Issue 10: 2013/2

Cover artist: Anthony Russell

Editor's letter

The B Beyond team has been busy this season.

We have gone a bit quiet on the social media front because we’ve been doing so much in the physical world.

Just watching it change is at times exhausting… and boy, has it been changing.

Our regular Sovereign Group editorial has devoted more than a paragraph to the Cyprus drama that unfolded this past spring. We monitored that with abated breath as its wider significance was not lost on us.

Most people would take the view that the plight of a tiny island in the Mediterranean and its supposedly dodgy Russian deposit holders can be shrugged off.

We feel it’s symptomatic of the new order of things, namely governments scrambling to replenish their depleted coffers by any means available to them.

Witch-hunting, demonising and turfing out people and companies at each end of the scale, respectively ‘benefit scroungers’ and ‘tax dodgers’, has become stock in trade for political publicity machines everywhere.

The Cyprus debacle was particularly brutal in that it targeted all savers indiscriminately and proved, once and for all, that nothing is safe or sacred in our modern, post-economic crisis world.

On a brighter note, our art and travel editors have been busy revisiting some of the most beautiful places in Europe, from the Swiss Alps to the Italian and French Riviera, all the way down to the Spanish border, while our sister publication FAULT magazine’s travel editor, Caroline Lawless, falls in love with the London scene this Spring 2013.

The travelogues will be published in this and the following edition, along with news of private art collectors’ events, food & wine reviews, and pictures of some of the very private parties we are privileged to be invited to.

Our finance writer David S. Wong profiles major player, John d’Agostino, and will be continuing this tradition with other big names in the future, so stay tuned.

Our team is readying to attend Dakis Joannou’s big annual art event in Greece which was sadly cancelled last year because of the elections. One of the best and most eagerly looked forward to art extravaganzas, it also has the merit of being huge fun.

We will then repair to our new favourite place, the South-West France, where the summers are long, dry and languid and where everything is right with the world – well, almost.