Tabla de contenidos para January/February 2021 en Esquire UK

the 1959 Corvette Stingray Racer from General Motors 42 As a kid growing up in the 1980s, nowhere was the gulf between American and European car design more starkly demonstrated than in the faux-wood-panelled station wagon (an estate to us), made famous by Clark Griswald’s Family Truckster in National Lampoon’s Vacation. Huge, kitsch and blocky with spongey suspension and cornering that needed to be phoned ahead, here, inexplicably, was a car that seemed to have been inspired by a bookcase. It was proof that despite the automobile’s status as the defining global product of the 20th century, America did things differently. This slightly sneery “them and us” stance doesn’t tell the whole story, of course, and the actual reasons why such different approaches to car design developed on opposite sides…

CHAD ELWARTOWSKI AND NADIA SUMMERGIRL were a couple with a dream of living out on the ocean. They would make their home on a purpose-built floating structure, far from any shore, and create a life of total freedom — unencumbered by the trappings of society or the edicts of any government. They could spend their days snorkelling, scuba diving, sailing, kayaking, playing strategy games, reading, eating spicy Thai papaya salad (Summergirl), and tacos and chilli chicken wings (Elwartowski), and drinking the occasional piña colada. Eventually, perhaps, others would join them, in neighbouring structures, and a community would form. It’s a movement known as “seasteading”, and the concept had captivated Elwartowski since he first stumbled across it online in 2008. For years, seasteading had been discussed on forums, and talked about…

Typically, Esquire cover stars wear clothes from the new collections of the leading fashion brands — and so they should. Occasionally, though, it’s fun to mess around in the dressing up box. Vintage clothes — or “pre-loved” to use the grisly, contemporary vernacular — presumably always have a story to tell, but it’s not always easy to tease it out. (Inanimate objects: so tricky to interview.) In special cases, though, as in the example of the baseball jacket photographed above, and worn by our cover star, Vanessa Kirby, on page 115 of this issue, we know exactly where an item is from and some of where it’s been. Eagle-eyed readers will find a clue in The Rolling Stones’ logo (the famous Mick’s lips) and the legend “US Tour ’81”. For…

‘We must get it out of our heads that this is a doomed time, that we are waiting for the end, and the rest of it, mere junk from fashionable magazines. Things are grim enough without these shivery games’ — Saul Bellow, Herzog Put aside, if you can for a moment in this era of shivery games, your preconceptions, if you suffer from them, about semi-autobiographical novels by horny, egocentric, middle-aged white dudes (decd), and dig on those lines from Bellow’s 1964 masterpiece. It’s not Bellow speaking, not directly. The sentences quoted are from a letter — a diatribe, as he admits — written by Moses Herzog, the book’s protagonist, a failed academic, a cuckolded husband, an absentee father, a disappointment to others and to himself. Herzog is a crank,…

Can a grape be fashionable? Not in the same ephemeral sense as an oversized trench coat perhaps, but it can certainly be on a roll, which is where the Italian red grape variety Nebbiolo finds itself. It has form for a start, thanks to a series of great vintages in its Piedmont heartlands, including a stellar 2016, which have piqued the interest of drinkers and collectors alike. It has backstory, too; in Barbaresco and Barolo it is known as “the grape of kings and the king of grapes”. To stretch the fashion analogy a little further, the grape’s very nature could be described as somewhat diva-like. “The beautiful thing is that Nebbiolo is to Italy what Pinot Noir is to France, it’s our most noble and aristocratic grape variety, which…

WHEN I WAS 17, I GOT A GIRLFRIEND. The relationship divided my four older siblings along two lines: some who felt I was too young and would be corrupted by it, and those who thought it worthwhile. In the first camp were two of my older brothers, and in the second, my sister, and my oldest brother who saw himself as a philanderer. He’d had his first sex around that age and saw in my move a manliness that aped his own, especially because my girlfriend was considered by most of the boys who lived in our gated estate to be a great beauty. The sibling to whom I was closest at the time, Joseph, was in the first camp, however. His objection stemmed mostly from his religious devotion to…

I NEVER HAVE LIKED IT, THE EARLY RISING. As a child in the north-east of Scotland, I watched our winter nights gnaw at both ends of the day and force us to wake in darkness. My summer nights were uncannily glowing and restless until my alarm kicked me in the ears at 7am. Springs and autumns were more moderate and fragrant with the scent of leaves being born and of leaves dying. This made for calm, and calm leads to sleep and I need 10 hours of that every day. Even Christmas mornings never made me leap from my bed with eager delight. Holidays should surely involve a long lie-in. After my parents’ divorce, I celebrated Christmas with my grandparents. I was a generally surly teenager but my grandfather’s urgent…

“IT WILL BRING ABOUT NOT JUST A NEW ERA of civilisation, but a new stage in the evolution of life on Earth. The computer programmer is now a minor god.” That was the software engineer and University of Washington professor Pedro Domingos, in 2015. He was writing about the computer algorithm, and to be fair he wasn’t the only one getting excited. Google’s artificial intelligence computer AlphaGo had just beaten the world champion at Go, apparently the world’s hardest board game, and Yuval Noah Harari had written a clever book called Homo Deus stating how, thanks to algorithms and data, computers would soon be even cleverer than him, and left to do all the work while we humans went on permanent holiday. I don’t know how Domingos and Harari feel…

Reflecting on his 2020, Berwyn admits it’s been a mixed bag. “World pandemics,” he says. “And voice messages from Drake.” The 24-year-old Trinidad-born, Romford-raised singer, songwriter, rapper and producer is unlikely to forget this year in a hurry, and not for entirely traumatic reasons. In June, he made his debut live performance on Later… with Jools Holland, the BBC show with a track record of ushering in future superstars. You could see why its bookers were keen. If ever there was a time when viewers would be receptive to a soul-baring artist trading in poignant life lessons and introspective UK rap, you’ve got to imagine that time is now. Three months into the first national lockdown and a week after the countrywide Black Lives Matter protests, even Later…’s quarantine rebrand…

When the screenwriter Russell T Davies announced he was leaving Doctor Who, the show he resurrected for the BBC in 2005 with unprecedented global success, to concentrate on telling gay stories, he meant it. In 2015, his drama Cucumber broke ground with its portrayal of the turbulence of gay relationships in middle age. It was accompanied by two interconnected series: Banana, an anthology show focusing on the LGBTQ community and Tofu, a documentary series about modern sex culture (“cumin-your-face frank” — the Guardian.) All three were named for different states of tumescence. In 2018, Davies wrote A Very English Scandal, the hit mini-series based on the book of the same name, concerning the Jeremy Thorpe scandal of the 1970s, with Hugh Grant playing the disgraced Liberal Party leader and Ben…

1. T-shirt by Esquire x Sunspel, £70 Cut from long-staple Pima cotton for softness and comfort, this is the best T-shirt money can buy. Sunspel has been making the finest menswear essentials for 150 years, and we’re honoured to have the brand feature in this year’s Edit. 2. Socks by Esquire x The Workers Club, £20 The Workers Club is the place for classic, astonishingly well-made workwear. These vintage-inspired varsity socks are knitted in England from a combed cotton that offers superior smoothness and strength. 3. Holdall by Esquire x Bennett Winch, £450 Perfectly sized for a weekend getaway, Bennett Winch’s holdall is also ideal for commuters thanks to a padded laptop pocket, external “grab” pockets and a detachable waterproof compartment for gym kit and toiletries. 4. Trainers by Esquire…

THE CALENDAR WAS MERCILESS. In the first lockdown, weeks passed in which most days looked the same, I became intimately acquainted with the interior of my house, and the only thing that truly changed was the ontological weather in which my family’s time passed: gloomy, with outbreaks of despair; breezy, with sunny periods. Meanwhile, each morning, a calendar notification would spring up in the bottom-right corner of my computer screen, reminding me of a ghost schedule I had planned in the before-times. With a few exceptions, the calendar suggested things I could no longer do, in places I could not visit, with people I might never hug again. Even the humdrum prompts — things like “call accountant” or “childminder away, pick up from schl” — acquired an exotic tinge. Some…

RÓISÍN MURPHY SINGER/SONGWRITER, ON HER LAST LIVE PERFORMANCE “It all went by in a big blur. I was like a bullet from a gun that night, I had a lot of energy. Recently, I saw some footage of myself at that gig getting into the crowd and I took off my gloves and threw them away so I could hold people’s hands and stuff. And it feels like a lost era.” Murphy’s album Róisín Machine is out now STEVE MCQUEEN ARTIST/FILM DIRECTOR, ON INEQUALITY IN THE UK “There’s a certain level you can get to, and then there’s a barrier. And I think that’s where we are now… We’ll see how that changes, possibly, after recent events. But in order for us to move on and progress, there has to…

WHAT A MOMENT TO HAVE A MOMENT, what a year for it to be your year. Were the world operating under pre-pandemic conditions then Vanessa Kirby, the actress best known for playing Princess Margaret in the first two series of Netflix’s The Crown, would be on lap two, or lap three, or who knows how many laps of an international victory tour, ears ringing from the applause, eyes smarting from the camera flashes, head spinning from the intoxicating cocktail of jet lag and Champagne and acclaim. Instead, Kirby’s time is… now? In the middle of… this? So rather than trotting the globe she’s mostly been at home, like the rest of us, in her case in south London, with her sister and their two housemates, watching old films, cooking big…