Innholdsfortegnelse for 16-May-18 i Country Life

Royal weddings create a serene and much-needed space in our crowded lives THE Royal Family times its weddings perfectly. The marriage of The Queen and The Duke of Edinburgh boosted the morale of a nation faced with seismic shifts: a devastating world war had been followed, in quick succession, by the resignation of Sir Winston Churchill, austerity and polarising social change. To make matters worse, the effects of a bitterly cold winter were compounded by coal shortages. The marriage of the young princess and her beau, so clearly in love, did much to warm the cockles of the nation’s heart. The wedding of The Prince and Princess of Wales in 1981 and The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge in 2011 both also offered distractions from periods of social and economic…

Quiz of the week 1) Pentatonic, hexatonic and heptatonic are all types of what? 2) What sort of insect is a hedge brown? 3) SW1A 1AA is the postcode of which London residence? 4) In bingo, the call ‘knock at the door' represents which number? 5) Herpetology is the study of what? The nature of things Flint HOLD a chunk of flint freshly out of the chalky cliff-face. It’s smooth, but perhaps as irregularly shaped as an amoeba. There’s a fair weight to it—it’s much heavier and denser than the surrounding chalk. Then, when broken open, the sharpness of its edges becomes apparent, something that the earliest humans discovered was very much to their advantage and advancement. Across the world, wherever it occurs in layers of sedimentary rock, prehistoric…

IT’S hard to go for a country walk and not send a wood pigeon or two up into the air ahead of us. Their raucous flapping is part of the soundtrack of the woods or, to be more precise, the soundtrack when something disturbs the peace of the countryside. The noisy pigeon’s flight is deliberate: the loud flapping alerts other birds that something of concern is going on. It is a simple but effective alarm. Notice how they tend to fly away from the disturbance—again, this is a deliberate signal, telling others the direction in which to head to get away from a perceived threat. Now, notice how we can tell what others are up to in the wood from this simple sign. This is a trick that has been…

‘It isn’t acceptable to put such power into the hands of so few’ H Ow can it possibly be good for Britain for more than 60% of its food to be sold by just two companies? If ever there was a threat to farmers, it’s this domination of their marketplace. with two customers for most of their milk, butter and cheese, what hope has even the largest of the farming cooperatives to strike a fair bargain? It’s already so bad that the Government had to introduce a special ombudsman to protect suppliers from the overweening power of the supermarkets. with Tesco taking over Booker and Sainsbury’s merging with Asda, it can only get worse. No wonder the two Parliamentary Select Committees have written jointly to the Competition and Markets Authority…

WHAT am I doing in this eternal winter?’ bemoans the title character in Franz Kafka’s Ein Landarzt (A Country Doctor) when called out of bed one stormy night to attend to a sick patient. Our local medico must surely have been asking himself the same question at 1am on Tuesday morning as he drove through bitterly cold, torrential rain to our house. We had hesitated for several hours before telephoning him, but, eventually, our child’s symptoms became so bad we convinced ourselves it was something really serious. It was probably the doctor’s sixth middle-of-the-night visit to us since he opened his practice in a nearby village a quarter of a century ago. Not once has he complained, although he must sometimes have felt we had disturbed his sleep unnecessarily.…

WHEN Marilyn Monroe is introduced to Laurence Olivier’s Balkan prince in the 1957 film The Prince and the Showgirl, the strap of her dress snaps as she curtseys, to loud shrieks. She then stumbles through a list of royal titles, eventually settling on ‘your grand ducal’. It’s inconceivable that the newest member of our own Royal Family should make such an error at a future State occasion. But then, as royal historian Hugo Vickers points out, Meghan Markle is ‘the first royal bride ever to have addressed the United Nations’. Miss Markle is also the first royal bride to have persuaded Procter & Gamble to drop a sexist tagline for one of its products (at the age of 11) and the first to write an impassioned essay for Time magazine…

IN September 2002, Prince Harry was granted his own coat-of-arms. This forms the central element of what is termed an achievement (see above), a heraldic composition with supporters and a crest that identify The Prince personally and his estate in the realm. As is always the case, the heraldry assumed by The Prince on his coming of age was formulated by convention and flavoured by personal choice. Given his descent, the starting point was necessarily the Royal Arms. This has varied over time, but since the accession of Queen Victoria in 1837, it has comprised a quartered shield with the lions of England on the first and third quarters, and the rampant lion of Scotland and the harp of Ireland in the second and fourth respectively. Supporting this are a…

IT’S not quite Harlaxton Manor but we think you’ll like it’, says a large advertisement for the passenger lounge at Grantham Station. The advertisement is testimony both to local awareness of this vast house and the splendour that it projects even from afar. Indeed, you don’t have to travel very far down the mile-long drive to wonder whether there really could be anything quite comparable. The impression increases as the visitor progresses around the gigantic interiors, which combine the forms of Tudor and Jacobean architecture with Baroque bravura. ‘The visitor feels like Gulliver exploring Brobdingnag, the kingdom of giants’ Harlaxton Manor was the creation of one Gregory Gregory, an elusive figure educated at Rugby School and Christ Church, Oxford. From 1809, he served in the local militia and, in 1814,…

A THEME runs, like a golden thread, through anthologies of garden writing: whoever plants a garden plants happiness. It takes many forms, this happiness, moving different authors in different ways. Most of them agree, however, that it amounts to dependable long-term wellbeing punctuated with euphoric moments, with highlights and insights. They eulogise the garden as a companion for life, rather than as a brief infatuation. There’s the primal Edenic bliss that Milton described and which, for other authors, could be regained either by planting a garden (Francis Bacon’s ‘purest of human pleasures’) or simply by being in one (Andrew Marvell’s ‘happy Garden-state’ where the mind is purified, liberated and elevated ‘To a green Thought in a green Shade’). There’s the contentment of retirement from the world into a world of…

HAZELBY HOUSE is hidden away in countryside that, due to being accessible only via a bewildering network of tiny lanes, seems more remote than it actually is. This is where Berkshire, Hampshire and Wiltshire meet, in the rolling chalkland of the North Wessex Downs, a beguiling landscape of hilltop stone circles and beech roundels, of racehorses and Ravilious-esque views. Its garden is one of two parts or, more correctly, two layers. The first was conceived and executed by Hazelby’s creator, the much-missed Martin Lane Fox, who died in 2016. The second has been added by present owners Patrick and Gabrielle Hungerford, who have been here since 2000. Continuity has been provided by head gardener Kevin Rush, who has looked after the garden for 30 years. Lane Fox bought Hazelby in…

HIDDEN beneath Chancery Lane, behind a deliberately unassuming door, lies the largest retail selection of fine antique and contemporary silver in the world—the London Silver Vaults. Once a labyrinth of privately owned strong rooms, it was only after the Second World War that the potential of the vaults as a showcase itself was seen and it was opened to the public. The catacomb of vaults retains its original Victorian John Tann bank -vault doors, measuring more than 6ft high and weighing almost a ton each. Many of the original firms remain in the control of the descendants of the first tenants and have long-established relationships with their clients that last a lifetime and span family events, from Christenings to engagements, weddings and subsequent anniversaries. An Aladdin’s cave of antique and…

IN the library of Radley College in Oxfordshire, the customer-liaison officer spends afternoons asleep under her desk. The ‘officer’ in question is an 11-year-old lemon-and-white beagle called Disco. Belonging to college librarian Anne Mühlberg, Disco earnt her honorary title in recognition of her contribution to the wellbeing of library users—both boys and dons. ‘The boys enjoy a bit of dog therapy, as do some of the dons,’ admits Miss Mühlberg. ‘It’s just what you need in the middle of a hectic day, especially at a busy moment in term such as exam time.’ Librarianship is Disco’s second career. Until a year ago, she was a member of the college’s beagle pack, hunting twice a week. When loose in the college grounds, Disco remains energetic. She is lively in pursuit of…

THE sales details for historic, Grade I- listed Luddesdown Court, near Cobham, Kent—currently on the market with Knight Frank (020–7861 5390) at a guide price of £3.5 million—suggest that the former manor house, which was held by William the Conqueror’s half-brother, Odo, until his disgrace in 1082, may be ‘the oldest continually occupied house in the country’. It is a debate that has exercised the minds of successive generations of Country Life readers. In 1931, Knight Frank’s Arthur J. Burrows described Luddesdown as ‘the oldest court lodge in Kent’ and ‘presumably one of the most ancient continuously inhabited domestic buildings in the kingdom’. At that time, it was owned by a Mr Cobbett Barker, ‘who has done much towards disclosing the appearance it must have had when first erected about…

THIS Saturday marks the culmination of the Royal Academy’s (RA) 250th anniversary celebrations with the unveiling of Sir David Chipperfield’s £56 million reconfiguration of the RA complex, to link Burlington House to the building at its north, Burlington Gardens (above). Described by the architect as ‘a small amount of architecture for a profound result’, the development has created a two-acre ‘cultural campus’ running from Piccadilly to Mayfair, with 70% more gallery and exhibition space linked by a new bridge. A highlight is the new gallery devoted to the RA’s own collection—in effect, a complete survey of British art from 1768, including a great, as yet untapped, body of contemporary works by Royal Academicians. The inaugural display has been selected by president Christopher Le Brun. The work of the RA schools…

JOST HAAS is the only remaining maker of glass eyes working in Britain today. Having originally completed an apprenticeship in his native Germany—where glass-eye technology was perfected in the 18th century —Mr Haas has been carefully crafting eyeballs in London for 50 years and, at the age of 81, has no plans to retire. ‘I have many loyal clients, some of whom have become friends and, as long as they continue to come here, I will carry on,’ he confirms. This must be reassuring for his clientele, many of whom have lost eyes due to illness, assault or accidents and who can’t wear plastic eyes due to allergies. Mr Haas is kept busy due to the fact that glass eyes have such a short lifespan—all of them are returned to…

PRESIDING over the centre of the Royal Wedding festivities in Windsor later this week will be one particularly bizarre group of spectators. They include creatures from the natural world—a writhing octopus and a snail—as well as from fantasy—a dragon and phoenix—and even from nightmare— a trumpeting figure and a mouse with a human ear protruding from its back. They are not living and breathing onlookers, of course, but, instead, new works of sculpture installed beneath parapets of St George’s Chapel as part of an imaginative conservation project to this great church. ‘One way to articulate the sacred space was to surround it with the prosaic, the ludicrous or the hideous’ The main body of St George’s Chapel, begun in 1475, is encrusted with sculpture. Such carving was intended to underline…

AS LONG ago as 1995, Rosebie Morton’s mission was to ‘bring beautiful, natural, scented flowers and foliage back into a market that had lost touch with the wonder for real flowers’. So, she began The Real Flower Company within the walled garden at her family’s former home at Bramdean, in Hampshire. When the estate was sold, Rosebie took her flowers to occupy 12 acres of her husband’s commercial arable land, near Alresford. It is now the Rose Paddock, together with vital adjoining outbuildings and, over the years, the business has expanded from growing wholesale fragrant roses to include the growing and retail of seasonal garden bouquets. ‘Subtle, softly scented sages, fresh mints and kitchen-garden dill add further notes’ Roses were the inspiration and remain the backbone of the business. Of…

AN English woodland garden in spring is, to me, little short of perfection. As the aconites, snowdrops and hellebores give way to fritillaries, bluebells and thrusting wild garlic, the heady smell of damp, surging growth jostles for attention with the dappled sunshine. Prior Park in Bath has all this and more: a woodland wilderness and spectacular terraced landscape garden—a gem tucked into the edge of a beautiful city. One of the architects of the Georgian city was the inspiration behind this garden. Ralph Allen, born at the end of the 17th century, was a Cornish post boy-turned-entrepreneur, who made his fortune transforming local postal services into a national system and buying the quarries that supplied the Bath stone. To show off his wealth and the quality of the hitherto maligned…

Serves 4 Ingredients 600g top-rump beef, rolled and tied2tbspn olive oil1tbspn wholegrain mustard600g rainbow radishes with tops1tbspn olive oilFor the pestoThe tops from half the radishes10g basil leaves75ml olive oilJuice and zest of 1 lemon2 cloves garlic75g grated ParmesanSeasoning200ml Greek yoghurt1tbspn creamed horseradishA squeeze of lemonEdible flowers to serve Method Preheat your oven to 180ºC/350ºF/gas mark 4. Rub the beef with olive oil and sear it all over in a hot frying pan. Place the meat on a roasting tray, brush over the mustard and season. Cook in the oven for about 20 minutes for medium (depending on the thickness of the joint). Remove the tops from the radishes and set aside. Toss the radishes in olive oil in an ovenproof dish and, after the meat has had 10 minutes…

£1.75 million Lovers of life on the water's edge can find a novel alternative at The Moat House, at Malt Hill, near Warfield, Berkshire. A former 15th-century hall house set in about three acres, it has six bedrooms, four of which are en suite and one of which has a dressing room. The setting is extremely tranquil and, as well as the eponymous moat, a magnificent mulberry tree is a notable feature of the landscaped gardens. Strutt & Parker (01344 636960) £3.5 million With elaborate Dutch-style gables and of warm, red bricks imported from Holland by barge in the 17th century, Grade II*-listed Brook Place is not far from the pretty Surrey village of Chobham, near Woking. It has been recently refurbished to include, among other modern features, a…

The ruined gatehouse of St Benet's Abbey in Norfolk is rendered even more picturesque by the now also ruined windmill that was once built into it and it has been painted by many artists, including J. S. Cotman. However, Edward Seago, who lived nearby at Ludham from 1946, was not looking for picturesque when he painted his watercolour of St Benet’s Lake under Snow , so he ignored the ruins entirely, producing a wonderfully minimalist winter impression. This painting is in Richard Green's Seago show, at 147, New Bond Street, London W1, until June 8. Across the street at No 33, the gallery is showing ‘Newlyn to St Ives'.…

IT may come as a relief that no one has revived it in time for the current celebrations, but there is actually a play in existence about a royal wedding. Prompted by the marriage in 1960 of Princess Margaret and Antony Armstrong-Jones, it’s called The Blood of the Bambergs and was written in 1962 by John Osborne. It lifts its plot from The Prisoner of Zenda and is based on the idea that, in a moment of crisis, an Australian photographer takes the place of the groom, for whom he is a dead ringer. Hardly one of Osborne’s best works, it’s a bilious attack on British royalty-worship and the only surprise is that it got staged at all. At the time, all scripts, under an act instituted by Sir…

‘In a century, this volume will be a point of reference’ Windsor Castle: A Thousand Years of a Royal Palace Edited by Steven Brindle (Royal Collection Trust, £95) IN 1913, Country Life published two immense and luxuriously bound volumes entitled Windsor Castle: An Architectural History. This limited edition told the story of Windsor’s evolution and has remained the standard account of the castle—until now. As the author, W. H. St John Hope, liked to point out, his great work was prepared at the direction of three successive sovereigns during a period of 20 years. This new volume at last supplants its predecessor, although for those fortunate enough to own both works—and have the space to accommodate them—they will surely sit together on the shelves. In physical terms, this is another…

Saturday, May 19 9am More than 1,000 members of the public who have been invited to watch begin to arrive at the grounds of Windsor Castle 9.30am to 11am Guests arrive at St George’s Chapel 11.20am Arrival of the Royal Family 11.45am Arrival of Prince Harry and his best man, The Duke of Cambridge 11.59am Arrival of the bride, Meghan Markle, at the west steps of the chapel 12pm The service begins, conducted by the Dean of Windsor, the Rt Rev David Conner. The Most Rev and Rt Hon Justin Welby, Archbishop of Canterbury, will officiate as the couple make their marriage vows 1pm In an open-topped Ascot Landau carriage drawn by a team of four, the couple will travel two miles along Castle Hill, the High Street and into…

Not normal for a Norfolk EXCELLENT article on Norfolk terriers (April 25), but please correct the statement regarding purported anti-rabbit traits. This picture of our Norfolk, Borrie (after the late Lord Borrie), shows him guarding Professor Hops from the attentions of our dachshund, Tilly, who is very much an anti. Rupert and Rachel Morton-Curtis, Hampshire The writer of the letter of the week will win a bottle of Pol Roger Brut Réserve Champagne Who wears the crown? I ENJOYED reading about the mysterious monogram in the great chamber at Alston Court (‘Mercantile splendour’, April 25). Dr Goodall says the crown over it ‘is only appropriate to royal or celestial figures’. That’s largely, but not completely, true. In Norfolk, at least, not everybody understood the rules as these clerestorey…

ON a trip to the Okavango Delta in Botswana, my bushman guide suddenly held up his hand. ‘Look there,’ he said in an excited whisper. Was it a fish eagle? Or a leopard coming to the water to drink? No. ‘You see,’ he said with satisfaction, ‘that log is where Preence Hairy set down yesterday.’ I knew ‘Preence Hairy’, or HRH Prince Henry of Wales, to give him his official title, was in the country as I had met his former nanny ‘Tiggy’ Legge-Bourke at the remote Maun airport, where she was distributing sweets and chocolates from the royal plane to local children. That was more than two decades ago, but it was an indication of the kind of man the young prince, now 33, would develop into: with a…

THE longest-serving jeweller in the world, Garrard’s designs date back to 1735, when master silversmith George Wicks opened a store in London’s West End. The company soon received its first royal commission from Frederick, Prince of Wales and then, after enjoying great acclaim, we fast-forward to 1843, when Garrard was appointed the first official Crown Jeweller. Throughout its magnificent history, Garrard has handcrafted tiaras, necklaces, brooches, rings and many more significant pieces that are still worn by the British Royal Family. These dazzling items include The Duchess of Cambridge’s iconic sapphire cluster engagement ring, which was worn by Diana, Princess of Wales before her. ‘In 1843, Garrard was appointed the first official Crown Jeweller’ The tiara is Garrard’s true showpiece, traditionally worn by young women first on their wedding day…

The Ice Maidens ICAN’T believe how far we’ve come,’ Maj Nics Wetherill told reporters after she crossed the finishing line back in January. The Royal Army Medical Corps member wasn’t, as per The X Factor contestants, referring to the emotional journey she and her teammates had been on: they had just completed a jaw-dropping 1,000-mile trek across Antarctica. Experts predicted it would take them between 75 and 90 days to complete the challenge—they did it in just 62, becoming the largest all-female group ever to traverse the continent on skis. The five other Ice Maidens—Maj Natalie Taylor of the Royal Army Medical Corps, Maj Sandy Hennis of the Royal Signals, Capt Zanna Baker (who had dreamed of taking part in an Antarctica expedition for a decade) and Lt Jenni Stephenson…

A SINGLE-FLOWERED rose, with only one layer of petals, is a versatile thing. We’ve seen some come out of the David Austin stable over the years, but far fewer than the voluptuous, full-bodied flowers that have become something of a trademark among his English roses. To name some of the loveliest of the Austin singles, there was The Alexandra Rose (Ausday, 1992), opening pale pink to nearly white, before fading to blush, with all the look of a wild rose wafting fugitive, musk fragrance. Morning Mist (Ausfire, 1996), opens out to reveal mutable, salmon hues reminiscent of peachy sunsets, from tight little red buds. Kew Gardens (Ausfence, 2009) won the prestigious gold standard award at the National Institute of Agricultural Botany trials, with its heads of clustered creamy buds, opening…

TRYING to get a mule across the North of England isn’t easy. I’d worked with mules as pack animals in Peru and thought it would be intriguing to do the same along the rough route of the Coast to Coast path, from the Irish to the North Sea. I found a mule called Jethro at an RSPCA rescue centre. He was small (about 12½hh) with striking colouring—a freckling of white and beige, like an appaloosa—and an enquiring, appraising gaze. Our first meeting in the stable yard at the RSPCA was cordial, if not effusive. I noticed his eyes: dark, soulful and thoughtful. His colouring wasn’t like anything I had seen in Peru, where mules tended to come in bay or skewbald, if at all; they can be hard to find.…

DAPPER as a Spitfire pilot in his cravat and leather jerkin, my host, Ian Neale, dashes into the layby in his customised Defender. We are off in search of a Findhorn springer and everyone is feeling gung-ho. A few miles above tide water, the Altyre beat he rents is a good bet for a few early-run salmon, with the Falls upstream acting as a temperature barrier (about 42˚F/5˚C) in spring. It’s still March and, as I roll out my first Spey casts of the season towards the sandstone cliff on the far bank—where the ‘opposition’ have to descend on a rope to fish the Roan—I ask Ian what the water temperature is today. ‘Positively Baltic,’ comes the reply. I’m glad of my tweed breeks and neoprene chesties. ‘Just below…

I DOUBT there are many days when one sets coordinates for Milton Keynes in a fervour of anticipation, but, on January 18, I did just that. Audi had offered me a spin in its fearsome estate car, the RS4 Avant. This stealthy rocketship has a cult following and holds its value like a Ming vase, so it’s always puzzled me that it plays its game of load-lugging racer on a field almost devoid of opposition. Hot versions of the Subaru Legacy once traded blows, but not anymore. Now, there is only the Mercedes-AMG C63 Estate, same power, same ‘sportingbrake’ boot: but rear-wheel-drive only. On British roads, with the tectonic power that either of these wagons offer, I’d take the quadruped any day. The lineage of this surefooted, blisteringly quick…

UNEASY lies the head that wears the crown,’ soliloquises the king before the entrance of Warwick, ‘the King Maker’, in Shakespeare’s Henry IV Part II. Even more uneasy were the heads of those found guilty of plotting against the Crown, if the history of Warblington Castle, near Havant, Hampshire, is anything to go by. Although no longer a castle, but a handsome, mainly 17th-century country house rebuilt from the Caen stone of a 16th-century fortified manor, Warblington Castle is for sale, for the first time in 35 years, at a guide price of £2.6 million through the Chichester office of Jackson-Stops (01243 786316). All that remains of the Tudor house built for Margaret Pole, Countess of Salisbury, between 1514 and 1526, is part of the gateway tower, a moulded…

BARRY PARkER and Raymond Unwin were the two architects of Letchworth Garden City, the utopian Hertfordshire settlement intended to create a green community that would shun the squalor and soot of the industrial city in the early 20th century. Their example, at Letchworth and elsewhere, was hugely influential, creating an ideal to which many English families aspired—although they could only obtain it in suburbs. Ebenezer Howard, the founder of the movement, envisaged this first garden city as a place where people would be able to work, shop and socialise near their homes, walking or cycling to their destination along roads that were linear parks—a vision that, more recently, has helped shape Poundbury in Dorset. Parker and Unwin not only planned the layout, but provided an architectural idiom for the dwellings:…