Here’s to a second, Andy…

In this issue… Andy Murray has hired a woman as his coach. While the world didn’t stop spinning, this was still a bold move. We asked a number of well known women across business, sport, politics and journalism to assess whether this is a great leap forward. Or should we all just calm down. Martina Navratilova, Laura Robson, Hilary Devey and Stella Creasy feature. Allez Andy – to glory! Again.

Also this week…

• Our Letter to My Younger Self is with veteran screen queen Stephanie Beacham. There are some great thoughts on deafness and disability (she has 40% hearing) and a brilliant story about a date with Marlon Brando. “Men are a different species,” she says, warning women not to “discuss your problems with your partner.”
• John Bird looks at Piet Mondrian, an artist he loves. He went to the new Turner Contemporary in Margate to see the Mondrian exhibition and considers how art, and great destination buildings, can reinvigorate tired towns.
• Eamonn Forde took a classic Routemaster bus around London. What started as a guided tour looking at some landmarks, becomes a piece about the “the electric potential of the capital”, that terrifying property prizes can’t crush.
• Our guest columnist this week is Harry Leslie Smith. A 91-year-old, he has lived through the Great Depression and the Second World War and in simple, evocative words celebrates the “balanced and fair” country created beyond the divisions of his youth. His is a clarion call for us all not to slip backwards allowing inequality to grip and grow. A terrific read.
• We also celebrate that wonderful magazine maverick turned poet and tree planter Felix Dennis, who died last weekend after a battle with cancer. In tribute, we reproduce the cover of OZ magazine that lead to the obscenity trial and in its way kickstarted a new kind of non-establishment publisher in Britain.
• Steven MacKenzie wonders what the world is crying about by going to see The Fault In Our Stars, while Jane Graham gets stuck into football on the radio, a place where when World Cup chat is delivered, no cliché is left unturned.

Our featured vendor telling their story in My Pitch is Stuart Drucker, working in Cardiff. He turned 40 recently and made a big, life changing decision…