Contributors
Peter Bradshaw The contributing editor turns
p.144 his hand to fiction this month. “I wrote my short story,
Holiness, because I have always been fascinated by Pope Benedict XVI’s retirement,” he says. “How do you renounce infallibility and rejoin ordinary humanity, with all its vanity and cruelty? By getting into the movie business, of course.” Bradshaw is chief film critic for The Guardian.
Michael Smith “It was a great adventure for me to go and explore the beer culture of Manchester,” says Smith, “one of the cities at the leading edge of the current beer renaissance. One unintended consequence of my trip to the Manc metropolis is that I’ve been listening to the Happy Mondays in our small flat all month like a displaced Northerner in his forties trying to relive his youth, much to the irritation of my wife.” Smith now runs an off-licence in Hastings. Paul Wilson “I’m always a bit on edge interviewing novelists,” says Wilson, who meets Ian McEwan on page 102. “I mean, I get paid for writing too, but those lot have a way with words that wins Booker Prizes and moves people’s souls. Plus, they know everything. I needn’t have worried about McEwan: lovely man, wears his learning lightly and happy to confirm — correctly — that David Cronenberg’s The Fly is a masterpiece.” Wilson is an Esquire contributing editor. Ben Machell “As a Yorkshireman,
I’ve always felt equal parts proud and exasperated when it comes to my county’s sense of exceptionalism,” says Machell. “When I heard that plans for a Yorkshire national football team were afoot, my first instinct was to wince: it sounded so tinpot and hubrisbaiting. But having spoken to the fans, players and chairman powering this project, I’ve completely changed my mind. It’s mad, but brilliant.” Machell is a writer for The Times. Seth Armstrong This month, Esquire’s fashion pages take a painterly turn, with winning depictions of the forthcoming royal honeymoon from the brush of
Los Angeles-based oil painter, Armstrong. “Being from California, I’m not very accustomed to dealing with British Royalty,” he says. “I guess Meghan and I have that in common.” Armstrong has also worked for Jay Z, Christie’s and Mr Porter.