The Rake August 2016 - Issue 47

I don’t get it. You would think that when the first man emerged from the primordial evolutionary process, got hooked into Descartes’s declaration of self-awareness — “Cogito ergo sum” — and realised his sentient empathetic state of being, he would have turned to his fellow man and, together capitalising on their complementary aptitudes, they would have made their surroundings more habitable by starting to cultivate Pinot noir, so as to make their lives truly awesome. And as man began to make forays into the hinterland around him, he would discover other groups with their own civilisations and share in their knowledge and exchange ideas so as to make better Pinot noir. At least, that is the idyllic version of human nature. Unfortunately, the reality is at times more bleak and…

Britain, I left you alone for just two bloody weeks. As a recently married man, this country’s new epoch of confusion has darkened the prospect of parenthood. See the damage that can be done when your back is turned, even for a short time. Though in the U.K. it’s not particularly fashionable this summer, the team at Rake Towers and I have decided not to resign from our great offices of state. In case you were worried. I am not one for trends, really: I find it too hard to keep up. Comfort is key to my tastes, which is why, on the first day of returning to work after my honeymoon — post-Euro exit of two sorts (one political, one sporting), as well as a lost Prime Minister, a political…

Alexei Hay spent his early years in Miami, Tehran and New York. After graduating in literature from Brown University, he assisted a range of photographers. Drawing upon the Catholic range of lighting techniques that he encountered as an apprentice, Alexei began to develop his own approach to portrait photography. Known for playing light and fast with different genres and applications of the camera, Hay cast his net far and wide over the commercial arena. He feels that photography is one way of living up to his rabbi’s maxim of “keep your eyes on your teachers”. He lives with his wife, Batsheva, and two children on New York’s Upper West Side. Alexei photographed Jonah Hill for this issue’s cover story. As well as The Rake, Nick — a historian and author, and…

In 1921, a teenage Laurence Olivier went on a school outing to see Henry IV, Part II. Later, he rhapsodised in his diary: “Prince Hal. Oh, that magical Prince Hal, the most beautiful male I have ever laid eyes upon. His profile was that of a god, his figure pure Olympiad, his voice the most beautiful instrument I had yet heard, and even his name suggested the utmost in glamorous masculinity — Basil Rathbone.” Olivier wasn’t the only one with a bit of a Rathbone for this dark-eyed, charismatic actor, his double-breasted chalkstripes and clipped RP tones equally immaculate. “Lean as a wolfhound, saturnine, cerebral, and icily commanding, with precise and knife-like diction, he made an ideal arch-enemy for many of Hollywood’s top stars,” wrote Robert A. Juran in his 1995…

As we approach the 500th year since the Spanish Flota deIndias weighed anchor on its golden sands, swanningaround Latin America’s best-preserved colonial city is ararefied, unrivalled pleasure. Having strolled past the mildewed sea wall, then a couple ofmiles south to the Habana Vieja, and taken in the Cuban Baroque,Neoclassical and Moorish piles therein, the discerning visitor iswell advised to hop into the back of an old Chevrolet or Buick —vintage 1950s and sixties American cars are as much a part of theurban landscape here as upmarket SUVs are in South Kensington— and traverse 115 miles or so west, to Pinar Del Río. There, at theFábrica de Tabacos Francisco Donatien factory, 50 or so employeesroll the most impeccably constructed, sense-assaulting cigars onthe planet. A proactive approach is, naturally, encouraged. Back in the capital,…

There was never much doubt what Tyrone Power woulddo for a living. His father had been a star of Americantheatre and his great-grandfather a popular comedianin mid-19th-century Ireland, both under the same name.His grandfather, Harold, had been a performer, too, as aconcert pianist, and his mother, Helen Patia, had even met herhusband in a theatre company. What no one could have predicted, however, was howcompletely he would surpass them all, his fame so vast that hewould be recognised throughout the world. For three years at theheight of the Golden Age of Hollywood, from 1939 to 1941, hewas officially the ‘king of the movies’. Some 25 years on, he wasstill sufficiently iconic to appear on Peter Blake’s cover for The Beatles’Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, and even today heremains one of…