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from the editor issue no.
127
may 2018
m a n a g in g Edi tor Richard Brown
c o n t e n t d i r e ctor dawn alford
a s s is ta n t Edi tors Melissa emerson
Edit o ria l i nt e rn Abisha sritharan
J EWE LL E RY EDITOR It stopped people in their tracks. The image, 50-foot high, wrapped around a glass skyscraper in New York’s Times Square, literally forced tourists and yellow-taxi drivers to take five from their Manhattan-mad lives. Staring back at them, supine in an inflatable sun-kissed dinghy, legs akimbo, crotch front and centre, was the ripped-to-shit torso and piercing blue eyes of a Mediterranean matador that goes by the name Gandy, David Gandy. The Testino-shot image might well have appeared in the Association of Photographers’ 50 Images that defined an Age, a collection of pictures currently exhibiting in the foyer of One Canada Square, Canary Wharf – our office. Not since Marky Mark went shirtless for Calvin Klein in 1992 had a pair of tighty-whities caused such a sensation. Shot in 2006 for Dolce & Gabbana’s Light Blue fragrance range, the image propelled its protagonist to a level of fame not seen in the arena of male modelling before or since. For the rest of us, the campaign coincided with a step change in the way we view masculinity. After the lager-swigging, fart-lighting laddism of the nineties, the musclebound Alpha male was back. More pumped, more virile, more unattainable than ever. Thanks Dave. The age of the metrosexual was over. The era of the spornosexual was about to begin. Leaner, slicker and smoother – even than Gandy – it found a cult leader in Cristiano Ronaldo. No matter that the sporno was just another social construct masterminded by marketers to persuade us to BUY. MORE. SHIT, it took root and spread through social media. Alas, we digress. Four years after that Light Blue campaign launched, its leading man walked into my local ( for the full story see page 60). I’d just landed this job and would earn serious kudos if I could secure an interview. David graciously agreed, then went jet-setting around the world. It took eight years to pin him down. During that time, David swapped pants for suits and, somewhat ironically, became the poster boy for a return to stoic, self-effacing gentlemanliness. If anyone can wrestle masculinity back from the teeth-whitening spornos, the Gandy Man can.
MHAIRI GRAHAM
ART E DITOR Laddawan Juhong
Ge n era l M anag e r Fiona Smith
Pro du cti on Hugo Wheatley Alice Ford Jamie Steele
Pro pe rt y Di rector Samantha Ratcliffe
M a n a g in g Di r ector Eren Ellwood
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Richard brown, managing editor
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127 7
may 2018
Contributors
contents
issue no.
Rob Crossan Rob writes regularly for the BBC and across publications including GQ, The Sunday Times and the Daily Telegraph. In this issue, Rob takes us to Russia ahead of this summer’s FIFA World Cup (p.72).
60 on the cover 20 36
Mr philipp humm The corporate CEO turned sociopolitical artist The Soul of english cricket W hy scandals are just a blip in the rich history of the game 42 mr darren clarke The rebirth of the former Ryder Cup captain 60 mr david gandy What the supermodel did next 72 from russia with love The corruption, racism and violence blighting the beautiful game in Russia 78 land of the samurai How the history and legacy of the Japanese military class lives on 86 mr frederick gibbard The architect who humanised modernism 102 journey to the centre of the earth The world’s most luxurious train ride
City Life
12 City Edit Moscot, Moncler, an all-electric Mini, and a Zaha Hadid apartment block for NYC
city social
28 New and noteworthy The latest launches and culinary crazes
8
30 Wolf Pack Blood, sweat and beers 32 bon viveur The best private dining rooms in London 34 City concours Ready, Set, Go: The fastest cars in the world make their way to London 40 Horsing around Playing polo in the Docklands
Mark Westall Mark is editor-inchief of online art and culture magazine FAD. In this issue, Mark talks to Philipp Humm about the socio-politics of our digital world (p.20).
city Style
48 best of baselworld Standout pieces from the watch and jewellery trade show 56 style edit: her Great British brands doing what they do best 58 Style edit: him Your monthly style briefing
out of office
70 motoring news The latest four-wheel launches
City ESCAPE
98 rainbow nation A transformative tour around South Africa 102 belles & whistles A train journey through time
Jack Watkins Jack’s writing on history and politics has featured in titles such as The Guardian and The Daily Telegraph . In this issue, Jack discusses the soul of English Cricket (p.36).
lu x u ry lon don.co.u k
La Grade Arche Š 2016 Johan Otto Von Spreckelsen, a signature building of Paris
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4 World Trade Centre, a signature building of New York
State University of Music and Performing Arts, a signature building of Stuttgart
All great things are alike. They are built on their defining essence. LG SIGNATURE. Delivering state of the art to the most discerning individual.
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09/10/2017 18:09
Changing the game since 1962 For 56 years, A&K has been winning awards by helping discerning travellers discover the world through our tailor-made luxury holidays and unparalleled small-group experiences. We specialise in connecting world wanderers to interesting places, peoples and cultures in real and authentic ways
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CITY LIFE MAY
2 0 1 8
Bennet Winch’s signature bag, the Weekender, is a modern take on the traditional duffle bag. The brand, which has been producing luxury luggage since 2014, manufactures all of its products by hand in England. from £575, bennettwinch.com
p. 12
p. 14
p. 21
the all-new all-electric mini makes its debut
nyc welcomes its first zaha hadiddesigned luxury apartments
the former amazon md turned philosophic artist
electric dreams
made in manhattan
philipp humm
the Edit
The commodities and consumables raising our interest rates this month
THE car
no.
01 electric dreams
the classic mini gets a 21st-century upgrade
An all-electric version of the classic Mini debuted at the New York International Auto Show in April. Announced as a concept at the 2017 Frankfurt Motor Show, the one-of-akind car – a late and carefully restored Mini Cooper fitted with an electric engine – acts as a precursor to the brand’s first all-electric vehicle set to be launched in 2019 – just in time for the 60th anniversary of the classic Mini. The fully-electric production vehicle is currently in development, based on the MINI 3-Door Hatch. Its electric drivetrain will be manufactured in Germany before being transported to the brand’s Oxford plant, where the main production will take place. In 2008, the company presented the MINI E. Based on the predecessor model of the current MINI 3 Door, about 600 examples were produced and used in a field trial under everyday conditions. This trial played a central role in paving the way for the development of the BMW i3, which has enjoyed worldwide success since its launch in 2013. mini.co.uk
THE shades
no.
moscot: A Man’s best friend Lemtosh Round-Frame Acetate Sunglasses - the shades of creatives
Opened on New York’s Rivington Street in 1915, Mr Hyman Moscot’s optical shop quickly became a firm neighbourhood favourite. The brand’s vintage-inspired designs are crafted with over five generations of expertise and worn by the likes of Messrs Tim Burton, Jeff Goldblum and Johnny Depp.
02
£240, mrporter.com
THE trunks
no.
03 swimming into summer
moncler segues from the mountain tops to the swimming pool
The design for Moncler’s latest swim shorts is an original print inspired by comic books. The fun, summer staples are made of nylon, feature side pockets, a tonal drawcord and are available in dark blue, sky blue and red – perfect for a season spent in the south of France. £295, store.moncler.com
The Architecture
the Edit
no.
04
made in manhattan
Zaha Hadid Architects has completed its first project in new york city
The luxury West Chelsea condo features steel bands and rounded glass corners and is located beside High Line Park, a disused railway line that has been turned into a landscaped public space. The 11-storey structure includes 39 private residences and a number of amenities, including an IMAX theatre, a gym, and a 25-metre private swimming pool. In addition, the garage has an automated valet parking and storage network,
which allows guests to have their car parked and collected by a mechanised system. The building is wrapped in metallic ridges that join sinuously across the facade, and jut out from the floor plates to form balconies and terraces with rounded edges. Large floor-toceiling windows curve around the corners of the apartments, mirroring glass balustrades. 520w28.com
THE Hotel
no.
05
havana hot right now
the Edit
The Cuban capital gets its first luxury five-star hotel, courtesy of Kempinksi
Having been declared one of the Seven Urban Wonders of the World by Condé Nast Traveller in 2015, Havana welcomed its first five-star hotel last year. Bought to the Cuban capital by Europe’s oldest luxury hotel group, Kempinski – which has operated hotels since 1897 – the Gran Hotel Manzana Kempinski opened in June to affirm Havana as one of the world’s hottest new travel destinations. Gran Hotel Manzana Kempinski is located in the heart of Old Havana – a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The sixstorey building, built between 1890 and 1917, was originally a hugely popular shopping arcade with boutiques, theatres, restaurants and a skating rink. The trendy, designer fashion boutiques remain, but, along with the hotel, have been joined by an art gallery dedicated to local art, history and culture. Declaring itself the first truly luxury hotel in Cuba, Manzana Kempinski boasts a rooftop infinity pool, state-of-the-art gym, and a world-class, 1,000 sq m spa. Rooms and suites
feature locally-manufactured furniture and stunning views of old Havana. There’s a rooftop terrace, limousine service, classic American cars available to rent, and, of course, a tobacco lounge serving the finest rums, cigars and spirits. Elsewhere, five restaurants and bars serve a breadth of food inspired by Cuba’s culinary culture with distinct European and Caribbean twists. ‘Manzana’ is a colloquial term for ‘block’, an apt name for this building given that it covers exactly that. It is situated amid a collection of UNESCO Heritage sites and is close to many of Havana’s main tourist attractions, including the former home of government El Capitolio, the Great Theatre of Havana, and Central Park. It is also situated near the famous El Floridita bar – a favourite of one Ernest Hemingway. from USD440 per night, kempinski.com
no.
06
a taste of new york
madison launches a new cocktail menu inspired by the big apple
One of London’s most popular rooftop bars and restaurants, Madison is launching a new drinks menu inspired by the cocktail culture of Manhattan. The list comprises 12 cocktails, half of which are classic favourites, the other half contemporary creations. The drinks – bourbons, gins and vodkas – are inspired by America’s colourful cocktail history, from the Victorian age through prohibition to the present day. Aiming to bring a slice of the Big Apple to the Square
Mile, the menu has been devised by Madison assistant general manager Fred Tartas, previously of German Gymnasium, Blue Bar at The Berkeley Hotel and The Ritz, Paris. To complement the cocktails, Madison is running a summer series of DJ sets and live acoustic music events. And don’t worry about the unpredictable weather, umbrellas and heaters mean you can enjoy breathtaking views of St Paul’s even if it rains. One New Change, EC4 madisonlondon.net
the Edit
The Terrace
BOOK YOUR TICKETS 28 JUNE – 4 JULY masterpiecefair.com
INTERVIEW refugees, 2015
No
fear of
FAILURE
Former CEO of Vodafone, T-Mobile and managing director of Amazon, Philipp Humm is now creating playful mise-en-scènes that examine the sociopolitics of our contemporary, digital world Words: Hannah & Mark Hayes-Westall
F
ail fast and fail often’ is a term that has gained traction thanks to its adoption by Silicon Valley as a tool to explain the extraordinary rate of innovation in the tech sector. It is a concept that has gained so much in popularity that there is now an annual conference, FailCon, devoted to learning from the experience of failure. With an unparalleled degree of irony, FailCon itself was briefly halted due to being far more successful than its founders anticipated. In its relationship to our feelings about freedom, failure has long been fertile territory for philosophers and psychologists. As we develop technologies that devolve more responsibility for making decisions to artificial intelligence, it is becoming increasingly vital to discuss our own role as instigator-overseer in the decision-making process. Or so believes Philipp Rudolf Humm, a German artist with a unique background as a philosopher-turned-tech-leader-turned-artist. Humm’s studio, in a quiet side street bordering Hampstead Heath, is a light, airy room on the first floor of an unassuming house, home to the artist and his partner, the photographer Danielle Mah. It is surprisingly modest for the former CEO of Vodafone, T-Mobile and managing director of Amazon, a tech investor who continues to sit on the boards of investment banks and global technology businesses, yet it is entirely appropriate for the philosopher-artist, a man working through some of the knottiest ethical topics of our age via his creative output. A ground-floor gallery space houses recent paintings and sculptures, with large format figurative paintings in the bright, hard-edged style that one critic has called ‘Pop Expressionist’ lining the walls, with pride of place given to new sculptures in bronze. In the series of three sculptures, The Play (2017), each around two feet in
INTERVIEW
peeping tom, 2016
lu x u ry lon don.co.u k
23
Virtuoso Apprentices, 2016
INTERVIEW
butts, 2014
length, an athletic woman whirls a smaller man through the air, sees him fall, and scoops him up. In another sculpture, Balance (2017), a calm, collected woman in contemporary dress stands face on to a charging horse with a dove falcon-like at her wrist, while a young girl urges the horse forwards, tugging on its dressage-plaited mane. The works, completed in London over the course of several months and cast in one of London’s only remaining artisanal foundries, summarise some of the key approaches taken by Humm toward articulating the challenges he sees. Before studying art in London and Florence, Humm was a student at Germany’s Saarland University where he became interested in the existentialist philosophy of Martin Heidegger, whose idea of ‘thrownness’ (Geworfenheit in German) describes our existence as the result of accident and chance, the outcome of both our past and present. Heidegger’s idea was that this thrownness doesn’t dictate our future, but that it is part of our authentic selves, forming part of the concrete fact of our being (alongside things like our height, our age, etc.), which he called ‘facticity’ – the same consciousness that the French existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre later called ‘transcendence’. The big idea, and the idea that informs much of Humm’s work, is that since our existence is a mix of concrete facts and thinking about what’s happened to us, and since no one can control our thinking, the freedom to think and therefore make choices, some terrible and destined to fail, is what defines existence. “It’s about the interplay between absolute power and belief, and the thrill of controlling – or believing that you can control – things that are inherently uncontrollable,” says Humm. He’s explaining a series of bronze sculpture showing tiny acrobats leaping over a charging bull (Minoan Bull Leaping (2017)). Using the language of classical sculpture and painting, taking references from the Old Masters and contemporary society, Humm’s work repeatedly questions our perception of freedom and dwells on the choices we make as a result of these freedoms, often showing symbolically the push and pull of the past and future. The thrownness of the small man whirled by the athletic woman suggests the possibility of failure, her scooping up of him the possibility of recovery and redemption. Perhaps the young girl on the charging horse is the lure of the future, the carefully plaited mane the illusion that our being in the future can be controlled, the calm woman our authentic self. Yet these works can also refer to Humm’s view of our responsibility toward the advances of technology and our societal response to it. “[The acrobats show] the way that modern scientists feel when they look at tech. They feel that they are skilled and can control it but if you make a little mistake…” A quick look at Wikipedia shows that mistakes haven’t been part of Humm’s business life, in a career that has progressed seemingly effortlessly from business school to management consultancy to C-suite roles. His successes in business gave his artistic career a startling beginning, with his first show covered on the front page of The Wall Street Journal, yet he struggled at first to reconcile the two parts of his life. “At the beginning, I was pushing it away,” he says, now seeming extremely comfortable with the mix. “Now it’s moving together. At the beginning I didn’t want different
lu x u ry lon don.co.u k
worlds influencing each other, but after a while, I realised it’s about authenticity, and I needed to bring the two pieces together; they are all part of me and my art should reflect that.” In his work, this drawing together of the two worlds has meant that he is more comfortable drawing on the skilled manipulation of meaning and iconography that he gained leading the marketing and advertising initiatives of the world’s biggest brands. A frequent figure in his painting work is Marengo, a large white horse who was Napoleon’s war charger, taken from an 1805 painting by Jacques Louis David of the Emperor crossing the Alps, and symbolising the eternal, repetitive tragedy of human overambition. Napoleon is an important figure to Humm. “Napoleon won it all and he lost it all. The tragedy is that he was able to conquer so much but not to see that he was going too far. His ambitions destroyed so many lands and people.” Some writers have compared Humm to another businessman-turned-artist, Paul Gauguin. However, there are some essential differences. While Gauguin removed himself to a pre-industrial Tahitian idyll in a retreat from technological advance, Humm challenges the problems of technology head on. In Alienation (2017), a barefoot worker moves alone through the stages of creating luxury cars, accompanied only by her screen. The alienation and subservience of a robotics-dominated future and the unthinking choice-making that leads to a future where the choices are no longer ours is another execution of the themes of overconfidence and potential failure. “There’s so much discussion by super smart people around ethics and control, but for now everyone is thinking and no one is doing. It’s a reality we will have to find solutions for, because, like nuclear technology, there is no positive without a negative.” Engaging with the potential of our choices to create technology that will fail us is perhaps an approach that only someone who has embraced a past filled with choices about technology creation can take. In bringing together the two parts of his life, Humm has provided the viewer with a privileged position from which to consider the issues that face us, in the process developing a fearlessness that seems set to take him far. Asked about the risks of pursuing an art career he chuckles. “In Germany, we have a saying, ‘Your last shirt is pocketless’. The cost is high, but you can’t take it with you.” philipprudolfhumm.com
25
CITY
SOCIAL p. 32
BLOOD, SWEAT AND BEERS THE PROFESSIONAL RUGBY PLAYERS TURNED BREWERS
p. 34 BON VIVEUR THE CAPITAL’S BEST PRIVATE DINING ROOMS
One of Latin America’s most celebrated chefs, Martha Ortiz’s Ella Canta (translation ‘she sings’) is situated in the Intercontinental London Park Lane and features a cocktail list entitled ‘Mexico’s Gifts to the World’. W1, ellacanta.com
Temper City, EC2
Untempered Expectations Words: David Taylor
Neil Rankin knows his meat. Starting out in fine dining under chefs such as two-michelinstarred Michael Wignall and executive chef at Chiltern Firehouse, Nuno Mendes, Rankin progressed to work at Barbecoa with Jamie Oliver, where his charcoal-cooking passion began. Fast-forward via a stint as head chef at Pitt Cue, and after founding Smokehouse restaurants, the carnivorous cook launched the lauded Temper Soho – and more recently, Temper City. Where the original Soho branch focuses on South American BBQ ingredients – think gauchos, tacos and mezcal – its younger, Angel Court-based sibling turns east for its influences. Tandoor roast meats and homemade roti are the specialities in the sleek interiors of Temper City. Try to bag a seat at the kitchen counter: the signature Temper open kitchen in the centre of the restaurant means that flames lick away in full view of diners. If you’re ready for a feast, go for the thali, an enormous
City Social
Keeping the Epicure nourished with the latest launches and culinary crazes
Review
platter of spiced fried potatoes, a heady ‘temper mix’ of nuts, crackers and other treats, paratha ( flatbread), turmeric pickles, peshwari dust and fresh herbs. Even this, though, is merely a sideshow for the main event. Choose from a list of seven curries, including crispy egg with katsu, tomato and charred aubergine, or spiced pork belly. I was recommended the dash chip shop chicken, a curry of smoked chicken and dashi sauce (a Japanese fish stock). Rich and fragrant, I’d gladly welcome the curry to the blackboard at my local. If you can, save space for dessert. The very helpful (and inspiringly named) restaurant manager David Taylor suggested the chocolate and turmeric torte with pistachio ice cream. I’m not
a follower of the pistachio ice cream cult, but it worked like a treat alongside the warm, dense cake and aromatic influence of the turmeric. The menu is ambitious, and sometimes can’t work out what it is – are we sitting in a smoky, fiery, charcoal restaurant? Or is this a curry house? No matter. It’s no big deal when the flavours, atmosphere and portions are this big. temperrestaurant.com
Temper City
FOOD & DRINK
New & noteworthy
Restaurants Brigadiers at Bloomberg Arcade
The Bloomberg Arcade is set to welcome Brigadiers, the latest project by JKS Restaurants, a group run by the Sethi siblings, the brains behind Hoppers in Soho and the Michelin-starred Trishna in Marylebone. JKS’s newest creation – inspired by the army mess bars of India – will focus on Indian barbecue and beer, with 30 different beers available, including JKS’ own ‘4th Rifles’. Live sport will be shown on demand in selected areas of the restaurant. There’s also a pool table and the chance to play classic card games. Celebrate your win with a whisky from the restaurant’s whisky vending machine. The restaurant is set to open in June 2018. brigadierslondon.com
National Vegetarian Week
Mint Leaf city
Chef Rajinder Pandey, part of the original team that opened the first Mint Leaf in Haymarket in 2003, returns as head chef at Mint Leaf City having travelled throughout India and gaining experience working in several fine-dining establishments. Combining traditional Indian cuisine with contemporary cooking techniques, Pandey creates dishes that put an emphasis on seasonal ingredients. The Bank-based restaurant, which has a mezzanine level, benefits from an abundance of natural light and high ceilings, creating a sense of space. In addition to the à la carte and set menus available for lunch, choose from a variety of set menus for group bookings. Mint Leaf can be hired exclusively for private dining, even at weekends, when it is usually closed, and can accommodate up to 300 guests. Visitors will be able to enjoy a bespoke menu, live music, and a stylish backdrop.
National Vegetarian Week takes place 14-20 May, promoting vegetarian food and the benefits of a meat-free lifestyle. The popular US plant-based restaurant chain, By Chloe has just opened its first UK restaurant in Covent Garden and is set to open another one in Tower Bridge this summer. If that doesn’t tantalise your taste buds, check out the newly opened Vurger Co. in Shoreditch, Wedge Issue Pizza, also in Shoreditch, or Michelinrecommended Vanilla Black in Took’s Court. nationalvegetarianweek.org
mintleaflondon.com
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29
FOOD & DRINK
Blood, Sweat and Beers
What to do when your professional rugby career is coming to an end? For South African Springbok Alistair Hargreaves and USA international Chris Wyles it was either get a job in insurance or start their own lager business Words: Dan Hayes
What to do when your professional rugby career is coming to an end? For South African Springbok Alistair Hargreaves and USA international Chris Wyles it was either get a job insurance or start their own larger business Words: Dan Hayes
A
nyone with even a passing interest in rugby union will understand it’s a tough, physical game and one in which careers can be cut short prematurely and without warning. In such circumstances it’s no surprise that top-level players reach a stage where thoughts increasingly turn to the future and how they’ll occupy themselves when they call time on their sporting careers. In the case of Saracens duo Alistair Hargreaves and Chris Wyles, respectively a former South African Springbok and a 54-times capped former skipper of the USA Eagles, those thoughts found direction in the pub. Wyles explains: “It was around five years ago and we were talking about what we’d do after rugby and the transition from professional sport to real life. At the time, the idea of what would happen afterwards was becoming an increasingly topical conversation.” Back then, Wyles was considering signing up for an MBA course, and had taken part in internships both in consultancy and insurance, but neither had quite matched his aspirations. “I realised I wanted to run my own business. I had an interest in the whole concept of entrepreneurship and that was something that Alistair shared.” With remarkable logic, the result of their pubbased discussions turned out to be a beer company, Wolfpack Lager, named after an intense style of play coined by a former Saracens’ coach. “We always joked the idea was staring us in the face, because we always used to meet over a beer,” adds Wyles. “Everything developed from that.” As professional rugby players, the pair were used to focusing on their strengths, assessing the opposition and coming up with a successful game plan.
“From the start, we took Wolfpack really seriously,” Wyles recalls. “We did a lot of research and due diligence and, although we didn’t have any background in business as such, we were very methodical in our approach.” And, while the two founders were fascinated both by the craft beer market and the creativity of the brewing process, they also had a clear vision of where they wanted their own product to be pitched. “We’re really focused on the lager space,” explains Wyles. ‘There’s a huge variety of really interesting craft beers out there, but what really caught our interest was that lagers can be extremely well-made beers as well. We also liked the accessibility that lagers provided and the way that links to creating interesting social experiences – which is something that drives everything we do.” Hargreaves and Wyles spent the best part of two years in preparation prior to launching their brand. This was partly because they were determined to hit the ground running and partly because they were balancing the demands of Wolfpack with the intense schedule of professional rugby. The next step involved fitting out a double-decker bus as the Wolfpack bar and parking it overlooking the pitch at Saracens’ north London stadium, Allianz Park. As a route to market, the vehicle has a lot to recommend it. “We have 10,000 potential customers there every other weekend,” says Wyles, “and the bus fits really well with our whole brand ethos in creating remarkable experiences.”
lu x u ry lon don.co.u k
Wolfpack is now on sale in more than 50 outlets and the company opened its own bar in Queen’s Park at the end of 2017. The brand currently features two beers, a German-style lager and a Czech-inspired pilsner, both of which are currently brewed under contract. Wyles says: “Our initial plan was to set up our own brewery and we ended up walking around Kilburn looking at railway arches which might become our premises, but ultimately we decided we didn’t have the know-how or the capital to start that just yet.” Instead, they bought a rundown former car-repair garage in Queen’s Park. Simply restored, featuring exposed brickwork, prominent branding and additional guest beers from a select group of other small breweries, it is now the Wolfpack HQ and centrepiece. The timing of this next phase of the brand’s development is seemingly no coincidence. Hargreaves was forced to retire from rugby in 2016 on medical advice and Wyles is due to hang up his boots at the end of the 2018 season, meaning the development of Wolfpack will increasingly be their focus. Wyles says: “We’ve got such an exciting opportunity in terms of growing the business and it’s a great learning curve as well. Right now, though, the vision is to stay true to who we are and make sure we don’t rest on our laurels. “We want to keep creating really outstanding social experiences for our customers. while still thinking differently and not just going down the welltrodden route.” On the list of possibilities are a bespoke brewery, additional bars and increased export sales, but Wolfpack’s founders are understandably cautious about expansion for its own sake. “Decisions have to be for the right reasons,” Wyles says. “There always has to be an emotional connection to the brand and what we’re trying to achieve.” The Wolfpack bar is at 53 Lonsdale Rd, Queen’s Park, London NW6 6RA, wolfpacklager.com
31
[ city social ]
bon viveur
London’s
Best Private Dining Rooms Whether they’re sequestered from the rest of the restaurant or feeding off its energy from the mezzanine, there’s a frisson of excitement to be gained from the exclusivity of a private dining room
A
new breed of private dining room is taking over the capital: the test kitchen. Chefs, usually of the celebrated variety, are bringing in punters at ground level to witness and occasionally participate in the creative culinary process. Britain’s Simon Rogan often garners comparisons with Denmark’s René Redzepi for his locavore (local food) sensibilities and penetrating interest in the history of British gastronomy. In the same vein, he’s cultivated a community of obsessive chefs who have made the pilgrimage to his two Michelin-starred l’Enclume in Cartmel, Cumbria. It was here that he launched the first iteration of Aulis, where he gave guests the opportunity to get up close and personal with insights into how his kitchen operates. Following the end of Rogan’s tenure at Fera at Claridge’s and in conjunction with the launch of Roganic in Marylebone, he launched the second iteration of Aulis: an eight-seater restaurant now
from top: Aulis; hawksmoor; the blue posts
at a secret Soho location which is revealed to the visitor upon booking. Guests can sample new dishes before they are included on Rogan’s menus, at £250 per person. Nuno Mendes has made his mark on London with a career that has ranged from fabled pop-up The Loft Project to his Michelin-starred restaurant Viajante to the celebrity-heavy Chiltern Firehouse and his Portuguese bistro Taberna do Mercado. As he prepares for the next leap forward, he’s launched a 14-seater secret kitchen, table and wine room above high-end clothing boutique Hostem’s former premises on Shoreditch’s Redchurch Street. Named Mãos, which translates from Portuguese as “hands”, the three-hour dinner will run diners £150 per person and will presumably offer a window into Mendes’ culinary soul. The three-floored The Blue Posts was recently taken over by Layo and Zoë Paskin, the sibling power pair that reshaped central London’s attitude toward Jerusalem-inspired cooking with The Palomar and The Barbary. One of the hottest seats in Soho this Spring can be found in the basement level of The Blue Posts, where you’ll find Evelyn’s Table. There’s counter seating for 11 with two satellite tables of two. Chef Luke Robinson (Corner Room, Bonnie Gull) has put together a southern European-inspired seasonal menu with a changing selection of dayboat fish brought to the restaurant from Looe, Cornwall, in the mornings. Hawksmoor is arguably one of Britain’s most feted high-end restaurant groups, having reinvented the traditional steakhouse for a contemporary audience. The latest jewel in its crown is Hawksmoor Borough, which plays host to the Cooks’ Room. The 16-seater PDR features its very own open-plan kitchen. The executive chef team have put a lot of thought into what would comprise the ultimate Hawksmoor meal and planned a feasting menu accordingly. There’s also a sharing menu available, as well as a schedule of special dates for menu previews and guest chefs. Remarkably, all of these test kitchens have launched in the past year, and there are plenty more PDRs popping up across the capital…
news
Man-about-town, Innerplace’s Nick Savage, gives you the insider lowdown on London’s most hedonistic haunts
City Hotspots The best private dining rooms to have launched in and around the Square Mile in the past 12 months… temper City Neil Rankin’s second restaurant offers a contemporary slant on subcontinental grilling and a semi-private balcony that can accommodate up to 60 guests. It has its own private bar, service team and a secret wine room. temperrestaurant.com Red Rooster NY chef Marcus Samuelsson caused a stir when he arrived at Shoreditch’s The Curtain hotel. The private room for Red Rooster seats 20 with wooden flooring, brick walls and striking circular lighting. redroosterldn.com Brigadiers Helmed by JKS Restaurants, this brand new Indian grill offers three separately themed PDRs: The Pot Luck Room seats 16 and features its own ‘help yourself’ beer station; The Bidi Room seats 14 guests; while The Kukri Room seats eight and is replete with Gurkha memorabilia. brigadierslondon.com the Ivy City Garden The Garden Room offers charming views of Bishopsgate Gardens and St Botolph’s Church and seats 24 guests on one long table, or 32 over four round tables of eight, or 50 at a standing reception. theivycitygarden.com Frog by Adam Handling The young chef made his mark on casual fine dining this year with his second spot in Covent Garden. His 20-seater PDR shows him at his most grown-up. thefrogrestaurant.com The Square The revamped Michelin-starred Mayfair fine dining operation boasts a PDR that can seat up to 18 guests, with striking artwork from Oscar Murillo and David Altmejd. squarerestaurant.com
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Serge et le Phoque The Mandrake’s flagship French resto offers a high-spec red-lacquered PDR that underwent 28 individual paint processes to arrive at its current shiny state. It can seat up to 18 and sommelier extraordinaire Bert Blaize will be on hand for wine recommendations. themandrake.com
The Coal Shed The sister restaurant to the Brighton big-hitter, The Coal Shed has plenty of space to cater to Citygoers, with a private dining room in its mezzanine. Book out the PDR for 20 or the entire floor for 50 diners. coalshed-restaurant.co.uk
DUDDELL’S The exceptional Hong Kong import boasts a semi-private mezzanine with a capacity of 44 for those who prefer to enjoy Cantonese cuisine in style. duddells.co/london
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On your MARQUES Get ready to witness the world’s greatest (and fastest) cars roar into the City this summer Words: Abi Sritharan
Set… Get
T
he London Concours is returning to the Honourable Artillery Company’s garden in the City this summer, following the huge success of last year’s event. The exclusive gathering is designed to appeal to all those with an appreciation of quality and craftsmanship, as well as collectors and all-round car lovers. The five acres of beautifully presented gardens and manicured lawns – used for cricket from April to September – will host around 80 of the world’s finest classic and performance cars. This year’s theme is speed and all the vehicles, from early 20th century racers to modern hypercars, will be grouped into the following classes: Fast, Faster, Very Fast, Superfast, and Hyperfast. With breakfast, lunch and afternoon tea being served, and champagne from Taittinger, it earns its reputation as the city’s ‘automotive garden party’, and bespoke hospitality packages for client entertainment can also be organised. After browsing the motors, visitors can shop at boutiques from the likes of Swiss watch specialist Breguet and art house Collier Dobson, while automotive specialists including Stratstone of Mayfair and Nicholas Mee & Co will be in attendance for those inspired by what’s on show. All of the cars on display – most of which have been entered by the general public – have been carefully curated by the London Concours Steering Committee – a group of motoring experts from a variety of fields including journalism, finance, law and classic car restoration. 7-8 June, londonconcours.co.uk. use the discount code RWMGVIP to get £10 off an entry ticket
PROMOTION
Shelby GT500 Speed factor: 150 mph. Boasting 420hp, the Shelby GT500 was the ultimate incarnation of the original Ford Mustang. This very special example was tuned up to 750hp by its original owner when it was imported to the UK in 1970.
Go…
Ones to watch
Lamborghini Miura S Speed factor: Described by some as the world’s first supercar The Lamborghini Miura debuted in 1966. Thanks to its 4.0-litre V12 engine mounted just behind the driver, it easily beat its rival Ferrari to become the fastest car in the world at the time, with a top speed of 170mph.
Lancia Aurelia B20 GT ‘Outlaw’ Speed factor: Over 125mph. A bespoke creation by specialist Thornley Kelham Ltd, this 1954 Lancia Aurelia B20 GT ‘Outlaw’ is the result of over 5,000 hours of restoration and customisation, including a lowered roofline and 2.6-litre fuel-injected V6.
Ferrari F50 Speed factor: 0-60mph in less than four seconds The F50 was created to celebrate Ferrari’s 50th anniversary. A 4.7-litre V12 engine, based on Ferrari’s Formula One engine of the time, helped the F50 clock a top speed of 202mph.
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Aston Martin One-77 Speed factor: Can hit a speed of 220mph. Only 77 of this model were ever built, making it one of the rarest Aston Martins ever produced. Its 7.3-litre V12 engine justifies its price tag of just over £1m when new.
Lamborghini Murcielago Speed factor: Top speed 200mph+ The Murcielago was the first new model from Lamborghini under Audi ownership, but it still had the character of an Italian supercar. Wild looks were paired with a raucous 6.2-litre V12 engine for a top speed of more than 200mph.
McLaren F1 Speed factor: Fastest car in the world for 13 years. The F1 was the fastest car in the world from 1992 to 2005, setting a record of 240.1mph. It implemented a number of firsts for a road car, including a chassis made completely of strong, lightweight carbon fibre reinforced polymer. It also features an engine bay lined with gold leaf for heat management.
Jaguar XK120 OTS Speed factor: Fastest car of its day The Jaguar XK120 OTS was where Jaguar’s sports car history began. It set 24-hour and seven-day, seven-night speed records of more than 100 mph.
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WHITE CAVIAR CRÈME EXTRAORDINAIRE
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STYLE Celebrated German product designer Werner Aisslinger has teamed up with German watchmaker NOMOS GlashĂźtte to create the Autobahn, a Bauhaus-informed timepiece powered by a propriety escapement (p53). nomos-glashuette.com
p. 48 best of baselworld inside the fashion week of watches
p. 54
all that glitters the latest trends in luxury jewellery
p. 60 reporting for duty what one-man-brand david gandy did next
Best of
Baselworld
2018
Statement-making colourways and a swathe of cross-industry collaborations are a sign of the times at the world’s largest watch fair words: richard brown
Octo Finissimo Tourbillon Automatic, POA, Bulgari
Just three months after losing its crown to Piaget, Bulgari has reinstated itself as King of the Ultra-thins. The Octo Finissimo Tourbillon Automatic becomes the world’s slimmest self-winding watch with a case that’s just 3.95mm thick – beating Piaget’s Altiplano Ultimate Automatic by 0.35mm. Incredibly, the tourbillon-regulated movement inside measures just 1.95mm in depth and endows the watch with a 52-hour power reserve. The calibre is housed in a sandblasted, multifaceted titanium case and is visible through an exhibition window in the case-back. bulgari.com
Aquanaut Chronograph
£33,510, Patek Philippe
Proving that even the most classical of traditional Swiss watchmakers can no longer ignore the consumer reach of social media, Patek Philippe finally launched an Instagram account two days before Baselworld 2018 opened its doors. Further proof that the brand of the Calatrava cross has millennials in its crosshairs came in the shape of the sporty, stainless steel Aquanaut Chronograph – complete with statement-making orange accents on its second hand, chronograph hand, and inner and outer railway track counters. Having celebrated its 20th anniversary last year, the Aquanaut is Patek Philippe’s most athletic collection, befitting of its first flyback chronograph addition – presented as a 60-minute counter at six o’clock. Behind a grey dial with applied gold, luminescent-coated numerals, a 42.2mm case houses a self-winding movement visible through a sapphire-crystal case back that is accurate to -3/+2 seconds per day (as required by the Patek Philippe seal). The Aquanaut Chronograph is water resistant to 120m and available with either a classic black composite rubber strap, or a vivid, dialmatching orange rubber strap. patek.com
WAT C H E S
Big Bang Sapphire Tourbillon £122,000, Hublot
After diamond, sapphire is the hardest material around and, thus, one of the most difficult to mill. Breaking through a glass ceiling then – sorry, terrible pun – Hublot has managed to machine not just a watch case but a bezel, bridges and a case-back out of the ultra-resistant material. Even the tourbillon within the Big Bang Sapphire Tourbillon is held in place by a strip of the synthetic gemstone. On the wrist the Big Bang Sapphire Tourbillon appears invisible thanks to a transparent rubber strap. Only 99 of the 45mm models are being manufactured. Elsewhere, Hublot also launched the Big Bang Referee 2018 FIFA World Cup Russia, a smartwatch that will be worn by all referess at this summer’s world cup.
Defy El Primero 21 Swizz Beatz £12,800, Zenith
At the start of last year Zenith was a watchmaker facing an identity crisis. Stagnating sales and a lack of clear direction led to the exit of CEO Aldo Magada ‘by mutual agreement’. Three months later, long-serving Vacheron Constantin managing director Julien Tornare had been appointed as Magada’s successor. Clearly an advocate of cross-industry collaborations, Tornare has since signed an agreement with British watch-modifier George Bamford, partnered with prestigious cigar manufacturer Cohiba, and announced American hip-hop producer Swizz Beatz as an ambassador. The latter of those lifestyle tie-ins has yielded three special editions of Zenith’s Defy timepiece, the highlight being this 1/100th of a second chronograph. In case its orange strap is a little too quiet for your taste, it also comes pebble-dashed with diamonds. zenith-watches.com
hublot.com
R.S.18 Chronograph
Dark Side of the Moon Apollo 8
Sticking steadfast to its signature, square-faced, cockpit-clockfor-your-wrist designs, Bell & Ross’s rapid rise through the horologic ranks has been nothing short of meteoric. The company only became an independent watchmaker in 2002. To celebrate its third year of partnership with Renault Sport Formula One Team, the brand has realised the R.S.18, an automatic, water-resistant skeletonised chronograph with a tachymeter scale and yellow rubber inserts. A 45mm quadrangle case means that big wrists are a prerequisite.
£7,200, Omega
£16,900, Bell & Ross
bellross.com
In 1968, one year before Buzz Aldrin’s Omega Speedmaster became the first watch on the moon – Neil Armstrong had left his model inside the Lunar Module – the crew of Apollo 8 became the first humans to leave the Earth’s mesosphere and orbit the moon. To mark the mission’s 50th anniversary, Omega presents the skeletonised Dark Side of the Moon Apollo 8. Produced in black ceramic, minuscule craters have been lasered into the model’s movement to mimic a pockmarked lunar landscape. Around a transparent caseback, the words ‘We’ll see you on the other side’ have been inscribed – a reference to Jim Lovell’s final words to ground control before Apollo 8’s takeoff. omegawatches.com
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WAT C H E S
Time in
SEIKO REFERENCE SRPB99J1, £429
TWO TONE I
rolex gmtmaster ii, £6,800
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TAG HEUER CARRERA CHRONOGRAPH GMT, £4,900
n 2014, Rolex created the world’s first two-tone ceramic bezel – one half red for daylight hours, one half blue for night-time – and placed it on its GMT-Master II, mirroring the ‘Pepsi’ bezel of the original GMT Master from the 1950s. Anyone wanting access to this piece of Rolex history, however, would have to pay for it. The company chose to reintroduce the colourway on a timepiece made of white gold, and proceeded to slap a £28,150 price tag on it. So it will come as welcome news to Rolex fans that the company has now made a version in steel, with a far more accessible asking price of £6,800. It features Rolex’s brand new calibre 3285 movement – incorporating a nickel-phosphorus, Rolexpatented escapement – and the same ceramic two-tone bezel from 2014. In the flesh, the ‘red’ of the new GMT-Master II is more mauve than previous Pepsi models, where bezels were made of steel – perhaps that’s owing to the fact that ceramic is such a difficult material to produce in lighter colours. Rolex, when questioned, insisted that it had created exactly the colour it was aiming for. Sister brand Tudor is far more accurate when it describes the colours on the steel bezel of its own new Black Bay GMT as blue and burgundy (not red). The 41mm model is equipped with
a brand new inhouse movement. Additional time zones are indicated by a red snowflake hand, Tudor’s hallmark, which spins around the dial every 24 hours. PADI partner Seiko used Baselworld to announce ocean explorer and marine conservationist Fabien Cousteau (grandson of Jacques Cousteau) as its new ambassador. The Japanese brand – inventor of the first hi-beat diver’s watch and first quartz saturation diver’s timepiece – also presented six new Prospex watches. The part of the bezel representing 0-15 minutes on the reference SRPB99J1 is coloured red, allowing divers to time their decompression stops as they make their way back to the surface – preventing decompression sickness, or as diver’s call it, the ‘bends’. Elsewhere, TAG Heuer has added a GMT function to its in-house Heuer 02 self-winding chronograph movement. A second time zone can be adjusted via the crown and is readable using a lacquered red hand and a black-and-blue ceramic bezel, which has a 24-hour GMT scale. The new 45mm steel model adopts the design codes of the original Heuer Carrera from 1963, with its chronograph minutes and hours set at three and nine o’clock, TUDOR and a permanent small second at six BLACK BAY GMT, £2,790 o’clock.
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© DK Engineering
TICKETS AT LONDONCONCOURS.CO.UK
MAT TERS OF SPEED
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IN THE HEART OF THE CITY
On 7th – 8th June, the gardens of the Honourable Artillery Company, in the heart of the City, will host a selection of the rarest and fastest cars from 1898 to the present day, each an icon of its era. A unique automotive garden party with the perfect combination of concours cars from the UK’s leading private collectors, luxury retailers, fine watches, art, gourmet food and champagne; an occasion of pure indulgence. Hospitality and general enquiries 020 3725 4044
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CURIO COLLECTION S T E R L I N G S I LV E R V E R M E I L W I T H S E M I - P R E C I O U S S T O N E S A N D D I A M O N D S
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WAT C H E S
Autobahn
£3,800, NOMOS Glashütte
The brand new, multileveled, Bauhausinformed Autobahn from the (typically) minimalist NOMOS Glashütte was created in collaboration with German product designer Werner Aisslinger. It is powered by a proprietary escapement and features a three-lane date window at six o’clock and glow-in-the-dark dial. The 41mm timepiece is available in three versions: one with a white silver-plated dial (pictured), a sporty grey version, and a model in deep midnight blue. Funny how you can never imagine an English watchmaker naming a creation after the motorway, such is the German pride for its fêted highways. NOMOS also presented another in-house built calibre at Baselworld, the neomatik date (DUW 6101). The watchmaker has equipped three NOMOS icons – Tangente, Orion, and Ludwig – with this new calibre and created a tailor-made date design for each.
Classique Tourbillon~ Extra-Plat Automatique £110,600, Breguet
OK, so it’s not a record breaker. At 3mm thick, the automatic tourbillon movement inside Breguet’s Classique Tourbillon Extra-Plat Automatique is a full 1.05mm fatter than the escapement that powers Bulgari’s Octo Finissimo Tourbillon Automatic – the slimmest automatic tourbillon in watchmaking. Yet if prizes were handed out for elegance, then Breguet’s latest ultra-thin would surely be triumphant. An extremely understated enamel dial directs attention to an exposed tourbillon at five o’clock. Inside, a ‘high-energy’ barrel, patented to increase the number of coils of its silicon balance spring, provides an 80-hour power reserve. A hand-engraved platinum oscillating weight rotates on the periphery of the calibre, providing an unobstructed view of the tourbillon. The 7.45mm-deep dress watch is offered in rose gold and platinum. breguet.com
nomos-glashuette.com
Bubble Central Tourbillon
Senator Cosmopolite
£67,100, Corum
The first tourbillon within Corum’s playful Bubble collection is noteworthy for two reasons. Firstly, the tourbillon is positioned at the centre of the watch, a technical feat requiring an inline movement construction. Secondly, rather than conventional hands, time is displayed by two triangular markers at the edge of the dial: one in black that indicates the minutes; one in blue indicating the hours. Seconds are displayed by the tourbillon itself, which performs one rotation every minute. It’s an extremely solid piece of kit and completely captivating on the wrist. corum-watches.com
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£16,100, Glashütte Original
The source of Germany’s most handsome dress watches, Glashütte Original launched a stainless steel version of a world timer that debuted in 2015. Simultaneously indicating the time in two time zones, the Minimalist World Traveller takes into account daylight saving and standard times in 36 zones, colour-coded to indicate their deviation from GMT (including half and three-quarter hour differences). The lacquered silver-grained dial on this latest glossy version is circled by a black railroad chapter ring and sub-dials, and blue hands and numerals. An innovative off-centre oscillating rotor makes for a longer-than-average 72-hour power reserve. glashuette-original.com
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Style Brief Your monthly sartorial meeting Words: abi sritharan
playing ball
This bat and ball set by Brazilian brand Frescobol Carioca is inspired by the vibrant spirit of Rio de Janeiro, as is the rest of the company’s range. Each set is handmade and finished with blue neoprene grips and coating that resists wear and tear. So it will provide fun on the beach for years to come. £150, mrporter.com
Diamond Dogs David bowie in print
Style your walls with this 17 x 21-inch print of the late artist framed, mounted and etched. The Sonic Editions colour print in a black wooden frame, features a picture of David Bowie captured by Terry O’Neill in LA in 1974. Only 200 of these framed prints were made, making them a perfect gift for devoted fans of the musical icon. Sonic Editions works with some of the world’s greatest photographers and picture archives, as well as professional designers, in order to deliver high-quality prints in hand-made frames. £300, soniceditions.com
Cubitt Chic
The latest range from Cubitts is inspired by NHS-style cellulose acetate material. Due to the popularity of the brown mottle glasses – which was associated with modernism and progress in the 1960s – Cubitts decided to create its bespoke beechwood range. The custom-made acetate colour is made through the ‘wet block’ process; this makes the pattern on each frame completely unique. £125, cubitts.co.uk
STYLE
Pretty in Panama
This grosgrain-trimmed straw Panama hat has been handwoven in Italy and finished with a dapper navy ribbon with an internal brow band for a perfect fit. £185, mrporter.com
Sartorial Sanctuary Suitable for Vegans
Hugo Boss has introduced a 100 per cent vegan shoe introduced as part of an ongoing sustainability programme. The shoes, which are made from recyclable, organic materials, are available from June in a range of four colours; all derived from natural plantbased dyes. The result offers style without damage to the environment. £269, hugoboss.com
Jack Davison Bespoke combines modern styling with traditional tailoring methods to create high-quality, custommade suits. The brand’s house-cut blazer creates what the company believes to be a universally flattering silhouette. The design duo, Jack Stammers and Will Davison, are based by St Paul’s Cathedral and have already got a loyal celebrity following with fans including Rio Ferdinand and Oliver Cheshire. Servcies from £975, jack-davison.co.uk
sporting stripes
Hackett London has launched ‘Show Your Stripes’, a film instalment for its Great British Stripe spring/summer 2018 collection. In the new line, contrasting stripes are layered to create a bold statements. A traditional sporting colour palette of red, white and navy with splashes of mint and sky blue is used in the collection. The key item is the classic blazer – an essential piece in any gent’s wardrobe. Suits from £395, hackett.com
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MR DAVID GANDY PROPERTY
reporting for duty
supermodel, sex symbol, style icon. after almost two decades shaping men’s fashion, Brand Gandy is ready for take off Words: RICHARD BROWN
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T
he first time I saw David Gandy, in the flesh, as opposed to splashed across a billboard or magazine spread, was on a Saturday afternoon in a spit-and-sawdust gym opposite a pickle-jarring factory on a rundown industrial estate in Essex. When it rained, the roof of the gym leaked. Buckets would catch the water. In the winter, it got so cold that dumbbells would freeze to your palms. That Saturday, I took a break from trying to look tough, as you do in gyms full of tattooed bouncers and builders shaped like pizza slices, and there, drop-setting on the bench next to me, was David Gandy. Except, of course, it couldn’t really be David Gandy. Why would David Gandy have paid five quid – “sorry, mate, cash only” – to pump iron in a place where there was once a sign pinned to the tanning machine that read, and I quote verbatim, ‘Dear members, some c**t has been fiddling the sunbed. You will be caught, and you will be dealt with’…? It couldn’t have been Gandy. Must have been a doppelgänger. Then I saw him again. Just a few hours later. In the redbrick Victorian schoolhouse that is now a stickyfloored wine-bar guarded by G4S doormen at the end of my road. The sort of commuter-belt gastro-pub-cumwedding-venue that does a thriving trade by hosting ‘evenings with’ Neil Ruddock and Julian Dicks. That was eight years ago, almost to the week. I know this because the month before I had persuaded the theneditor of this magazine to take a punt and give me a job
(and been nicking a living ever since). If that tall, chiseljawed, Roman-nosed hunk-of-a-man oozing testosterone at the bar really was David Gandy – and his Caesar-like silhouette was now garnering enough glances to suggest that it just might be – then as an aspiring young journalist surely I was duty bound to go and get the scoop. I reminded David of what happened next last month, over a slap-up lunch at Mayfair’s glitzy nightclub-restaurant Quaglino’s. I’d like to say that the foundations of a budding bromance were formed that night, that these two Billericay boys had become bezzies, and that shooting the breeze over a boozy lunch had become the norm. Truth was, we had both arrived with an agenda. Me to secure a cover interview with the most famous face in men’s fashion; David to promote his latest brand collaboration – a vintageinspired capsule collection with British luxury leather-goods specialist Aspinal. Gandy played it cool, pretending not to remember our first encounter. “Ha! Oh no, mate! I hope I wasn’t rude – was I?” No, David, actually you were bloody charming. You explained that you grew up in Billericay – news to most people in the town at that time I think – and that you were back visiting your mum. You pointed out your old school mates. Gave me the business card of your PA. Told me to tell her that you’d be delighted to be interviewed and then you wished me good luck in my new job. What a bloody top bloke, I thought, running out of the bar to text my editor the good news, the obsequious little lapdog that I was. That interview never materialised. David was jet-setting around the world at the behest of Italian megabrands
INTERVIEW
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and we were unable to pin him down. I tell the story because, a) it’s a story I like telling; and b) because every time I’ve met David since he’s always been the same affable, charming, salt-of-the-earth, butter-wouldn’t-melt, all-round top fella. “I still go to the local pub,” says David, 38, having traded suburbia for a townhouse in Fulham (you’ll struggle to find Razor Ruddock giving after-dinner speeches there). “I have conversations with people who recognise me. They offer to buy me drinks, I offer to buy them drinks. I’m hopefully the kind of guy that women can come up to and chat with and who guys don’t feel threatened by. We can have a couple of pints and talk about cars – or fashion if that’s what you’re into.” The impact that David – along with the world’s other most famous David – has had on men’s fashion is hard to overstate. Having won a modelling competition on ITV’s This Morning in 2001– he’d been entered by a university friend, unbeknown to him – a 21-year-old Gandy was thrust into an industry that put androgyny on a pedestal. Not an aesthetic that’s easy to pull off when you’re a sixfoot-three county cricketer and rugby-playing beefcake. “I was never going to be that guy,” explains David, looking all fifties-film-star in a vintage Omega wristwatch, white open shirt and a wide-legged, wide-lapelled, one-of-a-
kind Marks & Spencer suit (one of the perks of working with the high street authority). “For me, it was go big or go home.” Committing himself to the gym, David swam against the current. His early work consisted mostly of look books for obscure German designers and campaigns for highstreet names that included H&M, Hugo Boss, Massimo Dutti, Gant and Zara. Then, in 2006, his dedication to the dumbbells paid off. His sculpted torso caught the attention of Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana, who cast him in a pair of now-legendary bright white budgiesmugglers and commanded him to look brooding while splayed out on an inflatable dinghy in Capri. The resulting shots, captured by Mario Testino, formed the framework for Dolce & Gabbana’s Light Blue fragrance campaign. The adverts were plastered on bus stops and billboards around the globe, including a 50-foot wrap in New York’s Times Square. Almost overnight, the blue-eyed boy from Essex achieved supermodel status. “That Light Blue campaign really was the platform for me. It’s fair to say that things have gone OK since then – we’ve not done too badly.” To put it mildly. In the decade that followed, as footballers, Topman and TOWIE dragged men’s style in one direction – towards carrot-legged jogging tracksuits and ripped-at-the-knee spray-on-skinny jeans – Gandy, along with those other two stubbly scions of style, Becks and Redknapp (not all footballers worship at the altar of athleisure), has pulled menswear in the polar opposite, championing classic tailoring and ethical fashion. “Sustainability wasn’t a subject that was even mentioned 10 years ago. Now brands are being more responsible. We have to look at this world of ‘disposable fashion’ and make sure that if people are buying these really cheap clothes, the sort you dispose of every three months, that they are aware that those clothes are probably not ethically produced. It’s better to buy things that are going to last you a long time. Things that you can get five or six different looks out of – sustainable can still mean affordable.” His hairline may have receded a little – pot, kettle – and wrinkles may have begun spreading like roads on a map around his eyes – “I look after myself, but I could probably do with more sleep” – yet for a man who’s less than two years shy of 40, Gandy is in incredibly good nick. He still works out, up to five times a week. The swimwear stuff takes longer to get in shape for nowadays, but that doesn’t stop him ordering a starter, mains and dessert. “I’ve never had to worry too much about what I eat.” He knows his way around a wine list, too. Which takes the pressure off me. A firm fixture at fashion weeks, now that he’s traded the catwalk for the front row, Gandy’s signature three-piecesuit look has proven catnip to street-style photographers, spawning countless fan pages on social media. Some of the most-liked men’s style posts on Instagram feature David in a double-breasted jacket, contrast-colour shirt and woven-wool tie, often paired with a newsboy cap or C-Crown fedora hat. The consummate midcentury metropolitan dandy. Accessorising is back in fashion. See the tie bars, pocket squares and lapel pins next time you’re at Ascot. Gandy played a part in that. The Aspinal collaboration, an 18-piece, Spitfire-inspired range of briefcases, weekend bags and suit carriers – “we’re trying to put the glamour back into travel” – follows
INTERVIEW
all images courtesy of Aspinal of London
ambassador roles for Jaguar, Wellman Vitamins and Savile Row tailor Henry Poole & Co. Away from the camera, David has launched two apps – one for fitness, the other offering style tips – invested in both the London Sock Company and David Preston Shoes, competed in the Mille Miglia classic car rally, raced power boats for Vector Martini, been appointed to the British Fashion Council, and, thus far, directed two style-focused short films. No wonder he turned down roles in Fifty Shades of Grey and 300: Rise of an Empire. It’s a CV that’s led to the Battersea Dogs & Cats Home ambassador (omitted that earlier) to be the labelled the ‘world’s most successful male model’. Does David allow himself to buy into that moniker? “Success means different things to different people. I’ve never thought I was the best-looking model, or even the best at modelling. Hands down, if you walk into Select [Model Agency] today, some of the guys in there will be incredibly good looking, and incredible models. I looked at modelling as a platform, in a business way. That’s what female supermodels were doing and I wanted to rival those models. When I started it was a time where you would be in the same campaign as a female supermodel and you’d get a fraction of what they were paid. I wasn’t saying it was wrong, I was asking myself how do I get to that level? And that comes down to branding, giving prestige to a company and the same sort of reach that the Kate Mosses can.” For evidence of the power of Brand Gandy, see Marks & Spencer. In 2014, the retailer launched a line of underwear, lounge wear and swimwear, modelled and part-designed by David himself. It became one of the company’s best selling lines. “I think we sold a pair of swim shorts every minute until they sold out.” Last year, the range expanded to include Orlebar Brown-esque beachwear. Devoted David Gandy fanboy that I am, I bought not one but two towel-cotton polo shirts. My girlfriend suggested that I wear one to the interview. “And remember, if people are looking at your table, they’re not looking at you.” If the Testino-shot white-pants pic solidified Gandy’s standing in the rarefied world of high fashion, it was his boxer shorts for Marks & Sparks that caught the attention of your mum – which is to say, made him properly famous.
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David’s presence in that wine bar eight years ago went relatively unnoticed (save for one hyperventilating wannabe writer). It wouldn’t be the same today. As his public star has risen, how has David’s personal life changed? “I do get recognised but I think I have a nice level of fame. People are very nice, very polite. I’ve never understood people who achieve fame and then say no to a picture. The public are the ones buying into you, following you, buying your products or your music. Shouldn’t it be lovely when they come up to say hello?” See, salt of the earth. What about social media? “It’s 99 per cent positive. My girlfriend [a London-based barrister, who David’s been dating since 2016] and I have a pact where we don’t use it too much. We are very careful to try and avoid the public eye. She’s come off most social media channels. She doesn’t want to be part of that world. She’s into fashion, but that side of my life is very separate from the one we share together.” Gandy arrived on the scene during glossy print’s glory days. Times change. Advertising budgets get redirected. Magazines close. Social media now provides the platform that newsstand magazines used to. Does the power to self-promote provide a stepping stone to aspiring young models? “Nowadays you can achieve success by becoming a digital sensation. If you have the right surname, then [clicks fingers] you can have success like that. That has always kind of been the way, but brands are thinking less creatively and more about the reach provided by someone’s daughter or girlfriend.” So it’s become more about connections than creativity? “There’s not much I look at now and think ‘wow, that’s an incredible creative’, not like I used to in the 90s, when you used to see [American fashion photographer] Bruce Webber work with brands like Ralph Lauren. You’d see a campaign and just go ‘wow, that’s insane’. Now brands look at names and what do they do with them? A couple of social posts? “I’m not criticising digital. It’s just not all about numbers, it’s about which demographic you are reaching. How do you connect with people outside the digital world? You still have to create incredible advertising and editorials.” God-like good-looks got Gandy so far. The rest came down to bull dog determination and the sort of singlemindedness that means you’ll find an hour to work out in a leaky gym where people fiddle the sun-bed even when you’re back for the weekend visiting your mum. It’s Beckham spending hours firing free kicks through a tyre suspended from a crossbar; Cristiano Ronaldo being the last one left on the training pitch. As Gandy – single-name status came with the M&S gig – continues to mutate from model to brand-building businessman, are there any words of wisdom that he wishes he could whisper to his younger competitionwinning self ? “Enjoy it,” he says, that megawatt-smile spreading across his face. “Take it all in. Don’t worry so much about what’s happening in the future. “Obviously that’s a very easy thing to say. And if you’re not worrying about what’s coming next, you’re probably not pushing yourself hard enough. I’ve always thought that if you haven’t got both feet on the floor, there’s a chance of toppling off – and who can afford to do that?”
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THE LATEST ISSUE OF
the city magazine DELIVERED TO YOUR DESK FOR FREE EMAIL YOUR NAME, ADDRESS & the company you work for to citydesk@rwmg.co.uk
out of
office
p. 72
welcome to the jungle what to expect from the world cup
p. 78
land of the samurai how the legacy of the warriors lives on
p. 86 humanising modernism Frederick Gibberd’s pioneering approach to urbanism
The Silo Hotel, Cape Town, has been built on top of the Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa, itself constructed out of a converted, 100-year-old grain silo overlooking the Atlantic Ocean and the V&A waterfront (p98). theroyalportfolio.com
FRONT SE AT
words: Hugh Francis Anderson
The supercars, hot hatches & SUVs heading to a forecourt near you
A Blast from the Past
Morgan Motor Company reveals its most aggressive model to date
Taking the much-loved Aero 8 as the basis, each of the limited eight-vehicle-run of the Aero GT will be entirely handcrafted to each customer’s specifications. Featuring the much-loved 375bhp BMW N62 V8 found in the Aero 8, the GT benefits from significant aerodynamic improvements for greater downforce and aggressive aesthetics, with a 0-62mph time of 4.5 seconds, and a top speed of 170mph. Naturally, all eight have already been sold to existing customers, and as the GT marks the end of the 17-year run of the Aero 8 range, it is also the end of a monumental era for Morgan. morgan-motor.co.uk
MOTORING
Back on Track
TVR to return to racing with Switzerland’s Team Rebellion
In the lead up to June’s 24 Hours of Le Mans, no vehicle has been making as much noise the REBELLION Racing TVR. Back from a 13-year hiatus, and ahead of the all-new TVR Griffith that will go into production in 2019, TVR will serve as primary automotive partner for the Swiss team’s pair of ORECA R-13 LMP prototypes, one of which will be raced by Ayrton Senna’s nephew, Bruno. Says TVR chairman Les Edgar: “Endurance racing is a key part of TVR’s DNA, and our role as primary automotive partner of REBELLION Racing TVR gives us a great opportunity to return to the sport. It also allows TVR to work with a competitive racing team and the production of not only TVR road cars, but also our future one-make series and track cars.” Could this finally be the start of a TVR renaissance? tvr.co.uk
Fun and Games Top of the Range
The 2017 World Car of the Year gets the SVR treatment
Revealed at the New York motor show, the all-new Jaguar F-Pace SVR is the most powerful F-Pace yet, and will hit British roads this summer. Featuring the well-used 5.0-litre supercharged V8, the F-Pace SVR will boast an impressive 542bhp that will achieve 0-62mph in just 4.3 seconds, despite its 2,070kg kerb weight. This is thanks to the engineers at JLR’s Special Vehicle Operations, who eked out a 44 per cent uplift in power. It also benefits from an SVR aerodynamic package that makes it look as aggressive as it performs. £74,835, jaguar.co.uk
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Audi turns gamers’ dreams into reality
From the PlayStaion to the race track. While many manufacturers develop concepts in parallel to game releases, working with Gran Turismo in particular, Audi’s e-tron Vision Gran Turismo is the first car to make it from computer game into production. The one-of-a-kind, fully electric prototype boasts a staggering 815bhp from three 220kW motors, and whilst it weighs in at 1,450kg, it’s still good for 0-62mph in 2.5 seconds. The e-tron Vision Gran Turismo is a statement of intent from the marque, and once again proves the sincerity with which the car world is approaching the potential of electricity. Audi will demonstrate the Vision Gran Turismo’s prowess on track throughout the Formula E season. audi.co.uk
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WELCOME TO
Endemic racism, hooligan training camps, far right violence and a domestic game mired in Words: Rob Crossan
FANS OF FC Spartak Moscow, AUGUST 2017, MOSCOW © Paparacy / Shutterstock.com
F E AT U R E
THE JUNGLE
corruption, Russia has done little to clear up its image ahead of this summer’s FIFA World Cup
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‘Pain and suffering are always inevitable for a large intelligence and a deep heart.’ So wrote Fyodor Dostoyevsky in the classic Russian novel Crime and Punishment. A century and a half on from its publication and that inevitability of suffering is a feeling about to be experienced by English visitors, with most of the pain, hopefully, being inflicted on their wallets. That’s because the hoteliers of Russia are doing their best to cash in on this summer’s World Cup tournament by raising prices across the board. In Kaliningrad, one guesthouse is raising its prices by as much as 18,000 per cent for a room on the night before England’s group game with Belgium. So, with many of the one and a half million supporters of other nations travelling to Russia this summer frantically checking the cost of campsites instead of hotels, their thoughts may, logically, turn to how safe they will be on their journeys to and from the stadiums to their canvas homes. The current experience of attending a Russian domestic game is a grim one for anyone raised on the more family friendly experience of the English Premiership. Reminiscent of the English hooligan scene of the early 1980s, the Russian Premier League has been beset with violence in and around stadiums in the last few years. At the European Championships in France in 2016, Russian hooligans attacked England supporters, leaving one paralysed on the left-hand side of his body. Now, on their home turf, reports from inside Russia suggest that de-facto ‘training camps’ are being held for hooligans wanting to wreak havoc this summer. Known as ‘okolofutbola’, protagonists consider violent attacks on rival supporters, and sometimes each other, as a kind of Fight Club-esque sport all of its own, with distinct rules and codes of honour, including raising arms to indicate ‘clean hands’ and not using weapons, signet rings or knuckle dusters. CSKA Moscow’s ‘Yaroslavka’, Zenit St Petersburg’s ‘Music Hall’, Dynamo Moscow’s ‘Capital’ and CSKA Moscow’s ‘Clockwork Oranges’ are just four of the most prominent gangs attached to top-level Russian domestic teams. And their deadly reputations are far from mere selfaggrandising hyperbole. In February this year, a Spanish policeman died before a match between Athletic Bilbao and Spartak Moscow. The travelling Russian
F E AT U R E
AN fC Dynamo Kyiv supporter shows his loyality to Vladimir Putin in a game against Shakhtar Donetsk, kyiv, ukraine, april 2017 Credit katatonia82 / Shutterstock.com
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clockwise from top left: russian hooligans storm english fans during the 2016 european championships ©Marco Iacobucci; CSKA (Moscow) vs Amkar (Perm), moscow, november 2016 ©Paparacy; Dynamo vs Spartak, october 2015 ©Paparacy; Dynamo vs Spartak, april 2013, The banner reads: ‘Your Judgment day has come’ ©vicspacewalker / all images Shutterstock.com
F E AT U R E
fans threw flares, one of which, targeted at officer Inocencio Arias Garcia, prompted a fatal heart attack. Intelligence gathering ahead of this summer’s games has left even deputy chief constable Mark Roberts, the National Police Chiefs’ Council national footballing police lead, to admit that he has fears for the safety of travelling England fans. Referring to the death of Garcia, Roberts commented, “this will, of course, cause concern for those England fans planning to travel to the World Cup and the behaviour of Russian fans needs to be a factor in deciding whether to go there or not.” Back in Moscow a somewhat more confrontational approach is being taken towards the issue of racism in the Russian game. “There’s no racism in Russia, because it doesn’t exist,” says Alexei Smertin in a comment made in 2015. Last year this same man was selected to head an investigation into racism in Russian football. Star players such as Yaya Toure of Manchester City may think differently. The midfielder was subjected to monkey chants from the home crowd during a 2013 Champions League game against CSKA Moscow. Whilst playing for Zenit St. Petersburg, Brazilian striker Hulk complained that racist chants were directed at him in, “almost every game”, whilst there are numerous instances of bananas being thrown onto the pitch at black players. “If [racism] happens in the World Cup, it will be really gross and really ugly,” Hulk said in 2015. “Usually it happens when Russian clubs play and it doesn’t come out to the world and the world doesn’t know about this. “I must say that in almost every game I see this happening. I used to get angry, but now I see this doesn’t help, so I just send a kiss to our fans and try not to get angry.” FIFA president Gianni Infantino warned recently that referees will have the power to stop or even abandon matches this summer if such incidents take place. One possible reason behind the lack of effective action taken by the Russian Premier League against offending ‘supporters’ is the utter chaos behind the scenes at administrative level – a situation which prompted action in 2015 from European football’s governing body UEFA. Under the organisation’s Financial Fair Play rules, Dynamo Moscow, a team bankrolled by Vladimir Putin’s former judo partner and the nation’s 100th wealthiest person, Boris Rotenberg, were expelled from the 2016 Europa League when Rotenburg was found to have grossly manipulated the club’s finances. “We haven’t any political will to see this problem. It’s the Russian tradition to show something good,” said Vasily Afanasiev, a sports management lecturer in at Moscow State University in an interview in 2016. “For example, the owners of the clubs can buy all the tickets and say the stadium’s full,” he says, with regard to how owners bring in revenue from investors and sponsors. “It’s one thousand fans in the stadium, but the stadium has ten thousand seats. And the owner buys eight thousand seats”. It’s not just the oligarchs and despots running many of Russia’s top clubs who have a hand in the current dire situation. Putin’s government is, perhaps unsurprisingly, keen to make sure its own interests and agendas are represented. This was manifested in 2016 when all Russian clubs were banned by the government from buying players from Turkey, in retaliation for Turkey’s shooting down of a Russian plane operating in Syria. Whether these moves can be said to have a direct impact upon the World Cup next summer is a matter of opinion. But
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what cannot be ignored are the allegations made in January this year by Grigory Rodchenkov, former head of the leading Moscow anti-doping laboratory. Now in witness protection in the USA, Rodchenkov claimed that the Russian national side had developed plans to swap urine samples at the World Cup games this summer in order to pass anti-doping tests. Documentary maker Bryan Fogel, creator of the film Icarus, which details the extent of the Russian doping conspiracy, claims that the plans to flout doping tests came directly from the deputy prime minister of Russia Vitaly Mutko who, until late last year was in charge of the entire Russia 2018 tournament organising committee. Rodchenkov, in the course of interviews with the World Anti-Doping Agency and with Fogul also stated that a special hole was created in the wall of one anti-doping lab during the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi. This was used so that urine samples from Russian athletes taking illegal substances were swapped with clean urine. Even more damming is that Rodchenkov states that the entire operation was handled by Russian government security agents. Incredibly, Rodchenkov’s lawyer stated in late February this year that, at the time of writing, FIFA (the world governing body for football) had not even been in touch with Rodchenkov to arrange an interview. It’s a situation that has resulted in raw anger from Travis Tygart, the head of the United States Anti-Doping Agency. “Frankly, it’s exasperating,” he confessed, referring to FIFA’s lack of action. “Clean athletes and the public deserve to have the impact of Russian doping on football, if any, resolved immediately. We are over three years into dealing with this mess and there is no excuse for FIFA failing to contact the star witness at this point.” Mutko has since resigned and whilst the state-sponsored doping allegations don’t look like going away anytime soon, the same can also be said for the murkiness surrounding the funding of the 11 stadiums being used to host matches this coming June. According to the Russian opposition party Yabloko, Russia has spent around three and a half billion US dollars on the construction or reconstruction of the venues. There is no officially sanctioned release of who won the contracts for these jobs but Yabloko leader Sergei Mitrokhin has stated that such a list would consist “almost entirely of the friends and comrades in arms of Putin.” He went on to say that the difference between the actual cost of the stadium developments and the projected initial cost “almost certainly has ended up corruptly in their pockets.” Football has the power to provide a happy cover story to distract all manner of sinister behind the scenes issues. The glory of Argentina winning the World Cup on home soil in 1978 played a crucial role in extending the rule of the military junta and the atrocities it committed across the nation at that time. For the time being, it seems that Putin is succeeding at frustrating and stalling any attempts to make this summer’s World Cup a more transparent event. “Russia is warm and welcoming,” FIFA president Gianni Infantino said at the tournament draw in December last year. “Everyone will be able to celebrate football with the Russian people.” With the first game of the World Cup less than two months away, perhaps Infantino may have been wiser to ask if there is anything much to celebrate at all in Russian football at the present time.
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a rARE, hand-painted PHOTO OF ONE OF JAPAN’S LAST SAMURAI, C.1881, created by austrian photographer Franz von Stillfried-Ratenicz
F E AT U R E
LAND OF THE
SAMURAI
From their emergence as a military class in the 12th century, to their demise following the Meiji Restoration and end of feudalism in 1868, the samurai played an integral part in shaping Japan’s identity. Rowena Marella-Daw explores how the legacy of these devoted warriors continues to live on
T
he samurai is no ordinary warrior. He does not fear death, only the loss of his honour. Yet should he find himself reborn in present-day Tokyo, formerly Edo, capital of the Tokugawa shogunate, the hereditary military dictatorship system that ruled Japan from 1185 to 1868 (Edo was its capital from 1603 to 1868), it might send him running towards Mount Fuji. Modern Tokyo’s jungle of skyscrapers would disorientate him – the Edo he knew was flat, punctuated only by the imposing Edo Castle, wooden houses and rice fields. Shinjuku’s blinding neon lights and blaring music would oblige him to wear his flamboyant helmet adorned with horns and fake moustache. A legion of commuters charging out of Shinjuku station armed with mobile phones might
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provoke his warrior instincts, ready to strike his katana (sword) should anyone attempt to take a selfie with him. Today’s electronic heated toilet seats equipped with automatic sprays would surely wipe the scowl from his face. Life as he once knew it was very different. In the samurai world, everyone knew his place. Theoretically, the emperor sat at the top of the pyramid, but his authority was usurped by the shogun, head honcho of the military government he was selected by the emperor and thus de facto leader of Japan. Next in line were the daimyo, feudal lordscum-warlords who employed warrior-class retainers, or samurai, to protect their domain. Further down the pecking order were peasants and artisans, then the ‘lowest of the low’, the merchants, whom samurai considered parasites.
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A samurai was bound by Bushido, a code of conduct based on frugality, martial arts skills, obedience, loyalty and honour to the death The whole of feudal Japan was controlled by the samurai. Over the centuries, the landscape they inhabited, ruled, fought over and spilled blood upon changed beyond recognition, destroyed by battle fires, earthquakes, and much later in history by Second World War bombings. Yet their legacy lives on through the people, surviving castles, monuments and mansions, not to mention countless epic films depicting their bravery and brutality in equal measure. A samurai was bound by Bushido, a code of conduct based on frugality, martial arts skills, obedience, loyalty and honour to the death. Unflinching allegiance to his master was the leading principle in any samurai’s life. The most legendary example, perhaps, is the Akō incident, which involved 47 ronin (masterless samurai) joining forces to avenge their master’s death. After killing their master’s murderer, they turned themselves in and were ordered by the shogunate authorities to commit seppuku (hara-kiri), a ritual suicide by disembowelment involving a ‘second’, who would chop off the victim’s head moments after he had thrust the knife into his belly. All ronins duly obliged except for one, who was pardoned because of his young age. The shōgun also condemned to death the grandson of the man that the ronins killed. His crime? Being incapable of protecting his family like a samurai should. In fact and fiction, the samurai is usually portrayed as an all-male army of skilled warriors, and rarely mentioned are the onna-bugeisha, the female warriors who fought alongside their male counterparts. Belonging to the elite bushi class, they were trained in martial arts and the naginata, a long spear with a curved blade, effective at disabling riders during cavalry combats. These women were not spared from jigai, the female version of seppuku, which involved slashing their throat. Tomoe Gozen, one of warlord Minamoto no Yoshinaka’s concubines, was exceptionally skilled in the long sword and bow and arrow, so he appointed her as one of his commanders during the Genpei Wars (1180-1185). Like amassing trophies, collecting heads was a post-battle ritual among the victorious, and Tomoe was said to have severed and collected the heads of seven mounted warriors at the Battle of Yokotagawara (1183). She then led a 1,000-strong cavalry to victory during the Battle of Kurikara (1183), and also fought alongside just 300 men against the Taira clan’s cavalry of 6,000 warriors. She survived
along with just four comrades. Her finest hour came during the Battle of Awazu (1184), when she charged towards 30 mounted warriors and decapitated a top warrior of the Musashi clan. There were other female warriors, as DNA evidence from other battle sites revealed, but it was Tomoe’s beauty and military prowess that made her a legend.
Kyoto – The Imperial Capital
If he were a high-ranking warrior serving the Emperor, then Kyoto – the imperial capital from 794 to 1868 – would be a samurai’s regular haunt. The first military government was established here in 1192 by warlord Minamoto no Yoritomo, who became first shogun of the Kamakura period (1185-1333). The serenity of modern Kyoto belies centuries of conflict, as battles fought within the city and its periphery left widespread devastation. Unlike Japan’s other mega-cities, Kyoto has been spared over-modernisation, its horizon devoid of skyscrapers and neon advertisements, which are banned by law. As the nation’s ancient capital of culture and history, it was deliberately spared the US bombing raids of the Second World War, helping to preserve period buildings, palaces and no less than 2,000 surviving temples and shrines. The samurai lived a frugal life, their sustenance comprising mainly of rice, tofu, fermented vegetables and fish, washed down with sake to drown their fears and loneliness. Today, Kyoto’s Nishiki Market’s covered alleyway is a foodie paradise. Not far from here is Nijo Castle, built in 1603 by Tokugawa Ieyasu, first shogun of the Edo period. An elaborate gate leads to well-preserved UNESCO-registered buildings, where corridors covered with tatami (mats made of rice straw) produce a bird-like squeak when anyone walks through, hence the name ‘Nightingale’ floorboards. It was the security system of its time. Kyoto’s temples and shrines were not just for worship. These sacred grounds offered refuge for warriors, although the monks couldn’t guarantee protection. A samurai preparing for battle would stop here to pray for victory or better luck in the next life. Warlord Oda Nobunaga – a powerful daimyo who attempted to unify Japan in the late 16th century – made Honnoji Temple his base when he was in town. He committed seppuku here when betrayed by his general, Akechi Mitsuhide, who set the temple on fire. It was rebuilt next to what is now Shiyakusho-mae Station. On the outskirts of Kyoto, the town of Yamazaki, now home to the Suntory Yamazaki whisky distillery, was where Nobunaga’s death was avenged by his loyal general, Toyotomi Hideyoshi during the Battle of Yamazaki in 1582. He then took over the reins of unifying Japan – and when not engaging in battle, invading Korea or crucifying missionaries, he focused his efforts on rebuilding Kyoto, restructuring its war-torn streets and rebuilding temples, although it was not until the Edo period that Kyoto became a prosperous city.
F E AT U R E A Samurai bearing typical sword and armour, c.1860
LEGENDARY SAMURAI Japan’s three powerful unifiers were
Oda Nobunaga (1534-1582), Toyotomi Hideyoshi (1536-1598) and Tokugawa Ieyasu (1543-1616), Japan’s last shogun. Differences in their temperament are summed up in a senryu (a three-line unrhymed satirical poem):
“If the cuckoo does not sing, kill it” describes Oda Nobunaga’s ruthlessness. “If the cuckoo does not sing, coax it” sums up Toyotomi Hideyoshi’s resourcefulness. “If the cuckoo does not sing, I will wait until it does” connotes Tokugawa’s stoicism.
BENKEI (1155-1189)
Benkei was a towering warrior monk (he stood 6ft 7in tall), who duelled and defeated his enemies and amassed 999 swords, only to lose his 1,000th to warlord Minamoto no Yoshitsune, to whom he then swore allegiance until death. He killed more than 300 soldiers while fighting Yoshitsune’s enemies, but it was his heroic death that lives on. Riddled with arrows, he died standing, a moment known as the ‘Standing Death of Benkei’.
MIYAMOTO MUSASHI (1584-1685)
Musashi fought his first duel and killed his opponent at the age of 13 – and didn’t lose any of his next 60 duels. He founded the Niten-ryū style of swordsmanship, requiring simultaneous use of two swords – the katana and wakizashi. Later in life Musashi retired to a cave, where he wrote The Book of Five Rings, about warfare tactics, strategy and philosophy.
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Iga Ueno – Home of the Ninja
The shinobu or ‘ninja’ played a vital role in samurai conflicts, and their portrayal as death-defying assassins in modern fiction is just half the story. Specialising in stealth, espionage and guerrilla tactics, they were hired to help the samurai undermine the enemy. And contrary to popular belief, they did not always don black outfits, more often disguising their identity by blending in with the crowd. They were the MI5 and SAS of their day. The tranquil city of Iga Ueno in Mie Prefecture was their homeland, and its most notable samurai, Hattori Hanzo, was also a ninja who defended his region against Nobunaga’s forces. The ninja’s combat style is referred to as Ninjutsu, but its practice today is just a fraction of what ninjas were capable of. At the Iga Museum of Iga-ryu, the Ashura Ninja Group demonstrates traditional Iga-ryu Ninjutsu tactics, agility and weaponry skills, while a guided tour reveals typical escape doors, traps and hiding places for weapons and explosives, alongside an exhibition of gadgets and secret codes. Iga Ueno’s ninja heritage is evident on every street corner, and even on local train carriages. The owner of Murai Bankoen tea shop, Motoharu Murai, is the grandson of a ninja master who operated a ninja school from 1860 to 1950. Motoharu serves excellent tea grown in the region, and is eager to show his collection of antique samurai and ninja weapons. This charming city is also home to the imposing 16thcentury Iga Ueno Castle, which has sweeping views of the city and a collection of samurai armour.
‘Control Gifu and you control Japan’ That was the mantra that galvanised Oda Nobunaga to take control of the region during the tumultuous Sengoku period (1467 to 1567). Although mountainous, the prefecture’s central location made it a strategic hub linking the east and west through ancient routes and post towns. Nobunaga didn’t waste time seizing Inabayama Castle and renaming the castle and town as ‘Gifu’. A golden statue stands in his memory outside Gifu Station, and the annual Gifu Nobunaga Festival held in October features a samurai warrior parade. Winters were harsh for samurai going into battle, and the same snow-covered mountains of Gifu they glimpsed are now known as the Japanese Alps. The city of Takayama in Gifu’s Hida region celebrates one of Japan’s best spring and autumn festivals, against a backdrop of well-preserved merchant buildings. And a samurai would have killed for a piece of succulent Hida beef, a speciality of this region. West of Gifu, Sekigahara was the location of the eponymous battle of 1600, when Ieyasu Tokugawa’s 74,000-strong army fought the forces of Ishida Mitsunari and Môri Terumoto, whose 80,000 contingent included powerful samurai clans. Last-minute defections were rife during battles, none more so than at Sekigahara, which swung in Tokugawa’s favour. Within a blood-soaked open field, 60,000 severed heads were amassed. It marked the unstoppable rise to power of the Tokugawa shogunate that was to last for nearly 270 years.
Edo’s ‘floating world’
Beneath modern-day Tokyo’s ultra-modern veneer lurk the shadows of the Edo period. After Ieyasu Tokugawa seized power in 1603 and established his military hegemony here, life changed for the samurai. Many became masterless, some resorting to banditry, while others lost their land to privileged regional daimyos, who themselves had to travel distances to stay in Edo, where their families were kept hostage. These lords were ordered to personally fund public projects, which eventually depleted their finances – a cunning manoeuvre for averting dissent and uprisings. During the reign of Iemitsu, the third shogun, farmers were banned from consuming the rice they harvested. With no major battles to fight, the samurai channelled their energies into learning the arts and assuming administrative SEVEN SAMURAI (Kurosawa, 1954): duties. Each class was Inspired the 1960 Western remake The confined to live within its Magnificent Seven, and the 2015 remake own quarter, while every of the remake aspect of life was monitored and controlled, leading RAN (Kurosawa, 1985): Inspired by to clandestine diversions Shakespeare’s King Lear to vent frustration. The Kabuki theatre developed 13 ASSASSINS (Takashi Miike, 2010): and flourished as a main Sleek remake of the 1963 version source of entertainment for samurai, merchants and 47 RONIN (Carl Rinsch, 2013): commoners. Initially, women Inspired by the real-life 47 Ronin assumed both male and female roles, but were later THE LAST SAMURAI (Edward Zwick, replaced by male performers. 2003): A depiction of conflicts leading to A hedonistic sub-culture the demise of Saigo Takamori thrived under the guise of the kabuki, where kagema – BLADE OF THE IMMORTAL (Takashi adolescent male apprentices Miike, 2017): Live-action flick based on who engaged in prostitution, the Manga series catered to both female and male clientele, including Buddhist priests. Its epicentre was the district of Yoshiwara, Edo’s registered red-light district. Yoshiwara’s licensed brothels were confined within a walled compound surrounded by rice fields. Young girls sold by their parents ended up here, and were forbidden to leave the premises, although those desperate to escape resorted to setting the place on fire. Privileged courtesans based outside the compound inspired fashion trends with their expensive kimonos, all integral to Edo’s decadent ‘floating world’ or ukiyo depicted in woodblock prints from notable artists such as Hokusai and Hiroshige. Other pleasure dens operated close to Buddhist temples in Sensoji and Asakusa, south of Yoshiwara. Merchants and entertainers paid donations to temples for the privilege of trading in these quarters, which thrived until the Second World War. While Asakusa cleaned up over the decades, today it retains its buzzing, Bohemian spirit. As Edo’s denizens did centuries past, today’s visitors flock to Sensoji Temple for worship, then indulge in retail therapy.
SIX MUST-SEE SAMURAI MOVIES
F E AT U R E a rARE, hand-painted PHOTO OF ONE OF JAPAN’S LAST SAMURAI, C.1881, created by austrian photographer Franz von Stillfried-Ratenicz
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Samurai of the Satsuma clan during the 1868-1869 Boshin War
Japan’s Samurai Attractions
The last samurai
TOEI KYOTO STUDIO PARK Samurai movies have long been a staple of Japanese culture, and the famous Toei Studio in Kyoto, home to hundreds of films and TV series, is renowned for producing period samurai and ninja films, including the recently released Blade of the Immortal, directed by Takashi Miike. The studio incorporates a theme park with behindthe-scene tours, fight demonstrations, shows, a museum, and a sprawling film location backlot with authentic Edo-period streets and buildings to explore. toei-eigamura.com Japanese samurai
The era of the samurai came to an end when in armor, 1860s. Photograph: the Meiji Restoration took power back from the Felice Beato Tokugawa shogunate in 1868. The revolution consolidated the political system under the Emperor of Japan, Emperor Meiji. But when the emperor abolished social classes, turned feudal domains into prefectures and conscripted commoners into the army, the samurai, who made up around 10 per cent the Japanese population, and who had wielded a tremendous amount of power, found themselves without purpose, no longer their nation’s only armed force. Those loyal to samurai traditions rebelled. Saigo Takamori, who had previously helped to overthrow the Tokugawa regime, lead the Satsuma Rebellion from January 1877 to September of the same year. Fatally wounded, he committed seppuku. He is considered Japan’s last samurai. From Japan’s tumultuous past through to its rapid modernisation, one thing that remains untouched is the samurai legacy of discipline, self-sacrifice and reverence deeply rooted in the nation’s psyche. In the words of Paul Tierney, Tokyo resident and guide, “doing what one is told without questioning authority and the willingness to do that task to the utmost of one’s ability manifests the samurai spirit in modern-day Japan and its people. You still see this in how society here raises its children and the top-down corporate culture of Japan.” During my sojourn in Japan, I watched sushi chefs carve raw fish with the concentration, skill and precision of a skilled warrior. The tea ceremony once performed by samurai tea masters remains a sacred ritual, while simplicity and minimalism in design, arts and day-to-day living hark back to their frugal past. The Japanese take politeness to a level unseen anywhere else, most prominently when hotel staff stay in bowing position until the guest is out of sight. A shogun would have expected nothing less. Cherry blossoms may come and go. Robots and vending machines may take over one day. But through thick and thin, the samurai spirit will prevail.
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SAMURAI MUSEUM OF TOKYO Shinjuku was once the samurai’s domain, which makes it a fitting home for the Samurai Museum of Tokyo. A guided tour across two floors reveals traditional armour, various types of kabuto (helmet), depictions of battles and prominent shoguns. Visitors can have their photos taken wearing samurai outfits, learn about calligraphy, samurai swords, and watch a sword battle performance. samuraimuseum.jp EDO-TOKYO MUSEUM The Edo-Tokyo Museum takes visitors on a fascinating journey back to Edo times through to post-war Tokyo. Permanent scale models showcasing period buildings, palaces, commoner and samurai quarters, landmarks such as Nihonbashi Bridge, and life on the streets. A special area is also dedicated to the Kabuki theatre. edo-tokyo-museum.or.jp Where to stay: THE CAPITOL HOTEL TOKYU The Capitol Hotel Tokyu owes its calming aura to its contemporary Japanese decor, water features and landscaped gardens, in perfect harmony with the 500-year-old Hie Shinto shrine next door. The shrine is dedicated to the Tokugawa shoguns, who are enshrined here as kami (gods). The hotel is popular with visiting dignitaries for its proximity to the National Diet Building, the equivalent of the Houses of Parliament. Views of the Imperial Palace and city skyline can be seen from its topfloor suites, and a few laps at the 20-metre indoor pool would soothe the stresses of a modern-day samurai. The hotel’s Suiren restaurant serves kaiseki, teppanyaki, shabu-shabu and sushi, all expertly prepared by chef Minoru Tsuge and his team. My kaiseki dinner brought together delicate flavours and textures presented with artistic flair. The Capitol Hotel Tokyu is close to the lively Akasaka district, frequented by local ‘salarymen’ for its myriad restaurants and entertainment bars. tokyuhotelsjapan.com
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WBS London, The Shard
The Warwick MBA in London
Transform yourself with a part-time MBA at The Shard. Visit our website to register for one of our Open Events. W wbs.ac.uk/go/canary
For the Change Makers
liverpool metropolitan cathedral, 1960-67 ŠCircle Creative Studio / Shutterstock.com
ARCHITECTURE
Words: Jack Watkins
Humanising Modernism
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One of the first English architects to truly adopt the International Style, Frederick Gibberd designed the groundbreaking Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral, planned Harlow New Town and created several celebrated housing projects in London. As the capital struggles to return to ideas about high-density development, a new book explores Gibberd’s pioneering approach to building in the urban environment
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ermione Hobhouse’s 1972 book Lost London drew attention to several regrettable losses to the capital’s built heritage during the 20th century, such as Sir John Soane’s Bank of England and the Euston Arch. Hobhouse didn’t stop there, pinpointing several other valued buildings and locations whose future looked dim, including Rules in Covent Garden (claimed as London’s oldest restaurant), the Albert Bridge, which connects Chelsea and Battersea across the Thames, Highgate Cemetery and Coutts Bank at 440 Strand. It’s an indication of how swiftly the conservation lobby got its act together in the years after Hobhouse’s book, and how heritage protection regulations were quickly beefed up, that more than 45 years later, these places are still with us, while the Coutts redevelopment has been hailed as one of the best examples of a historic building adapted to new use. John Nash’s pepperpot corner turrets and characteristically cream stuccoed facades still grace the historic Strand, flanking what was Britain’s first atrium building on its completion in 1978, its American banking hall-styled interior easily visible to pedestrians through the glass screen frontage. The redevelopment had been a matter of considerable controversy, but setting the new entrance to the bank back from the terrace to respect Nash’s work was a classic example of architect Sir Frederick Gibberd’s mantra that new building should always be done with sensitivity to the surrounding area. It’s also typical of the man’s work that you might easily walk past the building and hardly register it was there. Unlike more egotistical architects, Gibberd had little interest in stamping a personal signature on a
project. Yet as one of the few English-born architects to adopt the International Style from the 30s, he is overdue some attention. Christine Hui Lan Manley’s new account of his accomplishments, coming 50 years on from the completion of perhaps his most highprofile work, the Metropolitan Cathedral of Liverpool, and forty years after he finished the Central London Mosque, in Regent’s Park, is timely. Gibberd died in 1984, but the architectural practice he founded in 1945, based in Shoreditch, is still going strong, its portfolio a mix of City and inner London projects and others in the provinces, in keeping with its creator’s life as a Coventry lad who arrived in London in his early 20s. Coutts Bank was one of the last projects of a man whose architectural career had begun at the start of the 30s. While there were many examples of Modernist design in continental Europe by this time, traditional or more eclectic styles still prevailed in Britain, exemplified by the mild-mannered classicism of Sir Edwin Luytens, such as his former Midland Bank building, at 27-35 Poultry (now The Ned hotel), and Sir Reginald Blomfield, who carried out the redesign of Regent Street and Piccadilly Circus after the First World War. The reassurance of half-timber and brick for domestic structures, and dignified gravity of Portland stone for offices were still much in vogue. The spread of Modernist styles arose partly from the need and desire to build new buildings more quickly and cheaply during a period of depression, using new materials such as steel and ferrous concrete, as well as glass, along with the growing idea that the social and functional aspects of design were more important than style. In 1928, an international congress had been established on the European
left: london central mosque, regent’s park, 1967-77 ©Joe Dunckley / Shutterstock.com right: The Lawn, Mark Hall North, Harlow, 1950-1
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above: didcot power station, 1968 below: Fullwell Cross library, 1965-68
mainland to disseminate thinking on the subject, and by the early 30s, progressive British architects had broken away from the traditionalist school to form their own offshoot, the Modern Architectural Research Group. As Manley explains, membership was exclusive and by nomination only. “Those not considered ‘Modernist’ enough were not invited.” Gibberd was elected in its first year of existence. When Gibberd set up his first practice as an architect and surveyor, working from his own flat in Chelsea in 1932, his earliest major commission required him to design a modern apartment block containing rentable flats for young London professionals. Gibberd’s scheme was for 100 one-room flats in a two-storey structure in Clapham, made from reinforced concrete, with a rooftop garden. Each flat would have its own built-in furniture, in keeping with Modernist ideas about one-room living at affordable prices. Wandsworth Borough Council refused permission to build on the grounds that one-room flats would be “conducive to immorality”, but Gibberd quickly reincorporated the idea within a much larger commission, Pullman Court, at Streatham Hill. Even at this stage of his career, his design principles incorporated respect for location, with some of the blocks of flats in the complex being built at contrasting heights, which one journal described as a “graceful concession to the surrounding buildings”. He also set two blocks back from the road not merely to reduce the impact of traffic noise, but to preserve a row of existing trees, something that became a lifelong design principle. Manley argues that Pullman Court’s “total environment”, with its three elements of built form, spaces between buildings, and landscape, are what sets it apart from other key, still-surviving, Modernist buildings in Britain, such Wells Coates’ celebrated Isokon Flats, in Lawn Road, Hampstead, and Highpoint I in Highgate, designed by Berthold Lubetkin. Despite Pullman Court being one of the first examples of a flats development to be built in Britain in the International Style, Manley points out that literature on the history of modern architecture has virtually ignored it. Gibberd didn’t just design buildings, he also wrote about them, and today he reads like a man ahead of the mainstream thinking of his time. The Modern Flat, jointly authored with fellow Modernist FRS Yorke in 1937, promoted the idea of flats as the solution to urban sprawl. The authors claimed they would like to live “in a tall building in a park, with common amenities, air and a view”, and scorned “the millions of little cottages scattered over the face of the country”, in an era when ribbon development was an increasing blight on the landscape. They also observed that changes were occurring in the structure and size of families, and argued that professional single people, omitted from consideration when semi-detached family homes were being built, could be housed in modern flats. And yet, while many Modernists were uncompromising in their emphasis on wanting to break with the past, Gibberd saw his work as a
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continuation and natural development of traditional English building, and grew increasingly interested in the aesthetics of design. Manley says his diaries from the early 40s reveal a developing interest in a more picturesque approach to planning, and in the need to look again at the visual appeal of traditional and local materials. Gibberd was one of several British architects who were concerned to ‘humanise’ Modernism. He believed that the effect of high-rise development could be softened by the inclusion of smaller structures alongside, leading to what would be called mixed developments, while also stressing the need to think about colour, textures, and materials. Manley says such thinking meant that in the post-war period Gibberd was seen as a pioneer in the practice of the art of town design. He was made architect planner to Harlow New Town in 1947, and worked on several mixed development projects in London, including a housing estate at Somerford Grove in Hackney, praised for the way it combined urban scale with variety. Such was Gibberd’s standing by the 50s that he was asked to be the lead architect for the centrepiece of the Festival of Britain on London’s South Bank. He turned it down, preferring to pour his energy into a ‘Live Architecture’ exhibition, namely the designing of Lansbury market place and shopping centre in the bomb-damaged area of Stepney-Poplar. The Chrisp Street site, much admired when first completed for being a shining example of a ‘modern neighbourhood,’ comprising a grouping of structures linked by open spaces, is currently the subject of a proposed major redevelopment, although Gibberd’s Clock Tower and other Festival of Britain buildings would be retained. Despite his expert status in housing and urban planning, in later years Gibberd branched out, undertaking large-scale industrial projects such as the terminal buildings at London (now Heathrow) Airport, Hinkley Point Nuclear Power Station and Didcot A Power Station. Once again, the structures were in harmony with their rural settings. While some called the Didcot development, sitting in the Vale of the White Horse, an eyesore before it was finally closed in 2013, many local residents came to regard the “warm cream and biscuit” coloured towers with affection, even calling the power station “the cathedral of the vale”. Gibberd was no nostalgist. “There can be no turning back from industrialisation”, he once wrote. Yet in his talks he would often refer to “outdoor rooms”, that is, the spaces around buildings. He told The Architectural Review in 1972 that he was more concerned with the aesthetic expression of place than with that of the individual building. Because of this, some accused him of turning his back on Modernism. But at a time when high density is once more in vogue – though this time, it seems, with zero consideration given to space – his thinking is at the very least worth a revisit. As he wrote in 1964, “Building does not exist in a vacuum.” Frederick Gibberd, by Christine Hui Lan Manley, £30, published by Historic England, in collaboration with the Twentieth Century Society and RIBA Publishing, amazon.com
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ESCAPE a f r i c a
p. 94 pack your bags Luxury travel news south of the Sahara
p. 98 rainbow nation why the colours of south africa make it a country like no other
p. 102 journey of a life time on board the world’s most exclusive train
Image courtesy of Alex Beer, alexanderbeerphotography.com
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“The only man I envy is the man who has not yet been to Africa – for he has so much to look forward to” – Richard Mullin, author and travel writer
Pack Your Bags
The latest in luxury travel south of the Sahara Words: Abi Sritharan
Four Seasons Location: Seychelles Opened: March 2018 USP: The only hotel on Desroches Island
Surrounded by pristine powder-white sand, tropical foliage and beautiful blue sea, it is no surprise that this Four Seasons Resort has been described as “beach-side perfection”. The hotel is the second one from the brand in Seychelles, and currently the only hotel on Desroches Island. The hotel consists of over 70 accommodations, which includes bungalows, suites and villas. The entire resort has been designed with tranquillity in mind. Approx £810 per night for two, fourseasons.com
Zuri Zanzibar Hotel and Resort Location: Tanzania Opening: May 2018 USP: 32-metre infinity pool overlooking the Indian Ocean
Opening this month, Zuri Zanzibar Hotel and Resort is situated on a pristine beach facing west, meaning gorgeous African sunsets. The hotel combines contemporary design with sustainable construction and authentic African interiors. A stay at Zuri Zanzibar provides a choice of more than 50 villas, bungalows and suites as well as views of the breathtakingly beautiful Indian Ocean. Guests can enjoy access to a private beach, unspoilt coral reefs and tropical plants – some of Africa’s finest natural assets in one oasis. From USD 345 per night for a Garden Bungalow, zurizanzibar.com
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Sanctuary Olonana Location: Kenya Opening: June 2018 USP: Glass suites bringing the outdoors inside
&Beyond Bateleur Camp Location: Kenya Re-opened: March 2018 USP: Situated below the spot where the famous last scene of Oscar-winning Out of Africa was filmed
This luxury tented camp is tucked away in a stunning location. Amid the reserve’s high concentration of plentiful and diverse wildlife, guests can enjoy an unbeatable animal experience,
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including safari tours, bush walks, and day and night drives. The romantic and private camp reflects the ambiance of Kenyan safaris of the ‘20s and ‘30s and is situated below the scenic location where the final scene of the movie Out of Africa was filmed. The perfect place for nature lovers, wildlife enthusiasts, and movie buffs to enjoy an unforgettable African experience. From $680 per person per night, andbeyond.com
In the heart of Kenya’s most famous game reserve, Masai Mara, a tented safari camp will be built on a private stretch of the banks of the Mara River. The luxury lodge will consist of 14 glass-sided, spacious suites. The rooms, like the rest of the lodge, see contemporary architecture and modern design juxtapose with traditional African finishes. The hotel is part of Sanctuary Retreats, known for its exceptional customer service. The resort will also be gold eco-rated and is investing in various conservation and community projects. Guests can expect game drives, picnics, safari activities and the chance to see the Big Five. Abercrombie & Kent offers an 11-night trip to Kenya, including a stay at Sanctuary Olonana, from £5,575pp, abercrombiekent.co.uk
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One&Only Gorilla’s Nest Location: Rwanda Opening: Early 2019 USP: The last mountain gorillas right on your doorstep
The foothills of the awesome Virunga volcano range will be the location of One&Only’s newest hotel. One&Only Gorilla’s Nest will provide guests with face-to-face encounters with the last mountain gorillas left in the wild. Spend days watching these majestic animals roam their natural habitat before unwinding in your en-suite room, the hotel’s pool or spa, or its nine-hole golf course. A stay at One&Only Gorilla’s Nest is sure to be a unique and unforgettable experience for the whole family. Prices TBC, oneandonlyresorts.com
Meliá Maputo Hotel Location: Mozambique Opening: Summer 2018 USP: Walking distance from Maputo’s most famous attractions
Meliá Serengeti Lodge Location: Tanzania Opened: Early 2018 USP: Approximately 45 per cent of the resort’s energy is sourced from solar panels
Meliá Serengeti lodge – located in the heart of Serengeti National Park – is the hotel brand’s first state-of-the-art sustainabilitycentred hotel. Due to its great location,
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guests have access to thousands of square kilometres of pure nature and witness a range of wildlife. The hotel, with its elegant rooms and suites, has been designed with the protection and preservation of this local environment in mind. This luxury hotel is the perfect place to spend a splendid summer in the Serengeti. From £258 per night for two, melia.com
Meliá hotels are already popular in Africa, so there is no doubt that its new launch in Mozambique – its first in the country – is sure to be a hit. The new hotel, in the centre of Mozambique’s capital, Maputo, will be a short distance away from both the train station and the airport – perfect for business and leisure travellers alike. In addition to this, the hotel is just a short walk away from some of Maputo’s most famous attractions, such as the National Art Museum and the cathedral. The new hotel will adhere to the high standards of the hotel brand, and will boast more than 170 rooms and suites, as well as a great restaurant and coffee bar. Prices TBC, melia.com
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Rainbow Nation South Africa’s spectrum of climates, colours and contours imbue the country with transformative powers, discovers Alice Jones
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here are three stages of holiday withdrawal. The first is googling the place from which you’ve just returned. The second is phoning your travelling companion to partake in some joint googling. The third, in my case, was emailing my 24-year-old safari guide, Jacques. I was not romantically interested in Jacques, you understand, but he provided a link to a place I now truly adore – South Africa. In March 2018, my friend and I had the opportunity to experience the contrasts of a country as wild as it is artistic, as untamed as it is cosmopolitan, accessible by an 11-hour flight from London, with no time difference. We started on safari. The Madikwe Game Reserve is an hour north-west of Johannesburg by plane, not withstanding there being rhinos on the runway at the landing site. The 750km expanse is dramatic and red and picture-perfect. The iron oxide in the soil gives the landscape its rich colour, punctuated by a surprising amount of lush green vegetation – minus
the flat-topped trees you might associate with Africa. These are umbrella thorns and a high population of elephants at this reserve mean they barely stand 3ft tall, having been eaten or crushed. Of course, such a healthy population means that you’re more likely to see an elephant when you check in to Sanctuary Retreats Makanyane – a luxurious lodge that comprises just eight bedrooms. Here, two game drives are planned per day, one at sunrise, the other at sunset, making for a gorgeous ski trip-esque routine of coffee laced with local Amarula spirit at dawn, group brunches, days spent by the infinity pool at leisure, before life-changing conversations at sunset.
clockwise from above: Sanctuary Retreats Makanyane; Sanctuary Retreats Makanyane; Sanctuary Retreats Makanyane; Sanctuary Retreats Makanyane; ellerman house, cape town; ellerman house, cape town
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Bedtime came early, in glass-walled suites grouped around a watering hole for added photo opportunities. Open-air showers and thatched roofs lent them an outdoorsy quality, while comfy beds, free-standing bath tubs and candles added to the comfort factor. Michelle Obama is said to have once stayed here. All too soon it was time to see another side of the country, and as the 12-seater propeller plane hopped from the airstrip, we waved goodbye to Jacques, who had remarked how bizarre it was that there was “a whole world beyond the fence”. He emailed back, too, just so you know. “Missing you two for sure. We should do it again sometime.” Yes, please.
Cape Town
By which time you’ve abandoned the open-top jeep and written your name in the earth with a stick while waiting for the stars to come out. The Sanctuary Retreats experience is blissfully personalised. My friend and I were partnered with Jacques for our whole visit; enabling him to tailor our expeditions based on which animals we had yet to see. We covered hundreds of miles of ground, and raced across the tracks and rivers on an endorphin high, the radio crackling into life with sightings. And within three days of soaking up sun, and space, and peace, we had seen almost everything. Elephants, dozing lions, grazing rhinos, curious giraffes, playful zebra, formidable wildebeests that staked out the trucks, nervous cheetahs that stalked impalas, and crocodiles that slinked into murky waters as we headed home for supper. Each time we returned to the lodge we would tell the staff of our sightings, and sit by the fire while dinner was prepared; typically game steaks, fresh vegetables and sweet desserts that fuelled us for sleep and adventure.
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Facebook tells lies. According to my friend’s profile, on arrival in the city we undertook a happy abseil down the dramatic Table Mountain. Dramatic it was; happy, not so much. Halfway down, crippled with nerves, we begged to be hoisted back up. Thankfully, a prevailing mist meant we couldn’t see the drop below, something we were very grateful for. For people braver than us, the adventure is one of the most exhilarating ways to appreciate Cape Town. South Africa’s natural landscape is its greatest asset and 1,085m up, while tethered to ropes manned by Abseil Africa, you can see its twisted rock formations and sun-soaked colours in all of their glory. Surprisingly affordable,
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the excursion requires no training (although we could have done with some) and takes about half an hour. Table Mountain is one of the new ‘Seven Wonders of Nature’ and proves an achievable summit for those who want to climb and hike its peak. Though there’s also an open-air cable car, remember that. Mercifully, Table Mountain National Park is just 15 minutes from the chic V&A Waterfront, meaning you can recover quickly from your thrill-seeking at altitude. After our terror, we retreated to the bells and whistles of The Silo, a boutique hotel with members’ club vibes that opened in 2017.
The Silo
The Royal Portfolio hotel group is a family affair, founded and run by husband and wife team Phil and Liz Biden. Liz, CEO, personally oversees the extravagant interiors of the five properties the group owns in Africa, of which The Silo is the newest. Designed by Thomas Heatherwick, of Londonbased Heatherwick Studio, its most striking feature is its glass façade that gives each of its 28 rooms geometric, industrial-style windows. They overlook the art installations of the neighbouring Zeitz MOCAA – a gallery which houses the continent’s largest collection of contemporary African art – as well as the mountains or coast depending on which room you choose.
clockwise from above: the silo, cape town; the silo, cape town; food at janse & co, cape town, ©claire gunn; ellerman house, cape town; delaire graff, Stellenbosch; the silo, cape town
The hotel’s one-bed penthouse measures 211m and includes a private spa treatment room and a 25m wraparound terrace. Other than the generous layout, Biden’s fabled decadence is evident in the tribal-inspired crocskin dressers, leopard-print banquettes flanking bath tubs, sequined artworks and antique furniture as well as the vivid flashes of colour that really help make your Instagram pop. The effect is inimitable; don’t approach interior design like this at home. In the hotel’s basement is The Vault, which houses custom paintings on loan from local creatives. It is touches like this consignment that give the hotel its point of difference. And also the service, with staff
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rates Prices at Sanctuary Makanyane Safari Lodge start from £260 per person per night for a minimum 4 night stay on selected dates. Park fees and flights not included, sanctuaryretreats.com Prices at The Silo start from £790 per night in low season, theroyalportfolio.com Prices at Delaire Graff start from approx. £850 per night in low season, delaire.co.za Prices at Ellerman House from £525 per night, ellerman.co.za
more than happy to arrange last-minute in-room hairdressing appointments for you at the press of a button (true story). When the sun, views and local wine mean you don’t want to party anywhere else, make yourself comfortable at The Silo Rooftop – a bar and restaurant complete with glass-sided pool.
Wine tasting
This being winemaking country, a trip to the valleys of Franschhoek or Stellenbosch for a full tasting is a must. We chose the latter, as guests of Delaire Graff ( founded by jeweller, Laurence Graff), where a main homestead with indoor water features, two restaurants, a spa and 10 lodges are tucked into the hillside, complete with terraces and plunge pools. This is marriage proposal territory: the olive groves and grape vines do something spectacular to the view – especially at sunset – and privacy is assured. You’ll not see a soul in the gym or at the main pool, however slick and beautiful the spaces, with their muted colour palettes, sleek stonework and enormous artworks. Both wine tasting and tours of the vineyard are complimentary for those staying in the property. The Sunrise Brut is the estate’s own sparkling wine, but most people talk about its red: the Laurence Graff Reserve is a ripe, full-bodied claret. There’s also an award-winning semillon/sauvignon blend, which the tasting notes flag for its tropical, citrus taste from the local grapes.
The wine tasting is taken at the estate’s eponymous restaurant, which has genuinely inspiring views of the valley – all golden earth and purple and green flora. At night, book into Indochine. The Pan-Asian restaurant is the founder’s favourite, and after a few days of traditionally hearty African game, the fine dining twist on a vindaloo – complete with fresh langoustines and prawns – provides the spicy pick-me-up your taste buds need. The food is exquisite, the dining room moody and romantic and the cocktails deadly. We still talk about them.
Ellerman House
Back in the city, guests of Delaire Graff frequently take advantage of its partnership with Ellerman House, and book to stay the night at the Cape Edwardian mansion in one of the most exclusive areas of Cape Town – Bantry Bay. The hotel itself has a wine gallery of 7,500 bottles mounted in an impressive entertaining space in its grounds. But what makes this property so special is its warren of libraries, snugs and brandy lounges – two centuries of artwork line the walls – and the atmosphere is as mysterious as it is cosy. Ellerman House is a hideaway for the elusive and has been so for 25 years. All guests are invited to a reception each evening but you’ll not hear a peep from the suites. If you do tear yourself from your own terrace, there is a house pool complete with butler service, as well as a contemporary art gallery and spa, but the best spot is the house’s veranda for dinner – where finally you might just meet your neighbours as they dine while watching the waves roll in. We spent our last night watching a thunderstorm from this terrace as the rain finally came. If South Africa isn’t already on your bucket list, consider adding it now.
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he walkie-talkie crackled. Nothing was happening yet at Ishukudu Dam or much down Bushwillow Road. Nothing was going on down Cat’s Alley or Impala Road either. Hustler’s Alley was empty. Tree Squirrel Road was quiet too. It was still early. The sun rose over the Dwarsberg mountains spilling over the inselbergs, lighting up the termite mounds. The rangers talked. Iggy Bogatsu was following the Old Fence Road. Kylie was on Rusty’s Jungle Lane. Steph had drawn a blank at Python Pool. The radio squawked again. A prayer bird lifted off from a jacket plum tree. A herd of kudu stared at us incuriously. Jack went into code, speaking Tswana – sometimes poachers listen in. Something had been spotted at Adolf’s View heading in the direction of the Pofadder pan. Jack put his foot down and we bumped and jounced along the clay and Dolomite dirt tracks following the Northern Fence Line.
A few moments later we stopped on Mistral Road. A pack of rare wild dogs were feasting on their kill. They fought for its tongue. They fought over its ears. Western Cape Province’s malaria-free Madikwe Game Reserve on the South Africa-Botswana border, 25 miles south-east of Botswana’s capital Gaborone and three hours’ drive from both Johannesburg and Pretoria, is one of South Africa’s prime safari destinations. Stretching 75,000 hectares, it is the fourth largest game reserve in the country. The two-night, four-drive stay in the park is the highlight of Rovos Rail’s epic 15-day, 3,568-mile, £11,000 Pride of Africa train trip up the spine of Africa. A journey that stretches from Cape Town through Botswana, Zimbabwe, Zambia and ending in Dar es Salaam in Tanzania. Rovos runs five-star rail-hotel trips throughout southern Africa and into Namibia, recapturing the romance of train travel. So what do you get for £11,000 on what proclaims itself to be the world’s most luxurious train journey? A wealth of memories.
T R AV E L
And the very best of everything that is operationally possible and logistically feasible when you’re travelling through Africa for a fortnight. By numbers, the trip includes: five countries, interminable savannah, lots of waving children, four chauffeurs, three chefs, 10 waiters, countless discreet bodyguards, select company, an on-board doctor, hair stylist and social secretary, a resident encyclopaedic historian, hostesses providing 24/7 laundry and room service, air conditioning, shaver plugs, a stand-up perfect-temperature en-suite shower with optional clawfoot Victorian bathtub, a minibar with Méthode Cap Classique champagne, sparkling wine, top-of-range non-abrasive toilet paper and complimentary grooming products. There’s also plastic goggles, so you can stick your head out of the train, tunnels permitting. Our cosmopolitan company for the trip included American doctors, CEOs, a nougat mogul, an Australian timber mill magnate and an ex-scaffolder and Brussels sprout picker from Bedford who, with his wife having surprised him with the trip, was leaving their only son nothing except a DVD of them enjoying the high life. Another major plus is that all the visas and border formalities are taken care of for you. You get a tour of the Kimberley diamond mines; a stay at the
What do you get on the world’s most luxurious train journey? The very best of everything that is operationally possible
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$1,000-a-night, 1904-Empire-kitsch Victoria Falls Hotel, limitless fine wines and three meals a day. You must dress up for the bygone days and golden age of rail travel. Cummerbunds and penguin suits are not compulsory. But jackets and ties are. Tiaras and national costumes are optional. If you only see 20,000 out of 23,000 flamingos at Kamfers Dam in South Africa, you can hardly cavil. You are guaranteed to get up close and personal with a crash of rhinos, a tower of giraffes and a committee of vultures. There is also a one-day visit to the Selous Game Reserve in Tanzania. The only thing you have to pay for is French champagne. And throwing yourself off a bridge – bungee jumping is not included. The Pride of Africa, which can carry a maximum of 70 guests, is more sedate and unhurried than
Australia’s The Ghan or The Blue Train between Pretoria and Cape Town. Its windows may not be as opaque as India’s Palace on Wheels. The scenery is not as spectacular as on the Trans-Canadian railway, or as breathtaking as in Peru. But this is all-out adventure. Even if the Pullman cabins are small, the royal suites have a clawfoot bathtub. There is no radio or television onboard. No WiFi or laptop or casino or gym or wellness centre. Although the doctor’s cabin has an exercise bike. Mainly for himself. ‘Elegant conversation’ is encouraged. And your fellow passengers are the on-board entertainment when the low and high veldt and baobab forests pall. In the smoking cabin, and open-balconied observation car, conversation flows and stories are swapped as you cross rivers and travel through the Miombo, heartwoods and zebrawood thickets. Ostriches stare incuriously. Kudus barely raise their heads. Friendships are forged. A trip of a lifetime is shared. You must be prepared to pay for the late nights and cocktail parties, which tend to feature a lot of Amarula and Frangelico hazelnut liqueur. You must suffer sore elbows and bruised hips from walking down the halfmile long corridors. And be resigned to weight gain. Otto Hank is the executive chef sending out fourcourse meals into the Pride of Africa’s cherry-panelled, teakwood-pillared Belle Époque restaurant with its
T R AV E L
Rates & Dates 2018
Cape Town to Dar es Salaam: June 30 / September 29 Dar es Salaam to Cape Town: July 17 / September 4 / October 16 Royal suite: US$21,550 pp (single supplement upon request) Deluxe suite: US$16,500 pp (single supplement US$7,130) Pullman suite: US$12,450 pp (single supplement US$5,530)
2019
Cape Town to Dar es Salaam: June 29 / September 28 Dar es Salaam to Cape Town: January 24 / October 15 Royal suite: US$22,190 pp (single supplement upon request) Deluxe suite: US$16,995 pp (single supplement US$7,385) Pullman suite: US$12,820 pp (single supplement US$5,695)
singing cut-crystal wine glasses, bone china, starched linen napery, solid silver cutlery, tassel-tied curtains and romantic low lighting. Ineffably delightful staff like Heinrich will save you unconscionable amounts of exertion by not only reading the menus out loud but also placing the napkin in your lap. Hank works closely with Anthea Vos, wife of founder Rohan who started his auto parts business by selling a rebuilt car and then buying old British train carriages and steam trains to restore. He founded Rovos in 1989 and, after near-bankruptcy, it has rightfully become one of the Southern Hemisphere’s leading luxury brands. The centre of operations is Capital Park, Pretoria. You can visit the workshops and a museum. The original steam locomotives were named after family members. Running out of names, Vos named one Zog, after his pet Dalmatian. Steam power is no longer employed but ‘Tiffany’ and ‘Marjorie’ – built in Scotland in 1953 – do make occasional cameo appearances. It’s a luxury to eat your way up Africa. To be shown the high points of the continent in safety, security and exceptional comfort. To go through the continent first class. And travel a route rarely travelled. Passengers are hailed nightly by a mini-xylophone and proceed to the restored, almost 100-year-old dining car. Menus include traditional South African bobotie – spiced beef mince oven-baked with a layer of savoury egg custard served with Peppadew pepper, kiwi and banana chutney. Pecorino (ewe’s milk cheese soaked in a wine must) precedes a dessert of melktert – a sweet pastry crust with a dusting of cinnamon served with fruit coulis, and a small syrup-coated South African doughnut known as a koeksister. There are also ostrich and crocodile tails. All paired with the best Paarl, Stellenbosch and Franschhoek fine wines. At the end of the extraordinary trip, guests are presented with a certificate signed by Mr Vos: ‘Be it known that the prerogative to ride on board on the Greatest Train On Earth has been exercised. By this action, persistent thirst has been slaked on the rail-bound watering holes that bear the names of Modder, Nile and Nyanza and that culinary delights have been savoured in the dining cars Shangani, Pafuri or Letaba and that you have been lulled to sleep in the easy confines of a luxurious suite.’ An air-conditioned one, too. rovos.com; wexas.com; Emirates flies to Cape Town via Dubai, from £869, emirates.com; British Airways flies from London to Cape Town, from £725 return. Return flights from London to Johannesburg, from £642 return, ba.com
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London homes
& property showcasing the finest homes in your area
CO V ERING THE CITY , WA P P ING , SHA D THAMES , SHORE D ITCH & IS L INGTON
waterworks a br and ne w de velopment on the banks of the oldest canal in london
A CGI of Phoenix, Fairview’s development beside the Limehouse Cut. See page 122 for more information
Whitehouse Apartments, Southbank SE1 Three bedroom penthouse for sale with impressive city views A superb penthouse apartment incorporating over 1,560 square feet, over the top two floors of Whitehouse Apartments, offering bright and spacious living accomodation and a balcony affording fabulous views over London and Waterloo. 3 bedrooms, 3 bathrooms, kitchen, reception, concierge, private parking, gym and swimming pool. EPC: D. Approximately 145 sq m (1,561 sq ft). Share of freehold
Guide price: £2,350,000
KnightFrank.co.uk/riverside riverside@knightfrank.com 020 3641 5932
@KF_EastLondon KnightFrank.co.uk
KnightFrank.co.uk/RVR180050
City Mag May 2018 Sales
19/04/2018 16:41:40
city
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FOUND. Your perfect tenant. Let with Knight Frank
Our local expertise and global network mean that we can find a reliable tenant for your property; and with an average tenancy of nearly two years, Knight Frank not only helps you find them – but keep them as well. If you are considering letting a property this year, please contact us on 020 8166 5366 or visit KnightFrank.co.uk/lettings All potential tenants should be advised that, as well as rent, an Guide price: £695 per week
Royal Tower Lodge, Wapping E1W A beautifully presented 3 bedroom apartment in a sought after development in Wapping. Modern kitchen and reception room leading to a private balcony through double double doors. EPC: B Approximately 101 sq m (1091 sq ft). Available furnished. wappinglettings@knightfrank.com Office: 0 2 0 8 1 6 6 5 3 6 6
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administration fee of £288 and referencing fees of £48 per person will apply when renting a property. There will also be a £48 charge to register your deposit with the Tenancy Deposit Scheme if applicable. (All fees shown are inclusive of VAT.) Please ask us for more information about other fees that will apply or visit www.knightfrank.co.uk/tenantfees.
@KnightFrank KnightFrank.co.uk
Guide price: £550 per week
New Crane Wharf, Wapping E1W A stunning two bedroom apartment to rent in the sought after development of New Crane Wharf. Refurbished throughout, 2 bedrooms, reception room, bathroom and kitchen. EPC: D Approximately 96 sq m (1029 sq ft). Avaliable furnished. wappinglettings@knightfrank.com. Office: 0 2 0 8 1 6 6 5 3 6 6
city magazine may 2018
20/04/2018 16:37:39
Wellington Terrace, Wapping E1W
2 double bedroom, 2 storey house set within this gated CCTV development. The property has been fully modernised to include double glazing, replacement ceilings, wood floors, , alarm, central heating system operated via remote control, smart phone or internet. Lounge. Fully fitted kitchen. Double bedrooms with fitted wardrobes. Garden. Secure Underground parking space. Potential to extend into the loft subject to planning permission. Close to Wapping station and local amenities.
Park Vista Tower, Wapping E1W
£695,000
Price: £1,900,000
Ea2 are pleased to offer for sale this rare to market beautifully maintained and decorated modern built 10th floor 3 double bedroom, 2 bathroom apartment within this prestigious luxury development within the heart of Wapping.The apartment has 1350 sq ft of internal space and also boasts a 500sq ft roof terrace with incredible views of the City of London, the Shard and Tower Bridge.The apartment has been fully renovated from the original Ballymore Spec to include a new fully integrated kitchen with Tudor House,Tower Bridge, SE1 £1,595,000 Miele appliances.The apartment benefits from having an open plan lounge / diner and fully fitted integrated kitchen all with stunning views, an En-suite shower room to the 6th floor luxurytwo 2 Double Bedrooms, Open Plan Reception Room, largeSecure balcony. Master bedroom with master bedroom, further bedrooms with2a Bathrooms, family bathroom, 500 sq ft terrace, 2 Further balconies underground parking space. 24 en-suite Hour concierge/security. and walk in wardrobe. Modern Kitchen, Use of resident’s library, cinema room,Integrated gymnasium and spa. Balcony, 24 Hour Porter by Harrods Estates, Residents Gymnasium, Swimming
Pool, Lifts to all floors. Close to Local Shopping Facilities, Walking Distance to London Bridge.
ea2 Estate ea2 Estate AgencyAgency Heritage | 35a Court Wapping | 8-10High Sampson StreetStreet | Wapping | Wapping | London | London E1W 1NR E1W 1NA t: 020 7702 3456 t: 020 7702 3456 | f: 020 7702 9168 www.ea2group.com | enquiries@ea2group.com www.ea2.co.uk | property@ea2group.com
St Thomas Wharf, West Wapping E1W
Capital Wharf, West Wapping E1W
Overground and close to Waitrose. Rental Price: £650.00 per week
Rental Price: £825.00 per week
Turnstone House, St Katharine’s Dock E1W
Spice Court, West Wapping E1W
ea2 are pleased to offer this rare opportunity to rent this 4th and 5th floor 3 ea2 are pleased to offer for rent this stunning 2 double bedroom, 2 bathroom double bedroom duplex apartment, approx. 1528 sq ft within this sought after riverside apartment located on the 1st. floor of this beautiful warehouse secure development. The apartment benefits from having 3 bathrooms, en-suite conversion. underground parking. Close to St Katharine Docks, Tower Roding Secure Mews, Wapping E1W £1,300 per1 week to the master Separate fully fittediskitchen. Lounge with balcony with Hill and local amenities. The6property boasts exposed house for ea2and areWapping pleasedstations to be able to show you this bedroom 4 bathroom rental withbedroom. a garden. This property a views of River Thames and Tower Laminate wood floors. brickwork andproperty south facing balcony, andsuit bedroom. very unique andriver hasviews viewsfrom overthethe canal.lounge Would 6 professional people. Close to Tower Hill Bridge. and Wapping
ea2 are pleased to offer for rent this large bright one double bedroom apartment ea2 are pleased to offer for rent this 2 double bedroom and 2 bathrooms (both en in this rare to come to market development in West Wapping. It has a large terrace suite) apartment within this sought after West Wapping development.This duplex that has an amazing St Katherines Dock View. Separate kitchen and large lounge. apartment is set over two floors with a balcony and benefits from a separate Kitchen, Cascades Tower, Docklands E14 per week Right on St Katherines which is vibrant and close to all the bars and restaurants and secure parking space. Porter. Close to St Katharine’s Dock and£500 Tower Hill station. 2 double 2 bathroom 11th only a shortbedroom, walk into the City of London. 24floor Hour apartment Concierge. within this secure modern development. Comprising a reception
room with water/ City views, fitted kitchen, master bedroom with walk-in wardrobe & en suite bathroom, additional shower Balcony. Swimming pool, Gymnasium & Tennis court. Concierge. Rentalroom. Price: £650.00 per week Rental Price: £500.00 per week
ea2 Agency Estate Agency | 35a Wapping StreetStreet | Wapping | London E1W E1W 1NR 1NA ea2 Estate Heritage Court | 8-10High Sampson | Wapping | London 020 7702 3456 t: 020 7702t: 3456 | f: 020 7702 9168 www.ea2group.com | enquiries@ea2group.com www.ea2.co.uk | property@ea2group.com
Mayfair Showroom 66 Grosvenor Street, London, W1K 3JL 35 offices in central London and over 70 across the capital
Wapping Wall, E1W ÂŁ1,595,000
A two double bedroom, three bathroom apartment located in a riverside development. The large reception room has wood flooring and has access to the private balcony. The master bedroom has a dressing area which leads to an en suite bathroom with Jacuzzi bath, energy rating d. Dexters Wapping 020 7650 5350
Middleton Road, E8 ÂŁ2,000,000
Located close to London Fields, a large Victorian semi-detached house set on one of the prime roads in the Hackney area. Arranged over four floors, there are six bedrooms, three reception rooms, a terrace and a private garden, energy rating e. Dexters Hackney 020 7247 2440
dexters.co.uk
Wapping Wall, E1W £1,462 per week
This two bedroom, top floor apartment is situated in the renowned Metropolitan warehouse conversion in Wapping. There are high ceilings, wood flooring and exposed brickwork throughout. There is also a spiral staircase to a private roof terrace, energy rating c. Dexters City 020 7392 9111
Vaughan Way, E1W
£1,300 per week
A brand new three bedroom apartment in the sought after London Dock development located next to St Katherine’s Dock and Tower Gateway. There is a large open plan kitchen/reception room, three bathrooms and two balconies, energy rating b. Dexters City 020 7392 9111 Tenants fees apply: £180 per tenancy towards administration, £60 reference fee per tenant and £144 for a professional check in (All inc of VAT).
Beckenham 020 8663 4433 Bromley 020 8315 5544
Chislehurst 020 8295 4900 Locksbottom 01689 882 988
Orpington 01689 661 400 West Wickham 020 8432 7373
Orpington BR6
Sundridge Park BR1
This detached family home is set on a third of an acre plot within an area of outstanding natural beauty.
An exciting opportunity to acquire a detached home measuring approx. 3,200 sq ft.
OIEO £1,100,000 F/H
£1,195,000 F/H
Four bedrooms
Four bathrooms
Five bedrooms
Three bathrooms
Three receptions
EER E
Four receptions
EER E
Contact Orpington 01689 661 400
Contact Bromley 020 8315 5544
Penge SE20 Offered to the market in immaculate condition is this semi-detached period family home.
£750,000 F/H Three bedrooms
One bathroom
Two receptions
EER D
Contact Beckenham 020 8663 4433
The Acorn Group, incorporating:
langfordrussell.co.uk
TAKE THE TRAIN
TAKE THE DLR
London Bridge - 9 mins Cannon Street - 17 mins Charing Cross - 18 mins Victoria - 20 mins
Greenwich - 5 mins Heron Quays - 15 mins Canary Wharf - 16 mins Bank - 27 mins
A vibrant new hub for Lewisham, launching Saturday 19th May. Centralis is a brand new development of one, two and three bedroom apartments. Each apartment combines generous living spaces with comprehensive specifications to create highly desirable homes. Located within the heart of the Lewisham regeneration, Centralis is just a 5 minute walk
from Lewisham station which provides a range of excellent rail and DLR connections into London Bridge, London Victoria, Charing Cross, Bank and Canary Wharf - the commuters dream. One bed prices from £380,000 Two bed prices from £499,995 Three bed prices from £580,000
Sat Nav Ref: SE13 7TG
Book an appointment to view now 020 8315 6996 or acornnewhomes.co.uk Train times are from Lewisham Station. Source TFL.
PROPERTY
HOT PROPERTY
Stable House, BR7 A property on one of Chislehurst’s most soughtafter roads, Wilderness Road, is now available. This private, gated road is within walking distance of Chislehurst High Street with its independent boutiques and coffee shops, and offers a mixture of characterful period and modern properties. Stable House is one of the latter. This spacious home was completed in 2008 and with approximately 11,000 sq ft of space, it is ideal for those looking for a large family residence. High hedges give the property privacy and access is through its electronically controlled wrought iron gates. The paved driveway and double garage provide ample parking space. The house boasts a series of reception rooms, including a drawing room accessed from both the kitchen and entrance hall. French doors from this room (as well as the kitchen) lead onto a raised terrace area – perfect for entertaining – that overlooks the professionally landscaped gardens. The open-plan kitchen and dining area itself is generously proportioned, with a Stoneham fitted kitchen and built-in Miele appliances. A further reception room, snooker room, utility room and shower room on the other side of the ground floor have the potential to be transformed into a self-contained annex. A large reception hall, complete with a glass and oak feature staircase, leads to both the upper and lower levels. The first floor provides five substantial bedroom suites complete with built-in wardrobes and en-suite bathrooms, as well as a study area with built-in furniture and a further laundry room. The sixth en-suite bedroom
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is located separately on the second floor. If dining poolside sounds appealing, head to the lower ground floor’s leisure complex. It boasts a 46” x 15” heated pool, gymnasium, steam room, two changing rooms with showers, jacuzzi and a bar area complete with an integrated fridge, dishwasher and even a ‘dumb waiter’ to the ground floor above. Once again, French doors give access to the gardens and patio. The property’s landscaped gardens, set over half an acre, are no less impressive. The established flower and shrub banks, lawn areas, patios, seating areas and pathways are arranged over two levels and an automated irrigation system draws water from a rainwater harvesting tank. Chislehurst’s wider leafy landscape stems from its surrounding commons, which were saved from development at the end of the 19th century. Despite its rural feel, it is within close proximity to central London and Canary Wharf. Three local train stations, including Chislehurst Station at less than one mile away, serve major London terminals including Blackfriars, London Bridge and Charing Cross. Chislehurst Golf Club is also within a short distance, and its grand clubhouse was once the home of Napoleon III and his wife Eugenie. £4,950,000, 020 8295 4900, langfordrussell.co.uk
lu x u ry lon don.co.u k
50% NOW SOLD - MOVE IN IMMEDIATELY
ONE FIFTY THREE HIGH ST. LEWISHAM
PRICES FROM £315,000 1 & 2 BEDROOM APARTMENTS PERFECTLY POSITIONED FOR YOUNG PROFESSIONALS LOOKING TO ENJOY LEWISHAM’S VIBRANT TOWN CENTRE. Each apartment has been carefully designed and incorporates an impressive open-plan living/kitchen with integrated AEG appliances. Master bedrooms are generously sized doubles and stylish new bathrooms are fitted with Laufen sanitaryware and modern textured tiling. Sat nav ref: SE13 6AA Call now to book an appointment: 020 8852 4455 | lewisham@acorn.ltd.uk | acorn.ltd.uk
A LB E RT E M B A N K M E N T
The Corniche Show Apartment bedroom
Live on the finest curve of the river – Move in this year The Corniche on Albert Embankment is an exclusive riverside address comprising highly specified three bedroom apartments occupying a whole floor, overlooking some of London’s iconic landmarks. With an array of facilities featuring a residents’ bar, private dining and roof terraces as well as ten-pin bowling, private cinema and luxury spa and pool. Enjoy a lifestyle that is ahead of the curve.
Four apartments remaining – prices from £6,250,000. Show Apartment now open. To register your interest please call 020 3733 3520 or email corniche.london@stjames.co.uk To discover more visit www.cornichelondon.co.uk or visit our Sales & Marketing Suite Sales & Marketing Suite open daily 10am to 6pm. 21 Albert Embankment, London SE1 7TJ. Prices and details correct at time of going to press. Photography is indicative only.
Proud to be a member of the Berkeley Group of companies
CHELSEA WATERFRONT
Computer generated images. Price correct at time of going to press.
STYLE WITHOUT BOUNDARIES 2 to 5 bedroom apartments from £1.4M 600 metres of waterfront • 5 star 24hr concierge • State-of-the-art residents’ health club • Signature restaurant and café
Call now for more information
A DEVELOPMENT BY
020 7352 8852
Email sales@chelseawaterfront.com
JOINT SELLING AGENTS
PROPERTY
INVESTMENT PORTFOLIO
Phoenix, E14 A range of brand new one-, two- and three-bedroom homes are now available to buy in this east London development by Fairview New Homes. The complex is located off Broomfield Street, beside the Limehouse Cut, and is a five-minute walk away from Langdon Park DLR station. Services from this stop reach Canary Wharf in just six minutes. Bromley-By-Bow and Mile End underground stations are within a 20-minute walk. Buyers can make use of the London Help to Buy scheme to purchase a home here, with just a 5 per cent deposit and 55 per cent mortgage required. The remaining 40 per cent of the purchase price is provided as an equity loan from the government, which is interest-free for the first five years. “London Help to Buy is available on all
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of our current release of apartments and has been instrumental in helping buyers to purchase a new home in the capital,” says Jeremy Gee, main board director for Fairview. As well as getting on the property ladder sooner, buyers at Phoenix can enjoy the many benefits of opting for a new home – minimal maintenance costs, energy efficiency and a 10-year warranty from the National House Building Council (NHBC) – while avoiding the potential hassle of being caught in a chain. The homes at Phoenix have modern open-plan layouts and high-specification interiors. The apartments all include contemporary kitchens with white high-gloss units, granite worktops and integrated appliances, with oak flooring throughout the entrance hall and openplan kitchen, living and dining space.
A number of apartments look onto the Limehouse Cut, while some face Bartlett Park and benefit from views of the iconic Canary Wharf skyline. “Our residents have the very best of London on their doorstep thanks to the excellent transport connections and fantastic views from their homes,” says Gee. “I’d urge buyers looking for a London home to find out more about the benefits of buying new at Phoenix.” Interested buyers can see the high specification of the homes in the development’s new show apartment, which is open for viewings daily between 10am and 5pm. From £381,000 for a one-bedroom home, from £479,000 for a two-bedroom home, from £575,000 for a three-bedroom home, 020 3733 1695, fairview.co.uk
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