Esquire UK

SIMON GARFIELD is the author of many books on an unusually diverse range of subjects including BBC Radio 1 (The Nation’s Favourite), fonts (Just My Type), the colour mauve (Mauve), cartography (On the Map), the Aids crisis in Britain (The End of Innocence), dogs (Dog’s Best Friend) and, most recently, the encyclopaedia (All the Knowledge in the World). For this issue of Esquire, he flew to New York to witness Elvis Costello’s 10-night stand at the Gramercy Theatre in Manhattan. ‘TEN NIGHTS, 250 SONGS’, PAGE 142 TEO VAN DEN BROEKE’S memoir, The Closet, will be published in September. A former style director of Esquire, he is now editorial director at Soho House. ‘THE FISHERMAN’S JACKET’, PAGE 168 AL KENNEDY writes novels, books for children, short stories and non-fiction, as well as for stage, screen…

AN EVEN OLDER AND MORE GRIZZLED MAGAZINE editor than I once told me that sometimes the job is less to be the manager of the team than a cheerleader. Rather than raging from the dugout at the poor positioning of the players, better to stand decorously on the sidelines in an overcomplicated outfit, shouting encouragement and kicking your feet in the air, if you still can, and let the heroes on the pitch get on with the business of being brilliant without interference. The cover story of this issue is one of those happy occasions where I can take no personal credit at all. The writer Simon Garfield came to me with the idea of following Elvis Costello through all 10 nights of his recent residency at the Gramercy Theatre, in Manhattan,…

There are many things Gareth Southgate is. An unexpectedly decent manager of the England men’s football team; a considered, measured thinker; a setter of unlikely menswear trends. One thing he is not — at least not yet — is a Shakespearean hero (or, given the fickle nature of the business he’s in, a Shakespearean villain). This was one of the first conundrums with which James Graham, a writer of celebrated works for stage and screen, was faced when he decided to make Southgate the central figure in his new play, Dear England, which premieres in June. “Gareth is a gentle, thoughtful, quiet, shy person, who is doing something extraordinary,” says Graham, 40, who has cycled from his home in south London to join me in a small, stuffy meeting room in…

Guy Gunaratne was 16 on 9/11. On a London bus, in fact, when a friend called to say that the Twin Towers had fallen. Four years later, on 7/7, Gunaratne’s father phoned, warning against going into central London. The memories are a little hazy. But, when diving into the past, murky recollections are often more evocative than contemporary news reports. “I think it’s preferable to simmer with your feelings and memories, however imperfect they are,” the writer, now 38, says. “They’re coated with a weird, dark nostalgia.” We are discussing these traumatic events, in a central-London café in February, because they provide a backdrop for Gunaratne’s new novel. Mister, Mister, which is out later this month, recounts the story of Yahya Bas, the son of an absentminded English woman and just-plainabsent…

Watches tend to be ranked in terms of prestige by their number of complications. There are many other factors – weight; case size; precious metals; proprietary movements; heritage – but, in the main, a watch with a tourbillon or a perpetual calendar will have an altogether higher appeal than one without (but lower than one with both). Not only are such timepieces progressively harder to engineer, but finding space for more complications is like trying to fit a car with a second engine. But, as Audemars Piguet’s new Code 11.59 Ultra-Complication Universelle RD#4 attests, more is always possible. The highlight of a series of barnstorming 2023 releases from the sought-after Swiss brand, this new watch is AP’s first ‘ultra-complicated’ automatic watch in its 147-year history. In total, it offers 23 complications…

“I’m a little fried,” Ebon Moss-Bachrach says, slightly apologetically, on a Zoom call from Chicago. It is late February, and the American actor has been up all night filming for the second, much-anticipated season of hit dramedy The Bear. Anyone who has watched the TV show — one of the most acclaimed of last year — will know why: each expletive-filled episode, charting the euphoric ups and disastrous downs of a neighbourhood sandwich shop, was stuffed with screaming matches, kitchen meltdowns and flashes of violence. In one episode, Moss-Bachrach’s character is stabbed in the butt. No wonder he is frazzled. The Bear centres on Carmen “Carmy” Berzatto (Jeremy Allen White), a chef with big ideas and bigger arms, who takes over his dead brother’s restaurant in Chicago’s River North area. Moss-Bachrach,…