Tabla de contenidos para April 2025 - Issue 99 en The Rake

In The Second World War, Sir Winston Churchill wrote of the events of May 8, 1945: “The unconditional surrender of our enemies was the signal for the greatest outburst of joy in the history of mankind. The war had indeed been fought to the bitter end in Europe. The vanquished as well as the victors felt inexpressible relief. But for us in Britain and the British Empire, who had alone been in the struggle from the first day to the last and staked our existence on the result, there was a meaning beyond what even our most powerful and most valiant Allies could feel. Weary and worn, impoverished but undaunted and now triumphant, we had a moment that was sublime.” This edition of The Rake, which marks the 80th anniversary…

In a relatively short space of time, Finn Cole has become one of Britain’s leading young acting talents. He got his first break aged 18, playing Michael Gray in Steven Knight’s hit T.V. show Peaky Blinders. One of his older brothers, Joe Cole, was already in the first series, and when an open audition came up for season two, he thought Finn would be perfect for the job. It turns out he was, and with only a couple of school plays to his name, Finn made the character his own over the next decade. The younger Cole then joined another successful show, TNT’s Animal Kingdom, in which he starred alongside Ben Robson and Shawn Hatosy. But it’s his most recent project that is arguably his biggest and best. Last Breath…

Man’s best friend? Of all the tepid bromides that two-legged carbon-based lifeforms have come up with, that one takes the biscuit. The canine species is not only the human species’ beloved companion, we are his protector, defender, comrade and brother-in-arms. Take, for example, the seven-inch, four-pound Yorkshire terrier Smoky who was found in a foxhole in the New Guinea jungle by the decorated veteran Bill Wynne in 1944, and who then saved Wynne’s life by warning him of incoming shellfire on a transport ship before leading him to safety. Or Sergeant Stubby, a Boston Terrier who, while serving in France during world war I, would patrol the Flanders trenches, nipping at the heels of sleeping soldiers to warn them of gas attacks that his sense of smell had alerted him…

When it comes to seeking examples of renewal amid the arbitrary tweaks, Watches and Wonders can take the needle/haystack metaphor to confounding new levels. All too often, R&D departments, focused on transformative outcomes in the long term — and perhaps unwilling to steal too much thunder from their future selves, or their successors — limit themselves to the odd, homeopathically small change to existing models here and there. Their tentativeness is, to a point, understandable, but it has got to the point where the word ‘novelty’ can seem grandiloquent. So it was refreshing to see, presented within the Tag Heuer camp at Watches and Wonders this year, a set of five Tag Heuer Carrera Day-Date models that displayed a few impressive adaptations to changing times, as opposed to the evolutionary…

brian bowen smith Brian, who was born and raised in New York, became a professional photographer via a less-than-traditional route. After catching the eye of Herb Ritts while performing as a pro athlete in a print campaign, the legendary photographer became a friend and mentor, helping Brian find his personal photographic style. He has been working steadily ever since, shooting for countless publications and commercial clients as well as publishing two books and focusing heavily on his fine art photography. Brian lives in L.A. with his wife and young son, and when he is not working you will find him surfing, snowboarding or riding his motorcycle. Now unofficially Our Man in L.A., he met Kevin Bacon in the City of Angels to shoot the Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F and…

“I was a halfway-decent-looking English boy who looked nice in a drawing-room standing by a piano.” So quipped the man born Peter Sydney Ernest Lawford in London in 1923, referring to a Hollywood career arc that reached its apogee in 1960, when he starred with his fellow Rat Packers in the Ocean’s 11. Not only does Lawford’s demure assessment omit the part his preternaturally good looks and nonchalant baritone played in helping him carve a showbiz niche, it excludes various disadvantages that made his rise to stardom — and marriage into the most high-profile family in American history — borderline miraculous. Factor in other complications in Lawford’s life, and his dashing insouciance seems like denial at its most sophisticated and convincing. Lawford’s father was Sydney Turing Barlow Lawford, a major-general…

The Civil Servant cannot decide which part of his job title — the civil bit or the servant — is more important. In the world today, it is the definition of a thankless task to be a civil servant. In the days of Sir Humphrey and Yes, Minister, the idea was that the civil servant was like a nanny to those with power: they were presented as the smarter, safer hands tending to the public’s wellbeing compared with the politicians who put themselves up for power. In the state today, the Civil Servant has the role closest in nature to the royal family — a never complain, never explain status as far as the press goes, and all criticism, right or wrong, has to be taken on his mandarin chin.…

In the Canva of your mind, assemble a sepia ensemble of British second world war MVPs. Churchill, obviously. Field Marshal Bernard ‘Monty’ Montgomery, the scourge of Rommel, picks himself. Turing, sage of Bletchley, almost certainly. Of course, add your valorous ancestors, for few British family trees didn’t lose branches in the carnage. Now cast your eye over this glorious corps. Is there a diminutive, fine-boned woman of Indian descent with challenging eyes and the merest hint of a smile on her lips? Well, there should be. Noor-un-Nisa Inayat Khan, also known as Nora Inayat-Khan and Nora Baker, was born in Moscow on January 1, 1914. The eldest of four children, with Sufi heritage and Indian Muslim roots, she and her family decamped to Britain shortly before the optimistically subtitled ‘war…

The Ingenieur has pedigree, historical significance and style in abundance. It has filled a void IWC had for decades — that of a sports model with bracelet and modest proportions that could accommodate complications further down the line. Its evolution can be traced through three key phases. When it debuted in 1955, the Ingenieur was designed as a professional watch for engineers and scientists working in environments with strong magnetic fields. Its key innovation was an anti-magnetic soft-iron cage that protected the movement, capable of withstanding fields up to 80,000 A/m. In 1976 the legendary watch designer Gérald Genta reimagined the Ingenieur as the SL Reference 1832, introducing the distinctive integrated bracelet and bezel with exposed screws that would define the collection’s DNA. This design aligned with the era’s preference…

Sir Winston Churchill was a man of many characteristics, but what I enjoy most, when reading about him, was his frankness. “My rule of life prescribed as an absolutely sacred rite the smoking of cigars and also the drinking of alcohol before, after and, if need be, during all meals and the intervals between them,” he once said. There was no beating around any bushes. Throughout the war, it must have been Churchill’s commitment to a libation-led lifestyle that gave him the humanity and understanding to see what an important role alcohol had in raising spirits. There are so many morale-raising stories from world war II that shine a light on the humanity of people who weren’t afraid to, I suppose, bend the rules. For instance, have you heard about…

On December 14, 1931, at Woodley airfield near Reading, RAF pilot officer Douglas Bader was, in his own words, “ragging about a bit”, indulging in some low-level aerobatics in a Bristol Bulldog mark IIA single-seat biplane. Bader had already courted expulsion from the service with a high dangerous and/or illegal stunt count, and this turned out to be his reverse-Icarus moment: the tip of his left wing clipped the ground, the plane somersaulted and crashed, and he was rushed to the Royal Berkshire Hospital, where both his ruinously injured legs were amputated, one above and one below the knee. This was how he chose to record the life-changing moment in his logbook: “Crashed slow-rolling near ground. Bad show.” The almost pathological breeziness is Bader to a tee — here was…

Efe Efeturi has been in the men’s style game for a long time. He is part of the cadre of stylish men who have discovered the joy of tailoring, and how character can be demonstrated with one’s outfits. His social media output is a fanfare of colour and eras; he can pull off the interwar proportions just as well as Italian tailoring and dressed-down knitwear. His use of accessories is terrific, with wonderful scarves, hats and jewellery. We caught up with him at Birley Bakery in Chelsea — to break bread as well as break down his style. “For me, style is like football,” he says. “Across the world, for every culture, you see minute details that come about based on where you are from, be it Asia, Africa or…

When Tom Chamberlin, the Editor-in-Chief, told me this issue of The Rake would celebrate the 80th anniversary of V.E. Day, I was excited at the prospect of presenting a military-inspired cocktail. But as I sat down to write this column, I realised it was going to be a challenge. “War is hell,” the American Civil War general William Tecumseh Sherman famously said, and yet cocktails are supposed to be the opposite. (Though I had a few hangovers in my twenties that were definitely the work of the devil. Advice: never consume copious amounts of beer, tequila, red wine and grappa in a two-hour period. Ever.) Stories about cocktails should be fun, yet the subject of war, evidently, is anything but. My father and uncle fought in world war II, and…

Chopard L.U.C Quattro in rose gold with blue dial Removed and stretched out, the electrical wiring in a Concorde could tether the edge of the observable universe to the Yeovil aerodrome’s windsock. Remove, tie together and extend all the blood vessels in a single human body in the same fashion, and you could tickle God’s nose with the resulting length of twine. For those of us whose childhood involved visits to far-flung military museums that count the decommissioned supersonic airliner among its tour options — as well as the kind of biology books that attempted to pique students’ interest with enjoyable but iffy statistics — it is easy to become immune to such statistics (exaggerated for comic effect here, admittedly). But when, as fully grown and discerning adults, we encounter…

The role of the movies in world war II is the stuff of legend. In 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt referred to cinemas as “a necessary and beneficial part of the war effort”, prompting picture houses to host ‘bond drivers’ (campaigns to sell U.S. treasury bonds to finance the war effort) and place collection bins for scrap metal and rubber in their lobbies. Once seated, audiences were shown newsreel updates from the frontlines and stirring combat footage as well as movies influenced by the 32nd U.S. president’s other assertion — that with every production, Hollywood should ask itself, Will this picture help win the war? Roosevelt even established the Office of War Information (O.W.I.) to promote the war effort. The O.W.I. issued guidelines to filmmakers and reviewed scripts and early…

The D-Day landings of June 6, 1944 could never have succeeded without the plethora of military machines that helped get boots on the sand in Normandy and onwards into occupied France. As RAF Dakota aircraft dropped an estimated 7,000 British parachutists, ground troops piled out of landing craft onto the 50-mile stretch of beaches codenamed Omaha, Utah, Gold, Juno and Sword, while vehicles ranging from Churchill tanks and Bren gun carriers to Daimler Dingo scout cars and hundreds of examples of the ubiquitous Jeep delivered Allied troops into the heat of battle. But among the many better-known types of motorised transport, there was also a largely unsung hero: the diminutive ‘Flying Flea’ motorcycle built by the British manufacturer Royal Enfield. The smallest bike ever made by the marque, the Flying…

The Rake is a place of truth and integrity, which is why we felt it was high time we recommended a reading list that will help you go beyond the words in this magazine. Books are the first indicator of a civilised society, and this list is a warranty in the process of creating a civilised man. Oyster Perpetual Submariner This is the first book in what will become a series of coffee-table tomes on the different families of Rolex. Submariner has been published by Future in collaboration with the horological titan, and it therefore required a fellow titan to write it, someone whose knowledge and sophistication the project deserved. Rolex and Future turned to the one man they knew would fit the bill: Nick Foulkes. Just when you think…

The most decorated American soldier of world war II was a fresh-faced Texan farm hand by the name of Audie Murphy. Or at least he was in this universe. In a parallel universe with which we’re familiar — the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and the comic book franchise from which it evolved — that accolade goes to a superhero whose Nazi-thwarting heroics would have led to a medal haul you could melt down and dam the Rhine with. There is no specific testimony, paper or celluloid, to Captain America participating in the Normandy landings — depicting superhero exploits in so solemn and momentous an event would have been disrespectful to the brave mortals who actually took part. But he was in Europe at the time, and we can assume his outlandish…