Innholdsfortegnelse for January 22, 2025 i Country Life

THE famed BBC2 quiz programme University Challenge was adapted from an American show, College Bowl, by Granada TV in 1962, but it was Bamber Gascoigne who set the tone—and the questions—during his 25-year run as presenter. Viewing figures peaked at about 12 million during Gascoigne’s reign, although the programme was taken off air in 1987 due to dipping numbers; it now commands some 1.9 million viewers. Gascoigne coined phrases such as ‘Fingers on buzzers’, ‘No conferring’ and ‘Your starter for 10’ and would gently nudge ‘I’m going to have to hurry you’ in gentler tones than his successor—from 1994—Jeremy Paxman (‘Do come on!’), whose put downs were legendary. When Gascoigne died in 2022, aged 87, former contestant Bobby Seagull described him as ‘scholarly, gentle, yet commanding’ and Only Connect host…

PINK blossoms explode on a tree, a hillside dissolves into autumn gold, a shepherd and his sheep lie safe in the crook of a hill and gleaners still toil at the end of a long harvest day, stars already blazing above them. These dazzling pictures now adorn a smart pub in a pretty Kent village, but patrons of the Samuel Palmer in Shoreham might be surprised if its artist namesake shuffled in, a stocky figure in thick, scratched spectacles, a wide-brimmed straw hat and a huge shabby coat with enormous pockets, possibly singing hymns or reciting lines from Milton at the top of his voice. ‘The treasury of stored images would last him the rest of his life’ He didn’t always look like that. The earliest-known image of Samuel Palmer,…

The Master Builder: William Butterfield and his times Nicholas Olsberg (Lund Humphries, £60) THE architect William Butterfield (1814–1900) has always divided opinion. He stands out among the leaders of the Gothic movement in the Victorian period for austere high-mindedness combined at times with a rich sense of materials and decoration. He was a deeply religious man, whose clients were devoted to the improvement of society through Christian worship and projects for education and health. His best-known buildings, All Saints, Margaret Street, in Marylebone, London W1, Keble College Oxford and Rugby School, Warwickshire, show his pleasure in using coloured brick, set in geometrical patterns, inside and outside. They were seen by later critics as examples of the incomprehensible otherness of the Victorians, even as a form of architectural sadism, although this…

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Future Publishing Ltd, 121–141 Westbourne Terrace, Paddington, London W2 6JR 0330 390 6591; www.countrylife.co.uk IN case you are wondering, the place to go on holiday this year is, according to The New York Times’s 50 places to visit in 2025, Jane Austen’s England. Yes, Hampshire trumps the Galápagos Islands, New York’s own revamped museum spaces, the Indian state of Assam, White Lotus Thailand—and Greenland. The next European destination listed is Cézanne’s home town of Aix-en-Provence, France, in seventh place. The Austen salutation cites, of course, celebrations for the 250th anniversary of her birth, many of which are in Hampshire, at her birthplace of Steventon, her brother’s home at Chawton and her grave in Winchester Cathedral. Austenmania (‘Hold on to your bonnets’, page 60) shows no signs of abating and Hampshire,…

Pointing to the past YOUR image of the newly listed fingerpost (Town & Country, January 8) brought to mind this pair. The older one (left) has a carved stone base that details the distances and if you have a magnifying glass, you will see the date: 1739. The fingerposts are at the junction of the Trough of Bowland road and the road to the hamlet of Dunsop Bridge in Lancashire—allegedly the geographical centre of Britain. Michael Finch, by email Walk like a Roman MY heart leapt when I saw Fiona Reynolds had chosen Cwm Bychan with the Roman Steps along the Barmouth Ridge (‘For every walk of life’, January 8). More than 50 years ago, as a student at Coleg Harlech, Gwynedd, I climbed those steps. It was autumn and…

‘The Migration Series’ by Jacob Lawrence ‘Jacob Lawrence’s “The Migration Series” is an absolute favourite of mine, especially Panels 1, 45 and 60. These works capture the essence of the Great Migration. Panel 1 shows families gathered at a train station, ready to leave the South. Lawrence’s warm tones–rich browns and ochres–create anticipation. The scene pulses with the energy of a new beginning. In Panel 45, reality sets in. Lawrence’s cooler blues and greys reflect the challenges of life in the North. A resilience shines through, like the spirit of jazz and the reality of the blues. Panel 60 looks forward with hope. Lawrence’s warm reds and golds return. It’s a reminder that this journey wasn’t only about escape–but creating a new identity that would fuel the Harlem Renaissance in…

THE scene was little more than a square of bare earth on the edge of a busy road at the outskirts of Buxton, Derbyshire. It was loud with traffic, battered by rain and devoid of signs of Nature, except that rutted lorry tracks had given rise to a flourishing bank of thistles and this had lured in a dozen birds. It was a ‘charm’ of goldfinches. These joyous little creatures seemed as indifferent to the weather as they were to the disturbance and, in gaps left by relentless car noise, they inserted snatches of their lovely liquid calls. Dancing from one wizened plant to another, they unfolded as momentary patterns of crimson and yellow. What really transformed the birds to a kind of epiphany was that I noticed how, as…

WITH contacts in the film industry, Mitch Crook, creative director of the design practice Hotel Creative, was given first refusal on the bathroom used on the set of the Freddie Mercury biopic Bohemian Rhapsody. It was a faithful replica of the one in Garden Lodge, Kensington, London W8, the house that Queen’s singer-songwriter owned from 1980 until he died in 1991. Once filming had been completed, the main components, which had all been designed by Drummonds, needed a new home. Mr Crook, a fan of the band’s music, bought the pieces and put them away in storage for the right project. Three years later, an opportunity arose when Mr Crook was working on redesigning a five-bedroom Queen Anne house in Surrey. The owners were particularly dissatisfied with the main bathroom…

East Sussex, £3.25 million A 15th-century piece of rock-and-roll history wrapped in a moat, Horselunges Manor in the village of Hellingly was once the home of Peter Grant, the revered manager of Led Zeppelin who ‘could out-talk anybody’ and pioneered a new standard of management that ensured his band could focus on albums over singles and reap their just rewards. Beyond the studded oak front door, medieval grandeur reigns in the Great Parlour, with its timber frame, window seats and massive brick fireplace, and the billiard and sitting rooms are equally impressive; in contrast, the sizeable kitchen has been thoroughly modernised, as has a triple-aspect gym with vaulted ceiling. There are six bedrooms in the main house, with further accommodation in a two-bedroom annexe, a two-bedroom cottage and a two/three-bedroom…

Curly kale, mushroom and caramelised shallot tart with Gruyère crust Ingredients For the crust 200g plain flour100g butter, coldand cubed50g grated Gruyère2tbspn iced water For the filling A splash of olive oil4 shallots, thinly sliced200g mixed mushrooms, sliced1 clove garlic, grated200g curly kale3 eggs150ml double cream75g grated Gruyère Method 1 Put the flour into a large bowl and rub the butter into the flour with your fingertips until it resembles breadcrumbs. Mix in the Gruyère and add the water if needed to form a dough that comes together. Wrap in clingfilm and chill for 30 minutes. 2 Preheat your oven to 160˚C fan/180˚C/350˚F/gas mark 4. Roll out the dough between parchment paper to the thickness of a pound coin, peel away the paper and use the dough to line a…

LAST November, it was announced that the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford had raised £4.48 million to purchase a gold-ground panel of the Crucifixion by the Florentine Dominican Fra Angelico (1395–1455). It had been in Britain for two centuries before it was acquired by an overseas owner and became subject to an export stop. A private treaty sale was negotiated, at a price distinctly below its probable value on the open market. Sandro Botticelli (1445–1510) was born at about the time Fra Angelico died; by 1470, he was already establishing his career and even his early work demonstrates the speed with which Renaissance art was developing. Angelico was at the forefront of his generation, notably in his rational use of pictorial space and modelling of forms with light and shade, but…

FOR the first time ever, the World Monuments Fund (WMF) has gone inter-planetary; the Moon is among 25 sites on its 2025 Watch list, a biennial round-up that identifies places facing major challenges, such as climate change, tourism, conflict and natural disaster. There are more than 90 locations on the lunar surface where spacecraft have made historic landings, with relics including humanity’s first footprints there, courtesy of Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin in 1969, and part of Tranquility Base, Apollo 11’s landing site, together with more than 100 other artefacts. ‘Items such as the camera that captured the televised Moon landing; a memorial disk left by astronauts Armstrong and Aldrin; and hundreds of other objects are emblematic of this legacy. Yet, they face mounting risks amid accelerating lunar activities, undertaken…

IN the early days of television cookery programmes, the irrepressible Fanny Cradock used to fulminate about non-stick pans. ‘Where do you think that coating goes, as it inevitably wears off?’ she would ask. ‘I don’t want it in my food!’ Now, 50 years later, it turns out that her instinct was right. The ‘forever chemicals’ that were heralded as such a perfect breakthrough are seen today as a serious threat, not only to our food, but to our health and the wider environment. PFAS (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances), to give them their proper name, are the some 10,000 human-created compounds that we find in non-stick pans, pizza boxes, waterproof clothing, cosmetics and fire-fighting foam. They seemed to be a wonderful answer to so many simple problems. Non-stick, heatproof, greaseproof, stainproof…

Brockfield Hall, North Yorkshire The home of Mr Charlie and the Hon Mrs Wood BROCKFIELD HALL was the creation of a certain Benjamin Preston Agar, who succinctly recorded its construction in his personal account book: ‘Commenced the building of my mansion house [at] Brockfield in 1804 and on August 12th 1807 came to live in it.’ A well-lettered date stone inscribed ‘BA 1804’ survives in the house, but the completion of works took rather longer than this note implies. Agar’s surviving account book with its disbursements and accompanying vouchers and bills have been discussed in detail by Margaret Boustead in the North Yorkshire Record Office Publications no.55 (1994). As Giles Worsley explained in a slightly earlier account of the history of Brockfield (COUNTRY LIFE, March 9, 1989), these show that…

IN her lovely book The Land Where Lemons Grow (2015), Helena Attlee watches Sicilian cooks making marmalade with both sweet and sour oranges, red grapefruit and clementines. She calls those British people who think only Sevilles will do ‘marmalade fundamentalists’. I admit to being one of them and I’m in good company: the late Alan Davidson, author of the magisterial The Oxford Companion To Food (1999), observed, ‘only bitter oranges can be used to make proper marmalade’. The nation’s loyalty to the Seville can be attributed to a storm at the beginning of the 18th century that drove a Spanish ship laden with Sevilles to take shelter in a Dundee harbour. As Mrs Attlee has recorded, a local grocer called James Keiller bought the cargo, only to discover the oranges…

The army officer-turned-management consultant Six months ago, Joffy was deploying a battalion of infantrymen to eastern Europe; now, he’s bent over a laptop bound for Waterloo amending the fonts on a PowerPoint presentation. Yet old habits die hard and, on the eve of a commute, he polishes his shoes (he’s the only management consultant not in trainers) and preloads his cufflinks into his shirt, ready to do battle on the 06:24. In the depths of January, he puts his half-alive station runner through the wringer along the icy Dorset lanes—this is the SAS of commuting, more than two hours each way on the stopping service—but, by late April, he’s rewarded by stepping off the train into a Thomas Hardy nirvana. Lunchtime is spent romping along the Embankment at tabbing pace…

WHARTONS ROSES is the biggest rose producer in the British Isles. Its growing fields on the borders of Norfolk and Suffolk are a joy to see when they reach the peak of their flower power in late July. Whartons supplies many of the best rose nurseries and almost all Britain’s garden centres, but the company is not a household name because it is a wholesaler, not a retailer. It produces 1.5 million garden roses every year and its choice of varieties determines what retailers offer and gardeners buy. The heyday for roses was the middle of the 20th century. They were planted in vast numbers—50 or 100 of only one variety—in public parks and large private gardens, often as a cheap substitute for traditional summer bedding. British nurseries produced more…

I WAS recently told by a female friend that ‘every girl reads Ballet Shoes, no boy ever does’. A quick straw poll suggests there is some truth in this Wildean aphorism. I certainly came to the Olivier Theatre’s version of Noel Streatfeild’s novel in a state of total innocence and was bowled over by the story, the staging, the acting and the relevance of a 1936 book to today’s world. This is far and away the National’s best show since James Graham’s Dear England. Where to start? I assume my female readers will know that this is the story of three orphaned girls, brought up in the home of an eccentric professor, with distinct ambitions: for Pauline it is acting, for Posy it is dancing and for Petrova it is…