In this first issue, Naomi Alderman talks books, body-building, fatherhood and feminism with debonair actor and Booker judge DAN STEVENS; and we reconsider THE WOMAN IN WHITE as The Book of the Season, getting to grips with the Victorian classic through fashion, film, food and more.

CONTENTS

PART 1

A quick hello from the editor, a flurry of winter news and a capacious conversation with DAN STEVENS.

Dear Reader

Snippets

The Interview: DAN STEVENS by Naomi Alderman — A freewheeling interview with a bookish heart-throb

Winter Reads

PART 2

The Book of the Season is Wilkie Collins’ THE WOMAN IN WHITE, with midnight fashion, TV soaps, abandoned bon-bons and monochrome moans.

Introduction: An inferno of suspense by Seb Emina

Epoch: The year eighteen-sixty by Henry Jeffreys — Investigating a year of gossip, narcosis, revolution and junk food

Recipe: Bon-bons de chocolat à la vanilla by Hattie Ellis — What’s with Fosco’s bon-bons?

To write a soap by Lilie Ferrari — The modern pedlars of serialised sensation

Fashion: White gothic

Walter’s walk

White, red, green, yellow, purple and blue by Emily King — Why monochrome dressing is not as simple as it seems

Unputdownable by Nicci French — Sometimes reading is like a tent and sometimes it is like a scrapyard

Appendix

In spring

Some wear to the spine and slight separation.