The St James’s offices of Aim-quoted Cluff Gold in London resemble an explorer’s den: an antique globe, exotic objets d’art on the walls and a bust of Jan Smuts, the South African statesman, greeting visitors in the corridor.

It is the work of Algy Cluff, the buccaneering 71-year-old chairman of the west African gold producer. Just returned from shooting guinea-fowl in the Kalahari Desert, Mr Cluff’s air of patrician derring-do could have been sketched by the pen of Evelyn Waugh.

Having worked in Africa long before it became a fashionable investment destination Mr Cluff is modest about the key to success in frontier markets: “Good manners.”

— Financial Times

It used to be the certifiable Cusack position that the realms of finance & business were dead dull and to be avoided at all costs. I do read the Financial Times fairly often — especially for its praise-worthy and restrained weekend edition — but I’ve always steered well clear of the Companies & Markets section that appears in the paper’s Monday-through-Friday editions. A week or so ago, inspired by some bizarre exotic curiousity, I wandered over the borders into the territory of Companies & Markets for the first time, and was fascinated by the intricacy of what I found, as well as how interesting it all was.

Also, when younger I thought only boring people went into finance, but after graduating from university and seeing everyone toddle along their various paths, I find that about half the fun and interesting people I know have ended up doing somethingerother financial — another assault on Cusack’s anti-finance defences. I am aided in my exploration of this intricate world by a nifty little book I’ve stolen from a friend’s collection: How to Read the Financial Pages by Michael Brett; basically finance for layfolk such as yours truly. And of course I am still enjoying Philip O’Sullivan’s Market Musings.

Admittedly, much of this is sparked by the initial public offering of Glencore. There’s something splendidly boyish and fun about commodities (especially gold, as the above-mentioned Mr Cluff surely knows) and Glencore’s massive corner of the global commodities market is truly beyond the dreams of avarice. There is, apparently, gold in them thar hills.

Farewell, O good old days! Farewell, O affable visage of the proprietor and smiling and respectful reception of the waiters! Farewell, O solemn entries of the Café Valois’ dignified customs, which people were curious to see. Such was the case with the Knight Commander Odoard de La Fere’s arrival.

At exactly noon, the canon of the Palais-Royal heralded his arrival. He would appear on the threshold and pause for a moment to sweep the salon with an affable and self-assured gaze as someone eager to practice a longtime custom. His right hand pressing firmly on the white and blue porcelain handle of his cane, he threw his old faded brown cape over his shoulder with a swing of his left hand. No one ever snickered at this, since not even the most elegant mantle with golden fleur-de-lys embroidery was ever thrown back with a more distinguished movement.

In 1789 the former steward of the Prince of Conti ran the Café Valois; it was rather devoid of political colour and local flavor at that time.

Among the frequenters of the place, standing out by his noble manners, stately demeanor and wooden leg, was the Chevalier de Lautrec. He was from the second line of that family, an old brigadier of the king’s army, a Knight of Malta, of Saint Louis, of Saint Maurice and of Saint Lazare.

The Chevalier de Lautrec was a middle-aged man who lived a modest, though very dignified life on his small pension. Though he rarely appeared in society, he could be seen most often at the Palais Royal and the Café Valois. He was a very cultured mind and an assiduous reader of all the newspapers.

Deprived of his pension overnight, it was never known what the Chevalier de Lautrec lived on at a time when it was so difficult to live, and so easy to die. But here we have something that sheds at least a dim light on this mystery.

One morning after finishing a very modest breakfast in the Café Valois, as was his custom, the Chevalier de Lautrec rose from his table, chatted with all naturalness with the proprietress, who stood behind a counter, bid good-day to the master of the café with a slight gesture of the eyes, and walked out majestically saying nothing about the bill. (more…)

Books are a central obsession of mine. I’ve a reasonably large and ever-increasing library of my own and wherever I’ve called home there have been larger collections available to tap into: the Society Library in Manhattan, the Gericke-biblioteek in Stellenbosch, and the mostly excellent public libraries dotted around lower Westchester. When you see the wide range and styles of the book — it’s size, proportion, paper, appearance — it’s depressing to see how monotonous contemporary book publishing is today. I have a thousand different ideas on book publishing and the wide gaps in the market that are completely ignored today, but here’s one inventive idea I didn’t have.

According to Le Figaro, Editions Point Deux (a subsidiary of the La Martinière group, the third-largest publishers in France) has begun offering what it calls « le plus portables des livres » . These little books are printed on their side to be read like a flipbook rather than in the more conventional format. The idea, apparently, comes out of Holland and has proved successful in Spain, but I haven’t come across it at all in the English-speaking world.

The first question is: what’s the point? At 4.75 in. x 3.15 in., they’re a handy size, but is anything actually gained by turning the text on its side? I imagine it’d be helpful for commuters, but I think it’d be difficult to judge the concept without actually having one in hand and using it, so I think I’ll refrain from handing down a verdict just yet. Very boring of me, I know, but I’ll admit I’m intrigued by the idea.

“Vu hier soir à Odéon” writes Nicholas S-M, posting this photo on Facebook.

Of course, my mind immediately wanders to Le Secret de La Licorne, the 3D film version of which (directed by Mr. Spielberg) will be released before the end of the year. I am sure I will hate it, but in that way you can hate things while still liking them.

“Despite my inclinations to the contrary, I have racial sensitivities. I am Latin. I regard the civilised barbarian in the North with an inherited sense of mistrust. Today [the United States] has become a colossal society, and has adopted the goal of imposing its industry, its commerce, and its imperialism. Each citizen of the Union is a kind of stockholder… [upholding] an ideal of material perfection above moral perfection, and equating civilisation with the triumph of industry and commerce. We, by contrast, descendants of the Latins and educated by the Greeks, regard that person as most civilised who is most morally perfect. … I am proud to say I am bored with railroads and factory chimneys.” – Belisario Montero

ONE OF THE best aspects of Catholicism is the affirmation (for lack of a better word) of absolutely everything that is good throughout the world. All the peoples of the earth, each with their particular genius, eventually descend from the same parents. This gives one, I hope, a certain sympathy towards every nation and every people, and an anticipation that each one will eventually grow into the full flower of a Christian order appropriate to their particular characteristics and personality. Christianity is not oppressive and conformist in its universalism but instead all-embracing.

There is much to be admired in the sentiments expressed by Belisario Montero, an Argentine diplomat, in the comments cited above. To put them in context, they were made after the final collapse of the Spanish Empire following the Spanish-American War of 1898. Argentina, as you already know, is a place that excites me. In her is found so much of the idea of Europe, varyingly perfected and perverted, accidentally demolished in an attempt to save it and then put back together again not precisely as it was before. Marx “travelled” to Buenos Aires, but so did Maurras (and perhaps the Frenchman was more influential). For a time, photographs of Mussolini cut from the illustrated magazines were plastered onto the walls of aspirational working-class porteños trying to keep up with the latest European fad, and the military elite and social aristocracy combined to oppose the vulgar and destructive forces of liberal democracy and unbridled capitalism. Almost every coup in the nation’s history was received with a sigh of relief, especially (and ironically) the coups getting rid of whomever the previous welcome coup put in charge. Argentina has a long history of terrible success and beautiful failure. Perón himself is the very embodiment of this.

Of course, unlike Don Belisario, I am not a Latin. (more…)

Please don’t think I’ve been neglecting you! There has been a lot going on of late, some of which I will report on later, but I can tell you that I have been rendered temporarily homeless, my phone has been stolen, and my computer is (what’s new?) on the fritz. The damned fan is broken and so you’re lucky to get an hour out of it. Of course, before its latest round of hiccups, I took on a little charitable web design project for a certain non-profit London institution currently in its hour of need, so working on that has priority over compiling blog posts in the little time the aged laptop affords me. (If anyone wants to buy me a new MacBook – get in touch!).

Still, there is the office computer, a miserable Dell running miserable Windows on which I am forced to use miserable Internet Explorer (system administrators – that ominous tribe – forbid the downloading of more useful browsers like Safari, Firefox, etc.).

My computer woes have inhibited all my creative efforts! It’s funny (and worrying) how one’s thinking and operation can be so tied to a machine. The flip side of it is that you’re getting more word entries than image entries (even though my writing flows much more fluidly when typing on my Mac). So many damned images on my machine, most waiting for their ticket to come up so I will write what I hope will be an attractive, handsome, and informative article about whatever the subject matter is. You know I am a very visual person, but I am also a word person strangely.

If you’re lucky, perhaps we might tempt Alexander to make another appearance, though he’s currently in Paris trying to undermine French republicanism in an exceptionally asymmetric and perhaps not entirely logical fashion.

UPDATE: Just to clarify: please don’t think I’m homeless in the sense of sleeping rough on the streets. It’s merely that my flatmate fled the country and the landlord sold the place, so I’m currently staying with friends.

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