|From the Editor| This issue of Centurion starts with a bang – a cover with an exuberant splash of colour – that reverberates across every page of our redesigned magazine. On the Cover It is a carefully conceived new look that reflects the steady maturation of our award-winning title, which we’ve had the pleasure of crafting for you for more than 20 years. Our new cover concept encompasses the various beauties and mysteries of both the man-made and natural worlds as a nod to the wide-ranging pieces that await you inside the magazine. We have also reconfigured the magazine sections – now dubbed Places, Objects and Reflections – to mirror the ways in which our features and articles have been developing for several years. The breathless lists of where to go and rundowns of must-have accessories have largely been reassigned to our website, where news travels fastest, and we have expanded our selection of thoughtful pieces that delve into the heart of a topic to give a perspective that you can’t find anywhere else. We look forward to hearing from you about the updated magazine as well as how you’re travelling and indulging these days – to which end we’ve inserted a four-page survey in this magazine, with a stamped envelope for easy return. We hope you enjoying reading these pages as much as we enjoyed creating them. — Christian Schwalbach THE BEAUTIFUL, enigmatic tail feather of the king bird of paradise is this issue’s cover star. The remarkable bird is one of around 45 species of birds of paradise – who make their homes in New Guinea, Indonesia and Australia – with an extraordinary ability to transform themselves during their mating displays (the king bird males hang upside down to showcase their naturally spiral-shaped tail feather like the arm of a ticking clock). This spirit of transformation, so wonderfully captured by Tim Flach for his recent book, Birds (2021, Abrams), is particularly apt for our newly transformed magazine. And, like almost all the images by Flach, one of the great photographers of the natural world, it evokes not only the magnificence of the animal kingdom, but also the urgent need to protect it – a message that is also near and dear to our heart. 10 CENTURION-MAGAZINE.COM
