Innholdsfortegnelse for 06-Mar-2019 i Country Life

Salad days The rare Sutton beefsteak tomato, which has ivory-coloured flesh, has been rescued from extinction by the charity Garden Organic Literature The Booker Prize is secure for five years as Crankstart, a charity run by venture capitalist Sir Michael Moritz and his wife, Harriet Heyman, has agreed to sponsor it Doing the right thing Glastonbury has announced a ban on single-use plastic bottles; its 175,000 festival-goers are urged to bring reusable bottles and refill them at ‘hundreds of free water taps’ Bad week for Village people Midhurst, West Sussex, is in uproar over the proposed sale of Victorian Dunford House by the YMCA, to whom it was gifted on the condition it be used for educational purposes Privacy The pastel-hued houses of Notting Hill and Kensington have been besieged…

Quiz of the week 1) Other than The Queen, who is featured on the polymer £10 note put into circulation in 2017? 2) In bingo, ‘garden gate’ is the call for which number? 3) Fox terrier Montmorency takes part in a boating holiday in which novel? 4) Diptera is an order of winged insects commonly known as what? 5) Who composed the opera Così fan tutte ? Time to buy Ultravid HD-Plus Customised binoculars, from £1,850, Leica (020–7629 1351; www.leicastore-uk.co.uk) Little Sunshine puppy welcome basket, £229, Mungo & Maud (020–7022 1207; www.mungoandmaud.com) Carousel tin with vanilla fudge and English toffee, £11.99, Churchill’s Confectionery (020–8207 1234; https://churchillsconfectionery.co.uk) Unmissable events Photography March 16–19 The Photography Show ( above ), The NEC Birmingham, Marston Green. Both amateurs and…

These powerful and ageworthy wines are great bargains, reveals Harry Eyres One of my most pleasant wine surprises of 2019 came when I opened a dusty bottle languishing near the bottom of my wine rack. I assumed this bin-end 1967 Dão Grão Vasco would be decades past its best, but no: it combined a fragrant core of ripe fruit with lovely, structuring acidity. Nowadays, you’re more likely to come across fresh and fruity Portuguese reds from the Ribatejo and Alentejo further south. Historically important Dão still suffers from a dowdy image and the Douro remains best known for Port, despite considerable investment and achievements in table wine. Why you should be drinking them The same grapes that go to make Port, especially Touriga Nacional and Tinta Roriz, are eminently…

READING Athena’s commentary on the Franco-Italian spat over Leonardo da Vinci (February 6), one can feel rather gratified to live in a country in which The Queen is able to lend a sufficient number of Leonardo drawings to fill 12 simultaneous exhibitions across the UK. Bear in mind that he was at least as good a draughtsman as he was a painter and there’s a further exhibition of 200 of the master’s drawings coming up in May at The Queen’s Gallery. Let the French and Italians fight it out while we enjoy the riches.…

BUILDINGS are so very much like people,’ says Sir Donald Insall. ‘They all have their own characters, their own strengths and weaknesses, their own message, their own background in terms of the influences that have made them. People change throughout their lives—so does a building.’ Born in 1926, Sir Donald began his career when conservation was regarded as ‘a bit odd—not part of everyday planning’. After architectural training at Bristol and a scholarship to the Royal Academy School, he won the Lethaby Scholarship from the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings. That fired his imagination, but, in the late 1950s, an interest in old houses seemed antiquarian. ‘Nice to meet you, but when will your father be coming?’ asked the builder on one early job. After working for Claud…

The first printed recipe for a soufflé appeared in chef Vincent La Chapelle’s book Le Cuisinier Moderne in 1742 In the late 1700s, Antoine Beauvilliers helped to popularise the soufflé at Paris’s first smart restaurant, La Grande Taverne de Londres. His book L’Art du Cuisinier (1814) contained several soufflé recipes Marie-Antoine Carême, the first ‘celebrity’ chef, perfected the modern soufflé, publishing his recipe in Le Pâtissier Royal Parisien in 1815. He made them in stiff pastry casings with straight sides, creating the model for today’s soufflé dishes Soufflés appeared in British recipe books from about 1813. In her book Taste: The Story of Britain through its Cooking, Kate Colquhoun writes: ‘Getting them to the table before they collapsed back on to themselves…

‘At last, the pretty pink blush of rhubarb has arrived!’ More ways with rhubarb Rhubarb curd Put eight chopped stalks of rhubarb into a saucepan with 200g granulated sugar and 120ml water. Bring to a boil and then simmer until the rhubarb has softened and entirely lost its form. Add a good squeeze of lemon and set aside to cool a little. In a separate bowl, whisk together two eggs and two egg yolks. Add a little of the warm (but not hot) rhubarb to the eggs, whisking continuously, and then pour the egg mixture into the remainder of the rhubarb in the saucepan, still whisking. Return to the heat and keep stirring until thickened. Pour into a clean jar and refrigerate until ready to use. Rhubarb-curd and rosemary…

Perfect pruning The pruning of shrubs can appear to some an arcane mystery, but a good place to begin is with our old friend Buddleja davidii. This flowers on the current season’s growth, so we can hew away at it knowing it will flower abundantly more or less whatever we do. A large shrub will require secateurs, loppers and a curved banana saw (which only cuts on the pull). In removing big lengths, it’s wise to do so in sections. Cut cleanly back to a framework of a trunk and shoots facing in various directions. The resulting debris burns instantly.…

AND so to BADA (as Pepys would surely have said), at Duke of York’s Square, Chelsea, SW3, where this year’s fair will run from March 20 to 26, with about 100 top exhibitors. My impression is that there will be a wider range of art on offer than in the past, without compromising on quality or tipping the balance too far from the old in favour of the new. Indeed, the strength of dealers in such traditional areas as furniture (of all colours) should confirm—or otherwise—signs of the market recovery that have been noted for some time. ‘The Duchess of Marlborough called Moore her “oracle” who has “good sense”’ Furniture could not be more colourful than the early-18th-century red-lacquer cabinet on its gilt-wood stand to be shown by Frank…

IT’S approved for blondes, of course, but leggy’s the devil in seedlings. It’s almost as bad as damping off. Two hundred seedlings, in tiny coir pots, are sitting in plastic trays under the dining-room window. I’d studied the seed catalogues through the long winter months, Googled permaculture 20 times and drawn rings around the peas and the lettuces I wanted. I even got in an early order for agretti, the Italian salad crop my friend Simon grew—well, he did before it became so fashionable and the seed so rare as to be unobtainable. Slightly fleshy like samphire, but shaped like a grass, it’s known as barba di frate, or monk’s beard, in Italian; its English name, saltwort, is a reminder that it grows well by the coast. Worked into a…

THE rich have very sensitive ears, according to the property website Move IQ. Kensington and Chelsea residents made nearly 35,000 noise complaints in the past three years, more than 10 times the national average. The Outer Hebrides received 48 over the same period, Clackmannanshire and Mid Devon councils 102 and 185 respectively. There may be a pattern here. Some rich people seem to punish each other by making more racket, yet simultaneously have higher expectations of privacy. Last month, residents of a block of flats next to Tate Modern lost their case in the High Court against the art gallery, whose new viewing platform allows visitors to look into their rooms. They should have taken a warning from the next-door block, built by the Manhattan Loft Corporation—Manhattan is the poster…

SPRING was everywhere in Cornwall. The magnolias, azaleas and camellias hung exquisitely on the hills around Caerhays Castle, scenting the valley with a heady perfume. The delightful walk from slumbering St Mawes to the harbour churchyard of St Just in Roseland (described by John Betjeman as the most beautiful in the world) had hills of golden gorse to one side and a gently corrugated sea to the other. The rookery beside the 13th-century church was full of temper and cawing as the black corvids stole nest sticks from each other. Rooks are early sitters, so they can hatch their young in time to feed them on the eggs and chicks of songbirds. A peacock butterfly, awakened from hibernation by the warmth, fluttered along the beach, pausing to soak up energy…

ETON, which has its own game of football, and Radley, playing, as a rule, the Association game, met a few days since for the first time at Rugby football, when the smaller school won a highly meritorious victory. It is a capital thing that Rugby football should thus afford a friendly means of meeting to schools. It is a pity, however, that it should sometimes suffer from too much zeal on the part of its advocates. ‘A Headmaster’ writing in the Times went so far as to declare that an analysis of young officers who won the Military Cross or ‘died in an act of brilliant leadership’ during the war would show that the ‘lion’s share of the honour’ belonged to Rugby football players. Does he really mean to say…

Sweet dreams are made of this QI have always enjoyed the ability to conk out as soon as my head touches the pillow, so an ongoing bout of insomnia is driving me to distraction—I’m not sure I’m safe to be driving each morning. I’m loath to turn to pills. Have you any less drastic suggestions? L. K., Cornwall A For heaven’s sake, you live—like me—in Cornwall. Sea air is, for me, as it is for our narcoleptic houseguests, more effective than a sledgehammer. No, my lover, your problem is that you’re driving to work. Why not paddleboard instead? Or, like Ross Poldark, saddle up and gallop across our tumultuous cliffs? A spot of scything, if it doesn’t immediately do the trick, will render you so alluring to passers-by that…

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ATHENA has just returned from a short visit to Manchester. The city art gallery is a particular favourite of hers, not least because its magnificent entrance portico and hall carry her mind back to the glories of Athens as she distantly remembers it. One aspect of her visit jarred. Manchester Art Gallery has an impressive collection of medieval, Renaissance and 17th-century paintings, yet, for many years, the permanent display has begun with the 18th century. Athena asked after these paintings at the information desk and was told that, if there was something in particular she wished to see, it would be possible to make an appointment with the curator to see it. That seems fair enough, yet there was a deep irony here, because, well visited as the galleries were,…

Where is your favourite place in Britain? Home at Kew Green, with sunshine on the cricket Music? Shostakovich Book? The Oxford English Dictionary , for its definitions and derivations Food? Yoghurt at breakfast, fresh fruit Holiday? Getting lost in Venice or a weekend with my wife, in a good hotel next to a major cathedral Dinner guest? Patrick Geddes, biologist and planner Who is your hero? As a same-vintage, world-conscious environmentalist and achiever, Sir David Attenborough…

I HOPE, like me, you saw the Burne-Jones exhibition at Tate Britain this winter. The jewel-like colours in his major works—The Love Song, Laus Veneris, The Rose Bower, Love among the Ruins —and the calm, beautiful girls (modelled on real people) tripping down The Golden Stairs took my breath away. Those distinctive Pre-Raphaelite profiles, rich settings and powerful use of symbolism speak of a new generation of artists developing a philosophy for art, design and politics that snapped at the Establishment’s heels. Burne-Jones was far from destined for greatness. Born plain Edward Jones in 1833 in Birmingham, his was a poor family (his father a framer, his mother dead within a week of his birth). He escaped from this unpromising start because he was a clever child, winning a place…

In 1899, the first recorded yellow labrador was born, named Ben of Hyde, belonging to the kennel of Maj C. J. Radclyffe. It’s likely he was fox-red or certainly a very dark yellow At a time when black labradors reigned supreme, George VI was known for his preference for yellows—both as gundogs and as pets—and bred them at Sandringham. There are some wonderful photographs, taken in the 1920s, of the monarch and his wife with their beloved dark-yellow and fox-red dogs That a light-cream labrador was cast in the role of Lord Grantham’s gundog in Downton Abbey, set in 1912, remains an unforgiveable historical inaccuracy —not only were the pale labradors not yet in existence at that time, but yellow labradors in general would have been extremely unusual gundogs Call…

• Most magnolias require a well-drained acid soil • M. stellata, M. kobus, M. wilsonii and M. grandiflora are among the species that will grow in alkaline soils and even in chalk if they’re treated with trace minerals to combat chlorosis • Choose plants that are in scale with the space available in your garden • Magnolias don’t require pruning, unless they’ve become too large, in which case, light pruning is best after they’ve flowered in the case of deciduous cultivars or in spring for evergreen species, such as M. grandiflora • Severe pruning to regenerate a magnolia is best done in late winter and is usually effective • Magnolias are generally unaffected by pests and diseases…

Gardening with the Tudors MEMBERS of the public are invited to take part in a two-week dig at Sudeley Castle, Gloucestershire, this May, in the hopes of unearthing one of the last surviving Tudor gardens in England, which has been hidden for 300 years. The dig has the support of author and historian Philippa Gregory, who encourages those who are not able to take part to contribute to the crowdfunded initiative. ‘Even those who can’t attend in person will be able to watch live events from the dig online, including my talk,’ she says. Experts have already discovered that a mound in a field on the 1,200-acre Cotswold estate is where a temporary banqueting house once stood, which housed one of Elizabeth I’s celebrations of her victory over the…

AS we returned home from half-term, the first thing we discovered in the house was a mouse. It scuttled across the bedroom floor, where it had been chewing away on a bag of clothes. To judge from the mess, it had really enjoyed a week of housesitting in complete peace and quiet (possibly with friends). We’ve occasionally had such visits before and the experience of trying to deal with them has instilled in me a strong dislike for fellow mice of the town. They seem to emerge from nowhere and defy every attempt to catch them. How unlike those decent, honest and upstanding country mice, who, in my experience, attack Cheddar on a trap with hearty—and fatal—relish. So far, this mouse (and his friends, if he has them) has eluded…

Agatha Christie • The majority of her fictional murders involved poisoning, for which she drew on her training as an apothecary’s assistant in Torquay during the First World War. She became such an expert that pathologists are said to have consulted her books to check symptoms. • In 1922, the author learnt to surf in South Africa and went on to surf in Hawaii. • Her second husband, Sir Max Mallowan, was an archaeologist and she accompanied him on excavations of the ancient ruins of Iraq and Syria. • She wrote in her autobiography that the two things that excited her most in her life were dining with The Queen at Buckingham Palace and driving her grey, bottle-nosed Morris Cowley. • Her novels are believed to have sold in excess…

1876 In Boston, on March 10, Alexander Graham Bell made the very first phone-call. He said ‘Mister Watson, come here, I want to see you’ to his assistant, who was in the next room. Four years later, Bell stated, to widespread incredulity: ‘One day, there will be a telephone in every major city in the USA.’ In 1892, he inaugurated the New York-Chicago line (left) 1891 The first international call was made on April 1. Special booths were installed around London for people who wished to make a call to Paris, although the infrastructure could only support two people making calls simultaneously across the Channel 1936 Costing tuppence from a public phone-box and a mere penny from a home telephone, the Speaking Clock made its debut, boasting that it was…

Unibet Champion Hurdle Challenge (Tuesday) It’s due to go to an Irish mare for the first time since Dawn Run. Everyone raved about Apple’s Jade after she won the Irish Champion Hurdle, but conveniently forgot Laurina, unbeaten in two seasons for Willie Mullins. Espoir D’Allen, J. P. McManus’s second string with Gavin Cromwell, could be an interesting outsider and, unlike the mares, is a more specialist two-miler. Betway Queen Mother Champion Steeple Chase (Wednesday) All things being equal, it’ll be Altior first, the rest nowhere. He has it all: speed, scope, accuracy and a jockey (Nico de Boinville) with a cool head. Nicky Henderson’s charge hit a flat spot after the third last a year ago, but still finished like a steam train. Lady Buttons, trained by Philip Kirby, isn’t…

ONE beauty of the countryside is that we can get away from all the noise and intrusion of the increasingly technology-focused world we live in. However, there’s no need to go off the grid fully and there are many smartphone apps that can bolster the life of a countryman—here are our top 10. Good Pub Guide 2019, by Random House £4.99 Released each year, this app has information on more than 25,000 pubs around the UK, 5,000 of which are independently reviewed. You’ll never be caught thirsty again thanks to the pub-plotter feature, which allows you to search along your route for nearby watering holes. Tractive GPS Pet Finder, by Tractive Free (user needs Tractive GPS Tracker products) Have you ever been curious about where your dog goes every evening…

BEANS are the nearest we get to the mythical self-refilling pint. Start them well and do the few essentials—of which more in a moment—and you will be awash with beans that not only keep on coming, but are far superior in flavour, texture and variety to those in the shops. Entering this leguminous Nirvana, the first thing to remember is that it takes no more effort or expense to grow the most delicious bean than the least pleasing, so choose your varieties well: grow a bland variety well and it will still be bland. The rest is simple: just give your beans the few things they need at the right time. All legumes require a good start in life, so don’t stifle their desire for a long root run.…

THE European Championships occur every two years. They are arguably the toughest event in the world calendar to win, tougher even than the World Championships for which the top eight teams in the Europeans qualify. As one member of the England sextet, we headed off last June to a chilly Ostend to play a full round-robin against the other 32 competing European countries. Our first deal from Ostend was an outrageously fortunate grand slam. West knew dummy held a void Heart so led a Club, normal to lead a passive trump verses a grand slam. Declarer won dummy’s ten and called for the ten of Diamonds. In a moment he’ll wish to forget, East covered with the Knave (as I’m sure declarer was not planning to run the ten). Declarer…