Innholdsfortegnelse for June 4, 2025 i Country Life

Quiz of the week 1) What is the dispersal of seeds by animals called? 2) Name the mechanical shark in Steven Spielberg’s 1975 film Jaws 3) What was the code name for the evacuation of Allied Forces from Dunkirk in 1940? 4) Name the world’s largest land-locked country 5) Which animal’s name is derived from the Ancient Greek for ‘river horse’? 1) Zoochory 2) Bruce 3) Operation Dynamo 4) Kazakhstan 5) Hippopotamus. Riddle me this: Mercury Riddle me this I’m a god, a planet and I measure heat. What am I? Time to buy On this day… June 4, 1805 The custom of Trooping the Colour at Horse Guards Parade, London SW1, initiated in 1755, was held to honour the Sovereign’s birthday for the first time. A grand display of…

THE show season is fully under way. Last week, the Staffordshire, the Suffolk and the Royal Bath and West; this week, the Royal Cornwall, the South of England and the Cumberland. They will continue with national festivals, including the Royal Welsh and the Royal Highland, down to smaller events from Framlingham in Suffolk to Nidderdale in North Yorkshire and Kington in Herefordshire. The coverage, variety and enthusiasm is remarkable and the voluntary involvement unparalleled—a welcome reminder of the vibrancy of rural life. All this depends on the profitability of agriculture, which underpins everything in the countryside. There, confidence is at rock bottom. Increasingly battered by extreme weather, farmers now have to deal with a Government that appears oblivious to their concerns and ignorant of the facts of rural life. At…

Forest of mystery Imagine the public’s dismay when an arrow shot by the unpopular William II’s finest archer ‘accidentally’ ricocheted off an oak tree, straight into said monarch’s lung. The day was August 2, 1100, and the unfortunately perforated king, nicknamed Rufus for his ruddy complexion, died instantly. Described by historian Frank Barlow in his 1983 book as a ‘rumbustious, devil-may-care soldier, without natural dignity or social graces… addicted to every kind of vice, particularly lust’, the King is honoured at the site of the deadly mishap, near Minstead in the New Forest, with the Rufus Stone. Local folklore speculates that his demise is attributed to his father, William the Conqueror, who triggered a curse when he demolished churches and kicked out countless parishioners to create his hunting forest in…

IN recent years, a new generation of designers and architects has recognised that utility rooms, mud rooms and laundry rooms can shoulder the burden of domestic life, taking pressure off other areas of the house. But can functionality ever be aesthetically pleasing? Moreover, what’s the secret of creating spaces with multiple purposes, such as open-plan kitchens and living rooms? These are the issues that will be discussed by Emma Sims-Hilditch (top right), Rupert Cunningham of Ben Pentreath Studio (middle right) and Jay Grierson of Martin Hulbert Design (bottom right). Mrs Sims-Hilditch has designed a ‘modern mud room’ for this year’s WOW!house that comprises a boot room, complete with dog-washing station, and Mr Cunningham has conceived a kitchen inspired by Greek and Gothic styles brought to life by Lopen Joinery. In…

A big comeback at The Queen’s Club FROM June 7, The Queen’s Club, W14, will reopen its gates to members and those fortunate enough to secure tickets to the tennis championships. This year’s are historic: for the first time since 1973, women are back on the court and competing in their own tournament. Although the Cinch Championships, as they later became known, began in 1890 as a joint men’s and women’s event, both competitions were discontinued after the Nottingham Open took the prime slot in the week before Wimbledon. That event was moved forward in 1977, prompting soft-drinks company Rawlings to sponsor a new men’s tournament at Queen’s. The long-awaited return of its female counterpart, courtesy of current sponsor HSBC, comes at the perfect time for UK stars Emma Raducanu…

The garden at The Holt, Hampshire The home of Mr and Mrs Edward Wake THE Holt is the handsome 17th-century home of Edward and Katherine Wake, set within the South Downs National Park. The William and Mary façade looks out onto a blissful Arcadian landscape. Red Ruby Devon cattle and Wiltshire Horn sheep graze peacefully under spreading beech trees and would continue right up to the front door if it were not for a barely perceptible ditch and stretch of estate fencing. ‘This is how ha-has were originally designed,’ explains eminent landscape architect Kim Wilkie, who has helped the Wakes (who happen to be both old friends and near neighbours) integrate the house more comfortably into its surroundings. Importantly, the entire estate is run with a mission to improve and…

IF I suggested that the merlin (Falco columbarius) could be considered this country’s most dramatic avian predator, some readers might think me perverse. Especially when I add, in the next breath, that it is also Britain’s smallest bird of prey (although sparrowhawks can weigh less). Some male merlins are barely bigger than mistle thrushes, but what size cannot measure is the sheer charisma of the bird in almost everything it does. An illustration of the courage shown by adult merlins in defence of their chicks is that they are known to attack and chase away the more conventional ‘stars’ among this bird family—peregrines, gyr falcons and even golden eagles. Merlin wings, like the tail, are short and pointed. Even in leisured flight, they work with electric speed. In fact, part…

WE are bowling along a wide, straight road out of Muscat, Oman, when the conversation turns to camels. Beside me is Mohammed Al-Mahri, a distinguished member of the Al-Mahri tribe hailing from Oman’s southern Dhofar region and whose full name would run to many lines if I were to include his long lineage of grandfathers stretching back through time to the Prophet Hud. Mohammed and I have met before on a previous trip of mine to my favourite country in the Middle East, but, somehow, we have never touched on the subject of these hardy, desert beasts. He has 27 camels, he tells me, adding with a flourish that at least three are currently pregnant. He has four daughters, too, whom he professes to love almost as much, although, clearly,…

Future Publishing Ltd, 121–141 Westbourne Terrace, Paddington, London W2 6JR 0330 390 6591; www.countrylife.co.uk THE scent—fresh, yet ancient—will hit you before you see them, some 1,000 roses tumbling over walls and rollicking in beds. ‘Most old roses bloom only once a year,’ mused Audrey Hepburn when she visited Mottisfont in 1993. Here, ‘at the height of the season in June… during high rose tide, the magic of old roses still weaves a spell.’ This unparalleled garden in the grounds of an Augustinian priory-cum-country house, home to hundreds of pre-1900 varieties, is only one of the wonders of Hampshire. We’ve tried our best to condense the rest to a mere 13 (page 74), including ginclear chalkstreams and Highclere Castle, where Downton Abbey meets Tutankhamun, not to mention the ancient capital of…

The martini renaissance JAMES BOND’S favourite cocktail (vermouth with gin or vodka, in his case shaken and with a twist) is threatening to dethrone the perennially popular Aperol spritz as the drink of the summer. In the era of the microtrend, the martini—whether maximalist, mini or savoury—has become a mirror of the establishment that serves it. At Isaac McHale’s Bar Valette, London E2, the concoction is blended with absinthe, maraschino or orange bitters. At Café François, SE1, and the Covent Garden Hotel, WC2, it comes with fries at a happy-hour discount of £10 and £14, respectively. The martini at Claridge’s, W1, is, fittingly, a classic: ice-cold liquor with a hint of vermouth, as if it’s flirted with the glass, but not yet become intimately acquainted with it. Some more seasoned…

EDWARD, 3rd Baron Montagu of Beaulieu (1926–2015), who inherited his family estate on the Hampshire coast when he was only two, was a stylish and visionary pioneer of country-house diversification—on taking over Beaulieu on his 25th birthday, he discovered his income was only £1,500 a year—and one of the first landowners to run a music (jazz) festival on his estate. When this ran into trouble in 1960, with the ‘Battle of Beaulieu’—a riot caused by a clash between modern and traditional jazz purists—he concentrated on cars, already a family interest. His father, an MP, had campaigned for drivers’ rights and published Car Illustrated. Lord Montagu also published a magazine that eventually became Classic Cars (it was once owned by the same stable, IPC, as COUNTRY LIFE) and, early in his…

Shop of the month Amaia London, No 14, Cale Street, SW3 AMAIA ARRIETA, the founder of Amaia London, began kicking around an idea to start her own business when pregnant with her first child. For baby clothes, ‘I would go back to Spain, my home country,’ she says, ‘as the choice, quality, design and prices were much better than what I could find [in the UK]’. She opened a small shop on Chelsea Green in the spring of 2005. From the start, the aim was to offer traditional children’s clothing manufactured in Spain, but with British character (Liberty prints; smocked dresses). The shop is stocked with a mix of refined button-downs and seersucker shorts, and frothier pieces for special occasions, such as weddings and christenings. Amaia London also designs bespoke…

IT’S often when I have my hands full of shopping, perhaps when the car parking is running out, that I see a rare display of perfect romanesco. My eyes light up at its beauty, my thoughts turn to supper, but last time I stopped to balance one atop a full bag, it rolled off as I dashed to the car, its perfect point damaged on the kerb. Never again. This year, I’m going back to growing it. Brassica oleracea (Botrytis Group) ‘Romanesco’, to give it its proper name, is a lime-green spiralling cone, visually as if a cauliflower and a broccoli had a child. Its conical spiral comprises spirals of conical buds, which are each in turn made up of smaller conical buds ordered into a logarithmic spirals, so it…

Made for the Med Just as the holiday season kicks off, a bunch of fabulous villas and hotels is set to open across Europe. In Italy, the Splendido, A Belmond Hotel, in Portofino (above), has added Italy’s first Dior spa and exclusive-use Villa Beatrice (right), both part of a multi-year renovation by Martin Brudnizki Design Studio. The latter is a neo-Renaissance palazzo with four suites (plus a cottage), a pool, sea access, butler service and a private chef. The price is on request and it opens on June 29 (www.belmond.com). Along the coast in Puglia’s Ostuni, Vista Ostuni is a hotel in a 14th-century palazzo that was originally a convent. It has a spa, outdoor pool, two restaurants overseen by Michelin-starred chef Andrea Berton and a rooftop bar with sea…

What’s in a Year: A Countryman’s Tale Through the Seasons John Miller (Partnership Publishing, £19.99) LIKE many countrymen of a certain age, John Miller never envisaged a time when he would have to return a salmon to the river, when badgers would need controlling or that he would feel anxious about the return of swifts. Nor did he foresee that domestic animals, including dogs and cats, would create ecological problems, that feeding birds could spread disease and encourage predators, that an immaculate garden would be frowned upon and that a surfeit of game might go uneaten. As most naturalists do, he puts the case for an environmental reset, but done incrementally. He opines that eating beef in a predominantly grassland country is not a bad thing, especially when set against…

Wootton’s renaissance AS an 8–10-year-old child during the last part of the Second World War, I spent holidays with grandparents near Wootton Hall in Staffordshire (right; Letters, May 14). There, we could only peep through the huge gates into the wild growth beyond, believing the place was haunted. How wonderful that this historic building has been restored and replanted for future generations. Mrs B. A. Brearley, Hertfordshire The real Lorna Doone ST MARY’S in Oare, Somerset, is well known as the setting for the attempted murder of Lorna Doone (The legacy, May 21). Less well known is the memorial to Mary Whiddon (pictured) in Chagford church, on the edge of Dartmoor, which inspired the author R. D. Blackmore. Whiddon was shot dead in 1641 by a jealous lover as she…

The Supper at Emmaus by Caravaggio ‘Here, Caravaggio shows so incredibly his mastery–in colour and light and perspective, in the dimension of the work, in thought and in spirituality. This painting has always fascinated me: it is as if it’s alive–we are watching through a window in front. I would give metaphors of Caravaggio’s work in my exposition of ragas [melodic frameworks] and my way of flowing through glowing notes, where you show shades of a single note from the softest emotion to hard and powerful resonances. Caravaggio flows like music through this work, a story woven in melodious melancholic movement. He moves me very much–as a story of his inner torment brings out his mastery, so pure and seeped in such an intimate spiritual reality’ Charlotte Mullins comments on The…

ON May 24, 1817, Jane Austen left Chawton, Hampshire, in the company of her sister Cassandra, her brother Henry and her nephew William. A cottage in the village—now Jane Austen’s House museum (COUNTRY LIFE, August 28, 2013)—had been her home since 1809. Their destination was No 8, College Street, Winchester, a lodging house, from where Jane would seek medical treatment from a well-known physician, Giles King Lyford. He was surgeon-in-ordinary at the nearby county hospital and his treatment had already alleviated the suffering of her illness. Consequently, she explained in a letter to her friend Anne Sharp on May 22, 1817, ‘Instead of going to Town to put myself in the hands of some Physician… I am going to Winchester instead, for some weeks to see what Mr Lyford can…

COMPRISING cabinetry from the ‘Classic’ furniture collection by deVOL and painted in the firm’s Printer’s Black paint, this striking design is inspired by a neighbourhood bistro in Manhattan, US. ‘The plan was to create a chic and functional design to complement a sturdy, but plain island that is both a prep table and sit-up bar,’ explains creative director Helen Parker. On the wall, the glazed cupboards with brass frames are from the Haberdasher’s collection that takes its cue from a mid-century design. There are also references to Victorian shop fittings with their floor-to-ceiling cupboards, cubbyholes and sliding glass drawers that take advantage of the lofty proportions of this 18th-century townhouse in Bath. In addition, there are Heirloom task lights with creamware shades, an ornate La Cornue range cooker and bold…

STRAPPED for cash like the rest of us, the Duke of Alba recently agreed to turn his Madrid residence, the Liria Palace, into a temporary exhibition space for a show by Joana Vasconcelos (‘Absurdly wonderful’, March 26). Making my way among his Old Masters and her whimsical installations, I happened to overhear a snippet of conversation, a single sentence that rose above the general hubbub, in which one young American woman said to another: ‘Madrid is totally Europe’s darling.’ She’s right, of course, although for a long time Barcelona was the darling, having pole-vaulted into the collective consciousness when it hosted the 1992 Summer Olympics. Preparation for the Games involved all manner of grand-scale public works—not only the construction of sporting facilities, but also comprehensive infrastructure improvements and the regeneration…

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