We wrote the 21 questions really quickly, before the office closed, before we all went home. It was a knee-jerk reaction to what was coming, very fast, down the line and how it would affect our beloved industry. The questions were in part a desire to stay in touch with our favourite people, in part to support our favourite places. We wanted a love song, but also a battle cry, perhaps even an incantation – say the names enough, roll them round your mouth, the destinations where you’ve feasted and laughed and fallen in love, the ones you’ve visited year after year, which have given you rest and succour and respite – and perhaps you’ll go a small way to talisman their future.
We started sending the questions out. ‘To celebrate and support,’ we said, the businesses big and small. Let’s shine a light, and pay it forward, and hope that readers will bookmark them for later.
A couple of amazing things happened. Firstly, it started spiralling really quickly. We sent a few emails. Then those people suggested other people. Then altogether different people just sent back their answers anyway. Some folk in charge of huge travel businesses (dealing with the most challenging seismic shift in their careers)wrote pages and pages, poured out their hearts, and attached notes saying, ‘Thank you so much for asking me to do this! I’ve loved every second of writing them! It has brought back so many wonderful memories!’ The answers kept on coming, so that we didn’t even know where to begin. We were entirely swamped. But then we started to read them and I realised this other thing had happened, this magical thing. People weren’t writing about their own hotel, or their own restaurant, or plugging their new rooms, or pushing their guides, they were just – hearts open – singing the praises of the brasserie around the corner, waxing lyrical about a rival hotel, remembering some small but profound moment that happened on an adventure and changed their lives for ever. It was wonderful to witness, this delight, this joy, the intimate, the generous, the honest; it lifted me up in ways beyond measure.
So although it was initially a proposal only for our website, we decided to turn it into a special issue. And in even more amazing news: for the first time, all seven international publications of Condé Nast Traveller, in the UK, China, the USA, Italy, Spain, the Middle East and India, will publish their editions with this theme – each named Under One Sky.
Now here it is, a pretty fantastic address book from the most well-travelled people I know, interspersed with love letters to travel from some truly brilliant writers. Paul Theroux, Dervla Murphy, Bernardine Evaristo, David Sedaris, Sebastian Faulks and others. It was like producing a book in two weeks. I applaud my team, as I do every day. They wanted to put a pencil through my eye, for good reason, and would have done if I had been any closer to them.
For those who have contributed, thank you. As momentum gathered, and answers flurried in, it became obvious that it wouldn’t be possible to include everyone in the print issue. But the 21 Questions initiative itself, now under its own steam, will continue in various ways, online and through social media. If there are omissions or mistakes, if your answers aren’t here, or spliced in a way that is bothersome, bear in mind it was a project that emerged at speed, that gathered pace and had to change and adjust in a million different ways. Please remember the spirit of the creature, first and foremost, is to celebrate and support amazing people doing amazing things in amazing places.
Welcome to the new issue of Condé Nast Traveller. For all of our travelling souls.
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