Issues

How to stage an art heist

In many ways, a contemporary art gallery has a lot in common with a courtroom. Both are places of high spectacle, of lofty judgement, enforced decorum and politesse. People dress up to attend both and often leave owing vast sums of money (possibly overcast with fear or shame). It has always seemed odd to me, therefore, that when art dealers end up on trial, they do such a good job of looking out of place, of seeming shocked to be there. A good blue suit, it seems, will only get you so far.

Art dealers are synonymous in the public imagination with big money and dastardly behaviour. (I once briefly dated a woman whose family beseeched her to break up with me solely because I owned an art gallery.) And so, when considering how to pull off a fine-art swindle, it can be a little difficult to choose from the bright and varied palette of available criminality. Cicero wrote, “To be ignorant of what came before you is to remain forever a child.” Fortunately, the history of art-market criminality provides us with plenty of lessons in deception and scurrility.

When I tell people that I’ve recently published a book about fraud in the art market, their questions tend to go straight to art forgery. They picture a little old man in a remote Tuscan village, painstakingly putting the finishing touches on an as yet “undiscovered” Leonardo. This new-old painting then makes its way to market via a network of beret-wearing scallywags, all of whom smoke ominously and from the sides of their mouths, despite the conflagratory risk to their precious cargo.

This image comes, of course, from Patricia Highsmith novels and Hollywood movies starring hirsute billionaires, but it does have roots. One such forger (Dutch rather than Italian) was Han van Meegeren, the most prolific and successful forger of Vermeer paintings. Van Meegeren was canny in his choice: not only were Vermeer paintings incredibly valuable and sought-after but there were also very few of them (there are probably only 35 in existence). The discovery of “new” works by the Dutch master was welcome news to gullible buyers. Working from the basement of his house on the French Riviera, Van Meegeren used Bakelite to form an authentic-looking craquelure on his paintings.

Van Meegeren is remembered in the Netherlands as something of a national hero. During the Second World War, Hermann Göring traded 137 looted Dutch paintings for just one of Van Meegeren’s fake Vermeers. Van Meegeren thereby helped to safeguard precious national heritage – and got one over on the Nazis. After making and selling more than a dozen fakes (and becoming hugely wealthy in the process), Van Meegeren was caught and put on trial. He died in 1947, months into his prison sentence, at the age of 58.

What Van Meegeren did right was to select an artist to forge whose work was scarce. Half a century later, however, Iranian-American Ely Sakhai pulled off a fraud scheme with a brazenness that employed the opposite approach. Sakhai, who speaks fluent Japanese, knew that what most concerned new collectors in Japan was authenticity. So he trawled the auction houses of Europe and America, exclusively buying minor works by major impressionist artists, from Monet to Renoir, that came with certificates of authenticity. He would then have the painting expertly copied and sell the facsimile, along with its original’s certificate, to a Japanese collector. This went on until one of the buyers decided to sell, and a sharp-eyed auction-house employee in New York spotted what appeared to be the same Gauguin painting for sale in two different auctions, continents apart.

What elevated Sakhai’s scheme above that of a forger such as Van Meegeren was that it exploited a weakness in the art market of its day. Collectors, especially new ones, knew next to nothing, and with no internet databases available, they were flying blind, forced to trust their dealers. These days, with the price of practically every artwork that sells at auction available online, you must become ever more creative if you’re going to pull off something lucrative.

Perhaps part of the reason why forgery is the art crime that first comes to people’s minds is that it at least involves some artistry. But contemporary art, which is where the money is, is too tricky to fake; for one thing, the artists are often still alive. Nowadays, art crime has gone the way of the market, and it is increasingly financialised. As Damien Hirst once said, “Art’s about life; the art world’s about money.” Today art is all about the money.

All this is to say that art fraud today is, by necessity, a far trickier beast; one that is more contractual sleight of hand than imitated brushstroke. Take my former friend and business partner Inigo Philbrick. His fraud scheme, which clocked in at more than €79m, is thought to be the largest in US history. The swindle was wildly complex – like a Hollywood bank heist but carried out over emails and Whatsapp. The simplified version is that he would sell the same painting, or shares in that painting, to multiple people. In one instance, Philbrick sold 220 per cent of one multimillion-dollar painting – obviously 120 per cent more painting than exists.

There are several things to analyse here. Since art has become an asset class of its own, dealers and collectors have begun to buy works that they have no intention of hanging in their galleries or penthouses. Instead, the artworks languish in tax-haven warehouses until they have increased sufficiently in value. These kinds of buyers also often buy percentages in paintings to mitigate risk. Philbrick kept physical control of these paintings, ostensibly so that he would be able to arrange a client viewing at the drop of a (top) hat, but in reality so that he could sell the same work over and over. And what happened when two buyers both wanted control of a painting they owned (or thought they owned)? Philbrick simply sent them a blank canvas in a crate to their Swiss warehouse, where it remained unopened.

There are many different ways in which you can pull a fast one in the art market, though as with many get-rich-quick schemes, you’re more likely to end up counting the bars on your prison-cell door than your fortune. We’re fascinated by hucksters and villains but to me this seems a great sadness when it comes to the art world. When we obsess over fraudsters and their grimy actions, we forget ourselves. But perhaps our preoccupation with art crime also tells us how important art really is, how it can enrich us far more than mere lucre. We would do well to remember that.

Poetry is a way that people survive the fear and uncertainty that war brings

One Saturday last October, as we entered an elegant restaurant in downtown Beirut for lunch, my Lebanese colleague pointed out a Hezbollah minister sitting smoking shisha. He was a slim man in his early fifties, wearing a grey baseball cap and, like the other three men at the table with him, black jeans and a black T-shirt. We stopped to talk; Israel’s war against Hezbollah was at its height, with daily bombings of targets across the country. After we got to our table we laughed, slightly nervously, about whether the Israeli drone whirring overhead would drop its bomb before or after we had eaten our main course.

Black humour is a staple of life in places such as Lebanon, where your destiny seems to be beyond your control. The same Lebanese colleague had been late that morning because she was stuck in a traffic jam; the Israelis had bombed a car on the road ahead, killing two people inside. I never did find out who. A Hezbollah commander and his wife? A visiting Iranian financier? It could have been either. You couldn’t know whether the person in the car you were passing, or in the house next door, or on the street as you walked by, might be a target.

Poetry is another way that people survive the fear and uncertainty that war brings. Four lines by Bertolt Brecht have become an aphorism:

After living through the civil war in the 1970s and 1980s, four Israeli invasions, numerous assassinations of leaders, economic collapse and, in 2020, an accidental explosion of nitrates at the Beirut port, which has been described as the most powerful non-nuclear explosion in history, Lebanese people are fed up with being praised for their resilience. A poem by the New Orleans poet Zandashé l’Orelia Brown that starts, “I dream of never being called resilient again in my life/I’m exhausted by strength”, has been circulating on social media. It resonates across borders and cultures.

People often turn to poetry in times of personal grief and trauma, as well as political crisis. This is why, in my career as a reporter often covering conflict, I have always carried a volume of poetry with me. Poetry has an allusive power that journalism lacks; it picks up where we leave off. I turn to it when my own words run out.

Though the TV images we see daily have a huge effect, journalistic language sometimes fails to convey the intensity of the experience. As journalists we pride ourselves on the clarity of our prose and on making complex stories simple. Our job is to explain why terrible things are happening and to challenge the euphemisms used by politicians and military spokespeople. We also try to convey the thoughts and feelings of those we meet and a sense of what it feels like to be on the ground. Yet we may lose the deeper meaning, such as the universal significance of what we have witnessed or the contradictory emotions that war engenders.

On 21 October, Israel bombed, without warning, a building next to the Rafik Hariri hospital, the biggest health facility in Lebanon. Eighteen people were killed. We arrived the following morning to see a bulldozer scraping away at the wreckage. It would stop and the watching crowd would fall silent so that people could listen in case any mobile phones were ringing from inside the mountain of rubble. A man in a red baseball cap with tattooed arms scrambled up and started desperately digging with his bare hands. He was looking for his five-year-old son, Ali. Reaching into the crumbled ruins of his house, Ali’s father pulled out a multicoloured sack. He turned it upside down and a stream of plastic toys poured out, their bright pink, yellow, red and blue stark against the grey ruined concrete. “Are these the Hezbollah weapons?” he shouted. I thought of Anna Akhmatova’s poem about the siege of Leningrad, in which she compares the sound of a bomber to thunder that doesn’t bring blessed rain:

The shock of the last line echoed the shock I felt in the moment, watching the unspeakable pain of a father who has lost his own.

The dominance of the Great War soldier-poets – Wilfred Owen, Rupert Brooke, Siegfried Sassoon, Isaac Rosenberg – in Western culture might lead to the assumption that war poetry is a male preserve, and that Western poets have a monopoly on the form. This is far from the case. The first known war poet was a Sumerian high priestess, Enheduanna, who lived in Ur, in what is now southern Iraq, in about 2,300bce. Contemporary poetry, much of it written by women, reflects the fact that modern conflicts tend to kill more civilians than soldiers. The late Irish musician Frank Harte said, “Those in power write the history; those who suffer write the songs.” A lot of songs and poems have been written in recent years.

Across the Arab world, poets are revered. Poetry is not seen as an elite pastime but central to culture and identity. Poets may be as important as soldiers in other conflicts too. A statue of Taras Shevchenko, with his massive, drooping moustache, stands in nearly every town I have visited in Ukraine. The reputation of the national poet, who wrote revolutionary verse in the 19th century, has been further elevated by the 2022 Russian invasion. In Borodyanka, a small town near the Ukrainian capital Kyiv, which saw some of the worst of the early fighting, he surveys a bombed-out apartment block, the windows blackened and broken.

More than 150 years on, his struggle is not yet won. A new generation of Ukrainian poets has been born of the war, writing in Ukrainian not Russian, part of an assertion of Ukrainian culture. Focusing on physical suffering, Western journalists may fail to see the importance of art to people struggling to preserve their humanity. Mental health and trauma are a focus but we are often oblivious to spiritual and religious needs, and to the yearning for the comfort of ritual and recitation that poetry provides.

That yearning is increased when people are forced to flee. Refugees bring only what they can carry, which often means songs, stories, poems and prayers that they know by heart. They can’t go back, not just because it’s dangerous but because the country they grew up in no longer exists – war changes everything. They are lost in both space and time. Verses learnt on a grandmother’s knee or in school are anchors to the old life and provide a source of strength and identity that give solace in an alien and often hostile world. In TS Eliot’s words from “The Waste Land”: “these fragments I have shored against my ruins”.

While we ate our lunch in Beirut, the minister’s driver leant against his black four-wheel-drive with its tinted windows, smoking and looking up at the drone, before finishing and whisking his boss away. A few minutes later a new party arrived at the table. They couldn’t have been more different: four fashionably dressed women with bee-stung Botox lips and sunglasses perched on their head. The two divergent sets of table guests are part of the complexity of contemporary Lebanon, land of chuddars and bikinis, political parties with their own militia, and multiple sects and religions. Even in the darkest of times, it’s possible to admire the glory of Lebanon’s contradictions and diversity.

As the great Lebanese-American poet Khalil Gibran wrote in the 1920s:

Poets don’t have the answers but they can turn the horror of war into works of beauty. Journalism is of the moment; poetry lasts forever.

How to celebrate the Feast of the Seven Fishes in 10 dishes

This year’s December/January food shoot aims to keep you sated from Yule to the new year and beyond, and takes its inspiration from the way in which recipes and traditions are refined and changed depending on what you’re celebrating and with whom.

It’s not without a little irony that we’ve looked to the Festa dei Sette Pesci (feast of the seven fishes), an authentically European-sounding name for a firmly Italian Christmas Eve tradition in which seven dishes containing seafood are combined to make a mighty meal. In fact, so little is it known in the old country that the recent reference to it in Hulu’s tense culinary drama The Bear might be many actual Italians’ first taste of the idea.

Like so many rituals – from gifts of myrrh to jolly men with reindeers – the original idea feels far away from how things are done today. Perhaps those far-off Catholic predilections for abstaining from meat before feast days in Italy count for something but the roots of the ritual are less important than the message. Preparing and sharing a meal with your nearest and dearest matters. Oh, and we didn’t put fish in any of the three dessert recipes – and wouldn’t suggest that you do either. Enjoy the spread and buon appetito.

The starters

1.
Lemony garlic prawns
Serves 4

Ingredients
12 large prawns (biggest you can find with shells on)
3 tbsps olive oil
4 peeled garlic cloves, finely chopped
3 tbsps good white wine
2 tbsps fresh lemon juice
10g curly parsley, roughly chopped (save some leaves for garnish)
Salt and freshly ground black pepper

Method
1.
Cut the prawns through the shell with kitchen scissors, starting under the head and stopping before the tail. Remove and discard the vein with a fork. Repeat with the remaining prawns.

2.
Heat the olive oil and garlic in a frying pan until sizzling. Add the prawns and cook until they are pink on both sides.

3.
Add the white wine and lemon juice. When the sauce starts bubbling, add half of the chopped parsley, season with salt and pepper, and toss lightly and remove from heat.

4.
Serve the prawns with the sauce and sprinkle with the remaining parsley.

2.
Blinis with trout roe
Makes 16 blinis

Ingredients
40g buckwheat flour
60g strong white flour
½ tsp fast-action yeast
Pinch of salt
100ml whole milk
65ml sour cream
1 medium free-range egg, separated
Vegetable oil (for frying)
220ml sour cream (for topping)
85g trout roe
Small bunch of dill (for garnish)

Method
1.
Prepare the batter by mixing the flours, salt and yeast in a bowl. Make a well in the centre. Heat the milk gently (don’t let it get too hot or bubble) and pour into the well, whisking to combine with the flour. In another bowl, mix sour cream and egg yolk, then add to the dough. Cover with plastic wrap and let stand for 30 to 40 minutes until bubbly.

2.
Whisk the egg whites until soft peaks form. Gently fold them into the batter.

3.
Cook the blinis by heating 1 tbsp oil in a frying pan over medium heat. Drop 1 tbsp batter per blini and cook for 2 minutes per side. Remove and set aside.

4.
Spoon 1 tsp sour cream on each blini, top with ½ tsp trout roe, and garnish with a sprig of dill.

3.
Zuppa di pesce
Serves 4 as a main or 8 as a starter

Ingredients
3 tbsps olive oil
3 garlic cloves, minced
1 tsp fennel seeds
1 onion, finely chopped
1 fennel bulb, finely chopped (reserve fronds for garnish)
½ tsp sea salt
550ml fish stock (or water)
150ml dry white wine
400ml passata
2 large pinches of saffron
400g mussels (washed in running water and debearded)
8 prawns, heads and shells on
300g squid, cleaned
2 tbsps extra virgin olive oil (for drizzling)

Method
1.
Prepare seafood by cutting the squid into rings and slicing tentacles into bite-sized pieces. Using kitchen scissors, cut each prawn shell under the head until just before the tail, then use a fork to remove and discard the vein.

2.
To cook the aromatics, heat olive oil, garlic and fennel seeds over medium-low heat for 3 minutes. Add onion, fennel and a pinch of salt; cook until soft and translucent.

3.
Pour in fish stock or water, passata, white wine and saffron. Bring to a simmer and cook for 10 minutes.

4.
Add mussels, prawns and squid into the pan, then cover and poach gently until the mussels open, the prawns turn pink and the squid becomes opaque. Discard any unopened mussels. Season with salt and pepper.

5.
To serve, divide the soup into bowls, garnish with fennel fronds and drizzle with extra virgin olive oil.

The mains

4.
Roasted branzino with grilled courgette
Serves 4

Ingredients
700g whole sea bass, scaled and cleaned
10g dill
1 lemon, thinly sliced
2 tbsps olive oil
400g cherry tomatoes on the vine
2 red onions (¼ of an onion thinly sliced, for stuffing, and 1¾ onions cut into quarters)
750g baby potatoes
1½ tbsps olive oil
3 sprigs fresh thyme
4 courgettes
3 branches fresh oregano, roughly chopped
3 tbsps olive oil

Method
1.
Preheat oven to 180C.

2.
Bring water to boil with ½ tsp salt. Add potatoes and cook for 5 minutes, then drain. Place potatoes in a roasting dish with thyme, salt, pepper and 1½ tbsps olive oil. Roast for 30 minutes.

3.
Prepare sea bass by patting it dry. Drizzle with olive oil, season inside and out with salt and pepper. Stuff with dill, sliced onion and lemon.

4.
Arrange cherry tomatoes and remaining onion in a baking dish, season with olive oil, salt and pepper, and place fish on top. Roast for 35 to 45 minutes. Serve with roasted potatoes.

For the courgette
1.
Slice the courgette lengthwise into 5mm-thick pieces.

2.
Mix slices with olive oil and chopped oregano. Season with salt and pepper.

3.
Heat a grill pan and grill the courgette until grill marks appear on both sides.

5.
Spaghetti alle vongole with white wine and pangrattato
Serves 4

Ingredients
For clams
15g sea salt
1kg clams (from the fishmonger)

For pangrattato (breadcrumbs)
2 tbsps olive oil
2 garlic cloves, finely grated
1 anchovy fillet, finely chopped
30g panko breadcrumbs
¾ tsp chilli flakes

For the pasta
400g linguine
3 tbsps olive oil
6 peeled garlic cloves, finely chopped
150ml good white wine
40g curly parsley, finely chopped
Freshly ground black pepper

Method
1.
Wash the clams thoroughly and set apart evenly in a shallow tray. Stir and dissolve 15g sea salt in 500ml water, then pour the saline solution over the clams, ensuring that they are half-soaked. Cover with a tea towel and leave for a minimum of 30 minutes and up to an hour (for the clams to release any sand). Discard the water and let the clams drain in a sieve for 30 minutes.

2.
Heat oil in a frying pan, add garlic and anchovy, and cook gently until the anchovy dissolves and begins to sizzle. Add the breadcrumbs and stir constantly until golden. Stir in the chilli flakes, then set aside.

3.
Boil water with a generous amount of salt in a large pot. Cook the pasta for 1 minute less than the packet instructions.

4.
To cook the clams, heat oil and garlic in a frying pan until golden. Add the white wine and clams, cover with a glass lid and increase the heat. Remove every clam as their shells open, placing them in a bowl. This will prevent the clams from overcooking and keep them juicy and delicious. Discard any clams that don’t open after five minutes on a high heat but keep the sauce.

5.
Once the pasta is cooked al dente, save 3 tbsps of the cooking water then drain. Add pasta and the retained water to the frying pan containing the clam sauce. Add chopped parsley and black pepper, stirring well to coat the pasta. The sauce should be thickened and glossy. The clams will release some salted water so you shouldn’t need to season with salt.

6.
Divide the pasta and clams between 4 bowls, spoon the crunchy breadcrumbs over the top and serve.

6.
Squid ink pasta with bottarga
Serves 4 as main or 8 as a starter

Ingredients
270g cherry tomatoes on vine
1 tbsp olive oil
Salt and pepper
400g spaghetti
4 tbsps olive oil
4 garlic cloves, minced
1 tsp chilli flakes
400g squid, cleaned and sliced
120ml dry white wine
4 sachets (4g each) of squid ink
120ml pasta water
20g finely grated bottarga (you can buy a whole bottarga from a good fishmonger or a powdered version in many delis or grocery shops)

Method
1.
Preheat oven to 160C. Place cherry tomatoes in a baking tray, drizzle with olive oil and season with salt and pepper. Roast for 15 minutes and set aside.

2.
Bring water to a boil, add salt and cook spaghetti for 1 minute less than the package instructions.

3.
Prepare the squid ink sauce by heating olive oil in a frying pan over medium-low heat. Add garlic and chilli flakes. Stir-in the squid and cook for 2 minutes, then add the white wine and squid ink. Simmer until the sauce is glossy.

4.
Add pasta water to the sauce, then drain the pasta and mix in the sauce. Season with salt and pepper.

5.
Divide pasta into bowls, top with roasted tomatoes, sprinkle with bottarga and serve.

7.
Caesar salad with anchovies and boiled eggs
Serves 4 as main or 8 as a starter

Ingredients
200g ciabatta or 4 slices sourdough, cut into large cubes
2 tbsps olive oil
Salt and pepper
4 medium eggs
600g chicken breast, skin on or off
2 tsps olive oil
1 large romaine lettuce, soaked in cold water for 30 minutes, then drained
1 small red onion, thinly sliced and kept in cold water
8 anchovy fillets
35g parmesan, shaved

For caesar dressing
70g good-quality mayonnaise
½ small garlic clove, grated
1 anchovy, finely minced
1 tbsp apple cider vinegar
1 tbsp fresh lemon juice
¼ tsp light brown sugar or maple syrup
25g parmesan cheese, finely grated
Freshly ground black pepper

Method
1.
To make the croutons, preheat the oven to 180C. Toss bread cubes with olive oil, salt and pepper. Bake for 10 minutes or until golden and crunchy.

2.
Heat a griddle pan over high heat. Season chicken with salt and pepper, and drizzle with olive oil. Grill for 3 minutes on each side, then transfer to an ovenproof dish and bake for 10 minutes or until cooked through. You can test it by piercing the thickest part of the chicken. If the juice runs clear, the chicken is cooked. Let rest for 10 minutes, then slice.

3.
Bring water to a boil, add eggs, and cook for 7 minutes for a soft yolk. Cool eggs under cold running water and peel when ready.

4.
Make the dressing by mixing all dressing ingredients until smooth.

5. In a large bowl, toss the lettuce, drained red onions and croutons. Arrange rge chicken slices, halved eggs and anchovies on top. Sprinkle with shaved parmesan, drizzle with dressing and serve.

The desserts

8.
Recipe
Cannoli with pistachio cream
Makes 12

Equipment
12 cannoli moulds
Pasta machine (optional)

Ingredients
For cannoli shells
180g plain flour
2 tsps caster sugar
¼ tsp salt
30g cold unsalted butter, cubed
1 medium egg, separated
50ml marsala wine
Vegetable oil (for frying)

For pistachio filling
500g ricotta, strained for 1 hour
60g icing sugar
8 tbsps pistachio butter
20g pistachios, roughly chopped
Icing sugar (for dusting)

Method
1.
To make cannoli dough, mix flour, sugar and salt in a bowl. Rub in butter until combined. Mix egg yolk and marsala wine in another bowl, add to flour mixture and mix until it forms a dough. Knead the dough on a floured surface, until it becomes smooth. If the dough is still sticky you can add more flour. Wrap it in cling film and let it rest for 30 minutes.

2.
Mix the ricotta, icing sugar and pistachio butter. Place in a piping bag and refrigerate.

3.
To shape the cannoli, roll dough to 1mm in thickness, cut into 11cm circles. Wrap around cannoli moulds and seal with egg white.

4.
Heat oil to 160C. Fry cannoli for 1-2 minutes until golden. Remove moulds, fry cannoli for an additional 30 seconds, then leave to cool.

5.
When cannoli is ready to serve, pipe the filling into shells (don’t do this too far ahead of time or the pastry may become soggy), dip ends in chopped pistachios and dust with icing sugar.

9.
Tiramisù di Natale

Serves 6 to 8

Ingredients

4 medium eggs, separated into yolks and whites
120g caster sugar
250g fresh mascarpone cheese
100ml double cream
180ml espresso (about 5 shots)
30 finger sponges
1 tbsp cocoa powder
Star anise and redcurrants (or other red berries) for decoration

Method

1.
To make the cream, beat the egg yolks with half the sugar until pale and airy. Add the mascarpone and mix until combined.

2.
In a separate bowl, whip the double cream until soft peaks form, then gently fold into the mascarpone mixture.

3.
Beat the egg whites.

4.
In another bowl, beat the egg whites until they form stiff peaks. Gradually add the remaining sugar, one spoonful at a time, and beating well after each addition. Gently fold one-third of the egg whites into the mascarpone cream, then fold in the rest to keep the mixture light and airy.

5.
In a 20cm x 25cm x 5cm dish, layer half of the finger sponges and drizzle with half of the espresso. Then spread half of the mascarpone cream over the sponges. Repeat with the remaining sponges and cream.

6.
Dust the top with cocoa powder, cover, and refrigerate for at least an hour or, ideally, overnight. To serve, decorate with star anise and redcurrants.
Chef’s tip: This recipe can – and should – be prepared a day in advance.

10.
Zabaione with strawberry
Serves 4

Ingredients
400g strawberries, halved
2 tsps caster sugar
4 tsps fresh orange juice
Grated orange peel

For zabaglione
50g caster sugar
4 medium egg yolks
80ml marsala wine
15g dark chocolate (optional, for garnish)
Amaretti biscuits or finger sponges (for serving)

Method
1.
Mix strawberries with caster sugar, orange juice and half of the grated orange peel, and leave to macerate.

2.
To make the zabaglione, bring water to a simmer in a saucepan. In a heatproof bowl, whisk sugar, yolks and marsala over the simmering water until creamy and fluffy (you can use an electric hand mixer for this).

3.
Divide strawberries into glasses, spoon over zabaglione, and sprinkle with grated chocolate and the remaining orange peel. Serve with the biscuits or finger sponges.

Hungry for more?
Hosting a Christmas dinner isn’t the only chance to be creative in the kitchen. Get a new recipe every Sunday in The Monocle Weekend Edition newsletter. Sign up for free at monocle.com/minute

The man reinforcing Roger Vivier’s bejewelled legacy

Bejewelled buckles on shoes might once have brought to mind royal portraits from the 17th century but in today’s fashion industry they call forth one name only: Roger Vivier. The Parisian maison has perfected the twinkle of its shoes since it was founded by the French designer in 1937. Vivier pushed the boundaries of footwear, partnering with Christian Dior to develop his New Look silhouette and providing pumps for Catherine Deneuve in 1967 erotic psychodrama Belle de Jour. When the designer died in 1998, he left behind a maison and a legacy that still evoke glamour.

In 2015 the house was bought by Italian holding company Tod’s Group for €415m. And Italian designer Gherardo Felloni was installed as creative director in 2018 – very successfully, as it turns out. Last year, overall revenue increased by 16.5 per cent to €286.7m.

“I’ve always looked to Roger Vivier as a reference for my own career,” Felloni tells Monocle. “He was an inventor, a genius.” He is wearing one of his go-to outfits: a crisp shirt and a simple navy cardigan accentuated with an antique gold necklace, dripping with pearls. “Vivier designed for the contemporary women of the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s. That’s why one of the first shoes I designed for Roger Vivier was a trainer. Women today want to be comfortable. Sometimes I joke that Vivier, if he were alive today, would have worked on trainers. So I did it for him.”

Felloni had previously worked in the accessories and footwear departments of labels including Fendi, Dior, Miu Miu and Prada. But, for him, being appointed the creative director of a house with a visionary founder is somewhat akin to entering into dialogue with someone beyond the grave. Shared passions such as gardening, jewellery and a playful approach to design facilitates that conversation. “I never knew Vivier but from the archive you can tell that he didn’t take himself too seriously,” says Felloni. “He wanted to make fashion contemporary and light. And I believe that fashion is a moment for creativity but also for the clients to have fun.”

Growing up in Tuscany, Felloni considered a career in opera, cinema or architecture. But the calling came from closer to home: his father and uncle ran the family shoe factory, where he spent his childhood learning about the complexities of shoe construction. “Shoes aren’t like a bag or a dress: the form needs to support the foot so you can walk,” he says. “The technical part of my job is important to me.” This early exposure to manufacturing also instilled in him a reverence for craft from an early age. Now, at Roger Vivier, Felloni works with the house’s atelier to develop new designs but also to reiterate and update shoes that he finds in the archive.

His aim is to communicate the savoir-faire and rarity of the maison to customers through opulent salon-style presentations of not only shoes but accessories including bags, belts and headbands. For the house’s campaigns, Felloni has tapped actors including Deneuve, Isabella Rossellini, Laura Dern and, most recently, Eva Green as brand ambassadors. “The women I’m obsessed with all have confidence in common,” he says. “When you’re confident, you can wear whatever you want. You don’t think about other people’s opinions. You’re free. That is what inspires me.”

Playlist: 50 cosy songs for long, dark nights

Morning sun
There’s nothing like the sunlight on a crisp winter morning. Allow these tracks to provide a gentle, warming accompaniment.

1.
Todo Dia Santo
Marcos Valle
Brazilian legend Marcos Valle delights with his breezy, effortlessly cool bossa sound.

Marcos Valle
Brazilian singer and producer

What are you listening to currently?
On the road, I like to listen to playlists that I’ve made. I’m also listening to Céu’s new album, Novela, which is very nice, very beautiful. She wrote lyrics for a song on my album, which I love. And to tell you the truth, I listen to Ravel and Debussy in the quiet moments.

What are your plans for 2025?
I recently released a new album, Túnel Acústico, so I’ll continue touring it in Brazil, Europe and the US. We’re also planning to tour in China. Another project that I’ve been working on is a music series by [the late] French composer Henri Salvador, which I artistically directed, produced and did arrangements for. It’s becoming an album and will also be turned into a show, which will be toured. Beyond that, I don’t know. I can only to wait and see what will happen.

Do you have any New Year’s traditions?
I prefer to stay at home with my wife, Patricia, and our little dog, Merlot. If I’m performing on New Year’s Eve, it’s got to be something very special. Otherwise, I prefer to relax. I think that’s the way to be prepared for a new year.

2.
Moonlit Floor
Lisa
A member of K-pop group Blackpink, Thai singer Lisa shines in this track that riffs on 1990s classic “Kiss Me” by Sixpence None the Richer.

3.
Cinnamon and Clove
Sérgio Mendes & Brasil ’66
Another bossa nova classic, selected in tribute to the late Sérgio Mendes, who passed away in September.

4.
Sinking Boat
Infinity Song
Soft rock from four talented New York siblings.

5.
Crockett’s Theme
Jan Hammer
The iconic Miami Vice theme.

6.
Turbo
Sunni Colón
Mornings are always smoother with a little Sunni Colón.

7.
Rosário do Desejo
Ayom
A sunny blend of lusophone styles, from Brazilian frevos to Cape Verdean coladeiras.

8.
Love Me Jeje
Tems
This Tems track revamps Seyi Sodimu’s 1997 Nigerian Afro-pop hit of the same name.

9.
Amor em Jacumã
Lucas Santtana
Let cool Brazilian dub beats ease you into the day ahead.

10.
Erase/Rewind
The Cardigans
We never get tired of this one.

Walk in the park
Want to blow off the cobwebs with a walk? Grab your headphones…

1.
Somente o Sol
Deborah Blando
The Italo-Brazilian legend delivers a stirring cover of 10cc’s “I’m Not in Love”.

2.
Cruz de Navajas
Mecano
A Spanish new-wave classic.

3.
Amar Pela Metade
Calema
Kizomba pop from a duo with São Tomé and Príncipe roots.

4.
Sciura Milanese
Popa
A slick synth-pop tribute to the sciuras – the name given to chic older ladies in Milan.

5.
Ortak
Melike Sahin
New soulful pop from one of Turkey’s biggest stars.

6.
Power
Telenova
Alt-indie from the Melbourne trio’s 2024 debut album, Time Is a Flower.

7.
Si Antes Te Hubiera Conocido
Karol G
The Colombian singer dominated this year’s charts with this bouncy track.

8.
Leh Benkhaby
Tul8te
This masked singer and producer blends pop with bossa nova and Egyptian sounds.

9.
Acidente
Jão
Melancholic pop by the young Brazilian singer-songwriter.

10.
Cool Breeze
The Jeremy Spencer Band
Let this cinematic yacht-rock track whisk you to the 1970s.

Aperitivo hour
Whether you’re enjoying an aperitivo at home or après-ski on the slopes, these songs will kick-start your evening.

1.
I Forget (I’m So Young)
Sofie Royer
Shimmering up-tempo electro-pop from the Austrian singer.

2.
Desliza
Ana Moura
Short, sultry and infectious, this new track from the Portuguese fado artist will get you moving.

3.
Nenuphar
Polo & Pan
The French duo’s electro-disco track is inspired by Mexico City and its grooves are guaranteed to spice up your evening.

4.
Air
Crystal Murray
Emotional pop-r&b from the Franco-American singer.

5.
Una Notte Speciale
Alice
This dreamy synth track became a classic upon its release in 1981.

6.
Total Normal
Michael Cretu
Top synth-pop by the Romanian-German music producer.

7.
Diet Pepsi
Addison Rae
Simply a perfect pop song.

8.
Veridis Quo
Daft Punk
Luca Guadagnino selected this for his new Chanel No 5 ad.

9.
Esperar Pra Ver
Evinha
Pure bossa nova brilliance.

10.
Uciekaj!
Lor
Exciting Polish folk-pop.

Hedonistic night
Escape the cold and lose (or find) yourself on the dance floor with these club-ready songs.

1.
Ô travers
Zaho de Sagazan
The acclaimed star combines French chanson with electro.

2.
Galactic Romance
Jaakko Eino Kalevi(Kiva Kiva Versio)
Italo-disco collides with Finnish melancholy – and it works.

3.
Serotonin Moonbeams
The Blessed Madonna
A love letter to 1990s rave.

4.
Acid in My Blood
Channel Tres
Techno to get lost in.

5.
Pump It Up
Endor
Featured on the soundtrack of one of the year’s buzziest films, The Substance.

6.
Nightcall
Kavinsky, Angèle & Phoenix
Revived when it was performed at the 2024 Olympic Games closing ceremony.

7.
Taboo
Kylie Minogue
Classic Kylie from this year.

8.
Dancing Island
Angelina Petrosova
The Uzbek diva in full flow.

9.
Life
Jamie xx, Robyn
Let optimism banish the blues.

10.
Mystery of Love
Mr Fingers
A famed Chicago house track.

New Year’s celebrations
Raucously ring in 2025.

1.
Tout Pour Moi
Clara Luciani
An uplifting song from new album Mon Sang.

2.
Fantasy
Jade
The former Little Mix member turns disco diva.

3.
Bafana Bafana
Professor Rhythm
Recorded at the end of Apartheid.

4.
Nandakke?
Aili
Delicious electro-pop by the Belgian-Japanese duo.

5.
Somebody to Love
Kazy Lambist
It’s all about love in this gem.

6.
Time for Celebration
Dov’è Liana
Indie with an Italian twist from the French trio.

7.
La Bohème
Mauvais Oeil
Pop inspired by Arab divas.

8.
Promised Land
Joe Smooth
Start your year by bouncing.

9.
Ti Voglio
Ornella Vanoni, Elodie, Ditonellapiaga
A new version of a classic track by Italian icon Ornella Vanoni.

10.
Rescue Me
Madonna
Gospel for the dance floor.

Monocle Radio
To listen to the playlist, search “Monocle Radio” on Spotify or tune in live. Our radio station broadcasts around the clock, seven days a week. You’ll find more music alongside a daily mix of comment, analysis and news shows across the schedule. Head to monocle.com/radio or download the programmes as podcasts wherever you get your audio.

Keeping it real: Why meeting prospective employees in person yields the best results

The job interview’s reputation is almost universally negative. But outside of TV sitcoms, are old-fashioned, in-person meetings with prospective employers ever that bad? The alternatives certainly are. As with so much else from the analogue world, we might already be suffering from the job interview’s increasingly endangered status. When UK-based recruitment consultants CV Genius surveyed 625 hiring managers on what they look for in a successful job application, 80 per cent responded that they couldn’t stand AI-generated applications. But there’s a trusty implement in the recruiter’s toolbox that can save us from hiring the wrong candidate: meeting them in person.

The consequences of letting someone get too far into the job-application process without having met them are obvious. Not only does an AI-generated CV and covering letter give the employer no idea whether the candidate’s self-professed acumen stands up to scrutiny but they also offer little indication of the personality type that could be about to enter your working life.

It’s time that we scotched the encroachment of AI into the hiring process by reviving mandatory, in-person job interviews and holding them as early into proceedings as possible. They might be stressful for many candidates and time-consuming for bosses but they also reduce the chances of hiring someone who has been dishonest in their application. They are also a vote in favour of that increasingly rare but precious element of the working day: human connection.

It doesn’t matter how gleaming someone’s written job application is, whether it’s bot-created or not. You simply can’t get a full measure of a candidate without spending some time together. Not only does the employer get an insight into an applicant’s acuity, style and sense of humour but the candidate, in return, gets to find out the same things about their prospective boss too.

AI has become worryingly adept at gaming written job applications. Generic questions such as, “What can you bring to this role?” and, “What do you consider your strengths and weaknesses?” are catnip to bots. To vet potential employees properly, all predictable elements of job questionnaires should be expunged. The requests should be so specific that AI will wither on the digital vine. It would be difficult for a candidate to use Chatgpt to answer a question such as, “Please could you illustrate an example, directly referencing your previous position, of when you solved a problem, detailing the specifics of the situation and giving us a step-by-step narrative of your response to it?”

AI is problematic in other, more disturbing ways. A University of Washington study published in 2023 tested three large-language AI models by making them evaluate hundreds of CVs against job descriptions. They found that the models favoured CVs from candidates with white-associated names 85 per cent of the time – and preferred other candidates to black men 100 per cent of the time.

The endgame of this reliance on AI will be horribly retrograde. Successful candidates will be chosen based on whether they are the most clued up on how to use the technology to their advantage. There is also the risk that bosses will simply become distrustful – and heartily bored – of the entire process and give the job to someone in their social network. Goodbye, meritocracy.

So, if we really want to hire the best candidate for the job, we need to tidy our office desk, find another chair, take a coffee order and usher in the first of those aspirant future employees.

December 2024 updates from Monocle magazine

So much to do, so little time – which is why Tyler Brûlé has resurrected an old tradition: the round-the-world tour.

“The last quarter of 2024 has been marked by the return of a dependable but slightly forgotten old habit: the round-the-world tour. Ten years ago I realised that it was more efficient to stay on the road for long stretches than to dash back to base all the time to check on the “kids” (my colleagues) and water the plants. For a variety of reasons, I fell out of the habit but, since October, rtw tours have been back in the diary and today I’m filing from the Park Hyatt Sydney, with the opera house in the background and more than 200 Monocle subscribers about to join us for our first party on the continent in almost a decade.

“My current tour started in Zürich and has included stops in Tokyo, Hong Kong, Bangkok and Melbourne. From Sydney, I’ll be moving on to North America, with sojourns in Dallas, Des Moines and Toronto, before pivoting to the Middle East for appointments in Doha, Dubai and Abu Dhabi. All in all, it’ll be three weeks, with one carry-on and an array of story ideas for the issues ahead (and as many opportunities to match). For 2025, the agenda is just as packed. We look forward to seeing as many of you as possible at the end of January, when we’ll be throwing open the doors of our new premises in Paris – and maybe, just maybe, a little outpost back Sydney way. Cheers to a happy and prosperous 2025.”

Out in the world

Over the past month, the Monocle team has been busy convening with readers and thought leaders. Here are some of the highlights.

The Monocle Shop at the Landmark
Hong Kong

We bolstered our Hong Kong presence this autumn with a month-long pop-up within the iconic Landmark retail space. Our appearance in Central happened while our beloved Wan Chai shop closed for some timely refurbishments. Both the Wan Chai outpost and The Monocle Café on London’s Chiltern Street are set to reopen in December.

Monocle at Selectshop Frame
Dubai, UAE

The Monocle shop was in Dubai in November for a pop-up at Selectshop Frame, coinciding with the launch of The Monocle 100: Dubai handbook.

Monocle Patrons at Maçakizi
Bodrum, Turkey

A sunny group of our most dedicated readers joined Monocle’s editors at the Maçakizi resort for faultless service and the best swimming set-up this side of the Pacific. Patrons are a select group who are invited to private events and sent every print product we make. To join the programme, email Holly Anderson at (han@monocle.com). It would be great to have you on board.

The Monocle Quality of Life Conference
Istanbul, Turkey

More than 100 delegates attended Monocle’s annual Quality of Life Conference in Turkey’s biggest city. The speaker line-up included architect Richard England, mayor of Tirana Erion Veliaj and submarine officer Taylor Sheppard. There were also plenty of party moments at The Peninsula on the Bosphorus. Look out for all forthcoming events at monocle.com/events

Bucherer
New York, USA

In partnership with Swiss watchmaker Bucherer, Monocle’s sister publication Konfekt brought together leading creatives for dinner, drinks and a conversation on craft and luxury.

Coffee at Midori House
London, UK

During our Chiltern Street café renovation, the Monocle coffee (and bun) hit came from our truck parked outside Midori House. Beep beep!

From the editors: five things we’d like to see more of to round out 2024 and ring in 2025

1.
Off-season travel
Monocle was in Mykonos in November. The weather was stunning, there were few people and hotel prices were low. And you could go further afield too: it’s off-season in the northern hemishpere but hotting up down south.

2.
More indie print
Singapore is leading the way, with online politics and culture publication Jom launching a first print issue, food magazine Slow Press branching into events, and arts zine Now & Again releasing a new issue after two years.

3.
Visionary tech
Comédie Française has introduced for-hire eyeglasses that add individualised subtitles to the viewer’s field of vision. A winning idea both for hearing-impaired Parisians and foreign theatre visitors.

4.
Feast on frites
Next time you’re in Paris, tuck in to steak frites at Nonos. Chef Paul Peret’s 1950s-inspired grill at the Hotel de Crillon offers a tender take.

5.
Cultural education
The Blue Chair Film Festival in Laos (December) and the Jaipur Literature Festival in India (January) present a host of emerging Asian creatives.

Global: Up next

Feeling festive? Why not join Monocle for seasonal parties and pop-ups to round out the year.

The Monocle Shop, St Moritz, Switzerland
If you want an early dose of Christmas cheer, make your way to the Alps, where The Monocle Shop is set up as an outpost at Hotel Steffani.
5 December 2024 to 31 March 2025

Christmas Market, Zürich, Switzerland
Kick off the season with our annual Christmas market at our HQ at Dufourstrasse 90. Gifts and Glühwein are on offer.
7-8 December 2024

Christmas Market, London, UK
For some last-minute Christmas shopping and a visit from Santa, all the way from polar Finland, join us in London. Plus: live Monocle Radio broadcasts.
14-15 December 2024

Emily in limbo: The pull of Rome causes a diplomatic stir

Who vs who? France vs Italy

What it’s about: Emily in Paris, the Netflix series about an annoying American woman inhabiting a clichéd simulacrum of the French capital. It has become an enormous global hit, very possibly because it permits non-American and non-French people to sneer loftily at American and French people at the same time. Rumours abound that its titular character might be heading to Rome, and French president Emmanuel Macron, for one, is not having it: “Emily in Paris in Rome,” he has declared, “doesn’t make sense.” Rome’s mayor, Roberto Gualtieri, responded: “One can’t control the heart: let’s let her choose.” More pointedly, Gualtieri wondered, “Doesn’t President Macron have more pressing matters to worry about?”

What it’s really about: All criticism of Emily in Paris aside, it has been an immense soft-power boon for France. Sales of French brands worn by the characters have spiked. A study by France’s national film centre found that about four per cent of recent visitors to France had been inspired by the show. Four per cent of France’s tourist business is a perfectly reasonable thing for the president to worry about. Even Brigitte Macron is such a fan that she made a cameo appearance during the most recent season.

Likely resolution: Further wrangling over what is clearly a valuable media property, while the producers figure out how to milk this rivalry.

El Mordjene: The banned Algerian spread threatening to upset Nutella

In 2024, Nutella celebrated its 60th year as one of Italy’s most successful exports. But an Algerian upstart has been stealing the thunder of Ferrero Group’s famous chocolate spread. For sweet-toothed aficionados in France, Belgium and the Arab world, 2024 was the year of El Mordjene, a chocolate-and-hazelnut cream made by Algerian confectioner Cebon. This family business, founded in 1997, created El Mordjene in 2021 using hazelnuts, milk, cocoa, palm oil and, of course, lots of sugar.

Earlier this year, El Mordjene became a viral hit among Francophone internet users, which led to an explosion in popularity. As Cebon shifted gears to meet demand, there was a setback: French customs officials began detaining pallets of El Mordjene. Though it had been available in France since 2023, the spike in imports led authorities to realise that it had been on sale illegally, as EU rules forbid the import of Algerian products containing dairy. In Algeria, the press cried foul, with some inaccurately claiming that El Mordjene had been banned because it threatened to take Nutella’s crown.

Despite the ban, El Mordjene’s success provided an image boost for Algeria in the face of recent diplomatic setbacks with its former colonial masters. (In July, for instance, France sided with neighbouring Morocco in a decades-long dispute over the Western Sahara.) Indeed, the import ban might just be fuelling the hype, as French confiseurs and recipe websites compete to create a replica.

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December cultural updates, from Ruinart’s art-infused cellars to Finland’s national soundtrack

House Proud
Art, France

If you find yourself at an art fair and in need of a drink, chances are that a cold glass of Ruinart will be available to quench your thirst. The champagne house – which was founded in 1729, making it France’s oldest – has long fostered close ties with the contemporary art world. This relationship is the focus of Ruinart’s newly renovated headquarters in Reims. In addition to a sparkling new pavilion designed by Japanese architect Sou Fujimoto, artworks have been peppered throughout the site. Visitors will come across the first of these works – a flag painted with a calendar by British artist Marcus Coates – after following a zigzag path flanked by steep limestone walls up to the maison. Every day, a new flag replaces the last, with a description of how nature in the Champagne region is changing with the seasons. “Most of the art pieces here are about our connection with the living world,” Maison Ruinart president Frédéric Dufour tells Monocle. “This harmony with nature is absolutely crucial for us – our product comes from nature.”

Coates’s work is one of almost 20 pieces that can be seen in the Artists’ Garden. But there are also artworks inside the pavilion and the Unesco World Heritage-listed chalk cellars, where artistic duo Mouawad + Laurier has installed a giant sculptural “root” adorned with Murano-glass lamps. In response to climate data, it moves, lights up and emits sound. While ancient cellars and vineyards might be a far cry from the booths of Art Basel or Frieze, they represent a new creative iteration of Maison Ruinart and reinforce a universally known truth: that art is best observed with a glass of champagne in hand.
ruinart.com

Film: USA
Q&A

RaMell Ross
Director, ‘Nickel Boys’

Adapted from a novel by Colson Whitehead, the film Nickel Boys tells the story of two African-American boys, Elwood and Turner, and their traumatic experience of a reform school in 1960s Florida. Here, director RaMell Ross describes his unusual directorial decisions and his personal association with the story.

Why did you want to adapt this novel?
The book is about me in a way. I guess that I’m Elwood or Turner, given the type of family that I came from in the suburbs. What happened to them could have happened to me too.

The film is shot from a striking first-person perspective. Can you talk about that decision?
It seemed as though it was the right approach. Coming from an arts background, I believe that the intent of any project is just as important as the result. If the film doesn’t make a big splash but people get to access Elwood and Turner’s life and Whitehead’s novel through this subjectivity, then that’s a success to me.

Why did you want to use archival footage in ‘Nickel Boys’?
It opens the film up. It also helps to ground it in a way. The footage allows it to be both a Hollywood production and a film that shows what’s happening and what’s at stake in the real world.

Take note
Music, Finland

If your country were a piece of music, what would it sound like? That’s the question that the Finnish Ministry for Foreign Affairs asked before commissioning Lauri Porra, one of Finland’s most revered contemporary composers, to create the nation’s soundscape. The idea is not to present Finland’s greatest hits to the world but to capture the country’s essence through mental images of nature, which are expressed by the sounds of instruments.

“It could be the colour of the sky, a forest scene or the sound of the water running in our rivers,” Porra tells monocle. “It’s not about recreating these sounds but capturing the feelings that they evoke.” The finished piece, which will be ready in time for Finland’s Independence Day on 6 December, will become the soundtrack to parties and other events thrown by Finnish embassies across the world.

Porra was given creative freedom to make sure that the work felt personal and intimate, instead of turning into an idealised marketing image of the country. “I have spent a large part of my life abroad and whenever I return to Finland, I notice how the scale of things appears to change,” he says. “Humans seem smaller and nature seems bigger. That gives a beautiful perspective to life as we become  more bewildered by our surroundings. I wanted to capture that sensation through the language of music.”

To hear the full report, tune in to ‘The Globalist’ on Monocle Radio.

Media: Italy
Trade secrets

With top-floor views of Florence’s Duomo, the headquarters of Italy Segreta feels like a daydream. The magazine, however, is not interested in fairy tales but rather the depiction of real life in Italy. Marina Serena Cacciapuoti, the magazine’s founder, grew up in Florence but moved to New York in 2014 to pursue a career as a photo editor. “I missed Italy,” she tells monocle. “And I hated how one-dimensionally it was perceived abroad: just pizza, prosciutto and the Amalfi coast.”

Cacciapuoti was only 28 years old when she left New York. “I was thriving,” she says. “But all I was building was myself.” Returning to Italy, she envisioned a magazine that would give a platform to young writers and photographers. After launching in 2020, Italy Segreta quickly exploded, highlighting often-overlooked details of Italy, such as coffee rituals and street life.

Italy Segreta now publishes a digital issue every month and, since 2023, an annual large-format print issue packed with articles on everything from essential pasta dishes to Sicilian ceramics.“Many Italians think of their country as dysfunctional,” says Cacciapuoti. “It’s partially true but we’re showing that it’s possible to create something that works here.”

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Novel approach
Books, Singapore

Singaporean photographer Rebecca Toh was exploring a Japanese fishing town in April when she wandered into a small library. She learned that each shelf was operated by different people, who brought their own books for others to borrow. “I couldn’t get the idea out of my head,” says Toh. She posted on social media to gauge interest in starting a similar project in Singapore and received hundreds of responses. Encouraged, she signed a lease for a shop in Bukit Merah.

An architect volunteered to install wooden flooring; graphic designer friends created a logo; and almost 200 people committed to a monthly fee of s$45 (€32) to cover the space’s costs. In August the Casual Poet Library opened to the public, staffed entirely by volunteers.

Membership is s$25 (€18) a year and members can borrow five books at a time. There are no late fees; mutual trust is central to the ethos of the library. One shelf is run by a class of schoolchildren, while some are curated by doctors, aspiring playwrights and couples. “People just want to share their passion for books and literature with others,” says Toh. “We have built a real community here.”