mentor, although I have been able to work with some incredible designers over the years who have supported me. Back in the 80s, I was awarded a grant and mentorship from the Prince’s Trust which was very valuable to me –and that’s why I’ve decided to return now to mentoring. I know its value, because I’ve experienced it for myself.

WHAT ADVICE WOULD YOU GIVE TO A YOUNG PERSON LOOKING TO ENTER THE FASHION WORLD TODAY?

My biggest piece of advice would be to never give up: you’ve got to learn how to tackle adversity because that’s definitely coming to you. We all have so much potential to create something extraordinary with our talents.

SO THE FUTURE’S BRIGHT?

It is if you decide to pursue your vision. If you do that, then there will always be a great future ahead: but you have to take the plunge and decide to be true to yourself, and find the ideas that really belong to you.

www.jca.ac.uk

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