As Lehman Brothers sign sells for just £9,375 at Christie’s, one bidder disputes the sale price and former executives party
The Lehman Brothers sign we featured earlier this month achieved just £9,375 in this week’s Christie’s South Kensington sale. (more…)
An heir of the legacy of Napoleon Bonaparte, this investment banker is based in New York and works for Morgan Stanley. He succeeded his grandfather Louis, Prince Napoléon as Head of the Imperial House of France in 1997 due to a dynastic dispute due to his father “embracing republican principles” and remarrying “without his father’s permission”. In an interview, he stated: “I am a man of my time, as is everyone, but also with certain duties that I’ve decided to take up and certainly no extra rights. I am witness to my family’s past and of its role in history, but I am resolute to face the future. The Bonapartes have always been modern men and even avant-gardistes”.
The Steeple Times asks entrepreneur Laurence Benson: “What’s on your mantelpiece?”
The Steeple Times shares “wit and wisdom”. What’s your guiding force?
I fear a 9 to 5 office job. I cannot run far enough away from it.
“Don’t get even, get medieval” is, in our humble opinion, a great motto. What’s yours?
“Cheer up, the worst is yet to come”.
Kerry Katona was considered unacceptable in 2007. Who or what is unacceptable in 2013?
Unnecessary animal testing.
Tony Blair misses being Prime Minister. What do you miss most in your life?
Long school summer holidays. 12 weeks of sun, sand and golf.
What might you swap all your wealth for?
To bring a tropical climate to the UK.
Donald Trump was once a case of: “If you owe the bank a thousand, they close you down; but if you owe the bank a billion, you own the bank”. What’s your view on the banking crisis?
As a once recent graduate trying to find a job in the banking crisis, I feel bad for the kids that aspired to becoming a big shot in the City. These fresh faces are finding themselves in an environment where they must work inhuman hours, contribute a greater value, have no job security and get minimal rewards for their troubles.
What phrase or word do you most loathe?
“Alright for some!” – It is usually used as a negative statement, judgmental of others decisions, full of resentment and jealously.
In the UK, some people consider charity to “begin at home”. What’s your view and what causes do you personally support?
I support a lot of the main cancer charities as well as efforts in other areas. I have always been particularly close to The Aspinall Foundation and have worked with The Bill Clinton Foundation to provide clean water solutions to many parts of Africa.
The judge in Law Abiding Citizen states: “I can pretty much do whatever I want” before being blown up whilst answering her mobile phone. What’s your view on the appropriate use of such devices?
I loathe my mobile phone, but I am rarely detached from it when awake. They have become a ghastly anti-social necessity. More worryingly though, is my over riding belief that they will be the death of our generation.
If you could fill a carriage on The Orient Express, who would be your fellow passengers?
From past and present I would invite Salvador Dali, Nelson Mandela, Vivienne Westwood, Elton John, Audrey Hepburn and David Mitchell to keep the conversation amusing.
If you were unfortunate enough to end up on death row, what would be your last meal and where would you eat it?
I would have a picnic on the beach between the port and castle of Mandelieu. The basket would contain a large array of starters including tomato and mozzarella salad and garlic gambas. For the main course, rosemary rotisserie chicken from La Maison du Bon Poulet. I’d finish off with a white chocolate parfait with honeycomb.
What time is it acceptable to consume the first drink of the day?
I’m trying to stop drinking before 5pm. The emphasis is on trying.
A Negroni, a martini or a cup of tea?
Always a cup of tea.
Whose parties do you enjoy the most and why?
Any within my close circle of friends. Luckily, we are all fairly good party hosts and know how to have a good time.
Who is the most positive person you know?
Lulu Otte. She has had a few downs recently, but knowing that she will be blessed by many more ups in the future, she is always positive.
What’s your most guilty pleasure?
Jaffa Cakes.
If a tattoo were to sum you up, what would it be of?
A list of places I have visited and people I have met who have influenced my life, making me the person I am today.
If you were a car, what marque would you be?
I think a beach buggy. Laid back, good fun but effective at the job they do.
Cilla Black presented Surprise, Surprise. Tell us the most surprising thing about you.
Half of my family has roots in the Seychelles, which is why I hold a Seychellois passport.
What’s currently sitting on your mantelpiece?
A large mirror, a chiming clock, an MCC fixture list and a postcard from a friend in Hawaii. She’s rubbing salt into our cold April wounds.
Laurence Benson is a Belgravia based businessman. He began his career in the City but left to found first Lily & Benson, a design bureau and creative consultancy, and most recently a luxury accessories brand, Touni Minuit.
Follow him on Twitter at: http://www.twitter.com/LaurenceBenson
View Lily & Benson’s official website at: http://www.lilyandbenson.com
View Touni Minuit’s official website at: http://www.touniminuit.com
The Steeple Times asks author Alex Preston: “What’s on your mantelpiece?”
The Steeple Times shares “wit and wisdom”. What’s your guiding force?
Books, cooks and good looks.
“Don’t get even, get medieval” is, in our humble opinion, a great motto. What’s yours?
“Do no harm; or if you do, make sure it’s beautiful harm”.
The Steeple Times asks emerging market investor David Reuben Jr: “What’s on your mantelpiece?”
The Steeple Times shares “wit and wisdom”. What’s your guiding force?
I try to follow the “Golden Rule”. Treat others the way you would prefer that they treat you. Be careful how you are with people on your way up, you just might meet them on the way down.
“Don’t get even, get medieval” is, in our humble opinion, a great motto. What’s yours?
If at first you don’t succeed, skydiving is probably not for you.
The Steeple Times asks milliner Laura Cathcart: “What’s on your mantelpiece?”
The Steeple Times shares “wit and wisdom”. What’s your guiding force?
“No woman is a success to herself”. I’ve paraphrased this from Graham Greene but I think the thought applies to both men and women. I like originality, and pushing my own creative boundaries, which is why I chose making wacky and quirky hats for myself and my friends rather than working in a Mayfair decorating firm.
This talented Oxford educated author is a former credit derivatives trader who is now regular on BBC2’s The Review Show. This Bleeding City, his first novel, was based on his own working experiences and analyses how the financial crash could be seen as “our subconscious revenge, our way of bringing down the system that had ensnared us”. His second, The Revelations, was described by A. N. Wilson as a “strange and compulsively readable tale of City slickers seduced by a promise of spiritual awakening”. He predicts a bleak future for financiers in suggesting that we are still in the midst of “a crisis that will take more than a few bankers paying back their bonuses to solve”.
This “Boswell of the bluebloods” was a writer whose tips came from unnamed sources and “waiter[s] serving [him] risotto at dinner parties”. (more…)
Sarah Tucker shares her experiences on a panel discussing the outcomes of Leveson
Journalist and author Sarah Tucker was one of the panelists at a talk at the Richmond Literary Festival on Thursday evening. By chance, since it coincided with the publication of the Leveson Report, the panel’s discussion naturally focused on that. Here Tucker share her thought in an article first published on her own blog:
I was in excellent company last night as part of a panel at the Richmond Literary Festival that felt almost weirdly timed to coincide with the day of the Leveson announcement.
I appeared on a panel with Sir Trevor MacDonald (who needs no introduction, but got one any way), the editor of the Sheengate Titles, Richard Nye; Claire Fox, the director of the wonderfully named Institute of Ideas (which I thought sounded like something out of Hogwarts) and Matthew Syed, illustrious columnist, Times writer and former Commonwealth table tennis champion (I wanted to ask him about table tennis but felt it oddly irrelevant in context of the debate). We discussed if the media were ‘friend or foe’ (though it wasn’t specified ‘to whom’) this of course had been perfectly timed to coincide with the Leveson findings. It was pure fluke but that’s timing for you.
Sir Trevor felt Leveson would change nothing. Everything, he suggested, would be bogged down in committees and sub committees and nothing would be done. Ever. Fox and Syed felt if statute was put in place, it would potentially be very dangerous especially if you had the likes of Blair or Thatcher in charge again or some lesser megalomaniac.
As for my view, I think the politicians are playing a game. They are losers all of them, we are the biggest ones (the punter, the voter, the onlooker), but to think they could come out and out say one way or another would be a nonsense and would take a great deal of courage, which they don’t have.
When I look at politicians now I think of them as actors upon a stage, not meaning anything they are saying, not even understanding most of it, just reciting it. I don’t feel contempt because it takes courage to get up on that stage. And Sir Trevor noted that many journalists and reporters now treat politicians with barely restrained contempt when they interview them. As he noted, at least politicians enter the process to do something of good for their community (although I think some do enter it for ego), something you can never say about those who work in the city.
And who will be in this ‘organisation’ that will monitor the press? Who on earth, on this earth, is so honourable, so without fault, so incorruptible to be considered for this position? A politician? No. A banker? You’re joking. A policeman. Perhaps.
I think you need a ‘common man’, or woman who has a sense, a common sense and an ability to see through the emperor with no clothes phenomenon of what is bullshit and what isn’t, what is in the public interest and what isn’t. It isn’t someone who has risen to the top. If this year has proved anything the shit rises to the top more regularly than the cream does. Although I must say I do like Eddie George. I think his contempt for the city mirrors that of my own, but then he deals with them on a daily basis so that’s understandable.
In many ways the media has been it’s own worst enemy. Editors allowing for lazy journalism – the recent article about Canada in The Telegraph being an example. I met the head of PR for Canada in the UK for lunch this week and she despaired that they usual cliché about Canadians came up without anything relevant or up to date on a country that had a government which managed to manage their bankers – something our politicians have not. As she commented: “It’s harmless but it’s pathetic.”
Then there’s the phone hacking which hacked into ‘common man’ rather than celebrity, who I am afraid I have absolutely no sympathy with. That includes the royals, both the young and old. They are sold to us as though we know them. We don’t have a clue who they are. We just think we do.
Editors encourage journalists to get stories, to hit the negative angles because they are told ‘it makes better news’ and people are more interested in bad news than good. I think it’s been proven somewhere, with stats or something, but then so have a lot of other things which also turn out to be rubbish. And all media are businesses so their bottom line is more important than anything else. Associated Papers are making money, The Times is running on a subsidy, the rest of the papers I think are losing money. The BBC may have been dented but they are respected around the world and like the NHS should not be tampered with. They should not be interested in profit and should aim in their production values at all times and at all cost. Every panelist agreed on that point.
The weave between the institutions of the police, the law, the church, the city, the media, the royals, the politicians has become so entwined. This is like a lover’s tiff that will pass over because the end game is more important. There is too much money, too much power and far far too much ego invested in these institutions for morality and integrity to get in the way of profit.
This has been a year of revelation but not revolution. And if it were it would be the wrong heads that would roll.
Sarah Tucker is an award winning travel journalist, novelist, producer and broadcaster. She has edited, produced and presented her own radio and TV series as well as presenting reports for BBC Holiday Programme and anchored I Want That House on ITV. She is the author of best selling novels The Playground Mafia (short listed for the Good Housekeeping book of the year 2007) The Battle for Big School, The Last Year of Being Single, and The Control Freak Chronicles.
For more information about Sarah Tucker, go to: http://www.sarahtucker.info
Buy The Playground Mafia on Amazon at: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Playground-Mafia-Sarah-Tucker/dp/0099498456/ref=sr_1_7/202-9265101-5575054?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1193856472&sr=1-7
Follow Sarah Tucker on Twitter at: http://www.twitter.com/madasatucker
A marine residence with a history tied to the Rolls-Royce Spirit of Ecstasy, the Special Operations Executive and Babycham
The House on the Shore on Thorns Beach at Beaulieu in Hampshire is a home that wouldn’t look out of place in the Hamptons or Rhode Island. Dramatically situated next to the Solent waters to the north of the Isle of Wight, this suitably named building wouldn’t have been out of place in the 1980s BBC series Howards’ Way. It could. Indeed, have been an ideal home for Gerald and Polly Urquhart. (more…)