Innholdsfortegnelse for 21-Feb-18 i Country Life

SNOwDROPS in their full glory are spread as downy pillows around the ankles of the still-bare trees. Daffodils are opening, oblivious to winter’s gales and showers, insistent that spring and sunshine are just around the corner. On a mid-February morning, early rehearsals for April’s full-on dawn chorus can be savoured; we listen, enraptured by the blackbird’s poignant warblings in the darkness, with the knowledge that the best is yet to come. And, although few trees show any sign of it yet, their sap is rising, too. There may be gales and hail outside, but, with the lengthening of days now apparent, winter is truly on the back foot. Above all, this is the time to take pleasure in singular things. The fattened buds of camellias are primed, ready to burst…

WEATHERBYS HAMILTON has introduced a new £1 million prize to celebrate the finest staying horses. The Weatherby’s Stayers’ Million will go to the connections of a horse that, having won one of four prep races in May, goes on to win the Gold Cup at Royal Ascot in June, the Qatar Goodwood Cup at the Goodwood Festival in July and the Weatherbys Hamilton Lonsdale Cup at York’s Ebor Festival in August. ‘Stayers have been the bedrock of horseracing in England for 300 years,’ says Charles Hamilton, chief executive of Weatherbys Hamilton. ‘We would love it if the WH Stayers’ Million could be a reminder of just how important they are to the industry.’…

A PORTRAIT of Henry VIII (right), which hung unnoticed for years in Bath’s Guild Hall, has been confirmed as a rare Tudor original. Dendrochronology testing has dated the wooden base to 1525–57, with the painting attributed to the studio of Hans Holbein. It is assumed that the work, which forms a part of the Victoria Art Gallery collection, is a direct copy of Court artist Holbein’s 1537 Whitehall mural, which was destroyed by fire in 1698. ‘We have collections manager Katharine Wall to thank for the discovery. She spotted that it had potential,’ explains Jon Benington, gallery manager. ‘The painting is now hanging in the gallery in pride of place, but it’s set to undergo further investigation by the Holbein Research Group.’…

MY family and I were invited this week for a privately organised programme of vintage films at the Cinema Museum. Tucked away in the back streets of Lambeth, it proved unexpectedly delightful: it’s an enthusiasts’ cave of wonders, the entrance hall filled with a battery of huge film projectors and the corridors hung with a confusion of posters, memorabilia and fittings. With its salvaged seats, the small projection room was the perfect setting for a surprisingly brutal Ali Babar and the Forty Thieves (1903), followed by films starring Buster Keaton, Charlie Chaplin, Laurel & Hardy and Bugs Bunny. The slapstick felt unexpectedly fresh and united adults and children in companionable merriment. The museum occupies what remains of the Lambeth workhouse and there was a sobering plan of the late-19th-century complex…

The ex-husband trap QI am recently divorced and my ex-husband took sole custody of our labrador. He did already own the dog when we met, but I’ve become terribly attached over the years. Would it be odd to ask for visitation rights? After all, I got the children and he’s allowed to see them. M. M., Worcestershire A One: next time, offer to take the children over to his place in person. Two: take a sausage, tucked up your sleeve. Three: while he’s distracted flinging his arms around the children, let him see with what enthusiasm his labrador greets you. Four: milk it, milk it, milk it. Dogs are tremendous drama queens and, by rolling on your back all over the lawn and allowing the dog to lick your…

The Earl of Elgin, celebrated for securing the sculpture from the Parthenon, spent 40 years toying with the reconstruction of his house, which has recently been restored for the 21st century, as John Goodall explains BROOMHALL stands on the north bank of the Firth of Forth, the great natural inlet that demarcates the division between the Lothians and the Kingdom of Fife. For the modern visitor, it is hard to believe that the house, with its park and spectacular views, stands about three miles from the head of the vast new bridge—Queensferry Crossing—that carries the thundering traffic of the M90 over this body of water. This extraordinary work of engineering, 1.7 miles long, opened in August last year, just a few months after Broomhall opened its doors for the first…

‘Rocket is the perfect addition to countless dishes, giving a deliciously peppery and fresh flavour’ More ways with rocket Spaghetti with rocket-and-basil pesto ( below ) To make the pesto, process the following ingredients to a coarse paste: 1 clove of garlic, a pinch of salt, 25g of pine nuts, 30g of wild rocket, 20g of basil, 35g of Parmesan, the juice of 1 lemon and 125ml of olive oil. Cook pasta as per packet instructions and then stir the pesto through the spaghetti, along with fresh rocket leaves and a little crème fraîche. You can also fold in halved cherry tomatoes, with extra Parmesan and lemon juice on top. Warm Italian salad (serves 4) Cut 2 peeled red onions into quarters and fry with…

‘ Sheets of flowers will flutter long after you’ve left this Earth’ SOME spring-flowering bulbs are typically described as ‘choice’ in those richly illustrated catalogues that thump onto our doormats year after year. They exert a powerful appeal on people who, like me, are drawn to plants I’ve always fancied, but have never grown before. The nurseries know this, of course, and who wouldn’t want something described as ‘choice’? It implies a certain cachet, something that might enable you to get slightly ahead of the Joneses. Rarity is, however, irrelevant in my book. What matters is that I like the plant and that it likes me. Farewell, Iris danfordiae, so lovely in your yellow beauty for just one year, and your ilk. I prefer good doers who befriend me…

On August 29, 1842, Admiral Sir William Parker wrote to the Lords of the Admiralty: ‘It is with feelings of extraordinary gratification that I have the honour of announcing that a Treaty of Peace was this day signed by Her Majesty's Plenipotentiary and the Chinese High Commissioners on board HMS Cornwallis , bearing my flag, off the City of Nanking'. Parker (1781–1866), soon to be made a baronet for the campaign and negotiations leading to the cession of Hong Kong to Britain, had joined the Navy aged 13 in 1793 and ended active service only after the Crimea. He was highly regarded as a commander as well as for his diplomatic handling of the British and Chinese negotiators. In the House of Lords, the First Lord of the Admiralty ‘did…

Biography Into the Mountain Charlotte Peacock (Galileo, £20) Nature The Living Mountain Nan Shepherd (Canongate (1977; reissued in paperback with an introduction by Robert Macfarlane), £8.99) ON the Royal Bank of Scotland’s polymer £5 note is the head of a writer, Nan Shepherd. She is Brunhilde-like, with a band around her forehead, and she stares upwards and into the distance. Beneath her are words from her novel The Quarry Wood: ‘It’s a grand thing to get leave to live.’ Few people nowadays have read The Quarry Wood and few know of Nan Shepherd. The aim of this biography is to bring her into the limelight. The author faces two difficulties. First, the facts of Shepherd’s life are few. Born in 1893, she lived almost her entire life in West Cults,…

POTATO’S. 50p. ‘Broccoli’. Pizza’s. Randomly scattered around market stalls from one end of the country to the other, those apostrophes and quotation marks drive some people wild with rage. I don’t mind them—they’re put there in honest ignorance, not malice. Half an hour with Strunk & White’s The Elements of Style would have every costermonger in the land confidently and correctly offering Laxton’s Superb or Bananas: 50p. What I dislike is ‘Quote me happy’. Now, that is malevolent. Find my happy. A cup of merry. The perversity of the copywriters drives me wild with rage or, at least, disgust, but there comes a time in a man’s life when he has to stop complaining about every little thing—smartphones at the table, horrible advertising, virtue signalling, cheeky-chappie labelling on food cartons—and…

AMID howls of protests, the Environment Agency is proposing to charge river keepers £100 an hour just to give them advice on how to apply to do work on their own streams. From April, putting up a single noticeboard will cost £446 and protecting less than 100m (328ft) of bank costs the fishery £764 and £968 for a stretch of more than 200m. Riverkeeper Chris de Cani wonders what advice he might receive from an agency officer ‘who may be making their first visit to a stretch of river that I have been intimate with for more than half my life, who will have the ultimate say on the best way forward’. In Hampshire, the Test and Itchen Association is labelling the charges ‘excessive and disproportionate’. The national scheme will…

Every time I go to the annual Australia Day tasting, I come back with a different highlight. One year, it was the steely, superfine yet ripe Rieslings of Clare Valley. Another, it was the new, Côte Rôtie-inspired wave of more ethereal Shirazes, about as different from the Barossa blockbusters of yesteryear as could be imagined. This time, my stars were the dry Semillons-wines made from an overlooked grape, which have remarkable ageing ability. Why you should be drinking them If Semillon were a thespian, she or he would have been nominated many times for best supporting actor, but probably never won an Oscar. Perhaps Semillon's best-known role is in the botrytised double act with Sauvignon that goes to make sweet Sauternes. Dry Semillon is hardly known in France,…

Viscount Windsor is chairman of the Art Advisory Group for the National Museum of Wales. He will be giving the John Cornforth Lecture at Christie’s on March 19 about his home, Oakly Park ‘Coming from good agrarian stock, I love this elegiac mixed-media picture. It expresses a yearning for a bygone age (which some of us remember), echoing a landscape–once painted by the likes of Constable and Gainsborough–before agriculture became fully mechanised and when man had a much closer relationship with the soil. The title, taken from a Bob Dylan song, All along the watchtower, may have a sense of foreboding, surely referencing the Jimi Hendrix version, with the first chord representing the ploughshare hitting a stone, incendiary and coruscating. As it still is, 50 years on’ John McEwen…

NORFOLk has many barns, but it’s easy to see which one Annie Tempest has chosen as her home: there’s a large white face peering from a hedge—it’s above an archway and two white hands are positioned, far apart, to either side of it, as if a ghost with long arms and no body was about to burst through. A huge sculpted head stands by the path to the front door. This is a special year for Tottering-by-Gently, Annie’s cartoon strip, but don’t think that cartoons are all she does: she’s endlessly creative—the two acres of garden are in a constant state of reinvention and, six years ago, she discovered sculpture and has been going at it with a will. And there’s Tottering. The editor of the day may have been…

‘ The foxes have been up around the yard, an invasion of Rupertland’ WE all blame each other, but someone has left the back door open, letting the border terrier escape. It’s 11pm, just as we’re going to bed. Quite apart from the damage a free-running Rupert might do to himself, there’s the other problem with him. The one that cannot be named. A Rupert in army slang is an officer and our five-year-old terrier is definitely officer material. Think a short, choleric colonel. Rupert, unfortunately, likes to shout at sheep rather than squaddies. Penny and the children go off in the car to hunt for him along the lane. I have a hunch he’s headed for the wood down below the house. The foxes have been up around…

Gloucestershire, excess £300,000 As the name implies, The Old Chapel, in North Cerney, near Cirencester, is a former Victorian chapel that has been beautifully converted into a bright three-bedroom home. The door opens onto the vaulted, open-plan living area, which leads to the contemporary kitchen at the back and, via a spiral staircase, to the mezzanine bedroom. Two more bedrooms are situated on the lower-ground floor. Strutt & Parker (01285 653101) Oxfordshire, £695,000 Grade II-listed Ellsdale Cottage in the hamlet of Postcombe, at the foot of the Chilterns, has been sensitively renovated to combine modern comfort with period charm. Inglenook fireplaces take pride of place in the sitting and dining rooms and both the living areas and the bedrooms upstairs feature exposed beams. Outside, the gardens have been landscaped by…

It is in the nature of hedges that they gradually outgrow their intended dimensions with time. Now is a good moment to get a hedge back into shape. Reducing the height is straightforward, but go a little below the ideal to allow fine shoots to fill in the outline. Width should be dealt with in two successive seasons, one side per year. Use a level line and keep a strict eye on proceedings, stepping back from time to time. Once the job is finished and the debris is cleared away, spike the ground and mulch the base of the hedge…

TWO new stage productions of Macbeth hover darkly on the horizon. At the National Theatre, Rufus Norris directs Rory Kinnear and Anne-Marie Duff as the blood-soaked leads and Christopher Eccleston and Niamh Cusack take on the roles in Polly Findlay’s RSC production at Stratford-upon-Avon, plus there’s an operatic version at Covent Garden and a new film. Some cite this as an example of bad planning, but it’s a chance to contrast rival versions. Why this perennial obsession with what superstitious actors call ‘the Scottish play’ (it’s supposedly bad luck to cite it by name backstage)? First, it’s Shakespeare’s most rapid, hurtling tragedy, which, if played without interval, lasts no more than two hours. Its hero, who speaks roughly a third of the lines, admits us to his own haunted imagination.…

HERE are two basic finesse positions: To promote dummy’s King of Diamonds, you must lead from the opposite hand towards the King, hoping (as here) that West holds the Ace. To promote your Queen of Clubs, you must lead towards it (perhaps having played the Ace first), hoping (as here) East holds the King. Finessing is by its very nature risky—but sometimes you can put yourself in a win-win position. Take our first deal. West led out Ace-King of Spades. As declarer, you ruff, draw trumps in two rounds finishing in dummy and ruff the third Spade, eliminating the suit. You cash the King of Diamonds, cross to the Queen and lead a third Diamond, East following low. Finesse or drop? It’s a guess isn’t it? The odds very narrowly…

THE Judge and I went out to dinner last week to discuss our piscatorial scheme for the year. The planning is almost as much fun as the real thing and the anticipation lingers like a delicious aftertaste until we unpack our rods. There will be some early days in late April on the River Meon for the hawthorn hatch before we chance our casts on the Test and Dun in May and finally head north in early Autumn for the Tweed at Ladykirk, scene of the Judge’s three double-figure fish last year. That memory cast the only shadow on my evening. What we hadn’t realised was that, in our enthusiasm to meet up, we’d booked a table for two on Valentine’s Day. Our starters came with a rose. Most of…

IN the little village of Low Hartsop, near Patterdale, there is a farmhouse and a very picturesque old cottage, both of which have ‘spinning galleries’, traditionally so called. They are evidently of great age, and so rare in England now that they have an unusual interest. The neighbourhood of the English Lakes is full of traces of the Scandinavian occupation. In Norway at the present day most of the spinning is done in the winter and, therefore, indoors, but evidently in the Lake villages the spinning was carried out in the galleries under the shelter of the eaves in the summer time.…

NATIONAL treasure or poor substitute for the public sector? Athena has sympathies for those who find the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) difficult to characterise. It’s now unequivocally our most influential heritage funding body and received a glowing Government review last year, but important questions remain about its role and influence. The recently announced consultation on HLF strategy for 2019–24 must resolve these issues. Despite the good it’s done—awarding £7.7 billion to 42,000 projects since 1994 —the HLF has not properly acknowledged its effect on the landscape of culture. Its stated aim is to support heritage and communities, but it’s recently placed emphasis on the interests of lottery players. The HLF also passively leaves applicants to ‘identify their own heritage’. Although it’s not government, it needs a strategy that reflects public…

IT’S 25 years since Annie Tempest first dreamt up the cheering and perspicacious Tottering-by-Gently cartoon strip that graces the back page of COUNTRY LIFE and, with its regular doses of common sense and wisdom, has become a much-loved feature over a quarter of a century. In celebration, readers will have the chance to win a two-night house party for 12 guests at Annie’s glorious family home, Broughton Hall in North Yorkshire, which is the inspiration for Tottering Hall. Here, we reproduce 10 of Annie’s best loved works (marked A to J), featuring Dicky, Daffy, their extended family and, most popular of all, their dogs, Slobber and Scribble. All you have to do is guess which one has proved to be the best selling one of all. Enter online at www.countrylife.co.uk/totteringcompetition,where…

JEWELLED stickpins, crafted to tell stories, are masterpieces in miniature that the great houses such as Fabergé, Lacloche Frères, Cartier and Tiffany & Co perfected from the Belle Epoque to the outbreak of the Second World War. These precious nothings, originally pinned into a cravat, migrated to the necktie and seemingly fell out of fashion until enterprising 21st-century dandies began wearing them as lapel pins. Bearing in mind that the better stickpins were produced as sentimental or ceremonial items, these jewels are the biography of the wearer. Tsar Nicholas II hand-painted more than 70 of the gem-set stickpins that were given to him in his Jewel Album, preserved in the Kremlin Armoury in Moscow. Motifs ranged from imperial crowns and diamond-encircled hearts to miniature guilloché enamel imperial Easter eggs and…

IT would be interesting to know how much Howard (1924–92) and Saretta (1927–2017) Barnet spent on drawings over 40 years, from the 1970s. Their tastes ran from antiquities to contemporary American painting, by way of tribal arts from around the world, which they displayed together with about 30 drawings ranging from Fra Bartolommeo to Freud. Interestingly, although he was more passionate in their partnership and, according to their children, she contributed discernment, it was she who bought the works by those two artists during her widowhood. Whatever the balance, their joint eye was good and, most importantly, they enjoyed the whole process of collecting. They visited Europe twice a year and might buy only one drawing either there or in New York. In particular, I wonder how much they…