Innholdsfortegnelse for November 19, 2025 i Country Life

Facing up to a global challenge EARLIER this autumn, the World Monuments Fund (WMF) made a joint announcement with the Palace Museum of Beijing’s Forbidden City, China, about the official opening of the Qianlong Garden after the completion of a conservation project there lasting two decades. Created by the Qianlong Emperor (reigned 1735–96) as a peaceful retreat within this celebrated complex, the garden incorporates 27 exquisitely finished buildings of the period. Accompanying the opening is an exhibition and a new publication. Athena has never been, but the photographs look magnificent and she has optimistically added it to her bucket list of things to visit at some uncertain time in the future. The Qianlong Garden is only one of more than 700 important cultural sites in a total of 112 countries…

LISTENERS to radio stations in the 1980s will remember the endless reports of traffic delays at various city-centre ‘gyratories’. These were the post-war one-way inner ring-roads and roundabouts that were carved out of old towns, supposedly to ease traffic flow, but which often caused even greater congestion. One such roundabout ‘gyratory’ was created immediately to the north of St Paul’s Cathedral by the Corporation of the City of London in 1973. To streamline the road alignments, the corporation brazenly pulled down the eastern end of Wren’s great church of Christ Church Newgate Street; a masterpiece of Portland stone completed in 1704 on the site of the Greyfriars monastery lost in the Fire of London of 1666. Wren’s church had been left as a burnt-out shell following Second World War fire-bombing.…

LOVERS of old and antique garden tools, prized for their ergonomic design and hard-wearing good looks—not to mention the history they embody—will be familiar with Garden & Wood, which is run by Piers Newth and Louise Allen. They met as horticultural trainees at RHS Wisley in Surrey and ended their gardening careers at the Oxford Botanic Gardens. Kew-trained, she was curator of the gardens, overseeing horticultural and education staff, including a lot of fundraising, and he was in charge of the arboretum. When Mr Newth found he was spending as much time at his desk as he did outdoors, he remembered ruefully that during lessons at school he always gazed out of the window, because he really hated being inside. Meanwhile, Miss Allen was sacrificing most of her free evenings…

HOW do you solve a problem like winning an Ashes series in Australia? That is the question that was asked of Brendon McCullum and Ben Stokes when they were appointed as coach and captain of the England men’s cricket team back in May 2022. It is easy to pretend that there is more to cricket in England than beating the Australians, but we do not need to lie to ourselves any longer. It is all that matters. We did not beat Australia in the summer of 2023, so we will need to beat them this winter instead. Except, there is one small problem, which is that England have not won a series in Australia since 2011. They have not won a match in Australia since 2011. The odds are against…

RORY HUTTON lives in a time capsule. ‘I say I’m trying to create an Irish Georgian drawing room in Hertfordshire,’ he laughs. His walls are covered with serene landscapes, his cabinets burst with Irish silverware, some of his furniture once graced the Dublin home of the Guinness family and standing sentinel over all this is his ‘heart’: a harp (although, he continues almost apologetically, ‘it’s an English one’). Mr Hutton grew up in Ireland and this, together with his deep-rooted passion for history, guides both what he collects and how he displays it: ‘I like a layered aesthetic and take inspiration from the great Irish and English country houses—and a lot of times that also feeds into my work.’ (He is a scarf designer by day and, almost inevitably, one…

WHO would have thought it? At a time when directors’ theatre is all the rage, we have a production of Othello at the Theatre Royal Haymarket, London SW1, that is based on acting, language and narrative. This is not to deny the contributions of the director, Tom Morris, and his designer, Ti Green, who creates images of iridescent beauty, but it is one of those evenings when you come out discussing Shakespeare’s play, rather than the ingenuity of its interpreters. It helps that the casting is first-rate. There have been many notable Othellos recently including Adrian Lester, Chiwetel Ejiofor and Giles Terera, and David Harewood—who first played the role at the National in 1997—is ideal. He is now the right age, has a soldierly aspect and a stately dignity that…

EVERY year around this time, Kate unrolls the Turkish carpets—the runners, the prayer rugs—and spreads them out across the hall, where they sometimes flutter in the updraught from our freezing cellar. They bring a suitably autumnal colouring to the hall, with their muted russets and browns, like fallen leaves; they also—may the weavers forgive me—help the dogs wipe their feet and stop tracking mud up the stairs. They are good old rugs, a bit mothy, a bit ragged at the edges, of the sort that come tumbling out of England’s attics into country auctions every month, and go for less than £100. The carpet dealers of Istanbul take the disappointment philosophically when I explain that I can buy their rugs, better, cheaper, older and finer, in England. I suggest that…

Land Reform (Scotland) Bill branded ‘junk law’ FOR owners of more than 1,000 hectares (2,471 acres) of Scotland, control over selling and managing their land has changed for the worse. The Land Reform (Scotland) Bill passed in Holyrood on November 5 hands the Scottish Government the right to assume the role of estate agent in lotting up land for sale. In a bid to reverse the concentration of land ownership, SNP Rural Affairs Secretary Mairi Gougeon said the bill was for the benefit ‘of the many, not the few’ and would ‘breathe life into local communities’. Opposition to the bill has created an unusual alliance of landowners and professional advisers joining with land reformers to condemn it as badly drafted ‘junk law’. Estate owners selling land will have to undergo…

‘My hope is for a Budget that treats food and farming as strategic national assets’ Helen Browning Chief executive of the Soil Association AS we head into the Budget, I recognise the Government’s challenge in balancing the books, but few investments deliver better long-term returns than food, farming and the health of our children. The British public cares deeply about the countryside, wildlife, farmers, the food on our plates. The choices made now will shape all four for a generation. On food, we need smart fiscal measures that back healthier diets. I urge the Chancellor to explore where fiscal levers can shift consumption from ultra-processed products towards whole and minimally processed foods. Crucially, ring-fenced revenues from the Soft Drinks Industry Levy, and any future levies, should be allocated directly into…

THE beautiful Beaulieu River and the prestigious 7,000-acre estate that takes its name are two of the jewels in Hampshire’s crown. A series of secluded properties built on the waterfront in Dock Lane, Beaulieu, from the early 20th century onwards are among the most sought-after in the county and George Clarendon of Knight Frank in Winchester (01962 677234) is handling the sale of one of the earliest examples, The Rookery, at a guide price of £5.25 million. One of England’s great landed estates, Beaulieu can trace its origins to 1204, when King John gave the land to monks of the Cistercian order. The Abbey they founded grew in size and status until the Dissolution in 1538, when the Beaulieu estate was surrendered to the Crown and sold that same year…

IT is November 1964. Mr Mackenzie, in his black waistcoat, baggy black trousers, white shirt with tie, his head topped with the battered brown trilby he always wore come rain or shine, wiped the dewdrop off the end of his nose with the back of his horny hand and proceeded to dig up the maiden apple from the short row of fruit trees in his nursery. He pushed his spade—the silvery blade of which was worn to razor sharpness—into the damp, dark earth and prised out the roots, handing the four-branched sapling to me, the teenager who thought that a single apple tree of the variety ‘Ellison’s Orange’ was a good way to start an orchard. Not that we had space for one. It would be the sole representative of…

THE tone adopted at the 1924 annual conference of the Institution of Municipal and County Engineers was stentorian in the extreme, but the essence of the debate can be captured in the old aphorism: ‘If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.’ Another suitable epithet might have read, ‘try not to cause any more fires while you’re at it’, such were the previous, explosively disastrous attempts to put traffic lights onto the roads of Britain. The ostensibly dull-as-dishwater-sounding meeting resulted, two years later, in crowds numbering in the hundreds congregating around the junction of St James’s Street and Piccadilly in London. They had gathered to view something never seen before in the UK: the very first electric, three-colour traffic signal. It may be that, 100 years ago, there simply…

VASES coloured like an autumn sky’ caught the eye of the Italian correspondent of The Architectural Record at the Paris Exposition of 1900. They were the work of American designer Louis Comfort Tiffany and the Italian reporter was not their only admirer: another critic celebrated their ‘almost supernatural light’, which he called ‘as roseate as a sunset’. Glass vases produced by Tiffany’s French contemporary Émile Gallé were equally commended, in the Journal of Glass Studies, as ‘gems of enflamed transparencies, of bottomless blues, of congealed opals’. Iridescent, crackled and flashed, glass produced by luminaries of the Art Nouveau movement, resembling the shimmering interiors of seashells or the soft translucency of Roman unguentaria, inspired by Byzantine mosaics and medieval enamels, by shards of quartz and agate, has a glister, glamour and,…

Elaborate curtains and blinds Remember swags, tails and knicker blinds? Well, they’re back, perhaps not in the full-throttle style beloved of more, um, enthusiastic 1980s decorators, but certainly elevating windows above the more sotto-voce style that has prevailed for the past few decades. The programme of events at this year’s Focus, the annual interiors event held at Design Centre, Chelsea Harbour, London SW10, even included a Schumacher masterclass on swags by decorator Lucy Cunningham and Rachel Kershaw of Imella Design. Who would have anticipated such subversive behaviour a decade ago? Blind in Ikat heart £120 per metre, Barneby Gates (www.barnebygates.com) Cheery ottomans Ottomans are now a staple of country-house style and a cosier alternative to the coffee table. Because they don’t require much fabric, younger decorators are using them as…

Wiltshire, £895,000 The small village of Sutton Mandeville, close to Tisbury and set within the Cranborne Chase National Landscape (formerly AONB), is the glorious setting for the charming, thatched Ivy Cottage, so any new buyer can be guaranteed a feast for the eyes outside. That is also the case within this pretty Grade II-listed home, whose three reception rooms consist of a spacious triple-aspect, beamed drawing room, a family room and a kitchen/dining room with farmhouse-style fitted units and an additional sitting area. The four bedrooms are on the first floor. Peaceful terraces and a shaded area beneath a pergola draped in wisteria are heavenly on warm, sun-soaked days. Ivy Cottage comes with 1¾ acres of land. Strutt & Parker (01722 344018) Suffolk, £1.4m Agent Katy Stephenson says of the…

Roasted guinea fowl with parsnip-and-cauliflower gratin Ingredients Serves 4 For the gratin 4 large parsnips, peeled and thinly sliced1 cauliflower, broken into small florets60g butter3tbspn plain flour400ml milk200ml double cream100g Gruyère, grated, plus extra for scattering1tspn Dijon mustardA few thyme leavesA few short vines of tomatoes For the guinea fowl 4 guinea-fowl breasts1tbspn olive oil20g butterA few thyme sprigs 1 Preheat your oven to 180˚C fan/200˚C/400˚F/gas mark 6. 2 Bring a large pan of salted water to the boil and cook the parsnips and cauliflower for five minutes until just done, then drain them well. Melt the butter in a medium saucepan, whisk in the flour and cook for a minute. Gradually pour in the milk and cream, whisking until smooth and thickened. Stir through the Gruyère, mustard and thyme…

THERE used to be an old Persian rug hanging on the wall of my husband’s family home. Tattered and worn, its colours faded, it had been passed down through generations of his forebears. Its life had been turbulent: it was one of the few possessions that his Russian great-grandparents had managed to salvage from their country estate, which was seized during the 1917 revolution. They dragged the rug—already a much-loved heirloom—across half of Europe as they fled south in a perpetual state of nomadic exile. Firstly, they went through Russia, then Georgia, their fortunes dwindling rapidly, and finally into Greece, where the Second World War brought yet more upheaval and a move to England. The rug lived in London in The Boltons, SW10, and Battersea, SW11, and finally Sevenoaks in…

IN 1854, the critic Coventry Patmore opined that his fellow poet Matthew Arnold’s Sohrab and Rustum would appeal only to scholars. He was wrong, it became a literary mainstay of the British Empire. I suppose that mine must be about the last generation to whom it is familiar, in my case because the prep-school master who taught it to me was so thrilled when he found that Sorabji, a Persian pupil, had the middle name Rustum. In his epic, Arnold wrote of the River Oxus flowing ‘through the hush’d Chorasmian waste, Under the solitary moon’, giving his readers the impression that Central Asia west of the Caspian and south of the Aral Seas was one great desert devoid of civilisation. Whatever it was like in Arnold’s time, or indeed today,…

Bridge WE return to Poznan, Poland, for the 11th European Transnational Championships. The theme of both our deals is getting to dummy in trumps for a crucial side-suit lead towards an honour combination. On our first, from round five of the Swiss qualification of the Open Teams, you are in Four Spades doubled, West having announced most of the outstanding strength. West leads out the Ace-King of Hearts and you ruff—what now? Both declarers led the King of Diamonds out of hand. West won the Ace and led a third high Heart. Declarer ruffed and led the Knave of Diamonds, East winning the Queen and switching to a Club. Declarer won the bare Ace, ruffed a third Diamond (noting the three-three split) then ran the ten of Spades. West won…