Innholdsfortegnelse for May 7, 2025 i Country Life

Quiz of the week 1) What was the name of the British band formed by Jack Bruce, Eric Clapton and Ginger Baker? 2) Which wild plant is also known as Jack-by-the-hedge? 3) Who is credited with building the first successful steam locomotive, the Rocket, in 1829? 4) The green woodpecker’s call is known as what? 5) Which Greek god gave his name to the NASA missions that landed 12 men, including Neil Armstrong, on the moon? 1) Cream 2) Garlic mustard (‘Alliaria petiolata’) 3) Robert and George Stephenson 4) A yaffle 5) Apollo. Riddle me this: An echo Riddle me this I speak without a mouth and I hear without ears. I’m invisible, but you can call for me. What am I? Time to buy On this day… May 7,…

AS an unconventional schoolboy at Sherborne in Dorset, Alan Turing was ticked off for having ‘grandiose ideas’. Staff were perturbed that he preferred science to the classics (aged 15, he precised Einstein’s Theory of Relativity) and a maths report read: ‘He must realise that ability to put a neat and tidy solution on paper—intelligible and legible—is necessary for a first-rate mathematician.’ However, by his early twenties, Turing (1912–54) was being taken far more seriously; he laid the ground for today’s artificial intelligence with a machine he called a computer because it had the potential to match, and exceed, a human for computing information. During the Second World War, Britain was up against the Germans’ Enigma machine, used to encode secret messages; it had nearly 159 quintillion settings that changed daily.…

A is for Amateur rider, a rare beast at this five-star (highest) level of the sport, but last year Ireland’s Lucy Latta, who has a full-time job in drinks marketing, made a brilliant debut to finish runner-up. B is for Beaufort, 12th Duke of, the gracious host of the Horse Trials; for Bowlers, which are still doffed politely by stewards; and for BBC commentator Clare Balding, who never flaps. C is for Cross-Country, the pivotal phase of the competition and the sport’s USP, and for the official 2025 Charity, Guide Dogs. D is for Dressage, for some a necessary evil before the real business of cross-country, but judged subjectively and therefore highly influential, and for Dogs, which should be seen and not loose on the cross-country course. E is for…

HOBBY is a rather strange name for this wonderful bird, although it apparently bears no relationship to the human sort of ‘hobby’—the personal pastime. Yet those of us of a particular vintage may recognise sporting connotations in the falcon’s scientific name, Falco subbuteo, because it was once a popular children’s board game based on football, the creator of which was said to love this particular bird of prey. Subbuteo may now be unfamiliar, but hobbies themselves go from strength to strength. The British breeding population has increased at least 20-fold since 2000 and this almost certainly underestimates the total, which ranges from Cornwall to Co Durham. Some suggest the figure could be as high as 5,000 pairs, which is astonishing when you realise that, in 1970, the national total was…

MY family has been in the theatre for four generations. I’m related to Sir Squire Bancroft, one of the first great actor-managers, who, with his wife, Effie, produced and managed the Prince of Wales Theatre, London W1, during the 19th century. As well as encouraging writers to have a say in their work, they introduced new modern drama to London and gave actors not only salaries, but wardrobes, too. Today, at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane, London WC2, I am sitting in the most comfortable dressing room I’ve ever known throughout my 50-year career—I not only have a wardrobe, but a bed, a sofa, a bathroom, heating and lights around my dressing table. For my first entrance, I am called to the stage over the tannoy. I walk down the…

THE Okavango River, the fourth largest in Africa, is a wonder of the world. Rising in Angola, it runs for 1,000 miles into the Delta of the same name before disappearing beneath the Kalahari desert. It never reaches the sea. The river fills the Okavango Delta in Botswana at a critical period of the year, when the area would otherwise be dry, and this makes it a unique area for wildlife—the perfect destination for a safari. For our trip, we opted to sleep entirely under canvas, which makes for a complete safari experience in a way that being cocooned behind bricks and mortar can never match. Tents make you a part of Nature. If you think you need a television in your room, you are in the wrong place. TIA:…

WHEN he was a child, rare-book dealer Simon Finch met a robber. It wasn’t just any thug—he was one of the men who pulled off the Great Train Robbery of 1963, Ronnie Biggs. ‘He was working as a carpenter in a house owned by my parents,’ Mr Finch explains. One day, he disappeared mid job and never came back. ‘My parents thought, “Gosh, another hopeless tradesman”, but it turned out, obviously, that he was robbing a train with a few of his friends.’ By the time Biggs had begun working at the Finches’ house, he had already served a few prison sentences and collected a long and variegated list of crimes, ranging from desertion to theft and robbery. During one of his stints in jail, he had met another criminal,…

Sword: D-Day Trial by Battle Max Hastings (William Collins, £25) SIR Max Hastings is a prolific military historian, experienced war reporter and commentator, and consummate storyteller. His forte is the big picture enlivened by vignettes of combat and the individual soldier. In Sword, he brings these resources to bear on a much narrower front than usual: one of the five Allied divisional landing beaches in Operation Overlord, the invasion of occupied France in June 1944. The easternmost, Sword Beach, was the most important and the most vulnerable to counter-attack. It was the shortest route to Caen, the ancient capital of Normandy, key to breakout into open country beyond. For the landings at Sword, Gen Sir Bernard Montgomery committed his best troops, the bulk of them regular units, although most had…

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Future Publishing Ltd, 121–141 Westbourne Terrace, Paddington, London W2 6JR 0330 390 6591; www.countrylife.co.uk OSPREY lays egg’ was an uplifting rarity among last week’s headlines. A pair of the spectacular birds of prey residing in the Usk valley in Wales had produced their first egg under the proud watch of a local conservation group whose efforts are directed entirely at this single species of raptor. The curlew, the barn owl and the blackbird have their champions, but this is arguably the avian sector that attracts more single-bird devotees—and debate—than any other. COUNTRY LIFE’s new column by naturalist Mark Cocker celebrating these super-talented lords of the skies starts this week (Winging it, page 200). More than any other winged creature, the raptor encapsulates Tennyson’s famous line about ‘Nature, red in tooth…

Deer menace OUR garden has been increasingly invaded by deer, particularly muntjac (below), for decades (‘Oh deer, oh deer’, April 23). We experimented with every kind of deterrent—lion dung, human hair collected from my hairdresser and chilli flakes in the tulip pots, but nothing deterred the marauders. I tried Grazers repellent, but it did nothing to save my tulips from having their flower heads munched. Eventually, it became a question of fencing out the deer or giving up gardening altogether. In 2022, we invested in deer fencing the whole garden—it cost a small fortune, but it has worked brilliantly. Stella Vaines, Buckinghamshire Scottish spectres GHOSTS in the Highlands of Scotland have long been reported (Spectator, April 2). My ancestor, Revd Thomas Houstoun, minister at Boleskine from 1648–1705, was called in…

AND Joshua sent out… two men… to spy secretly, saying, Go view the land, even Jericho. And they went, and came into an harlot’s house, named Rahab, and lodged there.’ Rahab thus combined the oldest and second oldest professions, creating ‘sexpionage’. Churchill knew the importance of intelligence. He’d written the biography of his ancestor the Duke of Marlborough, Britain’s most complete general, who’d said: ‘No war can be made without good and early intelligence.’ Churchill’s most famous source was ‘Ultra’, the breaking of the German Enigma code at Bletchley Park. However, human intelligence (‘humint’) had a quality of its own and, in June 1940, after the fall of France, he set up the Special Operations Executive (SOE) ‘to co-ordinate, inspire, control and assist the nationals of the oppressed countries’ in…

IN a quiet corner of Cirencester, which is in a quiet corner of the Cotswolds, Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen sits in a loud room full of clutter, paint and paper. It is here that he does his most important work or, rather, works. Mr Llewelyn-Bowen is a painter now and he wants to paint your house. More precisely, he wants to paint your house with some swagger. Swagger comes naturally to him. When we meet, he is, of course, dressed impeccably. Lashings of blue, that swept hair, collar bursting. He is cheeky, his cadence voluptuous and he wants to gossip. He is everyone’s naughty uncle, the one who sneaks you a glass of wine at dinner and smiles with a twinkle. He is surrounded by easels, half-formed houses with swans and peacocks…

Pick of the crop Bedside water carafes Pick of the crop Luggage stands…

Honey, I’m at Chelsea BEES are vital for life on Earth because of their invaluable contributions to biodiversity, the fact that they pollinate plants and the products that come from them, such as honey and beeswax. Imagine a world without wonderful honey, a sweetener, spread and salve. In Greek mythology, the Gods feasted on ambrosia, believed to bestow power and immortality on the consumer and regularly associated with honey. There are 276 species of bee in the UK—nearly all of which are found in London. Urban beekeeping is now a popular pastime, with more than 5,000 hives rumoured to be active in the capital, including in Islington gardens (above). Notable locations include Fortnum & Mason and The Ritz hotel, as well as Kew Gardens, Buckingham Palace and Lambeth Palace. The…

The garden at Hampnett House, GloucestershireThe home of Mr Sanjeev Shah and Ms Mansi Amin ON a hot summer’s day, the herb garden just below the main house—a Victorian rectory in the Cotswolds—is busy with activity. Apart from the honey bees, hoverflies and bumblebees that provide a reassuring hum under a cloudless sky, Mansi Amin and her daughters are busy picking calendula flowers and sage leaves. The flowers are for a picture, the leaves will be used to make a sage honey. Wild strawberries have self-seeded through the gravel edges of this small terrace, where a mulberry tree drops its midday shade on drifts of lemon balm, rosemary, mint, thyme and catmint—the latter will be used to produce an insect repellent. There are currants for picking and Cistus ladanifer, which…

IN recent years, few countries have been dealt quite as bad a hand as Sri Lanka. There’s been civil war and natural disasters, terrorist attacks and political crises. It all feels doubly unfair because the south Asian island is so beloved. No one dithers over it; in fact, no one speaks badly of it at all. Thankfully, Sri Lanka now seems to have entered a much-deserved period of stability and, in January, it set a new tourist record. After the 2019 Easter bombing atrocity—in which three churches and three hotels were targeted in the capital, Colombo—Miguel Cunat, a partner at Sustainable Sri Lanka, found himself in conversation with ‘a gentleman who was working with the EU’ and on the hunt for a standout project to fund, one that would require…

THE vegans never disappoint when it comes to overplaying their hand. We’ve had meatless meat, pigless bacon and milkless cheese. Now, it appears we have eggless eggs. The fundamental nature of an egg is that it carries the prospect of life. Its nature is that it cannot be plant-based and yet that is precisely what is now being claimed. To make it worse, America’s best-selling product is a concoction called ‘Just Egg’, which is exactly what it isn’t. It is about to be launched in Europe and should come up against the Trade Descriptions Acts in the UK and the EU. The regulators should insist on rebranding as ‘Absolutely No Egg Whatsoever’. Or perhaps they could allow it to major on its biggest ingredient and call the product ‘Just Mung…

Bowood, Wiltshire The seat of the Marquis of Lansdowne IN 1955, George Petty-Fitzmaurice, 8th Marquis of Lansdowne, took the agonising decision to demolish the so-called Big House at Bowood. His intention was to reorganise an adjacent double courtyard of service buildings—the Little House, as it was known, and in which he already lived—as his future residence. A contemporary editorial in COUNTRY LIFE on July 7 described this ‘amputation’ of Bowood as ‘deplorable’, but agreed that circumstances left no alternative. The Big House, the magazine observed, was ‘never regarded as an architectural masterpiece’. It had, moreover, stood empty since the end of the Second World War and had no prospect of viable use. The demolition and remodelling of Bowood was planned and executed with exceptional care. Initial designs had been drawn…

IN his Chipping Campden workshop, furniture-maker John Crossley turns out benches, serving boards and his version of the classic stick chair, each piece displaying the characteristics of the tree it came from. A guiding principle, he says, is the motto of Arts-and-Crafts founder William Morris: ‘Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful.’ All Cotswold makers owe much to Morris and his fellow architects, craftsmen and political thinkers, who left London’s East End for the big skies and stone buildings of Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire. Morris leased the manor at Kelmscott, Oxfordshire, with his friend Dante Gabriel Rossetti, as Ernest Gimson and brothers Sidney and Ernest Barnsley set up a community of craftsmen producing cabinetry, ceramics and ironwork near Stroud in…

EARLY summer is the season of short-lived things. Spring’s sudden showers are succeeded by elusive rainbows, brief blossoms and fleeting glimpses of the sun. Few things epitomise this ephemerality better than the mayfly, an insect the very name of which, Ephemeroptera—from the Greek epi (upon) and hemero (a day)—signifies brevity. Most adult mayflies do not live beyond one day. Yet what a glorious, glamorous few hours of life they have. Clad in silver livery, propelling themselves up into the sunlit air before freefalling down in their thousands, the spinners, as they are known, grab their partners to mate in mid air. Soon, their dance and briefest of encounters is over. The females fall down to the water to lay their eggs and expire—or get snatched by a trout—and the males…

Shop of the month Gladwell’s Deli & Grocery, No 2, Camberwell Church Street, SE5 ON a roaring stretch of the A202 in Camber-well, across from Camberwell Green, Gladwell’s keeps its wooden double doors propped open. Passers-by get glimpses of lettuces in woven trays and mushrooms in crates, buckets of flowers and two long tables that wouldn’t look out of place in a dining hall, rammed with elbows and jam doughnuts from St John’s. A steady stream is drawn inside—the regulars ordering coffees and taking their cups upstairs to the larger seating area; the newbies edging around the ground floor, raising an occasional eyebrow at the cost of a sourdough loaf from Snapery Bakery (£7.25). Top-quality, artisanal foodstuffs are the point here. Brown-paper bags of Harth hot chocolate (regular and chilli)…

IT is the season of the sour, when gooseberries, rhubarb and sorrel come into their own. I look forward to it every bit as much as asparagus, new potatoes and other seasonal markers of the kitchen garden. Sorrel is perhaps the least appreciated of the three, taking its name from the French surelle, from sur meaning ‘sour’ and, as with rhubarb, that sharpness is due to oxalic acid. Sorrel is closely related to wild dock, and is similarly easy to find throughout Europe and North America, where it grows predominantly in woodlands and open fields. It has a long history of culinary and medicinal use, stretching back as least as far as the ancient Egyptians, Greeks and Romans, who enjoyed it as a digestive before and after meals. As with…

Wild wonderment A slew of exciting new safari camps has just opened or is about to—including Natural Selection’s 12-tent Mbaba in the Okavango Delta, Botswana, built in collaboration with Ralph Bousfield, the brains behind the famous Jack’s Camp (from £980 per person per night; www.naturalselection.travel). In Zimbabwe, about three miles upstream from Mpala Jena Camp on the Zambezi River (right), is Great Plains Conservation’s Mpala Jena Private Villas, opening in the late summer. The pair of exclusive-use, three-bedroom villas, complete with pools and butler service, will be an ideal base from which to visit Victoria Falls (above) and embark on dhow cruises and lion-spotting game drives (from £5,130 per villa, per night; www.greatplainsconservation.com). Meanwhile, over in Rwanda, Wilderness is preparing to open Magashi Peninsula in the country’s Akagera National Park.…

AS crab-apple blossom drifts through my office window and gardens nationwide put on their glad rags, it seems apt to focus upon one particular garden that I chanced upon last year—not in England, I should say, but in Italy. We were mooching about southern Tuscany with the vague intention of walking up Monte Amiata, a plan swiftly scotched by the weather. No point scaling a mountain in the cloud, we had decided, when the rationale had been to admire the sweeping landscape of Val d’Orcia from the top. A better plan was forged to hang out in the picturesque Renaissance hill-top town of Pienza and get stuck into the wine. This, after all, is serious Sangiovese country, home to Italy’s oldest and most famous appellation, Vino Nobile di Montepulciano. We’d…