Richard Godwin

Features / Interviews / Cocktails

London

I'm a freelance feature writer and interviewer based in London. My column appears in the Evening Standard each Wednesday. I also write widely on politics, technology, society, literature, art, human folly, families, fashion, food, travel and all in between. My work has appeared in Vogue, The Times, Private Eye, Marie Claire, The Debrief and Five Dials among others. My cocktail book, The Spirits (Square Peg), is due in the late-summer.

Richard Godwin

Features / Interviews / Cocktails

London

Tracey Emin: 'Your skin goes baggy and your muscles collapse. If I could change anything, it's that'
Poor Tracey Emin is feeling the worse for wear. Within a few minutes of turning up at her studio, Britain’s most celebrated female artist tells me to ‘expect monosyllables’. Then she disappears into an attic room — and I’m pretty sure I can hear weeping through the door. When I summon up the courage to enter, I am greeted by a contemporary update of her seminal work My Bed (1998), remade as a tableau vivant, with Emin reclining at the centre of it, in a pool of white light.
The Joy of Techs: London's sexy new IT crowd
Your industry, everyone agrees, has a decent chance of seeing out the decade (making it the envy of journalists) and investment, both public and private, seems easy to come by. So, too, are jobs. The bulletin board at your co-working space is full of ads for ‘product managers’ and ‘growth hackers’.
Hanging out with a hero: the rise of the celebrity meet and greet
Anticipation is building at the Lancaster Hotel near Hyde Park. In the street photographers wait, autograph-hunters salivate and security guards make sideways remarks into their earpieces. Tonight, we will have an experience un-precedented in all of our lives: an evening with Arnold Schwarzenegger.
The cutester: meet London's latest social stereotype
When the social historians of the future take the temperature of London in 2014, I’m 100 per cent certain they will take the opening of the Cereal Killer café on Brick Lane as a flashpoint. For a place that sells breakfast cereal — not crystal meth, nor IS propaganda, nor Moldavian sex workers, but Frosted Lucky Charms and Coco Pops — it has caused a huge amount of anger.
On a mission with London's urban explorers
Those who are serious about urban exploration are by nature discreet. Dark anoraks, lightweight trainers, tight backpacks containing climbing equipment, cameras, skeleton keys. Sensible haircuts, serious day jobs, a talent for evading CCTV cameras. The only thing that might give them away is the measured adrenaline in their step as they stake out a skyscraper, their swift sense of purpose as they test a manhole to see if it’s been left open.
December Issue: Elevating Rita Full Interview
From Notting Hill to New York via Jay-Z's record label, Rita Ora's career has reached dizzy heights - and she's just 21. The singer talks to Richard Godwin in the December issue of Vogue. Photograph by Scott Trindle. At 21, Rita Ora would appear to have it all. Signed to Jay-Z's Roc Nation label when she was still a teenager, the west London girl has now had three number one singles, and her first album Ora - all neon-tinged floor-fillers and acrobatic R'n'B - quickly reached the number-one slot, too.
The world according to Zadie Smith
An indolent summer’s day in North West London: Zadie Smith is having her photograph taken in Kilburn Park, while, all around her, the locals loll under the pale English sun. You can tell this is her manor. Her voice has a low drawl particular to NW postcodes. (‘Hey, Richard, are you bored out your tree?’.
Lorde: 'Teenagers? We're a lot wiser than you think'
I’m not sure why people make such a fuss about the fact that Lorde is 17. It is true that ‘Royals’, the anti-anthem that won a number one in America and over here, a couple of Grammys and the blessing of David Bowie, is beautifully accomplished for a teenager. However, everyone who meets Ella Yelich-O’Connor — the New Zealand singer’s birth name — seems more surprised by the fact that she can hold an intelligent conversation.
Fiction for Facebookers: Tao Lin and the art of Alt-Lit
He has since found a respectable publisher, but he recently declared himself available to live-tweet your wedding, for $400 an hour. The self-portrait he offers in his latest novel, Taipei, suggests a pharmaceutically numbed, enigmatic young man, more comfortable online than in person. When we do finally meet in a photo studio in Kensington, I sense, from his terrified eyes, that Lin would far rather do this over Gmail chat.
You shall go to the Russian ball: meet the wannabe debutants auditioning for a modern London fairytale
They were auditioning to be debutants at London’s second-ever Russian Ball, which will take place at Old Billingsgate Market in November. The event recreates the lavish balls of Tsarist Russia — mazurkas, naval officers, orchestras, ballgowns, the lot — and will mark the “coming out” of 60 young men and 60 young women into 21st-century society.
Young, shafted and black
Official new figures reveal more than half of Britain’s young, black men are unemployed — the worst-hit group and double the number four years ago. We ask why... Young, shafted and black — it’s the worst remix of Young, Gifted and Black ever. For the men emerging from the Job Centre Plus in Dalston on a spring morning, it is the soundtrack of their lives.
Is gentrification killing Brixton Market?
Gentrification (noun): The process by which upwardly mobile urbanites ‘discover’ an area, open trendy new businesses and displace the people who have been living and working there for years. Right now, Brixton looks to have a classic case — and its famous market is Exhibit A. Locals have been picking up their Alphonso mangoes and ackee here for generations.

About

Richard Godwin

Fluent in French and Russian

I began my career at the Evening Standard in 2003. During 11 years at the paper, I edited the listings sections, worked as Deputy Arts Editor and from 2010, moved to Features desk as a Senior Writer. I have contributed a weekly column since 2007 - currently it appears on Wednesdays in the Comment section - and have been nominated for British Press Awards for my writing. I've also written for publications including Vogue, The Times, Marie Claire, Private Eye, Standpoint, Five Dials, Condé Nast Traveller, Red, Hunger and The Debrief.

In all my writing, I'm driven by a deep curiosity about the world and how it functions. I believe almost anything is interesting if you ask the right questions and make the right connections, which is why I like to roam across politics, society, art, fashion, food, technology, music, literature.

As an interviewer, I love having the opportunity to be nosy but also to offer a truthful portrait. My subjects have included Zadie Smith, Rita Ora, Florence Welch, Rowan Williams, David Attenborough, Eva Green, Christian Louboutin, Tracey Emin, Jemima Khan, Noel Gallagher and Gemma Arterton.

Since 2013, I've turned my passion for making cocktails into an alcohol column. I've now turned my extensive research into a book, The Spirits, to published by Square Peg in Summer 2015.

My agent is Georgina Capel at Capel & Land: georgina@capelland.co.uk