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In the first of a regular monthly series of international street profiles, we popped down to Lamb's Conduit Street for a stroll and a little retail reconnaissance. Monocle's Saul Taylor reports.

In our opinion, late summer is the best time to head off on holiday - the sun's less fierce and many of the schools have gone back. Here are our top ten essential items for a tardy beach break: from sun cream to swimming trunks, tortoiseshell sunglasses to refreshing colognes, a great read and a must-hear CD, this is everything you'll need to stuff in your Tomorrowland beach bag.

From a good froth to a lazy day-bed, the perfect bathing club to the saintliest apothecary, here is our personal pick of some of the best things we've found to improve your life. For the complete Monocle Top 50, visit Issue 15 of the magazine.

Recently reopened in Copenhagen's Tivoli gardens, Nimb has provided the city with a badly needed asset - an outstanding hotel.

Bangkok's 'quality of life' radio station provides a lifeline in a city where public services are haphazard at best. The all-talk format of RDCK is a call to action and an attempt to solve problems via the community and its bulging Roladex. Lawyers, doctors, bus drivers, midwives and snake catchers are glued to the frequency. Monocle's Bangkok correspondent David Fullbrook tuned in for the day.

As anywhere, Lebanon's independent bookstores have slowly been eaten up by big, bland chains. Set in the once thriving district of Hamra, Esquire stands out as a slightly dusty, but proud, pillar of independence.

Smaller, faster, comfier and even cheaper - private aircraft of all shapes, sizes and price points were on offer at the EBACE aviation expo in Geneva. With sales on this side of the Atlantic still brisk, Monocle editor in chief Tyler Brûlé picks his best in show. There's more on the entire aviation sector in the Jun 2008 issue of the magazine.

For the past three decades Japanese fashion brand Tomorrowland has successfully navigated a fiercely competitive and highly sophisticated retail market. Under the helm of Hiroyuki Sasaki it made its name and built its reputation on an ability to modify the western trends of Paris and Milan to the Japanese body shape and taste. Tom Morris reports on the culture of Tomorrowland and its inspired collaboration with Jean Paul Knott in Paris.

Danish Architects Hvidt & Mølgaard have created a state-of-the-art, energy efficient headquarters for Energinet.dk. Thomas Morris reports on a workplace of the future.

This year's Salone Internazionale del Mobile defied the credit crunch with an optimistic mood and a record number of visitors. Sarah Balmond reports on how emerging designers and established brands are responding to turbulent times.

Beirut's Christian quarter of Ashrafieh has weathered civil war, terrorist assassinations and the recent Hezbollah-Israeli conflict. But today the hill-top neighbourhood is once again under threat, this time from developers who are destroying the old palaces to build high-rises for the country's internationally mobile elite. As Lebanon faces yet another uncertain summer, Monocle editor-in-chief Tyler Brûlé pays a visit to Lady Yvonne Cochrane, doyenne of the Christian East and owner of one of the most alluring palaces in the eastern Mediterranean, to talk urban planning, architecture and the future of her country.

A decade ago it was rare to see a pair of Tokyo teenage boys out shopping in kimonos. But attitudes to national identity are starting to change. Genbei Yamaguchi's new collection for United Arrows is targeting this shift in mood.

Baselworld, the biggest watch fair on earth, is where aficionados drool over exquisitely made tourbillons, escapements and overcoils, and where luxury watchmakers pick and choose the buyers they believe are worthy of their wares. Monocle visited the 91-year-old expo to see the latest horological must-haves.

Green credentials and energy efficiency were the buzzwords at the glitzy annual Geneva Motor Show, now in its 78th year. But the real show-stopper was Nissan's latest project, its luxury sub-brand Infiniti, set to launch in Europe this year. Toyota's Lexus will be watching very closely as Nissan takes the wraps off its new FX, touted as a whole new type of car.

The Digital News Affairs Conference in Brussels featured more than 50 speakers from the media world's leading editorial, marketing and business teams. The subject of this year's event was 'How to survive the digital news age' - a discussion of how news organisations need to change the way they work in order to maintain market share and influence in a rapidly changing media landscape. Monocle's Culture Editor Robert Bound talked to some of the leading lights to get their sides of the argument in the cross-platform media debate.