Innholdsfortegnelse for 19-Apr-2023 i Country Life

1901 Published June 1 A group of fulsomely attired women, one armed with a parasol, cluster around the door of Haddon Hall, Derbyshire. The house was already a popular tourist attraction, but perhaps these visitors are resting after the disappointing discovery that the way is shut. The shading elms have long vanished. Every week for the past 125 years, COUNTRY LIFE has documented and photographed many walks of life in Britain. More than 80,000 of the images are available for syndication or purchase in digital format. To view the archives, visit www.countrylifeimages.co.uk and email enquiries to licensing@futurenet.com…

MY schoolboy definitions of ‘public consumption’ were listening to a radio through an open window or reading over somebody’s shoulder—in other words, enjoying something I hadn’t paid for or that was already there. There are many such opportunities for public consumption in Cumbria and the Lake District. When a former colleague from London visited, he would always call at Hartside Café, now sadly burned down. At 1,904ft above sea level on the edge of the Pennines, he would sit with tea and a scone, drinking in the views across the Lake District, Eden Valley, Solway Firth and into Scotland. I once sat behind two Americans on a train leaving Lancaster. ‘Any second,’ said one excitedly. ‘Look to your left… now!’ And there were the Southern Fells laid out in the…

ONE for the master, one for the dame and one for the little boy who lives down the lane…’ We were once so collectively smitten with wool that songs—or, at least, nursery rhymes—were composed about bags simply full of the stuff. Fire- and stain-resistant, hard-wearing, sustainable, hypoallergenic, wonderfully soft and fluffy, this natural fibre is brimming with benefits that manmade counterparts struggle to replicate. George Mallory and his confrères tackled mountains in woollen plus fours; children of the 1950s wore Chilprufe wool vests and jumpers knitted by Granny. Today, climbers wear Gore-Tex and we have all got used to the ease and low cost (to us) of clothing in manmade fibres. Much of the wool clip from the nation’s sheep is shipped off to China to be made into carpets…

BIRDSONG is one of the best known —and best loved—aspects of the natural world. Many of us love listening to the dawn chorus, the songsters in our garden or the birds we hear on walks in the countryside. Yet not all birdsong is what it seems. Some birds deliberately mimic the songs of other, totally different species and a few are able to imitate human sounds. Many people have been confused—and sometimes infuriated—by what sounds uncannily like a car alarm going off in the street outside their home or the ringing of a telephone. Sometimes, it takes them days or even weeks to discover the culprit: the common, but sonically talented, starling. Across the world, other species have become so adept at mimicking other birds that their name reflects their…

Find the best properties at countrylife.co.uk GRADE I-listed Linton Park, with its Grade II*-listed gardens, woods and parkland overlooking the Weald, four miles south of Maidstone, promises to be one of the country-house sales of the year—if not of the century to date. Described by Mark McAndrew of selling agents Strutt & Parker (020–7591 2214) as ‘a jewel in the heart of the Garden of England’, the Linton Park estate comprises the impeccably restored, 28,824sq ft main house, which boasts 12 bedrooms, six principal reception rooms, garden rooms, a catering kitchen and extensive domestic offices; 20 acres of magnificent gardens, historic parkland, a lake and a cricket pitch, some 440 acres in all; and a coach house with a flat above and 16 further residential properties, all in excellent order…

MOST gardening folk are well versed in the definition of a weed: a plant ‘growing where it is not wanted’ or ‘growing in the wrong place’. As such, the term becomes subjective and, when a seedling of Rosa glauca appeared in my bed of agapanthus it was, quite clearly, a weed. And yet I feel guilty at calling such a graceful briar ‘a weed’, in the same way that I find it hard to be too dismissive of those plants in my garden that are only too obliging in the way they spread themselves around. Although I enjoy a challenge from time to time—nursing a tricky plant I admire through the early weeks and months (perhaps even years) of establishment until it decides to thrive —I have learned to respect…

TOGETHER with the rain and Queen Salote, the feature of the last coronation that remains most clearly in my memory is the guard of honour formed by the Queen’s Beasts outside Westminster Abbey. James Woodford’s 10 heraldic figures symbolising the Queen’s ancestry seemed to have emerged from Lewis Carroll’s world into ours and, for this six year old at least, may have helped prompt a lifelong fascination with history. The originals, now brightly coloured, survive in Quebec, Canada, and Woodford’s Portland-stone replicas guard the approach to the Palm House at Kew, but I doubt whether similar beasts will be on parade this time. However, heraldry plays a significant role in the coronation exhibition that opens on Saturday at the Bristol jeweller, silver and objects-of-art dealer Grey-Harris & Company, 12 Princess…

Raynor Winn is a long-distance walker and writer. In her latest book, Landlines, she describes how she and her husband, Moth, walk from Cape Wraith to Cornwall James Dickson Innes was drawn to Arenig Fawr, a mountain in Snowdonia, north Wales, returning to paint it many times. Whether he was attracted to the changing light or the wild, empty landscape from which the summit emerges, we’ll never know, but he had a passion for the mountain, even describing Arenig as “his best girl”. I recognise that magnetic pull a landscape can hold; how it can speak to your changing mood. Many of his Arenig paintings are dark, even foreboding, but this is different –in an otherwise blue scene of threatening cumuli, a shaft of pink sunlight plays across the mountain…

ON January 27, 1591, the ailing Viscount Montague called together his Surrey neighbours for a valedictory dinner at West Horsley Place. The event is recorded in an anonymous contemporary account recently rediscovered by Michael Questier (Historical Research, 77, 2004). After ‘good cheer’ over dinner, all the guests, as well as ‘the gentlewomen of the house, the waiting maids, strangers and others, all his men servants, gentlemen and yeomen’ were gathered ‘in the great chamber… where my Lord caused us of the better sort to sit down, himself sitting amongst us’. There, he began a speech, explaining that he wanted to be merry in this company because he might never return to the house. Also, that he wanted to explain his life—‘how I have been dealt withal’—and for his audience to…

PAINTING en plein air may be a familiar concept, but most artists confine it to sketching, working up canvases in the studio. Lucy Kemp-Welch, however, took the practice a stage further with the construction of a giant packing case (see box). Within this, she would store her enormous paintings, some as large as 10ft by 5ft, in situ, returning day after day to capture plunging horses and tired farmhands, shaggy ponies and brave lifeboatmen. For her, photography was anathema, it was ‘too perfect. It can never leave room for personal temperament to show. All is there except the creative effort’. Absorbed in her work, she frequently lost track of time or what meal she was being called for. Stopping to eat could be problematic; once, she returned to her canvas…

THERE is a certain irony about St George’s Hill, that 964-acre swathe of land in Weybridge, north Surrey. Some 100 years after it was transformed into one of the country’s first private estates by Walter George Tarrant in 1911, it is arguably one of the most exclusive addresses in the nation. One wonders if Tarrant knew that, back in April 1649, it was the site of a ‘Digger’ colony, now recognised as one of the first small-scale experiments of socialism in the world. What Tarrant certainly did know was that the burgeoning middle classes of Edwardian England would soon be drawn to this picturesque part of the Home Counties, take advantage of its beauty and utilise the technological advances of transportation to become some of the first suburbanites to enjoy…

Wild-garlic falafels with tahini dip and jewelled rice Ingredients 125g dried chickpeas (soaked overnight in water or used bottled ones)1 shallot, diced2 cloves garlic, gratedA handful wild-garlic leaves, washed and patted dry1tspn each cumin and coriander seedsOil for frying For the tahini dip75ml tahini1 clove garlic, grated ½ lemon, juice of2–6tbspn water, to loosen For the jewelled rice125g cooked basmati rice25g butter½ orange, zest of and a squeeze½ lemon, zest of and a squeeze50g chopped pistachios5 dried apricots, chopped30g pomegranate seedsA handful fresh parsley or coriander, chopped Method ▸ Drain the chickpeas and rinse them well under running cold water, then dry in a clean tea towel. Add them to the bowl of a food processor, together with the shallot, garlic, wild-garlic leaves and the cumin and coriander seeds.…

WHAT is it that makes Guys and Dolls currently the most enjoyable theatrical experience in London? Obviously, it is a great musical: an anthology entitled From The American Drama once omitted serious playwrights, such as Eugene O’Neill and Arthur Miller, yet included this particular show. It also helps that Sir Nicholas Hytner’s new production is an immersive spectacle with the action erupting among 420 standing spectators. However, if I had to pin down a reason for this version’s triumph (at the Bridge Theatre), it would be that every aspect of it is pervaded by wit. The wit is there in every line of the book by Jo Swerling and Abe Burrows, based on the stories of Damon Runyon. Nathan Detroit, the small-time gambler eternally putting off his marriage to…

THE goose writhes in agony as the eagle’s talons lock on and there is a terrible, balletic beauty as it plunges to the ground in its death spiral. Why is it all right to marvel at one animal killing another from the comfort of a sofa, when watching Sir David Attenborough’s Wild Isles, but no longer OK to observe from the back of a horse? Somewhere, society has got its values wrong and is diminished for it. Horses and hounds being exercised around our lanes have been an immutable part of our life since we re-formed the hunt, with the kennels here, nearly two decades ago. I pass them on my rounds; the sight gladdens the heart and makes me feel all is well with the world. Or, rather, it…

THE noble Bluefaced Leicester, with its aristocratic Roman nose, skin showing ‘blue’ through the white hair, characterful sticking-up ears and upright stance, is one of Britain’s most elegant sheep breeds. Although the UK breed society was only formed in the 1960s, the sheep traces back to the far-sighted livestock breeder Robert Bakewell (1725–95), who was known as ‘the great improver’ for his work in making cattle and sheep more commercial meat producers and for starting the idea of standing prize animals at stud for other farmers to use. He created the Bluefaced Leicester—first known as the ‘Dishley Leicester’ after his family home, Dishley Grange near Loughborough in the eponymous county—by crossing local breeds such as the Teeswater to produce a faster-maturing, more profitable sheep with quality wool. The breed is…

THERE was nothing in Martin Gibbons’s early life that gave the merest hint of the career that lay ahead. Yet, today, he lives in what was the old kitchen garden of Ham House, with his wife, Emma, a nurserywoman, and two teenage sons, named after plant hunters Jamie (Fortune) and Henry (Kingdon). Together with their home, the site houses The Palm Centre Mr Gibbons set up in the 1980s, where he cares for his National Collection of Trachycarpus palms, several of which he discovered and introduced. The first clue came with his departure, six days after his 21st birthday, to Australia, paying £10 as part of the Assisted Passage scheme. As a ‘£10 Pom’, he worked his way through Australia doing seasonal work, selling saucepans door to door and completing…

My Shakespeare Greg Doran (Methuen, £25) IF there is something a touch proprietorial about the title of this book, it is well justified. Greg Doran first worked as an actor at Stratford in 1987, started directing there in 1996 and, from 2012–22, was artistic director of the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC). What runs through this fascinating book is not only his passionate commitment, but his belief that Shakespeare holds up a mirror to all our lives and to the tumultuous times in which we live. It is subtitled ‘A director’s journey through the First Folio’ and consists of essays that blend autobiography, analysis, stage-history and scholarship. Others, such as the academic Harold Bloom and the actor David Weston, have taken a similar play-by-play approach, but the difference here…