Esquire UK January/February 2021

RICHARD BENSON is an Esquire editor-at-large and the author of the award-winning family histories The Farm and The Valley. PETER BRADSHAW is the chief film critic for the Guardian and the author of The Films that Made Me. ED CAESAR is an Esquire editor-at-large, a contributing writer to The New Yorker and the author of a new book, The Moth and the Mountain: a True Story of Love, War and Everest. TOM CRAIG is a multi-award-winning documentary and portrait photographer whose work has also appeared in British Vogue, Vanity Fair and The Sunday Times. BAY GARNETT is a stylist, editor, author and creative director whose work has appeared in British Vogue, V and Self Service magazines. AL KENNEDY writes novels, short stories, non-fiction and books for children, as well as for stage, screen and radio.…

‘We must get it out of our heads that this is a doomed time, that we are waiting for the end, and the rest of it, mere junk from fashionable magazines. Things are grim enough without these shivery games’ — Saul Bellow, Herzog Put aside, if you can for a moment in this era of shivery games, your preconceptions, if you suffer from them, about semi-autobiographical novels by horny, egocentric, middle-aged white dudes (decd), and dig on those lines from Bellow’s 1964 masterpiece. It’s not Bellow speaking, not directly. The sentences quoted are from a letter — a diatribe, as he admits — written by Moses Herzog, the book’s protagonist, a failed academic, a cuckolded husband, an absentee father, a disappointment to others and to himself. Herzog is a crank, a holy…

On a transatlantic night-flight six years ago, the Danish-American actor Viggo Mortensen took out his notebook and started to write a short story. He was returning home from his mother’s funeral in upstate New York; there, he had been struck by the subtle ways in which different people’s recollections of her diverged. “I found it interesting that the same story, told by each person, was slightly different,” he says. “It proved that memory is subjective.” A few days later, he returned to the short story, somewhat hesitantly. “I didn’t expect much. I thought it could be like when you wake up in the middle of the night with an idea and you write it down, and when you read it the next day you go, ‘That’s shit.’” But he was pleasantly surprised…

At a time when most of us have become more acquainted with our home furnishings than we ever thought possible, Ikea has made 70 years of its iconic catalogue available online. Dating from 1950, the back catalogue of catalogues is as much a social history as it is an opportunity to review wardrobes down the decades — one you can peruse free from rowing couples, car park struggles with irregular-shaped boxes, or suspiciously cheap hot dogs. Launched to coincide with the exhibition The Ikea Catalogue Through the Ages at the Ikea Museum in Älmhult, Sweden, the archive is also a trove of retro-interior kitsch. Marvel at the Miami Vice-style living rooms from 1985! Rub your eyes at the optic nerve-fraying bedspreads from 1958! Applaud the Zelig-like tenacity of the Billy…

Can a grape be fashionable? Not in the same ephemeral sense as an oversized trench coat perhaps, but it can certainly be on a roll, which is where the Italian red grape variety Nebbiolo finds itself. It has form for a start, thanks to a series of great vintages in its Piedmont heartlands, including a stellar 2016, which have piqued the interest of drinkers and collectors alike. It has backstory, too; in Barbaresco and Barolo it is known as “the grape of kings and the king of grapes”. To stretch the fashion analogy a little further, the grape’s very nature could be described as somewhat diva-like. “The beautiful thing is that Nebbiolo is to Italy what Pinot Noir is to France, it’s our most noble and aristocratic grape variety, which is…

Reflecting on his 2020, Berwyn admits it’s been a mixed bag. “World pandemics,” he says. “And voice messages from Drake.” The 24-year-old Trinidad-born, Romford-raised singer, songwriter, rapper and producer is unlikely to forget this year in a hurry, and not for entirely traumatic reasons. In June, he made his debut live performance on Later… with Jools Holland, the BBC show with a track record of ushering in future superstars. You could see why its bookers were keen. If ever there was a time when viewers would be receptive to a soul-baring artist trading in poignant life lessons and introspective UK rap, you’ve got to imagine that time is now. Three months into the first national lockdown and a week after the countrywide Black Lives Matter protests, even Later…’s quarantine rebrand Live…