My essentials: Mark Grenside’s cultural picks

1. Books 

‘Elon Musk’ by Ashlee Vance. People like Musk, Branson, Jobs, and Zuckerberg fascinate me. When did they decide to keep on going despite amassing vast fortunes? I’m sure that when they were in short pants if you said they would be billionaires at 30 they would have said, “Great. I can party the rest of my life.” I doubt Musk (like Jobs) is an easy person to have around. However, I would love to have him to dinner. As that is never going to happen reading this is the closest thing!

2. Film/TV

Cruella. By far the best Disney film in years. Excellent script and storyline with breathtaking art direction. The scene that sticks in the mind is Cruella (Emma Stone) driving away after sabotaging an event for The Baroness (Emma Thompson) in a Ford Transit van with sumptuous dress material flowing out of the back like a river. For TV, Succession. Brilliant cast and inter-family betrayals on an industrial scale.

3. Internet  

I follow themes. Cars, cooking, and world and local events. I am not influenced by others but certainly follow the well-informed and the funny.

4. Music

Every day this changes! Music so reflects your mood that one artist one day may not be suitable the next! I have mixed compilations from Spotify for Sonos and iPhone and in my car, USB toggles with 2,000 tracks each. So your mood of the moment is the music. Don’t ever stick to one genre!

5. Place

I have been incredibly lucky to have visited nearly 120 countries. It’s very difficult to pick one. As a favourite holiday destination, it’s either Halong Bay in Vietnam or Arrowtown in New Zealand. As a place I love to revisit it has to be Cernobbio on Lake Como or Carmel in California and for the future Antarctica, Tasmania and Patagonia!