Esquire UK

John Banville won the Booker Prize in 2005 for his novel The Sea. His most recent book, The Drowned, was published last October. Cameron Bensley is a still-life photographer. His commercial clients include JW Anderson, McQueen and Juicy Couture, and his work has appeared in Elle and Wallpaper*. Matt Blake is a features writer for The Guardian, The Daily Telegraph and Time Out. His first book, Hearth of Darkness, will be published in October. Mick Brown is a writer for The Daily Telegraph and the author of many books including, most recently, The Nirvana Express: How the Search for Enlightenment Went West. Lucas Burtin is an illustrator and cartoonist for publications including The New York Times, The New Yorker, Le Monde and Berliner Zeitung. Ed Caesar is a contributing staff writer to The New Yorker…

Into the unknown Like all sensible people, I have a moderate to severe allergy to those “some personal news” announcements one comes across on social media, in which bumptious self-promoters issue quasi press releases on their own behalf, congratulating themselves on their latest career moves — and, with mortifying presumption, expecting the rest of us to care. This editor’s letter, I fear, is going to resemble one of those impositions, so apologies in advance to fellow sufferers: I hope you have some soothing ointment within reach to rub into your rash while you indulge me, this one last time, in a spot of mortifying presumption. Recently, I read an interview with Francis Ford Coppola, the maverick genius behind The Godfather, Apocalypse Now and half a century of other cinematic bedazzlements and box-office duds.…

When Manchester punk pioneers Buzzcocks released their seminal (for once the word is apt) single “Orgasm Addict” in 1977, not the least of its power to shock and thrill came from the 7” sleeve design: superimposed on a yellow background with blue text, a black and white photo of the naked, oiled torso of a young woman, each of her nipples covered with a toothy, lip-sticked mouth, her head replaced by a Morphy Richards iron. The graphic designer was Malcolm Garrett. But the artist responsible for the provocative collage of the girl with the domestic appliance at the top of her neck was Linder Sterling (in her work she goes by Linder), then in her early twenties and embarking on what would develop into one of the most compelling careers in…

The link between football fandom and trainer fetishism is long established, with the labelconscious casuals of the late 1970s and early 1980s pioneering the friendly — and sometimes not-so-friendly — one-upmanship inherent to both contests: the one on the pitch, and the one in the stands, where last week’s Sambas suddenly look tired compared to this week’s Forest Hills. In the mid-2000s, trend-aware supporters went one step further than their forebears, wearing studless versions of the Nike Tiempos and Adidas Predators that their favourite players were sporting on the pitch. It’s those shoes, in recent years, that men’s style luminaries including Grace Wales Bonner and Martine Rose have referenced in their respective collaborations with the sportswear giants. Meanwhile, Nike has confirmed a spring reissue of the sneaker that many credit with…

The runway at Paro airport, in the landlocked Buddhist kingdom of Bhutan, is considered to be one of the most dangerous in the world. Only 50 pilots are certified to take on the tightly choreographed route, down a narrow corridor of the 18,000-ft Himalayan mountains. The atmosphere is thin in this lofty corner of South Asia, meaning that aircrafts move faster. That’s not to mention the fact there’s no radar assistance. One false move could leave a smouldering dent in Bhutan’s claim to being the most blissed-out place on Earth — and there’s a point during the plane’s final descent, as I press my face against the window and watch the left wing almost stroke the forested ridge beneath it, when the whole “zen” thing would really come in handy. But…

One hundred years ago, photography involved wooden cameras, metal tripods and glass plates. Then along came the Leica 1(A), a device that repurposed 35mm movie-film negative for a camera that was portable, lightweight and allowed users to take more than one shot without changing the film. It was dismissed as a toy. “Professional photographers didn’t trust it,” says Stefan Daniel, executive vice president of technology and operations at Leica, from the company’s headquarters in the city of Wetzlar, near Frankfurt, Germany. “It’s the typical reaction when something revolutionary comes up. But it really made photography much more mobile, much more agile than before.” Early adopters — including street photographers, explorers and members of the Bauhaus movement — did trust it, seeing the potential after it launched at the 1925 Leipzig Spring Fair. The 1(A) was…