The 14th issue of The Gentlewoman has launched at Indiecon magazine festival in Hamburg. The A/W issue stars novelist Zadie Smith in the run-up to the launch of her next book Swing Time. Art director Veronica Ditting and her team exclusively unveiled the issue at the festival for independent magazines, which will continue over the weekend (2 – 4 September). The combination of editor Penny Martin and art director Veronica Ditting has been consistently praised since the publication launched seven years ago. This issue continues to play on their strengths of insightful interviews, crisp design and joyful commissioning, resuming interviews with “women of great renown and distinction”. Other features include Erin Brockovich, Diana Athill, Helen Marten and Grace Wales Bonner. The issue additionally showcases an exploration of the art of the self-portrait by the formidable Harley Weir, and a collaboration between The Gentlewoman and Paul Smith creating a lambswool blanket.

The issue will be on sale from 8 September. The Gentlewoman: Issue 14 Submit Saturdays: Designer Johnathan Pell blends traditional methods with modern technology It's that time again for this week's Best of the Web Anthony Burrill, Apfel, Damien Poulain and Rhonda Drakeford design Kheyameya for Rotate Editions Braulio Amado releases third volume of Graphic Interviews for Graphic Artists Daniel Stier captures hopeful actors auditioning at the National Youth Theatre Dudi Hasson's personable photography of thoughtful amusement Deliveroo reveals new logo, identity and courier kit by DesignStudio Jonathan Barnbrook’s Bowie artwork and the Norwegian passport nominated for Designs of the Year Spike Jonze defies perfume ad cliches for Kenzo World Eva O’Leary’s striking images tackle consumerism and masculinity Kingston grad Harry Grundy's design work has a highly conceptual bias Artist Robert Beatty’s book provides an insight into his obsessive image-making

Magazines, Surface Design & Fashion It’s rare that I spend more than a few minutes flipping through a fashion magazine. Most are full of beauty tips I would never use, clothes I would never wear (or be able to afford), and celebrities I have no interest in. I had a very different experience with my first issue of The Gentlewoman (issue 9). The magazine focuses much more on fashion as creative expression and interviews artists and designers about their work. I spent a long time reading this issue and left feeling very inspired. It’s unusual for a women’s magazine to be both aspirational and accessible. One of my favorite articles in this issue is an essay about being a woman drinking alone in a bar, which makes this small act seem like the most confident, sophisticated, and feminist thing in the world. Sitting at a bar and enjoying a drink on my own is something I’ve never thought to do- and this essay made me wonder why. The styling of the fashion spreads is reality-based and the clothes are wearable- which makes for great inspiration as well.

I loved the interview with Vivienne Westwood, who is also on the cover- it made me want to know more about her. There is an interview with musician Cate leBon, who talks about her love of making pottery (she made a mug for every person who pre-ordered her album), and a clever photo essay about pockets- all shown in close-up. The Gentlewoman is biannual and available in bookstores (I picked up this copy at McNally Jackson) or through their website, and I highly recommend it.French Bulldogs Puppies For Sale In NebraskaSamuel Johnson’s debatable aphorism, that “every man thinks meanly of himself for not having been a soldier” is, inevitably, the epigraph to Heloise Goodley’s memoir about her experience of officer training at Sandhurst. Brown Cheetah CurtainsThese days, presumably, civilian women must share the Johnsonian dismay. Deer Stands For Sale Houston

But before the reader can get stuck into Goodley’s stirring account of early-morning inspections, gas drill and the horror of Army rations, he (or she) must negotiate a veritable assault course of prefatory caveats. There is one from the author, who admits to “fictional licence” as “one person’s account is simply not interesting enough to pen an entire book about” – a faintly discouraging admission. Even more disappointingly, she swears that the most interesting character in the book – the dreadful Captain Trunchbull – is pure fiction. Heloise Goodley studied at Bristol University, then worked in the City which, by the age of 27, she had begun to find intolerable. A chance meeting at a party with a young Army officer sharpened her feelings of discontent and when he suggested she consider joining the Army she took him at his word. After negotiating a series of assessment boards, she arrived at Sandhurst in 2007. Needless to say, it was a shock. “The conversion from civilian to soldier is a painful one and the initial five weeks are particularly hard.”

No chocolate, no mobile phones, no make-up, no alcohol, a day that began at 5.15am with a compulsory litre of water and a rousing chorus of all six verses of the national anthem. Cheerfulness seems to be the quality that enabled her to endure the sometimes intolerable emotional and physical rigours of her training. She was a little older than the other 31 women of her intake, and the only one with no military experience. Demoralised by the fact that, “as a military virgin I was pretty terrible at all the important stuff: marching, saluting, shoe shining, weapon handling”, she considered giving up. But her morale was raised by the discovery of an unsuspected talent for navigation (British Army officers, she notes, are notorious for being incapable of reading a map), and on she slogged, through increasingly gruelling exercises in Norfolk, Wales and Salisbury Plain (where her breakfast was cooked by former Blue Peter presenter Andi Peters as part of a Celebrity Masterchef challenge) towards the glory of commissioning and the Sovereign’s Parade.

Goodley is unduly modest when she fears that her personal experiences were insufficiently interesting to make a book. She is a vivid, energetic writer (though with a talent for malapropism, remarking that she travelled the world during her gap year and “never once kept an account of it for prosperity”. Her copy editor, if she had one, should retire with a bottle of whisky and a gun.) The trouble with this memoir is, in fact, that it is not personal enough. There is a chapter promisingly titled “Women at War”, a passage on sex and the Army, and brief accounts of her time in Afghanistan, but Goodley is still a serving officer and the dabs of self-censorship are all over her text. She reveals that the basis for this memoir was her Sandhurst diary – obligatory, and regularly checked by the directing staff – for which she received a prize. “The accolade was much mocked at the time,” she notes. “None of the boys wanted the honour.” In fact, this is a jolly good yarn, as far as it goes.