British GQ October 2018

This month we are celebrating 21 years of the GQ Men Of The Year Awards, 21 years since we launched it at Café De Paris, celebrating the likes of David Beckham, Arsène Wenger, Robbie Williams, Norman Cook, Ewan McGregor, Irvine Welsh, The Verve and a couple of knights of the realm, Sirs Michael Caine and Paul Smith. Since then, the venue has moved from Coventry Street to Home in Leicester Square to the Natural History Museum to the Royal Opera House and, finally, to Tate Modern, the GQ Men Of The Year Awards’ current residence. In the two decades since the awards launched we’ve attempted to celebrate the men and women who have made the most impact in their respective fields, be it film, fashion, politics, sport, restaurants, music, technology, media,…

Behind the scenes with GQ’s Men Of The Year See some of the biggest names of 2018 strike a pose at their GQ Awards photoshoots. ‘10 Coolest Things Of The Week’ Treat yourself to the coolest buys, new releases and general must-know products and concepts each Friday at 5pm. (Remember, payday is never far away…) Lou Stoppard tackles the trending topics From our love of dad trainers to crime podcasts, the GQ writer fills you in on the latest trends. ‘Best Menswear Items Of The Week’ Want to see which pieces make our list of essential purchases to boost, refine and revamp your wardrobe? Check in every Monday at 6pm for your fashion fix. Meet the GQ Grooming Awards 2019 judges Our star-studded panel have been testing the biggest launches in order to award the best fragrances, moisturisers, shampoos…

Matthew BROOKES There are Men Of The Year cover stars and then there are future kings. Matthew Brookes had the honour of photographing HRH The Prince Of Wales at Kensington Palace. “The Prince was charming,” says Brookes. “We only had 15 minutes, but it was incredibly exciting. My feet didn’t really touch the ground.” Kevin POWELL Writer Kevin Powell met Chadwick Boseman, GQ’s International Man Of The Year, in 2006, pre-fame. “The beautiful thing about him is he’s just as humble today,” Powell says of the Black Panther star he interviewed herein. “It’s inspirational that a shy boy from the American South would become a man with a year like this.” Mary McCARTNEY When Paul Weller found out he’d won our Songwriter Of The Year Award, he had one request: to be photographed by the…

Introducing! Political sketch writer and author of I, Maybot: The Rise And Fall John Crace is GQ’s new online columnist. Read his insights every Monday at GQ.co.uk. It’s likely that Theresa May still has nightmares about her speech at the Conservative Party conference last year. Those of us who sat through it certainly do. It was a political car crash like no other, one even the scriptwriters of The Thick Of It would have dismissed as too improbable. The prime minister had come to Manchester in search of redemption, to apologise for having conducted one of the most disastrous and unnecessary general election campaigns in modern British history, which had cost the Tories their overall majority in the House Of Commons, and to convince the party she was still the right person…

What is cultural appropriation exactly? I mean, does anyone other than possibly Kim Kardashian actually know? (This is a joke, of course. Kim Kardashian has no idea what cultural appropriation is.) Well, shall I tell you who definitely doesn’t know? Whiny, self-entitled, careerist, talentless souls who, so scared are they of straying from their noble, pious lanes of self-congratulation, would accuse a white middle-class schoolboy of cultural appropriation simply for having all the lyrics to Drake’s “God’s Plan” Sharpied onto his Palace bumbag. Listen up, kiddo: if you’re an overprivileged brat from Cobham, Surrey – that’s me – who owns a pager, likes his do-rags tight (at the weekends) and his denim as saggy as a failing Second World War parachute, just because you dress like the Wu-Tang Clan’s weed gofer…

“The shock of the new, founded on the excellence of the past”: thus runs Charles Finch’s billing for Drugstore Culture, the new arts, culture and politics magazine he’s publishing. Well, we say magazine. While Finch has put GQ Political Editor Matthew d’Ancona at the helm, and – as is traditional for magazines – there are interviews (with David Miliband, for instance) and essays (David Thomson on Emily Blunt and Claire Foy; Peter Hoskin on video game streaming), the first issue is a paperback book, albeit one that’s full of decidedly non-paperback tropes (multiple paper stocks, colour photography, alluring graphic design). Why the contrariness? Drugstore Culture defines itself not as a publication but as a “movement”, which also launches online this month. “Our crazy new world needs to be understood through…