I like reading the Financial Times. It makes me feel smart and cosmopolitan. I like the almost-unvarying reaction of people around me when I read it: “Excuse me, why is your newspaper that color?” (It's printed on its own unique salmon-colored paper, so everyone knows you're reading the FT. Even their website is that color.)
I mostly like the crossword puzzles. Ahem, ahem, I won their crossword-puzzle contest a few months ago. I won a dictionary and a word guide, both of which I gave away. But my name appeared in the Financial Times.
I also like the columns. Lucy Kellaway is great. The weekend edition is full of great feature writers: Sir David Tang, Mrs. Moneypenny, Harry Eyres, Robin Lane Fox.
And Tyler Brule.
Harry Eyres and Tyler Brule write complementary columns on weekends. Harry writes “The Slow Lane,” about ruined cathedrals and chamber-music recitals and flower shows; Tyler writes “The Fast Lane,” about flying to Helsinki and where to eat in Montevideo and what kind of underwear to buy on the Ginza.
Tyler is an almost-unbelievable character: Canadian, son of a soccer player and an artist, journalist, socialite, cosmopolitan, editor of a magazine called Monocle that you've probably never read, but that actually creates trends. He is gay, handsome, perfectly self-assured. He writes about flying from Sao Paulo to Frankfort to Dubai as if – well, of course, you do that too, right? And how tedious it is! So you should bring your bottle of Sea Breeze, and your best silk robe from Kuala Lumpur (he always mentions the brand names, and the stores, and the cities in which he bought them).
But he is also gracious. He speaks to you as if – of course! - you live the way he does. You fly everywhere, you do everything. You are exhausted (as he is) from living on the run. You are relieved to spend a day or two by a remote lake in Finland with some dear friends, before flying to London and Lusaka and Luang Prabang.
The perfect host makes you perfectly welcome in his world.
I love you, Tyler Brule.
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