Esquire UK

ADAM GOPNIK is a staff writer for The New Yorker and the author of many books, including bestsellers Paris to the Moon and Through the Children’s Gate. His new book, The Real Work: On the Mystery of Mastery, will be published in March. For Esquire, he writes about another string to his bow: his adventures in acting, especially a cameo in Tár, Todd Field’s current film, in which Gopnik appears opposite Cate Blanchett. ‘NOTES OF A BAPTISED PENGUIN’, PAGE 146 MISAN HARRIMAN is an activist, an entrepreneur and a photographer whose work has appeared in Vogue and Vanity Fair. He is also chair of the Southbank Centre in London. ‘BECOMING IDRIS ELBA’, PAGE 94 TABITHA LASLEY is the author of Sea State, which was shortlisted for the Gordon Burn Prize and the Portico Prize. ‘BURN BEFORE WRITING’, PAGE 85 JOHNNY DAVIS used…

FANCY A PINT? INCREASINGLY, THE answer to that most companionable question is a polite but definitive, “no”. And even when it’s, “Go on, then”, the pint might have a crucial difference from all previous pints you’ve ever sunk. There’s a missing ingredient, a significant one: alcohol. While booze sales drain away, pubs are shuttered, and the liquid lunch goes the way of the office romance (they still happen, but management no longer approves), a cottage industry is thriving, serving drinkers of beer and wine and spirits who are interested in the taste and the ritual, but the buzz, apparently, not so much. “Sober-curious” is the mildly infuriating buzz-phrase. “Mindful drinking” is the other. And while zero-alcohol beer, previously soapy and unconvincing, alcohol-free wine and the dreaded mocktail have long been available, alongside…

Going green? McLaren introduces a hybrid supercar The manner in which car manufacturers tend to launch their latest models has followed the same pattern for years. Fly a troupe of journalists and, more recently, influencers, to a glamorous hotel somewhere sunny, with nice roads and scenic backdrops within easy reach. On arrival, ply with drinks, canapés and strategic marketing messages. Next morning, put them in a car and wave them off. And cross your fingers. The hope is that everyone returns in one piece and that nice things are written about the particular machine in the spotlight. As an invited guest, it’s all very pleasant and, at the same time, very odd. Smiling people in branded T-shirts usher you from hotel to car park to snack trolley to toilet break, only stopping…

It’s rare that a film’s title doubles as its elevator pitch, but here is Cocaine Bear, a movie about — what else? — a bear on cocaine. Made by the American actor and, more recently, director Elizabeth Banks, the horror-comedy-thriller tells the story of a black bear that embarks on a murderous rampage through Georgia. There are drug jokes, there is death: Paddington, this ain’t. And, if the joyful reaction to the trailer is anything to go by, people really dig this bear who can’t get enough of the white stuff. “I think it is a great reminder not to take everything so fucking seriously,” says Banks, 49, of the film’s irreverent approach, on a Zoom call from Los Angeles. “It’s like going to the amusement park and getting on a…

Dive watches remain the number-one bestselling style for men, though it can be hard to fathom why. It’s unlikely you’ve ever met anyone who’s used one to go diving. Professionals have relied on computers and decompression meters for the last 40 years and virtually any watch released today — including the Apple Watch — is waterproof to at least 10 metres, which is plenty for any non-advanced scuba activity. Yet the classic diver style endures: rugged, outsized and usually equipped with a unidirectional bezel (the clicky outer ring designed to record time spent underwater). The fact is, dive watches look cool. They feel authentic, signal a certain active lifestyle and look solidly made and tough, usually because they are. (The appeal of being able to fiddle with the clicky outer ring shouldn’t…

For a chef and restaurateur whose ethos is so fundamental — some might say foundational — to the current London restaurant scene, the news that Margot Henderson OBE, founder of Rochelle Canteen in Shoreditch and wife of St John’s Fergus Henderson, is opening her very first pub is a big deal. But it’s the fact that The Three Horseshoes is not in the capital, but in the tiny village of Batcombe in the West Country, that will really set the cat amongst the (confit) pigeons. “Somerset is such a rich, amazing place full of incredible suppliers,” is how Henderson describes the county in which the 17th-century coaching inn is located; she’s currently renovating it with a view to opening in March. “It’s a chef’s heaven. I was driving around the first…