Innholdsfortegnelse for 28-Dec-2016 i Country Life

‘Only through proper decision-making can we protect our heritage’ THE incomparable Lake District has been saved from an intrusive line of electricity pylons that threatened to march more than 14 miles across some of the loveliest countryside of England. National Grid should be congratulated for having agreed to put its cables underground and to remove a number of existing pylons so that Wordsworth’s country can be free of pylons for the first time for 50 years—although the benefit stops 32ft outside the national park boundary. There are 4,475 miles of power lines running over the UK, of which 870 are underground. Already, we accept as normal the most expensive of underground works—those in urban areas—however, in general, power lines are strung between pylons rather than hidden below ground because of…

A RELATIVELY humble North Yorkshire parsonage occupies a remarkable place in the story of English literature (Fig 1). It was the home of the Rev Patrick Brontë, a widower, where three of the children he raised there, Charlotte, Emily and Anne, became published novelists of lasting repute. Each generation discovers these extraordinary books for themselves and few readers of Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights or The Tenant of Wildfell Hall can fail to be curious about the stone walls that contained the short but productive lives of their authors. It was, in its way, a dignified and secure home, but not without its privations, principally emotional, but also economic and social. A schoolfriend wrote after Charlotte’s death how odd it was that reviewers of her biography by fellow novelist Elizabeth Gaskell…

‘In our last garden, we tackled the problem of yellow full-on’ I HAVE a problem with yellow flowers—they’re not good mixers. They’re fine by themselves and some people blend them nicely with orange and scarlet flowers—the RHS does this very successfully in its Hot Garden at Rosemoor, in Devon—but yellow flowers don’t combine with the pink colours that dominate the plant kingdom. Alice de Rothschild, a formidable spinster who gardened no less than 335 acres in Provence 100 years ago, would not have agreed. She maintained that all difficult colours could be blended together by the addition of white or yellow. Many would agree that white is a useful mixer for other tints, but would need convincing that yellow is equally suitable. Yellow leaves are even worse, impertinent self-publicists…

‘April hath put a spirit of youth in everything’ Shakespeare, Sonnet XCVIII ‘Orwell considered the clinching evidence for spring’s arrival to be toads spawning’ SPRING sets in with its accustomed severity’: so goes the old country witticism. The shepherd on the black Welsh mountain and the ploughman on the open field of Norfolk know from bitter-cold experience that the equinox, on March 21 or thereabouts, is a hasty human date for the official start of spring. Ask the shivery crews of the Oxford and Cambridge Boat Race if March blusters and freezes—they will tell you. And is that blossom on the blackthorn or snow? Nonetheless, winter is now in its death throes. The ice age is over. How does Nature announce the arrival of spring? Let me count the ways,…

‘And tree and house, and hill and lake,/Are frosted like a wedding cake’ Robert Louis Stevenson ‘’Tis the season to be jolly, but Nature has her own view’ WINTER comes in with a howl. Unseen, whether in the borough park or the Shropshire wood, the vixen screams for a mate, the tawny hoots for territory. Winter is the midnight of the year. In the city, there is a new and foreign feeling. Romance, actually. Christmas lights reflect on wet Dickensian streets (rain and darkness make everything ‘olde’), children skate in ever faster swirls on the artificial ice rink beside the museum as adults sip mulled wine, the shopper’s restorative, at pop-up yuletide markets. Walking down the mews at night, there is the electric glimpse into the front room of other…

‘The market finally kicked off in September–it needed to!’Rupert Sweeting, Knight Frank IN a year in which the pollsters got more or less everything wrong—from the UK’s Brexit vote and Donald Trump’s victory in the American Presidential Election to Leicester City’s win in the Premier League—the multiple uncertainties of 2016 should have spelt disaster for the UK country-house market. But they didn’t. On the contrary, from September onwards, leading agents saw a surge in sales of prime country houses and estates with little sign of a slowdown on the run-up to Christmas—a time when the sector traditionally hangs up its boots until spring. Earlier this month, perseverance paid off for Atty Beor-Roberts, head of Knight Frank’s operations in the Cots-wolds, when he and his team signed off on the…

Ring in the new year THE coming year is one for book lovers. The 200th anniversary of the death of Jane Austen (below) will, inevitably, set the county of Hampshire a-flutter (www.janeausten200.co.uk). Jane Austen’s House Museum (her home) in Chawton will host shows and talks, including a Regency Week (June 17–25) co-hosted with nearby Alton and Hampshire Cultural Trust’s ‘The Mysterious Miss Austen’ loan exhibition will tour Winchester, Gosport and Basingstoke. Her final resting place, Winchester Cathedral, will run tours; in Basingstoke, there will be a sculpture trail; and Jane Austen ‘Big Picnics’ across Hampshire will offer the opportunity to sup as Regency folk did. The British Library, London NW1, has an exhibition of Austen’s teenage writings (January 10–February 19) and, in the same year that the city’s iconic…

Quiz of the week 1) Which actor won his first Oscar at the age of 82, in 2012? 2) Which is the largest island in Europe? 3) Clout, casing, brad, finish and horseshoe are all types of what? 4) Sodium hypochlorite is commonly known as what? 5) What do the Spanish eat 12 of to usher in the New Year? The nature of things Traveller’s joy (Clematis vitalba) IN limestone country, particularly the chalk downs, a rampant climber romps over hedgerows and softly blankets the shrubberies that were planted to margin main roads. In winter, Clematis vitalba reveals the reason why one of its folk names is ‘old man’s beard’, for its clustered seeds each drape a long, silky trail that has a silvery brightness when new, but by…

Rubbish drivers I SO agree with Robert Pawson (Letters, December 7). I don’t recall seeing many cyclists using a mobile phone, applying lipstick, brushing their hair, holding a burger with both hands or negotiating traffic with a fidgety dog on their lap, to name but a few causes of motorists being a danger on the road. As a cyclist, I follow the ‘mirror, signal, manoeuvre’ routine as a matter of course, to which I add quite a few safety observations that are not in the Highway Code, such as ‘watch for the car that will pull out without looking’. Yes, there are bad cyclists, but, in my experience, there are far more bad motorists. Providing consistent cycle routes should be a national priority, but, in the meantime, we…

‘The potted specimens are professionally tended through the year’ SOME 10,000 naturalised snowdrops illuminate the four acres of the Chelsea Physic Garden in London SW3, in the depths of winter and its Galanthus collection now extends to approximately 120 named species and cultivars, although not all of them are in the open ground. The present head gardener, Nick Bailey, recalls that a number of influential figures spanning the garden’s history have made significant contributions to its burgeoning population of snowdrops. ‘Philip Miller [1691–1771], who was head gardener here from 1722 until shortly before his death, was responsible for doubling the number of ornamental plants grown in the UK during his tenure. He would certainly have initially cultivated Galanthus nivalis, together with a selection of naturally occurring hybrids as they became…

‘I love the hay grass when the flower head swings/ To summer winds and insects happy wings’ John Clare, ‘I love to see the summer’ ‘A snapdragon bends under the weight of a fat bumblebee’ HIGH summer and the air is heavy with heat. Under the greenshade of the oak, cows stand whisking their tails. Sheep, glad now to have been shorn of their heavy fleeces last week, lie in the shadow pool of the hedge. Along the shimmering flower border of Miss Jones’s cottage, a peacock butterfly flitty-floats; sunny days in Britain are butterfly days. A snapdragon bends under the weight of a fat bumblebee, which then drones away to a foxglove. The lawnmower buzzes up and down. Although there isn’t a cloud in the blue, blue sky, the…

‘It was a joy to be close to the sea again, to feel that sharp east wind blowing in from Scandinavia’ THE first of my Shetland novels, Raven Black , was inspired by snow, ice and fire. I’d arrived into the island by the overnight ferry early one December morning to a still, white landscape. There was no wind and that’s unusual in Shetland—usually, there’s a gale strong enough to take your breath away. In midwinter, it’s dark for much of the morning—the islands lie on the same line of latitude as parts of Greenland and Alaska, after all. When the sun did rise, it was an orange ball throwing long shadows across the bare landscape. There are few trees in Shetland, so there are long horizons and big skies.…

‘As a culture, we have embraced slobby bowls of noodles in front of the television’ THE dining table is an object as solid as it is British, an item of furniture that’s been central to family life since our evening entertainment consisted of something on the lute rather than Downton Abbey. After a fireplace, a dining table is what makes a house a home, but—and you’d better hold on to your demitasses—the dining table is at risk of dying out. A recent survey has found that 78% of British people don’t sit down to a meal at a table every day. We’re all too busy grabbing a porridge pot from Pret a Manger for our breakfast, munching a sandwich at our desk for lunch and then eating off our…

This 16th-century watercolour of Nonsuch Palace, Surrey, has just gone on display in the British Galleries of the V&A after having been purchased for the museum with the assistance of the National Heritage Memorial Fund and the Art Fund. The palace was symbolically begun by Henry VIII on April 22, 1538, the first day of the 30th year of his reign. Its name underlined the fact that it was without parallel and the fantastical exterior, decorated with figurative plaster panels, was inspired by French example ( COUNTRY LIFE, October 26, 2011). So detailed is this drawing that some of the mythological subject matter visible here is identifiable. The building, which was largely of timber frame construction, was demolished in the 1680s. This watercolour is one of the few detailed depictions…

‘A second spring when every leaf is a flower’Albert Camus ‘As the thermometer falls, curiously, the ardour of sheep rises’ THE seasons need no calendar. The trees know the date. From the east on meteorite nights come gales to strip the trees of their dying leaves and carpet back lawns in gold and incense: the fallen leaves are future soil for the trees. The same winds bear Scandinavian fieldfares to gorge themselves on the berries proffered by the hawthorn. Wind is the youngster’s friend. Autumn is a time to bring on the childish games: to scuff through leaves, fly a kite, play ‘Obbly, obbly onker, my first conker’. Gazing at the autumn scene, the Metaphysical poet John Donne remarked: ‘No spring nor summer beauty hath such grace,/As I have seen…

MINOR mishaps are a Christmas stock in trade: the figure of Joseph who has apparently abandoned the crib; the strings of fairy lights that, like varicose veins, refuse to untangle; the Aga that grinds unspectacularly to a standstill; the godparent’s cheque that disappears among the paper recycling. Many families add to that mix a yearly row over which words are or aren’t permissible in Scrabble and a fruitless hunt for the missing Monopoly die or the lead piping from the Cluedo set, yet, as a nation, according to last year’s sales figures, we’re every bit as keen on board games as we ever were. And Christmas is our favourite time of the year to play them. This year, as you dust down the sets of Monopoly, Cluedo and Scrabble —…

Barbury Castle estate, near Marlborough, Wiltshire The picturesque, ring-fenced estate, set in 1,799 acres of rolling Wiltshire downland, combines farming and equestrian enterprises with a challenging shoot. Launched on the open market at £20m in late September, it found a buyer within weeks in one of the biggest estate sales of the year (Knight Frank) Alderley House, Wotton-under-Edge, Gloucestershire Designed by Lewis Vulliamy and built in 1863 for Robert Blagden Hale on the site of the Hale family's original 17th-century manor house, the Grade II-listed house was launched on the market in June 2014 at £8m and sold for £7m in November 2016 (Knight Frank/Strutt & Parker) Manor House, Little Tew, Oxfordshire A timeless former vicarage built in 1858, the house was home to the traveller and archaeologist Nancy Sandars…

‘ Whichever relationship Beryl is in, she wishes she were not’ Biography Beryl Bainbridge Brendan King (Bloomsbury, £25) NONE of us would like to have our untidy lives laid bare in the way Brendan King lays bare the astonishingly messy life of Beryl Bainbridge. We all have failed relationships we would rather not see immortalised in print, but the high-cheekboned Bainbridge, five times nominated for the Booker Prize with her novels, has to be one of the 20th-century British champions of serial failed relationships and here they all are, in their initial dazzle and their subsequent disenchanted petering-out. Reading this book, you get to know Beryl in all her frailty, neediness and dyslexia and, by the end, you feel vicariously sexually exhausted, as well as drunk. ‘If only you’d married…