Innholdsfortegnelse for November 27, 2024 i Country Life

A TINY piglet, soft pink with dark-brown stripes, sits on a vitrine shelf next to an aged urn, a candle and three frosted-glass vases. He’s a model in search of a canvas, on which he will appear when inspiration strikes the artist, photographer Harald Altmaier. ‘I saw him in Paris and had to have him. He’s been here since May and will go in a woodland shot, I think, with ferns, mushrooms—and there will be a little mole coming out of the soil.’ Mr Altmaier’s pictures are closer to paintings than classic photographs, portraying monumental floral arrangements against gilded mirrors, sleeping cherubs and swathes of damasks, silks and rich velvets that cascade in sinuous drapes, as butterflies, caterpillars or stag beetles frolic among the petals. Reminiscent of 17th-century Dutch still…

A FRACTAL, according to Franco-Polish mathematician Benoît Mandelbrot, is ‘a way of seeing infinity’. Simply put, it is a pattern that appears to self-replicate indefinitely, constantly reproducing an imitation of the previous shape. The term dates back to 1975, when Mandelbrot—to whom it is credited—applied the mathematics of theoretical fractional dimensions to the geometric patterning found in the natural world. Fractals are everywhere, even within the human body: our nervous system, blood vessels and the structure of our brain and lungs are all examples. ‘Fractals are even in the human body: our nervous system, the structure of our brain’ The archetypal fractal takes a form that is a blueprint for the smaller elements within it. The trunk and boughs of a tree, for example, echo the forked forms within the…

IMAGINE if, of the three gifts bestowed on baby Jesus, Mary had to choose only one. Should she pick a precious metal, some incense or a resin used to embalm the dead? I’d like to make the case for myrrh, arguably the most versatile and practical of the three and, in Biblical times, outpricing gold. The myrrh referenced in the Nativity story is an aromatic sap tapped from small trees found in north-east Africa and the southern part of the Arabian Peninsula. Its name is derived from the Arabic word for ‘bitter’, a reference to its pungent flavour. By association with these regions, Balthazar, the magus bearing myrrh, is depicted by painters such as Rubens and Bosch as dark-skinned and wearing a bejewelled turban or feathered Fez. Inside Balthazar’s ornate…

Ladies Gentlemen House & home Green fingered Bachelor Teens Tiny tots Children Animal magic Foodies…

Somerset, £2.5 million The focal point of No 1 Barrow Court is its magnificent Great Hall with its Corinthian fireplace, over which is the Gibbs family coat of arms. In the 19th century, Henry Martin Gibbs was the man responsible for transforming the whole estate into the Jacobean splendour it represents today, with parterre and 4¼ acres of formal (communal) gardens designed by Francis Inigo Thomas. The nine-bedroom house, once a Benedictine nunnery, then a wealthy merchant’s house following the Dissolution of the Monasteries, is redolent with history and retains many outstanding period features. It forms the main part of the Barrow Court estate just outside Bristol (within striking distance of the airport, train and M5), in the village of Barrow Gurney. Fine & Country (01275 859000) Somerset, £2.2 million…

LATELY, and perhaps largely because of a lady who keeps an old cob across the lane from a cottage I’m renovating, I’ve been thinking about property ownership and how it’s not always as cut and dried as it seems. About three weeks into renovating the much-dilapidated, pantile-roofed little house, the lady came across the road to tell me about it in some detail. She had, she explained fondly, grown up there as a little girl; her family had lived in it, as small tenant farmers, for two generations before that. She took me on a tour of the garden to tell me about the trees. She recalled how her mother, when she was a girl, used to drink a glass of sherry by the small pond in the evening and…

Future Publishing Ltd, 121–141 Westbourne Terrace, Paddington, London W2 6JR 0330 390 6591; www.countrylife.co.uk CHRISTINA ROSSETTI wrote of snow, frost and a stable’s warmth, T. S. Eliot of the chilly pilgrimage of the Magi and Thomas Hardy of ‘meek, mild’ oxen in their ‘strawy pen’. The late poet Benjamin Zephaniah urged us to be kind to turkeys—‘invite dem indoors fe sum greens’—and the American Clement Clarke Moore named all of the reindeer driven by a little old man with cheeks like roses and a nose like a cherry. Wendy Cope was cheered up by singing along to The First Nowell broadcast from King’s College, Cambridge, when stuck in a traffic jam on the M25. No poet, however, better encapsulated Christmas than Sir John Betjeman in his wonderfully evocative poem of…

No sweat I ENJOYED Tom Parker Bowles on the fiery delights of Tex Mex chili (‘Some like it hot’, November 20). It brought back memories of waitressing as a student. A customer—who also believed chili should ‘be hotter than the hinges of hell’—sent his meal back twice, claiming it wasn’t spicy enough. After decanting an entire pot of chilli powder into his bowl, I took the plate back to the table, watched him sweat profusely and awaited my tip. Mary Cook, Lanarkshire The croaking chorus line THE publication of your article coincided with the memorial service for my mentor and friend Dr Murray Littlejohn (‘You’ve got peemail’, October 30). He was one of the first scientists to document and study frog calls, from the 1950s onwards. Communication systems in anurans…

I’M guessing, in the wettest of years, that many of you have had moments such as this. I was coming off the Derbyshire moors after a rather joyless slog over sodden ground. I had seen next to nothing all day and spirits were low. As I came into a deep gritstone cleft, with boulders climbing the slopes on both sides, I discovered the usually tiny brook was engorged with rain and turned to a torrent, filling the clough with violent sound. Through it all, there arose a loud, sweet song with the penetrative, high trilling timbre of a martial fife. Again and again, the owner launched those phrases upon the waterlogged scene. It was like a tiny cannon blasting hope onto the gloom. Eventually, I located a brown bird no…

AH, ‘leafy Surrey’. Its tree-fringed avenues of mock-Tudor detached make it almost the definition of John Betjeman’s Metro-Land. Suburbia in excelsis: a lovely, domestic place, close to the centre of the English identity. Press the mind-button ‘Esher’ and a Good Life image springs to mind—solid, middle-class and safe. How the centuries turn and change the land-scape. Two hundred years ago, Surrey would have been best described as ‘heathy Surrey’, as at least 20% of the county was heathery, wide-open, almost treeless heathland. Today, perhaps 3% of Surrey’s heath remains. Southern England used to be resplendent in such purpled, heathery heathland, from Dorset to the Breckland of Norfolk—hence the abundance of Anglo-Saxon ‘heath’ place names, such as Heathfield, Bromley (from the shrub broom) and Farnham (from fern). What happened in Surrey…

Norman conquest Every meal requires a quality butter as a solid foundation. A good choice is D’isigny unpasteurised salted butter (£3.50 for 250g; www.ocado.com), favoured by COUNTRY LIFE’S Rosie Paterson. ‘It is made from raw milk from cows that graze on Normandy saltmarshes… soft and utterly sublime.’ Failing that, she recommends using ‘normal’ supermarket butter (always made from organic grass-fed milk), whipping it up with an electric whisk ‘until it’s smooth and verging on fluffy’, before topping it with sea salt and ‘passing it off as something much fancier’. Plenty of bite ‘There’s something so celebratory about giant versions of anything,’ says our Luxury Editor Hetty Lintell, who champions massive tins of Bonilla a La Vista Patatas Fritas (£26.95 for 500g; www.fortnumandmason.com). ‘They are hoovered up whenever I serve them.…

DO you have drawers, cupboards or garages full of redundant kitchen gadgets? The likely answer is ‘yes’. According to research by Tap Warehouse in 2022, the average UK household is cluttered with £822 of neglected culinary kits, the most unused being the cafetière: one in four owners have never taken theirs out of its box. The word gadget usually applies to a tool designed for a specific purpose. We couldn’t imagine kitchen life without some of them, yet digital scales, can openers and timers were all new once and seen as fangled or fashionable. Most gadgets, however helpful, have a lifespan—fondue sets, yoghurt makers, electric meat carvers—as fashion and technology move on. ‘Will your spiraliser or air-fryer end up on the rubbish heap with the butter curler?’ Sometimes, several stages…

Pan-roasted chicken thighs with Savoy cabbage and cider Ingredients 4 boneless, skin-on chicken thighs2tbspn olive oil1tbspn unsalted butter1 medium onion, finely sliced2 garlic cloves, grated1 small Savoy cabbage, cored and thinly sliced250ml dry apple cider200ml chicken stock1tbspn wholegrain mustard1 sprig rosemary2 sprigs fresh thyme leaves100ml double creamFreshly chopped parsley Method ▶ Preheat your oven to 180˚C fan/200˚C/400˚F/gas mark 6. ▶ Season the chicken thighs generously with salt and freshly ground black pepper. Heat a splash of olive oil in a large ovenproof casserole dish over a medium-high heat, add the chicken thighs skin-side down and sear for 5–6 minutes, until the skin is crisped and golden. Turn to brown all over, remove the chicken from the pan and set aside. ▶ Add the butter to the same pan, followed by…

IT was the unlikely beauty trend that took the 17th century by storm: the black patch. At a time when women were fêted for the paleness of their skin, little specks of black silk, satin, taffeta or leather artfully dotted on cheeks or chin made the rest of the face look whiter (not to mention conveniently hiding blemishes). Then, Oliver Cromwell and his band of Puritan killjoys came and put a swift end to all that. Parliament tried to pass a bill, in 1649, banning ‘the vice of painting and wearing black patches’. It never made it into an act, but this didn’t prevent widespread moral condemnation of patch-wearing—even in art. An allegorical picture from about 1655, Two Women Wearing Cosmetic Patches, stigmatised this particular form of female vanity, responding…

Great British Commanders: Leadership, Strategy and Luck Michael Clarke (Pen and Sword Books, £29.99) IN this collection of short [5,000–6,000-word] pen portraits,’ writes the author, ‘I wanted to present a number of “Great British Commanders” as individuals; not because I am a devotee of the “great man, or woman, school of history”, but simply because the task is interesting.’ It is, and so are Michael Clarke’s choices. Readers may wonder how he selected his 33: ‘My title is deliberately ambiguous. Some of these characters are indeed regarded as “great” commanders. Some are not so great—I am interested in elements of failure as well as success—but they have been commanders at some time in British history.’ Your reviewer would add that some were evidently born great, some achieved greatness and some…

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IT remains to be seen whether the Government will listen to the more than 20,000 farming people who thronged Whitehall in central London on November 19 to protest against changes to inheritance tax that could destroy countless family farms, but the impact of the good-hearted, sombre crowds was immediate and positive. Donations to food bank City Harvest amounted to 6.6 tons, meaning some 15,500 meals for Londoners in need. That evening, observing a street on which not a scrap of litter could be seen, a policeman outside Downing Street commented on how friendly and respectful the crowds had been: ‘You can come again any time!’ We can only hope we won’t have to. OP A very good dog THE Spanish Pointer (1766–68) by Stubbs, a landmark painting in that it…

OUR lives are often fundamentally affected, not by the generalities embodied in great Acts passed by Parliament, but by the detailed requirements laid down in Statutory Instruments. These detail the rules by which the law is enforced. They say what individuals and businesses are required to do and, this week, a particularly important Statutory Instrument is proceeding through Parliament with practically no press comment, although it could easily increase the cost of everything that we buy and is particularly relevant to country people because it fundamentally affects the economics of food. Yet, its concept is wholly admirable. Most of us are fed up with the amount of packaging around almost everything we buy. The UK, like all other European countries, tried to deal with the problem 30 years ago by…

THOMAS HARDY knew something about stone. We think of him as one of the giants of English literature, a poet and novelist who was lauded in his lifetime and memorialised alongside Charles Dickens in Westminster Abbey after his death in 1928. His vivid depictions of the lives of farmers and farmworkers such as Tess; of working men, including Jude, the studious stonemason; and his portrayal of provincial West Country town life and its characters, such as the Mayor of Casterbridge, is profound and perceptive. Throughout Hardy’s writing, there is also a notable sense of his interest in buildings, a reflection of his first intended career as an architect. ‘Hardy’s houses embodied the lives of the agricultural community’ Above all, Hardy’s imagination was caught by the ancient stone-built manor houses of…

WRITING in 1863, author and critic Percy Fitzgerald described Charles Dickens as ‘the Landseer of fiction’, referencing the celebrated painter famed for his animal representations. Dickens’s friend and biographer John Forster described the novelist’s fascination with ‘the habits and ways of all animals’ as ‘inexhaustible’. Today, Leon Litvack of Queen’s University, Belfast, believes that ‘no other 19th-century author writing in English uses animals in their novels to the extent or in the way that Dickens does’. Good luck to anyone brave enough to total Dickens’s mentions of members of the animal kingdom, from larks chirruping aloft in a pastoral setting to the farm-fragranced evocation of Smithfield meat market in Oliver Twist, with ‘the bellowing and plunging of the oxen, the bleating of sheep, the grunting and squeaking of pigs’. There…

IN the annals of the East India Company, one innovation has surely been as important as the bungalow or pyjamas. Punch the drink—as opposed to the magazine, which is not nearly as old—was brought over from India almost 400 years ago. There is, however, a connection between the drink and the journal. When it was established in 1841, a punning reference was made to the first editor, Mark Lemon: ‘Punch is nothing without the lemon.’ Lemons are, indeed, essential to punch in most of its forms. The name is taken from the Hindi panj, which means five—as in Punjab (Five Rivers)—and there are supposed to be five key ingredients. Charles Dickens, who took the beverage very seriously, kept it classic with his: lemons, demerara sugar, rum, cognac and boiling water.…

Göring, Göring, gone THE sound of a Spitfire is ingrained in the British psyche. The unapologetically purring rhythmic beat of the Rolls-Royce Merlin—the finest piston engine to soar skywards—and the throaty, cackling exhaust send shivers down the spine of all who witness this magnificence of mechanical engineering. The sorceress of the skies, the Spitfire is the embodiment of British spirit. The only Allied fighter to remain in full production throughout the Second World War, she is a symbol of dogged determination and national defiance against aggression. Unlike the bulldog, a symbol of stoicism that, over time, has distorted into a sorry shadow of its former self, the Spitfire remains frozen in modern memory: irresistibly elegant, lithe and dangerous. The old warbird still beckons. Based on the Goodwood estate in West…

IMPOSING, Grade II-listed Hurlditch Court stands in some 14 acres of formal gardens, parkland and pasture on the edge of the ancient village of Lamerton, about four miles north of the lively market town of Tavistock, Devon, and five miles west of Dartmoor. House and grounds have been sympathetically renovated by the current owners, who acquired the property in 2015 from its previous long-term custodians. Hurlditch Court is now for sale through Knight Frank, with selling agent Hamish Humfrey (020–7861 1717) seeking ‘offers over £3 million’. According to Ordnance Survey Archaeology, the original Hurlditch mansion was built in 1570, but destroyed by fire in 1905, except for the kitchen, which was incorporated in a new house built by the architect Walter Sarel for Reginald Morshead. His father was the Revd…

WE’VE put men on the moon. We’ve created the Hadron Collider and we’ve got to the bottom of the Mariana Trench. Yet we haven’t figured out how to keep Tupperware boxes and their lids in proximity to each other. This urban quandary is destined to join the pantheon marked ‘great unsolved mysteries’; perhaps to be filed below ‘how do cats purr?’ and above ‘why do some news agents think that the labelling instruction “Multipack—not to be sold separately” on tins of baked beans doesn’t apply to them?’ Yet the lid is finally—very finally—on Tupperware, something customers have been struggling with since the company emerged in the 1940s, courtesy of Earl Tupper, a chemist in Massachusetts, US, who invented a sturdier form of plastic that he called Poly-T. Filing for bankruptcy…

ON clear and frosted northern nights, if you are very lucky, green, blue, red and violet sheets of light as diaphanous as chiffon and shimmering like silk will come pouring into the dark bowl of the winter sky and prance and flicker for your entertainment. The Northern Lights are one of Nature’s most astonishing displays, a thing of jaw-dropping wonder. They are a sight, as Lancashire-born Bard of the Yukon Robert Service said, ‘for the eyes of God’. To our ancestors, the quivering spirals, beams and rods that danced above the horizon appeared supernatural: the glimmering armour of dead warriors, the breath of fallen heroes, the writhing fiery forms of battling dragons or a shimmering reflection of vast shoals of silver herring breasting the Arctic Ocean. They appeared a portent,…