Innholdsfortegnelse for August 19, 2015 i Country Life

AT this time of year, many of us holiday in the British countryside, as a retreat from the harsh realities of the world. However, the present crisis in dairy farming shows that rural life is just as globalised as anything else. Within these shores, the demand for milk has remained steady, but China is buying less and Russia has imposed a retaliatory embargo against some EU farm products, in response to sanctions—hence the price collapse, from comfortably more than 30p last year to this year’s 19p. Buyers of fresh milk, which goes off so easily in hot weather, may be surprised to find that it’s a commodity, as much subject to wild fluctuations as other farm products, such as wheat. Milk comes in many forms: yoghurt, cheese, butter and powder,…

GLENEAGLES HOTEL in Auchterader, Perthshire, is the splendid setting for Gavin Gardiner Ltd’s 48th annual sale of modern and vintage guns next week on August 24. Highlights include a pair of 20-bore Holland & Holland Sporting model over-and-under ejector guns built in 2000, which would cost £160,000 if ordered today (estimated at £60,000–£80,000). The 200 lots include a pair of 19th-century 16-bore pinfire hammer guns built by Albert Staehle for the Crown Prince of Hanover, which are engraved with a crown and decorated with landscape scenes (£2,000–£3,000). Viewing is on August 22–24 (01798 875300; www.gavingardiner.com).…

WHEN I mentioned that I’d just visited a Liotard exhibition, my friend raised an eyebrow. Admittedly, we were standing by a vintage-clothes stall in Pimlico at the time and garments, rather than pastellistes, may have been uppermost in his mind. Yet the location was appropriate: Liotard loved dressing up, both himself and his sitters. Lady Ann Somerset was put into one of his costumes à la turque—although, as she was only 14, I’m surprised her parents allowed it. I first came across Liotard at Stansted House in West Sussex, then home of the Bessborough family. The 2nd Earl met him on the Grand Tour and they went to Constantinople together; he’s shown in a full-length oil, darkly handsome and turbaned, with an exquisitely painted purse on his belt. That may…

Part of the National Trust's Stourhead estate, this beautifully placed unpretentious country pub has been well updated under a welcoming new landlord, with new woodburners at each end of its beamed and flagstoned main bar, and roomy tables in its attractively redecorated back dining room. Tables outside have lovely downland views and there are abundant walks from the pub, where dogs are welcome. The food is good, straightforward stuff: sandwiches, soups and splendid local pasties and sausages. The wines that are available by the glass would put some grander places to shame and the brewer of one of the good beers lives in the village. The pub is closed in the afternoons. (01985 844263; www.theredlionkilmington.co.uk) Alisdair Aird is co-editor of ‘The Good Pub Guide 2015’, out now from Ebury (£15.99)…

Letter of the week Dr Dolittle strikes again WHEN a man and his young son walk into your veterinary surgery with a large cardboard box, you’re never quite sure what will be inside it. Once, there was a tortoise. The article by Caroline Jackson (July 22) reminded me of the occasion. The boy said that the tortoise had not hibernated very well during the previous winter. Could I give it something to fix it this year? Fifty years ago, there was no mention of tortoises in the veterinary curriculum from which I had just qualified. ‘Do no harm’ is an important adage for vets, but ‘Do not disappoint small boys’ is quite good, too. I retreated into the pharmacy and put on my thinking cap. Ah, vitamin B12…

Tim Longville finds new art and old plants woven into the sensitive reclamation of an old Highland estate garden THE walled garden at Dundonnell House, by Little Loch Broom in Wester Ross, must have one of the most dramatic settings of any garden in the British Isles. It lies at the bottom of a fertile valley, with the babbling and brawling breadth of the River Dundonnell forming its south-west boundary and the sheer rock face of An Teallach (the anvil) rising to well over 3,000ft almost immediately to its north. Understandably, since she and her husband, Sir Tim, acquired the estate in the late 1990s, Jane Rice has been determined to make that setting an integral part of the garden. As she puts it: ‘Here, the views outward are as…

IN his treatise De Architectura, the Imperial Roman engineer and builder Vitruvius tells a story set in Corinth in the 5th century BC . A maiden dies. Her old nurse gathers some of the girl’s favourite possessions and places them on her grave in a basket covered with a heavy roof tile. Sometime later, the sculptor and architect Callimachus notices that a plant, at first flattened and smothered by this offering, has resprouted, surrounding the basket with leaves. From this, he draws inspiration for a new way of crowning columns —a box- or bell-shaped capital embraced by the same foliage. Thus, says Vitruvius, the Corinthian order was born. On the capitals, as around the basket, those beautifully scrolled and clasping leaves belonged to Acanthus. Too many plants get described…

ON my first visit to the ruins of Knossos—in my gap year, 26 years ago—I’m ashamed to say I shared Evelyn Waugh’s view of the Minoan pictures he’d seen in the 1920s. ‘Only a few square inches of the vast area exposed to our consideration are earlier than the last 20 years,’ Waugh wrote, after he’d glanced at the paintings recently reconstructed by the archaeologist Sir Arthur Evans. ‘And it is impossible to disregard the suspicion that their painters have tempered their zeal for accurate reconstruction with a somewhat inappropriate predilection for covers of Vogue.’ Returning to Crete last year, I was deeply excited by those same pictures. I even came up with a pet theory—looking at the paintings of the Minoan columns—that, in their simple, huge, rounded, tapering way,…

From the Quechua language of the Incas, quinoa means ‘super grain' First eaten in the South American Andes in about 3,000 bc , quinoa became a diet staple of the Incas, who considered it sacred food Peru produces the most (41,000 tons in 2011), followed by Bolivia (38,000 tons). It's also grown in the USA, Canada and Ecuador Unlike the cereal grasses wheat, oats, barley and rye, quinoa is a member of the same food family as spinach, Swiss chard and beets As well as being gluten-free, quinoa is a healthy food thanks to the anti-inflammatory compounds, antioxidants and monounsaturated fats it contains NASA says quinoa is a perfect in-flight snack for astronauts…

IN the wake of the recent revival of interest in the 1940s Recording Britain project, a fresh spotlight has been turned on the work of the participating artists: Barbara Jones, Malvina Cheek and Kenneth Rowntree (1915–97) among them. A watercolour of a pub, The Duke’s Head, FarnhamRoyal, from this period serves as a suitable introduction to the evocative, although modest, Rowntree centennial exhibition covering 50 years of his work as painter and designer, currently on show at Pallant House Gallery in Chichester. Rowntree was a multi-faceted artist, whose dexterity often obscured his talent. I went to visit him in the 1980s with a view to mounting a retrospective exhibition of his work, but came away baffled as to how to make sense of the several 90° stylistic turns that had…

A FEW nights ago, some friends walked over for supper. They live a few miles down the valley and wanted to walk home by the light of the glorious full moon. Actually, it was rather cloudy that night, but they followed the lane and were nearly home when a policeman drove by and stopped because two people walking along in the dark at 11pm, without a torch, is a suspicious sight. On deciding that they were merely odd, not criminal, he explained that there had been a significant number of burglaries in the area and wished them safely on their way. The next day, I was told that there had also been a number of dog thefts in the vicinity. I looked at Fletcher and he looked at me, with…

EDINBURGH is the centre of the Arts world this month, with an eclectic range of exhibitions alongside the annual Edinburgh International Festival (until August 31) and many works never before seen in public. The Scottish National Gallery (SNG) is exhibiting rarely seen portraits by Jean-Etienne Liotard, the witty 18th-century artist, who worked in the major cities and Courts of Europe and spent four years in Constantinople (until September 13, moving to London’s Royal Academy of Arts in October, www.nationalgalleries.org), plus ‘The Olympian Gods: European prints of the Renaissance’ (until October 18), a selection of 16th-century engravings, etchings and woodcuts exploring the fascination held by Renaissance artists for the myths and culture of the ancient world. Photographs feature large in the Scottish National Portrait Gallery’s two main exhibitions: ‘Lee Miller…

National Gallery Visitors are barred from seeing several major works due to staff being on strike over proposed privatisation of some service roles Fracking protestors The Government is to speed up development by giving councils only 16 weeks to process shale-gas planning applications and may intervene if plans are blocked Travelling teddies First Great Western trains-some of whose employees plan to cause maximum annoyance by striking this weekend -has a collection of 40 lost cuddly toys that will go to charity if they remain unclaimed…

OWNERS of listed properties are to have a political voice with the formation of an All Party Parliamentary Group to protect their interests. It will be chaired by Craig Mackinlay, the new Conservative MP for South Thanet, a constituency with 1,500 listed properties. Ironically, this was the constituency Nigel Farage was contesting—UKIP’s was the only election manifesto to mention listed-property owners, who, despite losing financial help, are still obliged to look after their houses for the nation. The Listed Property Owners’ Club (LPOC, 01795 342040; wwwlpoc.co.uk) has been campaigning for parliamentary representation for years after unhelpful political decisions, most notably George Osborne’s removal of VAT relief on alterations in 2012—the group will be lobbying to reduce VAT to 5%. ‘The VAT was the real kick in the teeth, but all…

A book of the series will be published in October BUILT in 1841–6 by the apostle of the Gothic Revival A. W. N. Pugin, St Giles’s Church was intended to be a landmark in every respect. Its 200ft spire, carefully positioned to dominate the locality, was an outward expression of the confidence of Catholics in the aftermath of Catholic Emancipation in 1829. Backed by his patron, the Earl of Shrewsbury, Pugin recognised in this commission an opportunity to realise his ideal: a building that re-created in coherent and sumptuous form an English church of about 1300. To contemporaries, the interior was nothing less than a revelation. Its painted surfaces, stained glass and tiles created a symphony of colour and light that many found overwhelmingly beautiful. John H. Newman, the…

A LAN, Bunny and Sandy Roger were the sons of Sir Alexander, a self-made Aberdonian telecoms tycoon. Sandy, who died 20 years before his siblings, took on the burden of their father’s business interests and Alan became a Lieutenant-Colonel in the Indian Army and remained in ‘military intelligence’ until 1952. After that, he devoted himself to his twin passions for horticulture (exhibiting at Chelsea for 35 years and becoming a respected RHS judge) and art (which included spells as chairman of the advisory committee on contemporary art for the National Galleries of Scotland and as a council member of the Contemporary Art Society). However, it was with Bunny, the most flamboyant, that Lady Rice became friends, when they were near-neighbours in London. At that stage, the Rices had a holiday…

THE most charming, peaceful and attractive companions as can be found in the whole dog world,’ eulogised Mrs Quicke from Tattenham, Surrey, in a dog-fancier’s manual entitled Why I Like Scottish Terriers in 1924, adding that, as well as being wise, plucky and sporting, Scotties are ‘such compact, well-proportioned little dogs’. Between the World Wars, the Scottish terrier was among Britain’s most popular dog breeds. Sometimes known as the Highland or Aberdeen terrier—memorably in the Jeeves novels of P. G. Wodehouse, in which Stiffy Byng’s ever-ferocious Aberdeen terrier Bartholomew is among the banes of Bertie Wooster’s life—these doughty little dogs were once a familiar sight in town and country. With their glossy black coats (which also occur in shades of brindle and a wheaten colourway), tiny, almond-shaped eyes, powerful jaws…

EXIGENCY, not design, prompted the development of the most instantly recognisable format in 20th-century publishing, the Ladybird hardback. In 1940, the motives of its Loughborough-based printer, Wills & Hepworth, were strictly commercial. Paper shortages and the particular requirements of the company’s printing presses dictated a book of 56 full-colour pages printed from a single sheet of paper measuring 40in by 30in for maximum cost efficiency. Did anyone at Wills & Hepworth imagine they had begun a revolution in children’s publishing when Bunnykin’s Picnic Party, The First Day of the Holidays and Ginger’s Adventures were first issued? History does not record, but posterity is quite clear. This year, a number of events, including an exhibition entitled ‘Ladybird by Design’ at the House of Illustration, celebrate 100 years since Wills & Hepworth…

Troy, near Çanakkale, Turkey A small site but, still, the best contender for the most important spot in Classical literature. Stand on top of the walls and look down on the plain where Achilles dragged Hector's body round and round the city Ftelia Beach, Mykonos Far from the nightclubbing crowd in Mykonos town, I had this charming, natural bay to myself. A short drive from Ano Mera, home to the Tourliani Monastery, with its delicate, 18th-century, domed church Kardamili, Peloponnese Home to that modern-day Odysseus, Paddy Leigh Fermor. A marvellously unspoilt, small Greek town, with terrific seafood restaurants strung alongside the sea Marathon, near Athens The plain where, in 490 BC , the Athenians defeated the Persians and laid the foundations for the Athenian political, architectural and literary miracle Odysseus’s…

The Border Towers of Scotland 2 Alastair M. T. Maxwell-Irving (£55 + £14 p&p, to order email a.maxwellirving@gmail.com or telephone 01259 761721) THIS MIGHTY VOLUME of nearly 500 pages and illustrations beyond count (more than 1,650) is the second by the author to address the subject of Scottish border towers. It is, however, effectively a standalone volume, covering the entire border area from coast to coast. Its emphasis is architectural and its strengths lie in the sheer volume of work it represents, collating information about buildings large and small, as well as familiar and unfamiliar. The introduction gives a brief overview history of towers in fortification, beginning in the ancient world. There follows a gazetteer of castle and tower-house sites divided into categories and organised in chronological order. This runs…

Bonhams' Edinburgh saleroom has an auction of Scottish art on September 16 (www.bonhams.com) at which the star lot is Stanley Cursiter's Summer Afternoon , a study of four women, including his wife, Phyllis, and sisters Poppy and Roberta Low, in his rooms at 11, Royal Circus in Edinburgh New Town. Painted in the early 1920s, it's a ‘welcome moment of calm and reflection in the wake of the First World War', says Bonhams' Chris Brickley. Cursiter (1887–1976) was Her Majesty's Limner and Painter in Scotland and director of the National Galleries of Scotland and campaigned to create a Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, but his work is now largely forgotten. Summer Afternoon has an estimate of £30,000–£50,000.…

SCOTLAND has taken advantage of more flexible EU rules that allow countries to set their own regulations on growing certain genetically modified (GM) crops and has strengthened its long-standing moratorium by implementing a ban north of the border. ‘There is no evidence of significant demand for GM products by Scottish consumers and I am concerned that allowing GM crops to be grown here would damage our clean and green brand, thereby gambling with the future of our £14 billion food-and-drink sector,’ explains Scottish Rural Affairs Secretary Richard Lochhead. NFU Scotland criticises the move, believing that Scotland should be following other countries in embracing biotechnology and will fall behind in technological advances. ‘Decisions should be taken on the individual merits of each variety, based on science and determined by whether the…

CATCHING up with the deadheading after a fortnight’s holiday, I noticed three oak saplings, just a few inches high, growing in the flowerbed. The nearest oak tree is about 100 yards away, so I knew it was the work of what Mark Cocker describes as the ‘great keeper of the Northern forests’—the jay. Every year, each jay plants about 5,000 acorns to store and retrieve as food during the bleak winter months, but they inadvertently fail, for whatever reason, to retrieve them all. The result is my three little saplings planted last autumn by this busy member of the corvid family. How many of our oaks, our great ancient trees that we admire so much and form the backdrop to our nation’s consciousness, were planted by these industrious, beautiful birds,…

THE Essex marshes, so often called flat and uninteresting, have, for those who know them, a charm all their own. No one denies that they are flat; but uninteresting —a thousand times no. Seen from a slight height on a June afternoon, you can look for miles over a land patchworked with meadows, bright green after the cutting; pasture land, and crops of already yellowing corn and silvery beans. In the distance a barge sails slowly up a creek, its big brown sail alone showing above the level of the fields.... A rough road zigzags from one farm to another; there are no hedges, but the fields are divided by deep ditches, bordered by bands of grey-green rushes. On one side is the blue line of the sea, on the…

I sometimes despair of Chianti-that is to say, of finding a Chianti in the UK that really tastes like Chianti, which has the warm aroma, sappiness and cherry bite that should be signature characteristics of the wine from the hills around Florence and Siena. Supermarket Chiantis are often strikingly nondescript. Some are a throwback to the bad old days, in which Chianti was diluted with bland white Trebbiano grapes. Other producers overdo the extraction and the oak, producing heavy wines of little charm. Why you should be drinking it Chianti shouldn't be heavy, in my view, and not overtly oaky either. It's more like Burgundy-the aromatic product of small plots of land on often stony hillsides-than smooth, well-upholstered Bordeaux. What to drink Riecine is a small estate in…

More ways with corn-on-the-cob Chicken, sweetcorn and quinoa soup ( below ) Cut the corn from two cobs and place in a large saucepan with a splash of olive oil. Add a finely diced brown onion, one diced carrot, one diced celery stalk, two diced rashers of bacon, one diced chicken breast, a handful mixed chopped fresh herbs (such as parsley, basil and thyme) and fry gently to infuse all the flavours for about 6–8 minutes. Set half of the ingredients aside in a bowl before pouring 900ml chicken stock into the saucepan and puréeing the soup with a stick blender. Return the contents of the bowl to the saucepan, add 250g cooked quinoa (I use the microwaveable sachets when in a hurry), mix thoroughly together and heat gently.…

• The Scottie's distinctive black colouring is a 20th-century phenomenon. In the earliest breed standard, written in 1880, Scottie colouring was described as ‘grey, grizzle or brindle' • On both sides of the Atlantic, Scottish terriers peaked in popularity between the World Wars. In 1936, Scotties were the third most popular dog in the USA; President Roosevelt owned a Scottie called Fala from 1940 • The board game Monopoly, which took on its current form in the 1930s, features a Scottie dog as one of its playing pieces • Among Scottie-themed adult fiction from that period are the charming ‘Black Rod' stories of C. B. Poultney, published by Methuen in 1934, describing the adventures of an engaging and energetic black Scottie, Roderick Dhu • Famous owners have included Queen Victoria,…

Bob Bushtail’s Adventure (1941) A mischievous red squirrel gets up to no good; his story is told in verse A Second Book of British Birds and their nests (1954) Wonderful illustrations by Allen W. Seaby make this my favourite of a series of three books: a smattering of rarer birds maintains interest What to Look for in Summer (1960) Quintessential postcard ‘Englishness'-as pictured by Charles Tunnicliffe, who spent most of his working life on Anglesey -and all the optimism of summer The Story of Houses and Homes (1963) A colourful and engaging history of architecture and interiors, with a waspish asperity in its treatment of all things Victorian The Story of Napoleon (right) (1968) One of Lawrence du Garde Peach's ‘Adventure from History' series: an unabashed celebration of the greatness…