13 DECEMBER 2020

Instagram’s
five
five brightest
fashion brands
Up in lights:
the best festive
illuminations
Tome raiders:
cracking the great
rare book heist

‘Working less on movies, working more on life’

An exclusive interview with George Clooney
 13 DECEMBER 2020

The Observer Magazine

49

In this
issue
Up front
7 Eva Wiseman We’re having too
many kids – but don’t blame the parents?
Plus, the Observer archive
8 This much I know Author Mary Gaitskill
Features
12 Gorgeous George Actor and
campaigner George Clooney on family life
under lockdown – and new beginnings
20 Tome raiders A daring heist made off
with £2.5m worth of rare books… But
investigators were able to spoil the plot
32 26 Soft centre Rap artist Stefflon Don on
toughing it out as a musician and a mum
Food & drink
32 Nigel Slater Festive main courses in
the second of our Christmas series
36 Jay Rayner Chinese food to make you
feel lucky. Plus, perfect port to savour
Fashion
26 38 Over the rainbow Online boutiques
have never been more colourful
Beauty
46 43 Sugar rush Kaleidoscopic makeup and
a moisturiser that zooms in on dry skin
Interiors
44 Going with the flow A cosy Thameside
flat. Plus, interior design books to treasure
Travel
46 Light fantastic Our pick of the 20 best
festive light displays around the UK
Gardens
49 Winging it Why the easy-going moth
orchid is a houseplant like no other
Self & wellbeing
51 Tech mates How AI helped a woman
with dyslexia. Plus, Séamas O’Reilly
Dear Mariella
38 54 The dilemma “I can’t choose between
two men.” Plus, Sunday with Kirsty Wark

Contributors Ruby Fresson makes

bright, bold and
Ugandan-British photographer
and director Danny Kasirye
The Observer
Magazine,
Kings Place,
humorous illustrations lives and works in London. 90 York Way,
London N1 9GU
Tom Lamont is a journalist which she hand-draws While studying film at (020 3353 2000)
who lives in London and writes in pen and ink, then university, he picked up magazine@
regularly for the Observer. colours digitally. It’s an interest in fashion and observer.co.uk
Printed at
For this issue, he speaks to a technique inspired photography. He always aims to YM Chantry,
our cover star actor by the time she spent in Japan bring a sense of purity, 41 Wakefield
Business Park,
George Clooney (p12), where she learned about joy and beauty to his Brindley Way,
and compares notes woodblock printing in Kyoto. work. This week he Wakefield
WF2 0XQ
about being the father She’s also happens to be big focusses on the hugely
of young children. His map and flag enthusiast. Here, talented rap artist
favourite Clooney she illustrates our feature on Stefflon Don, for our Cover image
movie is Out of Sight. a daring rare book theft (p20). interview (p26). Anette Nantell

The Observer Magazine 13.12.20 5

 Up front

Eva
Wiseman
Having kids increases
global warming. But
don’t blame parents
 @evawiseman

she is renouncing casual sex
W
hen I had my daughter I felt like the
first person to have a baby; now I’ve
had my son, I feel like I might be the
last. An academic study into how
young people factor climate change
into their reproductive choices makes for dark reading,
with 96% “very or extremely” concerned about their
potential children in a climate-changed world. For some
the concern is so severe they’ve decided not to have
children at all. “I can’t in good conscience bring a child
into this world and force them to try to survive what may
be apocalyptic conditions,” one 27-year-old woman said.
to remain childless either in an attempt to save the
planet, or for fear of the child having to live through its
death rattle. It is entirely sensible – in fact there are few
rational reasons to have a child. But I do feel uneasy
about the load of responsibility and sacrifice placed on to
individuals, rather than companies or countries.
The problem for those surveyed is that having kids
increases global warming. But if our polluting industries
and the governments that support them limited their
energy use, the children themselves would not cause
such harm. If world leaders made serious changes,
actively reducing carbon emissions and the use of fossil

From the and drugs in favour of a safe

archive
A look back
at the Observer
Magazine’s past
‘Sex in the 90s’ was
the cover tease for the
Observer Magazine of
29 November 1987, when
Suzanne Lowry’s short
story synthesised some
of the contemporary fears
about Aids. It was ‘a fantasy
about the meritocratic
middle classes… a
cautionary tale to show
what could happen to
them, caught between the
old selfish libertarianism
and the new hypocritical
conformism’.
Reflecting that ‘the time
between the introduction of
the pill and the emergence
of Aids was an interval of
strange hubris, the only
period of history in which
people believed that sex
was a wonderful “safe”
recreation,’ Lowry foresaw
a ‘growing return to a more
“normal” perception of sex
as being dangerous as well
as ecstatic’.
The cast included
Joe London, ‘a famous
has-been: a 60s swinger
turned media man, hack and
novelist’ and his 18-year-old
daughter Nadira (‘shrewd,
streetwise but pregnant,
marriage’). Joe has a ‘ballet-
dancing, non-fornicating
girlfriend’, Esmerelda.
Nadira’s mother, Annabel,
a fashion PR and Joe’s
ex-wife, is having an affair
with a ‘marvellous French
angel boy’ – her assistant,
Estèphe – who has just
announced he has Aids. He’d
been a prostitute in Paris
and hadn’t told her about it.
It transpires that they’re
all sleeping with each other
and as the introduction
stated, ‘The lesson of Aids
is that when you sleep with
someone, you sleep with
everyone that person has
ever slept with.’
In a postmodern twist,
we realise that Joe is writing
this as fiction even though
it’s real. On his way out
to meet his ex-wife for
sex, Joe ‘picked up a pack
of personalised Richard
Branson SuperMates II’. The
only thing that was even
more of a passion killer was
the sign-off: ‘Next week:
Peter Kellner’s projection
of the political scene in the
1990s.’ Chris Hall
More shocking even, were the 6% of parents who
confessed to feeling remorse about having children.
fuels, the basic needs of children, like staying warm or
even travelling abroad, need not be so impactful.
One 42-year-old father painted a Goya-like picture
of his children’s adult life, “a hot-house hell, with
In a conversation like this the stakes are so high that
the largest reasons for having children – love, hope –
wars over limited resources, collapsing civilisation,
failing agriculture, rising seas, melting glaciers,
can be dismissed in an inch of ink. But, well, maybe
that’s for the best.
starvation, droughts, floods, mudslides and widespread Because, of course, the choice to procreate and care for
devastation”. After reading this, I put the kettle on a stranger for the rest of your life, to carry them first in
and had a small cup of tea and waited until my hands your belly and then on your back and then in every line
stopped shaking. Bloody hell. Literally, bloody hell. on your face is a mad and objectively silly idea. And yet,
Man, I feel for that dad, singing his children to sleep some people will continue to do it in the same way that
before curling up on the landing and rocking, slowly. As they will continue to fall in love. This is what humans do.
well as pressing upon one of my archipelago of dready And each child’s future will always be uncertain, because
bruises, his quote made me consider the intellectual that is the nature of future. But we know that humans
compromises required in order to have a baby. adapt, because we’ve seen ourselves adapt.
There are the physical details – a person growing In the same way that having a baby makes a person
inside you – which, at the beginning especially, are so suddenly aware of steps a buggy can’t manage, so it can
unlikely they feel more akin to a metaphor or fable than radicalise them, creating a family determined to improve
science. There is the naming of the child, a task better their planet’s future. To have a baby is to indulge in an
suited to a god, who at least would not be burdened ancient form of magical thinking, where fairytales are
with class prejudice or negative associations with snotty made flesh. Where all terrors must be swallowed and
classmates. There is the folding of tiny empty vests, the their stones spat out, clean now, and ready to plant. ■
fantasies of their talents. And then, the stories one must
tell themselves to stave off the terrors that come free ‘public art’, and believe they
with every child. Terrors including but not limited to: the
child rolling off the sofa, going hungry, being bullied or, One more are the work of aliens, come
to deliver us from… all this.
at the far end of the continuum, being drowned aged 38
in a town-sized mudslide. This catastrophising leads to
such things as the purchase of knee-pads or, in the case
thing… Soothing activity of the
week: watching old BBC
of this 42-year-old dad, terrible, terrible regret. clips of Tony Hart drawing
Which is not to say it’s irrational. All signs, yes, lead with pastels. Sink into them
to horrible devastation, and indeed, it is a good idea for like a hot bath.
a child to wear protective clothing when careening on
their scooter down a bumpy hill. But these doom-tinged The Masked Singer, the ITV
prophesies are not unique to those with climate anxiety OK I’m obsessed with the talent show where disguised
– they are baked into parenthood. Ask any group of monoliths. Have you been celebrities perform for
childless young people today if they want kids and many following the story of the a panel of judges, has
of the reasonable ones will say no, partly because it is no shiny silver monoliths that released pictures of the new
longer taboo to be honest about wanting to keep your have been appearing across series’ masks. They’re the
independence, and live a beautiful life of freedom with the world, only to disappear stuff of nightmares. The
the responsibility of only your own arse to wipe, and days later? The first, in worst? A grandfather clock
partly because until one has a child, such a thing remains Utah, was spotted last that appears haunted by
abstract and completely bananas. It is a trick question, month. Another was seen a bad uncle. The other
grounded in the privilege of choice. There are thousands in Romania. At the time of worst? A saveloy emerging
of reasons not to have kids – the fact that the world is writing a third has appeared, from a packet of chips,
ending is simply one of them. in California. I choose to the expression on its face
I do not begrudge for a second these people choosing ignore haters who say it’s one of primal pain.

The Observer Magazine 13.12.20 7

Up front
This
much
I know
Mary Gaitskill, novelist, 66
Interview MEGAN NOLAN
Photograph TABITHA SOREN
I could easily have been a completely
ruined person. I could easily have
committed suicide when I was in my
20s. I could easily have been someone
who could not do anything, just living
in a hovel in poverty somewhere. That
may sound crazy, but I’m basing it on my
family. Both my sisters are living that way.
When I was younger it was really difficult
for me to exist normally.
I didn’t know how to behave socially.
I don’t mean that my behaviour was wild
or insane, I just often felt like I did not
know what other people were talking
about. The things I said were very
startling to people and I didn’t know why.
With a great deal of effort I got
myself into a different place where I could
not only negotiate society, but I could
8 13.12.20 The Observer Magazine
actually work for myself, write books and
have some degree of success in a world
that’s pretty hard to get any success in.
I find that quite miraculous.
My 40s were a great decade.
I remember being surprised by that
because, like a lot of people in my
generation, I was brought up to believe
that when you’re a 42-year-old then
everything’s terrible. But I began to feel
confidence in my writing that I had not
felt entirely before, and although being
married wasn’t a goal for me of any
kind – in fact, I viewed it with a certain
degree of scepticism – I enjoyed being
married to my husband.
People talk about how awful the
menopause is, and it was certainly
challenging, but for me it had
a tremendous sort of creative energy.
There was a lot of moodiness and I found
it difficult to know which feelings were
real and which were just tornadoes going
through me. That was hard, but it was
also interesting and very rich.
When I teach, I find it really moving
to see students respond to work that
is very old – Katherine Porter or James
Joyce or Chekhov. They can’t always, but
sometimes I can tell it’s clicking with
them and that’s a beautiful thing.
Climate change could wipe out the
human race, or cripple the human race
to the point that there won’t be people
People talk about
how awful the
menopause is,
but for me it had
a tremendous sort
of creative energy
reading 100 years from now. Even if
I don’t live to see it – and I suspect I will
because there is monstrous longevity in
my family – but even if I don’t, the idea of
it is disturbing and I think it’s affecting
everyone mentally that you can’t count on
human history to go on the way it has.
I’m in touch with some former
students and one of them wrote to me the
other day and said she had a really nice
dream of being in a class of mine. She
had me dressed in this cream-coloured
leather pants suit. She told me it was
incredibly nurturing and calming…
a great dream. And I thought: wow, that’s
wonderful that I could have created such
a nice space in somebody’s mind that
as she’s having a hard time during the
pandemic I would appear in her dream
teaching about writing. I loved that she
would find that comforting. ■
Lost Cat by Mary Gaitskill is published by
Daunt Books at £8.99
 ‘It’s been a
crappy year
but we
will come
out better’
Marriage and fatherhood have given George Clooney a new perspective on life,
work and the world we all share. While his young twins play outside,
he talks to Tom Lamont about outsmarting war criminals, battles with Boris
and dinnertime debates with Amal

Photographs ANETTE NANTELL


D
ad-chat with George Clooney, father
of two. While the actor’s twin three-
year-olds, Ella and Alexander, are
out on the family tennis court,
learning to ride their bikes, Clooney
sits in a curtained edit suite inside
his Los Angeles home, wondering
how they’re getting on out there.
“They’ve learned how to get going fast,” says the 59-year-
old who, unless otherwise specified, speaks at all times in
the measured, half-ironic, woodsmoked tones of just about
every leading man he’s played in a quarter-century career.
“They just haven’t learned to use their brakes yet.”
Clooney rubs at his two-day beard, anxious, fond. He
wears a fawn-coloured polo shirt and he has his grey hair
cropped short. I think I notice that slightly wild-eyed look
of someone still marvelling at the fact of their parent-
hood, and I ask him, is he a scaredy-cat dad, always trailing
behind his children with his arms outstretched in case
they fall? Or is he a let-them-fall-to-learn-about-the-hard-
truths-of-the-world sort of dad?
“Put it this way,” Clooney says. “The idea of them falling
is not my favourite thing. And I try to give ’em enough room
to make their mistakes.” It’s a familiar dilemma. Nobody
wants to be neglectful of safety. And nobody wants to hard-
code adult anxieties into them when they’re young and
carefree. Clooney says: “There’s a lot of things you try not
to do that your own parents did. Not because your par-
ents were bad parents. But because you can see the way it
has affected you… You’re trying to break the chain, man.”
Clooney, who is always looking for the humour in things,
but is ready and eager to be intellectually engaged, is spo-
ken about wistfully by interviewers as the Goldilocks of
celebrity conversation. Never too reserved. Never too
much. He is a good and open communicator of himself
and his story. His sentences tend to be crisp. If we all got
second or third attempts at conversations, we would all
sound like George Clooney. He’s great first go.
“Hey,” he says, smiling. “Where are you?”
We’re talking on Zoom and the actor, leaning into his
screen, squinting, has discerned that I’m sitting in an
uncommon work environment: a four-year-old’s bedroom.
Lockdown has necessitated space-sharing and reconfigu-
ration in our flat. It’s Covid feng shui. Clooney understands.
“My old office is now a nursery.”
The Clooneys – his wife Amal is a well-known lawyer
and human rights advocate – have spent almost all of the
lockdown in the Hollywood home George bought back in
the 1990s, when he first became famous in the hospital
drama ER. As Clooney went on to have more and more suc-
PREVIOUS PAGE: DAGENS NYHETER/TT/SIPA USA. THIS PAGE: LARRY BUSACCA/GETTY IMAGES’ NETFLIX
cess, as an actor in movies (working most profitably with
directors Steven Soderbergh and the Coen Brothers), as
a director himself (seven movies since 2002), and latterly as
a businessman (he sold a tequila company in 2017 for hun-
dreds of millions of dollars), more residences have been
added. The Clooneys have joints in Lake Como, in Cabo,
in the Lake District. But this one in the Hollywood Hills,
with its three bedrooms, three carports, office-turned-
nursery and tennis court currently serving as a bicycle
speedway, is home.
“This has been a crappy year for everyone. Started badly
and ran badly all year long, until recently… But I’m very
lucky. I ended up having a successful career. I wound up
living in a home with some space in it. We can walk around
outside.” They haven’t left the compound much since
March, Clooney says, because “my son has asthma. They
say it’s not so bad on young people. But do we know that?
We don’t know anything about the longterm of this yet.”
The nearterm needs of children and the longterm
prospects for the world: these are the driving themes of
a new movie that Clooney has made for Netflix. The Midnight
Sky, which Clooney directs as well as stars in, tells the
story of a future world in collapse. Clooney’s character is
a scientist, stuck in the last habitable place on Earth: the
North Pole. There, he has to look after a seven-year-old
girl who has been left in his care, while also trekking
across the melting ice to get to a satellite station
and warn a team of astronauts not to return to their
The Observer Magazine 13.12.20
Star power: (from top) with wife Amal; in The Midnight Sky
doomed planet. One of the astronauts is pregnant.
It’s a long movie. Clooney wanted to combine the thrills
of the space blockbuster Gravity with the more patient,
landbound, quest-based The Revenant. But the melancholy,
elegiac, goodbye-to-planet-Earth tone works, and the
ending kept me awake for a night. Clooney’s duelling con-
cerns, as a dutiful dad and a dutiful
liberal, are clear to read. “You worry
about your immediate family,” is
‘Your current
how he describes these concerns,
“and at the same time you worry
about all of the Earth.”
I ask him what sort of real-
prime
talk chats he’s had with his twins
about this stuff. The environment.
The wobbly state of global politics.
minister
Nothing yet, says Clooney. They’re
three-and-a-half. “For now we’re
still doing, ‘Hey, this is how to
literally
make Nutella look like poop in your
nappies. Go and show it to Mom.’”
Mom, during lockdown, has been
compared
working on the case of a journalist
from the Philippines, Maria Ressa,
who was found guilty of libel and
me to Hitler’
faces years in prison. (“A sinister action to silence a jour-
nalist,” is how Amal Clooney has described the charge.)
When I ask Clooney what family dinnertimes have been
like lately, he says: “Fascinating. We talk. Y’know, it’s just
Amal and I having dinner every night. We talk about the
Ressa case, that’s a huge topic of conversation right now.”
They’ve also been talking about Viktor Orbán, the prime
minister of Hungary. “I got in a fight with Orbán this week,”
says Clooney, coolly. It was one of the stranger interac-
tions between politics and showbusiness. Clooney had
been on the promotional trail, talking about his new movie
and explaining that he saw this apocalypse story, set 30
George Clooney
years in the future, as a playing-forward of current events.
Pandemic. Climate crisis. Populist politics and the erosion
of civil liberties, as embodied in rightwing figures such as
Orbán. The Hungarian government issued a statement
calling Clooney a fool for speaking out of turn.
He groans. “Amal uses this evaluation of where we are
in the world. The people who are exposing crime and cor-
ruption are being put in jail. And the people committing
the crimes are free. So – yeah! – it’s an interesting time.
And I think it’s certainly worth picking fights with peo-
ple like this, because I would be embarrassed if I wasn’t
standing against someone like Victor Orbán.” He carries
on: “I just feel like, with kids this age, having young chil-
dren in a period of time when there’s all this craziness,
I wanna make sure I can say, ‘These are the things we did
to stand against this moment in history.’ Not just to make
them proud. But to make their world better.”
Clooney grew up in Kentucky, on the fringes of show busi-
ness. His aunt, Rosemary, was a well-known singer and
actor who appeared in White Christmas with Bing Crosby.
His father, Nick, was a radio broadcaster and television
anchorman. In 1968, when Clooney was around six, he
was credited as a stagehand on his father’s TV show. Still,
Clooney recalls, “When I decided to move to LA to try to
become an actor, my dad really went after me. I remember
him saying, ‘You’re giving up your education!’”
And fair enough, Clooney thinks now, from the per-
spective of fatherhood himself: “He wasn’t wrong.” But
young George left for Hollywood anyway, and he has
come to think, since, that “pre-supposing anything on to
your children in terms of what you want from them” is
doomed. If he tries to think of his twins coming to him
one day, to announce bold and foolhardy decisions of their
own, “I hope I will be at a place where I can say, ‘All right.
Make your mistakes.’”
Clooney’s own are there for everyone to see on his IMDB
page. 1988: Return of the Killer Tomatoes. 1997: Batman
& Robin. These are the two silliest examples from his
back-catalogue and I pick them out because they bookend
his emergence to fame, which came from playing Dr Doug
Ross on the late-Thursday-night hospital drama ER.
It started broadcasting in 1994. Pretty soon, something
like 40m people were staying up until 10.59pm every
week to watch. Opportunities everywhere, the newly
famous Clooney made a trio of movies, between 1995
and 1997, that shaped so much of what was to come over
the next 25 years.
He did a vampire movie with
Robert Rodriguez and Quentin
Tarantino, From Dusk Till Dawn,
in which he played a violent but
charming crook. Though audiences
were most used to seeing him as
a saucy hospital doctor, Clooney was
oddly plausible in this role. Then he
did a romcom, One Fine Day, oppo-
site Michelle Pfeiffer. Fine. But not
a genre he would revisit more than
once. And he put on a mask and
a cape and he played Batman in
Batman & Robin, a $125m block-
buster and a dismal, haunting flop.
When I ask him what aspects of
his younger life he would approach
differently, as a man on the cusp of
60, he says: “Now, the obvious answer to your question
would be to joke, Batman & Robin. And I wouldn’t do it at
all.” Actually, the flop was an important lesson for him, he
says. “I learned that if you’re gonna be held responsible
for a film, instead of just being an actor in that film, you’d
better pick better films.”
It had worked really well when he played a charming
crook in From Dusk Till Dawn. So he did this over and over
again. “I’ve been a crook in almost everything good I’ve
ever done. Out of Sight [1998], crook. The Ocean’s 11 tril-
ogy [2001, 2004, 2007], crook. In Michael Clayton [2007]
I was a crook.” Add to this his brilliant performance as ‹
15
 Feature

‹ escaped convict in O Brother, Where Art Thou?, the Coen

Brothers movie from 2000, and his pitch-perfect voicing of
the title character in Wes Anderson’s Fantastic Mister Fox,
from 2009, and you’ve got a career absolutely dominated
by agreeable villainy.
He won an Oscar in 2005 for his role as a CIA assassin
in Syriana, by which time Clooney had started writing and
directing his own stuff, starting with 2002’s Confessions of
a Dangerous Mind, about a cheery game-show host who is
also a killer. It hasn’t left him with a lot of things he can
show to his kids.
“Maybe One Fine Day?” Clooney suggests. “Though
I do kiss Michelle Pfeiffer, so the twins would be, like,
‘Eeeeeeergh! Bluuuurgh!’ I think some of the Coen Brothers
movies I could get away with showing them. Well – maybe
not that one where I’m building a sex machine in the base-
ment.” That would be Burn After Reading, from 2008. In
2009 and 2011, Clooney was in a couple more acclaimed
movies, Up in the Air and The Descendants, and in 2013 he
was perfect as a slightly sleazy, ultimately heroic space-
man opposite Sandra Bullock in Gravity.
Up to 2013 he was working a lot. Clooney’s first mar-
riage had ended years earlier, in the 1990s, before he got
famous on ER. Through his most productive professional
decades he was mostly single, and obsessive about being
busy. “Taking projects because I felt like I needed to keep
the continuum and keep working,” he says. “Everything
changed when I got married to Amal.”
It’s worth taking a slightly more forensic look at his life
in this period, as his freewheeling workaholic singledom
came to an end and Clooney began a new phase of life. He
has always loved telling stories, and the months strad-
dling 2013 and 2014 gave rise to a lot – like the one about
Clooney getting so rich off the success of Gravity (he earned
a percentage of its box-office) that he gathered together his
14 best friends and gave each $1m. In cash.
Now Clooney tells me another story, about the very ear-
liest weeks of his relationship with Amal (then) Alamuddin,
in February 2014. That month he was in the UK to talk up
a new movie he’d directed and co-written, The Monuments
Men, about soldiers at the tail-end of the Second World War ‘I knew Trump as the guy
who were tasked to protect priceless works of European who was, like: “What’s that
art from Nazi looters. Innocently enough (he now insists), cocktail waitress’s name? Is
Clooney had mentioned a belief that the United Kingdom she single?” That’s literally
might return the Parthenon Marbles to Greece. all he was’: George Clooney
“And that,” Clooney tells me, picking up the story,
“was when your current prime minister compared me to
Adolf Hitler.”

‘After all the

Excuse me?
“Boris Johnson. Literally com-
pared me to Hitler.”
Clooney doesn’t often let the
measured, cool-bean persona slip
stage. In the nearer term it set them
on their way to marriage, in Italy in
September 2014.
pretty insane Looked at one way, I say to
Clooney, you owe everything –
With the strides being made by the foundation, recently,
in helping to prosecute war criminals in Darfur, and given
the recent outcome of the US election, Clooney says he’s
feeling more optimistic about the future than he has in
a while. Way-back-when, in the 1990s, Clooney used to

stuff in the
– but now he giggles like a school- your marriage, your kids, your see Donald Trump on the New York party circuit. “I knew
boy, reddening, properly amused. present state of domestic content- him as the guy who was, like, ‘Hey, what’s that cocktail
“It still makes me laugh. Bit of ment – to Boris Johnson. “You’re waitress’s name? Is she single?’ That’s all he was. Literally

US, there is
a stretch. But he said my comments right,” he says. “So, what, I should that’s all he was. And to see that become president, it felt
about the Marbles made me an art send him a thank you note? I’ll send as though the world had gone crazy.” Now, he says, as the
thief like Hitler was an art thief.” him a note. A thank you note. And page turns to president-elect Joe Biden, “The hope starts.

now some
Anyway, here’s the weird part, a comb.” After four years of some pretty insane stuff coming out of
says Clooney. Being compared to With Amal, Clooney set up a foun- the United States, there is some normalcy.”
a fascist by a major British politi- dation in 2016 with the intention of We’ve been talking for a while. Clooney rubs his beard

normalcy’
cian, “It was kind of great for me! holding to account international fig- and stretches his neck. Outside, riding up and down on
Because Amal and I were secretly ures who have abused human rights. their bicycles, his twins could be up to anything by now.
ANETTE NANTELL/DAGENS NYHETER/TT/SIPA USA

dating at the time. No one knew.
There was all this uproar about
what I’d said. And I was meeting Amal for dinner that
night.” By coincidence, she had been hired as a lawyer to
advocate on Greece’s behalf for the return of the Marbles.
“She goes to me, ‘Y’know I’ve worked on that case? So lis-
ten. Here’s a lot of stuff you should say.’ She told me about
Unesco rulings. Gave me all this info.” Next time Clooney
spoke about the matter in public, hoping to settle Johnson’s
hash, “I was just loaded with facts. Fantastic!”
That dinner discussing Boris and Hitler set the tem-
plate, in a way, for the family-table conversations they
would be having seven years later, in lockdown. George
and Amal against the rakes and the bullies of the world
If you’re wondering why you haven’t
seen him in all that many films in
the past few years, this is why, says Clooney. “Working less
on movies, working more on life. I gotta tell you, it’s been
pretty fun chasing some war criminals around.”
One of the things the foundation does is try to help
on financial sanctions for those who profit from war
crimes. Clooney really, really likes this bit. “We have foren-
sic accountants we’ve hired away from the FBI to find
these illicit bank accounts. People who are supposed to be
safeguarding their people and, instead, are profiteering
while those people are murdered? It’s really nice to be able
to freeze all their assets and make them suddenly broke.
It’s about as fun as anything can be.”
I expect he’ll go out and check on them once our conversa-
tion is over. We’re in that wrapping-up, valedictory phase
of a good and thorough chat, a time for by-the-ways and
final thoughts. He says: “It’s been a crappy year. It has. But
we’re gonna get through it. I believe that with my whole
heart. If I didn’t believe that I don’t know how we’d raise
kids in this world. We’re gonna get through these things
and my hope and my belief is that we will come out better.”
At last he leans into his camera. He raises an eyebrow.
“And, hey, listen, when we’re done here – let your kid have
their bedroom back, will ya?” I promise I will. ■
The Midnight Sky is in select cinemas now, and on
Netflix from 23 December

The Observer Magazine 13.12.20 17

E
verything went exactly to plan. Late on the
evening of 29 January 2017, Daniel David and
Victor Opariuc parked up and made their way
towards the Frontier Forwarding customs
warehouse in Feltham, less than a mile from
Heathrow. After cutting a hole in the fence, the men made
their way to the side of the building and scaled a wall to
the roof. There, they cut through a skylight and lowered
themselves on to shelving inside the building. The ware-
house burglar alarms stayed silent; the men had carefully
avoided tripping motion sensors positioned by the doors.
Once inside, with several lookouts posted around the
surrounding industrial estate, the men took their time.
Over the next five hours and 15 minutes, they broke pad-
locks off packing cases and placed items inside 16 large
holdalls taken from inside the warehouse. The men
escaped the same way they had entered: out through the
skylight and back into the night.
About 12 hours later, Alessandro Meda Riquier received
a phone call from his shipping company. Riquier was at
home in Italy when he learned that 52 valuable books
that were meant to be on their way to a major trade fair
in the US had been stolen. Riquier was one of three book
dealers affected by the theft. In total, around 240 books
and manuscripts were taken, including works by Sir Isaac
Newton, Galileo, Leonardo da Vinci and the 18th-century
Spanish painter Francisco de Goya. The total value was
estimated at more than £2.5m.
Riquier immediately called the Antiquarian Booksellers
Association, a trade body for rare book dealers in the
UK, providing details of the stolen items for circulation.
Going through the list of missing books, he thought
about the time the collection had taken him to assem-
ble. Thirteen years before, he had given up a law career
to pursue his passion for book collecting. “At one point of
my professional life I said, ‘I don’t want to be a lawyer any
more,’” he tells me. “I want something that gives me more
satisfaction.” Riquier would spend months researching
books before negotiating to acquire them. “I started from
zero,” he says. Now, more than half his stock had disap-
peared. The collection was insured, but that was only of
limited consolation. “It’s not a question of money,” he
says. The stolen items were not things you could “buy
just around the corner”.
Historically, book thieves have come in two varieties.
First, there are the rogue custodians, those who exploit
their privileged access to literary treasures. In June this
year, Gregory Priore, an archivist at the Carnegie Library in
Pittsburgh, was convicted of stealing more than 300 rare
books and other artefacts estimated to be worth around
£6m over a 20-year period. Then there are the academics
– or, at least, those who profess an academic interest in the
texts they go on to steal. In 2009, Iranian author Farhad
Hakimzadeh was convicted of stealing pages from as many
as 150 rare books at the Bodleian and British libraries,
smuggling a scalpel into reading rooms to remove maps
and illustrations for his personal collection. The following
year, William Jacques, a Cambridge University gradu-
ate dubbed the “Tome Raider”, was jailed for a series of
thefts from the Royal Horticultural Society library. Jacques
was believed to have carried out his crimes over several
months, signing into the library under a fake name before
walking out with rare books hidden beneath his jacket.
What these cases illustrate is that book theft is a slow
and surreptitious crime. Thefts typically take place
over many years. Sometimes, the books are taken for
the thief’s personal pleasure. Alternatively, identifying
marks are removed and the books are sold before any-
one has noticed they are missing. But the Feltham heist
was different. Several experts told me they could not
recall a similar crime, in which hundreds of books had
been brazenly stolen in a highly targeted raid. David ‹

A
proper
page
turner
When £2
books we.5m of rare
an audac re stolen in
at Feltham ious heis
t
police kn in 2017,
were dea ew they
a profess ling with
But the s ional gang.
unexpecttory had an
ed twist…

Words MARK WILDING Illustration R FRESSON

The Observer Magazine 13.12.20 21
 Book heist

‹ Ward, a borough officer with Hounslow police, who was says, “It’s more at the for fforefront
refront of people’s minds.” Twelve men have so far been sentenced to more than
assigned to investigate the burglary,
urglary, knew immediately With increased awareness
awaren ness of provenance issues and 48 years in prison for their part in the burglaries. During
that the break-in was the work of professionals. “They did the high-profile nature off the th
he Feltham heist, how did the their trial, the court heard
he how gang members were flown
it with a degree of finesse,” he says. “A less-sophisticated gang expect to sell the loot
lootedtedd items? “It’s a good question, into the UK from Rom Romania, then swiftly flown out again,
way would be just to jam a door or open. But that obviously because what was stolen w was so rare that you couldn’t w ith stolen property ta
with taken out of the country by different
would trigger alarms. Going in n via the ceiling, while quite have gone to a book fair an nyywhere in the world and been
anywhere individuals. The crime wave was solved in part by analysis
dangerous, was the safest way foror them not to be detected.” able to sell them,” says Elli is.. Art sold on the black market
Ellis. of DNA evidence found at the scene of some of the break-
During the investigation, Ward and his colleagues tends only to fetch up to 10 0% of its open-market value, ins – a metal bar from Feltham, a drinks can in Southall,
trawled through 50 hours of CCTV footage, eventually he adds. And while stolen na artwork has been used as col- a half-finished bottle of o milk in Milton Keynes. Most of the
identifying two cars used in the burglary, and vehicle lateral in deals between crimccrime
me gangs, “I don’t think that time, electronic goods had been stolen. Only one burglary
insurance records provided the he investigation’s first lead. the criminal underworld would would go into dealing in books
wo involved the theft of ra rare books.
“It became apparent that the people we were identify- as collateral in the same way way as they do with fine art.”
wa That may have been the gang’s downfall. The theft of
ing were Romanian nationals,”” says Ward. “But they The fact that the books
boo oks stolen in Feltham would such high-profile cultucultural property prompted the alloca-
weren’t known to our criminall systems.” Around be easily identifiable was wa ass a reason to remain hope- tion of resources and a level of international co-operation
two weeks after the burglary, y, Ward received ful about their recovery.. Privately,
P however, officers at that would probably never ne have been committed to inves-
a phone call from a senior officer with the the Metropolitan police
policce feared a different outcome. tigate missing laptop
laptops. “Hopefully, it will make similar
Romanian national police. Ward rd listened as the As the investigation pro p
progressed,
ogressed, evidence emerged organised crime group groups think twice about stealing items
man recounted intelligence that at connected the suggesting links between
between the gang and a noto- like that,” says Durham.
Durham “They know we won’t give up, we
raid to an organised crime gang g that operated rious Romanian
Roman niian crime family. Intelligence w ill turn over every sto
will stone, we will try every trick, and actu-
out of Romania. Following the call, the two provided
provid ded d by the Romanian police ally, they don’t want to be looking over their shoulders.”
tion.
forces opened a joint investigation. sugg geested the family had previ-
suggested Still, there are plent
plenty of unanswered questions about
Over the subsequent months, nths, officers ouslly stolen valuable paintings
ously the case. I ask Durha
Durham about the timing of the books’
linked the Feltham raid to a series
eries of other and those
th
hose paintings were believed recovery so close to the gang’s sentencing. Was this a coin-
burglaries at commercial warehouses
houses across to ha avee been burned when the gang
have cidence? Durham laughs. lau “No, it’s not coincidence,” he
the UK. Elsewhere, the thieves had stolen high- enforcement tightening the net
en
felt law enforcement says. But he declines to give more details, only stating that
value electronics rather than n books. But the around them. “So,“So o, y
yeah,” says Durham, “we cer- the raids were based on intelligence. A press statement
break-ins all carried the hallmarks
marks of a profes- tainly had to tread ligh httly.”
lightly.” issued by Eurojust, the EU agency for cross-border police
sional team. As the scale of the gang’s activities cooperation, suggested the arrest of Ungureanu in January
began to emerge, the case was elevated to the In the early hours of 225 5 JJune 2019, Durham and Ward was
w as a pivotal point in tthe investigation, describing him as
Metropolitan police’s specialistt crime squad, joined police colleagu
colleagues
uees from Romania and Italy at a “kingpin” and stating
statin that “his arrest and collaboration
led by detective inspector Andy y Durham, and a  Europol command d centre in Rotterdam. More w ere decisive for the su
were success of this important joint oper-
Ward joined the team to assist with the inves- than 300 officers ha had
ad been assigned to search 45 ation”. Asked to confirm if this was the case, the Met police
tigation. Their first goal was to try to prevent addresses in the threee countries.
c In Rotterdam, there said in a statement: “W “We would never confirm, nor deny, if
further offences. “There was an ongoing risk to was an air of trepidation
trepidaatiion in the room as the offic- any defendant has assisted
ass police with the investigation.”
London and to the UK from this his organised group,” says ers waited nervously to t see how the raids would play It also remains unclear
uncl how the gang knew where, and
Durham. “But the other main n objective was recovering excitiing
out. “It was very exciting,” g,” says Durham, “and a long w hen, to strike. The b
when, books were only due to be stored at
these books.” That meant grappling
pling with an unprecedented time coming.” the warehouse for a w weekend. “The natural assumption
question: what might an organised
nised crime gang At 4am London time, police
police broke down doors across
po was
w as to believe it was ssome sort of inside job,” says Ward.
want with a trove of rare books? s?
‘Crime gan the connttinent and Durham and Ward
continent Officers followed that lline of enquiry, but turned up noth-

r, Dick Ellis can hav

gs started
d tto tick off names of suspects ing. “We did thoroughly
thorough look at all of those possibilities,”
Like many an old-school copper,
e s lo wly
as new
news
ws of arrests came in. “We got says Durham. “We were wer never able to work it out. And we

one of them, no question,” he says. “Hats off come to r

appreciate a well-executed crime.
ime. “This was vasst majority of people that we
the vast w ere hoping one of the defendants might be kind enough
were

to them.” Ellis, the former head of Scotland tha

ealise were hoping
hoopping to find,” says Durham. By to tell us after arrest and charge, but so far, that’s not
t r ar e
the end d of the operation, 15 men were been the case.”

tigated plenty of high-profile cultural thefts books ar

Yard’s art and antiquities squad, has inves- in custody.
ody. At one of the properties, If the gang had a buy
buyer for the books in mind, it appears

during his 30-year career. In 1994, he recov- co

ea officers found a holdall matching the the transaction never neve took place. Dick Ellis suggests

ered Edvard Munch’s The Scream, three

m p aratively descriptionion of those taken from Feltham, another possibility: thatth the gang acted on a tip-off about

months after the painting was stolen from a soft tar

but there was no sign of the stolen books. the location of the books,
boo but never considered how they

Norwegian museum. That was a rare happy

get’ Durham
side chance
m says it was always an out-
ce that the books would be
would be brought to m
do we now sell th
market. “They hadn’t thought, ‘How
these on?’” he says. “And that would
ending. Ellis says the recovery rate for stolen artworks is recovered that day. Instead, the offic- suggest to me thethese are very professional organised
less than 5%. “It is abysmally low.” ers got back to work followingwing up new leads. In the criminals who dipped
dip a toe into an area that they’re
According to Ellis, book theft has undergone an evolu- weeks after the first arrests, ts, a further three mem- not familiar with, and an they hadn’t actually worked out
tion over the past 10 to 15 years. “Prior to that, the theft bers of the gang were apprehended.
prehended. In January what to do with the eend product.” Ellis is full of praise
of manuscripts and rare books was unusual, and quite 2020, Cristian Ungureanu, nu, one of the gang’s for the investigation and the successful recovery of the
often committed by people who had access,” he says, such most senior members, was as detained in Turin. books. But he also warns w this won’t be the last time
as librarians and academics. But every new high-profile Each time, the suspects were empty-handed. that antique books
book attract the attention of organised
heist raises awareness of the fact that rare books are val- gation, Riquier, the
Early on in the investigation, criminals. “The
“They are collectible. They have a value,”
uable enough to be worth stealing. At some point, “People Italian book dealer, was hopeful. “In the he says, “and
“and, therefore, they will be targeted.”
realised that these were a comparatively soft target,” Ellis beginning I said to myself, f, ‘They are prob-
says. And it was only a matter of time before organised ably going to recover the books,’” he says. On the morning
m of 19 October, Alessandro
criminals spotted an opportunity. As the case dragged on, however,
owever, his opti- Meda Riquier
Ri arrived at the Romanian
Hetty Gleave, a partner at Hunters Law and a special- mism wavered. Just as thee police had fears National Library. Also in attendance were
Nationa
ist in art and cultural property law, says the risks posed to about the likelihood of the books’ return, Andy Durham
Du and David Ward, their col-
rare books took longer to recognise than it did elsewhere Riquier considered other scenarios. He wondered leagues in the Romanian police and two
leagu
in the cultural sector. “Books haven’t really featured on if the books would remain n hidden for decades. At times, he other book dealers who had items stolen
othe
the radar in the same way that looted property or stolen imagined the books burnt nt to a pile of ash. “Even if I had in the
th Feltham heist. Over the course of
art have,” she says, “partly because it takes people a long been paid by my insurancee company,” he says, “that would two days, the dealers catalogued the
time to notice they’ve gone.” be the worst case that I can an imagine.” books and asses
assessed their condition. Of around 240
In the past, the rarity of book thefts may also have con- Thirteen men were eventuallyentually charged with offences books that were
we stolen, four were still missing,
tributed to a laissez-faire attitude when texts changed related to a string of commercial
mmercial burglaries across the according to ththe Met police. One in three had suf-
hands. Adrian Edwards, head of printed heritage col- UK, including the Feltham m raid. Twelve pleaded guilty. In fered some kind of damage.
dam Riquier felt the outcome could
lections at the British Library, says provenance checks September this year, two weeks before the gang was due have been much worseworse.
by purchasers were carried out much less stringently in to be sentenced, the Romanianmanian national police searched I spoke briefly to him after his return to Italy. He sounded
decades gone by. “I just don’t think they thought to ask a house in the northeast off the country. Hidden in a cement relieved; his books had arrived safely just an hour before.
the questions then,” he says. But in recent years the pit beneath the floor, they y found more than 200 individu- I asked him about th the atmosphere at the meeting in
book trade has become more attuned to the need for ally wrapped packages. Shortly hortly after the raid, Ward called Romania. “Everybody was happy,” he recalled. “It was the
robust checks around an item’s history. Today, Edwards Riquier. “I have good news for f you,” he
h said.
id endd off a long
l story.” ■

The Observer Magazine 13.12.20 23

 Fabulously talented
and famously
outspoken,
Stefflon Don is one
of rap’s hottest stars.
Here, she opens up
about controversy,
teen motherhood and
staying true to herself

Keep

it real
26 Interview YOMI ADEGOKE Photographs DANNY KASIRYE Fashion editor JO JONES 13.12.20 The Observer Magazine
 Red alert: (left)
Stefflon Don wears
top by Marine Serre
at brownsfashion.com.
Facing page: dress by
bottegaveneta.com
with heels by
yproject.fr.
All jewellery by
alighieri.co.uk

The Observer Magazine 13.12.20 27


High bars: (from left) with her partner Burna Boy; performing at Brixton Academy in 2018; at the Global Entertainment awards; with Headie One; and with French Montana
I
was trying not to be in the lockdown,” rapper
Stefflon Don tells me, running a multicoloured
claw through back-length, honey-blonde
extensions. “Hell no!” When we speak via Zoom
in mid-November, Don is in Ghana, where she
has flown to escape London, with her mother,
son and a close friend in tow. Despite it being
a trip for pleasure, she has a studio session
booked that evening. “No matter where I go, I’m always
gonna work,” she tells me.
This nonstop grind has paid dividends. Stephanie
Victoria Allen, 28, known to friends and fans as Steff,
TABATHA FIREMAN/GETTY IMAGES; JOSEPH OKPAKO/WIREIMAGE; WENN RIGHTS/ALAMY; OLLIE MILLINGTON/REDFERNS; WENN/ALAMY
is one of Britain’s biggest exports, according to the all-
important stats: 5.78bn streams globally, 2.3bn streams on
Apple Music alone, 444m views on Vevo, 1.2m subscrib-
ers on YouTube. But mainstream recognition eludes her
in the UK, particularly when compared to some of her less
commercially successful male counterparts.
Don arrived on the music scene in 2016 with a debut
mix-tape, Real Ting. Here was an artist who had swerved
the grittiness associated with British rap. Twelve months
later, she was longlisted in the BBC’s newcomer poll, Sound
of 2017. Four months later she signed a £1.2m deal with
Universal, and her breakout single, Hurtin’ Me, featuring
US rapper French Montana, reached number seven in the
UK singles chart. She’s been on an upward trajectory ever
since. She’s won Mobo awards. She’s worked with Nile
Rodgers, Drake and Mariah Carey. In 2018 she became
the first British artist ever to make legendary US hip-hop
magazine XXL’s annual Freshman List.
Don was born in Birmingham to Jamaican parents. She
moved to the Netherlands when she was five and returned
to the UK at 14. In Holland, she grew up among the immi-
grant communities of Rotterdam – people from Suriname,
Curaçao, Portugal. She recalls it being “just like London”
in terms of diversity, but she didn’t come across many
other Jamaicans until she arrived back in England. “People
[in Rotterdam] didn’t even know what Jamaica was,” she
laughs. “So I used to say, ‘Do you know Sean Paul?’ If it
wasn’t for him, people wouldn’t have known where the
fuck I’m from!”
Her discography draws on dancehall, grime, R&B and,
culturally, any country’s inspired by. Though she is often
described as a British artist, she says, “I’ve never felt like
a UK artist. I was around so many different people from dif-
ferent backgrounds, different countries. I feel I’m a part of
so much more. That’s why I’m never scared to try things.”
In her latest single, Can’t Let You Go, Don slips between
The Observer Magazine 13.12.20
patois and the Nigerian dialect, Yoruba. When she
was putting the song together, her Nigerian producer
mistakenly thought she’d said something in the language,
and encouraged her to carry on, which left her unchar-
acteristically coy. Given the mixed response to Beyoncé’s
Black is King album – rapper Noname panned the album’s
visuals as “an African aesthetic draped in capitalism” – Don
expected a backlash. The song was met with praise, but
the concept of cultural appropriation is generally one that
she isn’t entirely convinced by. Take the summer furore
over Adele’s now infamous Instagram post, showing her
wearing Bantu knots and a Jamaican flag bikini top to
mark what would have been Notting Hill Carnival. Steff
shakes her head at the culture vulture accusations.
“The people who were complaining weren’t Jamaicans,”
she says, with a shrug. “To us we just see it as love. Even that
Chet Hanks guy [actor Tom Hanks’ son, who has repeat-
edly gone viral for videos speaking
with a Jamaican accent]. We’ll just
laugh. We would never call it “cul-
tural appropriation”. We never use ‘I realised
that term. Because when you think
about it, the whole music scene
has a Jamaican influence. Jamaican
when I began
people know that they are creators
and inventors of a lot of things.”
When I meet her on Zoom, Don
rapping
is undoubtedly glamorous and
confident, but it wasn’t always so.
She was an outcast when she first
that it really
arrived in Clapton, east London,
in 2006. She was sporting a nose
piercing and lower back tattoo,
matches
body modification being less of a
big deal in Rotterdam schools. “My
dress sense was fucked,” she laughs.
who I am’
“So when I came, they were looking at me like, ‘What’s
going on for this chick, fam? What kind of shoes? What is
this jacket? What hairstyle? And I’m just like, ‘I’m a kid!’”
Don’s distinct accent also set her apart. “I had an
American, Jamaican, weird, fucked accent. I remember
when I had a boyfriend he would be like, ‘Talk to my
friends! Listen to her accent, listen to how she sounds,
it’s mad!’”
It was around this time she began taking music seri-
ously. Raised in a musical family – her mother sang in
choirs, her dad dabbled in music, her brother is the drill
artist Dutchavelli – Don was “that kid” in primary school,
Stefflon Don
rounding up reluctant friends to perform Destiny’s Child
routines at talent shows. “I would write down what
I thought were the lyrics and drag them along,” she gig-
gles. After encouraging her to start singing, her dad landed
her first gig, aged nine, recording an unreleased version of
the Hard Knock Life hook for Dutch rapper U-Niq. But she
knew singing wasn’t quite right for her back then, and says
she was “tired of the embarrassment, tired of being shy”.
Don was encouraged by her sister to try rapping instead,
at 15. “When I started rapping, I was like: this is it. This
matches really who I am. The confidence.”
Throughout our interview, Don repeatedly refers to her
confidence and her “realness”, as most rappers do. But
in her case, her lack of filter is undeniable. She speaks
wholly from a stream of consciousness, briefly acknowl-
edging that what she has said will likely elicit a reaction
and then saying it anyway. This has,
of course, several times landed her
in hot water. Last year, while pro-
moting a new single, she staged her
own arrest at the hands of a white
police officer and published images
of the fake event on social media.
In an Instagram caption, she wrote:
“Bloodclaat mi a get locked up Black
Lives Matter,” and added a laughing
face emoji. The post was criticised
by fans for being insensitive and
was later deleted.
Then, there were the tweets of
hers that resurfaced in 2018, insult-
ing darker-skinned women, an issue
she raises before I do, the elephant
on the Zoom. In 2013 she tweeted
about “dark-skinned” women “hat-
ing on light-skinned” women, adding: “Don’t act like if God
gave you a chance you wouldn’t change your colour.” She
has since apologised, but the “colourist” label has proven
difficult to shake.
“I understand everyone’s frustration with me,” she says.
“And I know how bad that tweet looks, like I’m another
person adding to all the fucked-up shit that everyone says…
But I was thinking rah, I’m not even this person that you’re
trying to say I am. How could I not like someone because
of the colour of their skin? A racist person is an evil person
and that would be the same thing for a colourist.”
She adds that while she understands the comparative ‹
29
 Feature

‹ privilege she has as a light-skinned black woman, the ‘My son made me
concept of colourism was not one she grew up with. “In who I am today’:
Holland, if you’re black, you’re black,” she says. “If you’re top, track pants,
white, you’re white. It was never shades: never a light- socks and heels,
skinned, dark-skinned thing. I never learned that until all by miumiu.com.
I came to England, where I would get into an argument at All jewellery by
school and girls would be like, “You think you’re nice cos alighieri.co.uk
you’re light-skinned.” And I’d think, ‘What the fuck does
that mean?’”
Over the past few years, several musicians, media
personalities and influencers have had old tweets
unearthed expressing similar, offensive views. Many have
been able to move on from their comments, but for Don, it
is still something that crops up frequently on social media.
These days, she says tends to clapback less (“There’s a lot of
times I write stuff and I’ll hit the backspace real quick,” she
says), but she believes it is getting more toxic. Instagram’s
decision to add the feature of liking comments, she says,
has encouraged more online maliciousness, as the mean-
est comments are often upvoted. The site invited her into
their offices for a meeting to address the issue of trolling,
which she dubbed a “waste of her time”.

Don’s demeanour softens when she discusses her son, who

is 10, and who she had, unplanned, at 17. His father was in
prison at the time, making an already challenging situa-
tion more difficult. “I was actually thinking about having
an abortion,” she says. “I had appointments to do it and
so many things kept happening to not make me do it.”
It crossed her mind how having a child might affect her
career. But she feels her success has been because of her
son not in spite of him. “He has made me who I am today,”
she says. “He helped me stay away from a lot of nonsense,
when it comes to boys. I hold myself so high because I’m
a mother. There’s a lot of things I wouldn’t stand for and
places I didn’t want to be because I’m a mum.”
Family is clearly a priority. Don has bought a large house
in Essex: 10 bedrooms, a designer wardrobe and a swim-
ming pool. She lives there with various family members,
including her brothers, sisters, mum and her son, as well
as nieces who are around so much, she says, that they may
as well live there full time. I tell her this is something I’ve
always wanted to do. “You say that until it happens!” she
cackles. “Then it’s like, ‘Fucking hell!’ When I was younger,
I had to look after my little brothers and sisters, I had to
HAIR AND WIG BY SNOBBSTYLIST; MAKEUP BY SUMMAR HUNJAN; SHOT AT BIG SKY STUDIO; FASHION ASSISTANT PETER BEVAN

take them to school, I had to cook dinner. Even now I’m like
the second mum. My little sister just turned 18; she doesn’t
do anything without asking me. So when I’m doing some-
thing I always bring my family along. But I’m thinking
about it now, though, because I’m tired of them,” she jokes.
The main source of fatigue? Being a critically acclaimed
artist who still has to pick up after her siblings. It’s her only
bugbear, but she balks at any suggestion she get a cleaner.
“I’ve got how many people in here that don’t do nothing?”
she says. “No. In my house you have to clean every day.”
As female rappers stateside continue to climb the charts
– Megan Thee Stallion, Doja Cat, City Girls – Britain is still
at least a decade behind, with a solitary “Queen B” spot that
Don is keenly aware she holds. “In the UK, a lot of people
are very much on the same level. There’s not many peo-
ple who are so far to reach. I’m one
of the only female rappers that is like
that, so you won’t really see a lot of
the female rappers fucking with me,
because they feel I’m so far gone.”
‘What’s that
While she applauds more women
on the scene, she worries about the
sustainability of the current model,
ginger guy’s
what she refers to as a  “trend” of
influencers-turned-rappers. It is a 
name again?
common trajectory for many musi-
cians, especially female rappers and
is achieved with varying degrees of
Ed Sheeran,
success. One managing to make the
transition is self-styled Queen of
Drill Ivorian Doll, who Don says she
I always
reached out to after she spoke about
her struggles navigating the industry. forget him’
“I had to message her like, hey, you’re doing good,
everyone loves what you’re doing – carry on,” she explains.
“But that’s somebody that probably didn’t grow up want-
ing to do music and now it’s like, ‘Rah, I didn’t know this
is what it comes with.’”
There is still some way to go, Don says, until we see the
same camaraderie that we do among male artists. “Women
naturally have beef with each other,” she says – some-
thing she feels mainly comes down to “boys”. “We just see
other women as threats; we compete with how we look,
we compete with our careers. The relationship I’m in now,
he makes me feel like I’m the only
woman in the room; that’s why
probably I’m way more relaxed
and way more cool with everyone.”
The man in question is
Grammy-nominated musician
Burna Boy, who she met in Ghana
two years ago, by chance. She
attended his show after missing
a flight and he told her she was
going to be his wife. This week,
however, the couple have been
facing infidelity rumours, with
Burna Boy being accused of hav-
ing a two-year relationship with
another woman. Both are yet to
comment on the allegations.
The trip to Africa was the
beginning of a different love story altogether, with the
country Ghana itself, which she visited for the first time
two years ago, after she was invited by Afrobeats artist
Fuse ODG.
“As soon as I got here I just felt at home,” she says. “It’s
weird, but you get a feeling. I’ve never felt it anywhere else,
but it’s that feeling of, ‘Oh, I belong somewhere.’ People
don’t realise that in western countries where people be
like, ‘freedom’, it is not freedom. You’re trapped,” she adds.
“Freedom is where you can walk and feel like no one would
harm you… I’m not saying there’s no crime in Ghana, but
I fell in love with it.”
On this trip, she has been visiting a primary school that
she, Fuse ODG, Ghanaian comedian Michael Blackson
and activist Chaka Bars are building in Akosombo, which
will partially be used as an orphanage. “What’s his name
has also been part of this… What’s that ginger guy’s name
again? Ginger hair.” Ed Sheeran? I offer. She nods. “I always
forget his name!”
Stefflon Don’s standoffish reputation precedes her, so
I wasn’t sure who I was going to meet. Her honesty was
refreshing, however, and something many media-trained
musicians could perhaps take note of. “When you’re a real
person and you have an opinion, it’s hard to play fake,” she
says. “What I’m realising is, you should get your money,
get your shit together and when you’re at the top, say what
you want”. ■
The single Can’t Let You Go is out now

The Observer Magazine 13.12.20 31

Food & drink
Nigel Slater
Deep and crisp A pie, or perhaps a large golden tart,
brought proudly to the table in its dish,
always feels like a celebration. I find such
and even: main recipes invaluable at this time of year,
for meals that need something “festive-
courses in the but-not-turkey”. So it’s straight down to
business with a chicken and prune pie
wrapped in crackling filo and a sweet
second part of potato and spinach tart that works as
both a principal dish and on the side.
a festive special Chicken, leek and prune pie
I have used filo pastry for its crispness,
but you could use puff pastry if you
prefer. Serves 4-6
olive oil 2 tbsp
Photographs JONATHAN LOVEKIN chicken breasts 750g
32
 @NigelSlater
sides, turning it once or twice to ensure
an even colour. Once the outside is golden
brown, remove the chicken and let it rest
on a plate.
Trim the leeks, discarding the darkest
green ends of the leaves, slice them into
rounds 1-2cm thick, then wash them
thoroughly in a colander under cold
running water. Shake the leeks dry, add
them to the pan in which you browned
the chicken and let them cook over
a low to moderate heat, lid on, for 10-15
minutes until they have softened a little.
Stir occasionally to prevent them from
browning.
Stir in the curry powder and continue
cooking for a couple of minutes, then add
the prunes, curry leaves, chopped parsley
and peppercorns, lightly cracked – use
a pestle or heavy weight, but don’t grind
them to a fine powder – then pour in
the water or stock and bring to the boil.
Lower the heat, add the chicken and leave
to simmer for 35 minutes.
Warm the milk almost to boiling point
in a small pan then remove from the heat.
In a separate pan, melt the butter, add
the flour and stir over a moderate heat
for a couple of minutes until pale biscuit-
coloured. Add the milk in small amounts,
stirring until smooth with a wooden
spoon – I use a whisk to beat out any
annoying lumps – then stir in a couple of
ladles of the stock from the chicken pan.
Remove the chicken and slice it into
strips, then add it to the sauce. Combine
with the leeks and aromatics and check
the seasoning: it will need salt. The
consistency should be thick and creamy.
If not, then let it simmer until it is.
Set the oven at 200C/gas mark 6.
Place a large baking sheet in the oven to
leeks 350g
curry powder 2 tsp
prunes 12
get hot. (It will help your tart to develop
a crisp base.) Brush the base of the baking
tin with a little of the melted butter.
curry leaves 10
parsley a good handful, chopped
Generously butter 2 leaves of pastry, then
place them in the tin, letting them hang
black peppercorns 8
light stock or water 600ml
milk 500ml
over the sides. Repeat, placing the pastry
at a slight angle to the others, again
letting their excess length hang over the
butter 50g
plain flour 50g
edges. Continue buttering and layering
until you have used up all the pastry.
butter 80g, melted
filo pastry 300g
Spoon the chicken filling into the dish
then fold the buttered overhanging pastry
over the top to create a crust. (They won’t
quite cover the top of the pie, leaving
You will also need a round 28cm baking tin a hole in the centre, which is fine.) Place
the dish on the hot baking sheet in the
Warm the oil in a deep-sided pan, add the oven and bake for 35-45 minutes until
chicken and let it lightly brown on both the pastry is deep brown and crisp. ‹
13.12.20 The Observer Magazine
Crunch time: sweet
potato and spinach
tart and, facing
page, chicken, leek
and prune pie
Food & drink
Nigel Slater

The sweet potato

and spinach tart
works as both
a principal dish
and on the side.
It’s good cold, too
Sweet potato and spinach tart
Let the tart settle for 20 minutes or so
before slicing and serving it. It’s good
eaten cold, too. Serves 6

For the pastry:

plain flour 200g
butter 100g
parmesan 2 tbsp, grated

For the filling:

sweet potatoes 600g
spring onions 4
eggs 3
cream 375ml
spinach 100g
parmesan a little to finish

You will also need a rectangular tart tin

measuring 30 x 20cm

Put the flour and butter into a food

processor and reduce to fine crumbs.
If you prefer, rub the butter, cut into
small pieces, into the flour with your
fingertips. Add the grated parmesan and
enough water (about 1-2 tbsp) to make
a firm dough. Wrap in kitchen paper and
refrigerate for 30 minutes.
Make the filling: put a deep pan of
water on to boil and place a steamer
basket over the top. (I often use a colander
instead.) Peel the sweet potatoes, then
slice them into thick rounds. Steam the
sweet potato slices for about 7 minutes
until tender to the point of a knife.
Meanwhile, finely slice the spring
onions. Break the eggs into a large bowl The recipe hot water for 10 minutes until lightly
or jug and beat them briefly, then mix
in the cream, season with salt and black
pepper. Wash the spinach, remove any
Nigel’s Rinse 250g of red lentils (masoor dal) in
cold water, then put them in a saucepan
and cover with water. Bring to the boil,
cooked. Warm 3 tbsp of oil in a shallow
pan and add the cauliflower, letting it
cook for a few minutes until it is lightly
tough stems, then cook the still wet leaves
briefly in a lidded pan until they start to
midweek lightly salt and cook for 15 minutes until
soft. Peel and thinly slice 1 medium
crisp. Dust it lightly with smoked paprika
and toasted nigella seeds. Ladle the
wilt. Drain and gently squeeze dry.
Set the oven at 200C/gas mark 6.
dinner onion. Warm 3 tbsp of groundnut or
vegetable oil in a saucepan, add the
lentils into shallow dishes, then add the
cauliflower and serve. Enough for 2
Roll out the pastry and line the tart
case, trimming the edges as necessary.
Lentils with onion and cook for a good 15 minutes
over a low to medium heat, stirring The trick
Line with baking parchment and baking
beans and bake for 15 minutes. Carefully
tomatoes regularly until soft.
Add 6 crushed peppercorns, 60g of
You can make the lentil porridge in
advance, then heat it up when you are
remove the paper and beans and return
to the oven for a further 8 minutes or
and finely grated ginger, 2 crushed cloves
of garlic, half a tsp each of ground
ready to eat. It will keep overnight in
the fridge. Make sure the onions are
until the pastry is dry to the touch. Lower
the heat to 180C/gas mark 4.
caulifl
liflower coriander, turmeric and chilli flakes,
and 8 curry leaves. Tip in the contents
really soft before you add the cooked
lentils to them.
Place the sweet potato slices in the tart of a 500g can of chopped tomatoes and
tin. Tuck the spinach among them and simmer for 15 minutes. The twist
scatter the spring onions, then pour in Drain the lentils, then stir them into the Use any of the brassica family in place
the custard. Sprinkle with parmesan and sauce and continue cooking for a further of the cauliflower. Sprouts, cut in half
bake for 25 minutes until lightly set. ■ Photograph 5 minutes. Meanwhile, separate 500g of and tossed in butter and oil, work well –
Next week, festive puddings JONATHAN LOVEKIN cauliflower into florets and steam it over broccoli, too. ■

The Observer Magazine 13.12.20 35

Food & drink
Jay Rayner
 @jayrayner1

Lucky & Joy makes

you smile – and
it also serves up
some cracking good
Chinese food

Lucky & Joy A lunchtime in the first blush

95 Lower Clapton Road, of the new normal and I am
London E5 (020 8617 8100) in a Hackney restaurant called
Snacks £3.50-£6.50 Lucky & Joy. It feels like the
Larger dishes £6-£14 right place to be. I know how
Dessert £5 lucky I am personally, and
Wine from £24 God knows we could all do
with some joy. Generally, the
Clay’s Hyderabadi Chinese use the two words
Kitchen together to mean “double
Deliveries nationwide happiness”. I appreciate the
(clayskitchen.co.uk) sentiment. But Lucky & Joy
also represents innovation in
the restaurant world that’s far
from the shiny big-ticket launches that get the attention.
It deserves a moment in the spotlight.
The project started with two friends becoming
obsessed with the food at Silk Road, a simple Chinese
caff in south London’s Camberwell, specialising in the
slippery ribbon noodles and the soupy big-plate chicken
dishes of China’s Xinjiang province. It’s easily done. I’ve
gone through my own Silk Road phases, too. Ellen Parr
is a chef with a bunch of places on her CV, including the
Iberian restaurant Moro. Pete Kelly is a drinks expert.
Silk Road was their shared gateway drug. Soon they were
working their way around the laid-back Chinese cafés of
New York, finding out what they liked. Eventually they
headed to China itself, to gather recipes.
Lucky & Joy began as a pop-up with Parr writing
a menu influenced by those travels: sprightly, boisterous
food which told the story of good times they’d had In the pink: (clockwise from left) typhoon shelter brussel
together. There are many fabulous Chinese restaurants in sprouts; the dining room; Yunan smacked cucumber; sea
Britain. This is not pretending to mimic one of those. It’s bass with chillies; cumin lamb ribs; pork belly; custard tart
paying homage by serving up dishes, which cheerily slap
you round the chops repeatedly, and then slap you again. garlic, dried and fresh chillies and fresh coriander, with
Last year they settled into this site with its candy-coloured just a pinch of sugar. It’s a Christmas dish for anyone
walls and open kitchen. Necessarily they have been closed wanting to scare their nervous granny, if they have one.
for most of it, but have now reopened with a menu that (This is not meant as an insult to brave and adventurous
could look short if you’re were comparing it to a standard grandmothers; only as an insult to the timid ones).
Chinese offering. So don’t compare it. See it as a set of Ellen Parr was a non-meat eater for many years.
stories from the road, in edible form. It comes in the shape Accordingly, the menu is vegetarian friendly. Try
of a shiny pink slip from which you tick off your choices. grandma’s potatoes, the spuds spun through with
There are five snacks starting with pickled peanuts, pickled mustard greens and ginger, or the Yunnan-style
wallowing in a bath of black vinegar. Move on to the aubergine with silken tofu. There’s only one fish dish, but
Yunnan smacked cucumber, cut into sizeable chunks, it draws attention to itself. A long fillet of seabass arrives
then pelted with chopped garlic and finally invited to looking like the flag of an emerging nation. One vertical
bathe in a sour dressing bobbing with chopped cherry half is spread with a green lawn of minced pickled
tomatoes. We also have a plate of their sesame noodles, Lightly battered typhoon chillies. The other is spread with an equal thickness of
served at room temperature, which are the proverbial salted chillies. Somehow, the fish still holds its own.
steel fist in the velvet glove. They are slippery with lots of
shelter brussels sprouts As do chunky, long-roasted lamb ribs, heavily dusted
toasty, nutty buttery tones before the chili heat builds. is a Christmas dish for with a mixture of ground cumin, chilli powder, salt and
As it’s so close to Christmas the bigger dishes include sugar, which I first met on BBQ lamb skewers at Silk
typhoon shelter brussels sprouts, which have been
anyone wanting to scare Road. We also have the red braised pork belly, which is
lightly battered then heaped under deep-fried minced their nervous granny the deepest of muddy browns. The meat is soft and the

36 Photographs SOPHIA EVANS 13.12.20 The Observer Magazine

sauce heavy with caramel and soy and the aromatics
omatics of
the black star anise which litter the surface. They look Wines of Sandeman
Vintage Port,
Recent years have been
a bit of a golden age in

the week
like Christmas decorations, albeit only from a version off Douro port’s home region, the
Christmas as directed by Tim Burton. Portugal 2018 swooping terraces along
There is just one dessert, a perfect slice of cinnamon- £113.95, Philglas Portugal’s Douro Valley.
dusted custard tart with a dark, crumbly biscuit base.
It’s a witty take on the Portuguese-style custard tarts
Smooth, rich and and Swiggot This is most apparent in
those representing the
that are so popular across much of China. It’s also full of festive fruit, pinnacle of production,
a cheery and unselfconscious end to a cheery and now is the time to vintage ports, traditionally made three or
unselfconscious meal. Lucky & Joy can’t help but make four times a decade, in those years deemed
you smile. This last lockdown was only a month, but by y enjoy a good port. to have produced the best quality. It is
God it was good to be seated back at a table enjoying the he By David Williams highly unusual for producers to ‘declare’,
fruits of someone else’s good taste and knowledge. as the industry jargon has it, a vintage
port two years in a row; to produce three
In normal times, which these are not, someone often consecutive vintages is almost unheard
complains that the restaurant I’ve reviewed is not within hin of. This year, however, a number of
walking distance of their home. That sound you can houses declared a hat-trick, with the
hear? My eyeballs grinding against my skull as I roll 2018s released in the spring, following on
them. But the issue is undeniably more pronounced now, ow, from the no less great 2016s and 2017s.
with restaurants in huge swathes of the country still Among those producers was Sandeman,
closed and pubs trying to work out how big a scotch egg gg who unleashed a sensationally sensuous,
has to be before it qualifies as a substantial meal.  @Daveydaibach fathomlessly deep, dark, polished wine.
It means restaurant meal kits remain relevant. Two
weeks ago, in the “news bites” which appear with
the online version of this column, I mentioned Clay’s Quinta do Noval The price of a top
Hyderabadi Kitchen in Reading. The response from Late Bottled vintage port such as
locals was a round of applause. Almost all the deliveries Vintage Port, Sandeman’s puts it into
I’ve had have been from high-profile players; this was an Douro the special occasion
encouragement to try somewhere less so. Portugal 2013 category. And although
It turns out I was absolutely right to include Clay’s. £21.50, Cambridge there’s great pleasure
Well done me. Starters, at around £7.50 include dark- Wine Merchants in drinking such
browed and intense chicken livers fried with cumin, powerful wines when
coriander, mint and dried mango power, fiery little th
they’re still young and full of vivid fruit and
beetroot potato tikki, and fillets of tilapia, first floured po
powerfully grippy tannins, they are in fact
and fried, then tossed in a glorious mess of caramelised m
much improved after being stowed away
onions, tomatoes and fresh coriander. Star of the mains, fo
for a few years. For drinking now, seek out
all priced in the low-teens, is a sweet and soupy prawn a late-bottled
l vintage style. These provide
curry, a zingy mess of pumpkin and butternut squash so
some of the character of a mature vintage
and, best of all, a keema biryani, the fluffy, aromatic rice w
wine but, having spent four to six years
mined with nuggets of ground and spiced lamb. ag
ageing in a barrel (rather than vintage port’s
Here in London, I’m close to some cracking m
maximum of two-and-a-half years), plus
restaurants serving the diverse food of the Indian a few
f more years in bottle before being
subcontinent. Even so, ordering a delivery from 40 miles re
released, are ready to enjoy now. In the best
away didn’t feel like a stupid idea. Which says an awful ex
examples, such as Quinta do Noval’s soft
lot about both the punchy cooking at Clay’s, and the an
and cedary offering, the wine still retains
weird times through which we’re living. ■ so
some of that dark forest-fruit plushness.

Christmas is going to be a different shaped holes, can I recommend

Notes on shape for lots of people this year.

There will be people missing, for
Tony’s Chocolonely, but
personalised (yes). Go to the
Morrisons The
Best 10 Year Old
One of the most
important developments

chocolate a variety of reasons; I know there

Bespoke stocking
fillers (if you’ve
been good). By
Annalisa Barbieri
will be in my house.
Most of my childhood
Christmases were spent in
England, which was great,
because in Italy we didn’t get our
presents until the Befana visited
and filled our clogs with gifts
(or coal if you’d been naughty)
ridiculously late, on 6 January. My
mum, I mean Santa, would fill our
stockings at home in London with
various thoughtful things, two
regulars of which were marzipan
fruits and these little chocolate
coffee beans, the like of which I’ve
never found since. They resolutely
weren’t chocolate-covered coffee
beans, but instead had a centre of
almost molten coffee.
If you have some stocking-
Tony’s website where you can
customise the wrapper (colour/
pic/writing) and then choose the
Tawny, Douro
Portugal NV
£11, Morrisons
in the Douro in recent
years has been the
marked improvement of
flavour. I honestly had to restrain the very distinct style
myself from buying a bar for every of port known as tawny.
person I know and running up Producers are much
a huge bill. The more you order the more careful than they used to be about
cheaper per bar (top price: £6). how they age, store and blend these ports,
If you haven’t already tried my which spend many years ageing in barrels.
Introduction to Craft Chocolate As well as bringing the colour that gives the
Box that I curated for Cocoa style its name, the extended time in wood
Runners, please do. It’s £37.95 brings out a nuttier cast of flavour, with
with a donation to Camfed for more dried fruit, vanilla and festive spiciness
every box sold. The beauty is you than vintage and LBV wines. For value, it’s
can divvy up the five bars among hard to look past the impressive 10 Year Old
the family (don’t forget yourself). produced for Morrisons by the Symington
Firetree has launched some clan, makers of Graham’s, Dow’s, Warre’s
fabulous mini bars, 7 x 25g bars and Cockburn’s. A blend of several different
for £19 and Bare Bones has ages of port adding up to an average age of
4 x 20g bars for £9. Both are 10 years old, it’s smoothly, sweetly enticing
perfect for real chocolate lovers. with chocolate-raisins and toffee flavours.

The Observer Magazine 13.12.20 37

38 13.12.20 The Observer Magazine
Interviews KATE FINNIGAN
Photographs SUKI DHANDA
Look
on the
bright
side
Lockdown forced shoppers online – and unleashed a thriving market for colourful clothes
‘If I wear a grey jumper
I just feel flat. I find myself
so attracted to colour’:
(clockwise from left)
Marielle Wyse of Wyse
London; Rene Macdonald of
Lisou London; and Louise
Markey of LF Markey
The Observer Magazine 13.12.20
‘Our designs are very uplifting’
Marielle Wyse of Wyse London
Multicoloured striped tank tops, pink
scalloped dungarees, rainbow wrist
warmers… If bright and bold colour is
what you’re looking for, Marielle Wyse
is your woman and Wyse London
your brand.
A former TV producer and a mother of
two, she founded Wyse in 2014 with just
five knitted jumpers to sell. Now she has
a comprehensive collection of ready-to-
wear outfits and a ream of famous and
stylish followers – you might have seen
Zoe Ball wearing one of her dazzling
knits on the BBC show It Takes Two.
“I grew slowly and very leanly,” Marielle
says. “I didn’t spend more than what was
necessary. And I drove my poor family
mad because I did everything at home.”
Her love of colour has only increased
as she’s got older. “My father used to
wear a lot of colour and I used to think,
why aren’t you in navy or grey? But now
I understand. If I wear a grey jumper
I just feel flat. I don’t know if it’s an age
thing, but I find myself so attracted to
colour. Our stripy cardigans are very
lifting pieces.”
During the course of this year, which
has seen so many fashion brands struggle
and fail, Marielle has entirely changed
her business strategy. As wholesalers
cancelled orders, she took to Instagram
Live to talk to followers and customers
directly about her design process.
“I would literally hold something up and
see if people liked it,” she says. “If people
said, ‘We love it,’ we’d get them to
pre-order and we’d make it. It’s almost
like a community design project. They
say they want the sleeves to look a certain
way and that’s what we do. It’s made me
much better at my job because they’ve
told me the bits they’re unhappy with.”
Although she readily admits to some
“clangers”, such as Wyse’s party season
sequins, which people haven’t really gone
in for this year, she’s also enjoyed some
big hits, including her velvet dresses
and scalloped dungarees. “I had famous
people asking me for them, to wear on
TV,” she says. “But they were all sold out!”
wyselondon.co.uk; @wyselondon
“I want colours to suit everyone’
Rene Macdonald of Lisou London
“There’s this theory that if you wear
colour on a Monday, you are more
productive in your work than if you ‹
39
Style
‹ wear black,” says Rene Macdonald,
the founder and designer behind Lisou
London. “People apparently react to you
differently when you wear colour.”
That is good news for the customers
of Lisou, whose skirts, shirting,
tailoring and dresses come bright,
printed and shiny.
Rene, a former academic and stylist
(“The serious and the ta-daa”, as she puts
it), founded the brand in 2018 with a silk
shirt – the Betty, still a best seller – that
brought to London some of the boldness
of her Tanzanian heritage. “I know my
love of colour comes from Africa,” she
says. “There is literally no street there
where anyone is wearing beige! So
I spend a lot of time running around
putting Pantone colours against different
skin tones – I want the colours to suit
everyone. Not everyone looks like me
and I’m not making clothes only for black
skin tones. They’re for everyone.”
At the start of the pandemic, Rene
thought her dream “had disappeared”.
But two weeks into lockdown,
something changed. “It was quite
surreal. I think people were bored. We
realised everyone was on their phones
and the Instagram followers started
racking up.” In response, she started
to do Instagram TV, talking directly to
her followers, showing how to style the
clothes, interviewing other women and
talking about the ethos of the brand. To
date, she’s done 35 broadcasts. “In the
fourth one I fell flat on my face. I hadn’t
put on my 5in heels properly and I fell
down the stairs. It’s probably the only
thing I have in common with Naomi
Campbell,” she laughs.
lisou.co.uk; @lisoulondon
‘In lockdown our sales tripled’
Louise Markey of LF Markey
Lilac joggers and primary-coloured
appliquéed boiler suits by LF Markey
have brightened up the days of many
of the brand’s customers this year, but
designer and founder Louise Markey has
been deep into colour for a long time.
While doing an MA in fashion at Central
St Martins, the mother-of-three created
colourful pieces based on historical
costume, while she was wearing the
vintage workwear she had started
collecting. “It took me a while to fuse
what I was wearing every day with what
I was designing for uni,” she says. “It met
in the middle with LF Markey, this very
geometric take on bright colours.”
Founded in 2013, the brand gives
a colourful dose of utility chic to those
bored of blue denim and khaki. “I think
it might be just because I’m Australian.
Colour is very acceptable to wear there,”
says Louise, of her penchant for brights.
“But this year colour has been shifting
even better than usual.”
With so many wholesalers cancelling
fashion orders this spring, Louise felt
lucky that she already had her online
business in shape. When photoshoots
were unable to happen, the team found
themselves with another problem – no
images of their summer collection to
put on the website or on Instagram.
Louise credits her marketing manager
40
‘The lovely
with a stroke of genius there. “She
said we should shoot the clothes on
ourselves. So we did it in our houses
jewel colours and our backyards.”
The images were so well received
make you
that the brand enjoyed an instant uplift.
“I think the numbers tripled,” says Louise.
“It was dramatic. People seemed to like
feel better
being introduced to the team and seeing
the people behind the brand. What I’ve
learned this year is that you really need to
when you
be talking to your customers all the time.”
lfmarkey.com; @lfmarkey
put them on’
‘I asked myself: “Is this real?”’
Yvonne Telford of Kemi Telford
When Yvonne Telford first moved to
the UK from Nigeria in 1996, she put
away her brightly coloured clothes. “In
Nigeria, if you wear black, they think
someone has died,” she says with a laugh.
“I’ve always loved colour and print, but
I couldn’t wear them here because it
wasn’t seen as chic.”
Yvonne, who had been working as
a credit risk analyst, began embracing
colour again when she turned 40.
“I thought, ‘It’s time for me to start living
my life.’ Colour is like freedom for me.”
Yet it was to take some time before that
love of bold colour became the basis of
her own successful clothing brand, Kemi
Telford. After quitting her corporate job
and while raising her two daughters,
Yvonne started a blog about motherhood.
Two years later she invested £50 in
tote bags that she had printed with
empowering slogans. Pouches, T-shirts
and sweatshirts followed. But something
started to irritate her. “When I wore my
T-shirts women would ask me about my
skirts. Why weren’t they asking about
‘In Nigeria, if you wear black, they think
someone has died. I’ve always loved
colour and print, but I couldn’t wear them
here because it wasn’t seen as chic’:
(from top) Yvonne Telford of Kemi Telford;
and Jo Hooper of NRBY
the T-shirts? In the shower one day, it
suddenly clicked: they like my skirts, they
like my dresses, do something about it!”
Her bright printed skirts and dresses
in African wax fabric, are modelled on
her website and Instagram account by
Yvonne herself, with pictures taken
by her family. “I’m not a fashion
designer,” she says. “I’m someone who
loves beautiful print and comfortable
clothes, and has a story to tell. People
are buying the clothes because of the
stories we share.”
kemitelford.com; @kemitelford
‘It’s gone off like a rocket’
Jo Hooper of NRBY
“Our motto is: We’re here to cheer,” says
Jo Hooper, founder of NRBY. “We say it in
the office all the time. What are we here
for? We’re here to cheer.”
Less than two years ago, Hooper,
a former womenswear director at
John Lewis and Debenhams, took her
experience in the retail industry and
her knowledge of how she and other
women were working from home, to
start NRBY, her own brand of colourful
and comfortable clothing to wear in the
house – and nearby. Inspired by the idea
of Japanese one-mile wear, the kind of
products she came up with were easy
joggers, roomy boiler suits, linen and silk
shirts and colourful, slouchy cashmere
and alpaca knits. She didn’t realise it
at the time, but her concept put her in
the ideal position to weather a global
pandemic in which people were confined
to the home.
“When the first lockdown happened
we didn’t have any ambitions other than
to still be around when it was all over,”
she says. “But our turnover quadrupled. It
was the combination of being able to tell
our story via things like Instagram and
having the right kind of product.” Five
hundred pairs of their Cameron jersey
dungarees with adjustable straps sold in
two days. As winter has taken hold, it has
been the velvet shirts, blazers and boiler
suits in saturated shades of blues, pinks
and red that, as Jo puts it, “have gone off
like a rocket”.
“We were concerned that if no one was
going anywhere they wouldn’t be sure
about velvet, but that idea of sitting on
your sofa wearing something nice and
being comfortable has been popular,” she
says. “The lovely jewel colours just make
you feel better when you put them on.”
She’s well aware of the power of
colour in fashion. “When I was at John
Lewis I used to say you’ve got seven
seconds to grab someone’s attention
as they walk past your range,” she says.
“But on Instagram you’ve got less
than 0.3 seconds or something! How
do you stop someone in their tracks?
I think that’s why colour has become so
important over the last five years.” ■
nrbyclothing.com; @nrbyclothing
13.12.20 The Observer Magazine
 Beauty
Funmı Fetto
 @FunmiFetto

Turn up the I can’t do

colour for a bit without...
of festive glam A moisturiser
that’s clever
enough to target
dry patches
We need mood boosters like never before,
hence I am all over this sugar rush of
colour, as seen at Rixo SS20. There is
nothing reticent about it, so approach it U Beauty Super
with wild abandon. Yes, I’m encouraging Smart Hydrator
you to go hard, because why bother going £65 ubeauty.com
home? Surely by now you must be fed up
with both your literal and metaphorical Multitasking products
four walls. So either apply the same make total sense to me
wash of colour across eyes, cheeks – especially now that the
and lips – pinks work best for this – or formulations are becoming
go completely kaleidoscopic. Yes, it’s increasingly innovative.
a different run-up to Christmas, but let’s It is wonderful to have
get our joy where we can. a cleanser that also targets
your blemishes, or a body
1. Laura Mercier Opening Night Cheek lotion that also works as an
Palette £46, spacenk.com 2. Chanel Rouge exfoliator, or a sunscreen
Allure Intense Lip Colour £35, johnlewis. that also treats your
com 3. Dior Glow Face Palette in Pure hyperpigmentation. I can’t
Go £36, dior.com 4. Lancôme La Rose
Gold complain about that. But
Eyeshadow Palet
Palette £45, lancome.co.uk sometimes I would like
a product that does one
thing and does that one
thing incredibly well. The area
where I find things lacking
is under the moisturiser
1 category. Consider the
number of moisturisers on
the market. Huge. But the
percentage that don’t deliver
on what they promise,
ie basic but efficacious
hydration, is alarming. This
one, by U Beauty, however,
is brilliant. And no, it is not
exaggerating by calling itself
super smart. The lack of
2 3 hydration in our skin is not
uniform; some bits are more
parched than others. So
what this does is distribute
hydration across the skin
according to how much each
area needs. Then it takes
that advanced, soon-to-
4 be-patented creamy but
non-greasy formulation
right down to the deepest
5
Best of both worlds Roller coaster
coa More than skin deep levels of the skin and keeps

On my A skincare product that

resurfaces while also
rehydrating sounds like
radar an oxymoron, but that’s
exactly what thishis jelly
jelly-
Treatments for textured mask
JASON LLOYD EVANS
The demand for skincare
gadgets is on a high. This
microneedling roller
This scientifically proven
anti-stress serum helps to
regulate our inner response
hydrating it for 48 hours
afterwards. The result is
plumper, healthier and
(and serum) targets
wrinkles, scarring
o
to stress while also
treating the impactt
happier-looking skin. And
if you’ve been mainlining
and dullness. It’s one that stress has on acids or have had a peel

stress, wrinkles does. And it does

and dehydration
it quickly. Lixir
es of the best. Sarah
Chapman Skinesis
on the skin.
De Mamiel First Fixx
and your skin barrier feels
compromised, this works
Peel Express, Meso-melt Infusion Stress Response wonders. I am no formulator,
£31, liberty System, £138, sarah Serum, £130, but I think this is how you do
london.com chapman.com demamiel.com a good moisturiser.

The Observer Magazine 13.12.20 41

 Tales of the
riverbank
Unusual colours, watery patterns and jewel-like details
add sparkle to this small flat overlooking the Thames
42 13.12.20 The Observer Magazine

Words SERENA FOKSCHANER
Photographs RACHAEL SMITH
Go with the tide: (from left) the purple
and gold kitchen, painted like a lacquered
jewellery box; and the light-filled living
room with its balcony and view of the river
The Observer Magazine 13.12.20
C
louds scurry across the
hallway of this London flat.
Not real ones, of course, but
the low-lying stratocumuli of
a monochrome wallpaper by
Fornasetti. It’s a clever device, calculated
to pull your gaze towards the view of the
Thames which flows directly beneath
this eighth-floor home in a watery
ribbon of greens and browns that change
with the seasons.
Rachel Chudley, who designed the
interior, likens the hallway to a “birthing
portal… you step through the front door
and – whoosh! – you’re immediately
transported towards the river.” Her
growing reputation for expressive style
has drawn likeminded clients, such as Lulu
Guinness, doyenne of vintage bag design.
This project, however, was closer to home.
Set in a labyrinthine, brick-built 1980s
block, the one-bedroom home belongs
to her family and it’s where – in normal
times – they gather to socialise, celebrate
or stay during trips to the city. They are
a tight-knit clan. Chudley’s siblings Alice,
a former patisserie chef, and George,
an engineer who lives in Manchester,
recently joined her business. Everyone
had a say in choosing the Docklands
property. “Fortunately, we have the same
aesthetic,” says Chudley. “This was the
first property we saw. It’s modest, but the
sense of privacy and setting won us over.”
This stretch of the river, upstream
from St Katharine Dock, is deep and
tidal. “Before it was redeveloped in the
1980s, the area was full of warehouses
and factories,” says Chudley. “Because the
water’s tidal, the landscape is constantly
changing. It’s rare to feel so connected
to the river in London. I wanted to bring
a sense of that ebb and flow inside.”
The family gave her free rein to
transform their riverine retreat. “Even
before we’d exchanged contracts I was
doodling ideas. It had to feel cosy for
one person, but sociable when we’re all
together.” The 900sqm apartment, which
includes a shower room and open-
plan living space, was too compact for
structural changes. “I had to delve into
my bag of tricks,” she says. There’s a lot
you can do with pattern and colour. It was
a large challenge in a small space.”
To bring “movement and drama” to the
Interiors
railway-carriage-like living room Chudley
designed asymmetric shelving, lit softly
by night, adding textiles, including
a rippled silk rug to mimic the play of light
on water. Curtains made from plain fabric
overlaid with vintage saris are another
of her motifs. “I like to treat rooms like
canvasses, layering colours, shapes and
surfaces,” says the art-history graduate.
A glinting Japanese screen divides the
dining area from the kitchen, which has
a contrastingly glamorous feel. Chudley
kept the carcasses, but added new doors,
painted in a deep plum, framed by the
brass skirting board. She also designed
the sparkling glass shelving. When
the lights are dimmed, you feel you’ve
stepped into a lacquered jewellery box.
There was little left in the family coffers
for new furniture. Most of it, like the
midcentury Danish table and chairs, was
found on eBay. Chudley is particularly
fond of the inlaid Arts and Crafts library
chair, which folds out to become a set of
steps, and the “eccentric” lamp with its
dangling shades, found in a Paris market.
Much of the art here has a personal
connection. A pair of watercolours, hung ‹
43
 Family ties: (from far left)
Rachel Chudley and sister
Alice; Fornasetti wallpaper;
tiles in the bathroom; the
fern-printed headboard in
the bedroom; and the view

‹ low to echo the shoreline, were painted

by an ancestor, the English impressionist
Fred Mayer, a contemporary of Walter
Sickert. In the bedroom, a glowing
abstract is by Joseph Goody. The pair
met at the Cob Gallery, in London, where
Chudley once ran a series of pop-ups:
“I’d paint the walls and we’d ask artists
to respond to a different themes, like
‘Surreal Women’. It was bonkers but fun.
We mixed new artists with established
names, like Gilbert & George, alongside
furniture and unusual bits and pieces. It’s
how I like to work, combining different
eras with the odd, out-of-kilter thing.
Interiors should be joyful, not perfect.”
She collaborated with another artist,
her father-in-law Donald Kaufman, to
create the paint colours in the apartment.
The New York-based Kaufman, who has
made colours for institutions including
the Metropolitan Museum of Art, is
known for his highly pigmented hues.
It is hard to pinpoint their exact colour,
which is precisely the point. “Don based
his research on nature and the way
colours change according to the light or
weather conditions,” explains Chudley.
In the living room, she used a greeny-
blue offset by the high-gloss gold ceiling
which bounces light into the room.
The fern print on the headboard mimics
the vegetal growth of the riverbank.
We step on to the tiny red balcony to
inspect the view. A river taxi zips past,
tailed by a sombre barge. When the tide
recedes, revealing the silty foreshore, down
come the mudlarkers with their wellies
and ziplock bags. A whale once swam
past; seals with baleful eyes occasionally
appear. For Chudley, that’s the attraction.
“There’s always an element of surprise
when you live by the river,” she says. ■
rachelchudley.com

Home
front:
the best
interior
books
For inspiration The Best of Nest Kabinett & Kammer Interiors of the Century House of Print Mad About the house
and practical Nest was the otherworldly From whittled songbirds to More than just a celebration Molly Mahon is a self- Subtitled ‘101 interior design
magazine of interiors created industrial apparatus, artist of decorators, designers taught textile designer who ideas’, this comprehensive
tips, these five by Joseph Holtzman from Sean Scherer uses disparate and architects, this glossy specialises in block printing. book, which features
luxurious books 1997 to 2004, and across historical objects and book highlights over 400 Here, you can explore the answers to all those
have everything a total of only 26 issues. layers them into beautiful exquisite interiors created craft through her designs questions about interior
you need to With photography by artists ensembles to create his by fashion designers, and influences. She also design that you were afraid
and writing by literary interiors. This book is both a artists, style icons and film offers practical skills and to ask, is by Kate Watson-
transform luminaries, Nest was an celebration of his work and a stars. It’s a testament to potential ways to transform Smyth, the woman behind
your home art piece; each issue was practical guide to collecting. residential interior design and your creations into the UK’s number one
uniquely golden. Phaidon, £75 Vendome Press, £29.95 decoration. Phaidon, £59.95 homeware. Pavilion, £16.99 interiors blog. Pavilion, £20

44 13.12.20 The Observer Magazine

 Gardens
James Wong
 @Botanygeek

Moth orchids
make perfect
housemates
In the traditional, deeply nostalgic
world of gardening, it’s amazing how
quickly some things can change. When
I was a plant-mad teenager back in the
1990s, the moth orchid, Phalaenopsis,
was considered an unbelievably rare
new introduction that cost a fortune and
was only available in a few colours. Fast
forward just a few decades and they are
now sold for no more than the price of
everyday bedding plants at supermarket
checkouts and garage forecourts
everywhere. But this immense spike in
popularity is not without good reason, so
here is my guide to getting the very best
out of them.
Hailing from the shaded forest
branches of the cool, highlands regions
of southeast Asia, moth orchids are in
many ways the perfect houseplant, as ‘They even tell you if
they are adapted to essentially the exact they need watering’:
environmental conditions we humans the easy-to-care-
like the most. In terms of light levels, for Phalaenopsis
temperature and humidity, if
you are happy to sit and read
in a particular spot wearing you what they require by changing misunderstanding. This is a technique nodes once their initial flush has ended.
ve
a T-shirt and jeans, they will love colour. As
A a general guide, if the used in the lowland tropics to cool the However, I find these side branches can
ors
it there too. So, with these factors leaves are green, they are happy. root zones of these highland species, look a little messy, producing much
eting
automatically ticked off by meeting If silver or white,
w they could do with allegedly encouraging flowering. In our smaller flowers, which rather ruins
hree
our own needs, there are only three a drink, espec
especially if slightly wrinkled. living rooms, there is no need to do this. the elegant architecture of this genus.
other things to bear in mind whenhen it All you need to t do is plunge the pot in What about fertiliser? Advice varies on Snipping whole flowering stems back to
comes to spoiling these plants: water, bow of water for a minute or
a sink or bowl this topic, but for me I just add a half- soil level will encourage the production
fertiliser and pruning. two and then drain it thoroughly. If they strength liquid orchid fertiliser at every of new ones, which will give you just as
Watering some plants can are brown
brown, that’s a sign of rot, caused watering, year-round. many blooms that are not only larger but
be tricky because with their by overwatering.
o Trim off any Finally, let’s talk pruning. There are better formed.
roots hidden away in opaque aff
affected areas and continue different schools of thought on this as There really isn’t anything else to add
pots it is often hard to gauge as per normal. There is some these notoriously free-flowering plants in terms of caring for these flexible, free-
how much water they need. Nott so inte
internet talk of ice cubes being are indeed capable of producing small flowering plants: hence the reason for
ven tell
with orchids. In fact they will even used, which
whic is a bit of a cultural lateral branches of blooms from dormant their popularity. ■

Plot 29
Growing plants
from seed you’ve
collected creates
a special magic.
By Allan Jenkins
ALAMY; ALLAN JENKINS
A winter Sunday morning.
Near biblical rain for, it
feels like, 40 days. The
pathways are saturated
and water streams. The
lowers plots are littered
with random pools.
I am not keen on walking
on the soil. I don’t want to
impact or churn it. I am not
looking to make mud. The
chicories sit in small lakes.
the hazel poles down, to Within a few damp minutes I The red chicories look
strip the remaining beans. have more than we’ll need. limp, but the mizuna is
I have been leaving them
to ‘cure’, or at least to dry
There is a special magic
in sowing seed you’ve
thriving in swathes of
jagged-edged green. They
out a bit more. But the saved, eating food that are survivors, the Japanese
dangling, fat pods are in
danger of moulding. I am
belongs to this land. The
same can be said about
mustards. I chew on a few
hot leaves while I work.
here to save seed. flowers. I have grown At home, Henri is still
I fill my jacket pockets tagetes Ildkongen here away. No one to frown while
with deep purple beans and
pink-flecked yellow ones.
for many years. This year
we also trialled a creamy
I fan out beans over the
kitchen table to dry. Later, I’ll
They are mostly ‘Blauhilde’ yellow Tagetes patula from pod and sort through them.

 @allanjenkins21
There is the slight air of
Glastonbury. At least I didn’t
bring a tent.
I have been waiting for
drier weather. At least an
interlude. I am keen to take
and ‘Gold of Bacau’. The
latter are much less easy
to find. Some pods are
slippery. They come away
in my hand. Others have
a pleasing leathery feel.
Bean feast: seeds saved
from this year’s crop to sow
again for next summer
the Danish seed savers
and I am keen to take this
year’s seed. The heads are
sodden, but I will slowly
dry them later on tissue,
open to heat.
I’ll think of another summer.
Allan Jenkins’s Plot 29
(4th Estate, £9.99) is out
now. Order it for £8.49 from
guardianbookshop.com

The Observer Magazine 13.12.20 45

 Twinkle in
your eye
See the light with our
guide to the 20 best
outdoor illuminated
experiences in the UK
Words SARAH TURNER

46 13.12.20 The Observer Magazine

 Travel
1. Belton House, Lincolnshire
Covering 1,300 acres, at Christmas
Belton’s essential sights are incorporated
into a mile-long trail, with giant baubles,
glowing flowers and snowflakes. Festive
music adds an extra seasonal touch amid
giant candles. Until 3 January, £19 adults,
£13.50 children (christmasatbelton.com)

2. Westonbirt, Gloucestershire
A trip during daylight in winter shows
the trees of this arboretum at their most
elemental. At night, there’s a child-
pleasing Christmas illuminated trail with
talkative trees and candy-cane forests
lighting up as you wander through the
glades. Until 21 December, £16 adults,
£8 children (forestryengland.uk)

3. Edinburgh Zoo
It’s real penguins and virtual polar
bears this winter at Edinburgh Zoo.
A trail leads you past many of the zoo’s
key sights, all augmented by projections
that help turn the experience into an
Arctic safari. It’s a mile-long route and
is suitable for both wheelchairs and
buggies. There are also drinks and food
available. Until 3 January, £18 adults,
£12 children (edinburghzoo.org.uk)

4. Armagh Observatory
and Planetarium
This 18th-century observatory with
beautiful landscaped grounds, known
as the Armagh Astropark, is taking
a scientific approach with a walking trail,
transforming the grounds into a magical 2
world of sound and light installations,
including space-themed sculptures.
From 16-23 December, £10 adults and
children (armagh.space)

5. Parking Lot Social

If you prefer your festive entertainment
in the car, look no further than Parking
Lot Social – taking place in a variety
of locations, including Cardiff, Bristol,
Manchester and Glasgow. Pantomimes
are filmed live and relayed on big screens,
alongside classic Christmas movies,
karaoke and a food market delivering
seasonal sustenance direct to your car.
Various dates until 30 December, from £42
per car (theparkinglotsocial.co.uk)

6. Wildwood Trust, Kent

For those who want to see nature
without festive adornments, this tour
runs until early January at Wildwood
near Herne Bay in Kent, a wildlife trust
devoted to Britain’s native species.
You can find out who feared the Yule
Cat, what beavers store in their fridges
and all about Santa’s reindeers, while
enjoying mulled wine and mince pies.
Until 3 January, £20 adults and children
(wildwoodtrust.org)

7. Canary Wharf, London

With their usual Winter Lights festival
postponed, Connected by Light is this
year’s alternative – a curated collection
of nine illuminated installations. Artists
play creatively with light, including
hundreds of orbs containing lights and
speakers, and projections of poetry. 3
1 Until 27 February, free (canarywharf.com) ‹

The Observer Magazine 13.12.20 47

Travel
8. Kew Gardens, London
Kew balances innovation with tradition.
The entrance is always a glittering
archway, but after that each year sees
new additions around its 300 acres
– there are tunnels with lanterns and
glowing pink cherry trees, while the
rose garden springs into voice. The
finale is at the Palm House with laser
beams and jets of light. (Sister site
Wakehurst in Sussex will have the
more nature-focussed Glow Wild on
selected evenings until 3 January.)
Until 17 January, £19.50 adults,
£14.50 children (kew.org)
9. Reindeer Lodge, Flintshire
This 50-acre farm will be surrounding
its resident herds of reindeer with
a full complement of socially distanced
attractions this year. For December,
it has been transformed into a drive-
thru experience, including a lighting
trail with sound piped through to your
car, Santa’s grotto and hot chocolate
delivered on tap. Until 29 December,
from £32.45 per car (reindeerlodge.co.uk)
10. Leonardslee, West Sussex
This garden has harnessed a range of
different talents to create its winter
trail, dominated by a vast moon floating
about the lake. There are lullabies from
local parents, puppet theatres and 3D
projections, and illuminated animals.
Until 28 December, £16 adults, £8 children
(leonardsleegardens.co.uk)
11. Gibside, Tyne and Wear
For the first time this year, lighting
specialists Ignite have partnered up
with the National Trust at this estate
near Newcastle to create a stunning
setting, from glowing mushrooms in
the woodland to a trail illuminated
by lanterns as it winds through the
18th-century gardens with the house
48
8 10
12
itself as a spectacular backdrop.
Until 30 December, £15 adults,
£10 children (nationaltrust.org.uk)
12. Eden Project, Cornwall
The garden’s winter offering mixes light
installations with live music. Each of
the biomes has a different installation.
There’s ice skating and a reindeer trail,
plus Father Christmas popping up with
his elves. Until 30 December, £28.50
adults, £15 children (edenproject.com)
13. Luminate
A travelling lighting trail that’s less
Christmas-focussed than many. Instead
it’s a mile-long journey through colour
and sensation. Although there’s food
and drink to buy, you can bring your
own. There’s also a fire pit where
you can toast marshmallows. It’s at
Sandringham in Norfolk between
17 December and 17 January, and then
Coombe Abbey in Warwickshire from
20 January to 21 February. £14 adults,
£10 children (luminate.live)
14. Waddesdon, Buckinghamshire
The extravagant gardens bring the
Victorian notion of pleasure gardens to
the 21st century, with giant fairy-light
baubles in the stables and lawns of gently
glowing tiny orbs. As well as the usual
festive snacks, afternoon teas and meals
are available. Until 31 January, £17.28
adults, £8.64 children (waddesdon.org.uk)
15. Lost Gardens of Heligan,
Cornwall
A smaller, gentler experience, the
gardens will have lanterns in the shapes
of animals, including foxes, badgers,
squirrels and hedgehogs all set along
the pathways. Torches to help navigate
the path are advised. Until 3 January,
£16 adults, £8 children (heligan.com)
16. Longleat, Wiltshire
This stately home brings an especially
whimsical touch to the posh-house
illumination experience. It’s certainly
one of the most ambitious, where
lasers blend with Longleat’s venerable
fountains. The trail is wheelchair
accessible. Until 10 January, £27.95 adults,
£20.95 children (longleat.co.uk)
17. Winterfest, London
A newcomer to the growing light
installation events list, Winterfest
incorporates both Christmas and Diwali.
It has London’s tallest LED tree and
plenty of other interactive light shows.
Until 17 January, free (wembleypark.com)
18. Stourhead, Wiltshire
One of the National Trust’s most prized
gardens is offering a field of glowing
crocuses and giant lilies on the lake
while glowing red noses and antlers
signal the possible presence of Santa.
Until 3 January, £19 adults, £13 children
(christmasatstourhead.co.uk)
19. Dunham Massey, Cheshire
PREVIOUS PAGE: PA WIRE. THIS PAGE: PA WIRE; EMILY WHITFIELD-WICKS
A bus ride from Warrington, you’ll find
giant glittery deer competing with this
National Trust property’s own herd. The
trail winds through formal gardens, with
sculptures and tunnels of light, and more
reflective moments in the fire garden.
Until 10 January, £20 adults, £13 children
(nationaltrust.org.uk)
20. Bradford LIT
LIT will see artists collaborate in a series
of light shows across Bradford, from the
rooftop of a historic mill to people’s front
gardens. Highlights include poet laureate
Simon Armitage working with Double
Take, a projection-mapping specialist,
and Alison Smith’s macramé-inspired
Lightweave. Various dates, until 28
February, free (visitbradford.com). ■
13.12.20 The Observer Magazine
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The Observer Magazine

azine 13.12.20 49
Self &
wellbeing
Photograph MOLLIE ROSE

Without the smart

benefits of artificial
intelligence I would
never have overcome
my dyslexia
Words TABITHA GOLDSTAUB

I’m 10 years old. Minutes into a maths lesson and my

palms have already begun to sweat. I’ve positioned
myself in the back row, but the teacher walks up and
down the aisles of the classroom, peering over our
shoulders. I don’t understand the rules. The teacher’s
voice becomes a blur, and I stare at the numbers on the
board, willing them to make sense. I wasn’t a shy child,
if anything I was bold and kind of brash, but I couldn’t
ask for help. I didn’t have the language to explain what
the numbers were doing to my brain.
Soon I’d have a name for what I was experiencing –
dyslexia – and I’d begin to find ways to accommodate
my learning style. As with everything, there are scales
here. Dyslexia presents and impacts people in different
ways, and I was lucky to be at a great school. But I had to
learn to overcome my fear of numbers and words. I had
to do battle with my confidence. It’s only now I realise
that this was the cause of me honing my greatest skill:
learning to learn. Discovering more about different
learning styles was a game-changer – and where my
love of artificial intelligence technology was born.
Flash forward and now I’m a tech entrepreneur
and co-founder of CognitionX, a market intelligence
platform for AI. Two years ago I was appointed by
government ministers Matt Hancock and Greg Clark,
to assemble a team of experts in AI to form a council
responsible for supporting the government and its
office for artificial intelligence. I’ve been fortunate
enough to have a front-row seat as the world is
transformed by new technology but on a personal level
I’m drawn to AI because I want more support too. My am I looking for AI support, I’m looking for human Statistics report revealed that 70% of them are women.
dyslexia means I need more help, like spotting simple support. The need for a conversation at the back of Covid will no doubt increase these risks – the shift to
mistakes in my writing. the class hasn’t been replaced by technology – it’s online working has only made it easier for companies to
I rely on apps such as SwiftKey and Grammarly been augmented by it. Technology and people need to increase automation. This is why I want to urge women
as one might an old friend. SwiftKey in particular is work in tandem. to get ahead of the game. Now more than ever is a good
a huge help in my day-to-day life. It’s an app for your time to become the person in your company who has
smartphone keyboard that uses AI to make much I think it was my dyslexia and my need to see things learned to master the newest software. Even for those
better recommendations than the inbuilt spelling and from a different angle that enabled me to be open to who are proudly the “least” techie, it is time to change
grammar check. Even better is its new feature that turns the rewards of AI. But this doesn’t mean that there tune. I’m not suggesting that everyone should retrain
my voice to text so I don’t have to type or leave a voice aren’t risks. I grapple with the potential pitfalls of AI, to become data scientists or AI experts. It’s more about
note when I’m struggling to find exactly the right particularly its bias against people underrepresented in having an understanding of how to work with products
way to say something. Grammarly is my go-to for my tech across society. We are hurtling towards AI, machine that have AI built in.
laptop. It combines rules, patterns, and AI deep learning learning and robotics I only ever advocate for AI systems in the workplace
techniques to help you improve your writing. at breakneck speed and if they have a Human in the Loop approach. HITL
The drawback is that if something goes wrong
with either of these apps, I feel as I’m back in the
At school, people are being left
behind. This means a risk
is a way to build AI systems that makes sure there
is always a person with a key role somewhere in
classroom again, free-falling, my brain foggy, letters and my brain of job loss in an already the decision-making process. This guarantees that
numbers jumbled up. I worry I’m over reliant on these
technologies, but I’m also thankful for their existence. was foggy, struggling climate.
One and a half million
whatever the outcome happens to be, it’s arrived at
through a combination of steps taken by a machine and
Because they use machine learning, which operates
by learning how I use the apps each time, we grow
letters and people in England are at
high risk of losing their
the person, together. It’s this sort of system I want to
encourage women to become the best at navigating.
together. It’s a conundrum but one I’m conscious of and
take into account every day.
numbers jobs to automation in
the coming years, and
Throughout history a set of qualities traditionally
associated with women – compassion, care, empathy
And this is why it’s important to note that not only a jumble… a 2019 Office for National and nurturing – have been dismissed or sidelined ‹

The Observer Magazine 13.12.20 51

Classified
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a tsunami that knocks you down, or it could be the wave
that we ride together to a brighter future. The moment
I began to truly understand this, I knew I had to share Séamas My son is waving a stick in
the park and we’re trying manner
ause of my urbane
Because
er and sophisticated
proscriptions has been
pulled up, and yet the taboo

O’Reilly
what I’d learned about its possible risks as well as its to keep him quiet. It’s not prose, you probably imagine words themselves remain.
rewards – and why it is that women were more likely to that we’re ashamed of his I’m above such h thi
things. O i we’ve
One sign ’ moved d
suffer the negative effects. ebullience. It’s just that we’re Doubtless, you presume on is in the asterisks I used
having a few vocabulary I spend the long winter earlier. There’s no way of
It’s really crucial for women to challenge the tendency to Swearing isn’t issues at the moment. As a evenings reading Viking reading f**k without reading
sometimes see tech as “boring”, “scary” or “for someone big and it isn’t two-year-old, he has not yet poetry in the original Norse the word it obscures in your
else”. I’m not a scientist, engineer, developer or techie. mastered the ‘st’ consonant and that I find nothing funnier own head, and it’s physically
It takes me a long time to understand technological clever, but when cluster that begins the than those New Yorker impossible to say it out loud.
ideas because they’re mostly founded in complex your two-year- word ‘stick’, which means cartoons about psychiatrists. It seems as if we’ve all agreed
mathematics. It was a really liberating moment when his delight at this object The truth is I find nothing, and the words are meaningless
I realised that I didn’t need to understand the precise
old son does it, is causing him to scream I mean nothing, as funny as and fine but are all too scared
inner workings of AI machines in order to understand it’s a real hoot something that sounds very my son shouting ‘f**k, f**k, to be the first ones to say
the ramifications of this technology. like ‘my dick, my dick!’ to f**k’ as he shoves a truck it, so have all pretended a
All you need is to get a good grasp on how to adapt  @shockproofbeats every person we meet. toward camera on a Zoom few removed letters are an
and thrive in this new world and what you can do to Other syllables also call with his grandparents. effective linguistic fig leaves.
support others to do the same. present issues. He mixes Taboos about swearing We pretend that ‘f**k’ or
There are simple ways of achieving this and one ne of up ‘tr’
tr sounds with ‘f’ have never made ‘s**t’ or ‘k**x’ aren’t really
them is learning how to talk to technologies which ch use sounds, which is fine when much sense. Even the swear words at all. In fairness,
AI. You don’t need to rush out to the shops – there re is chattering about h his trains nomenclature we use I made ‘k**x’ up, and you
AI you can talk to in products you may already have.ave. If (‘fains’) or their tra
tracks (‘fax’), derives from times when still read it as a swear word,
you’re an Apple user, talk to Siri, or Cortana if youu use but more alarming when the people balked at wielding which proves my point.
Microsoft and Google has an assistant too. Set your our subject turns to hi his trucks evil spirits (cursing), or None of this matters,
alarm to be voice-activated or use a voice assistant nt to (you get the pictu
picture). We invoking sacred names of course, since I too
add appointments to your calendar, or to search the lightly correct him so that he (swearing), holdovers from am a product of my
internet for you. My friends tell me that they’ve given doesn’t twig that there’s a time when blasphemous environment. For all my
up on their home system, or that they can’t bear that anything funny or rude or sexual language was philosophical bafflement at
their car is trying to talk to them. My response is about what he’he’s saying about as socially acceptable such verbal interdicts, the
always to tell them: this technology isn’t going because we don’t as coughing in public is now. idea of my son deliberately
anywhere. So instead of avoiding it, find ways to want him to start These days blasphemy swearing hurts my heart.
make the technology work for you before you end d doing it fo
for effect. isn’t really thought about in I don’t want a potty-
up working for it. ■ And that is a real those terms, and daytime mouthed child before he’s
beca
risk because, if I’m TV programmes run potty-trained. Just let me
How to Talk to Robots by Tabitha Goldstaub is being hon
honest, the segments about people who get a few more laughs out
0
published by 4th Estate at £12.99. Buy it for £11.30 effect on m me is quite marry their sex-dolls, so of it first, and then I’ll sort it
from guardianbookshop.com pronounced. every possible root for these out. I swear.

The Observer Magazine 13.12.20 53


Sunday
with...
Kirsty Wark on
tennis, beach
walks and cards
What’s your morning
routine? I’ve played Sunday
morning tennis for 18 years
– I’m up at 8am to check the
weather from the window of
my Glasgow bedroom. Our
match is a ritual, however
stressful the week has been,
however hungover we are.
How do you relax? By taking
the ferry to the Isle of Arran,
where I set my first book.
I walk along the empty beach
at Blackwaterfoot, before
visiting Brodick Castle’s
gardens. It’s my joyous place.
My shoulders ease down as
I drop a few gears on arrival.
Do you work? I’ve turned
down plenty of weekend
jobs; there’s no value in
filling your head with news
permanently. And especially
now, with work being so
intense, I need time away.
Looking out over a vista
I can take a breath knowing
I don’t need to think about
the pandemic’s every
development.
Your Sunday uniform? An
oversized men’s Bella Freud
sweater, black trousers and
54
Timberlands. Still, I always
have to bear in mind what I’ll
want to wear on Newsnight,
in London, the following
week: it can’t be caked in
mud, or at the bottom of my
Glasgow laundry basket.
Sunday evening? A game of
cards, dinner and wine (less
than the previous evening)
accompanied by Joni Mitchell.
Then I think about the week
ahead - reading the news
sites and packing. Leaving
for London on a Sunday
night feels wrong. If I have
to, I’ll take the sleeper train –
a treat to take the edge off.
Last thing you check on
your phone? Last-minute
messages to check the
kids are OK, even though
they’re 20 and 30. I’m
only truly at peace when
I know exactly where they
are. And then I’ll do some
online clothes shopping,
playing my part to help the
economy. Michael Segalov
Kirsty presents The Reunion
Christmas special - Strictly Come
Dancing at 9pm on Christmas Eve,
repeated at 9pm on Christmas
Day, on BBC Radio 4
Dear
Mariella
I have two great men
in my life – but I can’t
choose between them
 @mariellaf1
The dilemma I am in my early 30s and for the
past seven years I’ve been dealing with the
issue of loving two men at the same time.
Each of them is unique in his own way; both
of them are loving, caring and love me dearly.
I was with the first man for two years, then
I left him for the second one with whom
I stayed for four years. Now I’m back with the
first one, but missing the second one greatly.
I can’t be happy with either, because I miss the
other and worry constantly that I’m hurting
the feelings of the other one. Sometimes I am
not sure if I love them or am just worried
about not hurting them. I was wondering
whether to leave both of them, but everyone
I know says that many women can only dream
about having such a man and that I should
be happy that I have two of them to choose
from. I know I am lucky, but it has become
an impossible task for me to choose between
them and it’s destroying me.
Mariella replies I’m not sure about lucky. There will be
a few schools of thought on this issue, so in the interests
of inclusivity I’ll try to include them all. First and
foremost, why choose? We live in a changed world, where
19th-century normality no longer applies and if the
world is a better place with three of you in the mix why
not have the courage of your convictions and embark on
the unthinkable? I’ve no idea how your duelling suitors
will react, but perhaps as we’re encouraged to keep
things fluid when it comes to gender, so we might also
try it when it comes to “life partnerships”.
When you get to examine, on a weekly basis as I do,
the damage wreaked by couples splitting up – or, indeed,
couples trying to stay together – you do start to wonder
if it’s time to re-examine our monogamous model.
Loosening the ties that bind our “romantic”
relationships may be a better way of doing things in
a world where increased lifespan means partnerships
can last up to seven decades. That’s a really long time
to compromise over someone else’s shortcomings. So if
these two guys added together represent your ideal man,
I’d seriously consider – if they agree – giving it a try.
However, flight of fantasy aside, there’s a burning
question here that, in our one-way conversation, you
can’t answer. If neither offers you enough of what you
need, leaving you constantly hankering for the one
you’ve left, is it worth considering the possibility that
they are both coming up short?
Write to us: If you have a dilemma, send a brief email to mariella.frostrup@observer.co.uk. To have your say on
this week’s column, go to observer.co.uk/dear-mariella
You’ve invested some of the best, adventure-fuelled,
experimental days of your relationship life in these two
guys and what you’re telling me here suggests that,
rather than both being perfect, neither is satisfactory.
How about stepping away from committing to either of
them and finding out what it is you really want?
You’re in your early 30s so still have the luxury of
self-discovery, uncluttered by commitments and family.
Wouldn’t you like to experience the world without
the mitigating presence of another person for just
a little while? The route to real happiness is to develop
contentment in your own company, then try adding
a partner as seasoning and flavouring to an already
decent life. I feel as if you’ve prematurely added salt and
pepper before your main ingredients. How are you ever
going to know what life tastes like without the add-ons?
You’re clearly in a quandary and, if you’re not using
words like “desperate” lightly, you do really need to
take some action. Hankering after what you haven’t got
certainly doesn’t put you in a minority. For most of us
it’s a condition that continues to the end of our lives. But
when it comes to relationships it’s important to work out
what we want, what works for us and then how to find
the best way of achieving that compromise. For seven
years you’ve swapped Tweedledum for Tweedledee
without, it seems, any time spent experiencing the
pleasure and challenge of life without either. If your
ambition is to have a family,
Wouldn’t don’t forget: time is finite.
So you might want to stop
you like to dilly-dallying around and
spend it thinking seriously
experience about the bigger picture.
life on For most women the
next opportunity for
your own seismic self-scrutiny and
reinvention doesn’t come
for a while? until we are in our 50s when
re-adjustments are often
necessary for stage two of life’s evolutionary journey.
The best way I’ve found to make such choices is to
start with a clean slate and slowly build up the picture.
Developing your destiny mustn’t be mitigated by fear of
upsetting other people. Learning to be true to yourself
and employing honesty and kindness towards others is
the way to avoid the fear of causing hurt or guilt. Sadly,
relationships are not beautifully balanced creations and
therefore causing inadvertent pain when making choices
is unavoidable.
BAFTA/REX/SHUTTERSTOCK; ALAMY
I may have laboured the point a bit here, but I really
want you to stop and think about yourself, not spend
these precious days erroneously believing the key to
your own happiness is choosing which of these men best
delivers it. The key to contentment, as I hope I’ve made
clear, lies within. Free yourself to make choices and you
might be surprised by the person who reveals herself. ■
13.12.20 The Observer Magazine
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