Moreintelligentlife.com is the website of Intelligent Life magazine. Articles about Arts, Lifestyle, Travels, and Ideas

~ Posted by Robert Butler, February 3rd 2012
 
In From Here to New Hampshire we blogged about the view from our office (with the Shard and the London Eye in the distance) and the beneficial effects, generally, of looking out of the window—whether you're a blogger in London or a former poet laureate in New Hampshire. It turns out the view from our window is also a barometer of the city's financial health. From my desk I can count 25 building cranes, which the chancellor of the exchequer may not consider good news. The Financial Times reports that only 300 tower cranes went up in London in the second half of 2011 compared with 371 in the previous six months. And who's patient enough to count 300 tower cranes? The Health and Safety Executive receives notification of each one that goes up. 
 
In Another Top 40 for Dickens, we noted Penguin Classics' online poll of favourite Dickens characters and suggested another Top 40 poll for favourite minor ones. We put forward five. One of our expert readers wrote in to suggest another 14 including one dog (Bullseye from "Oliver Twist"). The Daily Telegraph is running a series in which 29 journalists write about their favourite Dickens character (one for each day of this month). That discussion continues on Twitter, where there's a shout-out for Tommy Traddles, David Copperfield's endearing pal. The tweet is from the great-great-great-great-grandson of Judge Thomas Noon Talfourd, who is said to have inspired the character and who is the dedicatee of "The Pickwick Papers".
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 ~ Posted by Robert Butler, January 2nd 2012

An update on some recent stories:

There's another good reason why there's a fresh audience for Sherlock. The BBC series "Sherlock" returned yesterday, with the dominatrix in "A Scandal
in Belgravia" telling Holmes that "brainy is the new sexy". The Daily Telegraph
says one of the joys of the series is the way its creators have "devised ways of showing its protagonist’s mind working".

After hearing saxophonist Jorja Chalmers take centre stage with Bryan Ferry, we noted the return of the sax. Rolling Stone has a slideshow on the same theme with last year's 10 best pop songs featuring the sax.

David Hockney was just one in 23,000 British artists having their work uploaded to Your Paintings. In the New Year's Honours list he became one of only 24 holders of the Order of Merit. (We preview his new exhibition in Hockney thinks big.)  read more »

~ Posted by Robert Butler, December 8th 2011

The January/February issue of Intelligent Life is on newsstands today, with a very different cover star from the last two: Thomas Heatherwick, the designer of benches and buses who may also be the future of architecture.

The first issue of 2012 also brings a reshuffle in the editorial team, and two of the changes involve the website. The online editor for the past three years, Emily Bobrow, becomes a contributing editor of Intelligent Life magazine, while continuing to edit the culture channel of The Economist online. Since Emily took over, More Intelligent Life has grown dramatically in its reach and stature, a fact reflected in the number of page views, which have more than doubled in the past year. "Emily has done a fine job," said Tim de Lisle, editor of Intelligent Life. "In fact two of them. She has fully earned the chance to have only one job, rather than having to run two websites dancing to the very different rhythms of a weekly and a bi-monthly. And we look forward to having her input on the magazine."

The other change is that The Blog gets a different name today, The Editors' Blog. It struck us that the editorial team, through their contact with our wide circle of contributors, come across many more insights and observations than we can fit into a 150-page bi-monthly.

One of my tasks, as the new online editor, will be to pass some of these on. There will be more blog posts, and they will be shorter. The magazine tries to serve slow food, and you will continue to find a choice of main courses on the home page—but this will be the place to come for tapas.