The Monocle Weekly

We meet Oscar-winning director Sir Sam Mendes to learn more about his First World War epic, ‘1917’. Plus: Nicolas Godin – one half of French electro-rocking legends, Air -– talks us through his latest album, and Radie Peat, a lynchpin of the contemporary Irish Folk scene, on how she uses ancient instruments to explore new sonic palettes.

As the new decade dawns, Monocle's Rob Bound and Augustin Macellari look ahead to 2020 with Jacques Testard, founder of London's influential publishing house, Fitzcarraldo Editions. Plus, Clare Gough, director of Pitzhanger Manor and Gallery, unpacks the upcoming programme and Mode Exchange director Chris Vaughan explains the experimental music ties between the UK and Japan that his festival will be exploring in 2020.

Rob Bound and Augustin Macellari look back at 2019, revisiting the conversations and motifs that made the year. A conservateur and a mudlark explain how a tactile engagement with the past can facilitate time travel, while journalists, artists and documentarians reflect on surveillance capitalism. Plus: an author and a popstar on the psychic resonance of the US landscape.

Chris Maynard, author of cult Usborne children’s book, ‘All About Ghosts’, joins us to discuss his work on a publication that sent chills up the spines of a generation of kids. Plus, a Christmas cocktail-making workshop from one of Rosewood London’s Scarfes Bar’s crack bartenders, and a look at the psychedelic magic that underpins pre-Christian Christmas.

We meet musician Dan Bejar, better known as Destroyer, to find out about his forthcoming album, ‘Have We Met’. Plus: CEO-turned-filmmaker Philipp Humm and actor Martin Hancock discuss their adaptation of Goethe’s ‘Faust’, and priest Marie-Elsa Bragg on her intensely personal new book.

Musician and composer Yann Tiersen talks about collaboration, misinterpretation and going analogue as he releases his new album, ‘Portrait’. Plus: Humphrey Ocean, one of the UK’s great painters, discusses his 50-year career, and our culture editor, Chiara Rimella, reports from Art Basel in Miami Beach.

André Aciman, author of ‘Call Me By Your Name’ tells us why he wanted to revisit the characters in its recent sequel, ‘Find Me’. Plus: we speak to Francesca Cartier Brickell, a scion of the Cartier dynasty, about her family history and join Jockum Nordström’s on a tour of his latest exhibition at London’s David Zwirner gallery.

We meet Rana Foroohar, FT columnist and author of ‘Don’t be Evil,’ a new book that explores just how and when Big Tech lost its way. Plus: Greco-Australian duo Xylouris White talk turning the Myth of Sisyphus from a negative to a positive, and the curator of a major new Dora Maar exhibition at the Tate unpacks her legacy.

We meet painting conservator Simon Gillespie in his studio to learn more about the fine art of his profession – and get up close and personal with some truly amazing paintings. Plus: as they receive the Queen Elizabeth prize for engineering, we sit down with Bradford Parkinson and Hugo Fruehauf. It’s hard to imagine a world without the technology they invented: GPS. And we hear about this year’s London Jazz Festival from director Pelin Opcin.

Novelist and poet Ben Lerner discusses how his new book, ‘The Topeka School’ explores language, masculinity and violence in Trump’s America. Plus: Eleanor Pinfield, head of Art on the Underground, unpacks the project’s mission to bring colour to London’s transport network, and artist Larry Achiampong discusses his upcoming commission.