Jon Snow
Best gift I ever got: I met Jonathan Ive, the Apple designer and we got on like a house on fire. A few days later, a MacBook Air arrived in the mail. The worst: a colleague came back from Poland with a winking Christ—a sort of giant beach postcard; when you moved it, the eye would wink and a droplet of blood fell down his cheek from the crown of thorns. The best I have given: a fabulous necklace found while working in Jordan. The worst: a wonky self-executed watercolour of a pond on Cape Cod!
Julian Baggini
It's become fashionable to give "experience" gifts. Often these just provide hedonistic hits that don't leave a lasting trace. But the experience gift I once gave was a plane ticket [to someone] who otherwise would not have made the trip to visit some family for the first time in years. I'm pretty sure it retains much more significance than a pampering day at a health spa, and was probably cheaper too.
Since I was given a bread maker three years ago, I've regularly been eating much better bread and hardly bought a loaf. And since receiving a bass guitar a few years ago, I've been playing music (badly) regularly for the first time since childhood. These may seem like small things, but "life-changing" does not only mean "momentous." It is what we do from day to day that does most to fashion our lives, and some gifts can change this for the better. And life with fresh bread and bass is that much richer.
Martin Sorrell
Best: surviving a car crash in New York at the age of 19.
Worst: some of the business gifts I have received on my travels, well intentioned but wasteful and known as "chatzkes."
More: Jemima Khan, Jon Snow and others tell Prospect about their best presents—and the worst—here
Best gift I ever got: I met Jonathan Ive, the Apple designer and we got on like a house on fire. A few days later, a MacBook Air arrived in the mail. The worst: a colleague came back from Poland with a winking Christ—a sort of giant beach postcard; when you moved it, the eye would wink and a droplet of blood fell down his cheek from the crown of thorns. The best I have given: a fabulous necklace found while working in Jordan. The worst: a wonky self-executed watercolour of a pond on Cape Cod!
Julian Baggini
It's become fashionable to give "experience" gifts. Often these just provide hedonistic hits that don't leave a lasting trace. But the experience gift I once gave was a plane ticket [to someone] who otherwise would not have made the trip to visit some family for the first time in years. I'm pretty sure it retains much more significance than a pampering day at a health spa, and was probably cheaper too.
Since I was given a bread maker three years ago, I've regularly been eating much better bread and hardly bought a loaf. And since receiving a bass guitar a few years ago, I've been playing music (badly) regularly for the first time since childhood. These may seem like small things, but "life-changing" does not only mean "momentous." It is what we do from day to day that does most to fashion our lives, and some gifts can change this for the better. And life with fresh bread and bass is that much richer.
Martin Sorrell
Best: surviving a car crash in New York at the age of 19.
Worst: some of the business gifts I have received on my travels, well intentioned but wasteful and known as "chatzkes."
More: Jemima Khan, Jon Snow and others tell Prospect about their best presents—and the worst—here
