British GQ November 2017

Now, it probably won’t surprise you that organising the seating plan for our annual Men Of The Year Awards is almost as strenuous, and certainly just as time-consuming, as choosing and catching our winners. Each year we will have an internal debrief soon after the event – often when the sore heads have yet to completely leave the premises – but then we leave the whole thing alone until January, when, on the second or third day back in the office, the team start planning the following September’s event. No one can quite believe it when I call a Men Of The Year meeting just after Christmas, but then they know that to put it off, even until February, will make everything so much harder for everyone (including ourselves) down…

Catch more of Baldwin busting Trump Head to the British GQ YouTube page to go behind the scenes of this issue’s cover shoot and hear Baldwin share more about life as the (impersonator) president of the United States. 10th anniversary Grooming Awards Find out which gadgets, moisturisers, fragrances and more got your vote as we announce your top product picks following the awards ceremony on 2 October. Halloween costumes for lazy men We can no longer ignore that fancy dress is a “thing” in the UK. Whether you’re more of a Patrick Bateman or a Marty McFly, we have some seriously easy suggestions at GQ.co.uk that could actually make you look good. Sit at chef Mark Hix’s kitchen table Watch our breakfast time Facebook Lives with GQ Contributing Editor Mark Hix as he shows you what to…

Tony KELLY It’s time to start planning your winter wardrobe. In this issue, you’ll find Philipp Plein’s new Autumn/Winter collection, styled by Anna Trevelyan and shot by Tony Kelly, which sets the designer’s heavily sequined, black leather garments against bright blue skies, palm trees and Plein’s home, La Jungle Du Roi, in the South of France. “It was the perfect backdrop and we even managed to borrow his gardener’s cherry picker to shoot a portrait of Philipp and his girlfriend elevated 50 feet in the air,” Kelly says. Now that’s our kind of winter. Carlotta CONSTANT This year marks GQ’s tenth annual Grooming Awards. In association with Philips and organised by Acting Style & Grooming Editor Carlotta Constant, no less than 101 products were tested by a panel of nine judges. “For our…

I’m currently researching the biography of another gargantuan name in rock: Eric Clapton. As always with such projects, I wonder what testing experiences may lie ahead. Since my 1981 Beatles biography, Shout!, I’ve “done” The Rolling Stones, Sir Elton John, Buddy Holly, John Lennon, Sir Mick Jagger and Sir Paul McCartney. In between, I’ve taken time out for novels, short stories, feature films, plays and musicals. But there’s no escaping the rock biographer label; just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in again. Actually, what I’ve been writing for all these years is a single epic story: how British popular music conquered the world in the Sixties to create a seemingly eternal template. After The Beatles, it was logical for me to move on to The Stones, since…

THE RISING STAR Eleanor Tomlinson knows all about those two impostors, triumph and disaster. In 2013, she landed the role of flame-haired Demelza in BBC’s Poldark, now on to its fourth series. By contrast, a few years earlier she auditioned for Game Of Thrones only to crash out. Not that she’s complaining. Talking to GQ while filming the BBC’s Ordeal By Innocence with Bill Nighy, 25-year-old Tomlinson recalls advice given by her parents (mother, Judith, a singer; father, Malcolm, actor/horse-racing commentator). “They are always telling me that it’s an incredibly competitive industry so I should never be too grand to audition for anything.” The advice has served her well. This month she stars in Loving Vincent, an ambitious biopic of Van Gogh, mixing live action with animation and featuring 65,000 oil paintings by…

By Talking Heads (Sire, 1977) With the vinyl revival still in rude health, Dylan Jones selects an overlooked classic to hunt out next time you’re flicking through the crates “Music,” said WH Auden, “can be made anywhere, is invisible and does not smell.” This was Talking Heads when they started out. They came from New York, but could have come from any state; they were deliberately contrary and decidedly anti “rock”. Looking back now, it’s difficult to imagine just how shocking Talking Heads were in 1976 and 1977, when they began supporting the likes of The Ramones. For while The Ramones were the perfect example of hard-core cartoon punk, they still looked like rockers, as many new bands did at the time: they wore denim jeans, leather jackets and skanky old T-shirts and…