Innholdsfortegnelse for 4-Apr-18 i Country Life

LUNA Cinema, the UK leader in alfresco film, is celebrating its 10th anniversary with its biggest ever season. Taking in Royal Palaces such as Hampton Court (above) and Kensington, plus Warwick Castle, Chatsworth, Westminster Abbey, Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh, Leeds Castle, Kenwood House, Lulworth Castle and Harewood House, to name a few, there will be 175 screenings between April and October. Films range from this year’s award-winners The Shape of Water, Darkest Hour, The Greatest Showman and Dunkirk, to old favourites such as Dirty Dancing, Casablanca, The Goonies and Jaws, which will be shown at Grade II-listed Brockwell Lido, London SE24. New venues this year include York Minster, Guildford Cathedral, Belvoir Castle, Royal Windsor Racecourse, Bolton Abbey and Osterley House. Also new this year are Luna Kids, the country’s first…

Letter of the week The beauty in the beast THE so-called ‘Beast from the East’ certainly made its physical presence felt this year, but, make no mistake, it wasn’t a monster in every aspect. The trail of damage and exhausted farmers left in the wake of this weather phenomenon is more than made up for by the blessings woven into our soils. Great falls of snow deliver vast quantities of the farmer’s favourite gas: nitrogen. Suspended in the quartz-like structure of the flakes, nitrogen—along with carbon, mercury, lead, arsenic and many other beneficial elements (in non-substantial form)—is spread across our farmlands and gardens, preparing soil to become extra sensitive to the sun’s generous helpings of phosphorus and sulphur. Any farmer dauntless enough to trust in this picture will…

Pocahontas and after This diptych combines a photograph, by John Cobb, of Josaphat Buyombo (right, aged 9) from Cavendish Primary School, Chiswick, with the image that inspired it, a portrait of a Zuni bread maker taken by Edward Curtis in 1903. It's one of 25 displayed in an exhibition called ‘Pocahontas and After' at Syon House that runs until June 2. The exhibition celebrates the visit of Pocahontas, the Algonquian Indian princess, to England (and to Syon) in 1616–17. A diverse group of Londoners, including refugees and immigrants, were asked to choose a historic photographic portrait and to create a corresponding image of themselves with Mr Cobb. Josaphat wrote of his own choice: ‘My grandparents are from Congo. I like this heritage photograph because it reminds me of Congolese workers.…

‘I have collected Victor Pasmore prints for many years (oh, for a painting!) because I am very drawn both to this period of English art and, particularly, to calm abstraction in visual images. I find this print, with the spaces between the shapes, the colours and the sharpness of the black line, a beautiful and serene picture that would fit elegantly into a modern or traditional environment and with which I would be only too happy to live. John McEwen comments on The Dance of Man BORN in Chelsham, Surrey, Edwin John Victor Pasmore was the son of a distinguished London doctor. He went to Summer Fields and then to Harrow, where impressionist paintings announced his talent. He was 19 when his father died, obliging him to earn his living…

‘Humpty Dumpty was a weapon in the Civil War, wasn’t he? WHY, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast,’ declares the Red Queen in Alice in Wonderland. However, compared with the average infant, this is positively conservative. By the time a child reaches its first birthday, it will have encountered cows clearing the moon with a single leap, crockery and cutlery eloping together and elderly women getting up to all manner of extraordinary things: living in shoes, being tossed up in baskets and sweeping cobwebs from the sky. When they grow up and have a baby of their own in the nursery, they too will sing them the traditional songs. They might not ever ponder the provenance or meaning, however, or how the jaunty tunes of…

ON Tuesday, May 1, Country Life readers are invited to an exclusive preview of Max Rollitt’s ‘Beneath the Canopy’ exhibition at his Hampshire showroom. The event sets out to demonstrate the possibilities of the four-poster bed through decorative schemes that use fabrics from some of Britain’s most iconic brands, such as Bennison, de Le Cuona, Claremont and George Spencer. The project revives the tradition of using four-posters as an opportunity to experiment with the most lavish fabrics and passementerie. In the succession of schemes, Max Rollitt will also include any antiques that complement the new range of beds he has created. Northington Grange The exhibition is a 10-minute drive from The Grange at Northington (where the images were photographed), the magnificent Greek Revival house that owes its appearance to the…

‘I’ve always been happier with something beautiful and old, rather than new and shiny’ WHEN Lord Inchyra’s grandparents bought a Grade- A listed Regency house near Perth in the 1950s, the property was described in Country Life as ‘the most perfect small estate in Scotland’. When he, his wife Caroline and their three children moved there from London, the first requirement was to add a large kitchen extension to the ground floor. Then, in piecemeal fashion, they began to tackle the other rooms. With the help of an Edinburgh-based decorator, Sara Whitby, a George Smith sofa from their London house, trunks rescued from the attic and long lengths of fabrics from the likes of de Le Cuona and Colefax and Fowler, the drawing room was transformed. Later, damage caused by…

‘We select our garden plants mainly for their visual character, but rarely for their safety to our pets and children’ MENTION poisonous plants and we may think immediately of dangers such as deadly nightshade (Atropa), yew (Taxus) and hemlock (Oenanthe), or lethal fungi such as the death cap (Amanita) and Cortinarius. We probably remember that foxgloves (Digitalis) contain a powerful cardiac medicine and, of course, we all know that poppies (Papaver) are cultivated around the world because of the opium they produce. The idea of plants containing strong chemicals is the basis of all herbal medicine, but somehow we risk thinking that medicinal plants and poisonous plants are in a special category of their own—‘plants that have active ingredients’—when, in fact, all plants contain complicated organic compounds that may or…

‘If sweeteners act like sugar, they will still cause a biochemical dependence for all things sweet’ WE’RE not only at the start of a new financial year, but this month also sees the arrival of a new tax: the Soft Drinks Industry Levy, an innovation that will be heralded as progress by those who believe that the excessive consumption of sugar in Britain demands urgent attention. It will appeal to anybody nostalgic for those days, before Brexit, when our Government had time to take on the vested interests and do the right thing. It’s no mean achievement on the part of the zealously campaigning chef Jamie Oliver, who refused to allow politicians to hide behind their natural fear of sounding like ‘Nanny knows best’. No one really questions the…

SAM GIBSON of Strutt & Parker’s Morpeth office (01670 516123) is handling the sale of imposing, Victorian Derwent Lodge, which stands in 7.6 acres of enchanting gardens and grounds on the banks of the River Derwent at Shotley Bridge, Co Durham. The house, built in 1867, was home to the Priestman family, leading lights in their day of the local Consett Iron Works, once the biggest private steelworks in the world, before being nationalised and finally closed down in 1980. Carefully maintained by its present owners, who have lived there for 20 years or more, the house (for sale at a guide price of £1.5 million) boasts seven reception rooms, seven bedrooms and three bathrooms, and extensive gardens and wooded grounds leading down to the river, with fishing rights included…

‘ However much Mr Cocker’s stance might annoy, it works’ Nature Our Place Mark Cocker (Jonathan Cape, £18.99) THIS is a rollicking rush of a book that travels to key places in the countryside, reviewing and revealing the people, the events and the institutions that have shaped the British determination to save our rural landscape and its wildlife. No one gets away unscathed; there’s no reverence here for anything or anyone except for Nature. Mark Cocker is an ever-engaging writer whose radicalism rises from that noble stream of revolt: from Wycliffe through the Levellers, Fifth Monarchy Men and Sandemanians to Chartists, Luddites and to the Rochdale Pioneers and the Labour movement. There are no holds barred, with attacks on the National Trust as an institutional preserve of the upper classes,…

ISAMBARD KINGDOM BRUNEL—the 19th-century engineering talent ‘who built britain’ (particularly dockyards, steamships, bridges and tunnels)—is celebrated in a new £7.2 million museum, which opened last month after six years in the making at bristol’s newly restored Grade II*-listed Great Western Dockyard, where he designed and built the SS Great Britain. The ocean liner that revolutionised the way we travel is mere feet away from the ‘being brunel’ exhibition, which has been funded by a range of charitable trusts, from the Heritage Lottery Fund to the being Brunel Corporate Club. Brunel’s drawing office has been re-created, based on a painting by his niece, and visitors can walk inside a 26ft-tall model of the great man’s head (right) for an audio/visual experience of his brain (with a hint of steam and cigar…

Quiz of the week 1) Which poet wrote the lines ‘And when those deep and burning moments pass'd/And Juan sunk to sleep within her arms'? 2) A heptahedron has how many faces? 3) St James's Palace was commissioned by which British monarch? 4) The Irish Derby is held at which racecourse? 5) Which American actress, born Betty Joan Perske, starred in The Big Sleep and To Have and Have Not? The nature of things Monterey cypress BRITAIN doesn’t have any native cypresses, although numerous varieties can be seen across towns and countryside. The Monterey cypress, Cupressus macrocarpa, is more statuesque than many when able to stretch out unchecked; then, the multiple upward-thrusting limbs spread out horizontally at the ends, looking superficially like big old yews or cedars of Lebanon,…

GARDENERS don’t believe in bullying Nature, but lend a guiding hand. Wildflower aficionados accept the lottery of Nature. There is one thing that unites them: the escapee. Many flowers are pollinated and spread by insects, birds or the wind, but some rely on bulb division below ground, which leads to very different patterns of distribution. A plant hitching a lift might be found miles downwind of its parent, whereas dividers can take years to travel a few metres. Their reluctance to travel yields our clue. The best-known escapee is probably the snowdrop, which would have been planted when it first arrived in the UK. Therefore, when we find snowdrops in a semi-wild area, we are looking at the start of a trail that will lead to civilisation—perhaps a churchyard or…

‘It’s the veggies’ assumption of moral superiority that really irks ’ THE World Wildlife Fund (WWF) thinks that lamb stew is the most environmentally unfriendly dinner you could possibly choose, Welsh hill farmers are furious and the newspapers have been stirring things up with a vengeance. Long-held prejudices make good copy and the image of wiry, intemperate Celts facing bearded, sandalled vegans confirms every stereotype in the book. No one is much bothered about the facts—we’re all too busy taking sides and enjoying the row. The whole kerfuffle is a nonsense that has only served to obscure what sense there was in the WWF report and provide instead a PR victory for Easter lamb. It’s also a good moment to confront the animal absolutists who are in danger of running…

‘Little Charlotte begged us to throw playing cards in the air so she might pepper them with holes ’ DO you hunt?’ asked my father’s hostess at a country-house party in about 1968. ‘No,’ he replied. She was unperturbed. ‘Do you shoot?’ ‘I am afraid not.’ Understanding dawned in her eyes: ‘Do you fish?’ ‘I am sorry to say I don’t.’ Exasperated, she blurted out: ‘Well, what the blazes do you do?’ His answer, spoken out of pure devilment, led to an extremely embarrassing encounter, for he pretended to be a mountain climber, upon which he was immediately introduced to a fellow guest, John Hunt ( the John Hunt, leader of the 1953 Everest expedition), with the words: ‘You two will have a great deal to talk about.’ I…

‘ The image of this great dinosaur-like bird is sealed in the memory forever THE grey heron may not be Britain’s prettiest bird, but it is surely its most pictorial. No wonder Henry Williamson allowed one to set the opening scene of his literary classic Tarka the Otter. ‘Twilight over meadow and water, the eve-star shining above the hill, and Old Nog the heron crying kra-a-ark! as his slow wings carried him down to estuary,’ reads the evocative first line. The image of this great dinosaur-like bird, flying low over the hedgerows, is sealed in the memory forever. Richard Jefferies, another of nature writing’s great field observers, in his Wild Life in a Southern County, wrote of the heron being ‘a most suspicious bird: when he alights in the water…

‘We live on an island that has long been a melting pot of influences IN recent decades, designers have embraced all manner of influences from all over the world; the formality of Gustavian and Louis XV, the breezy style of Cape Cod and the pared back restraint of the Far East. However, there are now signs that a new generation is finding inspiration in English design, decorative arts, print making, painting and ceramics and is reinterpreting our own decorative heritage in a way that is relevant to the 21st century. But this isn’t 1980s-style nostalgia, rather, it’s a thoughtful celebration of English style—both past and present—that is creating an exciting new mood in interior design. Guy Goodfellow, interior and textile designer English style has recently been internationalised: every high street…

ON Thursday, April 26, 2018, COUNTRY LIFE is collaborating with OKA to offer 20 readers an exclusive opportunity to discover the infinite possibilities of paint from Edward Bulmer, the interior designer who also has his own range of paints made with natural ingredients and plant extracts. In conversation with COUNTRY LIFE’s interiors editor, Giles Kime, Edward will offer advice on all the common colour conundrums and the demonstrate how the right choice can completely transform a room. Using examples from his own home—the beautiful Court of Noke in Herefordshire—and high-profile projects such as his work at Althorp, he will demystify this fascinating subject. The event will also offer an opportunity to explore OKA’s latest inspirational store, which offers furniture, accessories and lighting that are perfect for creating a vast range…

HE’S high in the water, looking for hooks,’ murmured my guide Marc encouragingly. Through the amber lenses of my swish new Tonic sunglasses (‘They’re as good as gold,’ the salesman on the South Island had assured me), I could make out a hefty brown trout tucked strategically below a fallen tree. ‘Let’s see if we can get introduced,’ said Marc. Mrs Reel Life and I were on the second leg of our three-week New Zealand tour and were now in the volcanic Taupo region of the North Island, where the great lake—240sq miles and known to Maoris as the ‘sea of Taupo’—is a centre for Antipodean anglers. We were guests of Eve Reilly, the dynamic Irish lady who manages Poronui Lodge, a wonderfully high-end establishment set in a private…

Dressing room Simon Barnes, H. Barnes & Co Prospective buyers usually make a decision after seeing the kitchen and reception room. If you can get them to the second floor and there’s a walk-in wardrobe, you’ll seal the deal. Giles Kime, COUNTRY LIFE Not only do dressing rooms transform your mornings, but also your bedroom, which will be infinitely more tidy. It’s more than worth sacrificing a smaller bedroom. They are to a bedroom what a pantry is to a kitchen. Nick Churton, Mayfair Office A media room is so last year. If you need a party room, hire one. As for a gym… No, the best is the dressing room. This is the inner sanctum, the holy of holies, the most intimate of spaces that is used and…

RED RUM, the legendary racehorse, is celebrated in an exhibition, at Osborne Studio Gallery, London SW1 (April 9 to 18), of unseen images taken by award-winning photographer Jeremy Hoare in 1974, the year of the champion’s second of a record-breaking three Grand National wins. Famously trained by Ginger McCain on Southport sands, Red Rum (right) had an incurable bone disease in one hoof and ‘should never have run,’ says Mr Hoare. It’s thought that regular gallops through seawater were theraputic. ‘It was a fairy story,’ continues Mr Hoare, ‘a classic sporting tale of the underdog and a bright moment amid the 1970s gloom.’ There are 20 limited-edition prints on show, for sale at £245 each and taken from a book launched alongside the exhibition (£28, www.jeremyhoare.com).‘He was the most…

EXTRACTING malt from barley, which is the first stage of the brewing and distilling process, has occurred in Britain for thousands of years, but there are only four companies in England that still do it the traditional way. The oldest, Warminster Maltings in Wiltshire, has been housed in the same premises since 1855. ‘The building is Grade-II* listed, so it had to be restored sympathetically,’ explains Robin Appel, who describes himself as the custodian of the business that he acquired 12 years ago. The malting process is still carried out in much the same way as it ever was. Raw barley arrives from farms and is steeped in water to precipitate the germination process before being transferred to the germination floors. ‘This is where the maltster’s great skill comes into…

PLUMPTON ROCKS is as unexpected as it is astonishing, a cluster of vast gritstone boulders that bursts through the undulating North Yorkshire landscape. This natural outcrop, which shares the geology of the more familiar Brimham Rocks, was transformed into a celebrated landscape garden in the 1750s and enjoyed considerable celebrity into the early 20th century. Since the 1950s, however, it has almost completely slipped from the popular consciousness and when it was last written up in Country Life on February 13, 1992, it seemed to be vanishing altogether, threatened by Nature and a road scheme. That has now changed. A triumphant restoration completed in 2016 gives a modern audience the opportunity to enjoy its 18th-century grandeur once more. The present garden was the creation of Daniel Lascelles, co-heir to a…

IN its heyday, the four-poster wasn’t just a status symbol—it was also a practical piece of kit that acted as insulation on chilly nights. In the days of double glazing and central heating, the thermal properties of four-posters are no longer necessary, but there’s no doubt that they lend more drama to a scheme than any other item of furniture. Inspiration for Max Rollitt’s collection includes a mahogany four-poster from Stoneythorpe Hall in Warwickshire, a military-campaign bed designed by Thomas Butler as well as designs inspired by the Indian and Shaker originals. The four-poster is also a vehicle for colour, pattern and texture and a foundation for a plethora of looks, from tailored simplicity to decorative excess, as demonstrated here by hangings created with fabrics from Claremont, de Le Cuona,…

‘It makes for a very convincing alternative to an SUV’ HMMM. Let’s see now. All-terrain? All-terrain? Something familiar in that. If only I could guess which iconic German mud-plugging estate this new Mercedes is playing top trumps against. Oh yes! It’s the car in my driveway: the Audi A6 allroad. It’s a war of words as much as machinery. Alle Straße? Pish. Ich ein Alles Gelände wagon haben. As if to prove it, Mercedes launched the car in northern England in mid-winter and set, as our mid-morning break, the task of towing a horsebox up and down a muddy woodland track. Our lunchtime rendezvous was a bothy nestled under precipitous rocks way up high on a Northumbrian grouse moor. The setting was breathtaking and the road to it did…

ESTABLISHED in 1994, The Wedding Present Co. has built its reputation on word of mouth from ecstatic customers to become one of the most highly regarded wedding-list specialists in the business. A gift list is a must for any engaged couple, giving guests the chance to give you something you will cherish and that will last a lifetime. With so many demands on your time throughout the process of planning a wedding, creating your list shouldn’t be one more stressful task to complete—with the warm, personal and efficient service on offer at The Wedding Present Co., it will become a pleasure. Next month, company founder James Dundas is inviting COUNTRY LIFE readers to a special event where you can meet your dedicated wedding-list advisor, find out how the service works…

THE changing of the clocks was the signal for Savills to defy the last blast of winter with the launch onto the market of two exceptional small country estates—Grade II*-listed Thorpe Hall with 85 acres at Wycliffe, near Barnard Castle, Co Durham, and Grade II-listed Bilton Hall with 93 acres at Bilton-in-Ainsty, nine miles from York. Both are for sale through the agents’ York office (01904 617831) at guide prices of £6 million and £6.5 million respectively. According to Lindsay Cuthill of Savills’ country department, Thorpe Hall was ‘an absolute wreck’ when, in 2002, owners Paul and Gaynor Townley bought the crumbling Palladian mansion, built in about 1740 and incorporating a 13th-century pele tower erected by the Wycliffe family, who were lords of the manor in what was then…

I WILL miss the long English spring.’ Andrea Brunsendorf, head gardener of the Inner Temple Gardens, has recently been appointed director of outdoor landscapes at the enormous (1,083 acres) Longwood Gardens in Pennsylvania, USA, and is about to leave this peaceful, three acres of green space in the centre of London to start her new life. It was spring when she arrived for her interview 11 years ago. ‘There were no bulbs at all, not even daffodils,’ she recalls. The garden then felt unloved and municipal, just an immaculate lawn, regimented rose-beds and red pelargoniums, ‘however, there was such great potential’. Andrea, who had studied first in Germany, then at Kew (with a Master’s in nature conservation from UCL) and had trained in gardens around the world, was charged with…

‘ Mr Eccleston as Macbeth reminded me of the England cricketer, Ben Stokes’ I LOVE directors. However, I sometimes think that, especially in Shakespeare, they impose their ideas on a play or signal their intentions too blatantly. Such is the case with Polly Findlay’s production of Macbeth at the RSC, Stratfordupon-Avon. It’s swift, well acted and full of intelligent touches, but too self-conscious in displaying its cleverness. The Witches are performed by three little girls in red onesies who acquire the demonic force of kids in a horror-movie. It must have seemed a bright idea in the planning, but, in practice, it means that the prophecies of the Witches are reduced to childish singsong. Similarly, Time is a vital feature, but it seems gratuitous to remind us of the…