Innholdsfortegnelse for October 15, 2025 i Country Life

Jewellery theft raises a question of value LAST week, several objects, including some items of gold Bronze Age jewellery, were stolen from St Fagans National Museum of History outside Cardiff, Wales. Since the theft, two men in Northamptonshire have been arrested for burglary, but—at the time of writing—the stolen objects have yet to be recovered. It’s a state of affairs that highlights the ironic situation of many museums at the present moment. Namely, that although they struggle to survive financially, they nevertheless look after objects that are of sufficient value to be worth stealing for their bullion value alone. The financial difficulties are particularly dire in Wales, as a Senedd committee report issued at the start of this year underlined. Theft is a subject that those who work in museums…

Schloss Sanssouci, Brandenburg, Germany A property in the care of the Prussian Palaces and Gardens Foundation Berlin-Brandenburg SANSSOUCI stands in an expansive park on the edge of Potsdam about 20 miles south-west of Berlin. The city itself is inextricably associated with Europe’s 20th-century hostilities. In 1945, the Potsdam Conference determined the division of post-war Europe and the Glienicke Bridge on the outskirts—known as the Bridge of Spies—was used for the exchange of secret agents during the Cold War. Yet previously, Potsdam had been celebrated as the summer retreat of Prussia’s ruling dynasty. In August 1743, Frederick the Great (1712–86) enjoyed a picnic on a hilltop overlooking the city. He decided that the site would play host to his own bucolic summer residence, a palace where he could exist ‘without a…

KIDNEY beans. Please, no, anything but those damned infernal kidney beans. As a child, these hateful crimson crescents sat somewhere between liver and tapioca in the list of frightful foods—although, I’m not entirely sure why. Liver, cooked in the English prep-school fashion and riddled with sinister tubes, had all the appeal of a used Ultra-Marathon insole, whereas tapioca had the texture of terror. The beans, however, with their bland taste and soft, unthreatening texture, offered no such visceral disgust, more Cliff Richard than Sid Vicious. They were harmless, blameless and utterly uninspired. Still, I would forensically pick them out from wanly insipid chili con carne and secrete them in my pocket, ready to be disposed of later. I wouldn’t merely cross the road to avoid them, rather traverse entire continents,…

Upside-down brown-butter pear cake with maple and rosemary Ingredients Serves 8 120g unsalted butter150g soft light-brown sugar2tbspn maple syrup2 sprigs rosemary, plus extra to serve3 firm pears, peeled, cored and sliced150g unsalted butter, softened150g caster sugar2 eggs, room temperature1tspn vanilla-bean paste150g self-raising flour75g ground almonds80ml milkIcing sugar, for dusting Method 1 Heat the oven to 160˚C fan/180˚C/350˚F/gas mark 4 and grease and line a 23cm (9in) cake tin. 2 Melt the butter in a frying pan until foaming and nutty. Add the brown sugar, maple syrup and rosemary sprigs, stirring until the sugar dissolves. Pour the mixture into the base of the prepared tin and then arrange the sliced pears in a circle on top. 3 In a bowl, cream the softened butter and caster sugar until pale and fluffy.…

KATHERINE PARR loved shoes. It’s hard to reconcile the pious, scholarly Queen who became the first woman to publish a book in English under her own name with a fashionista who hoarded slippers, jewellery, furs and perfume bottles, but, says historical novelist Philippa Gregory, Henry VIII’s last wife was gloriously extravagant. ‘She’s been the wife of wealthy men twice before, but when she comes to be Henry’s queen, she really uses her income to patronise the Arts, or, if you like, buy lovely things.’ With men at Court, on campaigns or even on crusade, upper-class women played a far greater role in Tudor England than they are often given credit for. They were stewards of the land and guardians of the family fortune—so much that the tombstone effigies of the…

SEARCH online for ‘learn the Viennese waltz’ and up pops Westminster dance class company Zoltan’s, promising that waltzing will ‘enhance co-ordination, balance and posture, helping to improve overall body awareness and grace’ and ‘provide an avenue for self-expression and creativity, allowing dancers to interpret the music’. Above all, however, it means the music of ‘Johann Strauss II, whose Blue Danube and Tales from the Vienna Woods encapsulate the essence of the Viennese waltz’. This year marks the bicentenary of Strauss’s birth, in Vienna, Austria, in 1825. The Danube may be more brown than blue, but Strauss’s music still flows through the city as the river does. He was, in his day, a hugely celebrated figure, responsible for composing the music that took the craze for dancing the waltz, that ‘vertical…

Crossword A prize of £25 in book tokens will be awarded for the first correct solution opened. Solutions must reach Crossword No 4902, Country Life, 121–141 Westbourne Terrace, Paddington, London, W2 6JR, by Tuesday, October 21. UK entrants only ACROSS 1 See something fishy? Not quite (5,1,3) 7 Burns through fund of dinars (6) 9 Ravers sent shooting across (10) 10 Plan to pay attention (4,2) 11 Journalist with tape is barred (7) 13 Bird nipped another one (7) 14 The sure thing (8,7) 16 Horsey person (7) 19 Extend part of racecourse (7) 21 Time for composer to make trip (6) 23 Parting with imported container made in silver (10) 24 Drink to throw out when make a mistake (6) 25 Down with media caught in the act (9)…

Forestry sector urged to innovate amid myriad threats BRITAIN’S forestry owners and managers, although increasingly aware of climate and ecological risks, could do more to counter the devastating impacts of a changing world. Results can be achieved through innovation, adaptation and outside-the-box thinking, delegates at the National Forestry Conference, held last week in Newbury, Berkshire, were told. Statistics from the new British Woodlands Survey, set to be published in December (www.sylva.org.uk/bws), paint a picture of a sector in which 65% out of a total of 536 survey respondents, consisting principally of wood-land owners and agents, had some form of management plan in place for their wood-lands, although 26% had no plan at all. ‘We need to reach out to those who don’t have plans because awareness is linked to action……

WHEN Will Green and his wife, Hayley, finally found a house that they wanted to buy, the deal was agreed not through an agent, but on a firm handshake with the local farmer. Set in the middle of a village on the Northamptonshire/Buckinghamshire border, the house dates from the late 18th century, with a substantial section added during the 19th century. The attraction to Mr Green, who is the fourth generation to work for Towcester-based family business Ron Green, was the fact that much of the house had been left untouched by modernity. ‘There is a top floor that we haven’t got to yet and it remains as it was in the 19th century,’ he says, pointing out that when planning the project, he was very keen to preserve what…

THE history of holm oaks in Britain begins with a handful of stow-aways: acorns concealed in wooden packing crates. Thomas Coke, future 1st Earl of Leicester, was only 15—intelligent and intellectually curious, but unruly—when, in August 1712, he left England for a Continental Grand Tour that would last an impressive six years. His stay in Rome stretched over 10 months and transformed him, in his own words, into a ‘perfect virtuoso’. Acquisitions made during this period turned Coke into the owner of an important collection of classical antiquities. Coke’s Greek and Roman sculptures were shipped across the Mediterranean in cases, crates and boxes packed with protective material, including acorns of the holm oak (Quercus ilex), of which many thousands must have made the lengthy journey. According to legend at Holkham…

ACCORDING to the annals of history, it was the year 1957 when the dashing Lord Tottering married the Hon Daphne Fitztonic-Gordons, thus forging a union between two of the ancient—and entirely fictional—families of North Pimmshire. Better known to COUNTRY LIFE readers as Dicky and Daffy, the now elderly, but indefatigable cartoon couple have graced the back page of the magazine since January 1994. Their friends and family are numerous, their herbaceous borders are well tended and their residence, Tottering Hall, is a house of errant labradors and spaniels, striped ties and rarely empty wine glasses. The creator of this much-loved world is Annie Tempest. By her own count, she has now drawn more than 1,700 Tottering cartoon strips, some of which are being showcased at a forthcoming selling exhibition at…

The Art Isles: A 15,000-year Story of Art in Britain and Ireland Charlotte Mullins (Yale, £25) USEFULLY, we have the exact date when our national art was born. On December 10, 1768, the Royal Academy of Arts officially came into being. It was founded with the explicit aim of fostering a British school by teaching native artists how to work in the approved grand manner of Continental Masters and then promoting their work at an annual exhibition. Nevertheless, among the 36 original academicians were four Italian artists, one French, two Swiss and one German (and, for good measure, two women and an American). From the start, British art was inextricably linked with Europe. It is this theme that occurs time and again in Charlotte Mullins’s ambitious and wide-ranging account of…

THE glossy mag GQ—an acronym for Gentleman’s Quarterly—hit the news recently with ‘125 rules for a modern gentleman’. That’s a lot of rules, I thought. Surely Geoff Chaucer’s parfit gentil knyght gave all the succinct guidance anyone could ever require 600 years ago? ‘For honour always took the highest prize, for though he was most worthy he was wise;/His manners were as gentle as a maid, and discourteous language he never made/…He was a truly, gentle, perfect Knight.’ Our knight seems an unlikely GQ reader, he of the ‘clothes not gay, a fustian tunic showing much travail’, much as the magazine’s stylists might want to give him a makeover. Nor, I suspect, does he need guidance on ‘how to act in that all-women Pilates class’ (chill out with the grunting,…

THE simultaneous launch onto the market of Newington House in Oxfordshire and Longparish House in Hampshire, both listed Grade II*, has raised the stakes for prime country property in two of England’s most sought-after counties. Both sales are being handled by Crispin Holborow of Savills Private Office (020–7409 8881), who quotes guide prices of £16 million and £16.75m respectively. According to the Victoria County History of Oxfordshire, a large estate at Newington in the Thame valley, six miles north of Wallingford and 10 miles south-east of Oxford, was granted by Emma, Queen Consort of King Canute, to the priory of Canterbury Cathedral between 1017 and 1035. Following the Dissolution in 1542, Newington was sold to landowner John Oglethorpe of Newington, whose son, Owen, twice sheriff of the county, divided the…

YOU need a hedge for your country garden? Very sensible. Fences might mark your boundary with clarity and offer privacy, should they be solid, but that means they will offer a huge amount of wind resistance. The wind always wins and it also causes turbulence on the leeward side of an impenetrable fence. In the countryside, interwoven fencing is simply too stark and suburban in appearance, whatever colour you paint or stain it. A hedge, on the other hand, will fit more sympathetically into the landscape. It will filter the wind rather than attempting, unsuccessfully, to stop it in its tracks, thus making for more propitious growing conditions for the plants within the land that it protects. It will offer sustenance and shelter to all kinds of wild-life, from birds…

REMIND you of anyone?’ I asked Leslie Caron one afternoon last summer. We were in her London sitting room, looking through the catalogue of the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s exhibition on John Singer Sargent and Paris, in New York, US (now at the Musée d’Orsay in Paris, France), and I had pointed out the artist’s most famous painting, Madame X. Miss Caron eyed the portrait of a woman in a plunging black evening gown with all the curiosity of the young courtesan she played in the 1958 film Gigi. I watched her closely, waiting for her to notice the uncanny resemblance. ‘Birds? You saw birds? Well, we can have birds, if you’d like’ It had struck me a few weeks earlier in New York, when I was standing before Madame…

IN June 1978, an eight-day sale at Sotheby’s in London, making a total of £18.4 million (about £88.4 million today), established the von Hirsch Collection as the most valuable ever auctioned. That record has now been comfortably surpassed, again at Sotheby’s, by the recent £101 million, three-session sale of 250 works from the Karpidas Collection. These came from the London apartment of Pauline Karpidas; 300 works from her other home on the Greek island of Hydra were sold for €35.6 million in Paris two years ago and, in 2009, during a recession, she sold a Warhol for a record $43.7 million. Separate sales included a Dalí and a Picasso and she also donated a number of important works to her native Manchester, so, by any purely financial reckoning, this must…

I HAVE finally caught up with James Graham’s Punch. It started life at Nottingham Playhouse in May 2024, moved to the Young Vic and is now installed at the Apollo in Shaftesbury Avenue, WC1. I can only report that I found it emotionally overwhelming. Based on real-life events, it is a rare modern play that deals with the possibility of personal redemption. Mr Graham accurately charts the basic facts of the story. In 2011, a young Nottingham tearaway, Jacob Dunne, who was high on drink and drugs, threw a punch at a 28-year-old trainee paramedic, James Hodgkinson, that killed him. The perpetrator was convicted of manslaughter, but served only 14 months of his original four-year sentence. What happened on his release was remarkable. The victim’s parents, although appalled by the…