Innholdsfortegnelse for 21-Jun-2023 i Country Life

BUTTERFLIES make us happy. From the spring emergence of the striking sulphur-yellow brimstones, the appearance of our many native species builds to a summertime crescendo of sheer winged beauty. With a staggering palette of colour and patterns that only Mother Nature could conceive, butterflies are the most recognised insect of the tens of thousands of invertebrates that reside in the British Isles. There are 59 species on our islands: 57 residents and two migrants, the painted lady and the clouded yellow. They have brightened our world for 56 million years and all possess family names: skippers, yellows, whites and blues, aristocrats, fritillaries, coppers, hairstreaks and browns. Most active at 12˚C and above, they can often be seen sunning themselves, wings outstretched, ahead of a busy day. And each day is…

1924 December 6 Published Caricatures by Swedish artist Einar Nerman of Sir Charles Hawtrey and Lottie Venne, two of a host of performers depicted ‘almost life size’ on paper sheets inserted into the frames of the abandoned ballroom at Devonshire House, Piccadilly, as it awaited demolition. Why the drawings were created—they can be dated 1922–23—is not clear. 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…

THE Cloisters is an outpost of New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art (‘the Met’) that sits in Fort Tryon Park, on the northern end of Manhattan Island in the US. There is nothing quite like the building, which was begun in 1935 and is still one of the world’s most memorable museums. It displays European medieval artworks, carvings, stained glass, tapestry, metalwork, earthenware and manuscripts in an immersive architectural evocation of the Middle Ages that could only have been designed in 1930s America (Fig 1). Timothy B. Husband’s Creating The Cloisters (2013) offers an authoritative history of this remarkable building, which reassembles sections of four medieval cloisters, a chapter house (Fig 4) and a Romanesque chapel to create a series of halls, courts and enclosed green gardens. Entering the museum,…

STANDING solemnly over Salisbury Plain, Stonehenge has witnessed millennia unfold and change the beautiful landscape that surrounds it. Perhaps it was the air of mystique that shrouded the site for centuries—from tales of long-forgotten ancestors to speculations about giants and aliens—that captivated and persuaded Sir Cecil Herbert Edward Chubb to put in a bid for a plot of land he could never develop. Sir Cecil, then Master Chubb, was born in the village of Shrewton, only four miles west of Stonehenge. His beginnings were somewhat humble. His father was the village saddler and harness-maker, as had been his grandfather. Although becoming the next generation of saddlers was an excellent prospect for young Cecil, he had an academic bent and worked his way into Bishop Wordsworth’s, a local grammar school. Such…

THE term ‘gentleman driver’ is usually used for an amateur, but wealthy car fan who has the time and money to indulge a passion for motor racing. At the highest level of motorsport, however, there is one driver who is widely acknowledged as being among the greatest true gentlemen who ever turned a steering wheel —the Belgian star Jacky Ickx. Although 78 years young and officially retired from professional racing (since 1985), his motoring life remains hectic. Earlier this month, he took to the 8½-mile Le Mans circuit in a variety of fire-breathing cars as a special guest at the centenary of the celebrated 24 Hours of Le Mans, the world’s oldest endurance race. First run in 1923 to prove the resilience of both car and driver, it became famous…

IMAGINE, for one moment, that you are not a wise and gentle reader of COUNTRY LIFE, but foolish and hot-tempered, and find yourself waiting in line at a dispensary. The chemist says something you find hard to understand, to which, gentle reader, you react with fury. Inchoate rage seizes you by the throat. As the red mist descends, your eye falls on a notice pinned to the wall. ‘Our staff,’ it reads, ‘have the right to work free from the threat of verbal or physical abuse.’ The mood changes; your fists gently unclench and the vicious remark that had been on the tip of your tongue melts like a parma violet. I’ve been thinking recently about these signs, because they’ve been popping up everywhere I go and there is something…

LAST week, firefighters from around the country had gathered in Wales when their training sessions were cut short and what was to have been practice was turned into fearsome reality. They watched as specialists from the South Wales Fire and Rescue Service tackled a wildfire near Merthyr Tydfil. The blaze raged on Rhigos Mountain and, despite the use of helicopters to douse the flames, it continued, threatening to engulf other woodlands and a nearby wind farm. Heavy machinery was brought in to create fire breaks and controlled fires lit to encircle the main blaze and stop it spreading. Techniques that have long been necessary in California, US, were being employed in the UK—testament to the changes to our weather that have become increasingly common. This was only one of four…

Skye Gyngell is the culinary director at Heckfield Place hotel, Hampshire, and founder of Spring Restaurant in Somerset House, London W2. She was previously head chef at Petersham Nurseries Café, which was awarded a Michelin star in 2011 'There are so many really wonderful and fascinating paintings at Heckfield–it’s almost impossible to choose–but I think the painting that defines the hotel more than any other, for me at least, is the David Spiller in the drawing room. Guests have a really visceral response to it and it adds so much life and personality to the room, which is otherwise incredibly tranquil and calm. It has an energy about it that everyone seems drawn to, including me!' Charlotte Mullins comments on All My Loving AT the heart of David Spiller’s…

Paying a premium THE premium for living among England’s architectural conservation areas has risen in the past three years, with buyers now expecting to pay 31% more than average to live in one, the latest research from Savills has revealed. Defined as places ‘of special architectural or historic interest as deserving of careful management to protect their character’, conservation areas make up 2.2% of England, encompassing about 10,000 properties. Savills’s analysis has shown that properties in these areas are worth about £400,000 on average, compared with an average price of £305,730 in non-conservation areas. Perhaps unsurprisingly, London has the largest premium for its conservation areas, with Savills concluding that you are likely to pay 48% more to live in one. This is more than twice that of the second-placed…

AT first glance, there seems little to connect the Hon Christian Methuen and Miss Rachel Johns, who respectively appeared on the Frontispiece of this magazine on May 1, 1915, and August 29, 1974. The common denominator, despite nearly 60 years’ difference, is that they each had their picture taken by the same photographer. Her name was Madame Yevonde. Theirs were the first and the last Yevonde portraits to be published in COUNTRY LIFE, bookending the extraordinary career of a pioneering photographer. When the National Portrait Gallery (NPG) reopens this month after a three-year, £41 million refurbishment (‘A fresh face’, June 7 ), it will position Yevonde firmly centre stage with a major exhibition celebrating her life and work. Integral to this story is Yevonde’s long association with magazines such as…

A prize of £25 in book tokens will be awarded for the first correct solution opened. Solutions must reach Crossword No 4785, Country Life, 121–141 Westbourne Terrace, Paddington, London, W2 6JR, by Tuesday, June 27. UK entrants only ACROSS1 Stand up to deliver basin (8)5 Squeeze in a game (6)9 Orpheus’ wife says ecru dye runs (8)10 Slightly sooner (6)12 The French leave out lacy copy in tempest (7)13 Three times go back to study—and repeat (7)14 Seems conkers are used as red herrings (12)17 Being ready with homework for a socialist by headland (12)22 I turn to couple to adopt (7)23 Row about stray dog (7)24 Quaint second half of singular chant (6)25 Exchanges for money small enclosure at sporting contest (8)26 Tiny me subject to deep hatred (6)27…

Quiz of the week 1) Nanki-Poo is a character in which Gilbert & Sullivan operetta? 2) What was the world’s first postage stamp, issued in the UK in 1840? 3) Arborists specialise in the care and maintenance of what? 4) The ruins of which Welsh Abbey became Romantic symbols and inspired both Wordsworth and Turner? 5) What’s the name for a male duck? Word of the week Wastrife (adjective) Wasteful 100 years ago in June 23, 1923 IN what main way is American civic building better than our own, and in what way do we score in domestic work? The success of American town building lies chiefly in its impersonal character. It is reserved and remote, grand in scale, elegant, if rather frigid, in detail. What is wrong…

ONE of the charges that cultural institutions are particularly sensitive to at the present moment is that of elitism. In large part, that’s simply because Government funding for Arts initiatives of all kinds is tied so closely to their breadth and depth of appeal to society at large. Merely to be perceived as elitist as a cultural organisation can threaten your financial security. The sensitivity, however, has a more positive root cause. If you believe—as Athena does—that the Arts in their myriad forms are both universal and enrich the lives of everyone they touch, there can be nothing wrong in encouraging as many people as possible to engage with them; the more people that get involved—either actively or within audiences—the better. That said, although the Arts should strive to make…

THE Panama hat is the symbol of elegant British summer living, synonymous with Pimm’s and strawberries, blades feathering, the rattle of batting collapses and the ripple of sympathetic applause at Wimbledon as a plucky British player bows out in the early rounds. Sported by the art historian abroad and the detective on a Nile cruise, it is also the hat a man wears when day-dreaming of driving an open-topped roadster along the Corniche with Grace Kelly in the passenger seat. Although the trilby suggests pipe tobacco and fly-fishing in the autumn rain, the Panama carries the whiff of Cuban cigars, white smoke rising before a silhouette of ancient ruins against a dimming orange sun. It is both practical and fantastical. It has panache. It also has the wrong name. ‘The…

The Coming Of The Railway: A New Global History, 1750–1850 David Gwyn (Yale, £25) IN April 1807, wealthy travellers enjoyed the scenic pleasures of Swansea Bay along a rail track originally opened for industrial purposes. It was the world’s first-known railway passenger service and similar opportunities were soon offered in the West Country and Scotland. Those lower down the social scale used these horse-drawn trains for working purposes, including taking goods to market. Such examples are little known because popular railway histories usually begin with the dawn of the so-called railway age, represented by the opening of the Stockton-Darlington railway in 1825 and the first regular steam locomotive passenger service, between Liverpool and Manchester, five years later. However, David Gwyn argues that the previous 80 years are as much…

I’VE two more instructive deals for you from the Soloway Knockout Teams at last year’s US Fall Nationals in Phoenix, Arizona. On our first, you are declaring Three Notrumps on the eight of Spades lead. Plan the play. The kneejerk play may be to win the Queen (East playing low), finesse the Knave of Hearts (marked on the bidding) and run the nine of Diamonds. No good—West wins the Queen and leads a second Spade (to the nine and Ace). When you next force out the Ace of Diamonds, East wins and cashes three Spades—one down. At the table, declarer made no mistake, ducking the first trick (key play). Happy his eight of Spades had struck gold, West continued with a second Spade (nothing works better). This time, declarer won…