Innholdsfortegnelse for 09-Jun-2021 i Country Life

A day at the races Royal will be a Government pilot event to research can again, which means 12,000 people can attend each day Victory at last! An 1815 figurehead from Nelson's Trafalgar flagship HMS Victory that was accidentally sawn to pieces in 2009 (mistaken for a modern replica) has been restored and is on display in Portsmouth Buzzy buses The 479 bus stops of Leicester will soon be topped with ‘living roof' shelters covered in bee-friendly plants for biodiversity-a multimillion-pound project funded and managed by Clear Channel UK Hitting the sauce Heinz Ketchup could be produced in the UK again for the first time since 1999, after Kraft Heinz revealed its plan to invest £140m into Wigan plant Kitt Green…

LAST weekend, we decided to make the most of the sunshine and cross London by bicycle to visit friends for lunch. The decision was not popular with the children, but we eventually negotiated a route with the help of a travel app. Unfortunately, diversions onto quiet roads, and a few wrong turns, massively extended the anticipated journey to a round trip of more than 20 miles. It says a lot for the quality of our reception, which included a copious supply of lemonade, a delicious meal and excellent company, that the children grudgingly admitted—despite a steady flow of complaints and accusatory variations on the question ‘are we nearly there yet?’ —that the trip had been worthwhile. As the children grow up, the less inclined they are to show the slightest…

Palace of the Drowned, Christine Mangan (Little Brown, £14.99) Frances, a writer suffering a major comedown after the success of her first novel-something unlikely to happen to Christine Mangan, previously author of the enthralling Tangerine-is staying in Venice, at the time of the 1966 flooding, to recover from a devastating review and a humiliation at The Savoy. She is befriended by Gilly, apparently a deranged fan, but, as the murky waters swirl, it's hard to tell who in this dark psychological thriller, which has echoes of du Maurier, is the maddest.…

Spiced cinnamon Château Courac, Laudun Blanc, Côtes du Rhône Villages, France 2019. £12.95, Mr Wheeler, alc 14% A hidden white Rhône gem made from Viogner, Roussanne, Marsanne and Grenache Blanc. Layered and well made, with freshness and depth of flavour. Tropical aromas and baked apple, peach, white flowers and spiced cinnamon on the palate. Pair with lamb chops Château Ksara, Old Vine Carignan, Bekaa Valley, Lebanon 2018. £12.95, The Wine Society, alc 13% New , modern red from Lebanon's oldest winery is Château Ksara's first vintage of single-varietal Carignan, a grape typically found in France and Spain. Aged in concrete, there's no oak influence, only focused, lively red fruit with an attractive herbal twist. Good purity, good acidity and great freshness. Would pair well with lamb chops. A…

DESPITE my birthplace in the Mississippi Delta and my early years in schools whose teachers tried hard to educate the children in the poorest state in the Union, I reckon I had a head start when I arrived in Suffolk as the bride of a farmer. White children in the Deep South were taught that America owed everything to English literature, English history and English law. As soon as we could recite the Ten Commandments and Psalm 23 by heart, we latched on to Wordsworth, Shelley and Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Our valiant teachers believed it was their bounden duty to civilise us and the most likely way to achieve that was to Anglicize us. The early emphasis on kings and queens and daffodils meant the native Choctaws and Chickasaws whose…

Considering that Polonius, counsellor to Hamlet's father, was a conniving busybody whose spying tendencies got him killed, leading to the wonderfully ham ‘Oh! I am slain!', he was given some of the wisest, most enduring lines ‘Neither a borrower nor a lender be, for loan oft loses both itself and friend, and borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry’ ‘The apparel oft proclaims the man' ‘To thine own self be true, and it must follow, as the night the day, thou cans’t not then be false to any man’ ‘Brevity is the soul of wit' ‘Though this be madness, yet there is method in it’…

1 Manx shearwaters on Skomer A TINY island off the Pembrokeshire coast boasts the largest breeding colony of Manx shearwaters (Puffinus puffinus) in the world; they arrive in March from South America. When the bird was first scientifically recorded, in 1676 on the Calf of Man, it was known as the Manx puffin for its plump shape and, like puffins, which are also prolific on Skomer, they nest in burrows to avoid predation by gulls. The shearwater’s physiognomy (with its legs set far back on the body) is organised for graceful swimming and flying, not walking, and its slow waddle makes the bird vulnerable. A summer-evening boat cruise from Martin’s Haven is the prime viewing time although, ironically, it is rough weather that will bring the birds out. An overnight…

The South of England Show, Ardingly, West Sussex, takes place on June 11–13 (www.seas.org.uk) Where is your favourite place in Britain? The hills and moors of the North of England, from North Yorkshire up through the Cheviots and into the Borders. They’re uniquely wonderful and wild Who is your hero? NFU president Minette Batters —she fought like a tigress to get the farmers the [Brexit] deal they did Book? Barchester Towers (Anthony Trollope) or Mr Facey Romford’s Hounds (R. S. Surtees) Music? Military music—the standard of music at the Duke of Edinburgh’s funeral was quite extraordinary…

MANY are convinced that the moon’s cycle affects their mood, sleep patterns and dreams, and there are some claims it affects crime levels, too—although the jury’s out on that. One thing it certainly does affect is the tide, which can be more predictable than some people’s moods. Two high and two low tides occur daily around Britain, building up to a maximum and dropping to a minimum twice a month. The tides with the biggest difference between high and low water are called springs (just after every full and new moon, when the sun, moon and earth are in line) and those with the smallest are neaps (when the moon is in the first or third quarter, when the sun, earth and moon form a right angle).…

• Greek mythology describes beacons being used to tell of the fall of Troy: according to Agamemnon, news of the city's defeat was transmitted from there to Argos-320 miles-in a single night • Beacons were placed around England's coastline on December 31, 1981, to signal the start of the English Tourist Board's Maritime England project. The first was lit at Great Yarmouth by Lord Nelson, the direct descendant of Admiral Horatio Nelson. Beacons were used again in October 2005, in celebration of the bicentenary of the Battle of Trafalgar • In 1995, beacons marked the 50th anniversary of VE Day, but any plans to commemorate the 75th anniversary, in May 2020, were thwarted • November 2018 saw 1,000 Beacons of Light lit throughout the UK and UK overseas territories in…

SINGING voices go in and out of fashion. Although they were both consummate artists, to today’s ears, the Scottish soprano Isobel Baillie (1895–1983) might sound sweet and clear, if small and narrow in focus, whereas Clara Butt (1892–1936), all 6ft 2in of her, had an enormous range, but made what now come over as very obvious gear changes between chest voice and upper register. In the world of classical singing, there are many different voice types, but, in general, they divide in the operatic context into sopranos and mezzo-sopranos, tenors and counter-tenors, baritones and basses. In choral repertoire, the division is simplified to SATB (sopranos, altos, tenors and basses). Beyond these are trebles—usually boy sopranos before puberty—and contraltos, the lowest range of female voice. Subtly different and specialist voices identified…

1904 Cecil Walter Hardy is born on January 14, to timber merchant and amateur actor Ernest Beaton and his wife, Etty 1915 Given his first camera, a Box Brownie, having learnt photography from his nurse, Alice Collard (Ninnie) April 1924 First photograph in Vogue, of fellow Cambridge student George Rylands as the Duchess of Malfi 1927 First solo exhibition, at the Cooling Gallery, sponsored by Osbert Sitwell 1928 First visit to America 1930 Publishes The Book of Beauty 1939 Summoned to Buckingham Palace to photograph Princess Elizabeth 1942 Publishes Winged Squadrons, a book of photographs of wartime Britain 1972 Knighted 1980 Dies on January 18…

• Lovespoon Workshop (01834 812152; www.thelovespoon workshop.com) The business is run by Dai ‘Lovespoons' Thomas and his father, Thomas ‘the Woodcarver' Thomas, who has been making bespoke lovespoons since 1969 • Angel Woodcrafts (01443 480138; www.angelwoodcraft.co.uk) Founded in 1985 by Paul Curtis, who carved his first spoon after a visit to master craftsman Gwyndaf Breese, who taught him all about lovespoons • Adam King (07761 596616; www.adamking.co.uk) Hand-carved bespoke lovespoons, from dragons and hearts to cats chasing mice • Tim Bowen Antiques (01267 267122; www.timbowenantiques.co.uk) This furniture and folk-art specialist in Carmarthenshire has some exceptional antique examples…

LONG ago, we lived in Selborne, a Hampshire village famous for its massy graveyard yew, its beech hangers and the Revd Gilbert White, the first great English naturalist. One of the perks of life there was free access to his house, The Wakes, now a museum, with a large garden where our firstborn son could crawl on a nice clean lawn, free of the chicken droppings of home. White lived quietly here all his life and the museum, struggling to find enough paraphernalia to display, gives space to a small, unrelated exhibition dedicated to Capt Lawrence ‘Titus’ Oates, he of the polar expedition and the noble exit. Oates and White make a slightly odd couple, but, like many economical bachelor set ups, it has grown comfortable over time and lets…

THE return of National Garden Scheme (NGS) openings is definitely a factor in our hopes for a summer far better than 2020’s, which brought about a hiatus for the scheme for the first time in nearly 90 years (Town & Country, April 14). This year’s 3,500-strong leafy throng includes 358 newcomers, of which five are returning favourites. In Shropshire, Elizabethan Pitchford Hall was one of the original openers in 1927 and has not been seen for 29 years. ‘When Pitchford Hall was reunited with the Pitchford estate in 2016, we moved back into a house that had essentially been abandoned for a quarter of a century,’ explains owner James Nason. ‘Like the house, the garden and grounds were in a poor state, but, after five years of hard work, we…

Picking flowers Giant hogweed has been spotted in quite a few parks and gardens. Known as Britain's most dangerous plant, it looks a little like enormous cow parsley, grows near water and has a toxic sap that, when touched, causes blistering burns Architectural purists Experts say the 316ft-tall tower of Big Ben is perfect for biomass energy and could be turned into a living building, harvesting crops such as corn and soy City living Some 44% of Britons find urban living less appealing since the pandemic, 10% have already moved out of cities and 24% will no longer commute into town for work Bug splats Buglife has launched an app-Bugs Matter-to track bug splats on car number plates, after a Kent study found a worrying decline of 50%…

Quiz of the week 1) In which sport do matches typically consist of six chukkas? 2) Which actor first played the BBC's Doctor Who? 3) Extra Hot, Lemon & Herb, Garlic BBQ, Plain…ish and PERi-Tamer are spice options at which chain restaurant? 4) On which mountain would you find the highest point above global mean sea level? 5) How many keys are there on a piano? Word of the week Ustulate (adjective) Burnt or scorched 1) Polo 2) William Hartnell 3) Nando’s 4) Everest 5) 88 Time to buy Pink Grapefruit & Cucumber Gin, £34, Masons of Yorkshire (01677 426467; www.masonsofyorkshire.com) Rainbow Lacquered Ice Bucket, £285, Matilda Goad (www.matildagoad.com) Set of 4 Pewter Tablecloth Weights, £18.95, Glyndebourne (01273 815033; www.glyndebourneshop.com) Let’s go outside Findon Place, near Worthing, West Sussex. June…

For he’s a very good fellow LORENZO GIUNTINI (1843–1920), whose splendid neo-Jacobean ceiling at Athelhampton, Dorset, you illustrate (‘The lure of history’, May 26), was an artist of some versatility. From 1883–85, he accompanied the Maya archaeologist Alfred Maud-slay to Guatemala and Honduras to cast monuments of ancient Maya kings, the largest at 33ft high. The sculptures needed multiple moulds and four tons of plaster of Paris. Giuntini was ‘a very good fellow and does not grumble’, Maudslay wrote. Two of his superb casts flank the British Museum’s Mexican Gallery. Giuntini also worked for Brucciani’s in Bloomsbury, creating much of the V&A’s Cast Court. Norman Hammond, Cambridgeshire Shining a light on Skerryvore AS a fan of lighthouses, ‘Let your love light shine’ (May 26) was an enjoyable read, made all…

LAST month Jesus College, Cambridge, submitted an application to remove the funerary monument of Tobias Rustat (d. 1693), a fine portrait roundel attributed to Grin-ling Gibbons (page 166), from its chapel. Rustat gave the college one of its largest ever benefactions in 1671 and his monument is a presiding artistic treasure of this outstanding interior. The inscription notes Rustat’s faithful service to Charles II and his many charitable benefactions. It makes no reference, however, to his association with the Royal African Company, which was involved in slavery on a large scale. The submission cites the Church of England’s advice on monuments—the subject of our May 26 Leader—arguing that the chapel needs to be a welcoming space and that the monument prevents that. It also makes it clear that there is…

Considered the first English writer to become wealthy from his published output, Shakespeare was born in 1564 in the market town of Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, the son of a trader. Attendance at the local grammar gave him an ample grounding in the Classics, mythology and Roman history. Although he had to move to London to make his name, his rural origins are reflected in texts rich in their references to native flora. An actor before he was a writer, there is a tradition that he played the Ghost in an early production of Hamlet. Many of his plays, almost certainly including Hamlet, were reworkings of older material by other writers, but alongside the achievement of his great comedies and tragedies, Shakespeare was one of the first to understand that theatre could…

April 21, 1926 Born 1927 Moves to 145, Piccadilly, her parents' London home until their accession to the throne August 1930 Her only sibling, Margaret Rose, is born Spring 1931 Begins schoolroom lessons with her nanny, Allah, including French lessons using gramophone records Autumn 1931 First mention of Princess Elizabeth, independent of her parents, in the Court Circular published in The Times May 1932 Receives from the people of Wales Y Bwthyn Bach, the miniature house that became a symbol of Elizabeth's happy childhood Autumn 1933 Arrival of Marion Crawford, ‘Crawfie', as Elizabeth's governess January 1936 Death of George V, accession of Edward VIII December 1936 Abdication of Edward VIII, accession of George VI; the new king's daughter Elizabeth becomes the heiress presumptive July 1939 First meeting with Prince Philip…

How do you know if a product has been made in Britain? Actually, it can be hard to tell, because Britain doesn't have exclusivity when it comes to quality artisan goods and it is easy enough to set up a website that gives a deceptive feel of ‘homemade'. If you're passionate about buying British, try the following: • Look for the Made In Britain collective mark (www.madeinbritain.org)-morethan 1,000 businesses use it and each one needs to pass a stringent accreditation process to do so • Products being exported from Britain can use the free ‘Made in Britain' logo (www.madeinbritain.co) • Various websites help to promote British-made goods, including www.makeitbritish.co.uk and www.madeingreatbritain.uk • Scour a company's own website. If it makes products in Britain, it should proclaim that fact prominently and…

IN April 1785, an unusual guest was ushered into Brooks’s in St James’s Street, London. The illustrious club’s members included Prime Minister William Pitt and the Prince of Wales, yet the entry of these august personages caused nothing like the stir this visitor did. He was portly, with heavy jowls, large ears and a long nose. Apart from a waistcoat and collar, he was naked. This was unsurprising, as the guest was a pig. Not any old pig, mind you—this was Toby the Learned Pig, one of Georgian England’s greatest celebrities. Toby had arrived in London a year earlier, after a sensational tour of the provinces. He astounded audiences by doing arithmetic and spelling names using typographical cards, which he picked up in his mouth and arranged on the floor.…

GRAHAM STUART THO-MAS was once called ‘the greatest gardener ever’. That may be debatable (nominations, please), but no one doubts his enormous influence on how we garden today. During his years as gardens adviser to the National Trust, Thomas made attractive, but cheap-to-maintain gardens for more than 100 newly acquired and run-down properties. After he retired (he was still bright and active in his nineties), he wrote a series of books about perennials, alpines, bamboos, trees and climbers. They taught us how to use plants to make our gardens beautiful. Thomas’s most influential publication, however, came out long before he started writing books. It was the catalogue of old roses he produced after the end of the Second World War, when he was working as managing director of a wholesale…

1950s 1 What is the Archer family celebrating in the very first episode, aired on January 1, 1951? 2 In which county is their village, Ambridge? 3 Who is the only surviving character from 1951? 4 In 1951, patriarch Dan Archer retired his working horses. What were their names? 5 In 1955, listeners were so gripped by the drama of Phil Archer’s first wife, Grace, being killed in a stable fire, that they largely ignored the launch of which television channel? 6 Which character first appeared as a gadget demonstrator working in a Borchester department store? 7 Which actress is still playing Jill Archer? 8 In 1956, what disease devastated the livestock at Brookfield Farm? 9 In 1959, Jack and Peggy Archer bought the village pub. What is its name?…

A voice type that was used by Handel to great effect and which is rare, but extremely beautiful is the contralto, a properly velvet, ‘dark-chocolate' sound, of which Kathleen Ferrier was one of the most well-loved exponents until her untimely death from cancer in 1953-fortunately, her uniquely rich sound has been preserved on numerous recordings. A favourite of Handel's in the 18th century was Anastasia Robinson, who sang Cornelia in Giulio Cesare and who started her career as a soprano, but whose voice dropped in pitch after an illness. Another was Susannah Cibber, sister of the composer Thomas Arne, who became unfairly notorious when her abusive husband involved her in a public lawsuit. Handel wrote the contralto arias in Messiah for her; at its first performance, in Dublin in 1742,…

BEATON loved architectural beauty as much as he did human grace. In 1930, he discovered Ashcombe House in a difficult-to-find valley near Tollard Royal, Wiltshire, and ‘stood spellbound… it looms rather like a dwelling to which some royalty has been banished in a fairy story’. Beaton took a 15-year lease and joined the ‘weekend-cottage game’, as Christopher Hussey called it, which saw dilapidated country houses restored and filled with revellers. Not far from Stephen Tennant’s home, Wilsford, the house confirmed Beaton’s place in Society and was the idyllic setting for his Fête Champêtre. When the lease expired, Beaton transferred his affections to Reddish House, a Queen Anne building of rose-coloured brick with a touch of Rococo Wren. He bought it for £10,000 in 1947 and lived there until his death…

POLICE will be given greater power to act swiftly over livestock worrying in proposed edits to the Kept Animals Bill, announced yesterday. Last year, dogs chasing or attacking livestock on agricultural land were estimated to have cost the industry £1.3 million. The list of animals protected by the Bill will now include llamas, emus, enclosed deer and donkeys, with new locations including roadsides and paths. Currently, most livestock-worrying cases peter out due to lack of evidence, but now, police will be able to take samples and enter property to identify and seize dogs they believe pose an ongoing risk. ‘Growing up on a farm, I know first-hand the devastating effect of livestock worrying and the distress it causes to animals and farmers, as well as the financial implications,’ says Farming…

IN just under a year’s time, as a nation, we will be celebrating The Queen’s Platinum Jubilee. There will be a four-day Bank Holiday weekend, from Thursday, June 2, to Sunday, June 5. These things take a lot of organising and, already, the major plans for a concert at Buckingham Palace, Trooping the Colour, a service of thanksgiving at St Paul’s Cathedral and a trip to the Derby for The Queen are in place. I have enjoyed all the Jubilees, starting with the Silver in 1977, when I was 13. The 1970s were a pretty grim decade, with three-day weeks, a winter of discontent and social uncertainty. The Jubilee seemed like a miracle. Everyone came together, half a billion people around the world watched on television, the Sex Pistols hit…

Bad kitty Q During lockdown, I bought a kitten for company. It was quite sweet when small, if always slightly feral, but it’s getting meaner with age. It recently launched itself at my boyfriend’s face for no apparent reason—he was lucky to keep his eyes. I’m convinced my cat hates me and am feeling trapped. How might we make friends? R. M., East Sussex A Had you never come across a cat before? Cats are meant to hate you—that is the whole point. I maintain that the Ancient Egyptians only worshipped them because they were too afraid not to. This is why I’m more of a dog person: your forearms remain unscathed, you aren’t woken in the night by a feline attempting to asphyxiate you by sitting on your face…

IN 1934, a spellbound young Alec Guinness stood in the wings as John Gielgud delivered what came to be regarded as one of the definitive 20th-century performances of Hamlet. Night after night, throughout a production running for 155 shows at the New Theatre (now the Nöel Coward) in London’s West End, Guinness, cast as Osric and as one of the Players, followed each nuance of Gielgud’s interpretation of a character the watcher called ‘the loveable, distressed and romantic prince of all time’. ‘For centuries, “playing the Prince” has been the ultimate actor’s challenge’ For centuries, ‘playing the Prince’ has been the ultimate challenge for classically inclined British actors, from Edmund Kean and David Garrick in the 18th century and Henry Irving in the 19th, to Laurence Olivier, Michael Redgrave and…

‘Its true hero is man –haunted man… Man unable to either quite reject or quite to admit the supernatural, man struggling to get something done as man has struggled from the beginning…’ C. S. Lewis (1942) ‘[Shakespeare] did not see his way clearly enough to save the tons of ink and paper and “years of man’s time” that have been wasted, and are still being wasted, on innumerable volumes of nonsense about the meaning of Hamlet’ George Bernard Shaw (1945) ‘Hamlet is brave and careless of death; but he vacillates from sensibility, and procrastinates from thought, and loses the power of action in the energy of resolve’ Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1808)…

Baby Elizabeth was weeks short of her first birthday when Queen Mary described to Elizabeth’s father, the Duke of York, a car journey they had shared: ‘Your adorable child… was awfully good, giving shrieks of delight at each dog she saw.’ On the same visit to her grandparents, Elizabeth had encountered the King’s Cairn terrier, Snip, and his African grey parrot, Charlotte. Queen Mary noted her excitement at breakfast, ‘watch[ing] the bird eating pips with an air of absorption’. Later, Elizabeth’s parents acquired a parrot called Jimmie. It was George V who gave the little princess her first pony, a Shetland called Peggy, described as ‘full of latent mischief’ and her favourite of her fourth-birthday presents. After a summer of riding lessons on Peggy, Elizabeth knew exactly what she wanted…

SIR NICHOLAS SOAMES is the sort of character of whom it’s said that ‘they don’t make them like that any more’. Even with his now slimmer frame, he cuts a formidable figure, conversing in a splendid basso profundo. ‘God almighty, what a question!’, he booms. ‘I thought this was COUNTRY LIFE, not Politico!’ We’re here to talk about his presidency of the South of England Show, which runs in pared-down form this weekend, but there’s no extricating the former Member for Mid Sussex from politics. He stepped down at the 2019 election after 35 years, but says: ‘I really don’t miss it all. I’m not a great looker-backer. But I regret, in a way, that I didn’t stand down at the election before, because the last five years were absolutely…

I’VE yet to meet a crab I didn’t like. On the plate that is, rather than hanging tenaciously from my little toe, in the style of some bawdy Donald McGill seaside postcard. Because this fearsomely clawed crustacean is one of the steadfast stars of the culinary firmament, an endlessly versatile hard-shelled hero that never fails to delight. In fact, given the choice between thuggish lobster and nimble crab, I’d always plump for the latter. The flesh is more subtle, albeit rather trickier to extract. However, that’s all part of the charm, off-road eating of the most visceral kind; cracking and crunching and picking and sucking. Of course, you can buy your meat ready prepared, but that means you miss out on all that messy, mucky fun. As to my favourite,…

Melissa was promised a horse for her 57th birthday, but her husband didn't realise she was going to go to Holland with Carl Hester to buy one. Nor did he foresee the tennis court turning into an all-weather arena. A new lorry is the size of a cottage: when he pointed out that Melissa is quite a way off the World Cup circuit, she sharply retorted that all ‘athletes' need somewhere peaceful to ‘visualise' their test. The paraphernalia-everything's either spangly or Persilwhite-is endless. So are the training videos Melissa watches in bed. The golfing fortnight in Marbella has become five days at Aachen show in Germany. Melissa now doesn't seem to be able to listen to music without prancing around weirdly; she calls it ‘piaffe-passage'.…

LONG before telephones and texts, beacons played a key role in the networks of local, regional and national communications. Before that, Celtic bonfires sent messages to the gods requesting fruitful crops and the sun’s return after winter. Being nearer to the heavens and, therefore, closer to the deities in whom the worshippers believed, hilltops were frequently the favoured places for positioning any such beacons of hope. High ground was considered to be one of the most sacred parts of the earth—a consideration that continued into Christianity. In the book of Isaiah, ‘a beacon upon the top of a mountain’ is mentioned and Jeremiah tells of ‘a sign of fire’ warning of forthcoming evil. For navigation more practical than spiritual, beacons situated along the coastline guided sailors and their ships into…

ON May 11, 1769, Horace Walpole wrote to his friend George Montagu to report on the reception of a glittering array of English, French, Spanish and Portuguese guests at Strawberry Hill: ‘At the gates of the castle I received them dressed in the cravat of Gibbons’s carving, and a pair of gloves embroidered up to the elbows that had belonged to James I. The French servants stared and firmly believed this was the dress of English country gentlemen.’ The cravat that Walpole wore survives. Carved of close-grained limewood in about 1690, it resembles with almost disconcerting exactitude a piece of knotted and starched lace. The natural effects are yielded so exactly in three dimensions that the eye can suspend its disbelief and mistake the artificial work of sculpture for the…

FOR as long as anyone knows, people have found ways to express their love for others. The most obvious objects are engagement and wedding rings, symbols of a couple’s love, union and marriage in ancient Rome, Greece and Egypt—and ever since. Sometimes, however, a ring isn’t appropriate; there are circumstances when only a spoon will do. The Welsh lovespoon doesn’t sound that romantic. It is a wooden spoon—but one adorned with hand-carved decoration, traditionally given to represent one person’s love for another. ‘The tradition of lovespoon carving has survived intact and continues’ ‘Each spoon is unique and often features initials or dates personal to the recipient, but, over time, a series of symbols was employed to depict romantic thoughts and feelings, such as hearts, diamonds and wheels,’ says Fflur Morse,…