Making a magazine, I sometimes think, is a bit like hosting a dinner party. It’s easy to do badly and hard to do well, but if you manage to gather the right combination of guests – or interviewees and contributors in our case – then there’s a slim chance you’ll end up with some kind of wonderful alchemy.
In this issue we might just have brought together the most interesting mix of people in the magazine’s history. We have exclusive interviews with the former president of the European Commission and former non-executive chairman of Goldman Sachs, José Manuel Barroso; the justice system campaigner and philanthropist Lady Edwina Grosvenor; New York real estate mogul Harry Macklowe; and a chef who has held up to 21 Michelin stars at a time during his stellar career, Alain Ducasse. That’s just for starters.
[See also: How the rich and famous fell for Miami]
Other people to have spoken exclusively to us include the billionaire entrepreneur John Caudwell, the larger-than-life Miami property developer Gil Dezer and Shalini Hinduja, who has spearheaded the wider Hinduja family’s ambitious project to transform the Old War Office on Whitehall into a thrumming centre of the highest-class hospitality London has to offer, retaining all its heritage and character. She is profiled alongside other winners from the recent Spear’s Awards.
Related
We also go out to lunch with the London restaurateur ne plus ultra, Jeremy King. The man who gave Le Caprice and the Wolseley their mojo had a setback when he was muscled out of the business he built up with his friend and erstwhile business partner Chris Corbin. Don’t call it a comeback, but 2024 is shaping to be a banner year as he opens three new restaurants. One is a revivification of Le Caprice, on its original site. Some of the possible names for the new joint (he’s not allowed to use ‘Le Caprice’) are sure to raise a smile. King spoke with Spear’s digital director Stephanie Bridger-Linning, who makes her debut in the print magazine with this excellent interview.
There are some other notable debuts elsewhere. Robin Wigglesworth, editor of the FT’s markets and finance blog, Alphaville, charts the course of Vanguard. The $7 trillion asset management colossus has managed to do what many people thought impossible: make passive investing sexy (or at least effective, thanks to its tiny fees). Meanwhile, you may know Nick Hendrix best as Detective Sergeant Jamie Winter from ITV’s Midsomer Murders or his appearances in The Crown, but he takes on a different role for us, climbing behind the wheel of a Ferrari Roma to join a phalanx of Prancing Horse enthusiasts on a luxurious and highly exclusive gallop through the Tuscan countryside. His account and some beautiful pictures taken by Michael Shelford (another Spear’s debutant) are another highlight of the edition.
Our cover story this time – in case you missed it, in all its pink-and-orange glory – sees Spear’s contributing editor Robert Jackman jet off to Miami to discover why it has become a hotspot for the world’s super-rich and famous over the past few years. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos is among those to have upped sticks, recently buying a $79 million home in the neighbourhood known as ‘Billionaire Bunker’, but he’s far from the only boldface name to have made the move. As Robert hears, it’s not all a bed of roses and friendly tax legislation. There are concerns about a bubble in the city’s real estate market and fears about the consequences of climate change. After all, some parts of the metropolis are – literally – built on sand. The illustration is supplied by the brilliant Cat Sims, who takes inspiration from an unusual source: the video game Grand Theft Auto: Vice City.
To regather my slightly strained metaphor from earlier, dessert comes in the form of our Good Life section, the Spear’s guide to the (much) finer things. Timothy Barber brings his usual lightness of touch to a feature about the luxury watch marques deploying carbon fibre, and Sarah Royce Greensill discovers what happens when artists turn their hand to jewels. It’s all capped off with a cognac, as Chris Madigan discovers the endless charm of Louis XIII’s ‘infinity wheel’.
Content from our partners
I hope you enjoy the magazine.
