Innholdsfortegnelse for October 22, 2025 i Country Life

Quiz of the week 1) Which Spanish dance did French composer Maurice Ravel popularise? 2) Brock, pate and dawson are all regional names for which creature? 3) Who was the last English king to lead his army into battle? 4) Which football stadium is known as the ‘theatre of dreams’? 5) In what year did Land Rover vehicles enter service with the British Army? Riddle me this I burn in your thoughts and refuse to let go, until you ask and finally know. What am I? 1) Boléro 2) Badger (‘Meles meles’) 3) George II (battle of Dettingen in 1743) 4) Old Trafford, Greater Manchester 5) 1949. Riddle me this: Curiosity Time to buy On this day… October 22, 1930 Under the baton of Adrian Boult, the first broadcast performance…

AGROMENES is determined not to be negative. Even when he has to express the angst of country people at the way we are treated, he insists on offering a way forward, a means of putting things right. Therefore, how can Emma Reynolds, the new Secretary of State for Defra, establish her department as an effective player at the heart of Government? She has made a good personal start, displaying intelligence and judgement and being eminently likeable. She hasn’t yet, however, made the best of her inheritance. Her predecessor, Steve Reed, built a reputation for his support for the circular economy and his concern to tackle the problems of water. These issues are key parts of the Defra agenda, but have not yet been seen to engage Ms Reynolds as they…

The Foundling Museum, London WC1 IN about 1722, a retired sea captain called Thomas Coram was so distressed by the number of unwanted babies he witnessed abandoned, murdered or mutilated on the streets of London that he began to promote the idea of an institution that could look after these so-called foundlings. The treatment of such children was then a matter of current concern, famously discussed, for example, in Jonathan Swift’s excoriating satire A Modest Proposal for preventing the Children of Poor People from being a Burthen to their Parents or Country and for making them beneficial to the Publick, composed in 1728–29, and a theme of Henry Fielding’s comic novel The History of Tom Jones, A Foundling, published in 1749. Poverty was the main driving force behind abandonment, but…

The stockman Trevor Kirk, 53 Champion credentials Head stockman, Glympton estate, Oxfordshire TODAY, I was out on the farm at 6am, feeding the pedigree Aberdeen Angus cattle that are currently kept in. We have 90 breeding cows at Glympton and, of the 45 or so bulls that are produced each year, 40 are sold on for breeding. We keep a number of the heifer calves for our own breeding operation and sell the rest for the same task. During the remainder of the day, I checked the cattle that live out—spending some time halter-training youngsters—then I moved sheep. We have a flock of 400 breeding ewes here. It was a fairly typical day and, as did many before it, it ended at 6pm. When you’re a head stockman, there are…

I MUCH prefer talking to being photographed,’ states the film director, producer and screenwriter Guy Ritchie. We’re sitting on two large sofas facing each other in the Studio—once used by Cecil Beaton, Rex Whistler and Salvador Dalí—which was converted from the former stables in the 1930s, a few hundred yards from the red-brick Georgian manor house at Ashcombe, his Wiltshire estate. As it turns out, this will be the least surprising observation that Mr Ritchie makes all day, because the 57-year-old is a polymath with much to say on a variety of topics. ‘Don’t get me talking about country life,’ he warns. ‘I could bang on forever.’ Not that this was always the case. ‘In my youth, I was an urbanite, born and raised in London,’ he clarifies. ‘However, I…

THERE’S something so nostalgic about mashed potato, liver, bacon and lots of gravy,’ notes Sir David Beckham, between bites of his favourite recipe. ‘It’s one of those British comfort classics that my mum used to make for me and was also my granddad’s favourite dish. It’s not to all tastes,’ he smiles. ‘Two of my kids love liver, the other two hate it. But for me, there’s something very special about it.’ Cooking is in Sir David’s blood. ‘My mum, Sandra, is a great cook and this is her recipe,’ he reveals, as he piles buttery mashed potato onto a delicate sliver of pink liver. ‘She taught me how to cook and my love of cooking comes from her. My gran was also a great cook, and it was always…

AS gardeners, designers, and lifelong COUNTRY LIFE armchair house finders, Mr B and I have developed our own concept of gardening terroir. Place or terrain has an essence, a flavour that comes from the ground below, expressed in trees and vegetation, topography and, above all, soil, which makes for a certain type of gardening—and certain prejudices. We look for clues in the landscape that hint at what lies beneath the surface. Soil is the hidden soul of any place and all growers need to consider, respect, even venerate the living, breathing, vital organism right beneath our feet. I have been encouraged by Gabe Brown’s Dirt to Soil and the upsurge in regenerative farming generally, which offers a lot of wisdom for gardeners. Moseying through the countryside, it adds a whole…

THE name was Bond, James Bond. Mr Bond was an American ornithologist whose name was borrowed by Ian Fleming, a twitcher himself, for his spy hero 007. The original Mr Bond possesses another fame, being author of Birds of the West Indies. First published in 1936, this was, and is, the definitive guide to birds of the Caribbean. Yet even Bond’s knowledge and the artistry of the illustrators, struggles to pin to the page the beauty and variety of the birds that inhabit the tropical waters, islands and continental land masses framing the Caribbean Sea. The Caribbean is a birder’s paradise, not merely for its birdy bounty, but for the singularity of its avifauna. Of the 700 or so species in the Caribbean, 185 are endemic and found nowhere else…

IN May 1889, Vincent van Gogh was a patient in the psychiatric asylum at Saint-Rémy-de-Provence. He had committed himself after the breakdown of his friendship with Paul Gauguin, which had led to him taking a razor to his ear. Van Gogh lived in the asylum for a year and, in that period, produced no fewer than 143 oil paintings. Making them was, for him, both a compulsion and a form of therapy. During his stay, in one of the innumerable letters he wrote to his brother, Theo—his financial backer, lone supporter and emotional crutch—he described his latest picture. It was, he wrote resignedly, ‘commonplace again, like one of those chromos from a penny bazaar that depict eternal nests of greenery for lovers’. Then, however, he went on to list a…

How to be a patriot ON the cover of its renowned October edition, British GQ asked ‘What’s so great about Britain?’. The query appeared against a tableau of celebrities assembled onto a set resembling a British street. Among them were Dame Emma Thompson, Andrew Garfield and fellow London-to-Hollywood commuters, whose own answers to the question—revealed inside the issue—unwittingly betrayed their rootlessness. The Spectator declared the feature ‘a horror show’, lampooning what it claimed were saccharine clichés and naming tropes it thought more worthy of celebration: drunkenness, loutishness, bad teeth. Amid this culture war, true patriots have found themselves torn. Can one ever answer what’s great about Britain without resorting to platitudes? Some argue this is a byproduct of the internet age, in which people are well versed in the visual…

STANDING in the Scottish midday sun in his kilt, Hamish Martin holds up a small white flower. ‘It’s incredible,’ he says in wonder. ‘It’s the flower called “eyebright” and if you really look at it, the detail is incredible.’ Mr Martin is often out in the hills with people who spend much of their time travelling across the world, and who see all sorts of great manmade wonders, ‘but the real universe,’ he goes on, ‘is in there’. He often asks guests to take a picture of the flower and then zoom in—each and every time, they are amazed by the colours and the immense complexity of a flower by which most of us would simply walk unheeding. When I look down at the myriad colours, the violet and yellow,…

The garden of Sir David and Lady Beckham IT is a truth universally acknowledged that a successful footballer in possession of a large fortune must be in want of a house in Oxted or Alderley Edge. Although Sir David Beckham might once have resided in such predictable localities, his heart is now firmly planted in the Cotswolds. Granted, he also has homes in London and the US, where he is co-owner of Inter Miami CF, but it is the countryside near Chipping Norton in Oxfordshire that clearly exerts the greatest pull. ‘I just love it. I’m never happier than when I’m here,’ he enthuses. That much is clear from the way he and Lady Beckham have developed the 26 acres of land that once formed a part of the Great…

THE English have a rich tradition of inventing things and then not using them properly. Perhaps nowhere is this more evident than in our football team. Association Football, to give it its proper title, was created alongside the Football Association in 1863, with 13 laws ratified at the Free-mason’s Tavern on Great Queen Street in London. In terms of international success for England, it has been mostly downhill since then, apart from in 1966, when Bobby Moore held the Jules Rimet trophy aloft at Wembley Stadium in front of 98,000 fans and millions more watching at home. For the first and only time, England were world champions, having defeated Mexico, France, Argentina, Portugal and, famously, West Germany on their way to victory. The players—Moore, Alan Ball, Bobby and Jack Charlton,…

IT might be strange to say, but, years ago, I published a story called David Beckham is the best, in a hardback breathlessly described by The Daily Telegraph as ‘a book about fly-fishing’. It was a meandering tale about trout fishing in post-war-torn Croatia and my taxi driver for the trip, Milan. He was the footballing son of a pizza-bar owner, whose admiration for the Manchester United star transcended time and space. ‘A Defender can do things no other car can. Snow up to the bumper and it just drove out’ In the same volume, Somewhere Else, I also included a tale titled My new red Land Rover. Now, here I am, more than 20 years later, writing about Land Rovers in a special edition of COUNTRY LIFE, guest edited…

WHEN Charlotte Freemantle, who founded the antiques-to-fireplaces specialist Jamb with her husband, Will Fisher, first visited Aldourie Castle in Inverness-shire in 2022, it was clear that, with some decorative encouragement, the room could once again become the beating heart of the house. The project took 18 months and involved taking many rooms back to bare plaster and floorboards. For this room, she chose a favourite paint, Jonquil by Edward Bulmer, for the walls (01544 388535; www.edwardbulmerpaint.co.uk). ‘It’s a very typical country-house colour, which is soft and immediately inviting. I haven’t worked with Scottish light before, which changes quite significantly with the seasons, but fortunately Jonquil is ideal.’ The sofas and chairs are all from Jamb’s collection and upholstered in hand-dyed linen from The Dyeworks (07590 982965; www.dyeworks.co.uk). ‘It’s not a…

Front cover Jacket and trousers Loro Piana (https://uk.loropiana.com) Shirt and tie Purdey (www.shop.purdey.com) Wellington boots Loro Piana x La Chameau (uk.loropiana.com) ‘The countryside has brought me peace’ (pages 58–63) (Left, kitchen garden) Shirt Charvet (Paris, France) Trousers Loro Piana Wellington boots Loro Piana x La Chameau (Right, with Aston Martin) Jacket Loro Piana Trousers BECKHAM X BOSS (www.hugoboss.com) Shoes BOSS (www.hugoboss.com) (Left, with dogs) Hat and shirt Loro Piana Jeans Celine (www.celine.com) Wellington boots Loro Piana x La Chameau (Right, with chickens) Jumper Loro Piana Shirt Charvet Trousers Loro Piana Wellington boots Loro Piana x La Chameau ‘Firmly planted in the Cotswolds’ (pages 128–139) (Double-page spread, with dogs) Jumper Loro Piana Shirt Charvet Jeans Celine Wellington boots Loro Piana x Le Chameau (Double-page spread, with greenhouse) Jumper Loro Piana Shirt…

‘During his editorship, COUNTRY LIFE has enjoyed 13 consecutive years of readership increases’ Custodian of a 128-year-old British institution MARK HEDGES is photographed in his study at home with a handful of the 1,000 issues of COUNTRY LIFE that he has edited since he first became Editor-in-Chief of the magazine in March 2006. Although this page is usually focused on a treasure in a particular house, this week—to mark this landmark—it seems appropriate to celebrate the treasure that ought to be found in every home. As the only glossy weekly in British publishing today, producing 51 issues every year, the statistics that underlie the Editor’s achievement over the past two decades are remarkable. More than four million hard copies of the magazine have been sold in that time and these…

The vest is history I’D like to thank Simon Mills for his piece on waistcoats (‘Vested interest’, October 8), which taught me after all these years that the use of ‘vest’ for a waistcoat isn’t an Americanism after all, but originated in England. The revelation stirred a memory: in the early 1960s, when the Brook Brothers had a hit with Warpaint, my schoolfriends and I thought the line ‘When you put your head on my chest, you get lipstick on my vest’ terribly racy. Maggie Cobbett, North Yorkshire Paws for thought HOW delightful to see Annie Tempest with one of her spaniels (‘Gently does it’, October 15)—the resemblance to Dicky and Daffy’s own dogs on the facing page is unmistakable. Perhaps Dawa and Twiglet could appear in your next piece…

‘Houses of Parliament’ series by Claude Monet ‘I’ve been collecting art now for about 25 years and, as with certain unforgettable moments in life, I can remember exactly where I was and how I felt when I first saw one of Monet’s series of pictures of the Houses of Parliament. It was actually on the wall at a friend’s house, not in a gallery or a museum, and I can recall stopping and staring, because I could hardly believe or explain the sheer beauty of this painting in front of me. Perhaps because I was far from home, and a Londoner, it spoke to me. It looked as if it was made out of light and smoke–as if it was moving and standing still at the same time. The colours…

TREES come in all shapes and sizes. The fashion for planting them has waxed and waned over the centuries, but has fitfully gathered pace since the 1970s, when a growing sense of Britain’s relative treelessness in comparison with most of our European neighbours led to a series of campaigns, beginning with ‘Plant a Tree in ’73’. The idea that those trees should be British natives is a fairly recent concern and one that is reflected in, for example, the Forestry Commission’s transformation in our own lifetime from commercial forester to woodland conservator. The stage of life at which trees should be transplanted to their final position has also formed a key part of this debate. In the early 19th century, many landowners were awarded gold medals by the Society of…

ARISTOTLE kept bees, as did Tolstoy—his wife complained that the apiary had become the centre of his world—and Emily Dickinson wrote more than 100 poems about her beloved bees. These days, there is a new roll call of familiar names climbing into bee suits and wielding smokers in what has become a boom time for beekeeping. The Queen and The Princess of Wales keep bees, as do Ed Sheeran, Cate Blanchett and our guest editor Sir David Beckham, who has 27 hives at home in the Cotswolds and one at his house in London. Jamie Oliver posts updates from his bee colonies: here he is, knee deep in a meadow of ox-eye daisies and pink campion, filming worker bees building honeycomb from scratch in an empty frame. ‘Just genius,’ he…

Vermeer: A Life Lost and Found Andrew Graham-Dixon (Allen Lane, £30) IN 2023, 650,000 people journeyed to the Rijksmuseum in the Netherlands to see an exhibition that brought together 28 paintings by Johannes Vermeer (1632–75), about three-quarters of those known to survive. The sense that these visitors had come on a pilgrimage was enhanced by the rapt attention that permeated the galleries in which these mostly small works were hung. Such hushed reverence reflects the dominant impression made by Vermeer’s art, which in its most distinctive form consists of figures solemnly engaged in scenes of everyday life that are depicted with almost unearthly verisimilitude. His paintings seem as a result not only beautiful, but pregnant with hidden meaning. As Andrew Graham-Dixon writes: ‘They superficially resemble other Dutch paintings of the…

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