Indholdsfortegnelse for May 28, 2025 i Country Life

Quiz of the week 1) Which singer collaborated with Mick Jagger on the 1985 single Dancing in the Street? 2) Name the dog breed that Shakespeare referred to as ‘valiant creatures’ of ‘unmatchable courage’ 3) Which three condiments combine to make Marie Rose sauce? 4) What physiological state do hedge-hogs, dormice and bats enter into in winter? 5) What English word has three consecutive double letters? 1) David Bowie 2) Mastiff 3) Ketchup, mayonnaise and Worcestershire sauce 4) Hibernation 5) Bookkeeper (or bookkeeping). Riddle me this: A bottle Riddle me this I have a neck, but no head. What am I? Time to buy On this day… May 28, 1908 Ian Fleming, author of the James Bond series of spy novels, was born at No 27, Green Street, London W1.…

BEATRIX POTTER will forever be remembered for her enchanting, mischievous characters—Tom Kitten and his burst buttons, the Two Bad Mice, who trashed the dolls’ house in temper, Peter Rabbit scampering home after escaping from Mr McGregor’s garden—but in the Lake District, where she cut a sturdy Mrs Tiggy-winkle-like figure, she became respected as Mrs Heelis, a fierce champion of farming, farmers, the countryside and rural crafts and a generous benefactor through funds from selling her drawings. Potter (1866–1943) moved there in 1905, buying Hill Top Farm at Near Sawrey three months after the death of her fiancé, Norman Warne; it was a bid for independence from her disapproving parents and marked a shift in her priorities from the writing that made her wealthy to preserving the local landscape. According to…

IN his 1833 essay on vanity and elegance, Honoré de Balzac posited a bold opinion on the tying of bow ties. The manner in which his cravate is bowed and knotted, Balzac wrote in Traité de la Vie Élé-gante: Physiologie de la Toilette, separates ‘a man of genius from a mediocre one’. This was back when the fashion for men’s neckwear was in its infancy. It originated during the Thirty Years War among Croatian mercenaries, who used lengths of material, knotted around their necks, to hold together their shirt collars during battle and was then co-opted, fetishised and glamourised by the French. Fast forward a few centuries and US political firebrand Tucker Carlson, a tireless neckwear contrapuntist and bow-tie devotee of the modern age, has another, less romantic and slightly…

IT being the season for the painted purple perennial wallflower Erysimum ‘Bowles’s Mauve’ and irises, I have been looking into the world of E. A. Bowles. Imagine, if you will, a horticultural Howards End set in Enfield, north London, famous for rifles and motorbikes. This secure, golden place was hearth and home of the Bowles family at Myddelton House, EN2: settled successfully there, in business, for some 250 years before the birth of Edward Augustus in 1865. A benign oligarchy, five children, mother cheerfully rotund, describing herself as ‘bouncing’ round the house and, unconventionally, cooking in the morning room as a pastime. Well-equipped nurseries inside and out catered for children and plants and a pavilion in the garden served as a billiards and smoking room that young Augustus turned into…

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Future Publishing Ltd, 121–141 Westbourne Terrace, Paddington, London W2 6JR 0330 390 6591; www.countrylife.co.uk MOST people who care about the countryside are deeply alive to the current plightof bees in Britain; the collapse in numbers is partly as a result of pesticide use, partly loss of habitat. One unfortunate aspect of our concern is that we tend to select a single semi-domesticated species as the ‘poster girl’ for the whole issue, the one producing ambrosial food for us: the honeybee. Yet this misses the sheer variety, as well as the central importance of the full bee community. There are about 280 species in Britain (and more than 2,000 in Europe), which include some of the most beautiful, astonishing insects. Many are in your garden as we speak. When your currant…

Time for tea I WAS delighted to see Daintree tea (Town & Country Notebook, April 9). Many years ago, we lived on a property that bordered the Daintree rainforest. We regularly bought Daintree tea for ourselves and we also sent it to family and friends down south, as it wasn’t available elsewhere back then. We had to be sure that we had enough cash to purchase the tea, as it was stored in an honesty box in a shed close to where the tea was harvested. Kim Worner, Tasmania, Australia Ladybirds to the rescue YOUR informative article about ladybirds made interesting reading (‘Spot the difference’, May 14). My Australian niece, Libby, a scientist, recently bought a house in Surbiton in south-west London and, horrified to find aphids everywhere and being…

WATCHING Miller, a guide dog in training, calmly and confidently lead his handler around a purpose-built obstacle course, you’d assume there is nothing that might cause his remarkable focus to waver—but you’d be wrong. ‘He does have one weakness we’re still working on: squirrels,’ his handler, Gemma Eley, smiles. ‘If one darts out, he’ll turn to look—he’s learning to remain engaged with me despite distraction.’ A 17-month-old, labrador-golden retriever cross, Miller was born to be a guide dog—and that’s not merely a turn of phrase. He is part of the world-class breeding programme established by the Guide Dogs for the Blind Association, a project that combines pioneering technology of dog genetics with the passion and devotion of the charity’s staff and volunteers to produce happy, healthy and life-changing guide dogs.…

IN the 1950s, it is said that eminent scientist J. B. S. Haldane was asked what he had concluded about God, based on his years of study. Referencing the fact that our planet hosts about 400,000 species of beetle and 8,000 species of mammal, Haldane reputedly responded that ‘The Creator, if He exists, has an inordinate fondness for beetles’. Beetle species do, indeed, present enormous diversity. Some are a familiar sight, but less so is the rare stag beetle, our biggest species at up to 3in in length. The sight of this huge insect taking a typically low, rather haphazard flight on an early-summer evening is a marvel to some and understandably alarming to others. Our ancestors might have fallen into the latter category. Folklore credited stag beetles with the…

Gun Hill Farm, near Burnham Overy Staithe, Norfolk I WANTED to be a garden designer because I’m a problem solver,’ explains Charlotte Sanderson. ‘And this site was definitely problematic.’ Gun Hill Farm stands in magnificent isolation on a wild stretch of field and marsh, so close to the sand and muddy creeks of Burnham Overy Staithe that you can taste the salt on your lips. When the owners bought the property in 2019, the house had been unoccupied for years and rubble filled the derelict garden. Mrs Sanderson had happily worked with the owners on their London properties and, together, they agreed a brief: restore the views, blend the planting into the landscape and be sensitive to the property’s origin as a farm. ‘It’s also about making people comfortable, at…

Sceptred Isle: A New History of the Fourteenth Century Helen Carr (Hutchinson Heinemann, £25) IT’S now more than 60 years since the publication of May McKisack’s classic account of the 14th century, which appeared in the acclaimed ‘Oxford History of England’ series of volumes. Neatly, that work began with the death of Edward I in 1307 and focused on the reigns of Edward II (1307−27), Edward III (1327−77) and Richard II (1377−99). Impor-tantly, historians have since given considerably more attention to the 14th century. Not least, each king has been the subject of a major biography and detailed studies on specific themes have been plentiful, ranging from politics and the economy, to chivalry and warfare, and to the role of women in all areas of society. In this fast-paced and…

WHAT a welcome recovery: this year’s Chelsea Flower Show was really back on form. There was a verve and enthusiasm among the flower displays that lifted the heart and the Great Pavilion was a joy to navigate. Outside, the tradestands showed particular imagination and, among them, remarkable for its elegance and simplicity, was the Bamford stand, where the combination of daisies and old-fashioned bee skeps with traditional tablecloths and china drew visitors into its celebration of organic growing. Agromenes was pleased to see that historic rivalries continue with gold-medallist companies—Peter Beales, David Austin and Harkness—all seeking to outdo each other with the most staggering arrays of roses in full bloom and heavy with scent. It was the smells as well as the sights that, warmed by the spring sunshine, made…

VISCRI in southern Transylvania is one of a group of seven Saxon villages declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1999. All sit within a landscape of rolling hills and open valleys, ringed by the Carpathian mountains, and remain part of a traditional way of life linked to the seasons. Today, several charitable foundations—including the King Charles III Charitable Fund and the Mihai Eminescu Trust (MET)—help protect the village’s built heritage and support the local community, as others, such as Fundația ADEPT, work to preserve the continuity of its agricultural economy. In Viscri, cattle are let out from farmsteads to be driven down the main street to pasture in the morning (Fig 9), returning in the evenings. The surrounding hay meadows have, so far, largely been spared industrial farming…

DURING Rogation Week, in locations up and down the country, an unusual spectacle may be witnessed as groups of parishioners carrying willow wands take part in the ancient tradition of beating the bounds. Every so often, they will pause beside a mossy stone or an oak tree and beat it with gusto, crying out ‘mark, mark, mark’ before moving on to the next. To the casual observer, the ritual might look baffling. However, in the days before Ordnance Survey maps—and when the parish was the basic unit of local government—beating the bounds played a vital role. Parish borders determined important issues, such as where animals could be grazed, who could be buried in the churchyard and who should pay for the poor. The custom ensured everyone knew where the boundaries…

FEW of our birds of prey are more difficult to see than the goshawk (Accipiter gentilis). Part of this challenge is simply being able to separate it from the more numerous, but smaller sparrowhawk. On paper, the two look radically different. Big female goshawks can weigh more than 4lb (2kg) and have a wingspan of 5ft (1.6m), which is longer even than a common buzzard’s. They can be as much as 10 times the weight of a small male sparrowhawk. On average, all goshawks are bigger, broader-winged birds with thickset bodies. They possess a heavy, rounded chest that reinforces the impression of muscularity and power. Yet closer inspection can be necessary: the two species overlap and the largest female sparrowhawks are actually larger than some goshawk males. ‘Goshawks were valued…

WHEN COUNTRY LIFE invited the interior designer Isabella Worsley to dream up a concept for a stand at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show, she created a space inspired by an Italianate loggia that combined all the pleasures of a garden with the comforts of a drawing room, providing the perfect place to entertain late into the evening. The result was a transitional space between inside and out, furnished with elegant pieces capable of withstanding the unpredictable English weather, complete with a fireplace for chilly evenings. Much of the magic of our ‘outdoor drawing room’ was derived from the fact that it was framed within beautifully conceived architectural detail, including window architraves, columns, stone floors and a water trough enlivened with a constant stream of running water. Planting, by the landscape…

THE warmth of the May sun brought a special spring in the step to this year’s RHS Chelsea Flower Show. Visitors avoided last year’s frustration of peering through raised umbrellasand, although growers and designers had to water more than usual, the frost-free weeks leading up to the show meant there was much more colour everywhere, with the roses, nerines and clematis in the Great Pavilion impressing even seasoned nurserymen. The six large show gardens offered a great variety of designs and plantings that ranged from dry Mediterranean to lush greenery, notably in the Japanese Tea Garden, where the filigree foliage of acers shaded fresh moss and running water. Foxgloves, irises and umbellifers were to be seen everywhere, but it was shrubby baptisias with their lupin-like flowers that stood out as…

BUGATTI is an evocative name. For some, it means magnificent cars; for others, the bronzes of a great animal sculptor; for a few, it is exotic furniture. However, there is a common theme—all are manifestations of art of a high order, from a brilliantly talented family. Carlo Bugatti (1856–1940), son of an architect, opened the Artistici Fantasia studio in Milan, Italy, in 1880. The name did not mislead. He produced extraordinary, novel furniture, often complex and asymmetrical—using wood, metal, silk, ivorine and vellum and combining Art Nouveau with Islamic and Japanese influences. Perhaps the best-known example of his original approach is his Throne chair. Some pieces—the Cobra seats—were sinuously simple, others charmingly delicate. Highly successful, he won many international awards and counted composer Giacomo Puccini as a customer and a…