All Films

Until this year, the idea that Americans could enjoy European or Japanese-style train service was dismissed as a boutique cause of cosmopolitan columnists and futurist dreamers.

Where are the top 25 places in the world to call home? Listen to our countdown of the metropolises on the move and cities on the slide. For the survey in full read issue 25 of Monocle - the July-August 09 issue. But a warning: after listening to this report, you may want to move your base.

Sounds Like Teen Spirit, Jamie Jay Johnson's warm and witty documentary following four contestants in the Junior Eurovision Song Contest, is a sure contender as one of the strongest factual films of 2009. Monocle's Robert Bound met Johnson in London to talk tunes, childhood and bloc-voting.

In his private offices in Stenbock House in Tallinn, Prime Minister Andrus Ansip talks to editor Andrew Tuck about having Russia as a neighbour, sending troops to Afghanistan and how to save the economy.

From the art of travel to the architecture of happiness, author Alain de Botton's writings filter everyday life through a philosophical lens. Monocle Editor-in-Chief Tyler Brûlé met with Alain de Botton at his London home to talk about his latest book, The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work, a lucid and detailed exploration of the workplace - from office to factory, fishing boat to call centre.

In The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work, Alain de Botton reveals why we need an art that can proclaim the intelligence, peculiarity, beauty and horror of the workplace and, not least, its extraordinary claim to be able to provide us, alongside love, with the principal source of life's meaning.

This year Design Miami staged an installation at Salone del Mobile that created a public atelier for emerging designers to make and show their work. Monocle's design editor Sarah Balmond looks at CRAFT PUNK's celebration of contemporary craftsmanship.

Sarah Balmond reports from the sprawling Rho exhibition halls and the city's many design hotspots.

Like latter-day Vikings, the Danish Navy tours the treacherous Gulf of Aden hunting for Somali pirates.

With sales of timepieces falling by 20 per cent in the first few months of this year, watchmakers are remaining confident by looking to their archives. Monocle's Ivan Carvalho reports from Baselworld.

Despite years of turbulence between Taiwan and China, this island's pop culture leaves the mainland standing.

Car sales around the world are in freefall but the global economy is not the only problem - too many vehicles are design disasters.

Held every couple of years in Abu Dhabi, Idex is one of the world's largest defence, security and arms conventions.

For the first in a new series on outposts of opportunity, Monocle visits Stanley, capital of the Falkland Islands.

Save the world is just one of the items on the to do list of Denmark's prime minister, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, this year. In a far-reaching interview he also talks about immigration, Afghanistan and what he thinks of Obama.