The Financial Times has long been one of the best weekend print newspaper reads, even for those of us not especially interested in the money markets.

The arts reviews, columns, interviews and covetable property section are the perfect accompaniment to a slow-start Saturday.

It includes not one but two magazines. One, FT Weekend, is an award-winning but relatively standard-format production with high-class serious writing (and a clever quiz).  But there is also an over-sized and, in many ways, over-the-top, colour supplement to drool over. Full of outrageously expensive items nobody but a newly minted tech billionaire or mega bonused banker would consider affordable, the title seemed born of a more ostentatious age. How to spend it, as it was called, was like a slap in the face for mere ordinary salaried mortals. We were clearly failures since we could only look incredulously at a suit or frock that each cost more than our annual clothing budget. 

Despite being found among the leftovers at Colonel Gadhaffi’s Tripoli compound in 2011, which might have soiled the publication’s reputation, it wasn’t until Covid took its toll and then the Ukraine war hit the global economy that it all began to look a bit too out of touch with reality. Even when the revered designer Jony Ive guest-edited the magazine, the title sat uncomfortably with both his aesthetic and his content.