A MOMENT OF TRANSITION. Dame Minouche Shafik is Director of LSE (The London School of Economics and Political Science).  LSE just won the Queen’s Anniversary Prize for training, research and policy formation for cities of the future.  LSE Cities researches how to make cities more livable and environmentally sustainable, and trains hundreds of mayors from all over the world on how to run their cities better.

Minouche Shafik was the youngest vice-president in the history of the World Bank where she worked for 15 years, returning to the UK in 2004 as the UK Permanent Secretary of the Department for International Development.  In 2011 she became Deputy Managing Director of the IMF and from 2014-2017 was Deputy Governor of the Bank of England.

What are the big differences from your former role as Deputy Governor of the Bank of England to running LSE, The London School of Economics and Political Science?

Culturally they are very different places.  At the Bank of England there was a focus on ‘message discipline’; having a clear institutional line and being careful communicating about the future path of interest rates and the economy.  At a university academic freedom prevails, and people can say whatever they like.  Encouraging vigorous debate and different points of view is the reason we’re here.

Do you prefer being here to working in an international or central bank?

Yes, because it’s a moment of transition.  Things are shifting in the world.  That’s a very good moment to be in a university, because there is intellectual creativity, many points of view and new ideas being formed.

How many students do you have?

About 11,000, half undergraduates, half postgraduates.  We are one of the most global universities in the world.  Our student body are 30% from the UK, 30% from Asia, 20% from Europe, 9% from the Americas, and the rest from everywhere else.

What kind of university is LSE?

Ranked second best in the world for social science, just after Harvard.  In economics we’re number five in the world, number three in politics.  LSE was created by the Fabian Socialists in 1895 to know the causes of things and for the betterment of society.  It is empirically focused, evidence based, and takes a scientific approach to social policy and poverty issues.  Our students are interested in the real world.

LSE students in the new Lower Ground Floor Library at LSE, designed by Architecture PLB.

How do you prepare students for a changing world?

In their first year all undergraduates do a class called ‘LSE 100’ where they look at the big issues of the day.  Lord Nicholas Stern, who wrote the famous report on climate change, lectures them, and they debate and discuss the issues around climate change.  They have another session on global poverty; and another on the future of the financial system with Mervyn King, who was Governor of the Bank of England.  This interdisciplinary base engages students with the big issues of the day, and then they specialize, but this generation will change jobs many times in their career.  The average CV on LinkedIn today has 20 jobs on it.  That is something new.

What are the implications of this?

Teaching and memorizing facts is irrelevant today.  Being able to learn on your feet, to analyze, to think critically, to quickly absorb new knowledge, to assemble and make an argument, is what we focus on.  Our graduates are the highest earning in the UK, with skills that make them very effective in whatever career they choose to follow.  We also try to make them good citizens.

Do you miss your previous activities?

I see many of my former colleagues almost every day, because they come to the school, they speak, meet the faculty, and work on projects.  This is a unique university, and this is a good time to be in a university environment, where one can have a bigger impact thinking about how to shape things in the world.

What are your major concerns?

The ‘Enlightenment values’ on which universities are based are under threat because of the rise of populism – a sort of anti-intellectual, anti-expert sentiment.

What are the underlying causes of populism?

A rise in inequality and a decline in social mobility.  People don’t feel the system is fair and that their children can do better than them.  ‘Technological unemployment’ is a big driver.  Issues around racism, fear of difference, have caused divisions in society.

Is democracy in danger?

In the Cold War we had a competition between capitalism and communism.  The new conflict is between democracy and authoritarianism.  Democracies need to renew themselves.  People have come to take democracy for granted, and that’s dangerous.

Italy just voted for parties who are against immigrants, Brexit is more or less the same idea.  Do you have a solution?

Leaving the European Union or reducing the number of immigrants is not going to solve the real problems.  The underlying causes of the problems are different, and serious people have to look at these.

What are the real problems?

Do workers today have the skills they need for the future?  Will they be able to find good jobs in the age of automation?  Are labor markets working in a way so that young people can get educated and find jobs?  Are we building a social safety net that looks after people when they fall on hard times?  Are our health systems affordable?  How do we look after old people?  In current politics those questions have got lost.

What is really happening?

We’re on the edge of major change because of automation and machine learning, and most jobs which are routine and repetitive will be automated.  This will take decades, and it includes not just physical mechanical jobs like assembling a car, but also things like diagnosing eye disease or self-driving cars and big parts of the accounting profession.

Is this change causing panic?

Every technological revolution in history results in panic that jobs will disappear, and every time new jobs have emerged, but jobs will change.  We need to invest to make sure that both young people and current workers have access to the kind of training they’ll need to adjust to this new labor market.  That is what we should be thinking about.  For example, Denmark invests 1.7% of GDP, a really big number, on what they call ‘active labor market policies’ to help workers train to get new jobs.  As a result unemployment in Denmark is very low; people move quickly, the labor market is very flexible.  It’s easy for firms to get rid of workers, but then workers get generous unemployment benefits and are able to get training for new jobs. They call it ‘flex security’; it’s flexible but the workers are secure.  This could work in the age of automation.

Are stock markets a good barometer of how things are?

Not in their day to day movements.  Longer term measures of economic success are much more important.  What’s happening to investment in the economy?  What’s happening to productivity?  What’s happening to the well-being of citizens?  Are they living longer and healthier lives?

Do governments think about that?

Governments do look at broader definitions of economic progress, GDP is only one measure.  The thing that’s in common now is a desire for change, people are very frustrated with the status quo.

How do you prepare a person for the unknown world of tomorrow?

Education is absolutely vital.  Those who voted for populist leaders tend not to have a higher level of education, but they’re voting for policies they think will improve their lives, because the current system isn’t working for them.

What kind of education?

Being able to synthesize information, analyze it, and be critical about it, will be very important.  In the past jobs were about muscles, now they’re about brains, but in future they’ll be about the heart.  The caring and creative professions have high levels of emotional intelligence, the skills that robots can’t do will be required in future.  In Japan they are developing robots that are companions for old people, but that will not be a perfect substitute for real companionship.  Working in teams and with other people across disciplines is an important skill, and at LSE we also teach them to have coding skills and to work with large amounts of data.  Increasingly the students are really eager to have these skills.

An aerial view of the LSE campus in the heart of London.

Dame Minouche Shafik: “The future of jobs is about the heart.”

LSE won the Queen’s Anniversary Prize for training, research and policy formation for cities of the future.

Has education completely changed?

It is changing.  95% of our lectures are captured online.  The professor gives a lecture but the students can listen to it again online when they’re revising for their exams.  We didn’t do that 10 years ago.  Students work together online, interact online, do projects online.  Increasingly we have students who do part of their studies from another place, and then come to school some of the time.

As you’ve said, thinking has to be developed and used in a critical way?

Yes, absolutely.  The computer provides you with information and you have to think for yourself about how to interpret it. What it means, whether you believe it or not, what a different point of view might be.  Most people used to get one local newspaper, and that was all they were exposed to.  Now they have much bigger choices, so people have access to much more information.  The problem is the kind of algorithmic channeling that happens with some media platforms, where you just get information that confirms your own prejudices.  Teaching people how to think is the most important thing.

How do you teach people to think?

They practice.  Whether in a law degree or an economics degree it’s the practice of: here’s evidence, here’s a theoretical structure. Does that theory hold?  The rigor of having to look at data and make an argument.  Thinking is the most valuable skill we give, because that lasts.

You said that one of the things young people are going to do is change jobs a lot?

This generation don’t think of their careers in a linear way.  They find it completely normal to work for an organization for a while and then do a different but similar job in another organization; and then they might go independent and do some consulting.  Some of our students go and work in the City and are very successful in the financial services industry.  Many go into the public sector and public service.  Many more go into entrepreneurial businesses and set up their own companies.

How would you describe your students at LSE?

They are very serious.  There is more competitive pressure, because there are more and more hopeful, young energetic people traveling all over the world to go to the best universities.

Where do they stand politically?

The problem is that young people don’t vote, and need to be encouraged to vote.  Governments respond to who votes and only older people vote.  There are very big intergenerational issues today, climate change, pensions, health care.  The only way we will get a fair outcome for young people is if they vote.

Do you think China, which has just proclaimed Xi Jinping its lifelong leader, will be the leading country of the world?

Certainly the largest economy.  The international rules of the game are being renegotiated.  China, as it becomes more powerful, will want to write its own rules.  The U.S. will continue to grow and be very important, but China will be the locus of economic activity and the weight of the world will be tilting east.  The European social model of individual freedom but also collective security is important.  It’s not comfortable this time of transition, there are big shifts going on in our society, and something different will come of it, but it’s not a foregone conclusion that the outcome will be negative.

Are you frightened?

I worry and I work, but I am not frightened.  There will be disruption.  If we do nothing there will be more unemployment, but we need to be a little more creative about how the labor market works.  If we adjust our labor market institutions you might find a way to help people have meaningful work in the future but work fewer hours; quite a nice solution for many people.

London, 2018

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CREATING SOCIAL COHESION THROUGH THE HANDS OF ARTISTS. Cameron Kitchin is the Louis and Louise Dieterle Nippert Director of the Cincinnati Art Museum, where he serves as the ninth director in the museum’s 137-year history.  Since his appointment in 2014, Kitchin has led the museum to embrace its founding principles of inspiring people and connecting communities through the power of art.  Cameron Kitchin previously served as Director of the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art and as Executive Director of the Virginia Museum of Contemporary Art.

You are the Director of the Cincinnati Art Museum since 2014.  How would you describe your experience?

It has been a joyous beginning to what I hope to be a long tenure in the community of Cincinnati that we now call home.  The long appreciation for culture and for the visual arts in Cincinnati is seen through the great support, public and private, for this museum.  I appreciate that the story of this museum is based in the founding of the city.

What is the story of the museum and what is its position in the community?

The museum was founded by a group of volunteer citizens who felt that it was essential to the life and growth of a young burgeoning city to have a great art museum in the European tradition.  Our idea in Cincinnati was innovative from day one, in 1886.  Unlike many other East Coast colleagues, this museum was founded based on the arts of our own community, blended with the broader story of art history.  So the great collections today of European, American and Asian and African art were built with an eye to educating our population and providing teaching material for a growing community of artists and artisans.

How did you build the collection and what do you consider the masterpieces?

The collection was built through a blend of private donation and smart acquisitions by curators of the museum.

Do you continue to collect and add to the collection?

We do.  Among the masterpieces in antiquities is our third millennium Cycladic figure, one of the largest of its type and a foundation for the study of western art.  In European painting our major van Gogh, ‘Undergrowth with Two Figures’, was painted in June of 1890 in the last month of his life, during his final artistic flourish in Auvers-sur-Oise.  It is the exemplar of his sous-bois, forest undergrowth paintings and is often called on by art historians for major exhibitions.  Among the other masterpieces, our Franz Kline of 1960, ‘Horizontal Rust’, is one of the finest examples of the action paintings in the New York School.  It is surrounded in the gallery by Mark Rothko and Willem de Kooning, among my personal art heroes.

The Cincinnati Art Museum front entrance at night. Credit: Don Ventre

Our entire collection of Rookwood Pottery is the collection of record for this important school of American ceramics, all from Cincinnati, Ohio.  I would add that for me personally our John Singer Sargent, ‘A Venetian Woman’ (1882), is a prime example of his portraiture of anonymous figures.  I think our Anselm Kiefer, another personal art hero, from 1996, is a perfect representation of the artist’s interest in mythology and European history.  It is the story of Parsifal and Monsalvat and perhaps relates to mid-20^th century European history and the artist’s own childhood.

I also find that our Grant Wood, the American painter, ‘Daughters of Revolution’ (1932) captures a moment in American history in a uniquely personal manner.  In the Dutch Gallery, ‘The Music Party’ by Gerard ter Borch (circa 1675) is an example of both a trade and a fine art, and a subtle inclusion of sexuality in a time when sexuality was often unstated.

How many pieces do you have?

The collection is just over 68,000 works of art and growing.

How many visitors come here?

We have approximately 275-300,000 visitors a year, with additional outreach service in schools and neighbourhoods throughout the region.

Do you put on many exhibitions?

We do, and all of our exhibitions are based on new scholarship in our history and inspiring and connecting people.

Since you are Director which exhibitions have you staged?

For instance, our Cagnacci exhibition with the Foundation for Italian Art and Culture (FIAC) ‘Cagnacci: Painting Beauty and Death’ is a particular joy and pride for us.  As was our Raphael exhibition ‘Sublime Beauty: Raphael’s Portrait of a Lady with a Unicorn’, also with the able leadership of FIAC.  From April 20^th to August 12^th 2018 our exhibition ‘Terracotta Army: Legacy of the First Emperor of China’ with our Chinese colleagues brings the tomb figures from Xian with a new catalogue and new research.

What kind of a city is Cincinnati today?

Cincinnati is in a renaissance.  We often refer to the late 19^th Century as a highpoint for change and growth in our city.  Today we are in a new golden age for our city.

How come?

I think it is in part based on our historical strengths, and in part by a young and entrepreneurial diverse population making Cincinnati their own.  Large companies like Procter & Gamble, Macy’s  and Kroger are based here, as is AK Steel, and many other growing companies, particularly in branding and consumer research.  We have also a strong financial sector and importantly there is a civic sense that Cincinnati should be a great place to live and to raise a family.  This is seen in our parks, museums and universities.

Cincinnati is one of the most generous cities to the arts in the United States.  Our community arts fund ArtsWave is the largest in the country.  We are famed for our Symphony, for our choral music, for our three art museums and our theatres. All are healthy and growing, including our ballet and opera.

Is it a young city?

It’s a city where young people are moving in today; we have a large influx of young people.

Why?

The opportunity to start businesses and an emerging ‘cool’ factor.  The University of Cincinnati has 40,000 students and is part of the State university system of Ohio.  Other major universities are nearby.

You were director of the Memphis Brooks Museum and before that of the Virginia Museum of Contemprorary Art.  Is there a big difference here?

Each museum is uniquely wonderful in its own way.  Some with larger collections, some with larger resources, some with longer histories, but I hope that each of the museums I have led have been marked by a deep commitment to community change.

Do you have an ideal museum in your mind?

I think we are creating it in Cincinnati, because of the balance and blend of the collections, of academics and of public service.  Our museum was founded from the South Kensington School in London, that gave rise to the Victoria & Albert Museum.  For me personally, I was raised in the galleries of the National Gallery of Art and of the much missed Corcoran Gallery in Washington DC, the Whitney museum in New York, and my training grounds at the Harvard University Art Museums and the Fogg Museum.

The Great Hall represents the center of the Cincinnati Art Museum, and can be used as a gathering point during your visit. Credit: Don Ventre

The Mary R. and John J. Schiff Gallery highlights the Cincinnati Art Museum’s European Paintings collection.

Cincinnati Art Museum holds a monthly event, “Art After Dark”, which boasts specialized activities.

What is your ambition for this museum?

In the abstract, a museum that makes Cincinnati a better place.  In the concrete, that would mean an art museum that brings people together in the city and creates social cohesion through the hands of artists.  This means tackling difficult civic questions and needed dialogue.

Do you think that museums and arts have a central role in America?

I think that first we are a nation of immigrants, and museums serve a necessary role in increasing cross cultural appreciation.  But also, after World War 2, first New York and then the broader culture of America, has become a center for global culture.  Museums have played, and continue to play, a key role in that position.

American museums are mostly private.  Do they still have funds to buy new works of art to add to their collections even if prices are very high?

Not all museums are private, the majority, but there are also many State and City museums.  It’s a blend.  With the incredible acceleration of the art market in the 20^th and 21^st Centuries it is very difficult for museums to compete for acquisitions.  At the top of the art market we depend on generous private collectors.  We can still make a major impact with emerging and mid-career artists, and through exchange and smart curatorial work.

Do you add to your collection all the time?

Mostly in areas that connect to our collection, but as an academic institution we are not tightly connected to the market.  When we acquire we intend to keep an object in perpetuity, and not as an investment.  Thus market considerations are largely peripheral to our work.  We are very interested in digital interpretation when it can be additive to the understanding of a work of art, and not a distraction.

Are you connected to other museums?

Yes, we are in constant communication with our colleagues around the world, by developing exhibitions, publishing, and lending works of art.

Cincinnati, 2018.

Portrait of Cameron Kitchin by Paula Norton.

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VITALE BARBERIS CANONICO – SETTING TRENDS SINCE 1663.  There has been a Barberis Canonico fabric mill in the village of Pratrivero, in the province of Biella in Piedmont, Italy, since 1663.  Francesco Barberis Canonico, how did you keep the business in the family for 16 generations?

I can only speak about my generation.  We have a very strong sense of family, we believe in what we do, and we live in a small community.  Many of the workers are from the village, so I work with workers whose fathers my father was working with, and my grandfather was working with their grandfathers.  The sense of belonging is very important.

How many people do you employ?

Approximately 450 people in a village of about 700.

But from 1663 so many things have changed?

Obviously things have changed a lot.  Our still being here is due to one factor, and that is the water, which is very important for finishing the fabric and dyeing the yarns, also to power the machines.  Electricity did not arrive until around 1920.

Why are there so many wool and textile companies in Biella?

This is linked to the earlier answer; it is due to the huge availability of good water.  Many mills are next to a river.  In Biella we specialised in textiles and textile machinery; there is hardly any tourism or agriculture here.

What is special about your product?

For twenty years I was a salesman and travelled a lot.  It helped me to understand that we sell the product all over the world because we make modern fabrics but in a very old fashioned way.  Our fabric is constructed in a proper way to work with the tailor’s canvas, and tailors recognise this and like us very much.

What is your job now?

I am the creative director of Vitale Barberis Canonico, with a team of 7 designers, and all year round we work to design new fabrics.  I am also in charge of marketing and image.  We are now designing Autumn-Winter 2019-2020, so we are one year and a half ahead of what you see in the stores or tailors.  This is why they sometimes call us the designer behind the designer.  We go to the designers, and when they see the fabrics they sometimes get inspiration from us.

Mr. Francesco Barberis Canonico, Mr. Alessandro Barberis Canonico, Ms. Lucia Barberis Canonico.

What kind of fabrics do you make?

We specialise in pure wool men’s suiting, which is our forte and about 80% of what we do.  Then we do some blends like wool and mohair, for the summer we do silk wool and linen, we do wool and cashmere, and wool and silk.  Anyone who is looking for classic men’s suiting can find us, pretty much all over the world.

Do you only make fabric for men?

Women is a completely different business.  When a man buys my fabric and takes it to a good tailor, a well-made suit will last him well over 20 years, because the fabric is designed to last this long.  A man buying a good dinner jacket or a versatile blazer wants it to last all his life.

Where do you buy your wool?

We only make the best cloth and so we buy the best wool.  80% of our wool comes from Australia, and we have farms of 11,000 acres with about 25,000 sheep.  The rest is from New Zealand, and a little from Argentina.  We buy the mohair from South Africa.

Who are your clients?

Most of our clients are Italian, because the Italians make fully canvassed suits.  We make the fabric, we don’t produce the garments.  Italian companies then re-export our fabric as suits to international clients.

Where are your major markets?

Italy, which is the first; China is going really well; the US, South America and even Africa; Japan and Hong Kong are also very important.  We sell to all the famous names that make medium to high level suits.  People are not aware of us, but we are present in almost everybody’s wardrobe.

What are your most popular cloths?

The most popular is the Super 110’s fabric in the range called Perennial.  It’s a good weight, and you can wear it all year round.  Nowadays people want a lighter weight with some natural stretch that is comfortable when travelling for two or three days, and we are working on a fabric that is more crease resistant.  We make two collections a year of over 2,500 different designs and colours, so every year we do 5,000 different fabrics.

How do you know what is coming in the future?

We follow and anticipate trends.  Our designers travel, to New York, to London, to Tokyo, to pick up inspiration.  We have to be up to date.  We have 50 or 60 colour cards and over half of the collection changes, design-wise and colour-wise, every year.

What is the most popular colour nowadays?

Blue.  Blue is more versatile than grey, and people can wear it as a blazer with jeans.  We are selling more Prince of Wales and over-checks, less chalk-stripes or pin-stripes.  People don’t want to look like bankers.

How much do you produce?

We make 10 million metres of fabric a year; we use about 3 million kilos of wool; and we are the biggest buyer of wool in the world of the type of wool that we use.

Who are your other family members that work here?

My cousin Alessandro Barberis Canonico is the Managing Director and is more on the technical side.  Another cousin called Lucia works in sales, and she is doing the CRM.  We invest a big amount of what we earn every year in new machinery and technology that comes from all over the world, from Italy, from Germany, from Japan.  The very modern factory gives us the edge over our competitors.

Who are your competitors?

Other Italian mills, and there are some mills in England, but they have not invested so much over the years and have lost a lot of market share.  There are no more mills in America.  In China there are many mills, but for a world class product you have to come to Italy or the UK.  There are none in France or Spain.  It’s a very specialised sector.  I love the fantastic tweeds that are a niche and made by the Scottish.

Why does your mill have to be very modern?

Many operations have been substituted by robots in order to make the volume of output that we do and relieve the workers from heavy lifting jobs.  It is very important to give a better condition of workplace.  Looms are very noisy, 110 decibels, and we have the only weaving plant in the world where you hardly hear any noise and can speak freely.  Every single loom is covered by silencers.

You say robots help the workers, but aren’t they going to take their jobs?

A lot of people think robots will steal the workers’ jobs, but it’s not true.  When we get the wool from Australia there are 200 different processes that we have to do before it becomes fabric.  The wool is combed and re-combed eight or nine times, and then made into a yarn.  The workers check the machines and the machines check the workers.

What do you mean?

There are certain jobs you cannot do by eye and that you need a microscope for, and there are some other jobs that cannot be done by robots.  At the final inspection a worker touches the fabric and tells by hand if the fabric is exactly right.  A robot can never touch a fabric like a human and see if it’s OK or too dry or too woolly.  Over the past two years we have hired more than 40 people.  In Italy you hear about factories shutting, but we are very proud that we are hiring young people, which is quite unusual nowadays.

Is everything you do made in Italy?

We are 100% Made in Italy.  The wool arrives from Australia through Genoa and from then on everything is traceable as 100% Made in Italy.  We send a letter to all our customers and guarantee this.  We are very serious about it.  It’s an important message.

Where are the good tailors?

Savile Row in London, and there are still a lot of tailors in Italy, but unfortunately they are getting old and there’s hardly any replacement.  There are a couple of good tailors in Paris and in Madrid, and that’s it.

How do young people learn about your product?

Millennials look on the internet for reviews and good value.  With over 350 years history we don’t want anyone to think we are old in our approach, so we have Facebook and Instagram accounts to talk to young people, who often come to us for advice on their first suit, for a first communion, a graduation, a wedding, or a bar mitzvah.

Where do you recommend that they buy?

There is always going to be high level, but we also need good value, because young people don’t want to spend more than 2 or 300 euros for a suit.  If someone was 23/24 and asked me where they should buy a good suit for a good price, I would point them towards either Suitsupply or Massimo Dutti.  Suitsupply have shops in Milan, London, New York and many countries.  A lot of it is my fabrics and I often recommend them to someone young who doesn’t want to spend a lot of money.  Massimo Dutti is a very good company that is opening one new store every day and offers good value.  As you grow older your taste changes, and you move up in quality, price, and style.

Inside the fabric archive of Vitale Barberis Canonico.

Hopsack weave 21 Micron wool.

Fabric in the Super 150’s Revenge range

Why does Gary Cooper appear on your website?

He was one of the most elegant men in history.  We rotate between many stylish people, like Totò the very famous Italian actor, Fred Astaire, Vittorio De Sica, Gianni Agnelli – an icon of style – and Cary Grant, who was very elegant in the golden era of Hollywood.  Today there are not so many icons of style, which is less formal.  People blend more, wearing flannel trousers with a denim shirt from Ralph Lauren, or a blazer with jeans.  On top of appearance, people want functionality now.

Is your secret quality and change?

It’s a search for excellence.  We always look for what is the best available on the market.  We buy the best machinery, we buy the best possible wool, and if we have to buy a yarn of linen we buy it from Japan.  Like in a good restaurant, you start with the best quality materials and it costs whatever it costs.

Does wool go up and down in price?

Yes, it is exactly like any other commodity.  In the past year and a half it has gone up a lot, about 20%.  Wool is very susceptible to climate change, and it varies from year to year.  If it is very dry one year in Australia and very wet the next, the wool comes out different, because the sheep eat differently when they roam.  We have over 2,000 types of wool that we blend, as we always have to give exactly the same product.

How do you maintain contact with your clients and promote your fabrics?

We go to trade fairs in Italy and China to promote our fabrics, and we visit all our clients.  We have about 50 agents all over the world, and we sell to 80 or 85 countries.  Our turnover last year was 165 million Euros; it’s a medium to small company.

What are the challenges for the future?

To be competitive in an ever changing world, and to be attractive as people want to know more and more about the quality of a product.  There will always be room for a high quality, world class product.

Is there a global trend in taste?

Classic elegance is global, but people are very aware of trends.  At the moment the best dressed people are the Japanese, and you find the best men’s stores in the world in Tokyo.  They are obsessively careful, they go into the details of things, and their stores are beautiful.

What about the Chinese?

Not so much.  Americans have their own preppy style which is more casual.  In Europe, Italy and England are the best.  Traditional men’s elegance is really London and Italy.

April, 2018

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A CENTRE FOR DIALOGUE AND COEXISTENCE. Simonetta Della Seta is the Director of the National Museum of Italian Judaism and the Shoah (MEIS) in Ferrara.

Simonetta Della Seta you were appointed Director of MEIS in June 2016.  Can you describe the museum for me?

The museum is in a 10,000 square metres large compound inside the walls of Ferrara, which used to be the prison in the Ferrara area.  We call it the National Museum of Italian Judaism and the Shoah.

Is it a state museum?

It is a state museum, based on a law voted by the Italian parliament in 2003 which commits the government of Italy to create in Ferrara a national museum on Italian Judaism and the Shoah as a very crucial chapter experienced by the Italian Jews.

Is it like the Yad Vashem museum in Jerusalem, Israel’s official memorial to the Holocaust?

Not exactly, because the mission of our museum is focused first of all on Italian Judaism and not only on the Shoah.

The President of the Italian Republic, Sergio Mattarella; Anna Foa, one of the curators of the exhibition “Jews, an Italian Story: the First Thousand Years”; the President of MEIS, Dario Disegni; the former Italian Minister of Culture, Dario Franceschini; and Giovanni Tortelli, the Director of the museographic and exhibition design project; at MEIS within the reproduction of the Jewish catacombs of Vigna Randanini (Rome).

As Primo Levi wrote in his famous book ‘If This Is A Man’, Italian Jews are perceived as quite different from the majority of the diaspora Jews.  What is the difference?

The reason for creating this museum is connected to this difference.  In fact Jews have been in Italy for 2,200 years.  It is the most ancient community after Babylon outside the land of Israel, and it is still alive and not only a historical memory.

In order to explain this what do you show at the museum and how?

The museum, which in December 2017 opened its first two buildings out of seven, is showing 200 items connected with the first millennium of Jewish presence in the Italian Peninsula.  The exhibition starts with the arrival of the Jews from Jerusalem to Rome, 200 years before the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple that took place in 70AD, and then as slaves of General Titus, of the Roman capture of Judaea.

So the first Jewish settlements in Italy were in Rome?

The connection between Jerusalem and Rome is also emphasised by the fact that Roman Emperors built the Colosseum thanks to the treasure of the Jerusalem Temple and the labour of Jewish slaves.  The museum describes the life of the Jews in ancient Rome, their traditions, their several synagogues, the catacombs, and their eating habits and the reactions of ancient Romans to Jewish culture and life.

And then?

The museum describes the beginning of the relationship between Christianity and Judaism.  From Rome Jews spread throughout the Peninsula, especially in the South, and for the first time we are showing to the general public how many artefacts and objects are witnessing the Jewish presence in the South of Italy.  We are now working on the continuation of the exhibition, focussing on Jews during the Renaissance, and this will be on show in the beginning of 2019.  In the meanwhile the museum is also offering some multimedia experiences on the life of the Italian Jews from the beginning to nowadays, including the tragic period of the Holocaust.

Why the choice of Ferrara for the museum?

Ferrara has been a very important city for Jews.  Jews have lived in Ferrara for more than 1,000 years and the Dukes of Este, who were the governors of the city for many centuries, welcomed them when they were expelled from Spain and Portugal in 1492.  So while other cities on the Peninsula forced Jews to be enclosed in ghettoes, in Ferrara they enjoyed freedom and dialogue with non-Jews.  Only when Ferrara was conquered by the Popes at the beginning of the 17^th Century were the Jews enclosed in the ghetto.

Is there still a Jewish life in Ferrara?

Yes, Ferrara has a community of about 100 Jews, with two active synagogues, and a very poetic Jewish cemetery.  There is still a Jewish quarter.  It is also important to remember that many prominent Jewish families lived in Ferrara, like the Abravanel, the Lampronti, the Mendes-Nasi, and the Usque.

Ferrara was also the city so well described in Giorgio Bassani’s novels, like ‘The Garden of the Finzi-Continis’?

Yes, there is no doubt that Giorgio Bassani has promoted Jewish Ferrara throughout his books.  However the Jewish legacy of Ferrara is much richer than that.

How many visitors do you have?

Since the opening we have had 10,000 visitors from all over the world; many foreigners from the USA, European countries, Israel and Australia.

Reproduction of the frieze of the Arch of Titus and of the plan of the Flavian Amphitheatre

Reproduction of the mosaic of the two Ecclesiae, 5th century ce. ® Marco Caselli Nirmal

Rendering which shows how MEIS is going to become at the end of 2020.

Are you organising events in the museum?

Yes, special events in a large space that we have created in the heart of the bookshop, and in the good season we have a garden.

What kind of events?

We meet Jewish personalities and intellectuals specialising in Italian Judaism, and we are very happy and honoured that we are hosting the Israeli director Amos Gitai, who has announced his new film project based on the figure of a Jewish businesswoman of the 16^th century, Doña Gracia Mendes-Nasi, who lived in Ferrara for some years.  A. B. Yehoshua is coming in June for the Festival of Jewish Books.

Is the museum involved in some action against rising anti-Semitism in Europe and other countries?

As we all know, prejudices are based on ignorance, and our effort is to provide correct and more knowledge on Judaism.

Are you satisfied with your job?

I believe it is a privilege to have the opportunity to shape a new museum, and to create a centre for dialogue and co-existence.

How do you build up your collection?

In addition to some private donations, the main collection is created by loans from other Italian museums.

Do you think that Jewish life in Italy is sufficiently well known and studied?

The study of Italian Judaism could certainly be emphasised all over the world, as it is a unique case, and it is a story of co-existence between a minority and a majority throughout a long period of history.

There are not so many Italian Jews?

The Jews in the Italian Peninsula have been no more than 50,000, but they have been very relevant for Italian history and culture, and our museum has the task to show and tell this very special story to the world.  The title of our first exhibition is ‘Jews, An Italian Story: the First Thousand Years’.

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TYING IT ALL TOGETHER.  Blair Thurman is at the opening of the ‘Underwater Blue’ (‘Nell’Acqua Azzurra’) exhibition hosted by Gagosian in Milan, that takes place until May 17^th in the space of Lapo Elkann’s Garage Italia.

Blair, how come you decided to exhibit your work at Garage Italia in Milan?

It’s the sort of thing I have been waiting to do all my life.  It’s a combination of Italy, Ferrari, Lapo Elkann, and a kind of a destiny in a way.  Years ago I used to work in Milan and Venice.  I was the assistant of the Korean American artist Nam June Paik for ten years in the Nineties.  He did a number of Biennales in Venice and worked in Milan.

Where do you live?

I live in Hudson, which is in upstate New York.  It’s a town founded by the whaling oil business, a little bit like Nantucket.

Interior of Garage Italia during the Blair Thurman ‘Underwater Blue’ (‘Nell’Acqua Azzurra’) exhibition hosted by Gagosian ® Tullio M. Puglia – Getty Images for Garage Italia

Is your art mainly about automobiles?

Not really.  It’s about nostalgia and the history of painting, and some of the forms of the art come from automobiles and roads because the track or the circuit was an elegant solution to a formal problem.

What problem?

How to make a new kind of painting when I was aware that great painters had already done almost everything at least once.

And so?

My concept was a ‘less-than’ painting, which means something very simple that leads you to the next thing, very much like you have in Garage Italia with the customisation wall.

When did you start?

In 1988, first in school and then in New York.  Later my friendship with the painter Steven Parrino and his work led me to a breakthrough in elegant simplicity.  I realised that the circuit was the quickest expression of infinity, which is obvious, but it took me probably six or seven years to figure that out.  The car track toys from my childhood became the perfect ‘less-than’ that I had in mind.

How come the Gagosian Gallery decided to organise this new show with Garage Italia?

I am very lucky to have two men at Gagosian who understand my work, Andy Avini and Jean Olivier Despres, who proposed the idea.  They understand the synergy with the movie called ‘Toby Dammit’ by Fellini.  This obscure movie that they are showing in the exhibition is a very important movie for me, based on an Edgar Allan Poe short story about art and death and the devil.  I saw this as a young man.  An actor goes to Rome to get an award and they promise him a Ferrari.  He escapes the ceremony, driving around a labyrinth in dark Italian country towns, but finds there is no escape.  I believe the ‘golden Ferrari’ he is promised is the 1964 330 LMB Fantuzzi.

Here at Garage Italia there is a Ferrari on show?

It’s a 1953 Ferrari Scaglietti, a unique one, very special.  It has the same style as the Fantuzzi.

How many of your works are in the show?

Twelve.

Which ones?

The show spans twenty years of my work, and there is a linear progression – several generations – of a formal development.  For example, the black and white painting is my business card.  I liked it because it had an oval track motif that showed ownership and identity.  I like the serial repetition.

And?

The name of the blue painting with the holes is called ‘Dallas Book (2016)’ because it was made for a Dallas show and because it folds like a book.

What does it have to do with Dallas?

Dallas Book Depository is the building the guy was in when he shot JFK, so it is to remember somehow the assassination of President Kennedy in a non-heavy way.  The formal development is the holes and it becomes three-dimensional.

Another work?

The third work I want to mention is iconic for me.  It’s called ‘Day-Glo Tripper (2016)’, like ‘Day Tripper’ the Beatles song, but Day-Glo is a fluorescent yellow colour.  It’s a work that I have used as a customising platform.  I have probably done forty of them.

Garage Italia Exterior ® Vincenzo Lombardo – Getty Images for Garage Italia

Nell’Acqua Azzurra ® Vincenzo Lombardo – Getty Images for Garage Italia

Blair Thurman ‘Nell’Acqua Azzurra’ ® Tullio M. Puglia – Getty Images for Garage Italia

What about the painting that is the cover of the exhibition?

Based on the Daytona Race Track, it’s called ‘Spectre’.  It also has a much older painting behind it.  It has the shape of the Daytona Circuit and I did the first Daytona painting in 1995.

Are automobiles a passion of yours or just a symbolic inspiration for your work?

It’s really both, because I love to drive.  But for me it’s not a race.  I like cross country driving, or what I call road tripping, and I have paintings that I call ‘Road Tripping paintings’.  These are the road signs, like Route 66 for example, but it becomes a UFO.  The Chevron shape is a little bit like a space ship.

Is it hard to be an American artist today and do you feel sufficiently recognised?

I think the difference today versus the artists I admire, for example the Italian Spatialist Movement painters like Paolo Scheggi and Agostino Bonalumi, is that we no longer have the context of a group.  We do not have the critical, literary and philosophical underpinning cohesion that you get from a group of people that speaks and meets.  It’s not sad, it’s just different.  And to be an American is maybe hard, but it comes and it goes.

Why is the exhibition titled ‘Underwater Blue’ (‘Nell’Acqua Azzurra’)?

The title and the title painting was really a portrait of Lapo, because I knew of him a little, his exuberance and force of optimism, and his crazy love of blue.

What are your plans after this show?

This show is very important for me and marks the beginning of a period in my life when I am trying to tie all of my work together.  Now that I am 57 I want to connect and complete the various chains of form and subject.  I have a little show in Zurich coming up with a good friend, another painter.

Milan, April 17^th 2018

Blair Thurman’s portrait ©Mario Teli/Highlight Studio

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SHARING EXCEPTIONAL MOMENTS. Thierry Boutemy is a florist based in Brussels, whose ingenious, innocent and precise work derives from a spontaneous creativity inspired by his childhood.  Thierry Boutemy is known for the naturalistic craft and beauty of his seasonal bouquets, and in addition to private events has become much sought after in fashion, art and movies.

How come you became a florist?

I come from Normandy and I was an isolated child, walking through nature, and that opened doors to another reality.  For me, flowers became a way of communicating with nature, and I found it easier than with humans.  With flowers we can stay calm and contemplative.

And so what did you do?

I studied horticulture and botany, and then I studied to become a florist in a classical way.  But I did not like the studies because it did not reach the feeling I had with flowers.  It was without any love.

«LA GIOIA» by Pippo Delbono (2018) Photograph : Luca del Pia

How did you start?

When I was 25 years old I opened my own flower shop, in Brussels by chance.  I didn’t want to go to Paris, there is more of a flower culture in the north, and it is closer to Aalsmeer in Holland, the world stock exchange of flowers.  I started in Brussels and for ten years I worked by myself, until one day they asked me to work on Sofia Coppola’s film ‘Marie Antoinette’.

How come?

The film was shot in France and the set decorator K.K. Barrett with whom I had worked once before contacted me again.  This was in 2006.

And since?

I have worked for many fashion shows and fashion shoots, and for art galleries, and I have collaborated with artists.

Which fashion people?

For instance Lanvin, Hermès, Dries Van Noten.  I worked with Mario Testino and Lady Gaga for Vogue, and with Tim Walker, and then with galleries like Almine Rech, Gladstone Gallery, Galerie Perrotin, Xavier Hufkens, Galerie Rodolphe Janssen, Gallery Fifty One, and the Clearing Independent Art Fair in Brussels, and now there are some museums that call me for vegetal installations.

How would you describe your work?

I am always looking forward.  I like to talk about ephemera and the fragility of life.  I am not interested in business.  I lost a lot of money with my first shop.  We live in a society where we only have to make money.  I am very happy with my different encounters and through flowers I share exceptional moments.

We did not yet talk about flowers themselves.  How do you make your choices?

It is difficult to say.  The project makes me make the choice.  I will always go in the direction of simple flowers, close to my childhood, as I think that flowers and their scents help you remember childhood memories.

Which are simple flowers?

Myosotis, Bluets, Daffodils, Narcissi, Poppies, Lilies, Ranunculus, Tulips, Dahlias and Carnations. Also Peonies are nice alone.  I like Sweet Peas and Delphiniums.

No roses, no carnations, no orchids?

As I just told you, I like all the flowers.  What I don’t like is what we did with the flowers.

What?

We industrialised flowers, producing them as fruits without perfume, vegetables without savour.  I fight against it….

Are you interested in plants?

I have a passion for ferns.  I am interested in plants, but it is not my job.  I don’t like gardens too much because I prefer to walk in a freer environment and not a compressed one.  Once I was taken to Kent to visit gardens.  The first was beautiful.  The second was very beautiful.  The third, I got bored.  Even if it was beautiful, I had the feeling of being imprisoned.

Do you like woods?

I like woods, and the landscapes of Les Landes, Cornwall and Wales.  I like the Swedish landscape and the North Cotentin where I come from in Normandy, close to Cherbourg.

What do you do with flowers?

Bouquets, a decor, a scene, it depends on the occasion.  A flower works for different events: life, death, weddings, christenings.  The work that I like the most is for funerals, the last homage to accompany a person with beauty and nature.

Do people prefer some particular flowers?

I make my choices according to the seasons.  People come to my boutique for my style.  I love people that are capable of appreciating very ephemeral flowers.  We can appreciate reality in a very short span.

Show of «PEACEBIRD» AW2016 at Shanghai (2016)

Exhibition «VANITY FAIR» with Thomas Lerooy (2018) Photograph: Lydie Nesvadba

Thierry Boutemy

In this technological world in which we live is there still space for flowers?

Yes, a lot.  I think that they connect us with nature.  The plant stays, and if we cut a flower we don’t kill the plant.

Do you have some ambitions?

Yes, what I would like is to change the way flowers are cultivated.  Not like an industry.

Do you consider yourself an artist?

No.  I consider myself “borderline”.

What about Jeff Koons and flowers?

I don’t have an aesthetic opinion.  It is not a floral emotion.

Do people love flowers?

Not everyone, but normally, yes.  The way of working has changed a lot.  I see many social changes.  Before I sold flowers to people who wanted to gratify themselves with small means, but the middle class has disappeared, and nowadays flowers are something that have no other utility but being beautiful.  It is not a primary need, as beautiful flowers are becoming very expensive and there are less and less.  I personally prefer one flower in a vase than many flowers.  People want large bouquets when a small one is the same.

Are flowers symbolic?

The language of flowers was created in the 19^th Century.  For me it’s only beauty and love.

Where are the most beautiful flowers coming from?

What I say may sound like a contradiction, but the best flowers come from gardens.  As I said again and again, I am sad about the industrial production of flowers.

How do you mix flowers? Some are more compatible than others?

All colours go together, and flowers have to be able to breathe, that is important.  There is a fashion for round bouquets and that is not good.

What makes you successful?

I think that I have a gift to understand people and when they ask me a question it immediately works and everything is connected to dance, cinema, literature and I always try to go further.  In my head there is chaos.

Do you work in many countries?

Yes, I went to China, the United States, a lot in Italy, in Puglia, in Rome, in Sienna.  I always bring flowers with me.  I make the bouquets on the spot and I have a team of twenty or thirty florists.  Since ten years we work together.  They liked perfection at the beginning, but I always said do something more natural.  I worked in Greece, in Lebanon.  I am not interested in florists.  I like as I said dance, cinema, theatre.  For me Belgium is calm for thinking there are not too many distractions.  I like very much the work of William Blake.  I am not interested in flowers bouquet.  I don’t like pictures of flowers made to be aesthetic floral, but I like paintings.  I love van Gogh.  In London I went to Chinatown, to the French Notre Dame church with drawings by Cocteau, and I love the Chapel of Saint-Blaise des Simples where he is buried.

Are you religious?

No, I wish I was, but I think there is an energy non definitive.  I am more of an animist.  One day they asked me to make a book on the bouquets.  I like bouquets in the small churches.  I have to work in the space in large format.  I read a lot on the American Indians and the Siberians, and I like very much their relationship with nature, a lot of rituals and respect of the environment and a great knowledge of plants.  Sadly nowadays it is only left in books.

What are your next projects?

In Namur in Belgium, I was inspired by the work of Félicien Rops.  In the garden I will create a huge bush with the shape of buttocks and you can come inside and they will be full of flowers.  I want to continue to share what I do.

What is your ambition?

If I had a desire it would be to work on a ballet from Sharon Eyal for the Israeli dance company Batsheva. To me they are a very inspiring source of thoughts.  I would love to work again for cinema.  I love to enter in a story.  I also like opera and would love to make an opera with flowers.

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Lionel Barber is the Editor of the Financial Times (FT). Since his appointment in 2005, Lionel Barber has helped to transform the Financial Times into a multi-channel global news organisation, and during Barber’s editorship the FT has won many international awards for its journalism.

What kind of newspaper is the Financial Times?

The Financial Times is the paper of globalisation; I don’t call it a newspaper.  The day I took over as Editor I said that we are a print and digital news organisation, and we offer a unique global perspective on politics, economics, finance and business.  We have 568 journalists who connect the dots between these.  We are rooted in the City of London, but have a global footprint, with more than 100 foreign correspondents.

Is the FT is doing well?

We now have almost 1 million global paying readers, two thirds in the UK and US, 20 per cent in Europe, and the rest in Asia broadly defined.  Nikkei, our new Japanese owners, are long term investors and absolutely committed to editorial independence.  We are very happy with this stable relationship.

Do you make money?

We do make money, and have done ever since I took over, near peak globalisation and a couple of years before the financial crash.  Since the crash the paper of globalisation has had to encompass the reaction against globalisation into our coverage.

Because of Trump?

No, since the day Lehman Brothers collapsed, September 15^th 2008.  Think about Occupy Wall Street and when we had demonstrations against globalisation in Seattle and at the G7 summit at Lucca in Italy.  Things really changed after the financial crash and the rise of populism, so Trump is maybe the apogee.  Politics now affects trade and economics and the populists, and we have to understand and explain what’s happening, with no more multilateral trade agreements and America casting doubt on alliances.

Lionel Barber leads an editorial conference with his team at the Financial Times.

You made an important interview with President Trump and a much discussed one with his former adviser Steve Bannon, and you wrote an interesting article ‘What’s the point of the Interview?’  Trump continues to surprise everybody and dismantles things.  Is the world going the way you at the FT thought it would?

First of all, Trump is the Disruptor-in-Chief.  He is casting doubt, not just on the legacy of his predecessor Barack Obama, who supported the Trans-Pacific Partnership and the Iran nuclear agreement, he’s actually challenging basic tenets of the post-war liberal order.  He’s saying that alliances are cumbersome and he wants to move to a position of aggressive bilateralism.  This is not what we believe in at the FT.  It is a fundamental challenge to the European view of the world, and is also shift from what he said to me and my colleagues a year ago, when he gave grudging support to the value of the NATO alliance and said it was useful, but complained about the contributions of the major allies, notably Germany.

What has changed since then?

Now Trump feels comfortable in the job and thinks he is doing really well, and he has fundamentally changed his team.  The globalists, people like Gary Cohn and H.R. McMaster, have left, and now he has people who believe in aggressive bilateralism.  He thinks that he will be proven correct by this very transactional approach to international relations.

What have you seen that indicates this?

A year ago I went to the White House to interview the President and it was in such chaos, it was like a film set, with no attention to schedule and timing.  People were walking in and out, and I was even able to put my phone on his desk, a clear breach of security.  This had settled down by last September when I went back.  Nevertheless I wrote in April that: “There are tentative signs that there is a little more method in the madness than first appears.”  There’s still no real process, because he doesn’t believe in process and likes keeping everybody off balance.  He thinks he is going to handle North Korea, and he has figured out a way to get Kim Jong-un to the table; but will he be able to de-fang the nuclear program in North Korea?  Will Kim actually give up nuclear weapons?

One day Trump says this and the next that, but is he becoming more of a professional?

No, he is not professional, he revels in breaking all the rules, he revels in not being tied down and doing the unconventional.  The first question for me is: What does he really believe in, what is at the core of his world outlook?  And the second question is: How much of this posturing, the tweeting, the wanting to be the centre of attention, is actually just a giant distraction from what’s really going on?  I asked Steve Bannon: “You deliberately get people mad, but actually are you doing something completely different, so we get distracted?” and he said: “Yeah.  In the navy we used to call it diversionary fire.”  Trump changes the news agenda while gutting the government agencies, but much more is written about analysing his tweets than writing about what he’s doing in policy and deregulation.

What does he believe in?

Fundamentally, the exercise of American power.  He believes America has fought too many wars overseas, and has too many overseas entanglements.  If you think about the cost of Iraq and Afghanistan at 2.3 trillion dollars you can see where he’s coming from.  He also believes that American power deals with nuclear threats, particularly North Korea.

And Iran? 

Iran hasn’t tested a missile that could reach the USA.  The paradox is that if Iran resumes its nuclear programme then Saudi Arabia will become another nuclear power.

Isn’t this quite frightening?

Potentially very frightening.

The Chinese have long term projects, what are his ideas about restoring America economically?

He has a 1950s vision of what made America great, based on manufacturing and making real things.  He thinks America has not been a beneficiary of global trade liberalisation, I think wrongly.  He also thinks America has been outsmarted by other nations, notably China.  He thinks there is a fundamental imbalance.

But his actions have had immediate counter responses from China, that affect people like US soya farmers?

When he was elected I said to a top Wall Street executive: “OK, Trump has won; tell me what it’s going to be like?”  He said to me, “It is going to be completely different, like nothing you have ever seen.”  Normally, when coming up to a negotiation Presidents take advice and work out roughly what the demanding price is and where they are going to settle.  Trump starts by asking for 99% and then retreats from day one and waits to see where the other side come down. His style of negotiation makes it a big drama that is all designed to intimidate and to pressure.  You see where you end up, as in a form of price discovery. He probably did understand that the Chinese would retaliate, but to him it’s just business.

What about Korea? 

It all comes down to what’s the deal, and will there be rigorously inspected denuclearisation?  North Korea can launch an ICBM and we know they have a big stock of plutonium.  The sanctions have hurt Kim, but he’s reached the threshold of a nuclear weapon, which means he has something to bring to the table.

Trump has torn up the deal with Iran.  What do you think?  

That was predictable, he said it was the worst ever deal.  The only reason people are surprised is because a succession of leaders, Macron, Merkel, and May, begged him not to abandon the deal, but he listened and said no.  They ended up semi-humiliated.

What about Israel?

He is a friend of Israel.  The Saudis are not going to the wall for the Palestinians, nor will they make a huge fuss about the US embassy move to Jerusalem.  The closer cooperation between the Saudis and the Israelis is a sign of how the world is changing.  The UAE, Abu Dhabi, is very anti-Iranian, and very concerned about the nuclear program and Hezbollah and supportive insurgencies.  They felt abandoned by the Americans and shared a fundamental disagreement over the Iran nuclear deal with the Israelis.  It is no coincidence that President Trump chose to go to Saudi Arabia as his first foreign visit.

Did he recently bomb Syria to move against the Russians?

He bombed Syria, but there was clear coordination with the Russians beforehand; it was not an anti-Russian move at all.  It was about that any use of chemical weapons would meet a military response.  I call this an ABO approach (Anything But Obama) to foreign policy.  Obama did not take action, but Trump did.

Is Trump against Europe?

He is not against it, but he is influenced by people like Nigel Farage, who is seen as a successful revolutionary figure.  Bannon thinks he’s a hero.  They think Brexit was a moment of liberation, where the British people chose.

Is Europe shrinking?

Europe’s talk has been louder than its action for some time.  The EU Lisbon Summit in 2000 talked about making Europe the most competitive economy in the world by 2010, but that did not happen.  Europe has taken some extraordinary measures to strengthen its internal cohesion following the Eurozone crisis, but there is no great leap forward.  We are squeezed, spurned by America and China is on the rise.  Chancellor Merkel, President Macron and Tony Blair all say we need a bit more Europe, that we can ride Trump out and wait.  They hope it is a storm that will pass, but on the geopolitical chessboard at the moment we are at best bishops, certainly not the king, queen or rooks.

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President Donald Trump photographed with FT Editor Lionel Barber

The 2018 FT Business of Luxury Summit is being held in Venice.

What is happening in the UK?

The UK is going through a very difficult period, because we are so divided over Brexit.  The referendum was disastrously polarising, and was not necessary.  I am not a believer in referenda, especially on complex political questions like this one.  The most important geopolitical relationship over 40 years was submitted to a Yes / No vote in an irresponsible gamble by David Cameron.  Even in the United States constitutional change has to be approved by a three quarters majority.  In Scotland in the 1979 devolution referendum there was a 40% hurdle that had to be crossed.  The ill-informed debate and scare tactics ended up with a government that has triggered Article 50 with no plan for what the future relationship will be.

Is this a complete calamity?

No.  It has to be responsibly managed with a sensible transition and there may be new opportunities.  The FT is not saying we need a second referendum, which could be just as polarising.  Parliament needs a clear view and we need to make the best of it and think very hard about our immigration policy.  If we are to be on our own, trading freely with other countries and a global player, we have to be open, and a magnet to the best possible people.  We can’t be inward looking and xenophobic.  That would be a disaster.

But employers across all sectors are afraid of losing the best people, from simple workers to the most prestigious professors?

I am very concerned about that.  Nigel Farage says he is in favour of more Commonwealth immigration, rather than European immigration.  The general position of the Brexiters was anti-immigration.  It was mishandled and underestimated under Blair, but that’s not an argument.  We can’t reduce immigration to tens of thousands, and many people came in because we had a successful economy.

Is the City afraid of the Opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn heading a Labour government after Teresa May?

They are afraid of a Labour government that has been taken over by the hard left, something which was resisted in the late 70s and early 80s, by Dennis Healey for example.  The hard left leadership is pledging massive public spending, which could really spook the markets and is a throw-back to a different era and the 1970s.  Corbyn is a perpetual oppositionist who voted against his own party more than 500 times, and he is dangerous.  Plus he has definitely flirted with and tolerated anti-Semitism.

You are a global news organisation.  Do you see that in many places of the world dictatorship and populism is coming up? 

There is a tendency, but you shouldn’t exaggerate it.  After Brexit, 2017 was the test year for populists, and in Austria the right wing hardliners didn’t win the election.  In the Netherlands the populists did not win.  In France, the crucial country, Macron won from nowhere.  In Germany the AfD did better than expected, but the result is a coalition.  The centre has just about held, but the trend is not good.

What about the economy?

The economy is actually doing quite well.  We haven’t had a great depression.  Ultra-loose financial policy was the correct response, although it has had perverse consequences, notably in the inflation of asset prices.  To raise interest rates too quickly would still be the wrong response in Europe.  In America an interest rate rise is right, with growth of 3+%, a giant tax cut, and the 7^th/8^th year of recovery.  At this stage in the cycle it is probably necessary to have interest rate rises, but in Europe we are lagging and not the same.  A lot of jobs have been created, but the question is what kind of jobs, in this flexible labour market with part time work and the so-called gig economy.  There is some evidence that wages are rising in Germany and America, and that’s probably a good thing.  Inflation is not a threat in the immediate future in our view at the FT.

Might the US dollar lose its influence to other currencies?

There is no sign of that.  The dollar is actually going up, and that is causing problems in emerging markets to people with dollar denominated debt.  There is talk about economic sanctions, like against Iran, and people are exposed to the American economy, but Euro denominated debt is not a real rival to the dollar.

If England goes down does the FT go down too, because it is an English product?

It is very important to say that we are a European news organisation.  We believe in European cooperation and support the EU.  We’ve had correspondents all over Europe for more than three decades.  We are read very closely in Berlin, Rome and Paris.  We will strengthen our position in Europe, which is our backyard, and the FT is absolutely committed to Europe, whatever happens with Brexit.

London

10th May, 2018.

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THE IMAGE MAKER. Charles March is a photographer and owner of Goodwood Estate in West Sussex where he founded the Goodwood Festival of Speed and the Goodwood Revival. I interviewed Charles March in London earlier this year while he was planning the exhibition ‘Photographs 1980-2017’, whose opening I attended and which runs from 25th May to 30th June, 2018 at the Galleria del Cembalo in Rome.

I interviewed you as Lord March for Goodwood, and now you are the 11^th Duke of Richmond?

Since my father died last year Richmond is my last name, so now I am Charles Richmond, but I am still using the name Charles March for the photography. My name originally was Charles Settrington, so I was known as that in photography when I was a young man, but later on I used Charles March.  In my life my names have been Lord Settrington, then the Earl of March, then the Duke of Richmond.  My whole identity has changed, including my passport.

How many Dukes are there?

I think there are about 20 Dukes in England and Scotland.

How does a Duke like you compare to the Royal Dukes?

We have been around much longer.  Those titles are given by the Queen to a child or a cousin, but the Dukedom of Richmond goes back to 1675 and Charles II, who had a lot of illegitimate children.

What role do you have in the English structure?

Traditionally certain dukes have certain roles, and my family carry the sceptre behind the monarch at the coronation.

Charles March and Alain Elkann at the ‘Photographs 1980-2017’ exhibition in Galleria del Cembalo, Rome.

Photograph by Uli Weber.

You kept on being an artist and are going to have your first exhibition in Italy in the Galleria del Cembalo at the Palazzo Borghese in Rome which opens on May 25^th?

Yes, before I have been in America, Russia and London.

When did you start being a photographer?

I started taking pictures when I was a boy at boarding school aged 10 or 12.  Then I was at Eton, which I did not enjoy and I left very early when I was about 16.  I immediately went into the film and photography world and an Australian filmmaker who was living in London was teaching me.  He said there was a job going with Stanley Kubrick who was making ‘Barry Lyndon’.  Kubrick was a very good photographer who had worked for LOOK Magazine, and the art director was Ken Adam.  I got the job, and the film was in pre-production so I would take pictures all day and in the evening go through everything with them and they would critique my work.  I did that for about a year and it was an amazing experience at 16/17 to be around somebody where there was no compromise for anything.  It either had to be the best or it didn’t work.

What did you do next?

My formal education was pretty sketchy.  In 1972/3 I went to Africa for a year to get my own pictures in Kenya, Somalia, and Ethiopia, and when I came back to London I started taking pictures for Harper’s Bazaar and Queen and Italian Vogue.  I did reportage to start with and got very involved with complicated still life advertising, making special effects in the studio.  London was the best place for that then and it was an exciting time.

Where did you work?

I had my first big studio in a house at Parsons Green just off the Kings Road and I made a good business out of it, so was then lucky enough to be able to buy Hurlingham Lodge.  It was a wonderful house but very run down at the time, and I built a big studio on the side of it.

How long did you do that for?

I did that for about 12 years, all this was before the digital world.  I did very creative, complicated still life special effects which looked like they were impossible, and I worked for all the big advertising agencies.  Advertising then was very creative, you never even showed the product!  Many pictures took days and days to do, with complex set building and huge budgets.  The Galleria del Cembalo is going to show some of these early pictures.

And then?

Then I stopped working as a photographer and focussed on driving the business of Goodwood.

How would you define Goodwood and running it?

Goodwood is a country estate that has been in my family for 300 hundred years, and it has six sports attached to it that I have tried to reinvigorate, horse racing, motor racing, golf, flying shooting and cricket.  I have tried to turn it into a self-sustaining business so that the estate can carry on and survive.

Did you continue to take photographs?

All the time, but just for myself.  Very informal pictures of where I was, very different to those I did in the studio.  I developed a very particular technique of moving the cameras during the exposure.

What cameras do you use?

Mostly big format Leica cameras.

Who were your influences?

Ben Lewin the Australian photographer who made ‘The Sessions’ in which the actress Helen Hunt was nominated for an Oscar was a big influence on me.  My photographs were of nature, and at the time the whole idea of photographing nature and the divine was prevalent.

Who buys your work?

Urs Schwarzenbach bought the first series of very big pictures for the Dolder Hotel in Zurich.  I took photos of trees all over the world for about five years before I showed anybody, then I showed an agent for a well-known photographer and then I met Edward Lucie-Smith and he said he was keen to do a show at a Gallery he had in Bermondsey and that went really well.  Three years ago we did a show in Saint Petersburg in the Marble Palace and in Moscow.  When I was in Russia I took a lot of pictures and Tim Jefferies at Hamiltons saw those pictures and we did a show of the Russian tree pictures in London which went really well. And then with Adam Lindemann, who has a big gallery in New York, I did a show of more trees and that went really well.

Is photography an art?

It’s a craft, and I believe it is art and I am selling it as art.  The camera is moving around, and the direction the camera moves is critical.  It’s very hit and miss and unpredictable so I am shooting thousands of pictures to get one.  I am trying to create a feeling of a place.

What size editions do you make?

I do all the printing myself.  Some editions are just one and some are three.

Are they very expensive?

The small ones are about £4,000 and the most valuable £25,000.  I do most of them both small and big; some are huge inkjet prints almost the size of the wall of a living room.

What are you showing in Rome?

A mixture of all the trees including some of the Russian ones, and I did a show a year ago in LA of big sea pictures taken in Eleuthera in the Bahamas.  Again the camera is moving so it’s very complicated with the sea moving and the camera moving!  I am trying to get the feeling of what it is to be there.  The exposure is very slow so they are like a quick sketch trying to give an impression of the place.

How many are going to Rome?

25 of the big ones, trees and seascapes, and I am also launching a book of 25 photographs that were taken on the island of Jura on the West Coast of Scotland, where William Astor my brother-in-law has an estate.

RED COPSE  © Charles March

SEASCAPE  © Charles March

PARHAM  © Charles March

What are you doing with the moving the camera technique?

I am trying to minimise the amount of information.  In photography you have so much visual information it can become a burden.  Moving the camera reduces the information in the image.

When do you work?

At night, in my own time, or when I am away.  I have thousands of pictures I haven’t really looked at, so I am working my way through them.  I love the whole process and the technology.

Has photography changed much since you started?

Dramatically.  It has gained some things and lost some things.  In the days of working in advertising photography did not lie, but now with digital special effects you don’t believe it any more.  One of the joys of photography in those days was the fact that it never lied.

What is photography for you?

It was always more than a job, it started as a passion.  I have loved being able to express myself in this way from when I first bought a Pentax at school.  I felt it was something I could do, and people also responded well to what I did.  I loved being on my own in the dark room, and people were very positive about it, my parents encouraged me and that was also helpful.  I fell in love with it at an early age and I have now done it for 50 years, so it has been a very important part of my life.  I can do it very privately.  I had no alternative to trying to make a success of Goodwood, but the photography is me, and when I have a difficult day my step is lighter if I have a photography project on the go.

Do you always travel with your camera?

I do, but I don’t always take pictures.  I need to get into the zone of feeling where I am and be on a bit of a mission to go and do it by myself.  I don’t have to do it for anybody else.  I ask myself why am I doing this double work and giving myself a headache.

What is the zone of feeling for you?

Trees have always played a big part in my life and I am trying to convey what is going on inside myself at that time, and when I look at a sea view that hasn’t changed for millions of years nevertheless I am making an impression and doing things to disturb that environment with whatever is going on for me at that time.  I am an image maker rather than a photographer.

Do you have a main gallery?

Tim Jefferies at Hamiltons Gallery in London and Adam Lindemann in America.

What is your next series of images going to be about?

Perhaps more about people, where people become part of the impression of the place as well.

London, 2018

Portrait of Alainn Elkann and Charles March by Uli Weber

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LAST EXIT BEFORE BREXIT. Bernard-Henri Lévy is a philosopher, journalist, activist and filmmaker.  For more than four decades, Lévy has been a strong moral voice of our times.  Active in Bangladesh at the age of 20 and later in Bosnia, Libya and Ukraine, he has a taste for what he calls “the great rage of things”.

In London on 4^th June 2018 the Hexagon Society, an intellectual movement dedicated to the production of impactful cultural content to effect positive change, produced a performance by Bernard-Henri Lévy of his play ‘Last Exit Before Brexit’.

In the play a man due to deliver a speech about Europe experiences a severe case of spiritual and intellectual impotency at the very moment that he is expected to celebrate the majesty of the modern European project.  He feels devastated by the resurgence, all over the continent, of nationalism, populism and anti-Semitism.  The intellectual then expresses his alarm over the crisis that imperils the idea as well as the ideals of Europe.

What can a philosopher on stage influence?

In this case (that was the issue of Brexit) probably two things.  One: Give some additional weapons to those already convinced Brexit is a catastrophe.  Two: Shake the conviction of those who believe the opposite and introduce doubt into their mind and weaken their conviction.  This is what a philosopher can do in such a circumstance.  It’s not a lot, but it is something, I hope.

Was your one man play ‘Last Exit Before Brexit’ at the Cadogan Hall in London on June 4^th a one off performance?

 Yes. I am not a professional actor and I chose to do it this way as an odd performance, a single event, a sort of Warholian action; it was not meant to be repeated.

Bernard-Henri Lévy performs his play ‘Last Exit Before Brexit’ at London’s Cadogan Hall on 4 June 2018.

Was it recorded?

Yes, there was a crew of five cameramen.  It might become something, we’ll see.  I would love to release that to Nick Knight’s SHOWStudio; in this case there will be a real furore.

Is it the beginning of a movement?

I am an intellectual not an activist, but if some grasp this event and take advantage of it to build something I would be more than happy and would have reached my intention.  I hope they will do – why not?

Is there a link between your new book ‘The Empire of the Five Kings’ and Brexit?

For sure.  My new book is about the intellectual and spiritual decline of America, and symmetrically the big push of five new imperialist powers: China, Russia, Turkey, Iran and the arab countries that support, or have supported, Jihad.  The conclusion of my book is that the only force which is able to resist this push of the five imperialisms and that is also able to occupy the void created by the retreat of America, the only power that can do this is Europe.  My last book is about salvation by Europe!

But Europe is very weak and in the hands of populists?

That’s what my play says.  The four main countries of Europe are corrupted by a huge tide of populism.  France because of the twins Jean-Luc Mélenchon and Marine Le Pen, Germany because of the new weakness of Mrs Merkel and the rise of the AfD, Italy with this red-brown alliance between the League and the 5 Star movement  and England with Brexit.  So, of course, Europe has never been weaker.  Europe is in a process of collapse and this play is a very small levee in front of this tide coming from everywhere in Europe.

They always accuse intellectuals of being passive?

I try not to be.  I know the cost of passivity from history in the previous generations of our fathers and grandfathers.  Passivity is always paid for with a very, very high cost, so I try to learn the lessons of the past.

But people don’t seem to learn?

It depends.

You think we are in real danger? 

Of course, we are in danger of complete collapse of Europe.  If Europe collapses the worst forms of populism will prevail, racism and anti-Semitism will come back and misery will follow.  Same old story!

Is Putin responsible for this?

We are, ourselves, responsible for our own misery. As always. But, for sure, Putin is taking advantage of this situation.  He is puffing on the fire, pulling some of the strings, no doubt.  Never forget that Putin is engaged in a new imperialist adventure and one of his targets is to destabilise and weaken the West in general, and in particular Europe.  Putin today is not a normal partner – he is also an adversary of Europe.

What about the US? 

The US is engaged in a crazy strategy.  They have to face strong enemies, those who I name The Five Kings.  They are powerful, terrifying enemies.  And what does Trump do?  He targets Europe and Canada with this new commercial war.  This means shooting a bullet in his own foot, the foot to America, and the foot of the West.  It is suicidal for America to make such a mistake when China, Russia, the New Ottoman Erdogan, Iran, and Sunni Jihad are in front of you.  How can you be irresponsible enough to direct your forces against your most ancient ally, that is Europe?  It’s completely crazy.

Brexit is crazy too?

Yes.  Brexit is suicide for the UK and EU.

And Macron? 

He is doing his best.  He avoided France’s situation being like the Italian one today.  Without Macron we have a 5 Star Movement which is Mélenchon, and we have the League party which is Le Pen.  Macron interrupted their one-on-one encounter.  He did that, number one.  Number two, he raises as high as possible, considering the very bad climate, the flag of Europe.  He is the last great leader who definitely tries to avoid the collapse of Europe.

So where are we now? 

We are in a situation of slow motion catastrophe.

China is the new big power? 

And new danger also.  There are a lot of people who believe that China will never have some real imperial ambitions.  They grow this conviction from the past, and in the past it is true that the Chinese Empire had a tendency to restrain its own power.  At the time of the great empire of China their big vessels were forbidden to go further than Africa.  They had to turn back, by imperial law.  This is over!  China has become a very strong, greedy, imperial power, with no scruple, with no redemption, with no reserve.  China will do all that China can.  They will unfold the totality of their conquering potentialities.  So they are a real danger and I am not sure that the West wants to be aware of that.

So your battle against Brexit is real, and at the same time a metaphor? 

No, it’s not a metaphor at all. There still is, thanks god, a big movement, all over the continent, to stop Brexit and rethink Europe. I am happy to contribute to that.

Bernard-Henri Lévy: Last Exit Before Brexit

Bernard-Henri Lévy: Last Exit Before Brexit

Bernard-Henri Lévy: Last Exit Before Brexit

Is your book coming out in America?

Yes, the book will be published by Henry Holt next January.

What are you doing now?

I am going back to philosophy and will take a rest.

What is a philosopher today, in a world where technology prevails and humanities shrink? 

One of the advantages of working on philosophy is that you don’t need technology for that.  To build a concept only needs a pen and a sheet of paper. And it may be much more useful than to build one of these junk internet start-ups.  The role for a philosopher today is the same as always.  To raise good questions, to break the bad replies, to shake prejudices and clichés and so on.  There are three conceptions of history which I personally refuse.  One, Hegel and his idea of inevitable progress.  Two, Spengler and his idea of fatal decline.  Three, Vico and his idea of eternal return.  I don’t buy any of these theories.  I think that something new, unpredictable and disruptive can happen at any moment.

Are you an optimist? 

I am an optimist and I am a pessimist.  I believe in action.  Action always has some consequences.  They may be very small, nearly imperceptible, and they can be big.  You never know until you try.

You have tried all your life, with Kosovo and Libya? 

There is nothing I did that I regret.  Therefore I keep on.

London,  June 5^th 2018.

LAST EXIT BEFORE BREXIT was produced with the support of LA REGLE DU JEU and THE HEXAGON SOCIETY.

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LIVING SCULPTURES. The artist duo Gilbert & George is made up of Italian-born Gilbert Proesch (b. 1943) and British George Passmore (b. 1942).  They have lived and worked together in London for 50 years and have made their mark on the international art scene.  Together they create large formatted photo-based works in a graphic style with bright colors, as well as paintings, collages, performances and video works.  Gilbert & George do not separate life and art and can often be seen in their own works, which depict a wide range of human experiences such as religion, sexuality, identity, urban life, terrorism, superstition, AIDS, old age and death.

What is your artwork?

Our artwork is very hand made, and artistically done, but we like that you can’t see the hand.  We invented a new language, how to speak with a new form of two dimensional pictures.  We believe in the power of the two dimensional picture.  We stopped making artistic drawings in 1975 because people liked the aesthetics and didn’t realise the content and meaning of what we were trying to speak to them.

For you art is not aesthetic?

The form is very important as the servant of the meaning.  It is not the boss.  It has to carry the message to the viewer.  We were brought up in a college tradition where form was all.  Colour, shape and form was what it was all about.  Nobody discussed death, life, and hope.

Are you abstract artists?

We are trying to empty our soul, to speak directly to the viewer.  We were able to make the human person again the centre of the art, and to show emotions that were totally taboo in 1970.  To show fear, unhappiness, hope, drinking.  We were able to show our emotions.  We use our heads, pour souls and sex to make a picture, and every viewer has to use their head, soul and sex to view it.  The artwork is only finished when there is a viewer in front of it.

The artists Gilbert & George have lived together in London’s Spitalfields for fifty years.

How is it to work together?

We are two people but we are one artist.  That is the key.  We start by both taking images and material that speaks to us at the time.  We take pictures around here, we don’t go somewhere to be inspired, and we have four Nikon cameras.

Where do you take pictures?

In the studio, in the yard or outside.  We never travel to take pictures.

How do you work?

When we have enough material we open up all the contact sheets and walk from book to book, taking the images that inspire us that day.  We use black and white images and then we add the colour.  We do one design a day, and then it takes two days to make, adding the layers like an artist always did in the Renaissance.  We are trying to find the moral dimension, not just the image.

What is the moral dimension?

We make a composition with images and we use computers, but they don’t make these pictures.  How we are is how the pictures will be.  We lift them out from inside ourselves, our mental and moral position at the time.

Why did you become artists?  Gilbert is from the Dolomites and George from Devon.

The artist has to express himself.  Gilbert: I never had any other idea.  George: I saw my uncle doing little paintings.  I was 7 and that was it.  I read a book of van Gogh’s letters as an early teenager.  He did it all wrong and he won!  You don’t have to do it right.

What happened when you met at St Martin’s Art College in London in 1967?

It was a love story.  We believed that we were artists.  We weren’t practicing to be artists.  We were lower class people with no safety net.  We were outsiders and didn’t fit in, but were able to function because we are two people, so it was very powerful.  Everyone else was doing so-called normal art, and we invented this idea of living sculpture.  We were the emotional artists, speaking to the viewer.  We expressed it in many different ways and expressed ourselves like crazy.  We sent out images and became famous overnight.

Were you aware of the world of art?

We were late developers.  We wanted only our art.  In ten years of art school we saw every Madonna and Jesus and wanted to remove ourselves from that and do something new.  The living sculpture was new.  We thought differently from other art students who were trying to get somewhere with exhibitions.  We went to galleries and showed them our art; which was us, with a suit on.  We never wanted to be the artist the mother would be ashamed of, so we were not shabby bohemians.

Are you politically incorrect?

More now than before.  We became worldly in 1975/76.  Our art became a journey through life, like John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress.  We didn’t fit in, but some people liked us.  The famous art dealer Conrad Fisher saw us at the ICA in London in 1969.  He said, “Come to Dusseldorf and do the singing sculpture.”  In London we didn’t do them with metallised heads.  In Dusseldorf we did, for 8 hours, with all metallised heads.  All the people who stood there were crying, filled with emotions.  We never thought of it as an alienating performance, but as living sculpture.

(At this point in the interview Gilbert & George spontaneously sing “Underneath the Arches” a 1932 popular song.)

Were you in any groups or movements?

No groups.  We never were.  We were friends with the Arte Povera movement and Pistoletto.  Andy Warhol came to see the singing sculpture.  We are not friends with artists any more.  It’s all gossip and money.  We are still fighting for our form.  Art with paper photography was not accepted in the museums.  We had a show in Munich and they said: “If only they were painted we could sell them all!”

Do you do many shows?

Last year we did six shows: New York, Paris, London at the White Cube and at Thaddaeus Ropac, Naples and Essen.  It took three years to make the pictures.  This year among others we have a huge exhibition in Arles: ‘Gilbert & George: The Great Exhibition (1971-2016)’ which runs from July 2^nd to January 6th 2019 and is presented by LUMA.  Then there are exhibitions at Galerie Thaddaeus in Salzburg from July 28^th to October 5^th, and at HAM (Helsinki Art Museum) from October 12th to February 19th 2019.  We like exhibitions.  We like a public.

Do you sell a lot of work?

We sell 20% of what we make.  We have a Foundation and we bought a building two minutes’ walk from our house in Spitalfields, London.  We need to restore that building and it and the house will become part of the Foundation.  We do it because we want to be immoral.

Immortal?

That too!

Some artists are known for one thing.  What about you?

We are very famous as two people.

Thinking of Gilbert & George, do you have periods?

We are full of periods: Living Sculpture, Charcoal on Paper Sculptures, Living Drawings and Nature, Drinking Pieces.  Like all artists, we drink, and we created art around drinking and intoxication and we did drinking sculptures.  We did Cherry Blossom; Human Bondage; Bad Thoughts; Dead Heads, Mental – we felt we were mental; Red Morning; the Dirty Words Pictures; Are you angry or are you boring?  We started with black and white, and it took us two years to find red, and two years to find yellow.

An image from DEATH HOPE LIFE FEAR. 1984. 423 x 1919 cm, mixed media by Gilbert & George

An image from SCAPEGOATING. 2013. 381 x 1963 cm, mixed media by Gilbert & George

An image from SHITTY NAKED HUMAN WORLD. 1984. 338 x 2656 cm, mixed media by Gilbert & George

How is your life?

We are badly behaved in art and well behaved in life.  Over the years our life is a reflection of life.  Our pictures are forming our tomorrows better.  We are creating different levels of freedom.  How to behave in the modern world of today, without god, the vicar and the pope.

What is your philosophy?

Love your neighbour.  Don’t beat up your neighbour, unless he likes it!  John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress is like a visionary art.  William Blake is a visionary artist.  We are very against religion, but we deal with it, now it is very important.  We don’t like fake gods.  The waiter at our favourite restaurant said: “I don’t believe in all the man-made gods.  I am a Muslim.”

Do you eat at the same restaurant all the time?

The same Turkish restaurant for at least 20 years.  We do no cooking at home, there is no kitchen.  In the morning we go to a café and have one marmalade toast and coffee.  We wake at 5am, have breakfast at 7, and go for lunch between 11 and 11.30.

What do you eat for lunch?

It has become more difficult now that our local Italian cafes have gone.  We have lived here for 50 years, and now everybody is from another place.  We work in the afternoon and have dinner at 8 at the Turkish restaurant.  We don’t have alcohol in the house, except for entertaining with a glass of champagne.

Do you still drink?

Gilbert: I have had no drink in 15 years.

George: I have an occasional beer.

You have been together for 50 years.  Do you fight?

We always call that a great heterosexual question.

Who are your friends?

We don’t want other people in our lives, we don’t want people around us.  We don’t want a relationship with museums.  We have a very small group of very special young friends who we like and can trust.  We have rolling new generations all the time.

What are you looking for?

We still want to win.  We want to be loved more.  We do art because we want to win and be loved.  The world of Gilbert & George has lasted many years.  Our success is if the pictures succeed.

What is the key of your success?

Regimentation.  Seven pairs of identical shoes and many suits.  The whole exercise is to keep the brain empty and free.  The more orderly our life is, the crazier you can be with the pictures.  We have two privileges. The first is that we are totally free to say whatever we want in our pictures.  The second is to take whatever we want out into the world.

How is the world of today?

Utopia is here now.  The world is an enormous success and the western world is an even greater success.  A western triumph!  It is extraordinary.  You can travel.  You can see every book and video.  We feel amazing that we can do what we can do.

What is fun for you?

Winning with our ideas, that’s what it is.  We fight every day for our vision.  Our belief is art for all, winning over the people.  We care about that very much.

Spitalfields, London. 2018

All images © Gilbert & George.

With special thanks to Yu Yigang and also Phoebe Adler at Heni Publishing.

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FOR THE LOVE OF SHOES. Manolo Blahnik opened his first store in London on Old Church Street in Chelsea over 40 years ago.  The renowned shoe designer has expanded to London’s picturesque Burlington Arcade in order to sell both women’s and men’s shoes.

You started thinking about shoes as a child, playing with lizards in the Canary Islands?

It is true, as a child I used to make shoes for lizards out of Cadbury’s chocolate wrappers. It wasn’t till years later when I met Diana Vreeland of Vogue that I returned to shoes.

Is Spanish still your language?

Now my Spanish is rusty.  I guess English is my language now, as I have no parents and hardly any friends left.  I speak English with my niece Cristina who runs the business operation.

Manolo Blahnik’s new shoe shops in London’s historic Burlington Arcade.

How long have you been in business?

I started in 1971 in New York because Diana Vreeland sent me to Henri Bendel’s after she saw my drawings.  To be honest I wanted to do theatre design, but alas Ms. Vreeland said that I should do shoes.  I started in London with two thousand pounds, and my first shop was in Chelsea in Old Church Street.

Was it a success?

Yes.  I was invited by the designer Ossie Clark to do the shoes for his show.  I did shoes with high heels.  I went to Michael Turner, a manufacturer, and I said to him, “Can you help me to make shoes?”

What is the secret of your success?

I tried, tried, tried.

Is one of your shoes iconic?

It is the one called Hangisi.  They are classical shoes.

Do you like using colours?

Yes, I like colours very much, changing colours, mixing colours.  It’s not very practical sometimes.  I like tiny heels at the moment.  In the 60s Peggy Moffitt, a great friend of photographer William Claxton, liked a shoe like that.  Arabs and people of the Middle East especially like high heels.  What they want now is shoes with a buckle.

Do you have a favourite colour?

I love baby blue.

Where do you sell the most?

In America, in LA and in New York, then in Hong Kong, and in Europe.

How many shoes do you produce in a year?

600 a season, four shows a season.

How many shops do you have?

309 points of sale, 16 shops, and we just opened the last one in Geneva.

Now you have been successful for a long time?

In two years’ time it is my 50^th anniversary.  I don’t follow fashion at all.  I don’t like fashion.  If I do see fashion I do the contrary.  It is a miracle that I am still in business (he laughs).

Where do you work?

I draw at home.  Next to my bed I have colours and pencils, and I draw with a pencil Staedtler 3D.

Do you work with some fashion people?

Yes, with Grace Wales Bonner, an English designer.  I love to work with young people because they are excited.

Who were your favourite designers?

First of all Yves St Laurent, who always was very nice to me, and Pierre Bergé too.  Another one is Azzedine Alaïa, and another is Christian Lacroix.

Are your shoes for any specific age?

My shoes are for every age.  The kids love Tweed shoes, because Tweed is always in fashion.  I like the Tweed suits that I have had made at Anderson & Sheppard for forty years, and I hope to wear them until I can afford a new one.

Do you make your own shoes?

Yes, I wear Oxford and Derbys, and sandals in the summer.  Colourful shoes, yellow, blue, pink; and in Russia I wore red shoes, with red socks and a red suit and a red shirt.

You are opening your first men’s shop in London’s Burlington Arcade.  What kind of shoes do you sell?

One style is done in raffia in Morocco, the only place they make it.  They have classic shoes and sandals.   Men and women’s shoes don’t like to be together.  Men need a shop by themselves and to have their own space.

Fez Raffia

Red Suede Witney

Brown and White Leather Manolo

Do you have a particular love for London?

Yes, I still love London, but I worry about what is going to happen with Brexit.

What is going to happen?

We don’t know but I love my house in Bath.  I don’t want to leave England.  I am a permanent resident, but I am Spanish.  Of course I could have an English passport, but for what?  I am old, but I don’t feel old at all.

Who are the other shoemakers you admire?

I love Pietro Yantorny, an Italian shoemaker.  My greatest love of all is André Perugia, and then Salvatore Ferragamo.  Italians are by far the best.  Also there are young people like Nicolò Beretta at Giannico who is very good, and also the Frenchman Pierre Hardy who does shoes for Hermès.

And for men?

Classics, made for centuries in England.  I also like hats.  I buy them at Lock’s in St. James’s, the best in the world.

Are your shoes very expensive?

I don’t know.  I don’t even know my phone number, and I don’t know who buys my shoes.  Of course I made shoes for David Hockney, Brian Ferry, Peter Schlesinger, Christopher Gibbs and so on so forth.

How much does a pair of your shoes cost?

500 pounds more or less, unless they are crocodile or lizard.  People are judged by shoes.  Isabella Blow, two days after she bought the shoes, she broke them.  I love used shoes.  Women like pumps the most, to have a court shoe.

What is an elegant woman for you?

It’s not to do with dressing up.  Everything is about the way you move, the body, the neck, the hands.

Are you a designer ultimately?

Yes, I also design books.  I was asked by Penguin to do Balzac and Flaubert.  I designed the cover of Madame Bovary by Flaubert for Penguin, and therefore all my collection was about Madame Bovary.  Another year all of my collection was about Lampedusa.

They say you like movies?

Yes, I like movies and especially Hollywood movies and Italian movies of the 60s.  For instance ‘L’Avventura’ by Antonioni.  I also like the film ‘I am Love’ by Luca Guadagnino that was filmed in the Villa Necchi in Milano; the protagonist is the beautiful Tilda Swinton but there is a fantastic Marisa Berenson.  She’s one of the best European actresses.

Have you changed your life?

I still have my energy and I have my seven dogs.

Things have changed a lot in your business over the years?

Of course, now we have Nike and Adidas.

Do you have competition?

In men’s shoes maybe I will.

Where are you going for your holidays?

I don’t like holidays.  I used to go to St. Tropez when I was young with some friends but now I don’t like them anymore.  If I have time I go to the Canary Islands, but I don’t go very often.  I quite like to go to Madrid where I have a small shop.

Do you still love what you do?

I do love shoes.

London 2018

All images courtesy of Manolo Blahnik

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Answering New Questions on Racism. Tahar Ben Jelloun is a Moroccan-French novelist, poet and essayist who writes about culture, the immigrant experience, human rights and sexual identity.  Tahar Ben Jelloun’s book ‘Racism Explained To My Daughter’ is published in America by The New Press.  It has just been republished with a new preface by La nave di Teseo in Italy.

In 1998 you wrote ‘Racism Explained to My Daughter’, a world bestseller translated into 47 languages, including Esperanto, the universal language?

Yes, I sold around 2 million copies, and the text of this book has been used and taught in schools all over the world.  In South Africa it is translated into Afrikaans and two other regional languages.  This proves that racism concerns the entire humanity.  There is no society in the world that can say, “There is no racism here.”  It is a phenomenon that is deeply linked to the human condition, but it is something we can fight against.

Thousands of people marched in Paris in March 2018 in memory of Mireille Knoll, the 85-year old Jewish Holocaust survivor murdered in her Paris apartment.

Can you describe how this book that has been published many times in the last twenty years deals with the development of new racism events in Europe and in the world?

In 1998 when I was writing the book and answering my daughter’s questions, the word ‘Islamophobia’ did not exist, but the word ‘anti-Semitism’ always existed.  Anti-Semitism has changed colours and origin.  For instance, terrorism in the name of Islam creates very evident anti-Semitism, and terrorism in the name of Islam has generated fear and hate of Islam, of Muslims, creating a new racism.  The book was answering questions that all children, who are not racists, ask.  Now I had to answer new questions that did not exist twenty years ago, and in particular about Islam, Muslims, and their status in Europe.

Your book has been republished in Italy by La Nave di Teseo in a new edition of 300 hundred pages and will be republished in France in October by Éditions du Seuil.  What is new?

The main thing that has changed in twenty years is that the first edition was questioning the issue of ‘races’.  I was saying that ‘races’ do not exist.  There is only one ‘race’: the human race.  When I go to different schools all over the world and speak to children the first thing that I teach is that there are no ‘races’.  The French government has proposed to parliament to remove the word ‘race’ from the Constitution and from the law books.  During this time we have seen political leaders of the Right and extreme Right parties who are set against this, and they say that they belong to the ‘white race’, which is for them superior, different from the so-called ‘black race’.  For me this is the first victory against racism.

Why do you say that racism is endemic to the human being?

People are different but similar.  Man makes differences and transforms them with inequalities.  Everything starts from there.  What is different is inferior.

What about the Jews?

Jews can be of any colour.  It is the difference that Judaism represents that is intolerable for the others.  Jews have always been persecuted because of their difference, and because they were the first monotheistic religion.  History proves that.

Can we stop anti-Semitism?

It can only be stopped by justice and education, but to be an anti-Semite has changed.  Before it was a European obsession and in particular German and French.  Today anti-Semitism has been stopped but the terrorism of ISIS and its ideology is based on the hate of Jews and Christians.  It was translated in France with the murder of children and adult Jews, the crime of the extremist Mohammed Marrah and the crime of the barbarians who kidnapped the young Ilan Halimi, who was tortured and assassinated.  The attack after Charlie Hebdo on January 7 2015 on the kosher supermarket in Porte de Vincennes, the assassination of Sarah Halimi, aged 65 years, by her neighbour, plus the assassination of Mireille Knoll, aged 85 years, by two neighbours; these are crimes that all took place in France, and this is new in France.  Before they were killing Arabs, now they kill Jews.

How do you feel yourself as a Muslim?

I am wounded and humiliated by this kind of racism, and this is the case for the majority of the Muslim population in France.  The result is that Jews are frightened.  More than 6,000 Jews a year have left France because of this.  The Muslims are frightened too, because they are suspicious in the eyes of many people.

What about the dramatic problem of the migrants that is shocking the entire world?

One has to make a distinction between the Africans that are coming to find work and the refugees that are escaping from war, like in Syria and Iraq.  The refugees need to be comforted, and they aren’t coming to stay in Europe; they hope to go back to their homes.  The economic migrants from Africa create a problem that Europe is not able to resolve.  We need to find a realpolitik agreement about immigration.  Europe should negotiate with the rich African countries like Nigeria and Gabon and others, so that those communities can give work to their citizens.  It is a scandal that people from these countries do not have enough help to stay there.  Europe could invest in the poor African countries and create conditions for people to stay in their countries.  All these African countries have to fight against the mafia of the people traffickers who exploit this human misery.

“Il razzismo spiegato a mia figlia” by Tahar Ben Jelloun, recently republished in Italy by La nave di Teseo

A striking image protests Islamophobia in America

In September 2016 police moved in at dawn to remove migrants, mainly from Sudan, Eritrea and Afghanistan, who were sleeping in tents and on mattresses in a camp in northern Paris.

Do you feel that a writer like you has real influence today?  Do you feel that people listen to you?

Sadly I wrote articles and I spoke on the radio and TV, and many other writers did the same, but we are not listened to.  People today live in a state of fear and ignorance, and they are closed in on themselves, and this creates the triumph of the populism parties that are pre-Fascist, the Far Right movement.

Are the new populist parties racist?

No, they talk about ideas of fear for poor people who feel menaced by all that is foreign, and the arrival of Trump on the international political scene has been a disaster for humanism and solidarity with people who need help.  It has encouraged other European countries to vote in political parties who are racist and demagogic.

Are violence and fear coming back?

Yes, they do come back, but with less intensity than what our grandparents have seen in the Forties.

Is history repeating itself?

History progresses and the human being is always the same; either dominant and egoistic, or full of solidarity and generous. It depends.

At the end of the day, what are your major concerns?

The horror of the genocide of the Syrians by their own President Bashar al-Assad with the help of the Russians.  We have never seen this before.  He should be judged for the crimes he has committed.  The second country that creates trouble is Libya, which has become the centre for ISIS, and it is in this country that people are sold.  It is this country that allows the mafia and the people that organise the voyages of death.  It is because power is disputed by several sides, and this chaos is an advantage to the people traffickers and the terrorists.  Libya as it is today is the central source of racism.

Your real battle is against racism?

Yes, we are not made to fight but to live together.  We are not here to fight.  When I was a child of 8 years old we were living next to a Moroccan Jewish family in Tangier.  Every Friday my mother was sending them a plate of couscous and the day after the Jews were sending back a plate of skhina, a typical Jewish dish.  It was human solidarity.  In Morocco today we are nostalgic of the time when Jews and Muslims were living together in solidarity and in peace.  From there comes my concern and my fight against racism.

Tangier, July 2018

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IN SEARCH OF PERFECTION. Alain Ducasse is one of the world’s most decorated chefs.  Known for his incomparable French cuisine, Alain Ducasse has created innovative dining concepts reflecting international influences, and consequently has earned a phenomenal global reputation.

Where are you from?

I was born in South West France, between Bordeaux and San Sebastian, near Biarritz and Saint Jean de Luz.

Why did you want to be a cook?

When I was 12, I decided to be a cook, to my parents’ despair.  All my friends wanted to become pilots or engineers.  My mum said: “And you want to become a cook?”

How many years did you study?

7 years, and I studied hard.

Now you are a business man with restaurants all over the world, publish books, and run training schools?

I am a cook, not a business man.  I have a large team helping me to manage my business and more than 2000 collaborators worldwide.

In the evening, Ducasse at the Palace of Versailles offers an exceptional dining experience.

Is French cuisine the most important cuisine in the world?

Yes, for the techniques and codification of the rules, like ‘solfège’ in music.  There is the rule and then, after, there is the creation.  But the basis of French cuisine is the rule, written and ancient, that can be used in many other cuisines.  This is the base of what I learnt when I started working.  My teacher chefs were Michel Guérard, Gaston Lenôtre, Alain Chapel and Roger Vergé.

Is good taste something that can be learnt?

One has to be open.  Time is needed to take everything in.

When did you get your first star? 

I got my first Michelin star when I was chef at ‘L’Amandier’ in Mougins in 1980.

How many Michelin stars do you have now?

Around 20 in my different restaurants.  But I don’t only have restaurants with Michelin stars.  Lots of them don’t have any.

How many restaurants do you have? 

Around 25.  I have a large team to help me manage them, and long-term collaborators; my closest collaborators have been with me for over 25 years.  They are chefs, pastry chefs, sommeliers.  Many have been with me from the start of their career; 80% of my collaborators arrived at junior positions.  We like to promote and help people grow within the company.  For example, my Executive Chef Jean-Philippe Blondet at my restaurant in The Dorchester in London has been with me for 14 years, and he is 35!  He was in Monaco, in Paris, in Hong Kong and now in London.

Are your restaurants very expensive?

My restaurants range from bistros at 30 euros to Haute-gastronomy restaurants at 1000 euros.  For 15 pounds, US dollars or euros, I always have a proposal.  We try to be the best in each category.

What is the secret of the success of Alain Ducasse?

The DNA of French cuisine is the base, the attention given to sourcing, to the provenance and selection of the produce, their preparation, to the right seasoning, the right cooking.  Also, it is about the harmony between the content and the container: all the elements that come into play out of the dish itself; all the elements which contribute to serve it – silverware, china, glasses.  It is about the environment created to support the cuisine.  Finally, there is also always a strong interest in offering the right wines for a dish.  Wine is an important component of the idea of gastronomy.  In French gastronomy, there is always an order between the beginning and the end of a meal and all the details are important.

Was Haute-gastronomy created by Louis XIV?

The king’s cuisine was very sophisticated, varied and diverse, using produce coming from French regions.  There was a specific order in the menu, very much staged, and including tableware, silverware, china, crystal ware.  I do Haute-gastronomy in the Palace of Versailles with dinners inspired by the royal feasts served 300 years ago at the Court.  There were 10 to 25 dishes, but the guests would choose what they ate and not eat all of them.  The vegetable soup was followed by vegetables, fish and shellfish, poultry, game, stews.  Today, in my restaurant in the Palace of Versailles, I serve 10 courses.

Can you give an example of an Haute-gastronomy menu?

There would be too many options for one example.  There is a beginning and there is an end.  At the Court they would always start with a vegetable soup, followed by lots of dishes, always very seasonal as there were not as many conservation techniques.  For example, in spring there would be young vegetables: asparagus, green peas, new potatoes.  A few years ago I decided to restart the Queen’s Garden on the estate of the Palace of Versailles, and we have about 50 vegetables available.  The Queen’s Garden was historically better than the King’s Garden as she was more demanding.

What kind of desserts do you serve?  

We currently serve red fruits and berries with a sort of fresh cheese called Fontainebleau.  It is a delicate preparation made with cream cheese and whipped cream.  We always have a beautiful chocolate cake on the menu of my restaurants.  We make chocolate in Paris at La Manufacture de chocolat, a unique destination.  We have over 45 different types of chocolates with origins from over 20 countries.  I just opened another atelier in Tokyo, in Nihonbashi, with great success.  I also opened one shop in Roppongi.  Next stop will be London, with a shop opening in Coal Drops Yard, near Kings Cross, in October.

What are your best-sellers?

There are no bestsellers.  I don’t want to have signature dishes as they create habits.  I don’t want my teams to continually prepare the same things over and over.  Cooking is not about repetition and it is not educational; I want to make sure my teams are trained to work with fish and shellfish, meat, game, vegetables…

Do you still cook?

Yes, I cook for my friends, at home.  But I taste everything served in my restaurants.  I decide everything and taste everything, every day and every night.  That’s my job.

The main dining room of Alain Ducasse at The Dorchester

Chocolate from the Alain Ducasse manufacture in Paris

Ducasse sur Seine

Are you still a good chef?

Yes, because I taste every day. I carry the vision for my restaurants.  I act as an artistic director.  I am the designer of my cuisine, the one who thinks about the details of what is served in my restaurants and most importantly of their evolution.  Once a restaurant is open, we must continue to create.  The key of success is innovation and to continue to evolve and improve.  We have to be in search of perfection without ever reaching it.  The director Gilles de Maistre documented this very well with the movie The Quest of Alain Ducasse.

Are your chefs all French?

No, for example, my two chefs in Japan are Japanese.  I cook with the basis of French tradition but in Japan, 85% of my clients are Japanese.  In London, 85% of my clients are British.  Everywhere in the world, our clients are locals.  Today’s French cuisine seduces a large audience as it managed to adapt to the society it is in.  My clients in Japan are Japanese, so we have to seduce them.

How do you seduce them?

With the most perfect contemporary French cuisine.  Guests are curious, demanding, well informed and well-travelled, and there is a lot of competition.  In 25 years, the evolution of the culinary landscape of London or New York is a revolution.  We have no other choice than to be innovative and to be the best, never ceasing to work to achieve perfection without ever reaching it.

How are the new chefs?

Passionate and in competition, as the market is so saturated.  Each time I travel, I discover new talents.  Recently ‘La Mercerie’ in New York was just magnificent, and simply magnificent is not easy.  I always say that it is 95% of work and 5% of talent.

You prepared dinner for President Putin and President Trump?

I received President Putin in the Palace of Versailles, and President Trump at ‘Le Jules Verne’ on the Eiffel Tower.  The menus were very different, 8 courses for President Trump and 12 courses for President Putin.  There has always been a tradition of Haute-gastronomy with a French basis at the Russian Court.  President Trump really enjoyed everything that was served to him: sole, spinach, meat pie, vegetables from the garden of the Palace of Versailles, beef with Rossini sauce and ‘pommes soufflées’.  And to finish a soufflé made with chocolate from my Parisian atelier along with a red berries ice cream.  It was simple, but good and efficient.  I also gave a dinner for President Xi Jing Ping, and for him I did 20 courses.

Did they drink wine?

They drank great French wines.  Château Cheval Blanc, Dom Pérignon Champagne, Château d’Yquem…

Apart from French cuisine, what cuisines do you prefer?

I really enjoy Italian cuisines.  The one from Umbria is different from what is found in Piedmont, Sicily, Puglia or Tuscany.  I love Italy.  I am very much influenced by the Mediterranean, and Italy in particular.  In September I will open an Italian restaurant in Paris that will be called ‘Cucina’, with mainly influences from Tuscany and the rusticity of the land and sea.

You have a restaurant in Las Vegas, right?

My restaurant ‘Rivea Las Vegas’ is at the top of the Delano Hotel on the Strip.  The most beautiful shows in the world are in Vegas.

And in Macau?

We opened two restaurants in Macau in June.  Macau is an interesting place with gamblers and tourists, a bit like Las Vegas.  Today, Macau has become a destination.

Will you soon launch a restaurant cruise boat in Paris?

It is an extraordinary boat that will cruise on the Seine river.  It arrives in Paris in August and will officially welcome guests in September.  It is the largest electric boat in the world, equipped with a fully fitted kitchen.  It will be a restaurant and will be called ‘Ducasse sur Seine’.  The boat will be docked in the 16^th, and will go down past Saint-Louis island, to Bercy, and come back in an hour and a half.

London 2018

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THE VERTIGO OF FREEDOM.  The multi-cultural artist Arielle Dombasle was born in America and raised in Mexico.  Arielle moves easily between comedy, directing, acting and singing, her true passion.  Most of her acting work has been in French, while her albums are mostly in Spanish or English.

You just finished making your film Alien Crystal Palace.  You acted in the film but are you also the director?

Yes, it is my fourth film as a director.  It’s a little secret, because I am a multi-faceted character.  To shoot movies and do clips is my secret garden.  My first movie was Chassé-croisé in which I had Pierre Clémenti among the actors, with small cameos from Éric Rohmer and Roman Polanski.  It is a little passage around Greek mythology and the idea of God.

What is this latest film about?

It is a fantastic film, a little bit in the tradition of Dario Argento; a Gothic movie with crime, eroticism and rock and roll.  The film came about after my last album of rock songs, which has the title of La Rivière Atlantique.  I made it after an encounter with a rock singer with an extraordinary voice, Nicolas Ker.

ARIELLE DOMBASLE is a multi-faceted, multi-cultural artist.

You are eclectic; an actress, a singer, a dancer, a director.  How can we describe your life?

I owe all this to chance and a very precocious apprenticeship.  I come from a family which lived in Mexico and they were all quite extraordinary; very erudite and curious.  In my childhood I encountered extraordinary people and this has forged my destiny.  I encountered great artists and I saw what was the most beautiful and hospitable life, and also the most dangerous and the most extraordinary.  In order to protect oneself one needs knowledge, and I studied at the Conservatoire de Paris.  I was a classical dancer, I was at first a singer, and then I moved to the cinema.

You have studied quite a lot?

Yes, I really learned the bel canto tradition, including music and singing.

Why do you sing in Spanish and English, and act in French?

I worked for a little bit with the Americans, but I never wanted to establish myself in America.  I was attracted by Old Europe.

Which is your language?

As a child my first language was Spanish.  I listened to my parents speaking French and English.  At school I learned French, and I adored French and French literature.  I was also reading Spanish writers, especially the Latin Americans.

You seem to love literature very much?

I have lived with a writer for 25 years and therefore it is a question of books, books, books!  Today I like to be on stage, to sing, and also to make movies.

With whom were the most important encounters in your life?

With the Christ and the Virgin Mary.  I am very Catholic and religious, and I have always been much inspired by the great mystics.

With whom have been the most important encounters in your work?

I don’t know.  I don’t consider what I do a profession but a vocation.  I couldn’t do anything else.  I want my life to be a hurricane, the most beautiful of all films.  To me this means a melodramatic film and an idealistic film.  I am romantic and free.  I was attracted by splendid old people who were friends of my grandmother, who was a poet.  People like Tamara di Lempicka and others.  They gave me a lot of strength, and especially they taught me the freedom to become what one is.  There are some movie directors whom I worked for who were extremely important in my career, Éric Rohmer, Raoul Ruiz, and Alain Robbe-Grillet.  With each one of them I shot five films.  I directed Omar Sharif in one of the films that I directed, the title of the film was Les Pyramides Bleues.  I acted with Gérard Depardieu in Vatel, and I also worked with Joan Collins in a kitsch American saga, the miniseries Sins; and I sang with Johnny Hallyday, Julio Iglesias and others.

What is your next project?

Another album whose title is Empire, and I will do a tour in Italy with my review, Les Parisiennes.  We have done it already at the Folies Bergère in Paris, singing and dancing and so on with four other girls.

Have things have changed a lot in your life?

No, things are eternally the same.  One is choosing and one is chosen.

You are a strong Catholic and married to a Jewish intellectual (Bernard-Henri Lévy) and also very busy.  How does your life work?

It is very heterogeneous and so completely interesting.

Arielle Dombasle

Arielle Dombasle

Arielle Dombasle

France is your adopted country.  Do you still love it?

Yes, I adore it, but the France of my childhood, life in a chateau, a civilisation of incredible exquisite refinement, has fallen into oblivion in France and does not exist anymore.  Now we have a France that belongs to the global village, a France that knows the same events and music as everyone else and cannot escape this immense planetary syrup.  But I quite like the syrup.

When you think of yourself, who is Arielle?

I think of the vertigo of freedom, undiminished at every step by totalism and by making things easy.

Do you have some regrets?

No, but like everybody else I have a melancholia that sometimes suffocates me.  For example, when I see that the landscape that I loved has been massacred, and the people who loved it with me are not here anymore.  I am very sensitive, and I like order and equilibrium, measure, and the life that I lead happily is a chaos but one has to be very athletic.  One has to love, to be idealistic and to put love as the first thing in life; and this is what I do.

What is your ultimate goal?

Immortality.  To me it means to be eternally the same.

What about success?

I realised very quickly that to have great success was a stupid thing, and on the contrary the most secretive and delicious thing paradoxically remains in obscurity.  In other words, success is not for me my measure.

What does drive you?

Passion and impulsion.  But I am too impulsive.  This means there is not enough thinking, and one day I was sent a postcard with a sentence written by Cocteau: “Mirrors should think longer before they reflect.”

Tangier, 2018

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MASERATI MULTI 70 SKIPPER Giovanni Soldini has been sailing since he was a small boy.  Born in Milan in 1966, Soldini has over 25 years of making history in ocean racing to his credit, including two single-handed round the worlds.  With over 40 ocean crossings to his name, Giovanni Soldini has set a great many sailing records. On February 23rd 2018 Maserati Multi 70 conquered the Tea Route record from Hong Kong to London.

You are the skipper of the Maserati sailing boat and have achieved several exceptional results. Which do you consider the most significant?

The record Hong Kong-London is definitely the most striking result, and it was also a wonderful adventure.

What class of sailing boat is the Maserati?

Maserati is a MOD70 that we modified by developing the foil system to make it fly.  It was the first trimaran in the world that tested the foil on the centreboard, and when it is in flight is one of the most stable among the ocean trimarans of today.

Every how often do you have to change boats, and are the technological discoveries evolving very fast?

Sailing is a sport that is practiced with a mechanical machine, that’s why technology is fundamental and constantly evolving. We are implementing a very ambitious development program with Maserati Multi 70, and the evolution of the boat is continuously improving.

John Elkann, chairman of Fiat Chrysler, a global automobile brand that includes Maserati, in Monte Carlo with Giovanni Soldini, skipper of Maserati Multi 70.

What are the most important elements of a boat?  Speed, stability, radar?

All these elements are important for the boat’s performance and security.

Are you personally involved in the building of the boats you skipper?

I personally follow the modifications and I collaborate with the designers and engineers in the design phase.  Obviously I am assisted by a very close-knit group of people, who then often join the crew.

For many years you were a solo sailor and now you sail with a team.  What is the difference?

When you are sailing alone you develop a special relationship with the boat.  You learn to hear her voice, and you enter into close symbiosis with her.  When sailing in a crew the same special relationship is with the crew.

What are your next projects this summer, the races, the challenges?

The first race will be the Middle Sea Race that starts from Malta and goes around Sicily.  Then we will participate in the Royal Ocean Racing Club (RORC) Transatlantic.

Why and how come did you decide to devote your life to sailing?

Sailing, the sea and boats have always been my passions.  Even today, after hundreds of thousands of miles travelled, when I am in the middle of the sea I feel like a lucky man.

Since you started sailing, what has changed over the years in races, challenges and records?

In the last 30 years technology has revolutionized the way we live and also the way we sail.  The great revolution was the advent of the satellites that allowed us to communicate, to know where we are and where we are going, and to have detailed weather information.  Everything has changed.  The last great revolution was foiling.

Is sailing now more competitive than ever?

I think that the regattas have always been very competitive, but in recent years, thanks to technology, the level of competition has risen considerably.

Which was the most dangerous race that you remember and which are the most challenging and dangerous seas and oceans?

I think that the sea must always be respected, and that on the wrong day, even in front of your house, Neptune can decide to make you pass or not.  In some sections of navigation it is easier to realize its power and superiority.  Certainly the southern oceans and northern seas are places where the violence of storms and the sea is unleashed more frequently.

Maserati Multi 70, Cascais, July 2018

Giovanni Soldini planning the navigation from Hong Kong – London, January 2018.

Maserati Multi 70, skipper and crew enjoy a shared moment of relaxation off Malta.

Are you ever afraid?

I think fear is very important and positive.  Thanks to her we can see our limits and those of our boat.

You and your crew have to follow a very strict discipline.  What does it take to prepare yourselves and the boat for a race?

Preparing for a navigation like the record Hong Kong-London means doing a great job of preparation, first of all of the boat, but also of the crew and the group.

 At the end of the day, how much is unpredictable?

We always try to prepare ourselves in the best way, to manage the risk and the unexpected as much as possible.  In the end, however, there is a part that we can neither manage nor control; as in life, even at sea we always need a little luck.

Can you be more specific about what these preparations consist of?

The preparation of the boat is a very important job.  It is about disassembling and controlling all the parts of the boat. Maintenance is done to all the mechanical parts, to all the ropes, to the carbon parts that have suffered any damage.  You check the hull and the shaft with the ultrasounds to verify that there are no delaminations, do ordinary maintenance, and try to improve what does not work well.

Do you teach and encourage young people to follow your steps?

In the Maserati Multi70 team we try to be open and also to involve many young sailors.  In this sense surely Maserati is also a school, and a great opportunity for growth for everyone.

How many people are in the crew and how are they selected?

The crew changes according to the type of navigation, the duration and the type of route.  In general we are 8 for medium-short regattas and 5 for long routes like the record Hong Kong-London.  This is because on a boat such as the Maserati the weight is very important, and so we try to contain the amount of people and therefore the amount of food needed on long routes.  Generally the crew is made up of people who know the boat well, who are selected during uncompetitive sailing such as transfers or promotional events and campaigns.

What do you eat when you are racing?

For us Italians food is very important, and so on board Maserati we try to eat very well.  The diet is based on pasta and brown rice, all cooked in a pressure cooker.

 Are you all equal on the boat or are there differences in status?

In general they are all excellent sailors so we are all on par.  The final decisions and the global responsibility is my responsibility.

How many days at sea are the races you mention?

Maserati is a very fast boat.  For a transoceanic we count 5/6 days, while for the record Hong Kong – London we have used 36.

How fast does the boat go on average?  And what is the fastest speed you have ever achieved?

The maximum speed reached as of today is 46 knots.  It is very easy with a good wind to maintain an average of 30 knots.

Is all this very expensive?  How is it funded?

The Maserati budget is reasonable.  We try to optimize the costs to the maximum while maintaining a good level of research and development and competitiveness.  The budget is entirely covered by the partners of the boat, who are Maserati, Aon and Zegna.

August 2018

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FIGHTING THE HITLER WITHIN. Gisela Getty is a photographer, director, designer and writer. Born in 1949 in Kassel, Germany, like her twin sister Jutta she is known as a representative of the ’68 movement. Gisela agreed to marry Paul Getty very shortly before he was kidnapped in Rome in 1973. Gisela Getty lives an enduring quest to overcome the fascism of her parents, transcend her own inner violence and find real Love.

Your sister Jutta and yourself have been icons of the hippie movement in Germany, in Italy and in Los Angeles later you were part of the 60s-movement and close to singers like Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen. What is left, and what is your memory of all that? 

It is not a memory, and not something in the past. I feel until today together with the movement of the 60s that our generation actually had come into a kind of enlightenment and I think everyone felt enlightened to have a different kind of world of Love and a deep sense of connectedness. Now I see these times as a preview looking into a sort of coming garden or paradise and we all have been changed since that moment. But we don’t know it.

Jutta and Gisela, countryside, Rome, 1973, by Robert Freeman.

Image featured in the book Analog Bohemians by Alexander Schimmelbusch.

Is the dream finished?

For me it is not finished but lots of people have returned to the old resigned and disillusioned consciousness and have lost hope. Many people of my generation have died.

Of drugs?

Yes, but the drugs are not the reason. They are a way to commit suicide.

You tried them too, but you came through them?

We tried psychedelics. My first LSD experience was with my sister Jutta in Sperlonga in the early 70s in Italy. It was like enlightenment where we realised that the truth is Love and we felt like God’s children and had to bring Love into the world. We felt this unbelievable Love. 

Was that a reaction to the fact that you had been raised in Germany just after the war, when many people were still in denial?

Most people of our parents’ generation were more than in denial; they were still fascists. A lot of politicians were too, and that is why Baader-Meinhof decided that they had to fight with weapons and go to the last consequences, and that is why all my generation sympathised with them. 

But the hippie movement was pacifist?

Yes, but we were more influenced by the Kommune 1, a movement that came out of the Dada and Surrealist movements, and they said from early on that the real revolution is to revolutionise ourselves, because they realised that Hitler is within us and that the first step is to take responsibility for your inner fascism. 

You were very young. Were you aware of all this?

As children we started to discover what our parents had done. We realised that this was something that should never ever happen again.

You went to Italy to find freedom?

Yes, but first I left my home town Kassel where my sister and I had both studied art and we had created a film collective and started to do political films. But even that at the end seemed too bourgeois to us, too embedded in bourgeois tendencies. So we left art school a few months before the final exam and just became political activists. I went to Berlin. I was in a factory and supposed to politically agitate the working class, which was just a student dream. 

Why did you go to Italy?

My sister and I were very also somewhat influenced by a Professor Bazon Brock who had talked to us about the idea that you can invent yourself as an artist and then especially the approach of the Kommune 1 to revolutionize yourself and become a real, loving human, was the incentive. We went to Italy to do that. This was in 1972/3 and we wanted to go into total freedom. At the same time the feminist movement started with the idea that women are victims of men, that men stopped them and that wasn’t the way we wanted to go. My experience was that men always supported my quest and my independence. I think that in the ’68 movement there was equality. We all were on a quest. 

You met in your quest first in Italy and then in California some very significant male artists, singers, actors and also your husband Paul. How come?

My sister and I first went to Rome. Rome was during that time like a melting pot of people of the 60s movement, coming to Rome from all over the world. Students from Latin America having to escape fascistic regimes; drop outs; artists from America like Warhol; Morrissey; Glauber Rocha from Latin America… and if you move spiritually on a very high frequency you meet these people, inhabitants of an entirely new world. 

After a while Paul’s kidnapping happened and shortly after his release you married him and your life changed?

When my sister and I met Paul he was very young, a dropout from his family and it’s social context. He was living with a few friends in an old and dark basement in Trastevere and had involved himself with figures from the “malavita” (underworld) which in my eyes was a subculture that allowed him to be outside his confinement of expectations to be the heir of a dynasty and gave him the stigma of an outlaw. But my sister and I recognised that he had a basic nature of the “questor” which we had, so we were for him like his desired companions he had longed for. From the first day we met we felt like we completely belonged to each other and stayed together – moved in together, slept in one bed just being happy. We were outsiders and now this young triumvirate, convinced that we could achieve anything we wanted.

Then he was kidnapped and you married afterwards?

The kidnapping was like a clash between the old and the new world. But it also meant the end of the Summer of Love and the idea of establishing a whole new world. After this shock Paul and I got married. I was pregnant with Balthazar, but Rome was over for us as we were followed day and night by paparazzi and we did not see a future there. Paul, being heavily traumatised, took more and more heavy drugs. I did not. The family decided to move us to California. Jutta (my sister) in the meantime had gone to Munich to find Rainer Langhans, one of the co-founders of Kommune 1. He was out of prison, realizing that the real revolution takes place inside oneself. He had found an Indian Master, who had initiated him and Jutta wanted to enquire on how to go on with life. Her relationship with Mario Schifano had fallen apart, and she was searching for a new perspective. In California we were getting one thousand dollars a month from Paul’s Grandfather on the provision that Paul would study. He did it for maybe two days. We could not become conventional, it’s just not in our making. I started acting, doing some plays and some TV but Paul became increasingly depending on drugs to cope with his trauma. He never talked about the kidnapping. We were living free again In Los Angeles, trying to leave the painful past behind. And after all, it was still the seventies and drugs were normal. Dennis Hopper and other friends were on drugs, trying to escape the ‘backlash’ to normal life.

Of all this time what is left for you?

Jutta came and brought books about the Indian Master and talked about Rainer. I had tried to be with a Tibetan teacher in Colorado and had got a flight ticket to India. I got a postcard from Rainer – he had written down a dream of my sister and added: “Why India? There is so much to do here.” I changed my ticket from India to Munich and the encounter was so intense and pointing into the future. He touched me deeply.

Your sister Jutta met Bob Dylan? 

Yes, she took LSD in Malibu with Bob Dylan, who confronted her as a Nazi with him as a Jew. He wanted to find out who we are, who she is, what we do in that question. It was a very important experience for her because she saw that we all have ‘Hitler within’.

Gisela, Jutta and Dennis Hopper. Hotel Meurice, Paris, 1991, by Joerg Reichardt

Jutta, Timothy Leary and Gisela, Beverly Hills, 1993, by Douglas Kirland

Leonard Cohen and Gisela at “The Roxy”, Hollywood, 1977, by Brad Elterman

You had met Leonard Cohen?

Yes, I met him at the Chateau Marmont Hotel where we were living with Paul and he became my best friend. He took me to his Zen teacher and then I started to study. We were close and we remained close to the end and I still feel close to his wife Suzanne. Then from the moment I met Rainer I would go every year to Munich. All the ideas of Love and the New World, we realised that it is an internal work and we had to do it inwardly, and that we have to revolutionise ourselves and not the others. It is a process that never stops and it is a political act. “The private is political.” And also as a feminist the empowering of yourself. You take responsibility for every dark aspect of your own inner fascism, that means discovering your real self.

We can say that this quest started but it is a very vital process that goes on but becomes more invisible. 

This is why I say we are secret monks, which is the title of my next book.

Do you have young followers, pupils? 

We are not teachers. We are communicators with whomever we encounter. And the youth today is highly communicating with the powerful tool of the Internet. They are building a new world, inspired by the preview of the ’68 movement. By that they develop a new consciousness of the changes that happened since ’68. Long 50 years; we thought they are lost for all times.

Ultimately can we say that your life is a long journey in search of Love? 

Yes, real Love. That is to have overcome the fascism inside. Which I don’t claim having overcome. I have not yet transcended my own violence. I am still faulty like crazy. It is a life-long quest.

Berlin, July 28, 2018.

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De Gaulle Made France A Republican Monarchy.  Julian Jackson is Professor of History at Queen Mary, University of London and one of the foremost British experts on twentieth-century France.  Julian Jackson’s magnificent new biography, ‘A Certain Idea of France – The Life of Charles de Gaulle’, shows how de Gaulle achieved so much during the War with astonishingly few resources, and how, as President, he put a medium-rank power at the centre of world affairs. Much of French politics since de Gaulle’s death has been about his legacy.

Professor Jackson, you just published an 870 page biography of General Charles de Gaulle titled ‘A Certain Idea of France’.  How long did it take you to write it, and why de Gaulle?

I have been working on this particular book for the last five years.  De Gaulle because as a French historian of modern France de Gaulle is what the French call incontournable (unavoidable).  His figure is the towering person of 20^th century France.  If you want to understand 20^th century France you have to understand de Gaulle.

Was he a giant?

He was physically a giant, about 6ft 4inches, when the average height in 1930 was five and a half feet.  He was huge, very tall, but in a country where people are quite small that is very important.  He was a giant literally, but also a giant morally – an extraordinary, titanic personality – and he was the central protagonist of France’s two 20^th century civil wars.

Statue of Charles de Gaulle near Grand Palais, Paris, France

When does he become ‘de Gaulle’?

He enters history in June 1940.  He was a junior general who arrived in London on 17 June 1940 because he refused to accept defeat and that the war was over.  He saw that the defeat of France was only the first battle in what was going to be a world war.  He predicted that this would become a world war and that France must be part of that war on the side of the allies.  Because the official French government headed by Marshal Pétain had capitulated, de Gaulle assumed the position of the true representative of France’s national interest.  In effect he assumed France, self-declared.  The French government had given up, so he said, ‘I have to speak for France.’  He had an extraordinary force of will and an almost inhuman self-belief.  When you have nothing, one suitcase, it is remarkable to say that you are France.

How was that perceived by Churchill, and later by Roosevelt?

Neither of them accepted the claim that he and he alone was France.  Churchill backed him only because originally he hoped other people would join de Gaulle, people of more importance.  He found him impossible because de Gaulle, to show that he was not dependant, bit the hand that fed him – that is Churchill.  To show that he counted he had to be a difficult ally, because being difficult was the only weapon he had.  Therefore he was accepted because nobody else appeared, until it was too late.  He became a great broadcaster: he was a voice to the French before he was a face.  The British, who allowed him to use the BBC, created a monster they could not control.  His BBC speeches made him a figure in France, and gave him credibility which he did not have when he arrived in London.

Did he know that he would win the war?

He realised that the allies would win the war, and he wanted to be sure that France was among those allies.  Thus France got a permanent seat on the UN Security Council, and it got a zone of occupation in Germany.

Can we say that de Gaulle won the war for France without fighting?

De Gaulle would have liked to fight.  He only had his voice.  He is the first example in history of a political leader created by the radio.

When he liberates France in 1944 and goes into power?

He returns to Paris on 24^th August and assumes power that he keeps for 2 years, as head of a provisional government.

By then the soldier has become the politician?

A great politician, with a curious mixture of obstinacy and pragmatism.

Why did he retire in 1946?

Because he refused to accept the parliamentary system of the newly created 4^th Republic!  He wanted strong presidential authority.  He wanted to become what he became in 1958, a republican monarch (his words).  He created the constitution that France has today.  The President of France has greater political power than any other European head of state, and greater power than the US President.

What does he do from 1946 to 1958?

He founds a political party, Rassemblement du peuple français or RPF, to defend his constitutional ideas.  He runs the RPF, gives speeches and fights the 1951 election, but he does not get enough seats.  Having failed to break the 4^th Republic, he retires from political life and writes his memoirs- often using the third person – so the memoirs created this extraordinary myth.  This was from 1954 to 1958.

What happened in 1958?

In May 1958 there is an attempted military coup in Algiers, because the army thinks that the politicians will abandon French Algeria.  De Gaulle comes back to power because the army thinks he will defend French Algeria and the politicians think he will defend them from the army.  His condition for coming back is the new constitution, the 5^th Republic that France has today.

In his years of power, 1958 to 1969, what did he achieve?

He gave Algeria independence, he took France out of NATO, he denounced the Vietnam War, he developed an independent French foreign policy, he recognised communist China, he vetoed British entry to the Common Market and he gave the French an independent nuclear deterrent.  He also created a Franco German Alliance with Adenauer, still (just about!) the core of the European Union.  Most important, he created the political institutions which France still has today.  President Macron’s official photo has him standing in front of a copy of de Gaulle’s war memoirs.

He existed because of Britain and America.  Why did he take France out of NATO and why was he against Britain being in the Common Market?

His vision of Europe was to act independent of the two blocs, the Soviet Union and the United States.  He did not want French defence to be part of an integrated military alliance.  His obsession was independence.

And England?

His vision was of a Europe where France would be the dominant partner, with Germany as the junior partner, and he was very suspicious of Britain’s historic links to the United States.  He thought Britain would be an American Trojan Horse in Europe.  When he opposed British entry to Europe the arguments he used now seem very prophetic – that the British would never be proper Europeans.  They would always look to the United States.

He liked the British and the Americans?

He had a love/hate with the British I think.  Can you ever really like the person to whom you owe everything?  He had to oppose America because America was dominant.  De Gaulle said, “To exist you have to have enemies.”  He was an existential nationalist who believed that history is about the rivalry between nations.

What about Stalin and the Soviet Union?

He believed that France and Russia were two continental powers which shared certain historic interest, one being a fear of Germany.  He rarely used the term Soviet Union, preferring to talk of Russia.  For de Gaulle the nation was fundamental, not the ideology.  In 1944 for example he signed a treaty of alliance with Stalin, and in 1966 he visited the Soviet Union for two weeks.  He believed that France and Russia had shared strategic interests that transcended ideology.

de Gaulle addresses France on the BBC from London

President Charles de Gaulle

President Macron’s Official Portrait

In 1968 he was faced with the students in Paris in the famous May riots?

He was the target.  He had been in power for ten years.  “Dix ans, ça suffit” was a student slogan.  For the students he was an old man and it was a revolution against de Gaulle that almost succeeded.

Why didn’t it?

He was saved by Pompidou who kept the government afloat in ’68.  De Gaulle just survived, but he left power the next year, aged 78.  He died in 1970 when he was 80.  He sat down to play a game of patience and fell over dead at his residence in Colombey-les-Deux-Églises.

After having worked on this book about de Gaulle for five years, what is your conclusion?  Was he as great as Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin?

To me he is as great.  He counts today, because the institutions, the foreign policy of France, are still the ones he created.  Macron could not be Macron without the institutions that de Gaulle created.  Like Churchill he was a kind of prophet in the 30s.  They both saw the danger from Germany.

Was he anti-Semitic?

He was unusual in his almost complete absence of any anti-Semitism.  He famously denounced Israel in 1967 – he believed that the Six Day War was a mistake and gave a press conference where he opposed Israel expansionism, but he did not like or dislike Jews, he was a pragmatist.  The Vichy regime was anti-Semitic and Petain a French womaniser, but de Gaulle was neither of these things.  .

Will de Gaulle endure, like Napoleon and Charlemagne?

He remains a symbol of what France had been and could become.  He is a necessary myth.  There are more streets named after him in France than anyone else.  He transcends Right and Left.  He had extraordinary intuition about the evolution of the world.  Today, the smaller France becomes, the more they think about de Gaulle.

London 2018

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THE BEST BOOKSHOP IN LONDON. Johnny de Falbe runs John Sandoe Books, the independent bookseller close to London’s Sloane Square where he has worked for over thirty years. John Sandoe Books is one of London’s foremost and best-loved independent bookshops, and is a legend among bibliophiles around the world.

Are you one of the very few independent booksellers left in London?

It is true, there are very few booksellers that hand sell books in the traditional way. In the past bookshops made their own selections, and people went to bookshops according to that bookseller’s selection. If they liked it they tended to favour that seller. Changes in the last 30-40 years mean such selections have been surrendered. Instead of leading, today bookshops follow the selection of the press and literary prizes, which are wonderful but have changed the way the book trade works.  With that surrender their staff can be people who don’t necessarily read.

What about John Sandoe Books?

We are a traditional general bookshop, but with a very wide stockholding of about 30,000 books, of which about 29,500 are single copies. Of course we have to have books that win prizes, but we make four lists a year that we put online and give out, and that takes a lot of work.  Those assiduous selections are the flag on our mast.  They are particular to us, according to who we like.

Who is we?

My wife Arabella von Friesen works here too and is very much involved with the selections. Primarily the two of us do it, but all the staff are involved; we have no external readers.

The John Sandoe bookstore at Blacklands Terrace, Chelsea, London, is just round the corner from Sloane Square.

How do you make your selections?

A combination of factors: the subject, the author, the publisher. Some books immediately select themselves. Sometimes a new novel by an author who has previously had a big success says nothing new or interesting. I would rather sell something to our customers that I think is good. Sometimes a book that on the face of it is likely to be quite dull, like The Scottish Clearances by T. M. Devine, is absolutely fascinating and we will try to sell it. The author Shirley Hazzard is wonderful, so we try to sell her work, but you wouldn’t find her much in other bookshops.

Who are your customers?

Our customers were old fashioned English gentlemen families, and we also had a slightly Bohemian element in Chelsea. Now the older account customers are less, but they are still there. We have had an interesting time finding new customers, precisely because there are very few bricks and mortar book shops around. The younger clients didn’t grow up with bookshops. They are often people who read in English but are not resident in Britain.

How do they find out about you?

Online, in newspapers, on Instagram – in short, by word of mouth. Our online business is rising and feels as if it has a very good future. I feel very optimistic at the moment.  I wouldn’t have done five years ago.

How many years ago did you become a bookseller?

I started here in 1986.

Do you still love it?

Yes, I do. I enjoy coming into work. I love the place. I enjoy meeting customers every day.

How did you become a partner?

John Sandoe started this shop in 1957 and retired in 1989. There were two of us working here full time, Sean Jackson and I, but we didn’t have any money to buy the shop, so a customer called Stewart Grimshaw lent us the money and came in as a third partner. In 2000 Dan Fenton came in as a partner and Sean left and went back to Ireland where he runs a bookshop. In 2015 Dan left, so now it’s me running it with Stewart, who works here but not regularly.

How many are you in total?

Five full time and three part time.

Do you suggest books?

Yes, all the time. A lot of people ask, and different members of staff have different relationships with different customers. It’s like going to the hairdresser – you choose the one you know.

What makes a good customer and how many books a year do good customers buy?

A very difficult question to answer. Some account customers buy a hardback every two weeks and their regularity makes them a very good customer, but then we have a customer who comes in and buys £1,000 of books and we may never see them again. I like the customers who come back again and again and again.

Do you sell more hardbacks or paperbacks?

We sell a very high proportion of hard covers and we do a lot of mail order. Most of the sales are in the shop, but a significant proportion is mail order. Fifteen years ago publishers behaved as if Amazon was a promised land, and ten years ago it was the same with e-books. The media, which is closely connected to the publishing industry, told this story about how nobody was going to read books anymore. They got it wrong. E-books are not as successful as people expected. People prefer to read paper books. We see more and more foreign young people who read, and publishers have learnt that Amazon is not their friend. The only defence the publishers have is the other bookshops, who they need to be strong. If Amazon has the monopoly then everyone is in trouble.

How do you compete with Amazon?

People will buy from us if the book isn’t available on Amazon, and if they would prefer to support our selections and bricks and mortar rather than Amazon’s algorithms and tax evasions.

What are the most requested genres?

Fiction, history, biography; travel books, art books, architecture books, design books; gardening books, photography books, cooking books. Wine and poetry. We sell more natural history books these days. Children’s books are seasonal.

Are there some books that sell and sell?

Yes, of course there are Pride and Prejudice and Great Expectations, but there are other books that we sell that others don’t, like Shirley Hazzard or Paul Bowles’ The Sheltering Sky, or Javier Marías, a Spanish author, a great, great author. Pereira Maintains by Antonio Tabucchi is different from Elena Ferrante.  We sold a lot of copies and did a special edition of My Brilliant Friend but now the fashion has gone. We made a very special edition of Elena Ferrante because there was no hardback, so we approached the publisher, before My Brilliant Friend was a huge bestseller.

Do you have famous customers?

People like Tom Stoppard, Elton John, Dominique Bourgois, Mick Jagger, Edna O’Brien. Londoners know us, and have done for years. It is a neighbourhood thing, but nowadays there are fewer people who live in this part of London. Chelsea is not traditionally intellectual, but non-English people, French, Italian, Dutch, German, as well as young people from the Far East, buy books.

Do people still have libraries?

Yes, there are still people who have a lot of books.

Which books do you remember in your long career?

Elena Ferrante’s My Brilliant Friend because of the special edition. We sold huge numbers of copies of John Banville’s The Book of Evidence. I think Robert Edric is brilliant but nobody buys him and now he is mostly out of print. He is a great writer, totally ignored by the media. In non-fiction I remember Sybille Bedford, and selling Richard Ellmann’s biography of Oscar Wilde. There is a big new biography of Wilde by Matthew Sturgis coming out in October and we are holding an event for him here. The Leopard we sell on and on, and The Name of the Rose, Love in a Time of Cholera, William Boyd’s Any Human Heart, Amor Towles’ A Gentleman in Moscow. A Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley. Penelope Fitzgerald always sells lots of copies.

How much do you read?

Less than I used to. I am more occupied with managing the shop and it becomes a more complicated business so I have less time.

Is it a good business?

We are still here and pay ourselves a wage. We are not rich, but make enough to live on.

Will John Sandoe Books finish with you?

No. I look forward to conversations with my younger colleagues to see how we can make a transition. I love doing it, but I don’t intend doing it until I drop!

London. August, 2018

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A WHOLE NEW WAY OF THINKING ABOUT MONEY. James Canning-Cooke is Head of Research at Mulberry Tree Capital, one of the risk-managed hedge funds investing in leading digital currencies such as Bitcoin and Ethereum.  James went to Oxford University and networks with digital currency experts and key players in the sector.

When, how and why did you become interested in the world of Bitcoin?

I was a journalist at Channel 4 and the BBC, and then involved with a computer magazine which interested me in technology.  When I left publishing I invested in real estate in Estonia.  I also looked at Argentina and Russia, because their currencies had devalued and real estate was naturally well priced.  In 2003 the best way to get to St Petersburg was to fly to Finland and take a boat to Tallinn and then another one to St Petersburg.  I stopped in Tallinn for 10 years because it was a charming, historic, UNESCO listed old town and stunningly beautiful, a limited commodity.  We raised money mainly through Scandinavian investors, and deployed over $60 million into a range of real estate projects in Tallinn.  I sold that Estonian development company in 2008 and continued living there and to invest my own money in real estate.  In 2013 I was selling my Volkswagen car and the potential buyer, a Russian, offered to pay me with Bitcoin.  I did some research and said yes.

What did you discover about Bitcoin that convinced you to do it?

To my surprise I discovered that it was a hard currency I could exchange immediately into any other hard currency like dollars or pounds.

A technician monitors and maintains bitcoin mining machines at a mining facility operated by Bitmain in Ordos, China, on Friday 11 August, 2017. Photographer: Qilai Shen/Bloomberg

What are Bitcoins?

Bitcoins are not issued by a bank or backed by anything but mathematics and game theory, which in this case is the belief that other rational people value a commodity in the same way that you do. A Bitcoin is a long string of numbers and letters that exists in the cloud and takes the form of a public key and another string that is called a private key.  Bitcoins are part of a network that a private key gives you access to, and every Bitcoin knows of the existence of every other Bitcoin, and every Bitcoin knows the total history of all of the transactions on the entire network since it started in 2009

Can you explain more?

Each Bitcoin is unique.  A Bitcoin is also a network of computers that communicate with each other.  Every 10 minutes the network agrees on the number of Bitcoins on each of the other computers and the network updates.  That is called a block, and that block goes into the so-called block chain.  So a Bitcoin is also a distributed digital set of accounts that records how many Bitcoins you have and all Bitcoin transactions.

Is it like a currency?

It has many of the attributes of a currency.  A dollar for instance exists physically, and I can take it and give it.  A Bitcoin can be used as a currency or as a store of value, like gold, but it does not need human interaction.

How much are they worth?

Today one Bitcoin is worth $7,000.

How do you get one?

It is a liquid commodity.  You can open a trading account with a broker and buy it on the internet on a licensed exchange.  Then you keep the password to access it safe and you can trade it almost anywhere in the world.  Each Bitcoin is divisible into eight decimal points, so you can buy a cup of coffee or a car.  In Japan for example it is legal currency, and 300,000 shops accept it.

How many Bitcoins are there?

Currently 17 million in circulation in the world.  The inventor decided there can only ever be 21 million.  Every day more are issued through the process called Bitcoin mining, but there is a tapering issuance until 2140.

How did Bitcoin come about?

A person with the pseudonym of Satoshi Nakamoto invented it in 2008.  I think the actual inventor is the American Hal Finney.  In 2008 there were only 20 people in the world who had all the necessary skills to invent this.

Why did he want to invent it?

To solve the problem of internet money; with no central authority, no bank, no controller, and no human interaction.  Initially it was a direct response to the financial crisis of 2008.  A Bitcoin cannot be devalued by central banks printing unlimited amounts, it is a commodity outside of a bank.  Nobody knows what you have, nor can they take it from you, and all the accounts are numbered.  In other words, now everyone is a Swiss Bank, and you have sovereignty over your own wealth for the first time in history.

Is buying a Bitcoin an investment?

A Bitcoin is an investment like any other investment.  You can buy Bitcoin through an exchange or pay cash in a private transaction.  I could meet a holder of Bitcoin in a café, put $1000 on the table and he would transfer some Bitcoin to me and I could see it immediately on my phone.

Is this legal?

Everywhere except in China and Saudi Arabia.  They stopped Bitcoin in China because of capital flight.  Japan and South Korea are now the biggest users.

How many different kinds of digital currencies are there?

Now there are more than a thousand, but many will collapse, because they go bankrupt when nobody uses them and they only have value when they are recognised to be of value.  The big name ones are more likely to be around in a long time.  You can see the top 100 cryptocurrencies at https://coinmarketcap.com/  Now Bitcoin has a market cap of $100 billion, Ethereum $20 billion.

Why are they so volatile?

The price has fluctuated wildly because it’s a balance of supply and demand, and they are a store of value and generate no income.  In that way they are like digital gold, that is to say a non-material commodity that you can take across borders, and now they are beginning to get mainstream.  If you have the password in your head or on a bit of paper you have the Bitcoin.  Bitcoin is a non-material commodity with no nationality.  If you have internet access you can buy and sell Bitcoin, and a lot of people believe Bitcoin will go up in value.

Are they very much traded?

Every day some $4 Billion is traded.  Now there are futures and options, and due to client demand there is even a trading desk at Goldman Sachs.

What is the difference between Bitcoin and Ethereum for example?

Ethereum was started by a 19 year old Russian genius, Vitalik Buterin.  It is a flexi-Bitcoin if you like.  It is programmable money, and can do things like carry out contracts.  Because they can do deals with each other Ethereum allows for what is called a tokenised economy.  This is not just digital money, but clever money.

Is cryptocurrency successful?

It is controversial.  Very few people use Bitcoin to buy things, and hardly anyone is using Ethereum; a lot of the overexcitement has gone, but many clever people are working on the next stage of mass implementation, whether it be for taxi sharing, insurance, stock markets, or solar electricity trading.  It can be used for supply chain management for tracking containers, for example Maersk (a Danish transport and logistics conglomerate) has a deal with IBM (an American multinational technology company) for tracking their containers using the technology.

What does your hedge fund Mulberry Tree Capital do?

Mulberry Tree is a financial vehicle to buy and sell the top digital currencies at a profit.  We trade high conviction positions in the top regulated digital currencies, so we mostly trade in Bitcoin, Ethereum and Litecoin, which is another version of Bitcoin.  This year the technical factors indicated Litecoin was overvalued and we sold it short at a profit.

A Bitcoin ATM

The Russian-Canadian Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin.

Bitcoin compared to the size of the gold market.

What about 50 years from now?  Is this a new way of having money?

Most Bitcoin users are young people under the age of 35, and 36% of young Americans intend to buy a Bitcoin at some time in the next year.  It is a youthful phenomenon to be able to bank on your phone, and digital natives have no problems using it.

So this will grow?

It is very possible that within ten years several sovereign nations will have their own bitcoins.

Will there still be Euros and Dollars?

Yes.  For me it is another payment channel alongside PayPal and my bank account.  For example, when I was in Kiev and needed to buy a plane ticket my Lloyds Bank card was not working, and Paypal is not accepted in Ukraine.  I could only do the transaction in Bitcoin.  Air Baltic used to accept it as payment, and Peach Aviation still does in Japan, but the volatility makes it a nightmare for them.

Will it always be this volatile?

As more liquidity enters the market the volatility will come down.  It is a store of value because it is not correlated to anything else, so if the world economy collapses again it will go up in value..

How many people use it in the world?

Only 5-10 million people have a cryptocurrency app on their phones, which is a very small number.

What are the risks of owning Bitcoin?

The major risk is that the value will go to zero if everyone stops using it.  This is less likely than Bitcoin going up.  There is a risk of total loss, but Bitcoin has a first mover advantage that makes it less likely to go bankrupt.  There is no risk of being defrauded, but if you forget your password then you have lost everything.  Your password must be stored safely.  It is a window, a key to transact, that exists within the ecosystem of money.

Will employees be paid in cryptocurrency in the future?

It is possible, as the markets become more regulated and the volatility goes down

Is everyone a fan?

Not everyone, no.  Warren Buffet said: ‘Bitcoin is probably rat poison squared,’ so he is not a fan.  But Christine Lagarde, Managing Director at the IMF, is a big fan, as is Abigail Johnson, the CEO of Fidelity Investments, and it is accepted in their head office cafeteria.

Is cryptocurrency a refuge for illegal trade?

There is illegal trade in Bitcoin, as there is in cash, but you can do a taint analysis on the previous Bitcoin transactions.  A criminal would be crazy to use Bitcoin because it’s an open network.  When you try to cash out and a real world identity becomes associated with a Bitcoin address then you can be tracked.

Is it a bubble?

The retail investor bubble has burst, and pure speculation made it go down dramatically from a high of $19,783, but at some stage limited supply will make it go up again.  For us, trading the volatility is a good thing, with many similarities to a traditional commodity or foreign exchange trade.

Why not just use dollars or Paypal?

Bitcoin is a whole new way of thinking about money, and major institutions are moving in.  Compared to other insecure values this has international exchange value, and it is a store of value across borders.  It has many of the features of offshore banking, which is being closed down all over the world, and corrupt governments and central banks can’t take it away from you.  The value of a Bitcoin is debatable, but nevertheless we think $6 Billion has gone into cryptocurrency from institutions in the last six months, and remember, there are about a billion people in the world who don’t have access to banks, but they do have access to phones.  With cryptocurrency suddenly everyone is enfranchised.  It allows very poor people to get into the world of commerce, and the small farmer or businessman to communicate his products all over the world, so it has real social value.

London, August 2018

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DELICATELY RELATING TO THE FRAGILITY OF THE HUMAN CONDITION. Annabelle d’Huart is a photographer, a sculptor, a designer and a jewelry-maker.  She views all these fields as different aspects of her career as an artist.

You started your career as a photographer in New York if I am not wrong?

Yes, but first I went to the École Camondo school of arts in Paris.  My grandfather lived in Aix-en-Provence and was at the origin of  the festival of music. He was also a great collector. From the very beginning I was surrounded by art.

But why photography?

The Festival of Photography was starting in Arles when I was 20 years old and the American photographer Ralph Gibson told me: “If you want to become a photographer, call me when you are in New York.”  I went to New York and I was a very good friend of Nicky Vreeland, who is now a Buddhist monk but at the time was an assistant of Richard Avedon, and we spent our days looking at photographs.  I wanted to take pictures of the studios of certain American minimalist artists because there was very little documentation about them at the time.  I am talking about Richard Serra, Donald Judd, Sol LeWitt, Ellsworth Kelly, Brice Marden, Dan Flavin, Cy Twombly, Frank Stella.  I wanted to create a book with 16 pages for each artist and they would choose their own photographs and make dummies of their own pages and write their own texts.

Nobody published the book?

Christian Bourgois the publisher didn’t really react to my proposal but I kept the pictures for 40 years which enabled me to do it myself two years ago. The Museum of Philadelphia is interested in acquiring the lot. A hundred of them were shown at the Paula Cooper Gallery in New York in 2004 .

Annabelle d’Huart created this Sèvres cup in an homage to Émile-Jacques Ruhlmann, a renowned French designer of furniture and interiors.

But how was it to see these artists working in their studios?

With each one of them I took notes, and I had a little Leica camera and I didn’t disturb them at all.  With each one of them I tried to be completely transparent inside the studio and photograph their individual style.

And after that?

I started painting, and my first exhibition was in 1989.  It took place at the Galerie Pierre Passebon and the title of my first exhibition was “Atlantis”. Atlantis, a series of large-scale gouaches, evokes an imaginary cartography from ancient civilizations by means of a slow, piece by piece, progression  from the solid to the liquid. Its continents are the crystallizations of memory fragments composed of deserts or aquatic elements that have an amnestic quality.

After that for 15 years I made sculptures, first in 1996, Golden Dream of Our Origins, twenty-three terracotta and gilded bronze vases standing on rusted tripods, set on a rectangle of finely sifted earth that measures 4 meters by 8 meters. This installation brings into play a combination of contrasts: rust and gold, bronze and terracotta, clay and gold leaf.  And then I had the opportunity to have an atelier in Marrakesh and my work was inspired by a text of Isaac Newton that says that stars are like needles balancing on their points with an unstable and precarious equilibrium.  I related that to the fragility of the human condition.  I sculpted women that are not like reclining odalisques, they are standing, they express themselves and they are wounded.  I realised twenty-four of them coated with a white colour and reflecting in a pool in cedar wood, white and gold. Each of the sculptures is edged, slashed, impaired in its medium as if at the most critical point of its deployment. Jean and Terry de Gunzburg  bought 14 sculptures of 1.75 metres and 2 metres height,  another version made in bronze.  The originals were exhibited in the pavilion of the Menarra Gardens in Marrakesh.

And after this work what did you do?

Since 1991, I dedicated myself to the creation of single pieces of jewelry. One of these, a necklace, Talisman, has become part of the collection of the Guggenheim museum, distributed by Les Amis du Musée National D’art Moderne. I also made a collection for Maison Chanel that they used in their haute couture collection in winter 2000. Then, in 2007, I worked for Yohji Yamamoto.  When I was asked to go to Tokyo the first thing he said to me in a very intimidating office, when I had the light of the sun shining right in my eyes, was: “I don’t like jewelry.”  I said that my jewelry was inspired by the famous painting of Edvard Munch ‘The Scream’, and he said OK and they became the inspiration for the collection Stormy Weather.  Afterwards I worked on a very personal collection inspired by Benvenuto Cellini and Renaissance cabinets de curiosités, that was shown at Galerie Gladys Mougin in 2003.

How come you worked with the manufactory of Sèvres?

The curator of the manufactory of Sèvres came to my exhibition “Songes d’or ou L’Origine rêvée” and then contacted me and I worked with them on three projects.  First a complete table service inspired by Atlantis, second an homage to Ruhlmann, and then from 2007 to 2010, as an artist in residence  at Sèvres-Cité de la Céramique I created a unique series of three hundred ceramic jewelry pieces called Flotsam (Choses de Flots et de Mer), inspired by the sea and by the reading of Victor Hugo’s book, Toilers of the Sea (Les Travailleurs de la Mer). They were shown at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in 2008 and at Galerie Anne Sophie Duval in 2010. Sixty pieces belong to the permanent collection of the Sèvres Museum.

Then I worked for five years for the Manufacture des Gobelins, (Shitao, Savonnerie tapestry), le Mobilier, National-Lace Makers du Puy (Les dentelles du Ciel in the French embassy in Beijing).

“Songes d’or ou L’Origine rêvée“, “Golden Dream of our Origins “, 1994, Annabelle d’Huart

“Oiseau coquillage”, Noctiluque, Sèvres City of Ceramics, Annabelle d’Huart

Detail of “Shitao”,  2018, Sèvres City of Ceramics, Annabelle d’Huart. Photo by JB Hugo.

Since when did you paint?

In 2007 I started drawing again, and in 2016 I had a show at Piasa Gallery of my Sea Princesses series, inspired by Leonardo’s Imbroglios.  As for painting I just finished a series of seven 190cm x 290cm canvasses, Shitao; four of them were part of the exhibition L’Expérience de la couleur at Musée de Sèvres.

How would you describe your life?

I live in Paris in a very sober way.  I develop the things that I know how to do and I draw for my exhibition that will take place in the Spring at Galerie Pixi – Marie Victoire Poliakoff.  My work demands lot of time.  Sometimes I work three years in a row without taking a vacation.  I love to go to Italy.  I love to travel and I have travelled a lot, but we live in a very accelerated time and this is not good for the hand and the concentration.  I am in need of calm.

Is Paris an inspiring city?

It’s a familiar city for me.  I live very calmly and days go by very quickly since I work 9 to 10 hours a day.

What are you looking for?

I admire fluidity, I want my work to be very light and harmonious.  For me shape is quality, it’s a way of living. I practise yoga, just to be in good shape. I observe art and nature.  I want peace.  I take care of the people around me. Family and friends are very important.  Work is very enjoyable but I am conscious of the fragility and the volatility and vulnerability of our time.  Everything goes very fast, but a work of art has no age and style is the only thing that makes the difference.  I look forward for a comprehensive exhibition of my work.

Do you think you are properly recognised?

No, but for me it is not an issue. What matters is work.

Who are the collectors of your work?

Hélène David-Weill has bought a very beautiful necklace (in silver and ebony, Talisman) and nine pieces of the Sèvres Collection. I also worked for the Picasso family. I made jewelry for Sydney, the previous wife of Claude Picasso, then I did sculpture for Arielle de Rothschild and also for Sao Schlumberger and many others.

Paris, September 2018

Portrait of Annabelle d’Huart by SHEILA METZNER for Vogue

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