Indholdsfortegnelse for June 11, 2025 i Country Life

Quiz of the week 1) What is the largest native land mammal in the UK? 2) Name the ship camouflage used extensively during the First World War 3) Pogonophobia is the fear of what? 4) Who was the first Pope of the Catholic church? 5) What is the most abundant metal in the Earth’s crust? Riddle me this I have many teeth, but I cannot bite. I’m often used early, but rarely at night. What am I? 1) Red deer 2) Dazzle (or razzle dazzle in the US) 3) Beards 4) St Peter 5) Aluminium. Riddle me this: A comb Time to buy On this day… June 11, 1937 Supermarine Spitfire designer Reginald Joseph Mitchell (1895–1937) died at home in Highfield, Southampton, at the age of 42. His single-seat fighter…

AS a rural pastime, choosing to wander about in forests dressed in long white garb, wearing antlers and carrying wands has never appealed to Agromenes. However, this week, he has discovered that paganism is not only odd, but woke. It appears from recent events that no person is allowed to hobnob within the British Druid Order, nor in other constituent parts of the Pagan Federation, if they are deemed by the witchcraft police to be transphobic. This means that, should a witch support the Supreme Court’s recent ruling on the meaning of the word ‘woman’, she would be excluded from the community. As a result, recently, second-generation witch Angela Howard, ‘knighted’ two years ago at Stonehenge as a ‘Warrior Princess’, incurred such official censure. She argued, on Facebook, against the…

THERE is surely no better programme to cheer the nation in the event of a technical problem with live television than Dad’s Army—the BBC apparently keeps a reel on standby. The first episode of the much-loved sitcom—The Man and the Hour—was broadcast on July 31, 1968, with the theme tune Who Do You Think You Are Kidding Mr Hitler? sung by Bud Flanagan. The series, written by David Croft (1922–2011) and Jimmy Perry (1923–2016), also responsible for It Ain’t Half Hot, Mum and Hi-de-Hi!, ran for 80 episodes and nine years, attracted audiences of 20 million and is still repeated most weeks. Perry had himself been a teenage member of the Home Guard and based the unworldly mummy’s boy Pte Pike on himself; ‘You stupid boy!’ was a catchphrase of…

NATURE’S palette? The primary colours are red, yellow and blue, elemental in the way that primary numbers in maths are unique and indivisible except by themselves. Then there are the secondary colours, each made from a mix of two primary colours. These are purple, green and orange. Together, the six hues are the essential paintbox in the vivid colouring of Britain’s countryside. Vivid? Indeed. We tend to consider far-off exotic places as the paradises for Nature’s ultimate display of its paintbox, but these isles can put on an exhibition to match anywhere, even if, sometimes, the art is so discreetly done we barely register it. Think of the flash of brilliant blue on the wings of the jay (Garrulus glandarius) in the darkening wood, the fire-red belly of a cruising…

PLANT HERITAGE was founded in 1978 and has become a powerful influence—wholly for good—within the world of horticulture. It arose from the realisation that many good garden plants had been lost to cultivation. In those pre-internet days, when even the RHS’s annual Plant Finder did not exist, the only way to find a plant was to comb through piles of nursery catalogues, often fruitlessly. The founders were expert plantsmen, including Chris Brickell, Graham Stuart Thomas and Lawrence Banks. Each of them understood the need to conserve rare plants and to make them more accessible. The aims of Plant Heritage were—and still are—to ‘document, promote and make available Britain and Ireland’s rich biodiversity of garden plants for the benefit of everyone through horticulture, education and science’. There are many ways to…

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Future Publishing Ltd, 121–141 Westbourne Terrace, Paddington, London W2 6JR 0330 390 6591; www.countrylife.co.uk WHAT do the keeper of the national collection of camassias, pioneering saviours of the oak tree, the writer of an entire book on Spam or the makers of the Aston Martin bicycle, which takes more than 1,000 hours to create, have in common? Apart from the fact that they all appear in this issue of COUNTRY LIFE, which celebrates the best of Britain, the answer is that they all share the very British trait of being curious and passionate about singular—sometimes remarkably niche—elements of this country: myriad little pieces that add up to an endlessly fascinating whole. Eleven writers fiercely extol the glories of their relatively tiny pieces of Britain—‘My piece of Heaven’—from the Vale of…

Clarkson’s Farm THE beloved television show, the fourth season of which is now available on Amazon Prime, has been delighting audiences and rescuing first-date chatter up and down the country. For those still playing catch-up, the show sees presenter and farming champion Jeremy Clarkson return to his Cotswold farm, Diddly Squat, as he embarks on his latest venture: opening a pub. COUNTRY LIFE readers may be familiar with the lore surrounding The Farmer’s Dog and the building’s rather seedy history: a 400-year-old coaching inn-turned-Indian restaurant-turned-county lines meth lab. ‘So, they’ve drilled holes from cubicle to cubicle?’ Mr Clarkson asks. ‘I don’t think that was to improve ventilation,’ a surveyor replies. Although some viewers have lamented the absence of Kaleb Cooper, Mr Clarkson’s right hand, who has become so famous that…

The Vale of Belvoir by Lady Violet Manners THERE is a moment, as the sun begins to slip below the ridgeline, when the Vale of Belvoir becomes something truly magical. The warm light casts long shadows across the folds of pasture and ancient hedgerows. The castle rises above it all like a sentinel of time, watching over a landscape that has changed remarkably little for centuries. It is a moment that still stops me in my tracks—and one that reminds me why I will always call this pocket of England home. The Vale of Belvoir is not a place of grand gestures or attention-seeking landscapes. It is gentle, quietly poetic and layered with history. You don’t need to look far to find Roman roads, medieval field systems or Jacobean farmsteads.…

KING OFFA’S OAK has been a quiet bystander to history for more than a millennium. Probably a sapling in the early 700s, it was nearing 400-year-old ‘ancient’ status by the time of the Norman Conquest. Its age had doubled when Henry VIII was crowned in 1509 and its 1,000th birthday probably passed unmarked during the Jacobite Rebellions. Now gnarled, split, hollowed and misshapen by the march of time, this long-standing resident of the north-west edge of Windsor Great Park no doubt welcomes the modern props that help to keep its hefty branches aloft. Long before they were required, perhaps William I and Henry VIII dashed past on horseback in pursuit of boar or deer. So awestruck do we feel in the presence of this venerable living entity that even Geraint…

AFTER dinner, we all played the most exciting game that ever was invented,’ wrote 17-year-old Emily Bulwer-Lytton (who later married Sir Edwin Lutyens) in her diary on April 24, 1892. ‘I almost scream in describing it.’ The pastime that inspired such euphoria is now known as tiddlywinks, played by flicking small plastic discs (winks) into a pot using larger discs (squidgers), with the aim of potting all your winks before your opponents. Simple in theory, but any tiddlywinker, parlour player or professional, will tell you that, in practice, it is not so. You need precision and control to flick a wink accurately, yet every shot taken has a continuum of possible outcomes, meaning you cannot plan or predict moves far in advance, as in chess. Players can employ tactics such…

WHERE’S my Bentley?’ James Bond famously asked Q in 1964’s Goldfinger. ‘Oh, it’s had its day, I’m afraid,’ replied MI6’s quartermaster. ‘You’ll be using this Aston Martin DB5, with modifications.’ The rest, as film fans will know, is history. Now, some 60 years on, there is a new Aston Martin, again with modifications, which might be almost as exciting and iconic as the original DB5. The big difference, however, is that this one has two wheels rather than four and Bond would probably require bicycle clips to ensure that his suit trousers didn’t catch in the carbon crank and chainset. Produced in partnership with titanium bicycle-maker J.Laverack, this is the .1R—the most bespoke, advanced and meticulously engineered road bicycle ever made. The brains behind the .1R are J.Laverack co-owners Oli…

Strong Roots: A Ukrainian Family Story of War, Exile and Hope Olia Hercules (Bloomsbury, £20) IN February 2022, having annexed Crimea from Ukraine eight years earlier, Russia launched a full-scale invasion of the country. It captured the Kherson region, where the London-based Ukrainian food writer Olia Hercules was born and where her family still lived. At the start of Strong Roots, she persuades her parents to leave: they manage to break through 19 Russian checkpoints and escape to northern Italy, where she meets them. For the first time since the invasion, Ms Hercules goes out with a shopping list. ‘For months I have not been able to cook,’ she confesses; any hint of pleasure ‘felt like a betrayal’. However, she wants her parents to ‘step into a house of familiar…

It’s the little things I WAS struck by the quotation from the American naturalist, E. O. Wilson, ‘the little things that run the world’ (Leader, May 28) and, together with your article ‘Spot the difference’ (May 17), it brought to mind my student days studying aphids. Spending days in fields of broad beans, I would observe their lives and marvel at their powers of reproduction. Imagine where a single ladybird would be without the thousands of aphids it can eat in its lifetime? Instead of maligning the mighty superfamily Aphidoidea, we should be grateful for their vital part in running the world. Dr Simon Alderton, by email Wonderful wisteria YOUR magnificent presentation of Chloe Le Poidevin-Holmes’s Wisteria floribunda (Town & Country, May 21) sits with joy against the sadness of…

Bowleaze Cove, Weymouth by John Constable ‘This oil sketch is so immediate you can almost feel the wind on your face. Constable stopped to make it when out walking with his wife during their honeymoon in the autumn of 1816. It started to rain, hard, before he’d finished–we know that because raindrops left dents in the wet paint. He obviously relished the storm: look at that feverish sea and the sky the colour of a pewter plate. I love the fact that he didn’t see his honeymoon as a chance to take a break from his art, that he carried on drawing and painting. It was how he connected with the world’ Charlotte Mullins comments on Bowleaze Cove, Weymouth ON October 2, 1816, John Constable married Maria Bicknell at St…

A PATTERN in our relations with birds of prey is that we borrow their names as a way of celebrating human technologies. The Harrier jump jet is a good illustration. It was meant to honour the aeroplane’s marvellous manoeuvrability: what it draws on is the ease with which a hen harrier (Circus cyaneus) can hold steadily on the air, flap slowly to a point of stillness, then turn away in a sideways sweep or double back and twist down to the ground like a blade pressed home. The bird in hunting mode is an embodiment of immense control and exquisite aerial fluency. With all deference to the original manufacturers of the jump jet, their Harrier is a shadow of the living bird. Of our three harrier species—Montagu’s, marsh and hen—the…

A PERSON acts what he is when he may do what he will,’ wrote a monk in Kent at some point in the first half of the 11th century. This gnomic utterance was not of his own making—the monk in question was busy defacing a manuscript. Within a compendium of hymns, over five blank pages before the Canticles for Matins, he recorded 46 Old English proverbs and translated each of them into Latin. These wise, sometimes world-weary, occasionally cynical aphorisms reflect upon aspects of human experience—from friendship to fear, intemperance to trust—as understood 1,000 years ago. Despite their age, the sayings preserved in the manuscript today known as the Durham Proverbs remain remarkably insightful. We can all agree that ‘a friend, or kinsman, is helpful whether far or near, but…

THIS year’s WOW!house displays, oh so eloquently, the capacity of detail to elevate a space, from joinery and upholstery to furniture and finishes. It also offers an insight into how spatial planning is a far greater focus for designers than ever. Here, both have been delivered with aplomb—a juggling act that distinguishes the most capable designers from the rest. What’s on show is more than a succession of rooms. Instead, they are spaces configured with enormous cunning, notably in the Sims Hilditch Courtyard Room that artfully combines beauty with all the functionality required by a busy family. It’s not only floor space that has been deployed so deftly, but also height, from the monumental scale of ADAM Architecture’s grand entrance, designed by Darren Price, to the lofty lantern in Ben…

The gardens at Bledlow Manor, Bledlow, Buckinghamshire The home of Baron Carrington of Upton GARDENERS often comfort themselves after a disaster with the thought that the loss of a tree or favourite plant offers opportunities for planting something new. The destruction of such a building as the great medieval tithe barn at Bledlow Manor, which burned down one night in 1967, must have been a truly appalling blow. Yet its loss was the catalyst for the creation of the South Garden and much that followed, as Rupert Carington, 7th Baron Carrington of Upton, explains. Lord Carrington is standing above a sunken square pool reached via shallow brick steps at each end and edged with brick walls topped with contrasting fresh green beech hedges. A plain and perfectly judged fountain gives…

BRITAIN’S love affair with tea began in 1662, when Charles II’s Queen, Catherine de Braganza, introduced it to the English Court. Since then, the members of the Royal Family have set the rules of tea etiquette, with the world following their lead. If you are served ‘milk tea’ in Japan, it is because they have seen the royals add milk to black tea. They may even copy The King by adding milk to Earl Grey, nicely dismissing a tea taboo. The most significant moments in life are often accompanied by tea. It may surprise even American readers to know that White House presidential transitions take place over a cup of tea. Amid the weight of history, diplomacy and the world’s watchful eyes, do presidents worry about pinkie placement—or are they…

Bridge Andrew Robson THE winning team at the 2nd European Transnational Winter Games in Prague, Czech Republic, in February, was Pierre Zimmermann’s powerful team of ‘Swiss’ professionals. Actually, three are Polish and two Dutch—I think they speak a few broken words of Swiss. At a crucial stage in the final, the Dutch pair bid a hopeless slam missing two aces (actually, they were missing a third Ace, but that one could be ruffed—declarer was void). Defender A led the Ace of trumps and soon tabled his other Ace. The trouble was Defender B had carelessly revoked on the Ace of trumps. The penalty meant that the slam made. This divided the top players into ‘Concentrating and not revoking is part of the game, rules are rules,’ and, ‘Well, the slam…