The American November-December 2016 Issue 754ine 756 mar17

March - April 2017

THE TRANSATLANTIC MAGAZINE

Est. 1976

®

read more at ... www.theamerican.co.uk

EXPAT ADVICE WHAT’S ON TRAVEL HERITAGE EATING OUT POLITICS ARTS & REVIEWS AMERICAN SPORTS

Music Interview:

Jesse & Joy Osi Umenyiora at NFL UK’s new home An American on the Western Front

PLUS: OUR EXCLUSIVE US/UK SOCIAL GROUPS GUIDE

R A T S E V I F AL OUS C I S U M H THE JOY S ITI R B T I H H SMAS

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Issue 756 March-April 2017 Single copy £3.80 inc. P&P Annual subscription £20 (UK) For free digital sub or free print copy pickup visit www.theamerican.co.uk and click on Magazine PUBLISHED BY SP MEDIA FOR

Blue Edge Publishing Ltd. Old Byre House, East Knoyle, Salisbury SP3 6AW, UK Tel: +44 (0)1747 830520

Departments: News, Article ideas, Press releases: editor@theamerican.co.uk Advertising & Promotions: advertising@theamerican.co.uk Subscriptions: theamerican@blueedge.co.uk The Team: Michael Burland, Content Director michael@theamerican.co.uk Sabrina Sully, Content Director & Community Contact sabrina@theamerican.co.uk Daniel M Byway, Content Manager dan@theamerican.co.uk Virginia E Schultz, Food & Drink virginia@theamerican.co.uk Michael M Sandwick, Food & Drink mms@theamerican.co.uk Alison Holmes, Politics alison@theamerican.co.uk Jarlath O’Connell, Theater jarlath@theamerican.co.uk

S

pring is here, to quote Lorenz Hart, or I’m banking that it will be by the time you read this. At the time of writing Storm Doris is doing her best to beat down the doorway at The American Tower (as I feel we should rename our rural idyll).

It’s a time for new beginnings and change. In this issue we’re delighted to introduce a new column by an old friend who many of you will know from her expert restaurant and wine writing. The new column is called Who’s Afraid of Virginia Schultz and you’ll find Virginia on page 29. Her ‘blog’ joins Miss Patricia’s wicked column (page 34). And Olivia McLaren, an American lawyer in Edinburgh, joins us to write about expat life in Scotland, starting with a review of The Dining Room at the Scotch Malt Whisky Society. Mmmm...

As always we also have a lot of news and advice on matters that affect Americans living overseas, plus great interviews with the stars over here, including Robert Fairchild & Leanne Cope who open in An American in Paris, the new musical, and Jesse & Joy, the Mexican American musicians who are about to take over Europe!

Enjoy your magazine,

M ichael Burland, Content Director michael@theamerican.co.uk

Read the magazine online anytime: go to www.theamerican.co.uk and click on Magazine @TheAmericanMag @TheAmericanCommunity Follow us on social media:

Among this issue’s contributors

©2017 Blue Edge Publishing Ltd. Printed by www.ostrich-print.co.uk ISSN 2045-5968 MAIN COVER: JESSE & JOY; SQUARE INSET: ARTHUR KIMBER, AN AMERICAN ON THE WESTERN FRONT ©KIMBER LITERARY ESTATE; CIRCULAR INSET: OSI UMENYIORA ©MICHAEL BURLAND

Miss Patricia Olivia McLaren Patrick Gregory Our wicked Miss P meditates A warm welcome to Olivia, BBC journalist Patrick has on something we may not like who writes for us about expat written, with his US motherto think about, but should: life in Scotland, from eating in-law, the tale of a young how bereavement and funerals out to the vibrant arts scene American who fought and died are different for expats north of the border in World War I The entire contents of The American and www.theamerican.co.uk are protected by copyright and no part of it may be reproduced without written permission of the publishers. Whilst every effort is made to ensure that the information in The American is accurate, the editor and publishers cannot accept responsibility for any errors or omissions or any loss arising from reliance on it. The views and comments of contributors are not necessarily those of the publishers.

The American

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49 COMPETITIONS: Battle Proms & Elmer Bernstein 29 34 18 US SOCIAL SECURITY: A warning 20 INVESTMENT: UK securities for US citizens 36 50 22 FINANCE: Investing in change 60 24 PENSIONS: Returning to the States?

64 26 TAX: 3 big mistakes to avoid 70 28 HEALTH: Dentistry - why go private 72 1 Welcome 14 Diary Dates 6 A-List: Products & Services 42 Food & Drink 10 News 55 Arts Choice 2

The American

COLUMN: “The first time I met Liz Taylor...”

COLUMN: Miss Patricia on expat funerals INTERVIEW: An American in Paris’ stars INTERVIEW: Jesse & Joy FEATURE: American on the Western Front INTERVIEW: Lindsey Ferrentino POLITICS: The new Crucible SPORTS: The NFL’s new London home

60 Books & Theater Reviews 81 US Social Groups 88 Coffee Break Fun

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Suppliers of quality products and services - hand-picked for you To find out whether you’re eligible to advertise your products and services here, and for rates, call Dan +44 (0)1747 830520, or email dan@theamerican.co.uk. You’ll reach Americans living in and visiting the UK as well as Britons who like American culture and products.

ACCOUNTANCY & TAX ABBM Group

Blick Rothenberg LLP

cleartaxation group

Winner of the 2015 “Best International and Expatriate Team” at the UK Taxation Awards.

Leading tax practice with a highly respected client base and excellent reputation for providing high quality UK/US personal and corporate tax services with an international focus.

16 Great Queen Street, Covent Garden, London +44 (0)20 7486 0111 mark.abbs@blickrothenberg.com www.blickrothenberg.com Twitter @BlickRothenberg

Professional and affordable clear tax advice provided

by Enrolled Agents and UK Chartered Tax Advisers.

Free initial consultation throughout the UK. We can manage all your US and UK tax affairs and their interaction.

0800 917 6765 taxhelp@cleartaxation.co.uk www.cleartaxation.com

Expat Tax Professionals LLC

Bright ! Tax LLC Since 1967 ABBM has served US Expats. Experienced in FATCA compliance, OVDP, Streamlined Version, tax audits, renunciation, IRS dealings, and other foreign tax issues.

9575 Katy Freeway, Suite 370, Houston, TX 770242 USA Contact: Clint Bateman CPA Kara McDuffie CPA Kelli Perkins CPA (P)713.552.9800 (F)713.552.9700 cbateman@abbmgroup.com http://www.abbmgroup.com

After spending the majority of their respective careers at two of the largest accounting firms (PwC and Ernst & Young), Joshua Ashman and Ephraim Moss founded Expat Tax Professionals, a firm specializing in the needs of U.S. citizens living abroad. We’re here to help.

Joshua Ashman, CPA - Founder (718) 887-9933 • jashman@expattaxprofessionals.com Ephraim Moss, Esq. - Founder (718) 887-9933 • emoss@expattaxprofessionals.com www.expattaxprofessionals.com

Bright!Tax is a leading US expat tax services provider for Americans living in the UK. Visit brighttax.com to learn more. +1.212.465.2528 http://brighttax.com inquiries@brighttax.com

Burton Sweet

Frank Hirth

Bambridge Accountants

Bambridge Accountants specialise in the preparation of US expatriate taxes, including the streamlined process, for Americans living abroad. We are based in the heart of Covent Garden and offer fixed fees for US personal and corporate tax returns.

7 Henrietta Street, London WC2E 8PS 020 3829 3492 info@bambridgeaccountants.co.uk www.bambridgeaccountants.co.uk

Tax Return Preparation and compliance service for US Expatriates. Specialist in providing advice on UK/US Tax interaction. Affordable Fixed Fees.

Spencer House, Morston Court, Aisecome Way, WestonSuper-Mare, North Somerset BS22 8NG 01934 620011 Contact Rachel Finch rachel@burton-sweet.co.uk www.burton-sweet.co.uk Twitter @burtonsweet www.linkedin.com/company/burton-sweet

Butler Snow LLP

Established in 1975, and guided by a passion for building lasting relationships with our clients based on trust, understanding and technical excellence, we use our in-depth knowledge of US and UK tax jurisdictions to advise our clients through their complex tax issues, for both the present and the future.

1st Floor , 236 Gray’s Inn Road , London, WC1X 8HB 020 7833 3500 mail@frankhirth.com www.frankhirth.com

Fusion Consulting

Best4Business

With over 25 years’ experience in ‘Big 4’ firms, our dedicated dual-qualified London-based US/UK tax team is committed to providing a highly responsive, personal, proactive, value-added service. Contact our friendly team on a confidential, no obligation basis.

45 Beaufort Court, Admirals Way, London E14 9XL 020 7523 5322 s.healy@best4business.com W: best4business.com/us-advisory

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From our offices in London, Asia and the US, Butler Snow attorneys deliver tax and estate planning advice for clients residing outside of the US who have US business interests, family members or investments.

London: Brad F. Westerfield +44 (0)20 33003802 Brad.Westerfield@butlersnow.com Singapore: Kurt G. Rademacher +65 6808 6291 Kurt.Rademacher@butlersnow.com www.butlersnow.com Twitter: @Butler_Snow Facebook: @ButlerSnowLaw

We provide specialist US taxation advisory and compliance services to cater for our clients’ unique and sometimes complex circumstances. We assist clients in bringing their tax filing obligations up-todate and in compliance with US tax law. We have skills in international, cross-border taxation for taxpayer’s resident in the UK or US or living abroad.

Contact us for more information on the Streamline Program, 1040’s, FBAR’s and PFICS. 0203 841 7010 info@fusionconsult.co.uk www.fusionconsult.co.uk

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H&R Block Expat Tax Services

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Tax Advisory Partnership

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COUNSELLING AND PSYCHOTHERAPY Anji Holland Hypnotherapy

One H&R Block Way, Kansas City, MO 64105 USA 1-816-504-1665 expattax@hrblock.com http://hrblock.com/expats Our secure, remote service has a dedicated team which includes CPAs, enrolled agents, and tax attorneys, who focus on expat taxes and can handle all types of U.S. tax returns, including FATCA and FBAR.

Humphrey & Co.

Tax Advisory Partnership provides a broad range of UK and US tax advice and compliances services to private clients both in the UK and abroad. Our highly experienced team are ready to help you. Please contact us for further information.

Tel: +44 207 655 6959 info@tap-london.com www.taxadvisorypartnership.com

Warrener Stewart Based in Eastbourne and Brighton & Hove, we have been providing tax and business advice since 1928.

Within our general practice, we also specialise in Expatriate Tax and US Taxation, providing comprehensive advice and quality service to US citizens living in the UK. For more information contact our Tax Director, Kevin Hancock: 7-9 The Avenue, Eastbourne, East Sussex, BN21 3YA 01323 730631 khancock@humph.co.uk www.humph.co.uk

Rouse Partners LLP

DENTISTRY Based in Fulham, we are Chartered Accountants and Tax Advisors with two Enrolled Agents. We can provide a cost effective, bespoke service for US citizens with UK or US tax affairs.

To arrange an initial free consultation contact Ashleigh Molton on 020 7731 6163 or email amolton@warrenerstewart.com

ANTIQUES & COLLECTABLES Stephen T Taylor

Rouse Partners, multi award-winning team based in the west of London, and leading US firm, Plante Moran, offer a seamless tax service for US expatriates.

55 Station Road, Beaconsfield, HP9 1QL, UK +44 (0)1494 675321 info@rousepartners.co.uk www.rousepartners.co.uk/us

SDC Global CPA

Expats have special and complex tax considerations at home and abroad. Constant changes to the tax laws and regulations mean it’s important to work with a CPA knowledgeable of your unique reporting requirements. The penalties are too significant to risk. We are experienced in working with US citizens abroad, navigating the complex reporting requirements, including Streamlined and OVDP filings.

P.O. Box 1278, Columbus, Texas 78934, USA Contact Stacy Collier, MPA, CPA stacy@sdcglobalcpa.com www.sdcglobalcpa.com T: +1 346 231 1195 F: +1 346 231 1194

For Stress, Anxiety, Depression Insomnia, Sleeping Disorders, IBS, Panic Attacks, Fears & Phobias, IVF, Natural Childbirth, OCD, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, Stop Smoking, Pain Control, Weight Management, Sport Motivation, Anger Management, and more Seymour Place, London W1 and Bath 07944 647 978 anji@hollandhypnotherapy.com www.hollandhypnotherapy.com

Your American stamp dealer in Britain since 1995.

5 Glenbuck Road, Surbiton, Surrey KT6 6BS 020 8390 9357 info@stephentaylor.co.uk www.stephentaylor.co.uk

London Smile Clinic

London Smile Clinic is the centre of excellence for dentistry. Our award-winning team provides Cosmetic, General, Specialist, Implant and Dentures at exceptionally high standards.

40-44 Clipstone Street, London W1W 5DW +44 (0)20 8108 4774 www.londonsmile.co.uk

EDUCATION A-List Education

BANKING Metro Bank

Americans living abroad face many difficulties, especially when it comes to their money. Metro Bank is happy to assist all our customers, including American citizens and those with strong ties to the United States. We are focussed on customer service, and understand what Americans expect from their retail bank. British banking is very similar to the American system and you can enjoy many of the same services you have at home. alex.clayden@metrobank.plc.uk +44 (0)20 3402 8821 metrobankonline.co.uk

A-List offers specialist and highly customised US test preparation and admissions services for students and secondary schools all over the world via its offices in London, New York and Dubai. We can guide private clients through the entire process or just specific parts, including: tutoring for entrance exams (SAT, ACT, SAT Subject Tests, APs), selecting and visiting best-fit colleges, and crafting outstanding applications and college essays. A-List works with a number of leading UK schools providing US admissions support, SAT/ACT courses and teacher training. +44 (0)20 3004 8101 info.uk@alisteducation.com www.alisteducation.co.uk

The American

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Beacon Financial Education

continued ....

American SAT & ACT Tuition

Personalised SAT and ACT tutoring, bespoke online courses, expert advice on both the college application process and interviews.

207 Regent Street, 3rd Floor London W1B 3HH +44 (0)20 7692 0766 Twitter: @elivonna www.AmericanSATACTtuition.com Elizabeth@AmericanSATtuition.com www.facebook.com/AmericanSAT

Ashwicke Hall School

We are a UK based firm that specialise in providing financial advice to British expatriates who have left assets behind in the UK and foreign nationals who live and work in the UK. The financial planning solutions we provide take into account the tax, currency and legal implications for the country you currently live in and the country you plan to reside in or formerly lived in.

Pew Hill House, Pew Hill, Chippenham, Wiltshire, SN15 1DN +44 1249 400099 ecole@cbfp.co.uk www.cbfp.co.uk

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Tanager Wealth Management LLP

Integrated financial and investment advice for US expats living in the UK provided by US expats. Global account consolidation, UK/US savings and retirement planning together with investment advice.

Contact us for a no obligation meeting or telephone conversation.

020 7871 8440 www.tanagerwealth.com contact@tanagerwealth.com @tanagerwealth

Beacon Financial Education offers a Financial Education Platform for American expats, UK expats and other internationals, providing tools & guides, hosting local seminars as well as providing access to a global network of independent financial advisers. contact@beaconfinancialeducation.org www.beaconfinancialeducation.org https://twitter.com/aboutBFE www.linkedin.com/company/beacon-financialeducation www.facebook.com//beaconfinancialeducation

Cross Border Financial Planning

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MAIL & PARCELS

US Global Mail

Mail & Parcel forwarding service for expats, international shoppers, businesses and travelers. US street address. Virtual Mailbox with mail scanning, bundling and up to 70% savings on international shipping rates. +1 281 596 8965 www.usglobalmail.com support@usglobalmail.com

MEDICAL

Cigna Healthcare

LGT Vestra US

Ashwicke Hall School is an independent, coeducational day and boarding school for 11 to 18 yrs situated near Bath in the beautiful Cotswolds. We offer IGCSEs, A Levels and AP exams in preparation for university. Set in 148 acres of idyllic countryside, contact us to meet the staff and view the facilities.

01225 891841 admissions@ashwicke.sabis.net www.ashwickehall.sabis.net https://www.facebook.com/ashwickehall

FINANCIAL ADVICE Aisa Professional

A specialist subsidiary of wealth management firm LGT Vestra LLP, set up specifically to help clients with financial interests in both the US and UK. Authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority in the UK and a Registered Investment Adviser with the Securities & Exchange Commission in the US. 14 Cornhill, London EC3V 3NR Contact Paul Nixon on +44(0)20 3207 8364 or email paul.nixon@lgtvestra-us.com www.lgtvestra-us.com

Cigna Global specialise in health insurance policies for expats. Choose from three distinct levels of cover, with five optional additional benefits, including outpatient care, medical evacuation, and vision & dental care. Get a quote now!

The Grosvenor Building, 72 Gordon Street, Glasgow, Scotland G13RS www.cignaglobal.com +44(0)1475 779161 From the US: 877.539.6295

OFFICIAL VITAL RECORDS VitalChek

Maseco Private Wealth

A specialist Wealth Management and financial advice firm for those with UK and / or US pensions and investments. Regulated in the US and UK, we use UK and US custodians.

Unit 4, Fordbrook Business Centre, PEWSEY, Wiltshire SN9 5NU + 44 (0) 1672 569111 info@aisagroup.org www.aisagroup.org

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Expert wealth management advice, exceptional client service and a phenomenal client experience for Americans in the US and abroad, UK residents, as well as financial advisors, trustees and foundations.

Burleigh House, 357 Strand, London WC2R 0HS +44 (0) 207 043 0455 enquiries@masecopw.com http://masecoprivatewealth.com

VitalChek, a LexisNexis® company, is America’s #1 authorized online service for ordering official vital records including birth and death certificates, marriage records and divorce records.

Order through our website: www.vitalchek.com www.vitalcheknetwork.com

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VISAS & IMMIGRATION

PROPERTY Barton Wyatt

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Award winning agents offering quality managed properties and house sales in Surrey & Berkshire.

Comprehensive stress free service. NAEA, ARLA & NAR qualified staff.

01344 843000 homes@bartonwyatt.co.uk www.bartonwyatt.co.uk

Global American Migration Services

NOT TO BLOW OUR OWN TRUMPET, BUT

Specializing in all visa categories to the United States 45 years of U.S. Immigration experience. You may be able to avoid Attorney Fees.

Where else can you find a FREE glossy lifestyle magazine for Americans in the UK packed with features written just for you?

Free telephone consultation: Call 07506 849528 Rschremp@gamavisas.com www.gamavisas.com

Featherstone Leigh

OTS Solicitors

Read The American on your mobile device or computer at www.theamerican.co.uk or get your very own copy delivered to your home or workplace – the only thing we’ll ask you to pay for is post and packing.

South West London’s Premier Independent Estate Agent Since 1993.

• Chiswick • Battersea • Kew • Hammersmith • Clapham • Sheen • West Kensington • Putney • Twickenham • Fulham • Barnes • Teddington • Chelsea • Richmond • Kingston www.featherstoneleigh.co.uk

OTS Solicitors is one of the UK’s leading immigration law firms, with over 60 years of combined experience and knowledge in immigration law. Our solicitors are ultimately here to ensure the best representation and outcome for individuals and companies at every stage of the immigration process.

107-111 Fleet Street, London, EC4A 2AB t +44 (0)20 7936 9960 f +44 (0)20 7936 9100 info@otssolicitors.co.uk www.otssolicitors.co.uk TWITTER: twitter.com/OTSSolicitors FACEBOOK: www.facebook.com/otssolicitors LINKEDIN: www.linkedin.com/company/ots-solicitors GOOGLE: plus.google.com/+OtssolicitorsCoUk

Sabbatical Homes

London’s leading rental agency for visiting academics and professionals, specialising in fully furnished properties mainly in zones 1 & 2. Members of NAEA, TDS and TPO, visit our website for more details.

Please contact Elaine or David: elaine@sabbaticalhomes.co.uk david@sabbaticalhomes.co.uk M: (0) 7785 501 042 Office: +44 (0) 208 906 4747 Skype : david.godfreyoffice www.sabbaticalhomes.co.uk

TRAVEL Peter Sommer Travels

Award-winning travel company specialising in expert-led cultural tours, gulet cruises and gulet charters for small groups in Croatia, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Turkey and the UK. We offer a wide range of escorted archaeological tours, food tours, family tours and walking vacations. Winner in 2016 of the ‘Tour Operator of the Year’ award given by AITO (the Association of Independent Tour Operators) because of our exceptional customer feedback. One of the world’s ‘Top Ten Learning Holidays’ - National Geographic.

Tel 01600 888 220 info@petersommer.com www.petersommer.com

The answer – right here!

Just some of our interviewees: Actors John Lithgow, Danny DeVito, Cuba Gooding Jr, Leigh Zimmerman, Robert Sean Leonard, Donny Osmond, Harry Shearer, Betty Buckley, Heather Headley; artists Helaine Blumenfeld, Kaffe Fassett; NFL stars Steven Jackson, Nate Solder, authors Amanda Foreman, Sara Wheeler, Ken Rijock, musicians Curtis Stigers, Scott Gorham, Eric Church, Adam Duritz...

US Visa Solutions - Law Office of Janice A. Flynn

US-licensed immigration lawyers advising on US citizenship, green cards, visa and US entry issues.

Honest, straightforward advice and a high level of bespoke service.

Third Floor, 6 & 7 Hatton Garden, London EC1N 8AD UK +44 (0)20 7092 6830 US +1 (312) 361-0581 Twitter: FlynnUSVisaLaw Janice@usvisasolutions.co.uk www.usvisasolutions.co.uk

To find out whether you’re eligible to advertise your products and services here, and for rates, call Dan +44 (0)1747 830520, or email dan@theamerican.co.uk. You’ll reach Americans living in and visiting the UK as well as Britons who like American culture and products.

A real magazine for the expat community The American isn’t a mail-out or a web-only download. It’s a real magazine available from H The US Embassy, London & US Consulates H The American Museum in Britain H United/Continental & Virgin clubhouses, Heathrow H Autovillage, Suffolk H USAF bases H All the organizations listed in back of this magazine H And more! For other places see: www.theamerican.co.uk/pr/ TheAmericanMagazineOnline.php Call us now: +44 (0)1747 830520.

EMBASSY & SERVICES NEWS New Secretary of State, Exxon’s Rex Tillerson, confirmed Rex Tillerson has been appointed as the new Secretary of State. He is now at the helm of the United States Government’s external operations, including the network of Embassies. Mr Tillerson was confirmed February 1 as the 69th secretary of state, a position first held by Thomas Jefferson and most recently by John Kerry. Formerly an

engineer and oil executive, he was raised in Texas and Oklahoma.

A keen boy scout, he became an Eagle Scout at 13 and later the president of the organization.

Mr Tillerson’s oil industry career took him to Yemen and, for a long stint, Russia. He became the chairman and CEO of the merged ExxonMobil in 2006.

Congressional Elections California & Georgia: Vote Overseas The State of California will conduct a special primary election on Tuesday, April 4, 2017, for the 34th Congressional District to replace Xavier Becerra who was confirmed as Attorney General of California.

This district consists of part of Los Angeles County. If no candidate receives more than 50% of the vote,

a special general election will be held on June 6.

The State of Georgia will conduct a special election on Tuesday, April 18, 2017, for the 6th Congressional District to replace Tom Price who was confirmed as the US Health and Human Services Secretary. This district consists of

parts of northern Atlanta and parts of surrounding counties such as Cobb, Fulton, and Dekalb.

Your vote could count. For help with the absentee voting process you can go to FVAP.gov or call FVAP at 703-588-1584 (toll free 1-800438-VOTE or DSN 425-1584) or email (vote@fvap.gov)

100th Air Refueling Wing Celebrates 25 years at Mildenhall On February 1, 1992, the 100th Air Refueling Wing took over from the 513th Air Command and Control Wing as the host unit at RAF Mildenhall. The wing is the only active duty unit in the US Air Force still carrying World War II markings

on its aircraft, the result of its heritage with the 100th Bombardment Group which started back in June 1942.

Col. Thomas Torkelson is the wing’s 15th commander, and the 67th wing commander at Mildenhall since 1942. He said, “RAF Mildenhall has 100th ARW Stratotanker readies for action USAF PHOTO BY SENIOR AIRMAN CHRISTINE HALAN

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always been a location where Airmen and their families seek to serve. From the European Tanker Task Force days in the early 1990s, to the high operations tempo mission set of today, most tanker aircrews, maintainers and support personnel have either been assigned here, or passed through TDY – and they want to be here. I’d wager almost the entirety of the USAF tanker community as well as a large majority of our receiver aircraft wings and Mobility Air Forces are aware of RAF Mildenhall, the Bloody Hundredth, and the Square D that greets them on the side of our control tower, our Wing Headquarters, and on the tail flash of each of our KC-135s.”

HEAR, HEAR Book your tour today

020 7219 4114

Boston youth choir at Royal Albert Hall

Expat Erin wins Bright!Tax award Erin Moran from Bloomington, Illinois, is the latest recipient of a Bright!Tax Global Scholar award, won from a field of over 400 candidates.

Erin is studying for her PhD at University College London’s Institute of Education. Her post-graduate work aims to change the attitudes toward autistic children in Kazakhstan where they are considered outcasts and excluded from schools. Working alongside local partners and charities, Erin is helping mothers train teachers to educate autisitic children, with the objective of changing this stigma and allowing the children to attend mainstream schools.

“Autism was a disability I saw closely growing up as I watched my uncle trying to help my autistic cousin. I had often wondered how people with limited resources could cope though. I knew that helping these very special children and their families would play a role in my future,” says Erin.

Gregory Dewald, Bright!Tax founder and CEO, says: “American expats are the real American heroes, ambassadors, and pioneers of the 21st century. Erin’s work is an inspiration to me, but more importantly, she is inspiring and helping countless others.”

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The Boston Children’s Chorus joins a host of youth choirs for A Celebration of World Voices, the climax to the inaugural International Youth Choir Festival, at London’s Royal Albert Hall on April 15, 2017. The concert will feature a glorious ‘mash up’ in which the choirs will spontaneously create their own brand new composition. Prior to the evening concert, which is open to the public, the choirs will host workshops for one another, and for choral leaders, music teachers and aspiring singers from across the country, including an African choral music masterclass from South Africa’s Mzansi Youth Choir, and a chance to learn the secrets of great Gospel singing from the BCC. A second event on April 17 brings the festivities to London’s Southbank Centre for a day of informal mini-gigs, before the groups unite as one world-class ‘superchoir’ for a joint performance of Jonathan Dove’s ‘There Was a Child’ in the Royal Festival Hall.

The BCC’s young singers are excited to come to London. 15 year old Chloe Duval says, “Not only do we get to experience 1 new country and culture in London, but we will also be exposed to cultures from around the world! We are so fortunate to have an opportunity to meet singers from 7 other countries.”

“Singing has always made me happy, and singing in a chorus has given me a community and a space in which I can constantly learn and grow as a musician and as a person. This will be my first time going overseas with BCC, and also my first time visiting the UK, and I’m really looking forward to being able to learn and grow by experiencing the country for the first time with such an amazing group of singers,” says Hannah Cole (17).

Loulou Taylor, also 17, adds “My family is British and I go to London a lot, but I am so excited to be able to tour with people I love doing what I love. I love singing choral music because it is expressive, personal, and individual, yet also a bonding experience with a larger group.”

PHOTO © GRETJEN HELENE PHOTOGRAPHY

Gre at s o lo p e r fo r m e rs f ro m a ro u n d t h e wo r ld at S o u t h b a n k C e n t re

I NTER N ATIONA L

PI A N O

S ER I ES 2016 /17 © Steven J. Riskind

Richard Good e Wednesday 31 May

Bach, Beethoven, Chopin

‘Eve r s u btle a n d s u pple, h e m ai n ta i n e d a fra g i le fu s i o n of vi r tu o s i ty a n d i n tro s pe cti o n’ ( The Fi nanci al Ti m es )

© Aldo Ellena

© Norbert Kniat

© Harald Hoffman

Yulianna Avdeeva

Yuja Wang

Alexander Gavrylyuk

Beethoven, Liszt

Beethoven

Bach, Haydn, Chopin, Rachmaninov, Prokofiev

Wednesday 29 March

Tue sd ay 1 1 A p ri l

We d n e s d ay 3 May

Selected for you

Find many more events at www.theamerican.co.uk Belfast Nashville Songwriters Festival Various, Belfast, Northern Ireland www.belfastnashville.com March 1 to 5 The annual festival features Country and roots singers and songwriters from both sides of the pond. A great sharing of tradition. American artists include Kimmie Rhodes & Darrell Scott.

American Museum in Britain Claverton Manor, Claverton, Bath BA2 7BD americanmuseum.org March 18 to December 23 The American Museum in Britain re-opens on March 18 with a new range of exhibitions on American history as well as its ever popular range of social and family events.

This year’s new exhibitions open March 29 to October 29: 1920s Jazz: Fashion and Photographs A decade of American history in which vibrant cultural change created icons on an industrial scale, from stars of the silver screen to skyscrapers, reviewed as a seismic shift in moral, social, and cultural attitudes as the world saw the US as a global tastemaker and trend setter.

Joyce Petschek: Breaking the Pattern, beautiful fabrics & needlework.

The museum also hosts plenty of family fun events, craft workshops, ‘Smiley Coyotes’ for little ones, and musical concerts celebrating all things about the USA in the UK. 14

The American

StAnza - Scotland’s International Poetry Festival Various, St Andrews, Scotland KY16 www.stanzapoetry.org March 1 to 5 StAnza is Scotland’s annual celebration of international poetry. Based in and around St Andrews, the festival incorporates workshops, masterclasses and readings from a global selection of poets, including several from the USA. USA Grad School Day The American School in London, 1 Waverley Place, London NW8 0NP www.fulbright.org.uk March 7 The US-UK Fulbright Commission’s semiannual event provides students with an insider’s view of how to successfully navigate the US university postgraduate admissions process. Fulbright advisors and experts will cover a variety of topics including application components, admissions exams, choosing the right institution and funding opportunities, including the Fulbright Postgraduate Scholarship.

Rating the American Presidents: From George Washington to Donald Trump: A UK Perspective UCL Archaeology Lecture Theatre, 31-34 Gordon Sq., Kings Cross, London WC1H 0PY www.ucl.ac.uk March 8 A poll of 71 UK scholars specializing in US history and politics has rated the performance of presidents from George Washington to Barack Obama in five categories: vision/agenda setting; domestic leadership; foreign policy leadership; moral authority; and the positive historical significance of their legacy. Experts involved in the poll explain the survey, who rated best and worst, how to analyze the results, and an assessment of how Donald Trump is shaping up to compare with his predecessors.

Glasgow Comedy Festival Various, Glasgow, Scotland G4 www.glasgowcomedyfestival.com March 9 to 26 A top line-up of comedians including several Americans plus a special America Stands Up show, a showcase of upcoming American comedy talent.

C2C Country To Country Festival The O2, Peninsula Square, London SE10 www.c2c-countrytocountry.com March 10 to 12 The UK’s biggest celebration of Country music. Headliners at #C2C2017 are Reba McEntire, Brad Paisley and Zac Brown Band.

The bill includes Chris Young, Darius Rucker, Jennifer Nettles, Hunter Hayes, Maren Morris, Cam, Dan + Shay and Brothers Osborne plus five-time Grammy winner Marty Stuart.

Angela Davis in Conversation Royal Festival Hall, Southbank Centre, Belvedere Rd, Lambeth, London SE1 www.southbankcentre.co.uk March 14

Royal Albert Hall presents The European Premiere

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Legendary African-American activist Angela Davis talks to Southbank Centre’s Artistic Director Jude Kelly CBE about women, race and class in the post-Trump era.

Eccles Centre for American Studies The British Library, 96 Euston Road, London NW1 2DB www.bl.uk/eccles March 16 to 18 Pocahontas and After 2017 is the 400th anniversary of the death of Pocahontas, the Native American “princess” who married a Brit and came to England where she later died and was buried in Kent. The Eccles Centre co-sponsors a 3 day conference with film screenings, debates, a lecture, and live music.

March 23 Eccles Writer’s Award Festival A mini literary festival with past and current award holders including Naomi Wood,

Oxford vs Cambridge Boat Races Banks of the River Thames, London theboatraces.org April 2 The annual boat races (women’s and men’s) takes to the Thames, with crews representing Oxford and Cambridge Unviersities participating in the latest chapter of a 160 plus year old rivalry. There are nearly always American partricpants.

See website for more details on the best places to watch the race.

Sunday 2nd April 2017 4.35pm & 5.35pm.

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John Burnside, Andrea Wulf, Olivia Laing, Erica Wagner, Sarah Churchwell, Benjamin Markovits, William Atkins, Alison MacLeod, Hannah Kohler and Bob Stanley. 7pm to 9pm , followed by a drinks reception.

Unresolved histories: whose American Dream?

BP Lecture Theatre, British Museum, Great Russell St, London WC1B 3DG www.britishmuseum.org March 24 Playwright and novelist Bonnie Greer and Sarah Churchwell, Chair of Public Understanding of the Humanities and Professorial Fellow, IES, at the School of Advanced Study, University of London, reflect on social and racial divisions in America, both current and historical.

Mother’s Day everywhere, UK March 26 A day for all children to show appreciation to their Mothers - unlike in the US, in Britain this day falls on the fourth Sunday of Lent, so this year have your breakfast in bed, cards and gifts at the ready for March 26th!

April Fools Day everywhere, UK April 1 The day for pulling pranks and ‘fooling’ your friends, but don’t forget to stop the jokes by midday, as the UK tradition dictates that anyone who plays a trick after midday are themselves the ‘April Fools’.

The Passion of Jesus Trafalgar Square, London www.wintershall-estate.com April 14 On Good Friday the renowned Wintershall Players return to the heart of London with their awe-inspiring full scale re-enactment of The Passion of Jesus, performed for free in the shadow of the National Gallery. The story commemorating the day Jesus is believed to have been arrested, tried and

crucified by the Romans, two days before miraculously rising from the dead on Easter Sunday is brought to life by a cast of over a hundred, all in resplendent costumes, along with horses, doves and donkeys. Featuring realistic scenes and a heart moving crucifixion and resurrection, The Passion of Jesus is an unforgettable experience.

Contains a realistic interpretation of the crucifixion. Parental guidance is advised.

On Easter Saturday (April 15th) the cast of players and animals moves to the High Street in Guildford, in their home county of Surrey. They then perform the Life of Christ at the Wintershall Estate, Bramley, Guildford, Surrey, GU5 0LR from June 20th to 24th and the Wintershall Nativity in December.

London Harness Horse Parade South of England Centre, West Sussex, Ardingly, Haywards Heath RH17 6TL www.lhhp.co.uk April 17 Dating back to 1904, the Harness Horse Parade was originally intended to promote good welfare for London’s working horses.

Now, the parade is an opportunity to see a selection of Horses, Donkies and Ponies and both historic and contemporary carriages.

Shakespeare’s Birthday Stratford-upon-Avon www.shakespearescelebrations.com April 22 (street events), 23 (anniversary) Stratford-upon-Avon celebrates the famous bard’s birthday with free street entertainment and special birthday themed activities, including the Grand Birthday Procession parades through the town.

London Marathon www.virginmoneylondonmarathon.com April 23 A mainstay of British springtime sees both professional and fun-runners weave their way through the capital on their way to the finish line on Constitution Hill, near Buckingham Palace.

The American

A Celebration of World Voices Royal Albert Hall Saturday 15 April 2017, 5:00pm A host of leading world youth choirs, including the Boston Children’s Chorus, unite for a unique evening of performance.

Part of the International Youth Choir Festival 2017

Promoted by the Royal Albert Hall & National Youth Choirs of Great Britain Principal Media Partner: choral.ly / Education Partner: ABRSM

TICKETS: www.iycfestival.org

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Expat Retirement Don’t Do What I Did Make sure you qualify for US Social Security and Medicare, advises Carol Gould

I

f you are young - let’s say under thirty-five - please listen to me. If you are somewhat older - say, up to forty-five - please listen too. Why? From the outset may I explain that I am not a tax lawyer but simply a private citizen wishing to share my thoughts on retirement.

I lived in Great Britain from the age of twenty-two in 1976 and never once thought about my retirement years before it was too late.

It happens - you spend all of your waking hours living a full life. I was never a big earner and in some years was plagued by ill health but my life was solely in Britain. Many Americans decide to make a life in the UK because they have fallen in love and embark on raising a family. What is vital to remember is that Britain, according to the OECD - the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development - has one of the lowest state pensions in the developed world. When I went on the march on Downing Street as part of the WASPI campaign - Women Against State Pension Inequality - I spoke to Owen Smith MP who said he was keenly aware of the pitiful amount paid to British pensioners compared to that offered in other countries. (It should be pointed out here that European pensions are much higher than in Britain. In fact

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I argued pre-Brexit that if we were to Remain in the EU we should have equalization with generous continental pensions.)

Don’t get cut out of the US system

So - if you want to go back to the USA someday in your older years do you want to be cut out of Social Security and Medicare?

The full British state pension adds up to a whopping £130 a week.

Really and truly, who can live on that? Many will say, ‘Ah, but in the UK you have the National Health Service, which is worth its weight in gold,‘ but is a retirement income that barely covers the telephone, gas and electric bills a situation you really want? Let’s cut to the chase: here is what happened to me. I received this message from the Federal Benefits Unit in London earlier this year: “The Social Security records show that you have 7 quarters of coverage under the US Social Security System. To be fully insured you need a minimum of 40 quarters. As the US Social Security Administration has a Totalization Agreement with the US/ UK you can be entitled to retirement benefits from the US Social Security Administration under this agreement. Please visit the website which will provide you with general infor-

mation on the Totalization Agreements that the US has with other countries.

“The approximate benefit amount that you would receive from the US Social Security Administration under the Totalization agreement at your full retirement age of 66 is $22 per month.”

OMG - I nearly had heart failure when I saw that amount. What is important to note here is that unlike the UK, the American pension system does not allow taxpayers to top up their pension pot. I asked the Federal Benefits Unit if I could pay in a lump sum to bring up my number of quarters, but no. Likewise my situation precludes me from benefiting from Medicare. One aspect of this Embassy appraisal is that I did pay in on the odd year several thousand dollars but in other years I was not liable for US tax. Were I able to spread those thousands over several quarters that would bring me closer to qualifying but this mechanism is not permissible.

So, what is the solution?

All these decades it would have helped had I had even an income from the USA - say, writing for a magazine or being a consultant to a US company. This is something you need to consider if you are young

©FRANKIE LEON

enough to keep yourself employed on both sides of the ocean - even part-time. Get those quarters! One solution for me would be to go back to the USA now and work full-time until age 70 to accumulate more quarters. But do I really want to do that at my advanced age?

My advice to long-time expatriate Americans is to start saving at an early age in a flexible private pension scheme - not an annuity - so that you have some financial backup to compensate for the paltry state pension. Remember, too, that if you go back to the USA your state pension will not rise because the UK does not allow pensioners who move overseas to enjoy the annual increment.

The ‘upheaval solution,’ as I call it, is to quit your UK domicile in your thir-

ties or forties and to go back to the USA, get a job and start paying in to Social Security and Medicare. It is a painful choice but Social Security is considerably higher than the British state pension.

I remember visiting my mom in 1989 and her saying ‘Carol, you’ve got to start thinking about your retirement!’ I barked at her, ‘Oh, come on, I’m thirty-five - I’m not thinking about my retirement!’ I may have been a Phi Beta Kappa but boy, was that a dumb response. Suddenly at age 63 I am shocked that despite the advantage of the Equalization Agreement I needed to pay in to the American system from work done for an American employer. It keeps rolling around in my head that had I paid in to Social Security and Medi-

care the amount I paid in to the UK pension system all these decades, I would qualify for the top whack and have a happy retirement.

Frankly it frightens the hell out of me that £130 a week is all I get after nearly forty years of hard work overseas - and yes, I am grateful for the NHS and for free prescriptions. It is a grim prospect, as I see so many of my British retiree friends trying to make ends meet.

I hope this article has offered some warning lights on what to do if you are still young enough to make Social Security and Medicare a reality for your older years. .

Carol Gould is an American journalist, author, filmmaker and broadcaster who has lived in the UK for years The American

19

Finance: PFICs and OIGs Investing tax-efficiently as a US person in the UK: by Andrea Solana As an American living in the UK, almost nothing related to your financial affairs is easy. The consequences of seemingly simple decisions – such as how to pay for a new home or purchase a mutual fund - may create unnecessary tax charges and complexities. There are a number of key milestones that occur, from the time you arrive in the UK to the time you potentially approach and eventually reach retirement. Many of these changes will impact the appropriate wealth management strategies for American expats. Understanding how rules will change for you over time will allow you to plan ahead and make prudent financial decisions. However, there are some principles of personal finance that apply regardless of these complications.

A

s we have discussed previously, generally many non-domiciled individuals begin paying tax in the UK on worldwide earnings after 7 years of residency, that is, unless there is reason to pay the one-off Remittance Basis Charge (RBC) to remain on Remittance Basis taxation. And, even if you choose to pay the RBC, under the new rules set to come into effect in April 2017, any non-domiciled individuals who are UK resident for more than 15 out of the last 20 years will automatically move to paying tax in the UK on worldwide earnings. This change to worldwide taxation in the UK gen-

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erally requires you to look closely at any offshore earnings and asset structure in a slightly different light.

For any assets that are held outside of a recognized tax wrapped structure (for example, a Traditional IRA, Roth IRA, 401k or UK occupational pension scheme, etc.) you now need to ensure that the assets you own are tax-efficient from both a US and UK perspective (as opposed to just focusing on US tax efficiency) to avoid being subject to any unnecessary and disadvantageous tax charges.

To recap, from a US perspective, any investment in non-US col-

lective investments results in Passive Foreign Investment Company (PFIC) exposure which, unless a special mark-to-market election is made in the first year of ownership, may translate to recognized gains being taxed at the highest marginal income tax rate (currently 39.6%) plus an interest charge applied over the period of ownership. In addition to traditional non-US collectives being subject to PFIC treatment in the US, common UK products such as onshore and offshore investment bonds as well as collective EIS and VCT schemes are also subject to this regime. Additionally, due to the

left: Looking for tax-efficient securities for US citizens living in the UK? Things have changed since these gentlemen were working in the New York Stock Exchange © LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

fact that ISAs are considered taxable accounts from a US tax perspective, any collectives held within an ISA would be subject to PFIC treatment as well.

From a UK perspective, owning US collective investments such as mutual funds or exchange traded funds (without UK reporting status) can bring about similar treatment in the UK to the PFIC regime in the US. Any offshore collective investments that do not have UK reporting status will attract offshore income gains (OIG) taxation as opposed to capital gain treatment. A higher or additional rate taxpayer will find themselves paying 40% or 45% income tax on gains as opposed to 20%.

Additionally, OIG assets can potentially bring about two layers of taxation at death. OIG assets are deemed

to be sold at death with income tax being assessed. Then, to the extent that you are also deemed domicile for UK inheritance tax purposes, the assets (less an income tax paid) are also includable in your UK estate. So, whilst making these changes after already crossing over to the Arising basis is usually not ideal, it is better to address this sooner rather than later to avoid any surprises.

So, in summary, the following types of securities are considered tax-efficient for a US person living in the UK: Individual shares Individual bonds US ETFs with UK reporting status US mutual funds with UK reporting status Ensuring that the structure of your investments are tax-efficient

from both a US and UK perspective is an important ingredient to having a successful investment experience. It will not only allow you to take advantage of available US and UK allowances but it will also allow you to avoid incurring unnecessary tax costs which ultimately act as a headwind to investment returns.

If you would like a full copy of MASECO’s 39 Steps to Smart Living in the UK please visit www.masecoprivatewealth.com/the39steps or contact enquiries@masecopw.com.

MASECO Private Wealth is not a qualified tax adviser and you should seek separate advice on your tax position with a suitably qualified tax adviser. MASECO LLP trading as MASECO Private Wealth is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority. The Financial Conduct Authority does not regulate tax advice.

Investing in change ‘C

hange’ refers to a difference in a state of affairs at different points in time. Although it is a familiar concept, an analysis of change is more difficult than it suggests and has challenged philosophers for thousands of years.

Heraclitus is widely recognized as one of the first philosophers known to have brought the analysis of change to the fore, stating: “One cannot step into the same river twice...” observing that despite the river appearing the

same, the body of water has materially changed. Furthermore, the person entering the water may look the same, however, they too will have changed.

This is equally true of financial markets, despite appearances, they are never the same twice.

It is safe to say the modern world is changing more than ever before, with growing geopolitical risk and increased global nationalist and populist sentiment, change and the speed of change appear to have been considerably

by Paul Nixon

underestimated. Yet changes continue to provide surprises. How much would someone have received if they had placed a £1 bet on Leicester City winning the Premiership, the UK voting to leave the EU and Donald Trump winning the US election when they were at their longest odds? A £4,530,906 question.

It is therefore easy to understand why 2016 is being referred to as “the year of change”. 2017 however, has plenty of potential to continue

Heraclitus understood change - but did he invest in it?

© ASHFIN DARIAN

this theme, with Donald Trump now #POTUS, the UK triggering article 50 and the general elections in the Netherlands, France and Germany. Those who lived through the eras of momentous change, such as the Industrial Revolution and the Great Depression, would argue that the world has always been dealing with significant change. It could however be said that it is the pace at which change is now taking place that is creating feelings of apprehension and uncertainty.

Nowhere is the pace of change more accentuated than in technology. How we communicate with each other has arguably been the fastest change in recent times, as advances in computers and mobile technologies have revolutionized all mediums of communication. In 1965, the first commercially successful minicomputer had an inflation-adjusted price of $135,470.

However, even for this price it was only able to undertake basic computations, such as addition and multiplication. Its capacity was around 4,000 12-bit words.

Today’s mid-range smartphone has a capacity 3 million times the size and costs less than $600.

Change is one of life’s few constants, excluding death and taxes, and whilst one must acknowledge, and indeed embrace change, one must also be aware of the dangers of trying to predict too specifically the outcome of any one event. After all, if it was that easy everyone would have made at least £4,530,906 last year.

Navigating change, financial or otherwise, becomes easier after clearly assessing goals, understanding the full implications of the change that is happening, including its precedents and patterns, and ensuring decisions are made on the basis of these and the resources available. This is a fundamental part of the wealth management process, preparing clients for change and helping them deal with and thrive throughout change.

Macro trends are very difficult to predict with any real precision, couple this with a rise in political risk and the arguments for a truly diversified portfolio become stronger. Making major

asset allocation decisions or positioning a portfolio based solely on an anticipated outcome of a particular event is an extremely risky investment strategy.

As witnessed during Brexit, many investors would have experienced sharp corrections after incorrectly positioning their portfolios for the widely anticipated “remain” vote. It is paramount to avoid being driven by change and positioning portfolios in favor of a particular outcome. Rather a strategy should be established to maximize the potential for success, utilizing all available resources, including tax efficient, diversified strategies and alternative investments, to meet long-term objectives, with sufficient flexibility to take advantage of short-term tactical opportunities.

To paraphrase Donald Rumsfeld, once we have taken into account the known unknowns, we begin to worry about what the unknown unknowns are. In the end, it is reasoned judgement backed by careful thought that drives our decisions. This is more than ever pertinent today.

Change is constant and as goals are set, changes are happening. It is paramount that whilst the long-term natures of clients’ goals are acknowledged, how these goals can be achieved in the current environment is constantly reviewed.

As Heraclitus said: “Those who love wisdom must investigate many things”.

Paul Nixon is CEO of LGT Vestra US paul.nixon@lgtvestra-us.com www.lgtvestra-us.com +44 (0) 203 207 8000 The American

23

British Pension?

T

he British National Office of Statistics from data in 2013 suggests that there were over 197,000 US nationals resident in the UK. Those that work in Britain will undoubtably pay British tax and many will be members of a British pension scheme, some of whom will return home to the US.

British Pension Options: Frequently discussed

1. Final salary scheme (Will require advice outside the scope of this article) 2. SIPP (Self-Invested Personal Pension) 3. QROPS - Qualifying Recognised Overseas Pension SchemesNow referred to as ROPS by HMRC The transfer of a British pension, or a QROPS, to an IRA or 401K is not permitted, and therefore the consideration largely comes down to assessing whether leaving the pension where it is, or moving it to a SIPP or a QROPS is the better option.

So let us consider SIPPs and QROPS. Frequently, the homecoming American will be offered the chance to transfer the British pension to a Qualifying ROPS. While this

is most certainly possible, it is worth mentioning that the word “Qualifying” within QROPS has a different meaning than “Qualifying” to the IRS, and the difference could be a lot of tax!

Malta is often the preferred QROPS location, on many websites referred to as US Qualified or HMRC Approved. This is not the case at all and for the past couple of years, Malta has been subject to FATCA. Should a British pension be transferred to Malta then the event is reportable under FATCA by the custodian.

The US Department of the Treasury in 2011 stated, among other things, “…..Therefore, if the (British pension) transfer were to a pension scheme established in a third country, instead of to another pension scheme established in the United Kingdom, the transfer could be treated as a distribution that would be subject to taxation as income of the individual under paragraphs 1 and 2 of Article 17 of the U.K. Treaty.“ This being the case, if you are US tax resident at the time of the transfer to a QROPS then there could be a tax charge if insufficient Foreign Tax Credits are available to offset

Considerations for returning US expats

© HMRC

this tax.

In addition, the investments within a QROPS in places like Malta may be deemed by the IRS as being part of a trust wrapper. If this is the case then non-IRS recognised investments may be subject to a withholding tax, in addition to the tax on transfer irrespective of whether the indivudal is US or nonUS tax resident.

British pensions are not covered by the FATCA reporting requirements and so the relevant document to refer to is the Double Tax Treaty which covers both SIPPS and final salary pension schemes and makes the income tax position clear.

SIPPS can hold US compliant funds, denominated in US Dollars, to reduce currency risks. Despite being lower cost than QROPS, and tax compliant as a qualifying pension for the IRS, SIPPs are rarely recommended over QROPS by advisers based outside the UK, but this is more to do with the tough regulatory status of SIPPs in the UK and the lack of regulatory licences held by the advisers outside Britain. Put bluntly it is easier to recommend the higher risk QROPS than the lower cost SIPP as it takes the British pension outside of the British regulatory protection and system.

Cross-border advice from British qualified advisers with US investment licences is a must and, if a QROPS is to be considered, specialist US tax opinion before transferring.

Without this advice the only winner will be the IRS.

Written by Aisa Group – regulated in the UK by the Financial Conduct Authority and in the US by the Securities and Exchange Commission.

24

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3 Big Mistakes

© 401KCALCULATOR.ORG

US Expats Should Avoid This Tax Season With the 2017 tax filing season well under way, hundreds of thousands of American citizens living in the United Kingdom are again facing the task of filing US taxes while abroad. Each year presents its own unique challenges, so it’s important to stay on top of the ever-changing world of US income taxation. The following are three big mistakes that Americans living in the UK should avoid this tax season.

filing because #1Not no tax is due

US expats can often take advantage of beneficial tax rules to eliminate their US tax obligation. For instance, under the foreign earned income exclusion (“FEIE”), expats can exclude a certain amount of income earned overseas (US$ 101,300 for the 2016 tax year).

Foreign tax credits may also be available to eliminate one’s US tax obligation.

These exemptions may eliminate the requirement to pay tax, but they do not eliminate the obligation to file a tax return – in fact, in order to claim the foreign earned income exclusion or foreign tax credits, you

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actually need to file a tax return, and not filing on time may prevent you from being able to later make these claims on your return.

Expats living abroad who mistakenly haven’t been filing should consider utilizing one of the IRS amnesty programs to catch up with the IRS. Under the so-called “Streamlined Procedures,” for instance, non-willfully delinquent filers can potentially catch up without incurring any penalties.

#2Conflating law with

UK tax US tax law

Contrary to the belief of many expats, the tax rules applied in the UK are not necessarily applied in

the United States.

Take for example the sale of your home. The UK may offer a full tax exemption from the sale of your personal residence, but US tax law works differently. The US does offer a US$ 250,000 exemption on the gain from the sale of your home (US$ 500,000 for joint married filers), if certain requirements are met. However, gain exceeding the exclusion will be subject to US tax.

Currently, the maximum capital gains rate in the US is 20%, plus the net investment income tax (the “Obamacare tax”) of 3.8%. Consideration should be given to certain planning techniques, including property gifting, to reduce one’s US tax burden.

Another common example is the UK pension or other savings account (e.g., ISA account), which can have vastly different tax implications in each country. For instance, mutual funds held through stocks and shares ISAs, which may have favorable tax treatment in the UK, can trigger adverse passive foreign investment company (“PFIC”) consequences in the US. Expats should consider careful planning with an investment advisor who is sensitive to US expat issues. The US-UK tax treaty may help to ameliorate some of the US tax issues associated with pension plans. However, utilizing the treaty to defer US tax on employer contributions and earnings in a pension fund may actually be disadvantageous if you plan to one day retire in the United States.

#3Automatically choosing

FEIE

As mentioned above, expats often take advantage of the foreign earned income exclusion (“FEIE”) to reduce or eliminate their US tax bill. Assuming sufficient credits are available (i.e., your UK tax exceeds your US tax on your foreign income), US expat parents should consider the foreign tax credit instead, because under a new law, taxpayers who utilize the FEIE cannot claim the child tax credit (which may be refundable up to an amount of $1,000 per child). This limitation does not apply, however, when foreign tax credits are utilized.

This significant change in US tax law serves as a good example of why staying on top of the latest tax rule

changes is essential for optimizing your US tax filing. With a new US administration, further changes are no doubt on the horizon.

After spending the majority of their respective careers at two of the largest accounting firms (PwC and Ernst & Young), Joshua Ashman and Ephraim Moss founded Expat Tax Professionals, a firm specializing in the needs of US citizens living abroad.

Joshua Ashman, CPA, (718) 887-9933 jashman@expattaxprofessionals.com.

Ephraim Moss, esq. (718) 887-9933, emoss@expattaxprofessionals.com www.expattaxprofessionals.com

Why choose Expat Tax Professionals?

We prepare your taxes on time using our simple online process.

We are led by international tax experts with years of Big 4 firm experience.

We do not outsource anything to third-party contractor preparers.

Our simple pricing includes all the standard expat forms with no hidden fees.

We help late filers come back into compliance with the IRS with no penalties.

Shhh! Keep it Private NHS dental is good, but not the only game in town, says Tim Bradstock-Smith

A

s an American living in the good option to ensure access to den- not stop you accessing NHS services, UK, you may have already tal healthcare is there when you need and can, in fact, be a great enhanceexperienced the benefits of the it most, and in a convenient location, ment. If you receive a diagnosis on National Health Serthe NHS, you may like to vice (NHS) – a mostly seek a second opinion. A free service, paid for by private healthcare plan taxes. NHS treatment is can offer that back-up, reliable and affordable, giving you great peace of so why choose private mind. Perhaps you travel a healthcare? In a nutlot? An enhanced internashell, private healthcare tional plan can ensure that offers more choice than you receive the very best you would get using the healthcare wherever you NHS, including a choice may be in the world. of appointment times, If you are considerusually a choice of locaing a private healthcare tions, and sometimes plan, it is very important even a choice of practito research thoroughly tioners. before making any comTime is an important mitment. List the imporfactor when you need tant factors – do you need to access healthcare, international cover? Does whether you need an the policy extend to cover appointment at the denyour family? Do you have tist or you want timely and any pre-existing condiconvenient contact with tions? Once you have a healthcare specialist. As established exactly what with most public healthyou need from a private care systems, the NHS healthcare plan, there are has long waiting lists and many comparison webreferral times, meaning sites that can help you that you could be waiting choose the best value, months to speak to a spebest-fitting plan for you cialist. A private healthcare and your family. policy allows you almost Can a winning smile help you go far? just ask George © NICOLAS GENIN immediate access to the health services you require. whether that is close to home or This editorial has been provided by The London Dental healthcare is accessible to work. Another benefit of private Smile Clinic. Its founder, Tim Bradstock-Smith, via the NHS, but waiting lists to join healthcare is that it covers some prois the only UK dentist to hold both BACD (British dental practices can be extensive. cedures that the NHS does not, such Academy of Cosmetic Dentistry) and AACD Patients are required to register to as certain braces and cosmetic treat(American Academy of Cosmetic Dentistry) access a dentist in the area in which ments. Additionally, private practices accreditation. they live; in some areas demand is will also have access to the latest high, resulting in limited availability developments and treatments which Visit www.londonsmile.co.uk for more informaof practitioners. As such, having a the NHS may not yet have in place. tion on treatments available private healthcare plan in place is a A private healthcare plan does

28

The American

Who’s Afraid of Virginia Schultz?

Or, Thoughts of a Woman of a Certain Age, a new column by our much loved contributor he election is over and Donald Trump won. I’ve been a Republican since I was eighteen and this is the first time I found I couldn’t vote for my party. The thing that bothers me is, the women who were against Hillary.

I think of my female ancestors who came with the men to a new life in an unsettled country away from family and the friends they knew all their life and wonder what they would think.

The sad thing was, I heard more anger against her than Trump from female Americans. The fact he was married three times, had inherited a fortune from his father, or that he declared bankruptcy several times, leaving disaster behind for those who worked for him was seldom mentioned. Why did women resent Hillary? I ask myself.

Whatever problems they had in the past, the Clinton marriage appears solid and she appears to enjoy being a grandmother. Did Hillary not fight hard enough to be president?

But, then, I’m reminded that any woman who became as vulgar and crude as Trump was would have been condemned far and

©PAUL HAMILTON

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wide, especially by her own sex.

Melania is not moving to Washington, but then, perhaps, the White House doesn’t symbolize for her what it means to me. Her son comes first which I understand, but I then question the marriage. The boy is at an age where he needs his father’s guidance which is difficult if

Trump is in one city and the boy in another.

I think of my own three children at that age when their father was away weeks at a time and know the difficulty it was at times for them to relate to each other. Yet, at the same time, for my late husband and myself, separation was good for us even though it meant more responsibility for me raising our three children when I was on on my own for days at a time. It gave us, however, a freedom we needed and especially for me, to do my own ‘thing’ and not be hampered by catering to my husband’s needs and wants as too many of us did in the 1950’s and ‘60’s.

Absence may not make everyone’s marriage stronger, but for two first born individuals it was as necessary to us as my cup of coffee is for me first thing in the morning, with cream, please.

Not moving to DC - Melania may find that absence makes the marriage stronger. ©ABC / ISA MAE ASTUTE

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Elizabeth Taylor in a promotional shot

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y mother had a sense of style and at five foot six and probably not weighing more than 120 pounds, always appeared stylish and elegant. The mothers of my classmates would arrive wearing some simple outfit while mother was wearing a designer dress, high heels and a turban that showed off her Marlene Dietrich fine bone face. Instead of being proud of her beauty, I wanted to crawl under a desk because she didn’t look like everyone else.

The problem with having a beautiful mother when one is young, people too often compare the two of you. It wasn’t a problem for my sister as she was petite with huge wide set eyes, lovely curly light brown hair and a personality that could charm the birds out of the trees. She took after my father’s side of the family while I resembled my mother’s. I was tall and skinny with too small hands and feet, straight brown hair and clumsy.

Perhaps it was the times, but people never seem to take into consideration how a child might be hurt when they remarked, ‘It’s a shame she’s so ugly when her mother is so beautiful.’

A psychiatrist friend told me that having a cruel and selfish mother who was continually critical either strengthened or destroyed a woman and named Eleanor Roosevelt as an exam30

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ple. Her mother was known for her beauty and had no pleasure in having an unattractive child as she let Eleanor know. My problem was different. I wasn’t an ugly duckling at fifteen, but learned when I was asked to model that a half shy smile combined with a kind of cockiness that only the young can get away with, gave me the attention her beauty didn’t receive.

As a result, I was often asked to model and she wasn’t.

If there is one thing every beautiful woman should learn is beauty is temporary and that ugly duckling child may not become the swan they once were, but she is younger and trying to compete is a waste of time.

I

first met Elizabeth Taylor when we were in our late twenties and I don’t think I met a

more beautiful woman before or since. But years later in New York while dining at an exclusive restaurant, she sat at a table next to me and although she looked familiar, I didn’t recognize her until our waiter told us, ‘That’s Elizabeth Taylor sitting next to you.’ The eyes were still beautiful, but she was overweight and her face appeared to look as if it was drawn tightly together to hide any lines. I don’t know if it was caused by too many face lifts wrongly done or heavy drinking in her past. There was a tiredness in her face that appeared to echo the unhappiness that cursed her during her lifetime despite her success as an actress and a philanthropist.

The anti-gay movement when we were young was cruel and she was one of the first prominent stars who stood up and spoke for gay rights. This took courage as I knew from having gay friends.

I use to go out with a boy who was gay whenever his mother came to visit. Finally, after she learned he had Aids, she accepted him and was with his lover, each holding a hand while he was dying. At his funeral, she put her arms around me and whispered, ‘It made me happy thinking you were his girlfriend, but if I’m honest with myself, it was just wishful thinking because deep down I’ve always known the truth and wish now I had accepted him for the wonderful son he was.’

P

resident Trump, yes, I refer to him as president, for he won the electoral votes and is my president, like it or not. I shall support him as I did Obama and previous presidents and criticize as well if I disprove of his policies. I plan to attend Republican Abroad functions and perhaps because of my age, speak more openly and freely than someone far younger as I have less to lose.

Democracy as I’ve learned is not always tea and cake and I might have to add more sugar to my tea, but the question becomes, what is a better alternative? If I had advice for our new president it would be stop twittering in the middle of the night.

Stones may kill you while words won’t, but the memory lasts until death do us part. Text messages today are easily erased, but the words remain.

Like it or not, it will be future historians who will decide if Trump ‘made American great again’ and not his repeating those words over and over again. Fifty years from now, Trump will be a president from the past and his legacy will be remembered for what he did for the country and not unfulfilled promises. Before one destroys, one must have another answer, I’ve learned.

Destroying a forest does not just mean cutting trees down without replanting, for that empty land left behind becomes a problem that can be more expensive than the profits made from those trees that were felled.

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y maternal grandfather whom I adored and adored me had a mistress named Winnie who owned a

dress shop in a small town in Pennsylvania and every year she’d buy my sister and I a lovely dress, often one she bought on a buying trip to France.

One year, I must have been six or seven, I fell in love with a red hat with a tiny feather which I persuaded her to give me instead of the dress much to my mother’s horror. She became so angry she took the hat and cut it into pieces so I could never wear it again. Yet, even today in my ancient age, I recall the pleasure I had wearing that hat if only for a few days. The sad thing was, my mother would continually remind me of that hat and it became an albatross in her memory that made her bitter each time she spoke of it while I picture myself feeling the softness of that red velvet felt and see that tiny white feather twitch slightly as I look admiringly at myself in the mirror.

The best advice I was given was from my mother’s best friend who was an army nurse during World War II and had been as close to the front lines as a woman was then allowed.

“Always be proud of yourself and be the person you want to be and not the one that is expected” she told me. “Remember that tomorrow becomes yesterday in twenty-four hours.”

in, the curse of mankind from the beginning as they find when man is dug up from the past.

There are medicines to ease the pain, but that creates a dependency in the future for the pills or liquids, whatever you take, gets stronger and stronger and you become an addict to more and more each day.

So, I fight the urge to take anything but drug store bought aspirin that I take on awakening and before I fall sleep. I find myself dreading the cold and wet of winter and dream of living again in Puerto Rico and swimming in our pool early in the morning when the sun is rising and my children still asleep, my husband who exists on six hours sleep has already left for work and for a brief moment I can be me and not a mother and wife or even a friend to a friend.

We can all dream ©SARAH ACKERMAN

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ne reaches an age where one’s opinion seems to be lost and your voice is a whisper in everyone’s ears under the age of fifty. Slipping out of your life are friends one by one, and you find yourself recalling what you were told years ago and that is, old age isn’t for sissies.

Turn seventy and arthritis sets The American

31

MY EXPAT LIFE

Angela Medvedeva A

student from the United States has become one of the youngest ever to study for a PhD at Kingston University. Angela Medvedeva, from Houston, Texas, enroled last summer aged just 17 to undertake a postgraduate research degree in psychology.

Angela graduated from the University of Houston with degrees in both psychology and liberal studies.

She left high school for university at 15, but insists that she’s not the stereotypical child genius pressured by pushy parents. Instead, she says she is driven by a desire to continually try things that haven’t been done before, helped by support from a strong family unit, teachers and peers.

“I think I’m either more courageous or more foolhardy than my peers,” said Angela, who turned 18 in July 2016. “I have strong intuitions about things and I like to push my limits and the boundaries of what I can do.”

Born in Switzerland, Angela lived in Russia for a short time before

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settling in the US at the age of seven.

She says her PhD in the School of Social and Behavioural Sciences will build upon her own experiences of living in different countries and her interest in foreign languages and cultures.

Her PhD will see Angela working on a number of research projects, including using an electroencephalogram (EEG) to monitor the brain activity of people from multiple cultural backgrounds and examine how they adjust to the customs and values of a new country when they arrive.

Despite having never been to the United Kingdom before, and receiving offers from numerous institutions both back home and internationally, Angela said she felt such an immediate, instinctive connection with her research supervisors at Kingston that for her, there was no other choice.

“Coming from a scientific background, where everything is so precise and we must know exactly why we do things, everyone was

surprised I was so ready to pack up my bags and come here,” said Angela.

“But I think it’s rare so early on in your research career to find a place you’re so comfortable with.”

After the initial shock of discovering how young she was, tutors and fellow students have been unfazed by the age gap, according to the teenager. “My age is just a technicality to me,” she said. “When my fellow PhD students say I look really young, I just joke that it must be the facial cream I’m using. My supervisors don’t doubt my ability just because of my age.”

Once her PhD is complete, Angela would like to put her research to practical use in the world of medicine. But for now, she’s just enjoying her time at Kingston U. “It’s surprising how much I feel at home here – there’s a cat living in the reception of my halls of residence which looks like my own cat. And while that’s such a tiny detail, it reminds me of home and that’s really special.”

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Miss Patricia

Wins the Ashes Death’s like a lawyer: he’s needed, but he takes all the fun out of parties, finds Miss P

began to feel that our friends weren’t taking things seriously when they started inviting my mother’s ashes along with me to dinners. ‘Bring your mom!’ they would enthuse. In fairness, she had always been exceptionally pleasant company.

It’s one of the quirkier parts of ex-pat life: you can have your baby in the UK. You can get married in the UK. But a funeral demands a trip home.

First off, you have to decide if the flight is worth it: the person you’re going to see can’t see you. At my funeral, (should my survivors be so misguided as to waste money on one), the speaker can just announce the link to my website and that’s my career covered. My friends will click ‘Like’ on their iphones and go home.

Due to our ages, any number of friends have had some unwanted confrontations with that other mutual acquaintance, Death. He’s like a lawyer: he’s needed, but he takes all the fun out of parties.

An American friend recently posted a cute photo of herself with her sister, releasing a little froggie into a pond. Luckily for me, about

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to reply with some wisecrack, I realized in time that it was actually her father’s ashes that were being scattered. (Although, blending the theory of reincarnation with the amphibious appearance of any fetus,

© LILIANE MEMORIALS

I

it might amount to the same thing.)

My own mother’s ashes began to pose one of those ex-pat dilemmas. Everything became trapped in storage, including her. As short-term

plans unpredictably turned into long-term ones, The Boxes become as burdensome as Marley’s chain links. ‘Regular People’ think you can just walk into your storage unit and fetch things, but either your taped boxes are in a unit packed tighter than the inside of an egg, or your possessions were readied for shipping and so are in a sealed cube.

My mother had indeed been buried. But not in the way she wished.

She was emphatic about cremation, and always said that open caskets were barbaric and she didn’t want people staring at her.

So, finally, on a major redirectour-lives trip, I arranged her liberation.

Passing a sobbing woman sitting on stacked boxes inside her rented space, I found my mother’s little casket. She deserved better than a place where guards had to chase off prostitutes and homeless people trying to find affordable shelter: they were sent off to their favorite freeway underpasses instead.

I knew where Mom wanted to be: I had gone with her to scatter my dad’s ashes at a favorite nature walk.

I remember being surprised to find

A pre-paving Favorite Nature Spot ©JUSTIN KERN

that ashes could be a little chunky, but then, so was my dad.

So one special Thanksgiving, I begged off from friends and in-laws, and Mom and I struck off on our own.

But when we arrived at Favorite Nature Spot, we found that paradise have been paved: years had passed and development had encroached.

I had the choice of dumping my mother down a gutter, or separating her from Dad. I reasoned that my father might have scattered even further during construction anyway, so the latter seemed the best option.

My mother was flexible about rules anyway. Once during a pet blessing outside her church, when a thirsty dog drank all the holy water, she quietly refilled the vessel from

a garden tap, murmuring ‘No one needs to know’, just like Julia Child putting her dropped potato back in the pan during filming. It didn’t hurt anyone, including Julia, who lived to be about 1,000.

I climbed through a hole in the chain link fence made by dog walkers, past the No Trespassing sign, clutching my little boxed companion.

We had a brief chat, and then, just like my friend, released my beloved parent back to nature, from whence we all came.

Someone had given me a dark warning: sometimes ashes get mixed indiscriminately, and you might just get a box full of some-bodies. But I knew that I had my mom, and only

my mom. Her dental bridge was in there amongst the ashes, bent and melty, but quite recognizably hers.

And, no one was staring at her. It was just us.

The long-awaited deed was done!

I drove back to a friend’s guest room (I sleep under college pennants a lot these days), and began packing my luggage, which now gets weighed more often than a dieter.

And like my UK friend, I flew back to England, reversing my family’s Great Migration to the West, to stay where our distant ancestors’ ashes are part of the soil Churchill swore to defend. My friend wept while singing ‘God Save the Queen’ for her citizenship test, and the official said, ‘Don’t worry. Everybody cries.’

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35

New York City Ballet lead dancer Robert Fairchild stars in An American in Paris as Jerry Mulligan alongside his British leading lady, Leanne Cope who plays Lise Dassin.

For both, it was their Broadway debut and now it’s their West End debuts too. They told The American all about it.

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obert & Leanne, we’re a Transatlantic magazine, and this is such a Transatlantic story: the show’s storyline, the two of you, the director… Robert, I think you were born in Utah?

[Robert Fairchild] Salt Lake City, yeah. My dad was a wildlife biologist, my mom was a dietician.

So, no theater in your background?

[Robert] God no! My sister is a dancer in the New York City Ballet as well, so people always ask if we come from a dance family. Growing up, my mom wanted to be a dancer but she never got the opportunity. Not that she could have, she’s extremely uncoordinated - she’s the first to say it. But she has long limbs.

I think the aesthetic comes from her. My dad played soccer in college and also played the flute, so there’s musicality and athleticism. That’s the combination that led to two dancers.

My sister is three years older and she would dance around the living room and I would copy her. I just wanted

to be like her. She would come home from dance classes and teach me the routines. It’s kind of like a Chorus Line story, I started to watch her in class and I wanted to get in there. I went to my first tap class when I was four years old and fell in love with it, then came jazz, and they said if you want to take jazz it’ll help if you take ballet.

I didn’t really like ballet, to be honest, it was boring. When I was 15, my sister - who had already gotten into the New York City Ballet - saw one of my jazz competition videos and said I would benefit from going to a ballet summer course, and there’s nothing better than the The School of American Ballet, the New York City Ballet’s official school. So I went, only to get better jazz training, and ended up falling in love with ballet. I’d never seen it to that caliber before and the strength and power of these guys was so inspiring. And the Balanchine way of dancing is a little more jazzy.

Fast forward 10 years, I’d been in the company and Christopher Wheeldon [NYCB Resident Choreographer] called me and asked if I could sing?

I said I can carry a tune, I think. He asked me to come and sing some Gershwin, and that was the beginning of this American in Paris project.

Leanne, what’s your background?

[Leanne Cope] I was born in Bath and started dancing when I was about 5 years old. My mum did ballroom dancing when she was growing up. She wanted to do ballet and never had the chance, so she sent me to ballet classes. I auditioned for the Royal Ballet School and left home to go to boarding school when I was 11 to study ballet. I went all the way through school and at 18

got a job with the Royal Ballet Company and danced with them for 12 years. And then this happened! Similar to Bobby, Christopher Wheeldon was creating a ballet at the time and he asked me if I sang. I said I used to sing in the choir and the auditions happened from then on.

Usually for a musical you find people who can sing, then ask if they can dance a bit.

[Leanne] It’s completely the other way round. With Christopher Wheeldon as the director we always knew it was going to be a dance-heavy show and I guess he thought it would be easier to have the caliber of dancer he needed and teach them to act and sing than getting people who can act and sing in to a pair of point shoes.

That will make it different - and the show’s new?

[Leanne] It’s never been on, it’s a brand new musical. It’s the first time ‘American in Paris the story’ has been told on stage. It was only ever a film before.

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37

The show was nominated for 12 Tony Awards and both of you won the Astaire Award for best dancer in 2015. Was that special?

[Leanne] It was very special for me in that I’ve never won anything before! [laughs] It was wonderful to be recognized for your dancing in a city like New York, where the standard is so high.

American in Paris debuted in Paris before going to Broadway.

Have you both originated the roles, from the beginning? [both] Yes we have.

Normally young performers have to go for years adapting other people’s roles before they get this sort of chance.

[Robert] An actor friend of mine told me, “Do you realize you are living my dream? To create something brand new in a musical.” We are, but we’re building on what happened before us, the movie.

Did you know the film, and were you influenced by Gene Kelly and Leslie Caron?

[Leanne] I’d never seen it before

The American

ture. You don’t really remember the details of the story. It paints the MGM propaganda, back in the ‘50s, that the war was a good thing and it was all sunshine after the victory. We’re telling a more honest version. We’ve set the musical five years earlier than the movie, when the Nazis have just left Paris and you have five artists who are struggling to deal with what they experienced, making something that’s relevant. And it’s about how they relate to one another and how they challenge each other. It heightens the stakes.

The show features many of George and Ira Gershwin’s most famous songs. Do you have a favorite?

[Robert] I do! There’s a song I hadn’t heard of before, called ‘But not for me’, which Adam sings. As an audience member you feel for his character, which makes it difficult for me as Jerry. It’s the heart of the story, he’s in love with this girl but she’s got engagements with other people and the feelings aren’t there. There are moments of great romance in the

PHOTOS ON THIS SPREAD: MATTHEW MURPHY

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my audition. The first theater production I ever saw when I was a child was Gigi so I knew of Leslie Caron, and I think she’d been filming Chocolat in Bath, so there was a big hype around her at that time. But she’s so perfect in the movie of American in Paris I was never going to be a replica of her. Luckily enough our creative team never expected us to be.

And because the musical is set in a slightly different time period, we didn’t have to be cookie-cutter copies of Gene Kelly and Leslie Caron. We can be our own versions of Lise and Jerry. It took the pressure off a little bit. But watching the movie did help me - she’s so Parisian, so French, it helped me get the sense of a young Parisian woman, how stylish and chic and elegant she was. I wouldn’t say I tried to copy her, but I was inspired.

We were lucky enough to spend time in Paris for the previews too.

The musical has a new book

by Craig Lucas. Did you work with Craig on the story aspect?

[Leanne] He was very much around for the rehearsal process, then for our previews in Paris. I think Paris was inspiring for him too, as well as for the whole cast. And he was with us before Broadway, and hopefully he’ll able to pop over to London if he’s not too busy - in the Spring he’s opening another musical he’s written, Amélie - another French show! American in Paris is very much a collaboration between Craig and Christopher. And sometimes if we make a mistake and a word comes out differently he wouldn’t mind, and maybe add that word into the script. Nothing was set in stone, it was a very creative room to be in.

[Robert] The movie is fantastic, but the dancing is the main fea-

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39

show, but that song has loneliness, that I think we can all relate to.

That’s very generous of you, to choose another character’s song.

[Robert] My favorite part of the show that I do myself is ‘Beginner’s luck’, I just get to be myself, goofy, to try to get the attention of this incredible girl. She’s very stand-offish at the beginning, and I love a challenge. To get her to join my charades and create mayhem in the perfume shop is so much fun.

Leanne, what’s yours?

[Leanne] I love all the orchestral music in the show, the first ballet is incredible, and songwise, ‘Stairway to Paradise’, it’s so Broadway, a real fantasy moment.

Do you think the show offers an escape from the doom and gloom of the real world?

[Leanne] There is doom and gloom at the beginning of our show, but it shows that if people pull together you can reach a positive ending. We were performing the show on Broadway the night that the Bataclan shootings happened, and seeing the news footage of the people running through the streets in Paris in fear, and knowing that at the beginning of our show is us running in fear through the streets of Paris, and that people are still going through that throughout the world...

It’s realistic, it tells the truth about sometimes what an ugly world we

live in, but with love and hope we can come out the other side.

Finally, what’s the best thing about being Robert Fairchild & Leanne Cope [Leanne] Oooh. Getting to perform on Broadway every night, and in future in the West End. [Robert] To get to take people away from the everyday problems we experience every day, to escape to somewhere with a lot of joy.

An American in Paris is at the Dominion Theatre from March 4 www.AnAmericanInParisTheMusical.co.uk

The Broadway production of An American in Paris

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Far Left: Salt baked beets, preserved yuzu and shichimi

FLAT THREE I

n the early ‘80s I worked in two Japanese restaurants in New York (they allowed child labor then) and came to love both the food and aesthetic. In ’86 I moved to Denmark during an economic downturn known as “kartoffelkuren” (the potato diet). It was a culinary backwater. Pork and potatoes! If you had told me then that Scandinavia would become foodie Mecca, I would have laughed. Who’s laughing now?

This rather long preamble leads me to lunch at Flat Three. The food is Japanese, Korean and Nordic inspired. I was intrigued by the thought, thrilled at the reality.

Against all odds, these cultures are hugely compatible. Arduous, meticulous process, leading to simple, clean minimalism.

Chef Pavel Kanja trained in a number of Japanese restaurants. This is obvious in his food. The Nordic inspiration rather less so. The scandi-culinary revolution is by no means indigenous.

It is globally informed. It excels in food preservation and fermentation, impor-

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www.flatthree.london

Far Left: Kabocha

120-122 Holland Park Avenue, London W11 4UA

Reviewed by Michael M Sandwick tant elements of Pavel’s kitchen. It is in the restaurant’s décor however, where the Scandinavian element shines most.

Pavel is a vegan and offers both plant based and mixed tasting menus at £69, an alcoholic pairing at £49 and non-alcoholic at £33. A 3 course pretheater and lunch menu is £33. A la carte ranges from £9 – £39.

Our server possessed an impressive knowledge of food and wine.

Flawless. First, a potato doughnut with ponzu dipping sauce. The potato didn’t quite shine through but gave a soft, gnocchi-like consistency to the savory beignet. A non-alcoholic yuzu and lemon basil juice was brilliant.

Pavel excels at these nectars. Rosehip and hawthorn was equally good. Simple, pure and very unique.

Turbot tartare was a highlight.

Scallion, sesame and dashi kept a fine balance with the sweet, delicate fish.

A glass of Bartoli, Pietranera, 2014 was a treat. Pure Zibibbo (Muscat of Alexandria) grape, it was dry, packed with mineral, intense citrus, peach and a touch of bitter at the finish.

This also paired very well with perfectly cooked fresh scallops, crosnes (Japanese artichoke), sea beet and celeriac. Scallop with celeriac isn’t new. Sea beet and crosnes made it special.

Charred king cabbage was dish of the day. Seriously! Mixed with flaxseed udon noodles, gochujang (Korean chili paste) and pickled, dried cauliflower, it just sang with flavor.

Chef Pavel following his heart.

Medium-rare sirloin needed more marbling. Silky potato curd and nasturtium root with pear were sheer delight. A Guardoilvento 2014 was another fine wine. Rich tannins, vanilla, plum and a very dry finish.

Two desserts with no refined sugar were both excellent. Carrot sorbet, rhubarb, olive oil and bergamot was fun and refreshing. Sweet, sour, silk and spice. Chocolate, almond, chia and cherry bark maple was the best vegan dessert I have had. Sweetened with a hint of maple syrup, it was both light and sumptuous. When cabbage and sugar-free dessert makes me rave, you know it’s good!

Entrance & Rooftop

335-337 Old Street, London EC1V 9LL

www.shoreditch.courthouse-hotel.com

Room No. 8 & pool

courthousehotel Shoreditch N

ew York City, 1978. At that time, SoHo was a rat-infested hole in the wall, but the warehouses provided unbelievably cheap space.

A few clever people realized this and opened the first galleries and restaurants. Five minutes later, the average Joe couldn’t even afford to window shop.

Shoreditch, 2016. I am having the most marvelous flashback to those carefree days. No wonder this is my favorite part of town. I love to wander where edge and graffiti butt heads with out-of-reach designer goods. Where you can eat a pulled pork sandwich on the street, followed by a 5 star skinny latte. Where your luxury hotel offers cocktails in a jail cell where the infamous Kray brothers were once incarcerated!

The Old Street Magistrates Court and Police Station is grade II listed and one of London’s best examples of an Edwardian, Baroque style building. Architect firm, Consarc and Sundara, the interior designers, have made the most of it, retaining and

restoring the original features with care. The new build in the back looks a bit like a tank, but hides some of the hotel’s best bits: a spa, cinema, bowling lanes, roof terrace and enormous banquet facilities. A wonderful marriage of old and new.

The 86 rooms and 42 suites range in price from £169 to £524. My deluxe room with seating area was enormous. Just under the eaves, it boasted the building’s 2 south-facing round windows and a sensational view of the city. The room was beautifully appointed from the down covered king-size bed to the marble tiled bath.

Comfortable? To say the least.

Next, the spa. With every intention of gorging myself at dinner, I decided to hit the gym. It had everything I needed to work up a virtuous sweat. The pool had a powerful jet stream on one end. Swimming against it, I felt like a salmon, desperate to make it up stream. Exhausted, I took 20 minutes in the sauna.

My guest and I then enjoyed a G&T in the aforementioned cell

Reviewed by Michael M Sandwick

before dining in the bar. Dinner hasn’t quite been thought out. The room was frigid and the pub food menu nowhere near the quality of the hotel itself. Neither was the price!

Crab thermidor tart (£6.50), duck rillettes (£4.95), blackened salmon (£13.95), buttermilk chicken (£11.95), ginger sponge and apple crumble (£4.95). All simple, well prepared and comforting, if not memorable. A bottle of South African Chardonnay (£30) was a bargain.

Service was the best part of the meal. Here, like the rest of the hotel, there was a plenitude of staff and all were smiling, friendly and helpful.

I never wanted, or had to ask for anything.

After a gorgeous night’s sleep, greatly enhanced by very effective blackout curtains, I moseyed on down to breaky in the courtroom itself. My favorite room. Stunning oak panelling just screamed with austerity. I could almost hear the judge sentencing me to 30 days.

I wish!

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Interiors

39 Whitfield Street, London W1T 2SF

www.dabbous.co.uk

Interiors

Oskar’s Bar at Dabbous D

abbous is known for its Michelinstarred food and laid back atmosphere. Oskar’s Bar is its lesser known and even more laid back downstairs lounge. We descended into a cacophony of revelry mixed with modern jazz and Brazilian music. With nothing but concrete and exposed brick, sound was bouncing everywhere. Two long sharing tables with benches were packed, as was the bar. We were seated in two very low lounge chairs from which I feared I would never rise. The lighting improved my looks, but I couldn’t read the menu. All this was a bit trying for a gentleman of a certain age. It seemed that, for the full Michelin bar-food experience, I would have to dig deep and find my inner party animal. OK, we’re talking major excavation! Open-minded, I began to shovel.

Oskar Kinberg introduced himself.

He was as friendly and down to earth as his bar. We talked about booze and discovered a shared taste for Martin Miller’s gin. I ordered a barrel-

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aged Negroni with said gin, Cocchi de Torino Vermouth and Campari, rested in American oak and served with orange peel (£11). It was the best Negroni ever. I no longer cared if I could get up out of my chair and I found myself doing rib isolations to a sax solo. My guest enjoyed a Basil Fawlty (£9.50). Tanqueray, basil, meadowsweet, apple and lemon.

Very refreshing. Apple juice has made a surprisingly successful appearance on the cocktail scene.

When 2 stools became available, we moved to the bar for dinner.

The full Dabbous menu is available but I was intrigued by the bar menu. We settled on Crispy chicken wings with garlic and thyme (£6), Salmon tartare with sorrel (£5), grilled langoustines with fennel pollen and virgin rapeseed oil mayo (£27), and barbecued short rib of beef with dill pickle, mustard and molasses in a soft brioche bun (£14). If you had each dish twice, you still wouldn’t be guilty of the sin of gluttony. You might,

Reviewed by Michael M Sandwick

however, find yourself believing in heaven on earth. Every morsel was an absolute joy. Boneless chicken wings were like no other. Crisp outside, succulent inside and perfectly seasoned.

Salmon tartare, like butter, wrapped in exquisitely fresh sorrel leaves and held together by miniature clothes pins were little works of culinary art. The 2 langoustines on skewers were cooked to perfection and served with a truly inspired mayonnaise. The short rib was a 5-star take on an ordinary slider.

A Rully, 2013 (£8.50) and a Malbec, 2013 (£6.75) were both excellent wines.

For dessert, pink grapefruit with black sugar and kinome, a Japanese herb, (£6) had a gorgeous balance between the bittersweet acid of the fruit and the dark syrup. Chocolate soaked brioche with pecans, azuki beans and barley malt ice cream is the comfort food of paradise. The ice cream made me positively giddy.

As I left, I danced a samba up the stairs. Party animal unearthed!

Entrance & Wagu steak

8 Heddon Street, London W1B 4BU

www.sakaguralondon.com

Left: Sashimi Right: Sake otsumami sharing platter

sakagura T

he Tokumines have done it again.

CEO Tak, is the force behind Japan Centre and Shoryu. Manager Mimi is London’s best sake sommelier and a master at omotenashi, the art of Japanese hospitality. In partnership with sake giant Gekkeikan and 2 Michelin starred The Araki, they bring fine detail to the best of Japanese cuisine and service.

Chefs Kanji Furukawa and Jin Yackshin have created a menu based on Washoku. This traditional food of Japan is listed with UNESCO as an intangible cultural heritage, ensuring its longevity. The menu features a wide range of dishes with prices from affordable to extravagant. As well, Sakagura’s sake cellar has perhaps the best selection of sake in London.

The room is beautifully designed.

Dividers between the tables provide both intimacy and the ability to see and be seen. Downstairs, seating is at the robata grill where chefs entertain with their culinary prowess.

Service is exceptional. Mimi has infused the staff with her gracious

sense of hospitality and you will be made to feel like an honored member of the family.

We began in uncharted territory, with a glass of Tenzan sparkling sake (£9.40). Unfiltered and slightly effervescent, it had delightful hints of liquorice and a nod to Champagne at the finish.

The sashimi, served on silver filigree on a bed of ice and decorated with flowers, was a work of art. The top quality fish was served with genuine wasabi. Most wasabi is horseradish in disguise. Small wonder. A finger of the real stuff costs £25! The difference in taste is night and day.

Maguro tartare (£19), more eye candy, was equally good. Finely minced tuna, 2 kinds of caviar, sesame, wasabi and dashi brought elegance to the taste of the sea. A carafe of hot Gekkeikan “denshou”daiginjo (£37) was a beautiful pairing. Dry with hints of fennel and grass. Each guest is invited to choose a sake cup from a beautiful assortment.

Inevitably, I chose the one my guest wanted!

Reviewed by Michael M Sandwick A light, crisp, vegetable tempura (£16) came with the most delicate courgette flower. Lobster (£32) blackened with moshio brown salt and lime was picture perfect, but lost its succulence with overcooking. Kyushu Island prime Wagyu beef (£35), sun dried salt and fresh wasabi was a wonder. Every bit as good as Kobe with a very high fat content and flavor from heaven. Barely seared, it dissolved in my mouth without chewing.

Kamameshi “kettle of rice” is filling and affordable. Sea bream and salmon roe (£15) and Japanese mushrooms (£13) were both tasty if not extravagant. With the mains a carafe of a limited edition Gekkeikan “kyosansui” junmai (£21.20) brought me to a state of total harmony!

For dessert, a matcha fondant didn’t have the required ooze of its chocolate predecessor. It was however, a delicate green tea sponge.

A matcha tiramisu was a masterful green tea take on the Italian classic, infused with yet more sake. I hope sake is included on UNESCO’s list!

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The Scotch Malt Whisky Society, 28 Queen Street, Edinburgh EH2 1JX

The Dining Room, Edinburgh T

he Scotch Malt Whisky Society is a choir of believers formed by a group of friends in Edinburgh in 1983, with over 20,000 members worldwide. Selling patrons bottles of cask strength malt under funny titles like “Lively as a swarm of bees” and “Sweet and cereal snogfest”, SMWS captivates with its labels, combining descriptive flights of fancy with critical information.

To enhance the experience of enjoying these whiskies, SMWS offers fine dining at its 28 Queen Street premises in Edinburgh, which was renovated in summer 2016 along with the rest of the lovely Georgian townhouse it inhabits.

Despite the lofty ceilings, the new Dining Room is cozy, accented with a warm fire and textured, modern fabrics, suitable for any occasion.

Fortunately, the Dining Room is open to the public and provides several menus to choose from,

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including a la carte, which runs at £42 for three courses at dinner. The “taster” menu is £75 per person, while early birds and midweek diners earn reduced rates of £21.95 and £35 for special menus.

I was worried before I dined that the food might be underwhelming, perhaps only an opening act to the main attraction. I was very pleased to find that the food received every bit of attention that the whisky does – from complex flavor profiles to presentation. The theme embraced by the Head Chef James Freeman seems to be local ingredients with unusual combinations and continental influences.

One of the most memorable dishes I’ve had in a long time was the halibut in Scottish cider with carrot puree and spaetzle. The halibut was perfectly cooked, presenting as a crispy pan fried medallion, moist and flaky on the inside. While well-

www.thediningroomedinburgh.co.uk

Reviewed by Olivia McLaren cooked fish isn’t an anomaly at wellreputed restaurants, the buttery sauce with a suggestion of fizz and spike from cider and doused with chives was a showstopper. I also thought the venison in beetroot sauce was inspired – the chef used licorice to balance the beetroot and topped it with crunchy croquets and spinach. The chocolate biscuit with sloe sauce and pine ice cream was one of those unorthodox constructions that actually works. Tangyweird, but delicious.

The Dining Room’s service was warm and attentive, but a wee bit discombobulated in presenting our plates and answering questions.

That did little to quell our excitement as a surprise dram was served mid-meal. As I adjourned from the Dining Room (to sample more whisky in another part of the building), I racked my mind for an excuse to return as soon as possible.

Lewes Road, Forest Row, East Sussex RH18 5ER

www.swanforestrow.co.uk

THE SWAN Y

ears ago, in ancient times as one of my grandchildren might say, when I first visited the UK, restaurants in London could not compare with Paris or even New York and I often ate better food in a pub than one could find in restaurants connected to the Dorchester or the Ritz Hotel. How things have changed in the past twenty-some years and eating out is now a pleasure ...except to your pocket book.

But pubs are still delightful and The Swan, now a gastropub, is one of my favorites in the Sussex area.

Gastropubs are a relatively new breed - old pubs that have positioned themselves to serve good food. Although there are some that have taken the name without the skill. Not so with The Swan, nor its sister pub The Coney, in West Wickham, both owned by Al Bill. Their beer battered Haddock (£12.95) with homemade

Reviewed by Virginia E Schultz

(thick) chips (I skip the mushy peas) is a favorite and their 28 day aged 10 oz sirloin steak (£22.95) cooked medium rare is as good as I’ve had in far more expensive restaurants.

My eight year old grandson usually has Smokey BBQ ribs (£15.50) while his twin sister, a far fussier eater, prefers the thin crust Margarita pizza (kids menu). Perhaps I should say grandmother prefers the thinner crust while she wishes it was thicker.

The kids menu I might add is £5.95 and includes a scoop of ice cream.

Their steamed mussels (small £6.50 Tate patiently awaits

IMAGE © ALFONSO PÉREZ

to large £12.50) is a favorite of my grandson, that is when he doesn’t have the ribs.

Dogs are allowed and Tate, the Westie, sits under the table waiting for some tidbit to fall. In warm weather one can sit outside either front or back, and with global warming the opportunity seems to happen more now than in the past. I might add the onion rings (£2.50) are perfectly deep fried and their English cheese board selection (mature cheddar, Cornish Brie, Shropshire blue, £6.50) is served the way cheese should be served. Not as if it came straight from the refrigerator. All above from 11am to 3pm.

If I have a glass of wine, I prefer a rosé because too often I find the red not to my palate.

Oh, yes, the service is impeccable, and our waiter never forgets to bring a bowl of water for Tate.

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PHOTO ©MICHAL OSMENDA.

Cellar Talk

By Virginia E Schultz

Gewürztraminer & Riesling I

love cheddar cheese. Today for lunch I had a Gewürztraminer (or Gewurz as some call it) with the cheddar and I was in second heaven.

Was it a combination food critics would approve? Frankly, I don’t care. It was a gorgeous piece of cheddar my youngest daughter bought at a local supermarket, but that sharp crumbly taste that is delicious whether eaten with a sweet pickle or in a melted cheese sandwich was perfect for my casual lunch. Most food experts suggest fish, turkey or Chinese food with a Gewürztraminer. I love Chinese food, but I don’t like a Gewurz with it and much prefer a Riesling. A paté or wonderful English sausages for me is perfect as is smoked salmon, however.

The English have a tendency to underestimate themselves. Say cheese, and they talk about that Brie they had in France. Today, I went continental and opened a bottle

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of Gewurz and ate store bought cheddar and was as happy as a bug in the rug. Delicious!

Too sweet, some say about Gewurz, but I don’t think so or perhaps it’s because some of my forebears came from Alsace.

Gewürztraminer, meaning spice, describes the wine which people either love or hate. Trimbach, Hugel and Domaine Zind Humbrecht make my favorite Alsaces, but I’m not all that fond of an American or Australian Gewurz.

Like everything else, it’s a matter of taste.

Before World War I Alsace was part of Germany and although I’d like to think I might have French blood, those Alsace ancestors arrived in the middle of the eighteenth century. There is a difference between wines from Alsace and Germany even though they use the same grape varieties. After the winemaker harvests the Riesling,

By Virginia E Schultz the winemaker in Alsace ferments every bit of sugar in the grape while the winemaker in Germany adds a small amount of unfermented grape juice. Alsace wines are 99 percent totally dry. There is also a difference in the alcohol content. Wine from Germany have 8 to 9 percent alcohol while Alsace is eleven to twelve percent alcohol content and the reason one shouldn’t slip behind a wheel afterwards, An added note for a tourist visiting the Alsace area. The fifteenth-sixteenth century village of Riquewihr is beautiful and worth a visit. Make reservations ahead of time during the summer season or you could end up as a friend and I did, sleeping in the car. And do try one of Alsace’s eaux-de-vie or fruit brandies. A Framboise (raspberries), Kirsch (cherries), Mirabelle (yellow plums) or Fraise (strawberries) eaude-vie is the perfect way to end a meal.

COMPETITIONS

Elmer Bernstein: 50 Years of Film Music at the Royal Albert Hall

1997 - 2017: The 20th Anniversary of the Battle Proms!

Legendary film composer Elmer Bernstein will receive the ultimate musical tribute at the Royal Albert Hall this year, the 95th anniversary of his birth.

The writer of some of the movies’ most memorable themes – including The Magnificent Seven, The Great Escape and To Kill a Mockingbird – will be celebrated in a brand new show, Elmer Bernstein: 50 Years of Film Music, featuring the Royal Philharmonic Concert Orchestra and presented by the composer’s son, Peter.

The UK’s premier picnic concert series have been treating audiences to breath-taking, entertainment since 1997, bringing together a heady mix of sublime classical music, carefully choreographed Spitfire and cavalry displays, dramatic cannon fire and a stunning firework finale.

Battle Proms concerts take place in the grounds of 5 of the UKs most celebrated stately homes, including Blenheim Palace, birthplace of Sir Winston Churchill, and Highclere Castle (home of ITV’s Downton Abbey).

See www.battleproms.com for information and tickets for this unforgettable summer spectacular.

Royal Albert Hall have offered two tickets for one lucky reader of The American magazine to win, to see this tribute to Elmer Bernstein on June 18, 2017. For your chance to win, just answer this simple question and email it to theamerican@ blueedge.co.uk with ELMER in the subject line.

Closing Date: Wednesday May 31, 2017

For your chance to win, email your answer to this simple question to theamerican@blueedge.co.uk with BATTLE PROMS in the subject line. Closing Date: Wednesday May 31, 2017

Elmer Bernstein and Mack David wrote the title song for a 1962 movie that later inspired which New York-based Lou Reed song: a) Satellite of Love b) Perfect Day c) Walk on the Wild Side

Blenheim Palace is the birthplace of which celebrated British Prime Minister? a) Margaret Thatcher b) Sir Winston Churchill c) Lord North

Terms & Conditions: One reader will win a pair of tickets to see Elmer Bernstein: 50 Years of Film Music.

No cash alternative, travel not included. The editor’s decision is final.

If an event is cancelled The American accepts no liability.

Terms & Conditions: One reader will win a pair of tickets to a Battle Proms concert at the venue of your choice (see www.battleproms.com) subject to availability.

No cash alternative, travel not included. The editor’s decision is final.

If an event is cancelled The American accepts no liability.

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The TheAmerican American

Jesse & Joy The Mexican-American duo who have taken the Latin and American markets by storm look set to do the same in Europe

W

hen 34 year old Jesse and Joy (30) took time out from their Spanish tour to drop into London, Jesse Huerta Uecke chatted with The American’s Michael Burland You may have heard the brother and sister musical team’s suninfused single ‘More Than Amigos’ on British radio recently (Ken Bruce on BBC Radio 2 is a particular fan, it seems) and there’s now an album sung in Spanish and, for the first time, English to enjoy. For those in the UK who haven’t been aware of the Jesse & Joy phenomenon, a little history. It’s a family business that started back in 2001...

That’s right, our father was always around when my sister and I started writing – I was 18 and Joy was 15 – but we wrote the songs by ourselves.

The only instrument we had to start with were some kitchen buckets which I started using as a drum kit, then at the church we went to on

Sundays I started messing around with the piano. Later I would go to our uncle’s house after school and play his guitar then a friend lent me his. From that I jumped to the bass.

It sounds like music was natural for you. Were sounds just waiting to come out?

It was beautiful. Not a day would go by that I didn’t sit down and play.

I would sit and play instruments, and Joy would sing all day – she was always singing. When she was three years old I remember hearing some funny noise coming from her room, and she would have her teddy bears and dolls sitting like they were the crowd. It was amazing, the amount of sound coming from that small body. But she had stage fright for quite a bit. The only person she was comfortable to sing to was me. Fast forwarding to when I was eighteen, I had a tune, the first time I had made something I hadn’t heard before, and the first person I wanted to play it to

was Joy. She said it was nice, and why didn’t I write a song? I said, why don’t we write one together? I don’t know how to do it, you don’t know, let’s not know together! Since the beginning it’s been the two of us together.

I write most of the melodies and we do the lyrics together. It feels natural. It feels like three – the two of us achieve much more than we could do separately.

Do you play all the instruments on your recordings?

On our first album I played most of them, apart from the strings and the drums. I played the keys, bass, guitars. Over time we’ve learned to collaborate with more people, but we’re still pretty hands on!

Your career really started in 2005 when you ‘officially’ launched as a duo and immediately signed to Warner. You then promptly made your first public appearance on the Mexican Teletón – what size audience did that show have?

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It was a massive event, live on TV. It was in a downtown plaza, with 120,000 people there and millions watching on TV. But Joy & I weren’t aware of the magnitude of what was happening. We didn’t have any records out, nobody knew who Jesse & Joy were. It was a tough crowd, wanting to be pleased but thankfully everything went well and they paid attention. We were just two reckless kids who went onstage and sang their songs. It was a good experience, we didn’t know which song should be our first single but the audience’s reaction was a good thermometer.

ROCKET TO THE CHARTS Jesse & Joy’s went stratospheric in Hispanic markets. That debut single, ‘Espacio Sideral’, was certified Gold in Mexico, while their first album, Esta Es Mi Vida, was released through Warner Music Mexico in 2006 and soon reached Top 20 on the Mexican Album Chart, going Platinum in the process. They won the Latin Grammy Award for Best New Artist 2007, second album Electricidad reached 21 on the Mexican Chart and was certified Gold, ‘Adiós’ went to number 3 on the Billboard Hot Latin Songs chart and the third album, ¿Con Quién Se Queda El Perro? in 2011, went Double Platinum.

You want more? At the 2012 Latin Grammy Awards, Jesse & Joy were nominated for four Grammys, winning three, for Best Contemporary Pop Album, and Song and Record of the Year. Now they’ve won their first US Grammy - see the end box for details.

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Looking at your career stats you’ve had great success, with many awards, but I couldn’t help noticing that they are mainly for ‘pop’ categories. I can hear a lot of country and soul, and some rock & roll in your music. How do you think of your music?

Genres are sometimes a bit relative. As long as they can say, that sounds like Jesse & Joy! We have pop, a little bit of rock & roll, some folk, and Latin folk as well. We feel like some sort of chefs, we get to do our own mix of ingredients. And the more we travel, the more we make friends abroad, we keep on adding flavors of new things.

The music business is notorious for siblings who have success then argue and break up… How’s it going with you?!

I totally get why sometimes bands split. Human relationships are not easy when you are with that person 24/7. We’re still learning, but whenever we have a disagreement or a fight as brother and sister, our friendship kicks in. And whenever we fight as friends, the family side kicks in. We are blessed that we can do what we love together, and after our Dad passed away three years ago we became even closer, not only my sister and I but our entire family. And

as we get closer and tighter as friends and family, the music keeps on getting better.

Did the dynamic change when you got married? [Jesse wed 12 years ago and has two daughters.]

Not at all, and I am thankful for that with my wife. She lets me do my thing and she sees how happy I am doing this. It actually helps - just being around my two girls and my wife makes me have my emotions 100 percent, you know? It might sound goofy, but I’m quite a sensitive guy, music can make me cry when it hits the sweet spot, and I’m swamped in emotions with my family.

Do they come on tour with you?

Yes, during school break or when we’re in one city for a longer period.

It avoids the back and forth, and the craziness of the tour.

Many of our audience are dual citizens, with quite a mixture of nationalities. You have dual citizenship, your dad was Mexican, and your mom’s American, from German-Swedish stock in Wisconsin.

That’s about as far away as you get from Mexico in the States. How did they meet?

I believe our Dad was traveling, and our Mom was too. They just met on some trip, and said goodbye, but they randomly met again in the US. Dad used his Latino charm – I think he might even have exaggerated his accent.

And two months later they got married.

Your mom was an English teacher in Mexico, and she told you not to speak “Spanglish”, but to use either English or Spanish.

It was smart of Mom

to keep both languages ‘kosher’. But some expressions sound better and make more sense in each language so it was inevitable that we’d switch back and forth. In our music, we sing only in English or Spanish, but we can’t avoid using influences we grew up with. Mom listened to Carole King, Johnny Cash, The Carpenters, Neil Young. And Dad was listening to bolero music, Trio Los Panchos, Pedro Infante.

Your new album is your first that’s partly sung in English. Why now?

We’ve recorded mostly in Spanish because we wanted people to get to know us, and we didn’t want to seem like we were following a ‘crossover’ trend, but we’ve always written some songs in English. It’s happened organically - we’re satisfying the needs of that side of our DNA. And our Mom says we should release some stuff our uncles up north can

understand! Either that or she was tired of translating everything for them. And the label is excited about the things we’ve written in English.

Does it feel different writing and performing in English?

It feels the same, even though I can hear a tad of a difference when Joy sings in English. I’ve heard her voice more than anybody in the world, except her. The album is being released in the UK first, then globally.

It’s nice that we’re coming here, to the land of some of the bands I grew up listening to. We actually recorded our last two albums here. It was because of the producers, and then we liked the vibe here. There’s a sort of magic to going away from home and feeling that mellowness.

Finally, what is the best thing about being Jesse?

I found what I love to do the most, and I get to share it with other people and connect with them.

2017 US GRAMMY DEDICATED TO “ALL THE HISPANICS OUT THERE” Jesse & Joy were awarded their first US Grammy in February, for best Latin Pop album.

Joy said, “This means so much to us. The name of the album, Un Besito Más is a song we wrote for our daddy who passed away.

We are so proud to be Mexican-American so, this goes to all the Hispanics out there in this country.

To every minority group, we are with you, we stand with you.”

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Public View

Bluecoat, School Lane, Liverpool L1 3BX to April 23 Free, booking required The Bluecoat building, a fine example of Queen Anne style architecture, began life as a charity school in 1717, before housing an arts community in 1907, formally becoming an arts center in 1927, the UK’s oldest. A contemporary arts venue, it opens its 300th anniversary program with an exhibition featuring over 100 Bluecoat alumni artists who have exhibited there previously, mostly drawn from the last 50 years since the gallery space was improved and an exhibition programme formalized. Artists include John Akomfrah, Sonia Boyce, Jeremy Deller, John Latham, Mark Leckey, Imogen Stidworthy, and Yoko Ono, as well as Derek Boshier, Graham Ashton, Conrad Atkinson, Sue Coe and Padraig Timoney, who are now US resident British artists.

Even with 100 artists, this is but a small, though significant, sample of the thousands of artists who have shown here.

Tony Oursler, Dummy Sky, 1993, watercolor. Private collection.

IMAGE COURTESY BLUECOAT

Chuck Close: Sandy Nairne

Room 33, National Portrait Gallery, St. Martin’s Place, London WC2H 0HE on display until further notice The National Portrait Gallery has unveiled a large portrait of its former Director (2002–2015) Sandy Nairne, by American artist and photographer Chuck Close (b.1940).

It is to be found in Depicting the Human Head in Room 33, First Floor Landing, alongside paintings of pianist Alfred Brendel by Tony Bevan and scientist Sir Paul Nurse

by Jason Brooks, both commissioned during Nairne’s term as Director. This is the first portrait by Close to be acquired by the Gallery and his first major work to enter a British public collection. Renowned for the large-scale, photo-based portraits he has produced since the 1960s, Chuck Close has cre-

ated a six-foot tall watercolor print portrait of Sandy Nairne, based on a unique large format color Polaroid photograph that was taken in John Reuter’s 20x24 Studio, NY. To make the transition from a photograph to a six foot high watercolor, Close drew from a digital library of more than ten thousand, hand-painted, monochromatic marks created for the process. The specific size and spacing of the grid and the interaction of the individual marks were carefully chosen and manipulated in order to retain the characteristics and clarity of a special watercolor technique that was developed

by Close in his own studio with Donald Farnsworth, the artist’s main collaborator. Dr Nicholas Cullinan, Director, National Portrait Gallery, London has called this a fitting tribute to his predecessor, Sandy Nairne, and a striking example of contemporary portraiture. Close has donated the portrait to the Gallery.

Chuck Close, Sandy Nairne, 2015 Archival watercolor pigment print on Hahnemuhle rag paper, 74 x 60 in ©CHUCK CLOSE/NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY, LONDON

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Lucas Foglia (USA), Casey and Rowdy Horse Training, 71 Ranch, Deeth, Nevada, 2012 36 x 46 inches © LUCAS FOGLIA

Syngenta Photography Award

West Wing Galleries, Somerset House , Strand, London WC2R 1LA March 9-28 The winners of the third annual Syngenta Photography Award will be announced on March 8th.

The winning photographers will be exhibited alongside a curated selection of 92 images from 43 photographers, representing 22 countries. The award aims to explore issues of global significance. It is designed for both professional (who submit 5-10 images and a creative project proposal of a maximum of 500 words that considers the theme in a more indepth way for a commission worth $25,000) and amateur photographers (who submit 1-3 images).

The theme is ‘Grow-Conserve’ and the shortlist of six photographers includes two American photographers. Professional: Lucas Foglia (USA), Claudia Jaguaribe (Brazil), Yan Wang Preston (UK). Open: Robin Friend (UK), Matt Hamon (USA), Kenneth O’ Halloran (Ireland).

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The Art of the Brick: DC Super Heroes

London’s South Bank, Doon Street Car Park, Upper Ground, London SE1 2PP March 1 onwards It includes more than 120 original pieces, created from LEGO™ bricks. With Warner Bros and DC Entertainment, the well-known and celebrated US artist Nathan Sawaya (b. 1973) has created artwork inspired by DC’s Justice League, including Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, and a life-size (18ft) Batmobile.

Wayne Thiebaud (b.1920), Gumball Machine, 1970. Color linocut © WAYNE THIEBAUD/DACS, LONDON/VAGA, NEW YORK 2016

The American Dream: pop to the present

Sainsbury Exhibitions Gallery (Room 30), British Museum, Great Russell Street, London WC1B 3DG March 9 – July 18 The UK’s first major exhibition to chart modern and contemporary American printmaking it shows the creative momentum of print across five decades of turbulent and dynamic US history. It includes important loans from New York’s Museum of Modern Art and the National Gallery of Art, Washington DC as well as works drawn from the British Museum’s extensive collection of American prints and drawings. Using more than 200 works by 70 artists, the show includes works

by American greats such as Andy Warhol, Jasper Johns, Ed Ruscha, Chuck Close, Robert Rauschenberg, and Louise Bourgeois, alongside more recent works from artists such as Kara Walker, Willie Cole and The Guerrilla Girls.

Nathan Sawaya, The Joker, 1963 Lego™ bricks. © MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART, CHICAGO

Jan Lievens (1606-1674), Boy in a Cape and Turban (Portrait of the Prince Rupert of the Palatinate), 1631 oil on panel, 26 x 20 in ©THE LEIDEN COLLECTION, NEW YORK

Vermeer and the Masters of Genre Painting

Hall Napoléon, Musée du Louvre 75001 Paris, France - access via Pyramid to May 22

Valentin de Boulogne, Le Concert au basrelief, c.1622-25 oil on canvas, 173 x 214 cm IMAGE COURTESY AND ©MUSÉE DU LOUVRE, PARIS

Valentin de Boulogne: Reinventing Caravaggio

Hall Napoléon, Musée du Louvre 75001 Paris, France - access via Pyramid to May 22 With the National Gallery’s Caravaggio exhibition currently in Dublin before going to Edinburgh in June, The Louvre, Paris has an interesting exhibition on Valentin de Boulogne (1591-1632), considered one of the greatest French painters after Caravaggio. Spending most of his career in Rome, his work was collected by, amongst others, the Pope and Louis IV, and served as a model throughout the C19th to masters as different as David or Courbet. With innovative themes drawn from everyday life, such as taverns, concerts, martyrs and saints, with a sensitive touch of introspection and melancholy. The Louvre, which has the world’s richest collection of Boulogne’s works, has linked with New York‘s Metropolitan Museum to stage the first exhibition dedicated to this singular artist, the most important member of the Caravaggio movement in Europe.

Johannes Vermeer, The Milkmaid, c.1660 oil on canvas, 18 x 16 in IMAGE COURTESY AND ©RIJKSMUSEUM

A landmark Johannes Vermeer (1632-1675) exhibition in collaboration with the National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin and the National Gallery of Art, Washington. Twelve works, a third of his total known body of work, brought together for the first time since 1966, provide an insight into Vermeer’s relationship with other great painters of the Dutch Golden Age, with special loans from American, British, German and Dutch museums. Comparison with these top Dutch artists, including Gerrit Dou, Gerard ter Borch, Jan Steen, Pieter de Hooch, Gabriel Metsu, Caspar Netscher, and Frans van Mieris, shows Vermeer’s membership of a network of painters depicting everyday life while admiring, inspiring, and vying with each other to ever finer work (note how light, embroidery, glass and fur improve across the artists). The lightwork is so masterful in some pictures it’s as if they’re backlit.

The Age of Rembrandt - Masterpieces of the Leiden Collection

Sully rooms, Level 2, Sully wing, Musée du Louvre, 75001 Paris, France - access via Pyramid to May 22 Part of The Louvre’s season devoted to the Dutch Golden Age (check out the nod to tulipomania in the Tuileries this spring, The Drawing the Everyday: Holland in the Golden Age exhibition, as well as the reopening of the North European C17th to C19th galleries, with over 530 Dutch paintings, including works by Van Dyke, Rubens and Rembrandt).

The Leiden Collection, started in 2003 by the American philanthropist Thomas Kaplan and his wife, Daphne Recanati Kaplan, contains some 250 paintings and drawings

by Rembrandt and several generations of his pupils among the Leiden fijnschilders. This exhibition showcases the largest private collection of Rembrandt, with ten paintings by the master, plus a recently reattributed work and paintings from the greatest Leiden masters. The Kaplans are generously donating the large format Rebecca and Eliezer at the Well, by Ferdinand Bol (16161660), one of Rembrandt’s most talented pupils.

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DON’T MISS ...

House Bargains: Windsor House Antiques Barnwell Manor, Barnwell, nr.

Oundle, Peterborough PE8 5PJ

www.windsorhouseantiques.co.uk

Timothy Richards, The Pantheon Plaster, 22 x 18 x 15 in IMAGE COURTESY TIMOTHY RICHARDS

From Rome to the Royal Crescent C18th German Chinoiserie white lacquer cabinet decorated with warriors and country scenes – reduced from £18,500 to £9,500 © WINDSOR HOUSE ANTIQUES

To celebrate 60 years of trading and 18 years at its flagship gallery, the former Royal residence of the Duke and Duchess of Gloucester, internationally reknowned Windsor House Antiques, one of Britain’s leading antique dealers, is launching House Bargains, where some exceptional pieces are offered at almost half their original price for a limited time.

This is an additional service to the recently launched website. At Barnwell Manor trade and private clients can view antique stock from all periods, both restored and unrestored, in a period setting. All pieces have a guarantee of excellence and authenticity.

D. Kevin Smith, founder of Windsor House Antiques comments: “I hope offering exceptional pieces at attainable prices will encourage new collectors to share the excitement I still feel on finding the ‘perfect’ piece.”

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One Royal Crescent, Bath BA1 to June 4

Bath Preservation Trust celebrate the 250th anniversary of the Royal Crescent, Bath, by tracing the evolution of classical architecture from the ancient monuments of Rome, through the Renaissance to the modern designs of C18th England with the exquisite highly detailed models of some of the key buildings

by Bath resident Timothy Richards.

When the foundation stone was laid for the Royal Crescent in 1767

British architecture was dominated

by Palladianism. A fashionable style for both grand country houses and city structures, it was inspired by the buildings of ancient Greece and Rome as interpreted by Renaissance architects such as Andrea Palladio.

This exhibition reveals why the iconic Royal Crescent looks the way it does. Timothy Richards has spent over 25 years refining his craft. The origins of this quality of plasterwork date back to the Fouquet’s who worked in Paris between 1780 and 1830. For a taste of home, check out Timothy’s American Collections www.timothyrichards.co.uk.

Timothy Richards, Lincoln Memorial Plaster, 9 x 6.5 x 4.5 in IMAGE COURTESY TIMOTHY RICHARDS

DON’T MISS ...

Conrad Shawcross (b. 1974), Light Perpetual, 2004 wood, metal, wiring, electrical mechanism and light bulb 88 5/8 x 118 1/8 x 98 3/8 in IMAGE COURTESY CHRISTIE’S & SAATCHI GALLERY

Handpicked: 100 Artists Selected by The Saatchi Gallery Christie’s 85 Old Brompton Rd, South Kensington, London SW7 3LD & Rockefeller Center, 20 Rockefeller Plaza, New York, NY 10020, USA March 4-9 (London) and 18-21 (New York)

100 contemporary works from Charles Saatchi’s collection will be exhibited and then auctioned (50 in London, 50 in New York) to support the Saatchi Gallery’s free entry and education program. It features art from the US and the UK as well as Europe, Canada, Costa Rica and South Korea and includes many of the most exciting names from across the globe including Julia Dault, Anthea Hamilton, Laure Prouvost and Jon Rafman. It brings together some of the most compelling artistic talent working today. The London Auction is on March 10, concluding the 20th Century at Christie’s auction season; the Christie’s New York auction is on March 22. Estimates £1,000 up to £35,000. The American artists feature in the New York exhibition.

Marc Riboud, Demonstration against the Vietnam War, Washington DC, 1967 IMAGE COURTESY THE INCITE PROJECT

The Spring Decorative Antiques & Textiles Fair: The Morning Room Revisited Battersea Evolution, Battersea Park London SW11 4NJ April 4 - 9

History through a Lens: Iconic Photographs from the Incite Project Victoria Art Gallery, Bridge Street, Bath BA2 4AT to May 10

More than 100 images that have changed public perception of world events are displayed, by photographers including Robert Capa, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Dorothea Lange, Don McCullin, Sebastiao Salgado and W. Eugene Smith. The core of the collection are iconic C20th photojournalism classics, such as the assassination of JFK, a rare shot of the Normandy D-Day landing, Nelson Mandela in his cell on Robben Island, and the losses of life caused by 9/11 and overcrowded boats capsizing in the Mediterranean.

The Incite Project supports the photographers and artists currently making extraordinary images about contemporary issues.

some sample items for The Morning Room Revisited IMAGE COURTESY SDATF

On the doorstep of the new US Embassy, with more than 150 UK and European exhibitors the Spring 2017 Fair returns to the marquee with a foyer display focussing on the rising trend for an area in the home that combines bringing the outdoors inside with a tranquil space, reclaimed for grown-ups away from the hubbub of open-plan living, and designed as an escape from daily chores. Traditionally called The Morning Room, here it is created as an extension of a contemporary kitchen/living room. Using items from exhibitors, all for sale, it presents a fresh space that makes the most of the countryside, or brings it in to a city room, and which can be as generous or bijou in scale as a property dictates. Tickets £10 Marc Riboud, Demonstration against the orWar, freeWashington via website.

Vietnam DC, 1967

www.decorativefair.com 

MAGE COURTESY INCITE PROJECT

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An American on the Western Front Patrick Gregory on the writing of this book with Elizabeth Nurser, about Arthur Kimber’s experiences as a US serviceman in World War I (book cover left)

H

alf smiling, half self-conscious, proud in his new flying officer’s uniform, a 21-year old stared out at me. His level gaze cut through the century which separated us.

Arthur Clifford Kimber was a young American, a student at Stanford University who served his country in the First World War and was killed in action a few weeks before its end. That much I knew.

That and the fact that he had carried his country’s first official government flag to the Western Front when his country joined the war in 1917.

A partial account of the young man’s mission, a slim volume called The First Flag, had appeared back in 1920. It and a large and untouched cache of his letters and photographs formed part of my wife’s family history, a legacy and a subject which would pop up from time to time. But little more than that.

The young servicemen’s remaining possessions had been reduced over the years to a few boxes, ones which had been moved from pillar to post, stored in basements, attics and garages in America and Britain: diligently kept but largely overlooked.

Yet as the centennial of America’s war loomed the keeper of those

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boxes, my American mother-in-law Elizabeth Nurser and I decided that the time had come to bring them out. Elizabeth has lived in Britain for more than 60 years, arriving in Cambridge back in the 1950s as a Fulbright scholar: a native of California and the niece of the young serviceman in question. For her it was unfinished business.

We both knew that what Kimber had left behind was valuable from an historical point of view: valuable because the letters and photographs formed such a complete archive, and noteworthy given their historical context.

But when we began to go through the letters, transferring them into an editable format and proofing them, what surprised us was the clarity of the voice coming through and how engaging the letters were. Here was a young man in the round, someone with whom we could connect. His writing gave us a window through which we might look at his time: to follow his story but also see the wider picture, to live through moments in history big and small.

The letters were written at a rate of two or three per week every week over an 18-month period - a period which almost exactly mir-

rored that of America’s participation in the war - and Kimber had asked that each letter he posted back to his home in California be typed up by his mother and two brothers. He was conscious of wanting to capture his time in France as a complete memoir, one he hoped to be able to reflect on himself in later years. It was an ambition he was never able to realize of course, his life cut short as it was; which was where we came in all these years later.

His letters begin in the springtime sunshine of California, April 1917, and end in the rain of northeastern France in the autumn of 1918. They chart Kimber’s progress from when he boards the first of his many trains carrying his precious cargo of the flag to the front, days after a large and impressive leavetaking ceremony in San Francisco.

We go with him to New York and a parade down the packed streets of Fifth Avenue. We follow him by armed steamship across the Atlantic and travel with him through England and France, his first impressions of war-time London and Paris, onwards to the flag’s presentation on the front south of Verdun.

With these ceremonies out of the way, we get down to the busi-

Top right: Official presentation of the American flag to the French troops - from the front page of L’Illustration, Paris, June 9, 1917 COURTESY L’ILLUSTRATION, SERVICECLIENT@LILLUSTRATION.COM)

Middle right: Clifford at Cazaux gunnery school, March 1918 (KIMBER LITERARY ESTATE)

Bottom right: Leave-taking ceremony, San Francisco Civic Auditorium, 24 April 1917 (THE FIRST FLAG, © KIMBER LITERARY ESTATE)

ness of the war itself and it is here that we really get to know Kimber.

He serves first as an ambulancier – an American ambulance driver seconded to French military forces – and then as an early recruit to the US Air Service, training and flying as a fighter pilot with both American and the French Air Services. Yet in order to allow the modern reader an opportunity to follow his story properly, we felt it necessary to build a narrative shell around his letters, a narrative which would put him in his proper historical context.

We needed to combine his personal story with the bigger picture: the wider panorama of America’s war.

It involved two years of writing and research, of proofing and editing, of picture research and indexing, libraries and online archives constantly accessed, otherwise mundane details double-checked.

Chapters went back and forth between son-in-law and motherin-law. What I wrote, Elizabeth edited and fired back, with the keen attention to detail born of 50 years in publishing.

And honestly? Yes, on occasion there was haggling fit to test the most robust of writing partnerships, let alone an in-law one. But tellers of old music-hall jokes might just be disappointed: we emerged intact and happier with a century-year old story finally told.

I only hope the young man who still stares out at me from 1917 thinks we’ve done him justice. 

BOOKS British Lending Libraries are on most high streets, but are under threat. Why not join one and borrow a range of books, free, then return them, so you don’t even have to store them?

Virginia Schultz reviews a few she’s been reading:

Bee Journal

Sean Borodale Paperback, 112 pages, Jonathan Cape, £10

[Published July 5, 2012] ISBN: 978-0224097215

This is a poem journal on bee keeping that describes the life of a hive. If there is one thing I’ve become aware of during the past few years, it is the life and death of wild insects such as bees. I was ill as a child and lived with my grandparents and recall my complaining about the bugs, especially bees, that never seem to leave me alone when I was in the garden reading. The past few summers in the States as well as here in the UK I’ve become aware the music of buzzing insects such as bees has dimmed and it concerns me. Borodale’s poems are like honey on toast, a reminder of what I want my grandchildren to taste in the future as sweetly as I have in the past.

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Plant Lore And Legend: The Wisdom and Wonder of Plants and Flowers Revealed Ruth Binney Hardcover, 144 pages Rydon Publishing, £9.99

[Published March 1, 2016] ISBN: 978-1910821107

Understanding the mysteries of the natural world has created all kinds of secrets and superstitions for centuries and even the cave men realized the necessity of plants as food as well as remedies to cure disease.

In this fascinating small book, Binney observes these beliefs. One isn’t surprised that roses were for ‘love’, although it isn’t always the bed of roses one expects. If you’re giving a loved one flowers for a birthday or Valentine’s Day be careful as color is crucial - a yellow rose reads friendship in most places, but in Texas where I lived for a number of years it means passionate, undying love.

An apple a day may keep the doctor away as the old saying goes, but an apple still hanging on a tree after winter is gone foretells death. And in the Southern part of the USA if your dog is afraid to lift his leg at a certain tree it is because it’s one on which a man was hanged. Having a male Westie who automatically lifts his leg at anything larger than he is, I don’t have any worries.

Patterns: Inside the Design Library Peter Koepke Hardback, 332 pages Phaidon, £49.95

[Published October 3, 2016] ISBN: 978-0714871660 Founded in 1972 by internationally reknowned textile designer Susan Meller and her husband, the Design Library holds over 7 million textiles, swatches, wallpaper, and more dating from 1750 to today in Hudson Valley, New York (see www.designlibrary.com). It’s a valuable information source for anyone thinking of decorating their home now or in the future and this insider’s guide boasts 500 lovely illustrations. Or visit the Design Museum (designmuseum.org) or The Victoria and Albert Museum (vam. ac.uk), for further ideas.

London’s Hidden Corners, Lanes and Squares Graeme Chesters Paperback, 192 pages Survival Books, £9.95

[Published Oct ober 1, 2015] ISBN: 978-1909282698 Years ago when I first came to live in London, a friend and I used a similar book to get to know the wonderful city we had fallen in love with. On our once a month wanderings we ate in all kinds of pubs and ancient bistros where we met characters out of Dickens. London has changed since then; there are more multi-millionaires per square mile and the houses are no longer slightly run down, but the past still lingers in the walls and along the brick lined streets if one uses their imagination. So in April I plan to once again make this walking journey with this book in hand.

The Boy Who Sailed The Ocean In An Armchair Lara Williamson Paperback, 336 pages Usborne, £6.99

New York Cult Recipes Marc Grossman Hardcover, 274 pages Murdoch Books,£20.00

[Published October 10, 2013] ISBN 978-1743369722 The author’s grandparents emigrated from Russia to New York while he went in the opposite direction and now lives in Paris. My ancestors were slightly earlier, my grandmother’s Quaker ancestors came to Philadelphia with William Penn and I now live in London. Although, I never lived in New York, it was the first big city I visited from my home town in Pennsylvania. I was fortunate I was taken there by my grandfather and we stayed there with friends who were born and bred New Yorkers, including the accent. She was of Jewish and Greek background and he Italian and Russian and eating at their table along with friends and relatives who always seemed to show up at dinner time was an experience on its own. Until their death in my late twenties I use to visit them from time to time and the recipes in this book from ‘Coffee Time’ to the last chapter Grossman calls ‘Extras’ brought back memories of a time when people enjoyed eating and the word dieting was never heard. This is not a Julia Child cookbook but the recipes, whether you want to make Mac and Cheese, Corn Beef Brisket or Cholent which needs to be cooked for 15 hours, are perfect to cook on a lazy Sunday, or just browse hungrily through the book at bedtime.

A Slice Of Britain: Around the Country by Cake Caroline Taggart Hardcover, 336 pages Automobile Association, £10.00

[Published March 3, 2014] ISBN 978-0749574093

First of all, I advise anyone living in the UK and who enjoys cooking or baking should buy a British scale as well as any other measuring cups or spoons needed. Then buy this book and take a tour of Britain and enjoy everything from Singing Hinnies to Coventry God Cakes to Rich Shortbread. Taggart, the Sunday Times bestselling author, goes from Bath Buns to Rich Shortbread to Cornish teas, and there goes my diet. In the past, English restaurants weren’t so good, but oh, their traditional teas with all the delicious cakes and sandwiches were like no place else. In this book she reveals the origin of the recipes and we meet the people still making the traditional tea time fare.

A fun book to read and have.

Children’s books:

[Published October 1, 2015] ISBN 978-1409576327 Children’s books are more realistic than in my day and age when Jack and Jill went up the hill and did not break their crown when they fell. Here, Becket Rumsey lost his mother when he was four and was being raised by his father with the help of his father’s girl friend. Then in the middle of the night, his father for an unknown reason decides to run away with Becket and his brother Billy. It’s a journey of discovery and being able to say a final goodbye to his mother, but at the same time not forgetting her. It’s an adventure story for boys or girls from eight to twelve with realistic undertones that are sensitive but with enough adventure to enthral most children.

Witchwild

Emma Fischel Paperback, 336 pages Nosy Crow, £6.99

[Published August 4, 2016] Ages 8-12 ISBN 978-0857634986 Flo lives on a witchglobe filled with magic that needs to be carefully watched or things can go terribly wrong. It is Witchen Week, the best and most fun holiday of the year, and Flo loves to swim in Kroneby Bay, but she needs to be careful as there are dark secrets below the surface and she’ll have to fight off ghouls, Haggfiend, and then an even more terrifying creature.

But, there is sadness in her life because her Dad whom she adored has been missing for almost three years. Flo must face many challenges before a happy ending.

Read more Flo adventures in Witchworld and WitchMyth.

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Lindsey Ferrentino

Ugly Lies the Bone is an allegory of modern post-industrial, post-war, post-truth America, a time of flux. On Inauguration Day, playwright Lindsey Ferrentino spoke to The American

A

s the magazine for Americans in the UK, The American is always interested in our interviewees background stories where they originate from, where their life and career has taken them and how they ended up over here, whether permanently or just for a while. Lindsey Ferrentino’s path is even more relevant than most, and it focuses on two places: Florida and New York City.

I grew up half in Long Island, and when I was in fifth grade we moved to Merritt Island in Florida, a small town in the Space Coast Area, says Lindsey. It grew up around the NASA Space Shuttle industry and it changed physically and economically once the Shuttle program shut down, around the time I went to college. My family was one of the few that wasn’t affected - my dad’s a retired comedian, he used to surf there in the ‘70s and that’s how we ended up in Florida - but so many of

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my friends’ families were. Their parents were rockets scientists or in one of the trickle-out industries alongside the program that all shut down.

There were thousands of layoffs.

Many people fled the area. If anyone could leave, they did – you couldn’t get a moving truck!

In 2011, when Ugly Lies the Bone is set, the county had the sixth highest foreclosure rate in the country, and it was highest the year after. It was the peak of the fallout from the financial crisis and we had the housing bubble popping, on top of NASA closing the Shuttle program. It was devastating for the area. The play is set in the week leading up to the very final Shuttle launch, right before the final wave of layoffs.

Ugly Lies the Bone’s protagonist Jess, a female soldier, returns from Afghanistan to Florida severely burned, and finds her home town in turmoil. Is this a metaphor for the wider United States, or wider Ameri-

can society?

I had a childhood best friend who became a psychologist at a Veterans Center in the area. We talked a lot about the soldiers coming back who were looking for a way to start over, in a town itself looking for the same thing. It does seem to me a microcosm of what was going on in the United States, and would continue to go on and lead to Trump being elected – these one industry towns shutting down, and the local economies collapsing. And it felt to me a very symbolic industry, our space program was the pride of our country, the American frontier spirit of going out to explore. What does it mean when you take that away from the culture of a town, or a country?

Your family still lives in the area?

My mom is a hotel manager. They went through losing the tourism, and then seeing it back because they’re looking to open a huge cruise terminal there – that’s the new industry

Left: Lindsey Ferrentino in the National Theatre, London, rehearsal room for Ugly Lies the Bone Below: The UK cast in rehearsal - from left, Ralf Little (Stevie) & Kate Fleetwood who plays Jess; Fleetwood and Buffy Davis (Mom) PHOTOS: MARK DOUET

there, I guess.

It’s a pro-Trump community?

Very. It was a funny divide, living in my New York liberal artist circles where everybody was convinced it was going to be Clinton, and going to Florida and being surrounded by Trump signs. Speaking on Inauguration Day, it’s a great privilege and responsibility to have an international platform to talk about what’s going on in my home country. It’s an important time in the theater to fight narcissism with empathy. I’m very grateful to have this opportunity, at this time.

Writing started early for you?

I’d always written short stories, and that morphed into writing screenplays in high school. Right before I went to NYU, to be an actor, I wrote my first play. I had a teacher who pulled me out of class and scolded me for not having entered a school playwriting contest. She made me write something overnight, so I wrote a little one act play about a playwright who couldn’t think of anything to write. It won the school contest, then the State contest, then the national contest, and I got to see it produced at the Kennedy Center.

I realized it was much more satisfying than I was getting from acting or other writing pursuits, although I write a few short stories as a palate cleanser between plays.

Your plays are forensically journalistic, did you ever consider journalism as a career?

No, but in another life I would have been a documentary maker, I write fictional plays from as much of a real starting point as I can, and I tend to do a lot of research. For this play I talked to a lot of veterans, and the inventors of a virtual reality game I use in the play.

Edward Albee, a colossus of American playwriting who died in 2016, figured large in your development as a playwright?

Albee was a mentor of mine.

Not on a daily basis but I had been obsessively reading his plays in high school, and I wrote him a letter when I moved to New York and asked if he would meet with me. I was making a documentary on the poet WH Auden, who I found out I was related to. Albee knew Auden, and had written him a similar letter and they spent an afternoon discussing poetry and playwriting. Albee invited me into his home, we talked for a day and he let me interview him for the documentary. I applied to be an Edward Albee Fellow and was invited to his barn in Montauk, New York, where he invites artists come and stay and work. He was such a huge formative figure in my life.

Ugly Lies the Bone sold out its off-Broadway run, and it’s been

produced in Indiana, Massachusetts, Iowa, Colorado, Georgia and Florida. The play has evolved, will it continue to in London, especially with its British cast?

I suppose I can’t help myself changing it. We had done a workshop at the National Theatre last summer, and I did a fair amount of rewriting because this production is physically much bigger than in New York. It’s a 900 seat theater. Most of the changes are making sure the cultural references still specific to Americans, but are as clear to a British audience. When you say Cocoa Beach or Cape Canaveral here, people think of the ‘60s and I Dream of Jeannie – the area has a glamour associated with it that is not actually true. We’re lucky to have six weeks rehearsal at the National, because it’s such a well-supported institution.

In 2008 I studied abroad at the Institute of Contemporary Arts through New York University. I love London, although I’m still finding my way around. Theater is such an important part of culture here – it is in New York, but people go every few months, it’s not such a part of daily life there Lastly, what’s the best thing about being Lindsey Ferrentino?

That’s a terrible question! [laughs] The best thing is that I’m getting an international platform to talk about small personal stories.

PHOTO ©ROBERT WORKMAN

The Kite Runner T

he problem with adapting big epic novels to the stage is that too often you end up with just the plot.

Khaled Hosseini’s much loved novel, which has sold more than 23 million copies, has the epic sweep, large timespan and that blend of the personal and the political, the intimate and the epic, which defines a classic novel.

Here in Matthew Spangler’s rather pedestrian adaptation, which runs just short of three hours, we do get swept up in this gripping tale of guilt and atonement but the texture of the novel gets rather lost along the way and too often it appears to have a cloying earnestness to it. By slavishly following the first person narrator of the novel we end up with a chronological series of events and theater adding nothing.

Giles Croft’s staging fatally lacks pace and apart from the quiet poetry of a wedding scene, where the narrative takes a breather, it lacks any real imaginative spark. He created it in 2013 as the UK premiere in a co-production for Nottingham Playhouse and Liverpool’s Everyman, but Spangler had originated the piece for

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Adapted by Matthew Spangler from the novel by Khaled Hosseini Wyndham’s Theatre, Charing Cross Rd, London WC2H 0DA Reviewed by Jarlath O’Connell

the stage in California back in 2007.

It therefore predates the successful Oscar nominated film version, which would also be known to many.

The story is narrated by Amir, an Afghan refugee living in California and looking back on a childhood incident during the halcyon days of Kabul in the ‘70s which has haunted him his whole life. He and his widowed father Baba, from a comfortable and privileged Pashtun background, were forced to flee after the Soviet invasion. Amir’s memories are dominated by his inseparable boyhood friend, Hassan, the kite runner of the title, who was the poor and illiterate son of the family servant and a member of the persecuted Hazara minority. The sensitive Amir’s charged relationship with his father plays out in an incident where a fatal misjudgement by him leads to him betraying Hassan, after an altercation with the local bully, Assef. Not surprisingly, Assef later ends up as a Taliban thug. The guilt over all this causes Amir to take a further action which separates him and Hassan for good and leads to his lifelong search for redemption.

Having adults play the characters from childhood, as in Blood Brothers, does occasionally jar, as does the ‘generalized exotic’ accents which are often very old Hollywood indeed.

Despite this, Ben Turner who combines narrator and lead as Amir, carries the play with ease and has a rapt audience in tears by the end. Emilio Doorgasingh too manages to give the big hearted father much light and shade and his journey from the comfortable upper class life, to Third World refugee hell, to adapting to the zany reality of ‘80s San Francisco, is beautifully etched by him. The slightly built Andrei Costin is genuinely moving too in the difficult role of the innocent and ever loyal Hassan and Antony Bunsee is perfect as a rigid exiled General, who ends up as Amir’s father in law.

Unlike the Tricycle’s epic cycle The Great Game or Tony Kushner’s Homebody/Kabul the piece does little to enlighten one about the chequered history of Afghanistan but there is no denying the heart wrenching pull of this great tale. It will have a particular impact on those who are not familiar with the novel. Take Kleenex. 

The Glass Menagerie

by Tennessee Williams Duke of York’s Theatre St Martin’s Lane, London WC2N 4BG Reviewed by Jarlath O’Connell Brian J. Smith, Cherry Jones, Kate O’Flynn and Michael Esper

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ohn Tiffany’s direction and Nico Muhly’s compositions help mine new depths in this ace production of Williams’ greatest play.

It originated at the American Repertory Theatre in Harvard, moved to Broadway (where it was garlanded with Tony nominations), then last summer to the Edinburgh Festival and finally to London. It also marks the West End debut of the great Cherry Jones, a revered name on Broadway but (sadly) best known here as the President in Homeland. London can now see why she matters.

Bob Crowley’s design is spare, no walls but a lopsided fire escape which climbs to infinity giving the sense of the apartment as a refuge, floating above a cruel world. Nico Muhly’s limpid underscoring and Natasha Katz’s sensitive lighting add greatly to the ethereal atmosphere.

Williams, in a production note, made it explicit that this is a “memory play” and memories are of course notoriously selective. His argument was that truth or life can, in essence, only be represented on stage through transformation. This is Tiffany’s starting point and with

his usual penchant for gloriously fluid movement, he uses mime and illusion sparingly but effectively, to fashion a spellbindingly dreamlike production. It is nonetheless rooted in the cold reality of 1930s St Louis.

Often presented as a lioness, Jones here brings a tenderness to the Southern matriarch Amanda which is quite captivating. Her simple faith in her children’s natural endowments is truly touching as is her horror for Laura of a future life as a pitied and barely tolerated spinster. Life requires Spartan endurance she warns her two drifter offspring constantly, harking back to her halcyon youth when she was blessed with money and the allure to entertain many “gentlemen callers” of an evening. Her husbandbaiting has a very serious purpose however in a society where there was no safety net, especially for single women.

She’s masterful in slipping from girlish vitality to hardnosed pragmatism. When they invite Tom’s work colleague round for dinner, her Southern Belle performance (she never stops talking), which she forces Laura to join in with, is both tantalising and desperate in

PHOTO ©JOHAN PERSSON

equal measure. She wants Laura to “cultivate vivacity”, a tall order considering the girl is crippled by shyness because of slight physical disability.

As the single Brit joining the American cast, Kate O’Flynn is utterly beguiling as the fragile Laura and brings a vivid freshness to the role. Her transformation from mouse-like child to sharp and intelligent young woman when she temporarily opens up to the Gentleman Caller (Brian J Smith, who deftly manages to make the role both ordinary and romantic at the same time) is all the more heartbreaking because we then have to witness her slow retreat back into that shell after her dream has been dashed.

Michael Esper too brings a raffishness to Tom, the poet stuck in a dead end job to support his mother and sister and, crucially, he doesn’t soft-peddle Tom’s selfish disregard.

This quartet present such fully rounded portrayals of these great characters that it’s as if you’re seeing the play for the first time. They will all need to make some room on their mantelpieces. There will be awards. 

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By Tom Stoppard Apollo Theatre, Shaftesbury Avenue, London W1D 7EZ Reviewed by Jarlath O’Connell Clare Foster and Tom Hollander (in both) PHOTOS ©JOHAN PERSSON

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T R AV E S T I E S

illy Wilder’s maxim that “if you are going to tell people something serious you’d better entertain them while you’re at it, otherwise they will never forgive you” couldn’t be more apt when it comes to Travesties. Patrick Marber’s joyfully dazzling revival of this great play gets a well-deserved transfer from the Menier Chocolate Factory. In its last West End outing in 1993 the piece came across as rather arch, but not here, because Marber foregrounds the emotion and the wit. He is also blessed with a sublime cast who make it all fizz like Champagne.

The idea for the play stems from the obscure fact which Stoppard hit upon that Henry Carr, a minor British consular official in Zurich in 1917, not only played Algernon in The Importance of Being Earnest for the English Players there, but was also embroiled in angry litigation with a fellow company member, who happened to be James Joyce. We see the aged Carr (Tom Hollander) hilariously misremember the experience.

Also in the city at this time, sitting out the war, were the exiled Lenin and the founder of Dadaism, Tristan Tzara. This leads Carr to imagine that he himself was a pivotal player

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therefore in the political, artistic and literary revolutions initiated by these three figures who were to shape the 20th century from this point onwards. It’s a wonderfully British framing of these events, knocking ‘em all down to size.

Stoppard’s great conceit is that he uses Wilde’s play as the framework for the piece with Tzara and Carr taking on the roles of Jack and Algernon while Joyce (whose middle name, amazingly, was Augusta) becoming Lady Bracknell. A Zurich librarian in thrall to Lenin and his cause becomes Cecily (Clare Foster in sparkling form) and Joyce’s secretary (Amy Morgan) becomes Gwendolyn. The two hilariously play out Wilde’s great female confrontation in the style of an old vaudeville number. In the same vein Joyce has one scene written totally in Limericks. Stoppard’s great achievement is to present these literary and intellectual japes with such a lightness of touch as to totally charm the audience. So, you don’t really need to brush up on the history of Lenin or Joyce or Dadaism but a familiarity with The Importance of Being Earnest will certainly reap great rewards here.

Hollander, fresh from such hits

as The Night Manager and Rev is in his acting prime. He perfectly nails the tired philistinism of Carr and his type, but it’s the dandyish obsession with tailoring which gives Hollander the key to his character and he humanizes him by lending him a certain roguish charm.

It is great too to see Freddie Fox extend his range and perform acrobatic feats of both diction and movement in his witty impersonation of the devilish and posturing Tzara. Forbes Masson is uncanny as a rather dull Lenin and a barely recognizable Peter McDonald brings Joyce alive as a sort of whimsical cove. You can see though, that of this three, Stoppard’s heart is with Joyce, the artist who creates something immortal whilst revolutionaries come and go.

It is amazing to think that when this premiered in 1974 the USSR was at its height and so Stoppard felt he had to tread lightly in interpreting Lenin. Today’s culture wars give new dimensions to all the arguments here about the value and purpose of art but this play clearly speaks to every age, the true mark of a classic.

Production values throughout are top notch, particularly Tim Hatley’s exquisite costumes. 

PHOTO © MANUEL HARLAN

ART

By Yasmina Reza in a translation by Christopher Hampton Old Vic Theatre, The Cut, Lambeth, London SE1 8NB

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atthew Warchus calls Art, which he has revived after 20 years at the Old Vic, a 'big small play' and seeing it again after two decades what is striking is how perceptions of it change as you get older. What appeared to me in my late twenties as a mere amuse bouche, this time reveals itself as a play of some substance. Its richness has become more apparent with age because it leads us to reflect on how friendships change over time.

It is also a play about identity, fear of change, tolerance and prejudice, and you can't get more 'big' or more current than that.

In its original London outing in 1996 with Albert Finney, Tom Courtenay and Ken Stott it was a phenomenal success. At just 90 minutes it could be (and was) recast eternally with marquee names, just enough to fit neatly over the title. It had 8 years in the West End and 18 months on Broadway and it won every award going and was translated into 30 languages.

Christopher Hampton's transla-

tion of it introduced the young, female, French dramatist, Yasmina Reza to an Anglo audience, where she has since enjoyed ongoing success.

The play works simply because it deftly explores the tensions and resentments which bubble under in all friendships, the little ways friends hurt each other without realizing it or the mistaken ways they attempt to re-mold each other, and ultimately the way friendships just run out of steam.

Rufus Sewell, straight off his triumph in TV's Victoria, is perfect casting for Serge, the wealthy, suave, Parisian doctor who has just splashed out on a very expensive piece of modern art, a painting which is all-white. This so offends the sensibilities of his old friend Marc (a solid Paul Ritter), that the friendship teeters on the edge of collapse. Marc's tastes in art and life are more conservative and the arguments get heated. Long buried resentments surface and things are said that can't be unsaid and it's up

Reviewed by Jarlath O’Connell to their placid, mutual friend Yvan (Tim Key), as ever, to forge a truce.

Sewell, of the twinkling eyes, just has to raise an eyebrow to get a laugh. It's a pure star turn but he also makes us believe that Serge believes in what he's doing. You understand his disappointment at the smug arrogance of Marc, or even worse the infuriating passivity of Yvan, but neither does Sewell shy away from Serge's more spiteful side.

A rather miscast Key doesn't totally convince as a long term friend of the other two, but he does get to deliver one of the play's highlights. This is when the henpecked Yvan enters whilst in the middle of a glorious rant about the torture of his wedding preparations.

This prolonged volcanic explosion of pent-up frustration elicits a deserved round of applause.

Warchus has staged it again with loving attention to detail and Mark Thompson's designs and Hugh Vanstone's lighting are again top class. 

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Playwright Israel Zangwill (1864 - 1926) coined the phrase The Melting Pot to describe America’s acceptance of immigrants

The New Crucible America’s melting pot has become a donut. Alison Holmes investigates

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n 1908 Israel Zangwill, a young Jewish man born of Russian parents, wrote a play that spoke of hardship and history, family division and religion. Above all, Zangwill’s story was about hope and the strength he believed could be found in the combining of peoples as he praised the country whose promise to upwards of 18 million immigrants between 1890 and 1920 offered a truly new world. He called his play, The Melting Pot. However, almost from the moment the term was coined, other foodie concepts for American identity have jostled for attention and acceptance. Amy Chua and Eva Kolb have offered the idea of a ‘salad bowl’ where the ingredients do not become one but remain separate contributions to the overall dish. Alternatively, the notion of an ‘ethnic stew’ suggests that the elements are steeped in the flavor of other elements, each retaining a separate integrity.

In the aftermath of the election of Donald Trump, what might be considered an apt gastronomic metaphor for our current politics? Some

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could suggest items such as apple pie (as in ‘American as’) or perhaps Wonder bread (always white and fluffy).

Upon reflection, the best contender must be the doughnut aka donut.

Not only does it conjure the image of that quintessential American, Homer Simpson, but more seriously it is suggestive of the profound hollowing out of our civil society currently underway. Not only is there no one left in the center – no one even wants to be in the center. Everyone feels outside, isolated and estranged from society at large and further, actively seeks to highlight their disaffection by wearing it as a badge of honor. A vacuum has formed at the heart of our democracy and political discussion has been replaced with empty calories that offer only the short term energy of cloying sugar and the hollowness of fleeting satisfaction.

This degradation in the nutritional value of our discourse was clear from the outset of the campaign as each presidential candidate sought to establish their ‘outsider’ credentials.

Donald Trump clearly had the best form on this score, but Bernie Sanders

and even Hillary Clinton spent time and treasure asserting their profiles as plain folks who understood the folks. They all stumped hard on the assertion they felt the peoples’ pain and would fight in their corner. However, long before the voting began, it was clear that it was never going to be the appeal to a higher, broader idea of ‘us’ that would capture voters’ hearts, but the most narrow and flinty vision of the commonweal. In the final weeks, only the relentless cry to ‘Make America Great Again’ was able to reach the frustrated and angry heartland of uneducated, frightened, ignored and largely white underclass of American society.

For many Americans, it comes as icy cold comfort that this election outcome is not an outlier. Discussions of nationalism and populism now abound, but all agree that Europe is also witnessing a kind of curdling of its multiculturalist ideals, revealing only lumps of identity discourse and leading to a haunting sense of dystopic politics operating in parallel universes. Trump’s adeptness at courting support from those

PHOTO ©GAGE SKIDMORE

Donald Trump: The greatest outsider credentials

with extreme and distasteful views, combined with shrill accusations of a rigged election, find common cause with very unlikely political allies. As Pankaj Mishra points out in his November Foreign Affairs article, “marginalised blue collar Christians in rust belt America and post-communist Poland and alienated young Muslims in France push duelling narratives of victimhood and heroic struggle pitting the faithful against the heretics”. The battle cry has gone up for those whose lives and livelihoods have been all but destroyed by the processes of globalization, even as the economies around them have pushed ahead. Further, the troopers in this cause are being led not only by the likely suspects of Donald Trump, Victor Orban, Marine Le Pen, or Nigel Farage, but a most unlikely Boudica has been found in the UK’s Prime Minister, Theresa May as she declared war on “international elites” in her October party conference speech.

Amid a long list of the characteristics that define ‘us’ vs ‘them’ she also declared that “...if you believe you’re a citizen of the world, you’re a citizen of nowhere. You don’t understand what the very word ‘citizenship’ means”.

On its face, the comment seems a

relatively predictable applause line, designed for a conference speech.

However, as one considers this sentiment against the internationalist pedigree of the United Kingdom, the country’s enduring role – for good and ill – as a balancer of Europe, mediator of conflict, provider of aid and succour and support for the cause of peace, prosperity and progress around the world, the consequences of the United Kingdom following its lumbering American cousin into an isolationist ice age become profound. Happily, she may not have the people behind her on this score – at least not yet. According to a BBC poll, the UK remains convinced of its global credentials and 47% agree that they see themselves “more as a global citizen than a citizen of my country” with only 23% strongly disagreeing. By way of contrast, the same poll found that 36% of Americans strongly disagree, close behind the people of Russia where 40% strongly disagree with such a statement.

Immigration at the time of Zangwill’s play is generally assumed to be one of the largest waves in American history. Interestingly, since the 1990s there have been nearly a million more

immigrants to the United States and, unlike that first wave made up largely of Central and Eastern European Catholics and Jews, this latest wave has been Latin Catholics and African or Middle Eastern Muslims. In light of this information, it becomes less surprising that people are uncertain of their place in the economic, social and political marketplace.

Zangwill’s idea of “a new alloy,” forged in the “crucible” of democracy, freedom and civic responsibility was a melting pot for the 20th century.

What we are to become next is the new crucible to be endured, a play still to be written.

Dr. Alison Holmes is Asst. Professor of International Studies and Politics at Humboldt State University, CA. She lived in the UK for over 20 years and worked at the BBC, ran BritishAmerican Business in London and was speechwriter to the US Ambassador. A PhD in International Relations from the LSE, she has been an Associate Fellow at the Rothermere American Institute at Oxford, a Churchill Memorial Trust History Fellow and the Transatlantic Studies Fellow at Yale.

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Sept 7th, 2016: Donald Trump at the Marriott Marquis, NYC © MICHAEL-VADON Inset: Feb 18th, 2017: President Trump High-Fives Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe at his ‘Winter Whitehouse’, his Mar-a-Lago Golf Club, Florida PHOTO: TWITTER

Remembrance of Shots Past

By our Golfing correspondent, Darren Kilfara

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ostalgia seems to be violently in or out of fashion, depending on which side of the American political chasm you currently stand.

Many Trump supporters harken back to what they remember as a more straightforward time where jobs were steady, Walter Cronkite had never heard of “fake news”, and all of the caddies at The Masters were black. Many opponents of Trump and his supporters ridicule such views as anachronistic and out of touch with modern reality; for them, the past was never as good as we remember, modern life is better and indeed safer, and such nostalgia can be both delusional and dangerous.

I do not support Donald Trump.

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But I do often feel nostalgic for simpler, happier golfing times. Like, I dunno, December 2016.

I played in the final medal last year at my home club of Dunbar and shot a one-under-par 70. I hadn’t broken par in a competitive round at Dunbar before, and I hadn’t broken 76 in a stroke play competition all year, but I had one of those days when everything just clicked. I actually duffed two chips at the fourth and had to hole a 12-footer for double-bogey, but apart from that I hit almost everything straight, made four birdies, and finished with an excellent Texas wedge from 30 yards short of the final green and a sweetly satisfying six-foot par putt. It was a calm,

comfortable day, and I had two wonderful playing companions; in short, it was everything I wish golf could always be.

My capacity for self-indulgent reminiscing about past rounds and shots is almost limitless. I’m hardly alone in this; for many high handicappers, remembering and dreaming of recapturing one perfect shot or one great hole is enough to keep coming back for round upon round of additional punishment. But my golfing recall is particularly onanistic. I can still feel the sensations I felt from almost every outlandish shot I’ve ever holed, going back to the 110-yard 4-iron I sank for birdie as a youngster in a Thanksgiving tournament in suburban Atlanta. And I

Walter Cronkite at 35th Apollo 11 anniversary

haven’t played golf since that first week in December largely because I’ve enjoyed replaying every shot from that round in my mind so much; why risk tarnishing those pleasures with more immediate but less intense substitutes?

In these disturbing days, I find myself withdrawing even more to such safe spaces of the mind. I know such reveries cannot and should not last forever, but we all have our own defense mechanisms. And if I want to ponder afresh my hole-inone in the Carnegie Shield at Royal Dornoch or to watch the final round of the 1986 Masters again, you can’t stop me. But still, I hear things.

A friend of an acquaintance of mine is a member of Trump National Golf Club near Washington DC, and he has many stories about the new President of the United States including one in which Trump was playing in the club championship at TNGC, and when his playing partner refused

to sign Trump’s scorecard after the round on the grounds that Trump had cheated so many times, Trump literally screamed about how all great golfers improve their lies and how his partner would have his club membership revoked. Another time, apparently, Trump faced a blind approach shot and sent his caddie ahead to the green with the words “I need to get a birdie here”; the caddie took Trump’s ball after it landed and moved it to within 10 feet of the hole, but after Trump missed the putt, he grabbed the caddie by the neck and fired him instantly, saying, “When I need to get a birdie, I mean that I need to get a birdie!”

These are third- or fourth-hand stories, so you can choose to believe them or not. What I find hard to believe is that the person who knew and told these stories apparently voted for Trump anyway.

Right now, it’s difficult for me to care whether Tiger Woods can win

©NASA/BILL INGALLS

tournaments again, if Justin Thomas is the real deal, or if the PGA Championship will move from August to May when America’s golfer-in-chief is Donald Trump. I strongly suspect there will be better days ahead, both on and off the golf course. But for the moment, I’m inclined to stop beating and let my boat be swept by the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past. 

US expat Darren Kilfara formerly worked for Golf Digest magazine and is the author of A Golfer’s Education (below), a memoir of his junior year abroad as a studentgolfer at the University of St. Andrews. His latest book, a novel called Do You Want Total War?, is also now available online at Amazon and elsewhere.

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Tottenham - NFL’s new London home The American gets a sneak preview of Tottenham Hotspur’s new stadium in North London.

Get used to it - outside of Wembley and Twickenham it’ll be the NFL’s British base from 2018

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elcome to the future; the future of NFL football here in the UK. Top flight Premier League soccer club Tottenham Hotspur - aka Spurs - is building a new stadium for its many fans, and instead of thinking of ‘our’ football as an added attraction they’ve integrated gridiron into its design from the get go.

This commitment to the NFL means that from 2018 Tottenham will host two International Series games per year for at least 10 years.

The commitment goes both ways.

The press launch of the new stadium was co-hosted by the NFL with several officials on hand to explain the sporting linkup as well as Super Bowl legend Osi Umenyiora. (See page 76.)

The architects, Populous, have been responsible for the design of dozens of gridiron stadiums since

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1985 as well as facilities in many other sports, as their Managing Director, EMEA, explained, so they understand the needs and wants of the clubs and players in the different forms of football, but also of their fans.

The new stadium is being constructed beside Spurs’ current home in White Hart Lane. As the building reaches its conclusion, the new and the old will be amalgamated into a spectacular stateof-the-art space. During this final phase Tottenham will play their home games at Wembley Stadium.

When it opens, the new stadium will be the only one in the world boasting twin playing surfaces enabling soccer and gridiron football to be played on the same weekend - or even the same day! On top, a

natural grass soccer pitch which can slide back under one stand in a few hours to reveal an artificial surfaced NFL field. The front row of the soccer audience will be at the same level as the players. The drop in levels when the grass slides away will effectively raise the NFL crowd above the surface, enabling them to see over the teams on the sidelines. Clever.

No front row seat will be more than eight meters away from the action, unusual for EPL (English Premier League) but common in the NFL, giving a much more intense fan experience.

Experiences of a different kind are also planned for the new stadium, as one of the world’s top acousticians, who also oversees the sound of U2’s concerts, has optimised the sound within the bowl.

PHOTO © MICHAEL BURLAND PHOTO © MICHAEL BURLAND

The new White Hart Lane will be the largest club ground in London with a gameday capacity of more than 61,000. ‘Coincidentally’ that’s a Spinal Tap-like “one more” (thousand) than Tottenham’s biggest rivals and North London neighbors Arsenal.

Tottenham is one of London’s most deprived areas, so the new stadium is being integrated into the local economy, with a new school, a sports center and homes.

They want Americans to feel at home here too. There will be facilities that will enable you to use White Hart Lane as your virtual office, any day of the week, and the gameday entertainment and hospitality offer looks to be world class.

Of course you can just buy a ticket to the game, but corporates and other businesspeople should take a look at the premium suites, lounges, private loges, Michelin star quality dining, and airport business lounge-like Sky Lounges running along the top of both sides of the building. Down at ground level, the Tunnel Club will give a unique (in the UK) view of the players as they head from dressing room to pitch plus player-style seats right behind the First Team technical area.

There’s even the world’s first stadium micro-brewery producing a million pints of craft beer a year and an in-house bakery.

Tottenham are making big commitments to the United States in other ways too. It has more local clubs in the States than any other EPL team. The club’s top class coaches travel to the States to help American kids excel in the game of soccer, and they run a tournament in the US to find the best young players, who are invited to London for further training and competitions. 

From top: Construction of Tottenham’s new White Hart Lane stadium; Architect Chris Lee points out details to the press pack; Artist’s impression of the Tunnel Club

All these US-UK sporting connections make Tottenham Hotspur “the soccer team for Americans” as well as the natural home of the NFL in the UK. The American is teaming up with Spurs to give some great offers for our readers. Watch this space, and our website www.theamerican.co.uk.

And go to www.tottenhamhotspur.com for details of the new stadium.

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Osi Umenyiora The Super Bowl legend, NFL promoter, BBC pundit and London resident meets The American

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merican football is an increasingly Transatlantic business. Just look at Tottenham Hotspur’s incorporation of NFL requirements into its new stadium design - on the panel at the press presentation was Osi Umenyiora, former New York Giants and Atlanta Falcons player and two-time Super Bowl winner. An allAmerican hero, right? Well yeah, but a Transatlantic one too. We grabbed a few minutes with Osi to find out exactly why.

Osi (whose name in Igbo means “From today on things will be good”!

– it’s working well so far) has had a more international life than most.

Like many of The American’s readers he has dual citizenship, but rather than British/American Osi’s is British/Nigerian, holding a Green Card in the USA. He was born in London, England and moved to Nigeria at the age of 7. It wasn’t a culture shock as he’d been raised in the Nigerian way by his parents. The real culture shock came when he moved, at 14, to live with his sister in Alabama.

“It was crazy,” Osi says, “A completely different way of viewing the world. My sister was in college most of the time, I could have misbehaved myself ...but I never did!” he laughs.

What were the main differences in lifestyle?

“Number one was the language.

Everybody in Alabama asked me if I spoke English – I did, I don’t know what they were speaking there! I had to get used to the Southern accent and the way they do things. And the whole sporting culture – I went over to America with a primary focus on education. Everybody was football

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mad. People of all different colors and cultures coming together for sport. I didn’t go for a sports scholarship, it was straight up education.”

Osi graduated from Troy University, but before he did he had a great college football career and still holds the college record for sacks – it seems to be a theme as he also holds the NY Giants record for most sacks in one game. He’s also one of only four British-born players to have won a Super Bowl. Are there any Brits coming through now?

“We have a project here to get more people from England playing the sport. If you want to make the game popular in this country, people want to root for somebody they know. If we can get a true British superstar player it will help us grow the game exponentially out here. If I’d known what the NFL’s plans were I’d have played up my English background, walking round with a Union Jack! No we need to find more players who can carry that flag for Great Britain.”

Will Tottenham hosting two NFL games a year from 2018 help the sport grow in the UK? “That’s the plan. The NFL has a farreaching grass roots program to get the young kids playing flag football, not full contact yet. All the teams who come out here do things with the schools.”

Osi played for the Giants most of his career, with a 2 year stint with the Falcons. Is he a Giant at heart?

“Yeah, but interestingly enough the whole time I was playing for the Giants I lived in Atlanta, so I have a little bit of both in me. For the five

months of the NFL season I would be in New York, the rest of the time in Atlanta. It’s warmer – and a lot cheaper.”

Nowadays Osi is helping Mark Waller, the head of NFL International, promote the game overseas and, after a period with ESPN, co-presents the BBC’s highly entertaining NFL coverage along with Mark Chapman and Jason Bell (former Dallas, Houston and Giants player and Super Bowl winner). It looks like they have fun?

“That’s the main thing. We’re not talking to NFL purists. I try to do it the way I would want to watch – people want to be entertained.”

Home is in Notting Hill, London, so Osi’s a fully fledged expat now. He will be a regular at Tottenham’s new NFL-friendly stadium. Was he involved there early on?

“I came out with the NFL Commissioner last year and had some discussions. It’s something they’ve committed to, and the NFL has committed to being in the UK. It’s a fantastic opportunity for the NFL and for Tottenham.”

Will having games outside Wembley, the national soccer stadium, make it more ‘normal’ to go and see an NFL game in the UK, less of a novelty?

“No doubt about that, man. As fantastic as Wembley is they’ll never associate it with American football, never,” Osi laughs.

And long term, with four main season games each year for ten years, should London have its own franchise?

“That’s what the hope is. The NFL has invested a tremendous amount of money in London. The game is

IMAGE COURTESY NFLUK

The American’s Michael Burland chats to Osi Umenyiora

saturated in America, it can’t get any bigger. The NFL, as any business, wants to expand so it has to look overseas, and what better place is there than the United Kingdom?

It’s only six hours away, it’s like flying from Los Angeles to New York.

They’ll have to look at logistical issues, tax, getting players to move, that kind of thing.”

And should there be a new franchise here?

“They won’t start a new franchise, it’ll be an existing team. The team that has made the commitment so far has been the Jacksonville Jaguars, maybe because [Jags owner] Shahid Khan owns Fulham. But other people own teams – Kroenke owns Arsenal and the Los Angeles Rams, the Glazers own Manchester United and Tampa Bay Buccaneers.”

NFL teams frequently move, like the Rams’ recent move back to LA

from St Louis. If a team moves to London, will they lose their existing fan base?

“No, once you become a fan, it’s almost not territorial any more.

Wherever they go you’re always going to support them.”

At Wembley, fans of all NFL terams turn out to see an NFL game over here, no matter who is playing. Is there a risk that the numbers of American fans might go down with a local London franchise?

“Eventually it will, but that team is not just going to be London’s team, it’s going to be Europe’s team, so you’ll see people from everywhere fly in, from all across the continent of Europe. As soon as that happens, they will identify themselves with this particular franchise and support this team.”

One final question: What is the best thing about being Osi

Umenyiora?

“Wow. That’s tough, that’s not as easy as you might think. I think the best thing about being me is that I get to do this for a job. I never would have expected growing up where I came from that I’d be in this position, retired from the NFL, accomplished all the things I did, and I’m doing this as a job. Most of the time I really can’t believe it because this isn’t working, this is fun. When I was playing, and now I’m retired, I’m still having fun as a job.”

So, what you’re saying is, from school, onward you’ve never had a proper job?

“No, I never had an actual job – not one day!” 

Listen to the interview at https://goo.gl/Srfn9T

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Shea McClellin and Chris Long celebrate

Patriots Rock The House ...Eventually PHOTO COURTESY NEW ENGLAND PATRIOTS/ERIC J ADLER

Gary Jordan explores one of the greatest games in Super Bowl history

C

all it fate. Call it redemption. Call it good old fashioned revenge.

What Tom Brady and his New England Patriots achieved in Houston on the evening of Sunday February 5th, was nothing short of exceptional. The come from behind 34-28 overtime win against the Atlanta Falcons will go down in Super Bowl history as one of the greatest games ever played in the modern era. It will certainly be marked as the best ever showpiece game in NFL history.

Robert Kraft, the Patriots owner, gladly received the Lombardi Trophy from Commissioner Roger Goodell after he, like the rest of us, witnessed history, “Two years ago we won our fourth Super Bowl down in Arizona.

I told our fans that was the sweetest one of all, but a lot has transpired during the last two years. I don’t think that needs any explanation.”

He was of course referring to the

Deflategate scandal that rocked his team, and put big question marks over their fourth title success. “This is unequivocally the sweetest.” He added.

The reputation of both quarterback Tom Brady and head coach Bill Belichick was tarnished through a publicly humiliating time that saw the Patriots, Goodell and the NFL lock horns. Something that should have been dealt with swiftly turned into a legal battle that dragged the league through the mud. When the eventual dust had settled Brady had to serve a four game ban at the start of this season, such is the Patriot way they still came out of that opening month with a 3-1 record which is testament to the coach and his ability to make good things happen out of adversity.

Upon Brady’s return it was his personal crusade to take his team to

the playoffs and back to the Super Bowl. He did this with unnerving ease, helping the team to a league best 14-2 record, then dismantling the Houston Texans and Pittsburgh Steelers in the postseason. Atlanta would be a different opponent than their AFC counterparts. Always fast out the blocks and posting league high numbers in points scored, they also boasted newly crowned NFL MVP Matt Ryan.

The Falcons knew they would have to get off to a fast start, a close game would be in favor of the Patriots. The early signs were good as on their first play from scrimmage Devonta Freeman ripped off a 37 yard run. QB Ryan was accurate with his passing and playing to his nickname of “Matty Ice”, the pressure of the biggest game of his life passing him by. It was the awkwardness of Brady that was taking many

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Tom Brady cruises to a first down on the way to a historic win.

PHOTO COURTESY NEW ENGLAND PATRIOTS/ERIC J ADLER

by alarm. He was subject to hits and sacks by a ferocious Falcons D that was stepping up to new levels. When Robert Alford returned an interception 82 yards for a touchdown it was 21-0 in what seemed a blink of an eye. Everything the Atlanta game plan said they would do, they were doing, and more shockingly was that New England had little answer to what was happening.

After the electric show that was Lady Gaga’s half time performance the Falcons took another huge step towards what seemed like their first Super Bowl win. An 85 yard drive was punctuated by a 6 yard touchdown pass to Tevin Coleman, and at 28-3 with time running down in the third period the game looked won. Atlanta team owner Arthur Blank who had danced with his players after each playoff victory came down to the sideline to acknowledge what his team were about to

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achieve.

2016 saw some amazing comebacks in other sports, the NBA witness the Cleveland Cavaliers take down the Golden State Warriors after being 3-1 up in their best of seven series, and likewise in the MLB the Chicago Cubs came back from the same deficit against the Cleveland Indians. This shows that with your backs to the wall and when all is lost you find new strength. You look within and find something from the deepest well that inspires you to greatness.

Tom Brady at 28-3 down, “It’s hard to imagine us winning. It took a lot of great plays and that’s why you play to the end.” None so huge as when Julian Edelman kept a drive alive with a catch that will go down in NFL folklore, one that will even surpass a catch by David Tyree against the Patriots which ended their bid for a perfect season in a Super Bowl

almost a decade before. “There were a lot of plays that coach talks about, you never know which one is going to be the Super Bowl winner.” said Brady. Slowly and surely the lead was chipped away and when James White went in for a touchdown followed by Danny Amendola’s twopoint conversion the Super Bowl had its first overtime game. After winning the coin toss Brady took his team all the way down to the Atlanta 2 yard line where White ran for the corner and the game winner.

The ticker tape was fired in the air but such is Brady’s professionalism he wanted to wait and see if the score stood. He watched the giant screens for confirmation, then after being congratulated by his defeated opponent he knelt on the ground. Only he knows at that moment what was going on in his mind. Clearly emotional it was only after his coach had battled his way through the mass of players and media to join him in an embrace shared by the world. Both had cemented their place in history.

Most Super Bowl wins by a coach and QB, Brady was announced game MVP, the fourth time he had received the honor in the title game.

It was heartbreak on the other sideline. Atlanta knew they had the game won and it was only a case of them not quite believing in their own hype, that allowed their more experienced foe a chance that they didn’t need a second invite to, “That’s a tough loss, obviously very disappointing, very close to getting done what we wanted to get done.”

Ryan’s words were a summary of all the Falcons feelings.

The last word though goes to New England receiver Julian Edelman who put the whole Patriots team ethos into one sentence, “Just play every play. We never quit.”

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Please bring non-meat food dish to share.

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UK Panhellenic Association Contact Susan Woolf, 10 Coniston Court, High St. Harrow on the Hill, Middlesex HA1 3LP. 020 8864 0294 susanrwoolf@hotmail.com Wandsworth Women’s Institute Secretary: Laura wandsworthwi@hotmail.com www.wandsworthwi.org.uk W.E.B. DuBois Consistory #116 Northern Jurisdiction, Valley of London, England, Orient of Europe, Cell: 0776-873-8030 mjack36480@aol.com

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Joint RAF Alconbury/Molesworth Retiree Affairs Office 423, ABG/RAO, Unit 5623, RAF Alconbury, Huntingdon, Cambs., PE28 4DE, rao@alconbury.af.mil 01480 843364 (Tues only 10:30-14:30) Joint RAF Mildenhall/Lakenheath Retiree Affairs Office Co-Directors Dick Good & Jack Kramer Unit 8965, Box 30, RAF Mildenhall, Bury St. Edmonds, Suffolk, IP28 8NF 01638 542039 rao1@us.af.mil

Veterans of Foreign Wars of the United States Commander: Ernest Paolucci, 00 33 (0)1.42.50.96.34 24, rue Gerbert, 75015 Paris, France Western UK Retiree Association President: R. Jim Barber, MSgt (USAF), Ret 01280 708182

EDUCATIONAL ACS International Schools ACS Cobham International School, Heywood, www.acs-england.co.uk

Military Officers’ Association of America www.moaa.org msc@moaa.org

Navy League of the United States, United Kingdom Council Council President: Steven G. Franck steven.franck@googlemail.com www.navyleague.org

AFJROTC 20021 Principal.AlconburyHS@eu.dodea.edu Alconbury Middle/High School RAF Alconbury, Huntingdon, Cambs, PE17 1PJ, UK. www.alco-hs.eu.dodea.edu AlconburyHS.Principal@eu.dodea.edu

Reserve Officers Association London Col. B.V. Balch, USAR, 72 Westmoreland Road, Barnes, London SW13 9RY memberservices@roa.org www.roa.org

American Institute for Foreign Study 37 Queensgate, London SW7 5HR 020 7581 7300, www.aifs.co.uk info@aifs.co.uk

Society of American Military Engineers (UK) UK address: Box 763, USAFE Construction Directorate: 86 Blenheim Crescent, West Ruislip, Middlesex HA4 7HL London Post. President: W. Allan Clarke.

Secretary: Capt. Gary Chesley.

Membership Chairman, Mr. Jim Bizier.

American School in London 1 Waverley Place, London NW8 0NP 020 7449 1200, www.asl.org admissions@asl.org American School of Aberdeen Craigton Road, Cults, Aberdeen.

01224 861068 / 868927.

US Air Force Recruiting Office Bldg 239 Room 139, RAF Mildenhall, Suffolk IP28 8NF 01638-54-4942/1566 phillip.guffa@mildenhall.af.mil Retired Affairs Office, RAF Alconbury Serving Central England POC: Rex Keegan Alt. POC: Mike Depasquale 423 SVS/RAO, Unit 5585, Box 100, RAF Alconbury, Huntingdon, Cambs PE28 4DA. 01480 84 3364/3557 Office Hours: Tuesday and Friday, 10:30am–2:30pm RAO@Alconbury.af.mil.

Emergency no. 07986 887905 2nd Air Division Memorial Library The Forum, Norwich, Norfolk, NR2 1AW 01603 774747 www.2ndair.org.uk 2admemorial.lib@norfolk.gov.uk

US Merchant Marine Academy (Kings Point) UK Chapter President: Allison Bennett, bennett.ac@gmail.com Facebook: Kings Point Alumni - London/United Kingdom USNA Alumni Association UK Chapter Pres: LCDR Tim Fox ’97, timfox97@hotmail.com Vice Pres: Miguel Sierra ’90, mrsierra@chevron.com M’ship: Bart O’Brien ’98, bartonobrien2@yahoo.com Secretary: Matt Horan ’87, matthoran@btinternet.com

Marine Corps League London, UK Detachment. Founding Commandant Michael E Allen, Creek Cottage, 2 Pednormead End, Old Chesham, Buckinghamshire HP5 2JS mcllondon.1088@sky.com www.mcl-london-uk.org

AFJROTC 073 Lakenheath High School. Tel: 01638 525603

American Legion London Post 1 Adjutant: Christopher Shea, 10 Ivel Bridge Road, Biggleswade, Befordshire SG18 0AB 07501-062-882 info@amlegionpost1london.org.uk www.amlegionpost1london.org.uk

USAF Retiree Activities Office Director: Paul G Gumbert, CMSgt (USAF), Ret 422 ABG/CVR, Unit 5855, PSC 50, Box 3 RAF Croughton, Northants NN13 5XP 01280 708182 422abg.rao@croughton.af.mil

Benjamin Franklin House 36 Craven Street, London WC2N 5NF. 020 7839 2006 info@benjaminfranklinhouse.org

Boston University – London Graduate Programs Office 43 Harrington Gardens, London SW7 4JU. 020 7244 6255, www.bu.edu/london British American Educational Foundation Laurel Zimmermann, Executive Director BAEF, 520 Summit Avenue, Oradell, NJ 07649 USA (201) 2614438 www.baef.org

BUNAC Student Exchange Intern in Britain Program - Asst. Director: Jill Tabuteau, Priory House, Wrights Lane, London W8 6TA 020 7251 3472 www.bunac.org iib@bunac.org.uk

Fulbright (US-UK Educational) Commission Dir. of Advisory Service: Lauren Welch Battersea Power Station, 188 Kirtling Street, London SW8 5BN 020 7498 4010 www.fulbright.co.uk

Butler University, Institute for Study Abroad 21 Pembridge Gardens, London W2 4EB 020 7792 8751 www.ifsa-butler.org/england-overview.html

Halcyon London International School Co-educational International Baccalaureate (IB).

33 Seymour Place, London W1H 5AU +44 (0)20 7258 1169 hello@halcyonschool.com halcyonschool.com

Centre Academy London 92 St John’s Hill, Battersea, London SW11 1SH Tel: 02077382344, info@centreacademy.net www.centreacademy.net Centre Academy East Anglia Church Rd, Brettenham, Ipswich, Suffolk IP7 7QR Tel: 01449736404 admin@centreacademy.net www.centreacademy.net Central Bureau for Educational Visits Director: Peter Upton, The British Council , 10 Spring Gardens, London SW1A 2BN, 020 7389 4004.

Wales 029 2039 7346. Scotland 0131 447 8024. centralbureau@britishcouncil.org Council on International Educational Exchange Dr. Michael Woolf, 52 Portland Street, London WIV 1JQ Tel 020 7478 2000 www.ciee.org contact@ciee.org Ditchley Foundation Ditchley Park, Enstone, Chipping Norton, Oxon OX7 4ER Tel 01608 677346 www.ditchley.co.uk info@ditchley.co.uk Dwight School London Formerly North London International School 6 Friem Barnet Lane, London N11 3LX 020 8920 0600 vrose@dwightlondon.org www.dwightlondon.org European Council of International Schools Executive Director: Jean K Vahey Fourth Floor, 146 Buckingham Palace Road, London SW1W 9TR 020 7824 7040 www.ecis.org ecis@ecis.org European-Atlantic Group PO Box 37431, London N3 2XP 020 8632 9253 justinglass@btinternet.com www.eag.org.uk Florida State University London Study Centre Administrative Director: Kathleen Paul 99 Great Russell Street, London, WC1B 3LH. 020 7813 3233 intprog1@admin.fsu.edu www.international.fsu.edu/london Fordham University London Centre Academic Coordinator: Sabina Antal 23 Kensington Square, London W8 5HQ 020 7937 5023 londoncentre@fordham.edu www.fordham.edu

Harlaxton College UK Campus, University of Evansville, Harlaxton Manor, Grantham, Lincs. NG32 1AG. 01476 403000 harlaxton.ac.uk.

Hult International Business School Undergraduate: Hult House East, 35 Commercial Road London E1 1LD +44 (0)20 7636 5667 Graduate: Hult House, 37-38 John Street, London WC1N 2AT +44 (0) 20 7636 5667 Enrolment: 22 Chelsea Manor Street, London SW3 5RL +44 (0)207 341 8555 www.hult.edu/en/contact-us/ Institute for the Study of the Americas Director: Professor James Dunkerley.

Tel 020 7862 8879 americas@sas.ac.uk www.americas.sas.ac.uk International School of Aberdeen 296 North Deeside Rd, Milltimber, Aberdeen, AB13 0AB 01224 732267 admin@isa.aberdeen.sch.uk www.isa.aberdeen.sch.uk International School of London 139 Gunnersbury Avenue, London W3 8LG. 020 8992 5823 mail@ISLschools.org www.islschools.org International School of London in Surrey Old Woking Road, Woking GU22 8HY 01483 750409, www.islsurrey.com mail@islsurrey. com Ithaca College London Centre 35 Harrington Gardens, London SW7.

Tel. 020 7370 1166 www.ithaca.edu/london bsheasgreen@ithacalondon.co.uk Marymount International School, London Headmistress: Ms Sarah Gallagher George Road, Kingston upon Thames, KT2 7PE 020 8949 0571 info@marymountlondon.com www.marymountlondon.com Missouri London Study Abroad Program 32 Harrington Gardens, London SW7 4JU. 020 7373 7953. web_office@umsl.edu www.umsl.edu/services/cis/ Regent’s University London Inner Circle, Regent’s Park, London NW1 4NS. 020 7486 9605. www.regents.ac.uk exrel@regents.ac.uk

Richmond, The American International University in London Queen’s Road, Richmond-upon Thames TW10 6JP Tel: +44 20 8332 9000 enroll@richmond.ac.uk www.richmond.ac.uk Schiller International University Royal Waterloo House, 51-55 Waterloo Road, London SE1 8TX. Tel. 020 7928 1372 www.schillerlondon.ac.uk admissions@schillerlondon.ac.uk Schiller International, Wickham Court School Layhams Road, West Wickham, Kent BR4 9HW. Tel 0208 777 2942 Wickham@schillerintschool.com www.wickhamcourt.org.uk Sotheby’s Institute of Art Postgraduate Art studies, plus day /evening courses 30 Bedford Square, London WC1B 3EE Tel: 0207 462 3232, info@sothebysinstitute.com www.sothebysinstitute.com Southbank International Schools Kensington and Hampstead for 3-11 year olds; Westminster campuses for 11-18 year olds.

020 7243 3803 admissions@southbank.org www.southbank.org Syracuse University London Program Faraday House, 48-51 Old Gloucester Street, London WC1N 3AE, sulondon.syr.edu TASIS England, American School Coldharbour Lane, Thorpe, Nr. Egham, Surrey TW20 8TE. 01932 565252, england.tasis.com ukadmissions@tasisengland.org UKCISA - Council for International Education 9-17 St. Albans Place, London N1 0NX 020 7354 5210 www.ukcisa.org.uk University of Notre Dame London Program 1 Suffolk Street, London SW1Y 4HG 020 7484 7811, london@nd.edu http://international.nd.edu/about/notre-dameglobal-gateways/london-global-gateway Warnborough University International Office, Friars House, London SE1 8HB. Tel 020 7922 1200 www.warnborough.edu admin@warnborough.edu Webster Graduate Studies Center Regent’s College, Regent’s Park, Inner Circle, London NW1 4NS, UK. 020 7487 7505, webster@regents.ac.uk www.webster.ac.uk Wroxton College Study Abroad with Fairleigh Dickinson University, Wroxton, Nr. Banbury, Oxfordshire OX15 6PX 01295 730551, www.fdu.edu admin@wroxton-college.ac.uk

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ALUMNI ASSOCIATIONS Regent’s American College & Alliant U Alumni (formerly United States International University) President: Eric CK Chan 020 7487 7599 chane@regents.ac.uk, alumni@regents.ac.uk c/o Regent’s University London, Inner Circle, Regent’s Park, London, UK. www.alliant.edu Amherst College Bob Reichert RAreichert26b@aol.com, alumni@amherst.edu www.amherst.edu/alumni Andover/Abbot Association of London Jeffrey Hedges ‘71, President 07968 513 631, hedgeslon@hotmail.com www.andover.edu/alumni Association of MBAs info@mbaworld.com, www.mbaworld.com

t.vifor@mbaworld.com

Babson College Nico von Stackelberg ‘12 vonstack@gmail.com​ Ben McLeod M’97 bernard.mcleod@gmail.com babson.alumni@btinternet.com Barnard College Club Hiromi Stone, President.

0207 935 3981, barnardclubgb@yahoo.co.uk Berkeley Club of London Geoff Kertesz berkeleyclublondon@gmail.com http://international.berkeley.edu/LondonClub www.facebook.com groups/223876564344656/ www.linkedin.com/groups/Berkeley-ClubLondon-4186104 Boston College Alumni Club UK Craig Zematis, President +44 7717 878968 BCalumniclub@gmail.com www.alumniconnections.com/olc/pub/BTN/cpages/ chapters/home.jsp?chapter=41&org=BTN Boston University Alumni Association of the UK Will Straughn, Snr International Development Officer, University Development and Alumni Relations, 43 Harrington Gardens, Kensington, London SW7 4JU 020 7244 2908 020 7373 7411 bstraugh@bu.edu Brandeis Alumni Club of Great Britain Joan Bovarnick, President http://alumni.brandeis.edu office@alumni.brandeis.edu Brown University Club of the United Kingdom President: Tugba Erem.

Communication: Patrick Attie Alumni Club & Liaison: Vanessa Van Hoof Brown Club UK, Box 57100, London, EC1P 1RB contact@brownuk.org www.brownuk.org

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Bryn Mawr Club Lady Quinton, President Wendy Tiffin, Secretary/Treasurer, 52 Lansdowne Gardens, London SW8 2EF wendytif@ukgateway.net

Harvard Club of the United Kingdom president@hcuk.org, membership@hcuk.org www.hcuk.org

Claremont Colleges Alumni in London Hadley Beeman, hadley_beeman@alumni.cmc.edu

Indiana University Alumni club of England ukhoosiers@gmail.com www.alumni.indiana.edu/clubs/england

Colgate Club of London Stephen W Solomon ‘76, President 0207 349 0738 swsolomon@hotmail.com

KKG London Alumnae Association londonalumni.kkg@gmail.com w ww.kappakappagamma.org

Columbia Business School Alumni Club of London 6 Petersham Mews, London SW7 5NR www.cbsclublondon.org londonadmin@gsb.columbia.edu

LMU Loyola Marymount Alumni Club London Alumni Relations: heather.wells@lmu.edu 310.338.4574 http://alumni.lmu.edu

Columbia University Club of London london@alumniclubs.columbia.edu www.alumniclubs.columbia.edu/london

Marymount University Alumni UK Chapter President: Mrs Suzanne Tapley, 35 Park Mansions, Knightsbridge, London SW1X 7QT. 020 7581 3742 www.marymount.edu/alumni

Cornell Club of London nmt4@cornell.edu www.alumni.cornell.edu/orgs/int/London Dartmouth College Club of London alumni.dartmouth.edu www.dartmouth.org Delta Kappa Gamma Society International Sheila Roberts, Membership Chair 01580 761165, worsleyroberts@btinternet.com www.dkggb.org.uk Delta Sigma Pi Business Fraternity London Alumni Chapter. Ashok Arora, P O Box 1110, London W3 7ZB 020 8423 8231, bertela@yahoo.com www.dspnet.org

MIT Club of Great Britain reenan@alum.mit.edu greatbritain.alumclub.mit.edu Mount Holyoke Club of Britain mhcbritain@gmail.com sites.alumnae.mtholyoke.edu/wp/ukclub Notre Dame Club of London ndlondon@alumni.nd.edu http://london.undclub.org/ NYU Alumni Club in London Jodi Ekelchik, President alumni.london@nyu.edu alumni.nyu.edu

Delta Zeta International Sorority Alumna Club Sunny Eades 01543 490 312 SunnyEades@aol.com www.deltazeta.org

NYU STERN UK Alumni Club www.stern.nyu.edu/portal-partners/alumni sternukalumniclub@hotmail.com fjrodrgo@yahoo.com

Duke University Club of England rpalany@gmail.com, a.sagar@promemoriauk.com www.dukealumni.com/alumni-communities/ regional-programs/groups/london

Ohio University Alumni UK & Ireland Frank Madden, 01753 855 360 frank@madant.demon.co.uk www.ohioalumni.org

Emory University Alumni Chapter of the UK Matthew Williams, Chapter Leader 079 8451 4119, matthew.eric.williams@gmail.com www.alumni.emory.edu

Penn Alumni Club of the UK w ww.alumniconnections.com/olc/pub/UPN/cpages/ home.jsp?chapter=4&org=UPN pennalumniuk@gmail.com

Georgetown Alumni Club Alexa Fernandez, GeorgetownLondon@Yahoo.com UKHoyas@gmail.com , alumni.georgetown.edu

Penn State Alumni Association pennstatelondon@gmail.com www.alumni.psu.edu

Gettysburg College Alumni London Britt-Karin Oliver, brittkarin@aol.com alumni@gettysburg.edu www.gettysburg.edu/alumni2 HBS Alumni Club of London PO Box 1263 Swaffham Bulbeck, Cambridge CB25 0UW 01223 812800 / 07703 286931 admin@hbsa.org.uk www.hbsa.org.uk

The London Association of Phi Beta Kappa phibetakappalondon@gmail.com www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=5117368 www.pbkldn.org Twitter: @phibetakappaldn Princeton Association (UK) membership@princeton.org.uk princeton.org.uk Rice Alumni of London Kathy Wang 07912 560 177 a lumni.rice.edu kathyw@alumni.rice.edu, suzanne.boue@rice.edu

Skidmore College Alumni Club, London alumni.affairs@skidmore.edu w ww.skidmore.edu/alumni www.facebook.com/SkidmoreCollegeAlumni

University of Georgia Alumni Association Lee Hutchins lee67@uga.edu www.alumni.uga.edu/alumni/index.php/site/ chapters/london_chapter University of Illinois Alumni Club of the UK Amy Barklam BUS 1994, President, 07796 193 466 amybarklam@msn.com, alumni@uillinois.edu, illinoisalumni@uillinois.edu, uisalumni@uillinois.edu, uicalumni@uillinois.edu www.uialumninetwork.org

Smith College Club of London smithclubgb@gmail.com www.smithclubgb.org Stanford Business School Alumni Assn. UK alumni@gsb.stanford.edu alumni-gsb.stanford.edu/get/page/groups/ overview/?group_id=0038990048

University of Michigan Alumni Association 0788-784-0941, jesscobb@yahoo.com alumni.umich.edu

Syracuse University Alumni UK SUalumniUK@syr.edu sulondon.syr.edu/about/sualumniuk.html www.facebook.com/SUajlumniUK Texas Tech Alumni Association - London Chapter Scott Dewar 077754 35877 sdewar2@gmail.com www.texastechalumni.org/chapters

University of North Carolina Alumni Club unclondoncochairs@googlegroups.com london.unc.alumnispaces.com, alumni.unc.edu University of Rochester/Simon School UK Alumni Association Julie Bonne, 0118-956-5052, julie_bonne@yahoo.com, alumni@rochester.edu www.rochester.edu/alumni

Texas Exes UK (UKTE) England: Carra Kane 0778 660 7534 carrakane@alumni.utexas.net Scotland: Corey Cripe coreycripe@gmail.com www.fornogoodreason.com/UKTEMain.htm Texas A&M Club London london@aggienetwork.com www.aggienetwork.com/club-page/londn The John Adams Society johnadamssociety@gmail.com www.johnadamssociety.co.uk Tufts - London Tufts Alliance tuftsalumni.org Londontuftsalliance@yahoo.com UConn Alumni Association uconnalumni.com UnitedKingdom@UConnAlumni.com UMass Alumni Club UK President, Renu Singh, renu.singh@alumni.lse.ac.uk umassalumni.com University of California Alumni UK Chair: Trisha Rassatt 3 Bedford Square, London WC1B 3RA +44 (0)20 7079 0566, jodi.anderson@ucop.edu http://london.universityofcalifornia.edu University of Chicago Alumni Association rupalyp@gmail.com, www.uchicagouk.org University of Chicago Booth Alumni Association President: hbunuan@chicagobooth.edu www.chicagobooth.edu/alumni/clubs/uk University of Colorado Alumni www.colorado.edu/alumni/connect/chapters-clubs/ london-forever-buffs-alumni-chapter Facebook: LondonForeverBuffs Email: contact via website

University of South Carolina Alumni Contact: Dash Tabor evanalisontabor@gmail.com www.facebook.com/LondonGamecocks twitter.com/LondonGamecocks www.mycarolina.org

University of Southern California, USC Alumni Club of London Walter Ladwig, President usclondon@gmail.com uscalumnigroups.usc.edu/london/ University of Virginia Alumni Club of London uvaclubs.virginia.edu/group/uvaclub-of-london 020 7368 8473 uvacluboflondon@gmail.com

US Merchant Marine Academy (Kings Point) Alumni UK Chapter www.usmma.edu/alumni bennett.ac@gmail.com Facebook: Kings Point Alumni - London/United Kingdom

Wellesley College Club www.wellesley.edu/alumnae/groups/clubs/intlclubs/ wellesley_uk_club WCLondon@alum.wellesley.edu Wharton Alumni Club of the UK 020-7447-8800 www.whartonclubuk.net Williams Club of Great Britain Ethan Kline: ethankline@gmail.com, alumni. relations@williams.edu, alumni.williams.edu Yale Club of London President, president@yale.org.uk Secretary secretary@yale.org.uk www.yale.org.uk Zeta Tau Alpha Alumnae Kristin Morgan 07812 580949 kristinamorgan@gmail.com www.zetataualpha.org

CIVIL WAR SOCIETIES American Civil War Round Table (UK) American Civil War historical society Derek Young rebeldel55@icloud.com www.acwrt.org.uk Southern Skirmish Association (SoSkan) The oldest American Civil War Re-enacting Society outside the USA. www.soskan.co.uk membership@soskan.co.uk

ARTS American Actors UK 07873 371 891 admin@americanactorsuk.com www.americanactorsuk.com Savio(u)r Theatre Company Britain’s American theatre company www.saviourtheatrecompany.com

SPORTS

USNA Alumni Association, UK Chapter President: Cdr Timothy W. (Tim) Fox ‘97, USNR timfox97@hotmail.com www.usna.com www.facebook.com/groups/USNAAlumniUK/

English Lacrosse Wenlock Way, Manchester M12 5DH 0843 658 5006 info@englishlacrosse.co.uk www.englishlacrosse.co.uk

Vassar Club UK President: Andrew Solum ‘89 Treasurer Tris Barker’64 treasurer@vassarclubuk.org, 020 8467 0890 www.vassarclubuk.org

British Baseball Federation / SoftballUK 5th Floor, Ariel House, 74a Charlotte Street, London W1T 4QJ 020 7453 7055 www.britishbaseball.org

Warnborough Worldwide Alumni Association 01227 762 107 www.wwaa.info/wwaa.htm admissions@warnborough.edu Washington University UK Alumni Club Steven Leof, steven@leof.co.uk alumni.wustl.edu/Community/Pages/London.aspx www.facebook.com/groups/WUSTLLondon www.linkedin.com/groups/Washington-University-inSt-Louis-6966904

Details changed? Let us know email sabrina@theamerican.co.uk

Send profiles, news or articles about your organization for possible publication in The American. email sabrina@theamerican.co.uk, tel +44(0)1747 830520 Twitter @TheAmericanMag

The American

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Coffee Break

7 8 3

QUIZ

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➊ Which State is represented by these State flowers?

4

a) the Mayflower b) Orange Blossom c) Forget-Me-Not (think of this State’s location ...)

➋ What flavor is the ‘State Muffin’ of Hawaii?

5

It happened ....25 years ago...

Hollywood Star under her stage name, what is it?

....75 years ago...

➑ March 18, 1992: LaDonna Adrian Gaines is given a ➒ March 14, 1942: President Roosevelt sent a proposal to all

48 state governors that speed limits throughout the nation be reduced to 40 miles per hour. Why?

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➍ Which State has the ‘State Motto’ of ‘Eureka’? ➎ Which State has the ‘State Motto’ of ‘Live Free or Die’? ➏ License Plates in New Jersey often describe it as

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a) New York b) Maine c) Colorado

The ‘What’ State? a) Blue b) City c) Garden ➐ Although many States declare ‘Milk’ as their popular State Drink, which specified “Coffee Milk” as their beverage of choice, in 1993? a) Nevada b) Texas c) Rhode Island

9 3

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➌ Moxie is the ‘State Soft Drink’ of which State?

5 6

9

5

2 3

8 4 1

....100 years ago...

➓ March 5, 1917: Which US President was

inaugurated for his second term on this day?

....100 years ago...

⓫ April 6, 1917: The USA declares war on which country, formally entering the First World War?

....150 years ago...

pioneer (with his brother), was born. They achieved the first powered, sustained and controlled plane flight. What was Wilbur’s brother called?

⓬ April 16, 1867: Wilbur Wright, American aviation

Quiz answers and Sudoku solution on page 89

The American

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