Indholdsfortegnelse for April 23, 2025 i Country Life

GLYNDEBOURNE, a byword for operatic excellence and glamour for nine decades, was built out of love. In 1930, the 47-year-old John Christie, a former Eton master, theatrical producer and owner of organ-makers William Hill & Son and Norman & Beard, booked a soprano, Audrey Mildmay, for a recital in the Organ Room of his South Downs home and fell ‘wildly in love’. In January 1931, she wrote to him: ‘You are such a darling, John, that I don’t want you to fall in love with me…’ He sent her food parcels, including a brace of pheasants, when she was on tour, and married her six months later, despite her reluctance to give up her career. In 1934, they built the first opera house at Glyndebourne in East Sussex, with the…

AT the bottom of my childhood garden, backing onto woods and bordered by rabbit holes, stood a scruffy grass tennis court overlooked by a dusty pavilion. We would drag a rusty lawn roller behind the tractor to try to squeeze out the lumps and bumps, the zesty whiff of freshly mown grass rising in the air. The court was barely playable, but the sensory pleasures of the sport have stayed with me. I now play on clay, which has its own appeal: the satisfying crunchy sound it makes under the feet as you chase a ball and the vermillion sand that clings to my tennis shoes, leaving a granular trail as if I’ve spent a day at the beach. The beautiful international courts featured in a new photographic ode to…

AS oysters should only be eaten when there’s an ‘R’ in the month, so Pimm’s must only be served when there isn’t one. Sunshine—or, given our inclement climes, the promise of it—is the only prerequisite, together with a green sward and, possibly, a marquee. What could be more welcome, during a long hour of photographs at a wedding, than a tall glass of the fruity, fizzy, subtly spiced stuff? Amber-hued, it will be heavily iced, with delicate beads of condensation already forming on the glass and sporting a garnish plucked from a Carmen Miranda hat. A long, refreshing sip and one’s equilibrium is restored. Given the ubiquity of Pimm’s No. 1 Cup during the Season, it’s curious to discover that the creator James Pimm intended it as a digestive aid…

THAT ‘naturalistic’ gardening is a contradiction in terms was something that the first great exponent of regenerative gardening, William Robinson, understood. He used the word ‘naturalistic’ and, better still, ‘accidental’, for want of a term for a way of thinking so new that it was difficult to express, but he always held to the distinction that the thing that Man has made cannot be ‘natural’ and that nothing compares to what Nature has made. Born in Ireland in 1838, Robinson was apprenticed in his teens first at Curraghmore near Waterford and then at Ballykilcavan where vast greenhouses produced ‘floral carpets’ of tender bedding, planted, thrown away and planted again each season. Wildly fashionable at the time, this wasteful horticulture must have galled a boy who witnessed the horrors of the…

THE pignut is a diminutive member of the carrot family, a mature plant reaching only some 15in. It bears leaves so sparse and fine that it seems a miracle that it catches enough light to support itself. Nevertheless, it manages to produce one substantial ‘nut’, although it will take a few years to do so. This ‘nut’ is not, in fact, a nut, but a tuber, a storage root. These tubers will grow larger as the years tick by: the largest I have seen (and I’ve seen many hundreds) was approaching 1in in diameter, with half an inch being more typical. The crisp, white interior is surrounded by a thin brown membrane that comes away easily with a thumbnail or a nail brush. Pignut is generally a common plant throughout…

TURNER was a bad boy,’ says Jennifer Francis, director of the house in Twickenham, west London, where the artist lived with his ‘Old Dad’, as he called him, between 1813 and 1826. She’s not referring to his dalliances with women, none of whom he married; the odd mis-step in overcharging a wealthy patron; or even the boozy trips to Eel Pie Island with The Picnic Academical Club (‘an artistic lads’ drinking society,’ as Turner’s House guide David Meaden puts it). She’s talking about his art. ‘He was the disruptor of his time.’ Ms Francis believes this may perhaps have had something to do with his humble origins—the son of a West Country barber moving in the aristocratic circles of his patrons. ‘He was the upstart. I think he knew he…

Uncommon Ground: Rethinking our relationship with the countryside Patrick Galbraith (William Collins, £22) THE protean Patrick Galbraith—COUNTRY LIFE columnist, venison vendor, ex-Shooting Times editor—has written a rather brilliant book on land access, a countryside controversy of our time (‘One man’s playground’, April 16). The topic is dominated by the ‘Right to Roam’ campaign, led by Guy Shrubsole, a guy wedded to a mega-phone. The roamers’ claim as faith that we, the people, can access merely 8% of the countryside and that the land was stolen from us (by the Normans, or the Georgians with their enclosing of the commons, you takes your pick). Oh, and that trespass is justified because farmers are up to no good—meaning killing Nature—and should be exposed. ‘The quality of the connection with Nature is paramount,…

Future Publishing Ltd, 121–141 Westbourne Terrace, Paddington, London W2 6JR 0330 390 6591; www.countrylife.co.uk WHEN does the Season really begin? For some, it has already started, with the Cheltenham Festival, the Grand National and the Boat Race. For others, Badminton Horse Trials next month is the great countryside reunion. Glastonbury Festival aficionados were out of the starting gate last November when standard tickets sold out within 40 minutes of the box office opening; at Glyndebourne, Il Barbiere Di Siviglia is almost all gone. The Season is no longer about who you know, but what you know. Tradition and history are its magic and attraction; its 21st-century virtue is the subtle blend of egalitarianism with happily accepted codes and the highest standards of sport, culture and presentation, not to mention a…

A closer look YOUR teasing caption to the painting of Salisbury Cathedral, Wiltshire, ‘one of two by John Constable in the Frick Collection’, raises the question about what the other one might be (‘With a heavy art’, April 9). Vaguely familiar, it is The White Horse (below), which depicts a tow-horse being ferried across the River Stour, just below Flatford Lock in Suffolk. It was purchased by Constable’s friend Archdeacon John Fisher, the Bishop of Salisbury (who later commissioned Salisbury Cathedral from the Bishop’s Grounds). Constable bought the painting back when Fisher was in debt. He commented in later years that: ‘There are generally in the life of an artist perhaps one, two or three pictures on which hang more than usual interest—this is mine.’ Malcolm Watson, Isle of Wight…

The Ambassadors by Hans Holbein the Younger ‘This painting puts the entire Renaissance in a frame. In this carefully staged double portrait, we have the instruments of science and the accoutrements of art; the trappings of fashion and the fruits of global trade. Alongside the self-confident pose of the sitters (or, rather, standers), we have hints of the religious turmoil that would tear their Europe apart–the broken string on the lute, Lutheran hymns resting on an incomplete flute and the nearly concealed crucifix in the upper left corner. Cutting across the bottom is one of the period’s great technical and symbolic mysteries: what one of the National Gallery’s early curators described as a cuttlefish turns out to be a distorted skull that only takes its proper shape when viewed from…

IT’S not much to look at—a squidgy, foil-wrapped triangle, prised from a flimsy cardboard ‘wheel’. The label’s cavorting cow may be a touch more cartoonish, but the contents are still very much the same: soft, smooth and reassuringly bland. OK, so Dairylea will never be challenging Montgomery’s or Baron Bigod as the high point of the cheesemaker’s art. One taste, however, squeezed into my mouth through a nick in the wrapping, and I’m whisked back to the playground at Heywood House in Corsham, Wiltshire, more than four decades back, surrounded by shrieks, squeals and endless games of kiss chase. Knees are scabbed and muddy, pockets filled with conkers. Such is the evocative power of food. Now, we all know that Proust had his madeleines. In fact, it’s pretty much all…

DEER and gardens are an unwelcome combination. You will read well-meaning articles about respecting Nature, gardening without insecticides and trying to love slugs, but you will never hear anyone say that gardens and deer make a marriage in heaven. The damage deer can do in a garden is much more extensive than any other animal except, perhaps, wild boar, which we should never have allowed to escape into the wild. Come to that, we should never have allowed muntjac deer to escape either. Deer damage is a problem only for country dwellers. Unlike foxes, deer do not invade our suburbs. But they will invade our rural gardens whenever they can get in and feel safe to do so. The only solution is to ring-fence your garden with wire netting. It…

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THE annual conference of the largest teachers’ union—now known as the National Education Union (NEU)—may have been the best advertisement for home schooling. Even allowing for the fact that union conference goers tend to be unrepresentative and extreme, last week’s performance will have left few parents wanting their children to be educated by teachers such as those represented by the union and leadership on show at Harrogate. Attacking every educational reform that raises standards or teachers’ performances, the NEU (once the National Union of Teachers) continues to oppose every improvement in the education system. This year’s conference, ignoring the needs of its pupils and threatening strike action, centred on more pay for less work, together with a good deal of rhetoric about international affairs, Labour’s betrayal of teachers and the…

Vann, Godalming, SurreyThe home of the Caroe family THERE are few houses that capture the spirit of English architecture as well as Vann, located among the oak-fringed meadows of the Surrey-Sussex border, near Chiddingfold. Its name is thought to derive from the word ‘fen’—formerly spelled ‘Ffann’—long known as Lower Vann Farm. The heart of the house is ancient; its low central range dates to 1542 and was internally divided by a floor and central chimney stack possibly in 1619. In about 1700, a brick extension was added, the older range then presumably being converted into services. What transformed this not over-large, rambling farmhouse, however, was its acquisition by successful Edwardian architect W. D. Caröe. ‘He worked in an Arts-and-Crafts spirit, but made full use of modern materials’ In 1907–08, Caröe…

AS the sun cools on another Royal Ascot day during that hazy week in June, a serene creature emerges from amid the sea of redundant betting slips, discarded glasses and stumbling racegoers fumbling for an Uber: the Season insider. Effortlessly stylish, on the money and primed for their next social fix, their race card is intact and masterfully thumbed, wallet fuller than on arrival, feet blister free and driver waiting. For the Royal Enclosure at Ascot, securing a pass for Car Park Number 1 nearest the entrance is the golden ticket, but there are other secrets to serenity, too. ‘Get invited into a box if you can and, failing that, to the Buck’s Club or White’s tents for lunch and tea,’ insists Martha, Lady Sitwell. ‘I’ve never understood people’s enthusiasm…

DRAWING inspiration from both Italianate architecture and English country-house style, my design is for a loggia, an indoor-outdoor ‘drawing room’. It is a space that offers somewhere sheltered to sit and enjoy the garden views from spring through to summer and on into autumn, whatever the weather. The idea is that, as in so many Mediterranean houses, it’s a transitional space that blurs the divide between the inside and outside of a house. The structure draws on Classical proportions and symmetry. The back wall features pilasters that frame a central stone trough, which makes an elegant water feature. Tall windows, stone architraves and sills accentuate the strong architectural bones of the design, as a timber ceiling—often seen in Italianate buildings of this type—helps to emphasise the indoor-outdoor feel of the…

The Trials Garden at RHS Wisley, Surrey ALL gardeners know about the RHS garden at Wisley in Surrey and, if they have never visited it, they hope one day to do so. Then they find that it is enormous and that it needs several visits to see only a fraction of what there is to enjoy and learn from—and that they need to return at different seasons because, as in all good gardens, there is much to see in every month of the year. There is a new, must-see area now, called the Trials Garden. It occupies the former site of the plant centre, a spacious enclosure all along one side of the famous double borders that run up towards Battleston Hill, and it moved here four years ago from…

May 16–August 24 Glyndebourne, East Sussex The Royal Ascot of the summer opera season and a byword for glamour is now in its 10th decade. It’s worth arriving early: the gardens, showcasing striking sculptures by Conrad Shawcross, and exhibitions open two hours before the performance starts. There are changing rooms if you would rather not travel in your finery and a shuttle coach operates from Lewes station. What’s on Il Barbiere di Siviglia (Rossini), Parsifal (Wagner), Saul (Handel), Le Nozze di Figaro (Mozart), Falstaff (Verdi) and Káťa Kabanová (Janáček). Eating Under-cover picnic spots may be booked if the weather looks dodgy. There are three restaurants, too, and hampers may be ordered in advance. Tickets From £110, some performances have already sold out (01273 815000; www.glyndebourne.com). ‘The programme centres around love–appropriate for such…

AT 6.30am, I lay down in the soil and slept. Ten minutes later, I had one of those strange experiences where you wake up and have no idea where you are or how you got there. To my left was a freshly dead Chinese water deer. In an instant, it all made sense. I had just shot the final beast ahead of my wedding. The freezer is full of choice cuts, which will be barbecued, and the farm shop is punting the leftover mince. It is immensely heartening to see the enthusiasm for English venison. In truth, however, my recent wanders through the valley with my rifle have been a little sad. I keep seeing fields that, since the cut to the Sustainable Farming Incentive, are becoming scenes of intensive…