Indholdsfortegnelse for June 18, 2025 i Country Life

Quiz of the week 1) Ferrets belong to which family of carnivoran mammals? 2) What common English verb becomes its own past tense by rearranging its letters? 3) Name the horse that struck suffragette Emily Davison at the 1913 Epsom Derby. 4) What’s the key ingredient in Welsh laverbread? 5) According to the Scoville scale, which chilli pepper is the hottest? 1) Mustelids 2) Eat 3) Amner 4) Seaweed 5) Pepper X (2.693 million SHU or Scoville heat units). Riddle me this: A bell Riddle me this I can speak with my hard metal tongue, but I cannot breathe, for I have no lungs. What am I? Time to buy On this day… June 18, 1822 London’s first public nude statue was unveiled at Hyde Park. Erected seven years after…

AT last, it’s been raining. This has come as a real relief for the drought-ridden parts of Britain. Already, the lighter soils have suffered badly and continuous irrigation has been widely necessary and expensive. At the end of May, there was a drought order placed over north-west England—a part of the UK famed for its rain and only this dry twice before in 150 years. Even here, drought will now be a recurring concern. Britain is almost wholly unprepared for it. The regulator, Ofwat, has been pressed by successive governments to keep water bills down and that has discouraged investment. Many companies have failed even to carry out urgently necessary spending and there is, therefore, a huge backlog to make up. No one has built a new reservoir for decades,…

AT noon on September 20, 1675, after a period of unseasonably dry weather, a fire at a thatched cottage on St Mary’s Street in Northampton exploded out of control. There are several different accounts of how it began, but one of the best informed, written by Henry Lee, town clerk between 1662 and 1688, describes ‘a poor woman carrying a few live coals in a fire shovel from her neighbour’s house… to warm her dinner. The wind being very high and strong blew some of the coals upon the thatch of her house, which took fire immediately, and by the wind was carried from place to place through the whole town… it was God that blew the bellows’. There was no orchestrated response to the blaze and the town’s firefighting…

Over the counter Nighthawks, 1942, by Edward Hopper, The Art Institute of Chicago, US Yes, I know, I know, Edward Hopper’s master-piece is all about the gaping loneliness at the heart of the Big City American dream. Or something like that. Yet, I’ve always found it not only haunting, but rather glamorous, too. The three customers in this eternally bright diner may be wistfully lingering over coffee, but I like to think they’ve eaten. Eggs over easy, meatloaf or, best of all, a proper American grilled-cheese sandwich. You could, of course, use proper cheddar, or Ogleshield, with a few slices of raw onion. But for a true taste of America, it has to be soft, cheap white bread and neon-hued slices of that magnificent, plasticky American ‘cheese’. This recipe comes…

Co Durham, £1.8 million Six miles to the north-east of Durham in the hamlet of Chilton Moor is eight-bedroom, Grade II-listed Morton House. Once rather run-down, the current owners have transformed the property over the past 20 years into a well-designed, spacious family home. The five reception rooms look out on the 6½-acre garden, some with doors that open onto a terrace. Leading down from the kitchen (with four-oven Aga) is a generously sized cellar with plenty of space for storing bottles and hosting small gatherings. The house also takes in a protected courtyard area that is currently used for summer entertaining. Fine & Country (0330 166 4646) Worcestershire, £1 million Unusually, The Red House in the village of Dunley has full-height cellars of 942sq ft that are at the…

ALL squid are remarkable in one respect,’ notes Alan Davidson in The Oxford Companion to Food. ‘The processes of natural selection have operated on them in a manner which suggests that fitness for being stuffed in the kitchen was a criterion for their survival.’ He has a point. For these are cephalopods seemingly designed with lunch in mind, their preparation as simple as it is satisfying. Sure, the cuttlefish may be more meaty, stewed in a Provençal melange of olive oil, garlic and tomato. Whereas the octopus … oh dear, dear octopus. How I loved pulpo a la Gallega, those fat, luscious limbs drenched in olive oil, served atop sliced, boiled potatoes and dusted in a blizzard of smoked paprika. And chtapodi sti schara (try saying that after a few…

Stone Lands: A Journey of Darkness and Light Through Britain’s Ancient Places Fiona Robertson (Little, Brown, £25) WHEN Fiona Robertson first saw Avebury in Wiltshire, at the age of 18, ‘it was by far the most mind-blowing thing I’d ever encountered’. It felt ‘potent with spiritual meaning’, a prehistoric site as old as the pyramids, yet set in English farmland. One of her first dates with her future husband, Stephen, was walking the old drovers’ route of the Ridgeway and ending up at Avebury, sipping a pint and leaning against an ancient stone. The appeal of megaliths for her was their steadfastness over millennia in contrast to the ephemeral nature of a human’s time on Earth. This is brought home when, 18 years later, they are back, with their children,…

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Future Publishing Ltd, 121–141 Westbourne Terrace, Paddington, London W2 6JR 0330 390 6591; www.countrylife.co.uk THE 257th edition of the Royal Academy (RA) Summer Exhibition opened with a bang. Or, more accurately, with a loud, gong-like sound, as curator Farshid Moussavi struck with a mallet Jayden Ali’s Thunder and Şimşek, a 26ft-long steel-pan sculpture suspended from the ceiling in Gallery III. Nothing beats the drama of the RA show (Athena, page 86). Ever since the event first opened its doors on April 25, 1769, it has filled the British summer with squabbles (in 1775, Angelica Kauffman managed to have Nathaniel Hone’s The Conjuror removed because it hinted at her rumoured affair with Sir Joshua Reynolds); scandals (in 1848, Richard Reinagle tried to pass off the work of a younger artist as…

Why we’re no longer eating fish TEN years ago, pescatarianism (eating fish, but not meat) was hailed as an honourable third way for those with aspirations to vegetarianism. As the vegan lobby led many to realise that intensive farming had a noxious impact on the environment, people began to reduce their consumption of meat and up that of fish in a bid to replace lost protein. Those wanting to do their bit for the planet could pat themselves on the back, but at the same time turned a blind eye to the dangers of intensive fishing. Things have changed dramatically these past few months, especially after Sir David Attenborough’s Ocean documentary exposed the dire consequences of our fishing practices on the big screen. Among these methods is bottom trawling, when…

PITY the friends who toured France with Samuel Courtauld. ‘Pictures excite Sam so much that he spends sleepless nights,’ moaned one, adding that the industrialist had visited three exhibitions (by Edgar Degas, Georges Braque and Constantin Guys) in a single day. An encounter with the collection of art dealer Sir Hugh Lane at the National Gallery had ignited Courtauld’s passion for modern art in 1917. Adding spark to that tinder was a second exhibition, in 1922, at the Burlington Fine Arts Club, where he fell for the Impressionists, particularly Paul Cézanne: ‘At that moment, I felt the magic, and I have felt it in Cézanne’s work ever since.’ However, it was his wife, Elizabeth (‘Lil’), who kickstarted their collecting that same year, buying Pierre-Auguste Renoir’s Woman Tying her Shoe and…

I AM a big fan of wasps and what my hero, the insect biologist and conservationist Prof Dave Goulson, calls their weird and wonderful world. There are more than one million species of these enigmatic creatures, yet humans spend most of their time fussing about only one. It turns out that if I had done a bit more fussing about that one, I might have avoided a night lying in a corridor on a trolley in Ipswich Hospital. It was a late-summer evening full of promise. Some charming French students had organised a party to celebrate their time as guests on our organic farm and I had been welcomed with a drink of industrial strength that echoed the best of student cocktails. It soon seemed right to investigate the whiff…

BLACK-AND-WHITE images of Victorian domestic interiors tend to reveal an unhinged eclectism that would send a minimalist running for the smelling salts; folding screens, aspidistras, antimacassars, ostrich feathers, dried flowers, taxidermy—even the family dog was in danger of being festooned with a tasselled pelmet if it was foolish enough to stand still for long. This aspect of Victorian interior design is the subject of Domestic Gods, in which the author, Deborah Cohen, examines why some Victorians had such an insatiable appetite for stuff. It kicked off early in the century, but grew exponentially later on when ‘rising incomes combined with the bounty of industrial manufacture carried this tide of consumption to new heights’. Where the Great Exhibition helped create the desire, the emergence of new temples to consumerism, Selfridges, Liberty…

Coughton Court, Coughton, Warwickshire The home of Mr and Mrs Magnus Birch Throckmorton IT was always my grandmother’s wish,’ says Magnus Birch Throckmorton, of his ancestral home, Coughton Court by the River Arrow in Warwickshire, ‘that we would move in and look over the house and garden.’ The 25-acre gardens had been made by his grandmother and mother almost 30 years ago, embellishing ‘the lovely bones of the Tudor house, walls, two churches and lake’ with colourful planting. Yet Mr Birch Throck-morton and his wife, Imogen, knew nothing about gardens when they arrived in 2017. ‘I was a wine merchant and Imogen worked in London.’ Since then, he adds, ‘Imogen has worked alongside the very able team of gardeners and I provide some muscle occasionally. Now, we love the beauty…

Foxes brewing I SO enjoyed your ‘Hampshire chronicles’ (June 4). For me, the New Forest conjures up summer camps in the woods at Foxlease as a Girl Guide. Campfire sing-songs, washing in a bowl balanced on a tripod of sticks held together by just the right kind of knots, team games and chores. Following Girlguiding’s decision to sell this lovely place, which had such rich heritage and purpose, I am glad to say it has now been saved for future generations and will continue as an activities centre for young people. Bravo Foxie’s Future, the charity that has risen, like a phoenix, out of the love felt for this truly special place. Marina Knight, by email Not all are betrayed IN our small village, we have taken advantage of freely…

THE dog, independent of the beauty of his figure, his strength, vivacity, and nimbleness, possesses every internal excellence which can attract the regard of man,’ wrote Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon (1707–88). Whether in the works of Landseer, Gainsborough, Hogarth or 20th-century artists such as Lucian Freud or David Hockney, dogs are a perennially popular subject for creatives, offering a touching insight into the connection between Man and his best friend, but, perhaps more importantly, into the private life of the artist. A muse is like a gentle nudge from the universe, igniting creativity and spurring great works. Yet for some, their muse is a gentle nudge, from a cold wet nose. The canine muse undoubtedly contributes to the spiritual and artistic wellbeing of their master or mistress, as well…

IF you had to name a ‘dream’ bird that the British public would most love to see, I suspect the golden eagle (Aquila chrysaetos) would make our collective top three. Yet, for all its immense size, it can be a rather tricky species to identify. The most reliable feature is the shape of its broad wings, which are long and deeply fingered at their tips. The span is also invariably held in a shallow V above the line of the bird’s body; subadult eagles are easiest, because of contrasting white patches in their tails and mid-wings. One important part of the identification process is actually a psychological issue in us. We are often so keen to encounter this wonderful animal that ambition overrides the accuracy of our observations—in fact, common…

YOU should absolutely not attempt this at home. Duelling comes with a roughly 50% chance of dying, the risk of bleeding profusely and a very early start. Little wonder it has been illegal since at least 1215, when the Fourth Lateran Council in Rome, Italy, outlawed it. Since then, the practice has been forbidden again and again by successive institutions in dozens of countries. However, in spite of this, duels have continued to be fought, referred to numerous times across art and literature. Samuel Johnson, for example, believed that ‘a man may shoot the man who invades his character, as he may shoot him who attempts to break into his house’. In a world before credit checks and LinkedIn profiles, character and reputation were important assets to individuals—so important that…

BACK in January, the team working on my book summoned me for a kind, but firm reality check. They asked, doubtfully, if I’d heard of festivals such as Hay and Cheltenham. ‘Indeed I have,’ I replied. ‘Hay is a sort of celebration of Stephen Fry, isn’t it?’ What I’d been summoned to be told is that, although authors and publicists obviously want to get their books to the blue-riband festivals, it is an almost impossible task—unless you’re a Sunday Times bestselling writer, you’re beautiful or you’re Sir Stephen. This year, Hay even created a flavour of ice cream to celebrate the great man: fig and walnut, apparently a nod to his retelling of The Odyssey. Instead, I was told that there would be plenty of independent bookshop events. I like…