Innholdsfortegnelse for 6-Jun-18 i Country Life

Bohemia in the Club Hotel, St Helier Michelin-starred restaurant perfect for a treat La Capannina, St Helier A Jersey legend, with an extensive, beautifully cooked Italian menu Cheffins at the Beaumont Inn, St Peter The best place on the island for a Sunday roast Cafè Poste, Grouville Modern British food with a little twist Ocean at The Atlantic Hotel, St Brelade The seasonal à la carte and a market menu that changes daily show off the island's produce at its best…

Suited and booted Shopping should be enjoyable, as well as a means to an end, and St Helier's gents' outfitter Brummells goes above and beyond to offer a unique retail experience. Out-of-hours opening and a complementary in-house tailoring service (with delivery to home, hotel or office) are perfect touches for the busy gent. Old-fashioned service means that Brummells spends time getting to know clients and what they want, and the company stocks many of our favourites, such as shoes by Crockett & Jones. The store even has a concierge service, to bring together the best in luxury that Jersey has to offer. Whether a high-end residence, an exquisite watch or a tailored suit-Brummells will make it happen (01534 510105; www.brummellsjersey.com) Starlight, star bright Jeweller Catherine Best has two shops…

Clean streets In 2016–17, local authorities dealt with more than a million fly-tipping incidents, two-thirds of which involved household waste, which was up 8% on the previous year The National Trust Some 100,000 invasive American signal crayfish have been burrowing into 250-year-old dams and banks surrounding lakes at Bath beauty spot Prior Park ( Country Life, May 16); repair works are set to cost the charity £2.2 million Medicine Jewell brooch by Elaine Day. In homage to the world’s largest order of insects, and perhaps the most under-appreciated, artists Amanda Lawrence and Elaine Day of the Gloucestershire Guild of Craftsmen have created a range of beetle-inspired jewellery and glass sculpture. ‘Beetle Mania’ runs from June 12 to August 5 at The Guild at 51, Cheltenham, Gloucestershire (…

ADEVON BELLE observation car, one of only two in existence, returned to the rails last month, 100 years after its construction and following a 16-month rebuild. The historic carriage took a return trip from Queen’s Park station in Paignton to Kingswear. It is now in daily service on the same line. The observation car started life in 1918 as an ambulance coach on the London & North Western Railway, but, four years later, it was transformed into a Pullman car. It was remodelled again in 1947 as an observation car with distinctively large windows for panoramic viewing. The car ran between London Waterloo and llfracombe in Devon until 1954, after which it was used in the London Midland region, north Wales and the Scottish Highlands. The Dartmouth Steam Railway &…

WHAT a difference a year makes. The spring of 2017 was so dry that many wildflowers struggled to reach their full potential and their presence passed almost unnoticed. Yet, 12 months on, thanks to all that rain and those late snowfalls, followed by weeks of warmth and sunshine, the countryside is putting on the most verdant display of luxuriant blooms and rich, green foliage. I don’t know whether it’s because I’ve never fully appreciated the true wonder of our flora before, but, latterly, I’ve been taken aback by the sheer volume of cow parsley frothing on verges, the pink campion peeping through all that white lace and pillows of hawthorn flowers laden on branches like snow. The conditions have made the grass grow like billy-ho, too—a farming friend says his…

SAMPHIRE, more properly sampiere, seems to be derived from petros, a rock, and hence easily associated with St Peter, the fishermen’s saint. The story is well known of the fishermen in 1821 who were driven ashore at Beachy Head and four only saved, while the rest were drowned. They had been washed ashore, but death appeared to be staring them in the face. One of them, happening to grasp a weed to hold himself on the rock, recognised it as samphire, and knowing that samphire is never submerged by the sea, he felt he could say to the waves “hitherto shalt thou go and no further”.…

DESPITE taking up much of a garden, a lawn doesn’t often attract our attention. However, a mown lawn has dark areas and light areas and there is meaning within each. Whenever anything moves over grass, it bends the blades in the direction of travel, creating different shades. The darker lines are where the mower has been moving towards our eyes, the lighter shade where it has been moving away, hence the stripes. Look at the groomed sports pitches on TV and you’ll see a crisscross pattern of four shades, the darkest where the mower has moved towards you, in both an up-down and left-right sense, and the lightest when the opposite is true, with two shades in between. Once we’re used to spotting this effect, we can tell how an…

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Matching Patron & Maker will be at Luke Hughes Furniture, 7, Savoy Court, The Strand, London WC2, until June 13, and then at Ossowski, 83, Pimlico Road, London SW1, June 22–29 (www.bit.ly/patronandmaker)This exhibition of work by members of the Master Carvers' Association includes six music stands (including Nemo Music Stand by Ben Harms, right) designed and carved for the Chippendale 300 celebrations. These will tour to various sites, such as Burton Constable Hall in East Yorkshire, where Quartet by poet Paul Munden will be performed. The chamber poem reflects on the designs, combining themes of earth, water, fire and air with the muses and myths. It was composed in collaboration with Jonathan Louth, architect and principal of ‘ArchiCantuor: Singing for the Architectural Heritage', which brings together professional and trained amateur…

THE last time we analysed the results of the ‘My Favourite Painting’ series was back in 2014. At that time, Pieter Bruegel the Elder (pronounced ‘Broygel’ in English, but ‘Broogle’ in Flemish) scored most often; now, he has been deposed by Rembrandt and Picasso. Here are the top 21 artists selected since the series began in January 2009: • Rembrandt/Picasso (9 each) • Titian (8) • Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Turner, Matisse (7) • Piero della Francesca, Vermeer, Velázquez (6) • Botticelli, Caravaggio, van Gogh, Sargent (5) • Carpaccio, Rubens, Stubbs, Caspar David Friedrich, Palmer, Manet, Monet, Rothko (4) Apart from Bruegel, the 15th-century artist Piero della Francesca is the most conspicuous post-2014 casualty. Notable improvers have been Velázquez, Botticelli, van Gogh and Sargent. Botticelli—so popular with our Victorian forebears,…

Fermob Luxembourg outdoor trolley, £519, Barbed (020–8878 1994; www.barbed.co.uk) Amlapura outdoor cobalt cushion, £49, Designers Guild (020–7351 5775; www.designersguild.com) Kensington garden lantern, £129, Jim Lawrence (01473 826685; www.jim-lawrence.co.uk) Beaufort double sun chaise, £25,500, McKinnon and Harris (020–7349 9085; www.mckinnonharris.com) Jubilee Spiral bench, £8,820, Gaze Burvill (01420 588444; www.gazeburvill.com) Yamakawa C317 chair, £695, The Conran Shop (0344 848 4000; www.conranshop.co.uk) Classic Natural 3.5m parasol, £258, Neptune (01793 427450; www.neptune.com) Keramas acrylic tumblers, set of four, £34, OKA (0333 004 2042; www.oka.com) Ivo coffee table, £800, Vincent Sheppard (00 32 5646 1111; www.vincentsheppard.com) Demi outdoor kitchen, £9,995, Indian Ocean (020–8675 4808; www.indian-ocean.co.uk)…

‘The first bay offers a combination of beauty and quirkiness: statues, obelisks and scale models’ THE Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Galleries at Westminster Abbey are just about to open in part of its 13th-century ‘triforium’ space. More than 300 objects will be on show in almost 10,000sq ft of formerly inaccessible ‘attic’ running around the eastern end in a horseshoe-shape, 70ft above the abbey floor. For the first time, the public will have access to a part of the church created for Henry III from about 1250. Complementing the views down the nave are highlights from the abbey’s collection that have been sensitively arranged by exhibition designers MUMA (McInnes, Usher, McKnight Architects), in a design that glories in a sense of place, at the same time as subtly referencing the…

THE Germans, with the Swiss Germans, arrived as I was mowing the lawn, which gave me a chance to show off in Kate’s hearing. You can generally speak simple German by simply putting on the accent. ‘Here is my book’, for instance, or ‘Give me a drink’ sound much the same in either language but, to impress, you need to get into the loftier expressions, such as die Gelegenheit or die verdruckte Königin. When I speak German, my voice drops an octave and I become, briefly, in Kate’s eyes, masterful and authoritative. I avoid streichholzschachtel, or matchbox, which is so hard to pronounce that it was used to unmask British spies during the Second World War. Not that we mentioned that; the immediate and obvious subject of discussion was the…

THROUGHOUT history, salt has been prized by any civilisation worth its… well, exactly. To be ‘worth one’s salt’ is to be worth one’s pay and the word ‘salary’ derives from the Latin salarium, the money that was given to Roman soldiers, supposedly to buy salt. With its food-preserving qualities, the stuff was indispensable before the age of modern refrigeration and bottomless supermarket supplies. It’s not surprising, therefore, that Iron Age clay salt pots used for boiling seawater have been unearthed on Jersey. What is surprising is that, apart from a period during the Second World War, when the island was occupied by German forces and food was scarce, Jersey’s modern sea-salt production has been a non-event. Until recently, that is. The idea for producing organic, solar-evaporated sea salt came to…

LAST month, Christie’s, New York, auctioned the most expensive collection ever sold, realising $832.6 million for charities. It belonged to David and Peggy Rockefeller, who had pursued a lifetime passion for American paintings, decorative arts and furniture, English and European furniture, Asian art and silver (Art Market, May 30). There were 69 dinner services. Does that sound excessive? Not, perhaps, to a real collector, for whom the concept of ample sufficiency holds little meaning. ‘Allow not Nature more than Nature needs, Man’s life’s as cheap as beast’s,’ rages King Lear. Collecting means different things to different people. The thrill of the chase, worship of beauty, compulsion to master territory, an urge to assemble sets, love of a bargain—all can be excellent motives. The simple need to furnish a home in…

Eggs and soldiers (or battalions) Waitrose is now stocking ostrich eggs from Lincolnshire. The size of bowling balls at about 8in tall, they take 50 minutes to boil and have to be cracked open with a hammer Lions and tigers As of last week, Scotland is the first UK nation to ban wild animals in circuses; the Government has indicated that a similar ban could be in place in England by 2020 and support is mounting in Wales, too Girl’s best friend De Beers, the London-based mining group that controls a third of the world's diamond market, has announced a plan to produce synthetic diamonds in Oxfordshire, despite its previous insistence on solely natural gems…

HATCHLANDS’S landscaped park by Humphry Repton is reason enough to visit in the 200th anniversary year of his death, but the National Trust is also marking the centenary of women’s suffrage to draw attention to the property’s lesser-known association with the Bluestocking Society. Hatchlands was built for military hero Admiral Edward Boscawen and his wife, Fanny Boscawen, in 1756. Frustrated by the exclusion of women from intellectual conversations and the obstacles to female education, Fanny became a founder member of the Bluestocking Society, a literary discussion group, for which she hosted events. The term ‘bluestocking’ reflected the emphasis on informality and serious talk, rather than fashion, and it eventually became synonymous with intellectual women. A series of bluestocking-themed events will run at Hatchlands over the year, including, on June 12,…

I THOUGHT it was sweet when a friend asked for my dog’s name in full (yes, he has a middle name) so she could post him some treats. But when I received a little red note through the door, telling me his parcel needed to be signed for, I felt a twinge of uneasiness. Dutifully, I queued at the Post Office collection point, pup in tow, fingers and paws crossed that there’d be a nice, sensible person at the desk, possibly with a sense of humour. My hopes were dashed. ‘Where’s his ID?’ I was asked, without even a glimmer of a smile. ‘We have the same surname and address,’ I replied, smiling sweetly enough for both of us, but I’m not as charming as I would like. ‘The ID…

Honeybees • A typical worker bee will only produce 1/12 of a teaspoon of honey in its lifetime • Honey contains natural preservatives and, therefore, never goes off. Archaeologists have found sealed pots in ancient Egyptian tombs, the contents of which are perfectly edible after 3,000 years • The average human adult could withstand some 1,000 bee stings before they proved fatal • Bees have two stomachs—one for digesting food and another for storing nectar to carry it back to the hive • Colonies consist of a queen, drones and worker bees. The queen’s function is to lay eggs and she will live for about three years. Drones are all male and are there to mate with the queen—they will die shortly after doing so or when they are ejected…

‘We mustn’t voice empathy with the losing team; they are the enemy and must be treated as such FOR mothers such as me, who have no innate interest in the game, but happen to have football-mad sons and thus know a great deal more about it than we would naturally be inclined to, the current fortnight represents a longed-for interlude. For two blissful weeks in early June—between the end of the football season and the start of the World Cup on the 14th—we can live our days without having to tread softly around the hopes and dreads of the males at the supper table. It’s impossible to say the right thing. ‘It’s only a game’ is not acceptable, ever. Nor is ‘Why are they sacking their manager yet again?’…

‘ It’s now deeply unfashionable to collect anything our grandparents would have chosen’ A PROVINCIAL auction house recently sold a four-volume first edition of George Eliot’s final novel, Daniel Deronda, published in 1876, in handsome contemporary black-calf bindings, for £140. For £50,000, rare-book dealers Peter Harrington is currently offering a first-edition, first-impression of Ian Fleming’s Casino Royale, of 1953. Eliot’s novel is of incomparably greater literary merit; its tooled and gilded bindings represent a level of skilled handcraftsmanship far in excess of a printed dust jacket. In collecting terms, Fleming is decidedly more fashionable than his erudite Victorian predecessor, the raffish Bond more sympathetic to 21st-century readers than Deronda with his gleaming virtue. Both market whim and cultural outlook are amply reflected in the novels’ disparity of price. The impact…

‘Nothing represents our glorious British summer quite like sweet and juicy strawberries’ More ways with strawberries Strawberry breakfast pots ( below ) Mix chopped strawberries with Greek yoghurt and spoon into dishes. In a frying pan, toast porridge oats with chopped almonds, pumpkin seeds and sunflower seeds. Once hot, drizzle over maple syrup, stir and sprinkle over the yoghurt and strawberries. This can be made the night before and served in the morning. Champagne strawberry trifle Soak strawberries in Champagne with a sprinkling of sugar. Divide between glass bowls and top with a layer of sponge fingers. Pour over creamy custard and decorate the tops with piped whipped cream, strawberries and mini meringues. Strawberry and peanut-butter bundt cake Mix together 250g of butter with 250g…

Ingredients 25 elderflower heads1kg granulated sugar30g citric acid Juice of an unwaxed lemon and a long strip of its peel1 litre simmering water Method After picking, remove the stems and put the flower heads in a pan with the sugar, citric acid, lemon peel and juice. Pour over the water and stir, then cover and leave in a cool, dark place for 24 hours, stirring occasionally, to ensure that the sugar dissolves. Strain through a double layer of muslin and decant into sterilised bottles.…

‘An artichoke and white wine, on a sunny day, is a pleasure’ SINCE ancient Greece, globe artichokes have been considered an aphrodisiac and it was thought that women shouldn’t eat them. I’d try the same line at home with Toblerones, but I’d be hit over the head with one. In these more enlightened times, my wife and daughter are as likely to demolish as many just-cooked artichokes as I on a summer’s evening, which is good, as I wouldn’t want to clear up the mess on my own. I can’t think of another food where you end up with more on your plate when you’ve finished than when you started. The succulent, sweet heart of the cooked, immature flowerhead sits deep within the spiky exterior: getting at it requires…

The Genuine Jersey mark is a guarantee of local provenance (www.genuinejersey.com). Take a look at: La Robeline Cider Company has lovingly revived Jersey's cider-making tradition-the drink was one of the island's largest exports in the 19th century. Slightly fizzy in the Normandy style, this tipple makes a nice pairing with local seafood (01534 487883; www.facebook.com/LaRobelineCider) Sue’s Fudge is a Great Taste Award winner and is made in small batches with organic milk, cream and butter from Jersey cows (07797 758446; www.suesfudge.co.uk) Sinclair Ceramics are created by Andrew Sinclair, who specialises in creating functional stoneware, hand-thrown teapots and boat sculptures inspired by his coastal surroundings (07797 731324; www.sinclairceramics.je) Manomara is a range of organic skincare products made from plant extracts and is free from petroleum synthetics, parabens and excess packaging. Its…

TO celebrate the 70th anniversary of the ‘i-SPY’ books, a limited edition of 500 badges will be given away to customers who complete their i-SPY guides. The iconic series started in 1948 and was originally sold in the Woolworths local to its creator, former headmaster and Big Chief i-SPY Charles Warrell. They were particularly popular among British children in the 1950s and 1960s; now, some 25 million copies have been sold worldwide and more than 50 i-SPY books are currently available. New guides this year include i-SPY at the shops, i-SPY garden birds, i-SPY butterflies and moths and i-SPY In the city (Collins, £2.99 each).…

WHEN a client entered the Hampton Court Village office of Hansons Auctioneers clutching two extremely rare Fabergé flowers wrapped in an old tea towel, Charles Hanson couldn’t believe his luck. He called it ‘the holy grail of what an auctioneer can expect only in their wildest of dreams’. Created by Fabergé in Imperial Russia (about 1907–10), the flowers are expected to fetch up to £500,000 when they go to auction on June 11. One depicts a barberry bush with purpurine berries and jade leaves on an engraved gold stem, within a carved rock-crystal vase appearing to be half full of water. The other is a morning-glory blossom on a jade jardinière and aventurine-quartz stand, with gold, enamelled flowers, inset with diamond ‘dewdrops’, and leaves of Siberian jade nephrite. Only about…

THIS year marks the 60th anniversary of the Game Fair and, as part of the celebrations, the organisers have tracked down a photograph of the founder, the late Nigel Gray, at the first fair in 1958. The black-and-white photograph (right) will be on display at this year’s event, at Ragley Hall in Warwickshire, from Friday, July 27 to Sunday, July 29. It’s a little-known fact that the Game Fair came about because gamekeepers who used to gather on the second day of Crufts for the gundogs wanted a festival of their own. Gray, who was employed at a forerunner of the Game & Wildlife Conservation Trust at the time, came up with the idea. The Country Landowners’ Association (as the CLA was then) agreed to sponsor it and the Game…

Quiz of the week 1) In which part of the human body would you find the malleus, incus and stapes? 2) In which country was the inventor Alexander Graham Bell born? 3) The evergreen climbing shrub Hedera helix is commonly known as what? 4) Which stick-and-ball game employs a leather-covered ball called a sliotar? 5) Who composed the opera Carmen ? Time to buy Unmissable events Exhibition June 6–30 ‘Morning Light, Spring in Knoydart and South Skye’, The Manse, Ardvasar, Isle of Skye. Studio exhibition of the latest works by William Swann, who completes much of his paintings en plein air (01471 844403; www.wjswann-art.com) June 9–July 21 Martin Greenland, New Ashgate Gallery, Farnham, Surrey. ‘Beautifully detailed, highly realistic yet surreal' landscape paintings by the award-winning Lake District-based artist (www.newashgate.org.uk;…

A few weeks ago, I attended a retrospective of a Chilean Cabernet-based wine that became famous in 2004, when its 2001 vintage outperformed Château Lafite 2000 and Château Margaux 2001 at a blind-tasting in Berlin. This was Viña Seña from the Aconcagua Valley, originally a collaboration between Robert Mondavi and Eduardo Chadwick of Errázuriz. Since 2005, it has been wholly owned by the modest and impressive Sr Chadwick. Why you should be drinking it As is the case with all great or potentially great wines, Viña Seña comes from exceptional land-in this case, vineyards one ridge away from the Pacific, cooled by sea breezes, where Cabernet Sauvignon and Carménère ripen late. The aim is obviously to produce a wine of elegance and refinement rather than full-throttle power. The elegance…

Empty-nest syndrome I HAVE lived at Burrow Farm for more than 90 years and we have always had large numbers of swallows and martins nesting. The swallows arrived at their usual time, which was April 7. Sadly, for the first time, no martins (above) have arrived. I would like to know if anyone else has noticed the absence of these lovely birds? Donald Darby, Somerset The writer of the letter of the week will win a bottle of Pol Roger Brut Réserve Champagne Those so-and-sos ONTINUING on from Flora Watkins’s article ‘Talking C like a native’ (May 9), I am frequently distracted when listening to current-affairs radio programmes, at the beginning of an expert’s answer, by the use of ‘so’. I categorise this person as…

‘The minister famously said that if a few buildings were lost, she could easily make good the gaps’ BRITAIN came late to the identification and protection of historic buildings: the listing of places of ‘special architectural and historic interest’ began in 1947. The effectiveness of the process sprung from one simple phrase in the Act: ministers had not only a power, but a duty to list historic buildings. As a result, when the first—inevitably hasty—survey in England was complete in 1967 (in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, listing was done separately), a more thorough re-survey began, increasingly taking in 19th-century architecture in cities, as well as industrial and farm buildings. In the late 1970s, fierce Government cuts led to a fall in listing and a reduction in the number of…

‘I see this painting every day when I do my rounds of the gallery. I am tempted to run my fingers across the surface of the paint to feel if it is as smooth as the miraculously rendered silk cloak. Cover the right side of his face and Loredan appears serious, as befits a Renaissance doge. Cover the left side, and you sense a kindly bonhomie. Bellini knew how to make his people seem alive. I love paintings by elderly artists, eloquent with accumulated skill and a lifetime’s experience. Dürer said of Bellini shortly afterwards: “He is very old, and yet he is the best painter of all” ’ THE Most Serene Republic of Venice was founded in 697. The office of chief magistrate or leader of the republic,…

‘Cow-flop, dead man’s bells, witches’ gloves: no plant has more pseudonyms than the foxglove’ THE bright child’s protest deserves an explanation. It’s straightforward—both fox and glove are original Anglo-Saxon words and a legend from those distant times told how sympathetic fairies gave Reynard the blossoms of the plant to wear on his toes to muffle his approach to his prey. The legend endured through the ages, although a persistent youngster might be further informed that, in succeeding centuries, as folk medicine developed, so did regional names. Fairy fingers, ladies’ thimbles, rabbit flowers, throatwort, flapdock, cow-flop, lusmore, lionsmouth, Scotch mercury, dead man’s bells, witches’ gloves—more than 30 are recorded. No plant attracted more pseudonyms than the foxglove. Dead man’s bells rang a warning of the toxic nature of the foxglove, because…

The box tree moth, Cydalima perspectalis, is a recent alien import and a serious pest of Buxus plants. It's very active in the London area, but is now spreading. Eggs are laid by the brown-margined white moths and the resulting green-and-black caterpillars devastate plants within days. Pheromone traps and garden pesticides are inadequate. The only effective cure is Bacillus thuringiensis var Kurstaki, now widely available online and sold as Di-Pel or Topbuxus XenTari. Follow instructions and repeat fortnightly through the season to break the cycle of new hatchings. Your box plants will recover rapidly.…

MY team will forever remember our fateful 2017 Gold Cup semi-final. Comfortably leading the match, both pairs sat the same direction in the seventh stanza (of eight boards) out of eight. We both had very good sets and thought the match was as good as over, but, of course, the results were cancelled and we had to play the set again. You can guess the rest. Like a burst balloon versus a recharged battery back from the dead, we dribbled away points and lost the match by one imp, a brutal result compounded by a (dubious) slow play fine. Ah well —it’s only a card game. Here’s a very fortuitous slam from earlier in the match. A Club lead by West would have ended declarer’s chances, but West chose a…