OutThere Magazine #4 Great Britain Back Issue

At a dinner party in West Hollywood, someone asked us which part of Great Britain we loved the most. We replied “London, of course”, confident that our cosmopolitan bubble would impress.

“No, outside London, darling”, he added, as the ante was upped and the rest of the table turned their heads to listen. “Is Suffolk really as magical as Constable painted, and are the Yorkshire Moors as desolate as Bronte wrote in Wuthering Heights?” We were trapped – the only Brits in a group of L.A. queer intelligentsia. We can wax lyrical about British art and fashion, and speak passionately about travelling the rest of the world, but ask me specifically about the British Isles and our travel knowledge is limited to a handful of places. An interjected comment about Kate Bush saved our bacon, but we were inspired to find out more about what puts the ‘Great’ in Great Britain.

So, funnily enough, you have West Hollywood to thank for this, our ‘Great British Issue’ – where we dedicate over a third of our pages to discovering the union that is England, Scotland and Wales. It’s a place with a fascinating past, with stories dying to be told. Like its people, it’s eccentric, creative and industrious, handsome even. Its countryside is as dramatic and enriching as its cities. It’s a place where old traditions collide head-on with the future. Having been inspired in West Hollywood, it makes sense that we talk about this city too; we uncover the secret side of its two square miles. We also travel to Hong Kong, where nearly twenty years of tattoo obsession culminated in our Editor getting his first ink. We investigate Canadian cuisine in Toronto, go nocturnal in Berlin and hob-nob with the art elite in Venice for the Biennale.