The Rake

When I’m asked why it is that the Swiss are so damnably good at making watches but so hopeless at communicating about them, I explain that it has to do with the fundamental difference between the Catholic and Protestant religions. O.K., close your ey

Whereas the popularity of, and esteem for, British style seems immortal, pride in being British is these days about as fashionable as a mullet. Deposits of patriotism — and by that I mean of the old sense, the king and country sort, the kind that saw

November 30, 1895 was a hot day in Cuba. Arroyo Blanco, a small village in south central Cuba, was the scene of fighting between Spanish troops and rebel Cuban forces. It was Winston Churchill’s 21st birthday, and a birthday present was to come in th

In the mid 19th century, David Livingstone, God-fearing autodidact and missionary, lost his enthusiasm for efforts to convert the African people. He decided to discover the world, in the process leading Britain into a new era of discovery by a new br

Carving out a career in the film industry is no easy feat, and when taking into account the amount of work Douglas Booth does on the side, the ground he is covering is remarkable. Booth’s career began when he was 16, with a small part in Julian Fello

The idea of the family business is an evocative notion, and one that holds plenty of kudos in the luxury goods industry. Hefty price tags imply that handiwork and great care has gone into a product’s creation, yet this is not necessarily the case wit

The role of dogs in warfare — like that of mathematics, tobacco and women — is blithely overlooked. Egyptians, Greeks, Persians, Sarmatians, Slavs and Britons have all enlisted four-legged talent to their military ranks. Canines from the Molossia reg

Jane Seymour has always presented the thinking man with a rosy-cheeked dilemma. You see, there is something eternally virginal, ethereally pure, perpetually prim about the actress. So what the hell is she doing in your filthy little spank-bank? Relax

“In any industry,” Pier Luigi Loro Piana told The Rake some years ago, “the materials you use are the starting point for how your production philosophy is going to unfold in the future. It’s like being in a kitchen — if you have the very best raw ing

Limitation is a damnable thing. We Homo sapiens are adventurers by nature and instinctively try to discover the new or adapt the old. This psychological restlessness is evident in the clothes we wear as much as in the speed we run the 100 metres, or

Since ancient times, silk has been inextricably linked with society’s upper echelons. In Europe, the home of silk has been in and around Lyon, in France, primarily because of Louis XI’s decision in 1563 to take advantage of the area’s trade routes wi

The Outer Hebrides, a chain of islands off the northwest coast of mainland Scotland, is a remote and barren stretch of land. It’s devoid of many of the fripperies of modern civilisation, and the result is a charmingly simple place of escapism. Life h

Special thanks to Mark’s Club Brown checked wool, doublebreasted jacket, Ralph Lauren Purple Label; chocolate-brown puppytooth wool trousers, Anderson & Sheppard Haberdashery; white cotton shirt, Reda Slaoui; purple and white silk print tie, Hermès;

Clement, Davis, Benjafield, Rubin, Barnato and Birkin in Mayfair, London, 1924 Bernard Rubin with his fiancée, Audrey Simpson, 1934 Birkin and Barnato demonstrating their sartorial flair, 1929 Clement competing in 1922 with crowds perilously close to

Captain Henry Wilson of the East India Company launches from the Pelew Islands, circa 1784. There’s a key scene in Taboo, the BBC’s recent Dickensmeets- Goodfellas period drama starring Tom Hardy as the adventurer and would-be shipping magnate James

The expressive and enigmatic Robert Plant in 1972 Plant and Page performing in Sydney, Australia, in 1972 and on stage at Earl’s Court in London, 1975. It was a live shark. Or a dead one. A live octopus. Or perhaps just a whole red snapper. Either wa

Blue virgin wool and cashmere doublebreasted coat, Loro Piana at Mr Porter; navy wool argyle jumper, Corneliani; black wool trousers, Hermès; black crocodile leather boots, Berluti. Grey cotton pinstripe jacket, Connolly; marl grey cotton tank top an

Black wool coat, Neil Barrett; pale grey ribbed cashmere jumper, Ermenegildo Zegna Couture; grey wool checked trousers, Anderson & Sheppard Haberdashery; black leather brogue front Oxford shoes, Crockett & Jones; and grey cotton socks, Falke. In the

Allen Ginsberg’s poem Howl hits you like a concussive hollow-point double-tap to the soul. This is his paean and plea, his discourse and dogma cry out for insurrection and revolution, and it is set — and could only be set — in the greatest of all cit

“It is the unstable nature of denim — the fact that it fades, shows signs of age and wear, tells the story of your interaction with it, and becomes a physical repository of your memories — that makes it so fascinating as a material,” says Dean Gomils

The problem with translating The Great Gatsby from print to screen is that they always get the casting wrong. You don’t select a genetically overindulged golden god-Adonis like Robert Redford to play Gatsby. He should have played Tom Buchanan — rich,

The camel is an ungainly beast. ‘A horse designed by a committee,’ as one proverb goes, it compares to its distant equine cousin as one of The Beatles’ satin Sgt. Pepper suits does to a close-cut, single-breasted in sober graphite from a topnotch Mil

In The Fountainhead — the novel The New York Times referred to as her “hymn in praise of the individual” — Ayn Rand used the parsimony of natural selection to illustrate the beauty of stark functionality. “Why wouldn’t you like to see a human body wi

When low carbohydrate diets became popular, they seemed to be a breath of fresh air after the low-fat diet with hidden sugars that preceded them. Suddenly we were told to load up on meat and throw away the bun. Robert Atkins, M.D., who was responsibl

There’s a certain type of person who can recall what the weather was like in two specific months of the year more than two decades ago. Someone whose livelihood could be devastated by an uncharacteristically cold July or a wet September; a person who

The Barr Al Jissah beach at the Shangri-La resort. In such erratic and unstable geopolitical times, one of Oman’s greatest draws is its status as a safe haven. Nothing accentuates serenity like a bit of surrounding chaos. In fact, one rarely exists w

What do the rapid rise in cosmetic surgery procedures, people projecting their own mundanity all over Instagram, and a new nationalism based on personal superiority over solidarity have in common? They’re all symptoms of the Narcissism Epidemic: a va