If you follow this column with some degree of commitment you’ll know that I have a pretty set travel circuit. While some cities come and go (not so much Los Angeles, New York or Singapore these days), the current cities that see the most touchdowns for work are Paris, Geneva, Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Hong Kong, Tokyo and my current perch: Bangkok. In each city there’s an established drill – the hotel and regular room, the morning trot route, the café, the restaurant for team dinners, the quieter joint for something more clandestine, the shave place, the shops for wardrobe improvement and the essential book and mag stores. Each city also has its social scene, where friendships range from the somewhat work-related to the long established and also the occasional walk-on appearances from people who are (how do I say this?) more from the after-hours orbit.

Off the back of our Shanghai event earlier in the week (see Andrew’s column yesterday) and a special talk session for Chanel in Hong Kong on Thursday evening, it was on to Bangkok bright and sharp Friday morning. It’s unusual to have a few free days when out on the road so I decided that I would do a spa-meets-clinic long weekend. But when I started digging into the programme I realised that, due to my short stay, I couldn’t adapt to the offering and so I decided that singing bowls and herbal essence therapy wasn’t going to be quite my jam. Instead I opted for my Grand Hyatt default set-up.
 
Despite the public holidays on either side of the weekend, Bangkok feels oddly quiet. There are plenty of people around, hotels seem full but it somehow feels empty. On Friday eve I went out with some friends from Taipei and though bars and lounges were full, it all felt a bit flat. The company was entertaining, the drinks flowed but everything was somehow dull. Was it me? Shanghai was full-tilt and I was with 15 colleagues for a compressed 72 hours, so maybe I was feeling a bit out of sorts. I carried on till we decided to call it quits but I woke up feeling the same today. I slept well, the sun was shining and as the day started to cool I pulled on my trainers, shorts and a tee and walked down to Lumphini Park to join the thousands doing their evening fitness routines (catch Colin Nagy’s story on the park from earlier in the week), walking their dogs or partaking in lizard photography. The steamy eve, noisy birds and array of running gear and footwork improved my mood immediately. Did you know that there is a Thai tiptoe technique for keeping a smooth pace? I saw a couple of guys employing this style of running, which is a mix of gentle glide meets pony prance. Best to try it at home first if you’re considering a fresh gait. I also did a bit of market analysis and there is no question that Adidas and Asics are out front among Bangkok’s running crowd. Hoka and On are still around but they don’t seem to have nearly the market share as the German and Japanese brands.
 
After two circuits I exited the park, made a right onto Lang Suan, and as I passed the entrance to Sindhorn Village my mood returned and I realised what had been bothering me. I was missing Gwen Robinson and Sindhorn was the last place that I saw her before she died. It was also in that moment that I realised it has been just over a year since our correspondent Gwen left our pages and airwaves after nearly two decades of contributing to Monocle. In an earlier time and if Gwen had been here, my free weekend would have been rather different. She would have had three embassy receptions to go to, a pair of book launches to attend and then she’d suggest drinks somewhere not too far from her digs. We’d talk for hours about the world of journalism, the state of Thailand, hacks that she didn’t rate and all kinds of story and business ideas.
 
Indeed, I wouldn’t be writing this column so late on a Saturday (Thai time) as Gwen would have already allowed me to coax her to a Japanese bar that she deemed too far but would adore it once she got there. For such a thriving, dynamic city, it’s striking how one individual can take so much with them. I miss you Gwen. We all miss you very much. Big Bangkok isn’t the same without your spritzers, theories and rasp.

Enjoying life in ‘The Faster Lane’? Click here to browse all of Tyler’s past columns.

Anselm Chan had modest hopes for his film The Last Dance, a 2024 feature about Hong Kong’s death-care industry that he wrote and directed. It tells the story of a wedding celebrant-turned-funeral director – perhaps a symbolic career pivot in an economic downturn – and doesn’t exactly follow the formula of popular cinema.

Most of The Last Dance is set in and around a large funeral parlour in a gritty part of Kowloon. The story unfolds in morgues, crematoriums and a coffin shop, revealing a side of the city that few people see (and which many fear seeing at all). It tackles taboos head on, questioning widely held preconceptions, as well as specific rules about who can and cannot conduct Taoist funeral rites.

Chan’s film struck a chord with viewers. It broke box-office records on its opening day and went on to become the highest-grossing film in Hong Kong history, attracting audiences in mainland China, Taiwan and beyond. More than two million seats were sold in Hong Kong alone. Who says that the streamers are killing cinema?

“Since the coronavirus pandemic, Hong Kongers have experienced a lot of loss,” says Chan by way of explanation for the film’s broad appeal. “Many people who left before it all started couldn’t return to say goodbye to their loved ones. This movie made them feel like they could participate in something.”

We’re at the offices of Emperor Motion Pictures in Wan Chai. The production company’s owner, Emperor Group, is a key pillar of the contemporary Hong Kong film industry, funding and distributing commercial movies as well as operating a chain of cinemas and nurturing up-and-coming talent. Chan is part of a generation of homegrown filmmakers in their thirties and forties who are proving that great storytelling and cinematography can go hand in hand with commercial success.

Two of the region’s most successful crime dramas of recent years were co-produced by Emperor: the 2018 Chow Yun-Fat vehicle Project Gutenberg and The Goldfinger (2023), starring celebrated actors Tony Leung and Andy Lau. Their posters in the corridors at the company’s headquarters have now been joined by those for The Last Dance, placing Chan and his work firmly among the city’s cinematic pantheon.

However, he is blunt in his assessment of the current state of the art. “Hong Kong films are not as good as they used to be,” he says from behind thick, black-rimmed glasses, citing a shrinking industry, loss of talent and directors who rely on tired formulas. In the age of Netflix and other streaming services, people have more choice than ever. But Chan doesn’t think that the issue is that people are too easily distracted; instead, he believes that viewers everywhere are getting more, not less, sophisticated. “I need to earn the audience’s dollar. Why should they see my film instead of The Avengers when the ticket costs the same?” The rhetorical question hangs in the air for a few moments before he smiles.

On a typical day, Chan goes to bed at 06.00 or 07.00 in the morning and rises in the afternoon. After meditating at home, he walks to his studio in Kowloon Bay near the old Kai Tak airport. He eats one meal a day, usually a bowl of fishball noodle soup from a local café. He fits his own trips to the cinema around watching Arsenal football games and visits to his local Buddhist temple. His knowledge of filmmaking is impressive. “I absolutely have to watch films at the cinema,” he says, before quickly citing Peter Chan, Ann Hui, Johnnie To and Wong Kar-Wai as his favourite directors.

Chan grew up as a latchkey kid in a tong lau – a walk-up tenement apartment – in the industrial neighbourhood of San Po Kong. His parents met while working at a sand factory, though his father later became a seafarer and spent most of every year away from Hong Kong, working on ships bound for North America. At home alone, Chan devoured films on VHS tape; he particularly loved classics such as The Godfather and Schindler’s List. On his mother’s days off, they would go to see the Chinese opera together.

After graduating from high school, he landed his dream job commentating on horse racing for Hong Kong’s public television broadcaster, while writing for racing magazines on the side. Just as the TV work tailed off, director and producer Wong Jing asked Chan to work as a consultant on a show that he was developing about horse racing. It was a lucky gig that opened the door to a yearslong career as a screenwriter, creating comedies for television and film.

Chan aspired to write and direct his own feature-length dramas but his screenplays were repeatedly turned down by studio executives, who saw him as a “comedy guy”, he says. “I was getting a bit annoyed. Then I realised that comedy was my ticket to becoming a director.” So Chan and his partner wrote a fresh screenplay in two weeks. “I asked myself what I was most afraid of,” he adds with a smile. “The answer was marriage.” The movie Ready o/r Knot, about a long-term couple deciding whether they should get hitched, was greenlit immediately and released in 2021.

It was while preparing that film’s sequel that Chan received some terrible news: his maternal grandmother, who had helped to raise him, had been diagnosed with late-stage cancer. She died on the first day of production and, since visitors were restricted at hospitals during the pandemic, she was alone. Unable to properly say goodbye to her, Chan became depressed. “The more time that we spend with people, the closer we become. But the irony is that our time together is actually running out,” he says. “These are the stupid rules of the game. Why do we have to go through this?”

Propelled by such questions – and perhaps a search for meaning – Chan began to research end-of-life care. He reconnected with a friend who works in the funeral business and was struck by how matter-of-factly he and his colleagues would speak about death. For a year and a half, Chan shadowed staff members at a funeral parlour, after which he finished writing the screenplay that became The Last Dance.

So how does life after the death industry look for Hong Kong’s best young director? Chan says that he is developing a historical drama set in 1960s Hong Kong that explores polygamy, which he informs Monocle was both legal and widely practised here until 1971. His leading men from The Last Dance, Dayo Wong and Michael Hui, have signed on to the project. But has success changed Chan’s idea of his work? Not a bit. “A director’s job?” he says. “It’s to have a point of view.”

Monocle went to Shanghai this week to host a one-day conference about entrepreneurship. These are 10 takeaways from our time in the city.

1.
Shanghai changes at a pace. Even residents of the city told us that they would go away on trips and return to find a street upgraded or a pocket park planted. Delegates who were last in the city five or 10 years ago found the changes disorientating. It’s what happens when work on projects continues at every hour.

2.
The new parks add to a city that’s already very green. Every verge is planted with clipped hedges or banks of flowers. Ancient trees spread their shading branches across the streets.

3.
The city has turned down the volume. Electric cars and trucks silently cross town; beeping your horn can get you fined. But Shanghai has also tackled light pollution and, come night, the flashing neon advertising screens around our hotel all went dark.

4.
While the city builds new towers and polishes up its urban act, what makes Shanghai appealing is that it isn’t all manicured perfection. There are still numerous centuries-old low-rise apartment buildings and lanes lined with modest homes in need of some repairs. There’s texture and it’s appreciated. Art-fair pioneer Bao Yifeng and architect Alex Mok, the co-founder of Linehouse, helped to set up our day with a talk about what makes the city tick. They both said that they have chosen to live not in glitzy enclaves but in the Former French Concession, even if that means dealing with the occasional cockroach.

5.
Texture, layers and shade are also why lots of people walk or cycle around Shanghai – there are well-used bike lanes veining the entire city. And people also escape Shanghai when work gets too much. Tashi Tsering, CEO of hospitality company Songtsam, told the audience about his inns and lodges – he now has 19 – tucked away in the valleys of Yunnan, where people go to hike and reset.

6.
The desire to be in the great outdoors has also helped brand leader Xin Yuan to create an apparel business that caters to a new generation of nature lovers. Before our big day, we visited the headquarters of the label An Ko Rau and it was like entering a fun co-operative. There was a bouldering wall, dogs wandering around (including a porky corgi in need of a tickle) and staff cooking lunch together. And lots of talk about being sustainable.

7.
Luxury brands are still desired in Shanghai but locals told us that more is now expected from retailers pitching up in their city. If you were there to make a quick buck or didn’t have a true or authentic story to tell, you would fail.

8.
The Made in China label still faces challenges when it comes to the worlds of fashion, beauty and design. But lots of people are out to change that. Yisa He, founder of Shanghai-based beauty brand Herbeast, was just one of the speakers who spoke about the power of provenance and how she is finding cut-through for products that combine Chinese medicine and modern design. She’s about to open her first shop.

9.
And that’s another interesting shift. A market known for being an early adopter of e-commerce has rediscovered the allure of physical shops. Austin Zhu, founder of Zzer, spoke about his business. He runs a series of vast warehouses where you can go for consigned fashion from all the biggest luxury brands. He has used technology to create trust around authenticity and business is booming. People want to be in his spaces, not just clicking online.

10.
China makes some very nice wines. The final panel of the day involved drinking alcohol, something that I am very good at, and so, alongside my Tokyo colleague Fiona Wilson, I was very happy to help run this session. On stage were also sommelier King Wang from the Jing An Shangri-La and winemaker Emma Gao, a woman with great eyewear and a big, sunny personality. Trained in France, Gao makes delicious reds, as well as white and sparkling wines. It was worth going to Shanghai just to hear her story. And perhaps that’s really the key takeaway from this week – it’s good to get a different perspective every now and then. Especially if you have a glass of Emma’s Reserve in your hand.

To read more from Andrew Tuck, click here. 

Netflix’s French reality show, L’Agence, or The Parisian Agency: Exclusive Properties, has returned for its sixth season to follow the (actually Boulogne-Billancourt-based) property dynasty, the Kretz family. The programme covers the Kretz’s lives and work, selling outrageously expensive houses and apartments to defiantly unlikeable wealthy international clients. I can’t get enough.

The property porn is off the scale, of course: in this new season we are treated to a tour of Brigitte Bardot’s astonishing 16th-arrondissement mansion, for instance. But it helps that the Kretz family are genuinely likeable too, with Olivier the strict yet sentimental father, Sandrine the powerful matriarch and their four sons: leonine Martin, charming Valentin (whose hair transplant must have posed considerable continuity challenges in this latest series), non-main-character-energy Louis and the indulged youngest, Raphaël, with occasional stagey cameos from Majo, the redoubtable nonagenarian grandmother; and, for some reason, lots of kite surfing.

But the real reason I watch is my undimmed Francophilia, having lived in Paris many years ago. It is a cliché but true that all involved swan about in such an effortlessly French, chic and sexy way. They dress so well, in linens and silk, in stark contrast to the Manosphere/OnlyFans look of the Selling Sunset crowd. They wear costly yet normal-sized watches, eschewing supercars and Rolls-Royces for scooters and e-bikes. And the effortless flirting between the sons and their female clients of all ages is so well-judged and ineffably French, it’s like watching Matisse paint, Ducasse cook or Zidane score a goal. 

Although this is a US-style reality format with all the faux-jeopardy and intimate family moments that entails, as French people they still can’t conceal their awkwardness when asked to stage the set-pieces: everyone involved in the recent gender-reveal party of Valentin’s next child looked suitably embarrassed, for instance. And although the family swims in the Olympic-sized infinity pool of Anglo-Saxon late-stage capitalism – minerals traders complaining that there aren’t enough kitchens in their Mykonos villas, tech bros demanding bigger trainer closets in their Haussmannian apartments – it maintains a defiantly French approach to financial matters too. 

Thus, although they do give us an asking price for most properties, often we never hear whether they sell (I can see from their website that the creepy 100-room €100m+ pseudo chateaux southeast of Paris, owned by the King of Morocco, is still for sale), and when they do make a sale, we are never told for how much. We are never privy to the grubby negotiations of a Homes Under the Hammer, for instance. There is no indulging of the viewer’s base fiscal prurience. After six seasons, I have no inkling of how much the family takes from each transaction, let alone how much they earn, or how they are paid.

Similar in its reassuring Frenchness is the respect-bordering-on-anxiety that the sons seem to have towards their father – a reminder that France is still a “wait until your father gets home” society. Olivier’s authority is final. His approval sacred. But it is Sandrine who pulls the strings.

Naturally, I also enjoy the celebrity cameos. Being French celebrities, I have rarely heard of the actress, sports star or artist who is looking for the perfect Cap Ferret bolthole. Nor do I recognise the names of any of the “famous” interior designers who are to blame for the eye-watering marble-and-brass makeovers of the properties. But I enjoy the family’s excitement when they meet someone who plays “basket”, or was once in a film with Depardieu.

But now the Kretzes are stars themselves of course. Last season, two of the boys walked the red carpet at the Cannes Film Festival. This season’s big news is that they are opening a high-profile retail space in the 7th arrondissement. I don’t need to know how much they earn, or what happened to Martin’s first wife, but I do hope that through all the success and attention they still preserve their essential Frenchness.

This week sees the start of the Venice Biennale’s Vernissage – the preview week for press and VIPs – but there is disquiet among the gardens and waters of La Serenissima. The run-up to the “Art Olympics” has been dominated by an explosive row over who’s taking part. The resulting furore has now reached its crescendo: the entire Biennale jury has resigned and Alessandro Giuli, the Italian minister for culture, has launched an investigation into Russia’s pavilion.  

Designed by Alexey Shchusev in the early 20th century, Russia’s pavilion is a grand, imposing building in Venice’s Giardini – prime real estate in Biennale terms. For the first time since the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the building will be used to showcase the country’s chosen artists. (The exhibition, a performance titled The tree is rooted in the sky, conjures the image of a topsy turvy reality that feels particularly apt here.)

Russia owns its Giardini building and the Biennale’s constitution says that any country recognised by the Italian government is entitled to take part. To some extent, then, a country can decide how they participate and Russia’s absence in recent years (its artist and curator withdrew in 2022 and Bolivia used the pavilion in 2024) has been their choice. Now, not only Russia’s return but the inclusion of Israel in the event has caused consternation throughout the art world. For the five-person jury – tasked with giving prizes to the pavilions and appointed by the Biennale’s late curator, Kuyo Kouoh – the compounding controversies have clearly become untenable. What is unclear, and what will likely be at the heart of Giuli’s inquiries, is whether EU sanctions have been violated in the staging of Russia’s show. 

The power of art to transcend or entrench political realities is always part of what makes the Venice Biennale the event that it is. But to witness such deep divisions – before even a single guest has disembarked the vaporetto – hints at something more profound. For the next six months, Venice will not only take the temperature of contemporary art in 2026; the city will also play host to a much bigger story about which conflicts and countries deserve uproar in the public imagination, and whether even egregious acts can be quietly forgotten with time. Over the coming months there will be much more than paintings and sculptures reflected in the waters of Venice.

American Airlines (AA) resumed service to Caracas yesterday for the first time in more than seven years. It’s a pivotal moment for AA, which long dominated routes to the country and was once a busy market for the airline. At its peak, the airline served Venezuela out of Miami, Dallas, New York and even San Juan, Puerto Rico. This time things look very different, at least for now. The company is testing the waters with a daily 76-seat Embraer flight from Miami, operated by subsidiary Envoy Air. 
 
The service resumption follows the US capture of Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro in January. Since then, relations have been gradually normalising. Mutual accessibility is a crucial factor in that rebuild – and it is also a major business victory for AA. Initial fares for the three-and-a-half-hour flight went on sale at more than $800 (€682) for a one-way economy seat and a minimum $1,490 (€1,270) for business class. Presumably a steady flow of diplomats, oil executives and entrepreneurs looking to take advantage of thawing relations will be lining up to pay such fares and skip the stop in Panama City or Bogotá. 

But lining these seats will also be long-separated family members who will be keener than any for flights to proliferate and prices to drop. Critically, there is now a visa portal where US citizens can get e-visas to enter Venezuela – an impossibility in recent years that has certainly led to quite a bit of pent-up demand. Expect to see larger mainline aircraft flying between the two countries from more cities before long, as well as a second daily Miami-Caracas flight that is already planned for late May.
 
Naturally, other airlines, including Venezuelan carriers, are eager to resume their own US service as soon as possible. When I visited Venezuela in 2024, I spent time at the headquarters of the airline Avior in Barcelona, just down the coast from Caracas. On a warm January day, as mechanics performed heavy maintenance on a classic Boeing 737 outside, senior staff gathered around an office whiteboard. The heading scrawled in marker pen read: “US start-up”. Below that were about 30 bullet points listing the various regulatory and legal hurdles that would need to be cleared in order to restart the coveted Miami service. 
 
In other words, Avior – and no doubt others in the country – have been preparing for this day for years. But one problem remains: the US Federal Aviation Administration designates Venezuela as an IASA Category 2 country, meaning that it does not meet minimum international safety standards; combine that with prohibitions from the Department of Transport and the Department of Homeland Security and the country’s airlines are therefore banned from flying to the US, regardless of the political situation.
 
Not content to wait around, Venezuelan carrier Laser Airlines announced just days ago that it will begin Miami flights of its own but with a catch: the flights will actually be operated by an American carrier named Global X, onboard one of its A320 aircraft. Global X, it just so happens, is the carrier with a sizeable contract to operate ICE deportation flights (reportedly around 80 per cent of the total, including direct services to the notorious Cecot prison in El Salvador that the US government contracted to take many of its deportees). It’s a plan that feels rather on-brand for the current US administration: forcibly deport people from the US to Venezuela, then offer sky-high fares for the return leg on the same aircraft.
 
But for airlines on either side of the Caribbean, it’ll be a matter of getting their foot in the door, whatever way possible, and rebuilding a once-lucrative market. Keep in mind that in a much different era, Caracas once saw a Concorde service from Paris. Many will be hoping to see similar high points once again. 

But we’re not quite there yet. The US remains bullish in this corner of the world. Just one day before the Miami-Caracas resumption, AA unveiled an Embraer jet adorned in a special livery celebrating the 250-year anniversary of the founding of the US, with the number painted prominently across the fuselage in the colours of the American flag. You can guess which aircraft they sent to Caracas yesterday.

Gabriel Leigh is Monocle’s transport correspondent. For more opinion, analysis and insight, subscribe to Monocle today.

The setting for prime minister Mark Carney’s announcement of Canada’s first national sovereign wealth fund could not have been more redolent of his country’s past ambitions. On Monday, standing at a lectern in the Locomotive Hall of the Canada Science and Technology Museum in Ottawa, Carney evoked the generational effort to construct the Canada-Pacific Railway more than a century ago; the country’s first national project after gaining its sovereignty in 1867. 

“Facing at that time an economic depression and threats to our sovereignty from our southern neighbour,” said Carney, nodding to history’s apparent rhyme in today’s context, “Canadians chose to build.” And it’s in that spirit that his government has set up the Canada Strong Fund – a project as consequential as the one represented by the gleaming steam train behind him.

This is perhaps Carney’s boldest move in office so far. It also confirms that the dominant theme that brought him to power a year ago – countering the economic threat posed to Canada by a hostile US – is still very much his guiding principle. 

Full details are still to be published by Carney’s government – something his critics have been quick to pounce on. The populist leader of the opposition Conservative Party has already dismissed the endeavour as a “Liberal slush fund” for a government that spends too much. But here’s what we know so far. Set up with an initial endowment of CA$25bn (€15.6bn), the fund will be managed by a Crown corporation, a federal body that operates independently from the government. Its focus will be on landmark domestic-infrastructure investments, initially in mining, ports and technology. It will be open to a mix of stakeholders – public and private, home and overseas – as well as to individual Canadians, who will be able to buy in to some of the projects being financed by the fund, for a return on that investment at some point down the line. 

The Canadian reaction to the new fund has been mixed – the conservative-leaning premier of Saskatchewan, for example, was thrilled at the prospect. For others, the unanswered questions surrounding the fund outweigh its promised benefits. “I’m a bit of a sceptic, for a couple of reasons,” says David Soberman, a professor at the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto. “The question you have to ask yourself when these funds are put together is: would it be better for the government to take these assets and put them into a sovereign wealth fund to be managed by the government? Or would it be better for them to use the assets that are going into the fund to reduce national debt?” That debt currently stands at about CA$80bn (€49.97bn). “But one of the most important things with a sovereign wealth fund is how it’s managed – if it is taken care of by an independent board that truly knows how to invest funds, that is one thing. But if a sovereign wealth fund becomes politicised, then it becomes a problem.”

There are models already in place in Canada that might prove instructive to how the fund will work. The Canada Pension Plan (CPP) or even the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Fund – Canada’s largest single-profession pension plan with net assets of CA$279bn (€174.8bn) – are each managed independently of the government. They have been very successful in their investments, as well as the yields they’ve earned for those who pay into them. 

Carney’s big challenge is to convey to Canadians how profound and, perhaps, permanent, the change is. All spurred, of course, by the manoeuvres of a now-hostile neighbour. “Hope isn’t a plan and nostalgia is not a strategy,” said Carney recently in a video address. 

Canada, broadly speaking, is a country whose operating approach often stems from the comfort of the status quo. To mark the first year of the coronavirus pandemic, for instance, one of Canada’s big current-affairs magazines published a memorable editorial that decried that sense of national complacency, stating that for too long “good enough has been good enough”. It explained that the country’s handling of the outbreak, particularly the fragmented and often chaotic roll-out of vaccinations, should push Canadians to want for something better. Did it have the desired effect? Not really. But here we are now, at a time when most of the long-held assumptions about the way Canada’s economy works, and what it’s anchored to, have been cut from their moorings.

Carney is trying to recast basic principles in the minds of the country that he governs, as the old assumptions of how the nation operates continue to get chipped away. In principle, a new national sovereign wealth fund is surely a good thing. Canada is a wealthy country, so it should behave like one, particularly at a time of seismic tremors in the world order. But neither words nor principles alone – much like hope and nostalgia – amount to a plan. That lies in the work, hard though it might be.

Further reading:
‘You can’t be truly sovereign by yourself’: Mark Carney talks to Monocle about geopolitical pragmatism and a confident Canada

On film: Monocle in conversation with Prime Minister Mark Carney

US president Donald Trump is not known for bowing to convention – or bowing to anything for that matter. True to form, he didn’t greet King Charles III at the start of the latter’s state visit on Monday with a dip of the head but rather his customarily hearty handshake. And yet for all his outsider posturing, few things seem to please the president more than attention from the British Royals. He was in buoyant form all week, revelling in the pomp and pageantry, and embracing his role as sidekick King to the real thing. 

Nothing could spoil the mood. Even after a pointed speech to lawmakers in US Congress on Tuesday in which Charles made oblique references to constitutional checks on power and the importance of the Nato alliance, Trump remained effusive, calling it “a great speech”. At a lavish dinner of spring ramps, herbed ravioli and dover sole meunière, Trump grinned and chuckled as Charles dropped well-timed jokes about the 1814 British firebombing of the White House and how Trump “would be speaking French” if it weren’t for the English. All in all, the King’s speech was pitch-perfect, giving the feeling of good-natured ribbing between old friends. 

Sure, there was the small matter of the president breaking convention and sharing a private conversation with a monarch when he claimed Charles “agrees with me, even more than I do” about curtailing Iran’s nuclear ambition. But that was a mere blip, and when ties between the US and its traditional allies across the pond are severely strained, it’s a welcome diplomatic success. 

Since Trump took office in January last year, relations with Europe have been plummeting into an abyss. First Trump pulled back from supporting Ukraine, then threatened to invade Greenland and is now engaged in a full-scale retribution campaign against Nato allies who did not support his war against Iran. 

Europe’s leaders have been lining up at the White House door to try and repair relations. Taking it in turns for ritual humiliation in the Oval Office, they sit with rictus smiles as Trump rakes them over the coals on tariffs, defence spending and other pet peeves. 

There was no such confrontational diplomacy this week. Given that the US is celebrating 250 years since its independence from the British monarchy and many European countries are cooling on their own scandal-prone royals, there is an irony that it took a King to thaw the ice. But is the job really done? Are all fences mended and bridges rebuilt? Not so fast. Charles is far from the first visiting dignitary to pay their respects at the court of King Trump and leave feeling like they are best friends forever. 

In early 2025, Trump stood next to a beaming Keir Starmer at a White House press conference, praising him and his “beautiful accent”. It provoked a rosy glow in British diplomatic circles and a feeling that the special relationship was alive and well. Now he is calling Starmer “not Winston Churchill” and a man who “ruins relationships”, while also apparently questioning Britain’s claim over the Falkland Islands.

Similarly, French president Emmanuel Macron’s early White House visit was all knee-touching and back-slapping with a jovial US commander-in-chief. Now, Macron is on the receiving end of Trump’s tasteless jibes about his wife. 

It is highly unlikely that Trump is going to turn around after the royals depart and make similarly crude comments about King Charles and Queen Camilla, as he appears to have genuine respect for the British monarchy. But for a man who demands absolute loyalty from his acolytes, he gives out very little in return to his international allies, and when there is any deviation from his policy goals, all the goodwill evaporates. While Trump scoffs at the regular No Kings protests across the US and claims that he has no desire for absolute rule, his demands for absolute allegiance is clear – crown or no crown. 

Featuring Monocle’s annual Design Awards, a tour around Cairo’s regenerated downtown and our timekeeping special. Discover the creative director to watch, the camera to buy and the dining chair for your home.

Plus: hear from the world’s best designers, architects, chefs and more about their favourite timepieces – and welcome special canine models for the watches of the season.

The recent completion of the Artemis II mission was meant to remind us that space can still be a shared frontier. Artemis represents a step toward sustained lunar exploration and, eventually, Mars. Yet that hopeful image sits alongside a harder reality: space is becoming a contested strategic domain and the gap between rhetoric and security practice is expanding like the universe. 
 
The current state of arms control in space paints a picture of regulations that are thin, incomplete and increasingly outpaced by events. The 1967 Outer Space Treaty still bans weapons of mass destruction in orbit and on celestial bodies but it does not prohibit all military activity in space, nor does it provide a detailed rulebook for counter-space competition. Today’s UN process is therefore trying to manage the problem rather than solve it outright. In 2025, the General Assembly established a new open-ended working group for 2025-2028 to issue recommendations on preventing an arms race in outer space. That’s diplomacy but not disarmament.

The more immediate question is whether there are real prospects of open conflict in orbit. The answer is yes, in the sense that militaries are now planning for it as a live contingency. US Space Command planners are preparing for the first major war in space and Western officials increasingly speak of space as a war-fighting domain. Yet the more unsettling problem is that conflict is not a clear exchange of blows; instead, it is emerging as a pattern of coercion, rehearsal and ambiguity. That makes escalation harder to detect and therefore easier to misinterpret.
 
A lot that we can see in orbit looks a great deal like preparation for conflict. China, Russia, the US and India have all conducted anti-satellite weaponry tests, leaving behind debris that risks collisions with hardware. More recently, there have been reports of Chinese satellites practising co-ordinated “orbital dogfights”, as well as a Russian spacecraft that shadowed a US reconnaissance satellite for nearly two years. 
 
Alongside this are persistent concerns about jamming, lasers, cyberattacks and close-proximity operations. European responses reflect this shift: France is developing patrol satellites to monitor adversaries; the United Kingdom is investing in sensors to detect laser threats; Germany is building a large encrypted military constellation; and the EU is expanding capabilities to improve resilience against GPS interference.
 
Recent reporting related to Iran is particularly sobering because it illustrates how space-based capabilities are being integrated directly into terrestrial warfare. In April, Iran reportedly acquired a Chinese spy satellite and used it to monitor US military sites in the Middle East. At the same time, Russia has been providing Tehran with targeting information on US warships and aircraft. Taken together, these developments point to a future in which orbital assets do not merely underpin deterrence; they actively enhance strike capabilities on the ground.
 
None of this is unfolding in a spacious or forgiving environment. Earth’s orbit is increasingly crowded and fragile, with more than 14,000 satellites and an estimated 120 million pieces of debris in low-Earth orbits. Even debris as small as one centimetre can be lethal, as the extreme speeds of hypervelocity impacts give such fragments enough force to disable a satellite or trigger catastrophic fragmentation. 
 
This congestion has prompted warnings that parts of the atmosphere could become unusable without improved co-operation and data-sharing. Governments and commercial actors are acutely aware of how the security problem and the congestion problem are becoming one and the same. Starlink has announced a 2026 reconfiguration to lower its satellites and reduce collision risks. 
 
And yet the most likely response from space powers will be familiar: to harden their positions. This will mean more patrol satellites, more resilient constellations, expanded electronic warfare capabilities and a greater emphasis on redundancy over vulnerability. Artemis II might have revived hopes of a co-operative future but the strategic environment surrounding it is moving in a harsher direction; toward a space order defined by enduring competition.
 
Gorana Grgić is Monocle’s security correspondent. To hear about what’s next for the space economy, tune in to Monocle Radio’s ‘The Bulletin with UBS’. And for more opinion, analysis and insight, subscribe to Monocle today.