Indholdsfortegnelse for July 16, 2025 i Country Life

Future Publishing Ltd, 121–141 Westbourne Terrace, Paddington, London W2 6JR 0330 390 6591; www.countrylife.co.uk BRITAIN has until July 31 to vote on who—or what—should adorn the next series of Bank of England banknotes, together with The King. The images will replace Sir Winston Churchill (£5), Jane Austen (£10), J. M. W. Turner (£20) and Alan Turing (£50) (Legacy, May 7). Already, nervousness has been expressed about handing responsibility to the public—or, rather, social-media propagandists—by those who fear ‘wokeness’, lack of gravitas or perhaps, as in 2016, another Boaty McBoatface scenario (the ship in question was eventually named RRS Sir David Attenborough, the fifth most popular suggestion). Certainly, the persistent unearthing of flaws in famous names makes the exercise fraught with banana skins—Churchill seems likely to be the last politician awarded…

The weather… no, really WHAT heatwave are we on now? The 12th? Once more, Mediterranean temperatures have swept our green and pleasant land, with some estimates putting London and Manchester at 31˚C at the weekend. Talking about the weather can be a conversational nadir, but not when one is being forced to spend the night naked in the shape of a starfish lying on top of the bedsheets. A growing number of people are even thinking of installing air conditioning—unsightly, bad for the skin and nigh impossible to set up anyway, due to planning restrictions on both new-builds and listed buildings. So far, more reasonable people seem content with old-fashioned fans—mostly the portable kind, although the more elegant ceiling fan is also in vogue. The UK market for those items…

RACHEL CARSON (1907–64), the American aquatic biologist and writer, didn’t live to see the influence of her seminal work, Silent Spring, published in 1962 and warning of the danger to the environment from pesticides. Instead, she spent the last years of her life before dying from breast cancer combating lawsuits from manufacturers and accusations of ‘emotionalism’ and ‘gross distortion of the facts’. One of her targets was DDT, blamed for the decline of the otter in polluted English rivers in the 1960s. A New York Times editorial said that if her book ‘helps arouse public concern to immunise government agencies against the blandishments of the hucksters and enforces adequate controls, the author will be as deserving of the Nobel Prize as was the inventor of DDT’. In May 1963, President…

WHEN the rewilding concept became a big thing a couple of decades ago, there was much talk about the introduction of exotic animals and, indeed, one pioneering landowner in Scotland made headlines with the arrival of some rather charming moose. More recently, there have been suggestions of bringing in huge auroch-type cattle from Spain to trample dense scrub; Mouflon sheep from the Mediterranean have been mooted to tackle rocky thorns; and, for some years, Konik ponies from Poland have been employed on National Trust and Wildlife Trust projects in East Anglia. The sight of bison on English pastureland—there is currently a herd in a conservation project in Kent woodland—always seems otherworldly; the Derbyshire Wildlife Trust is considering bringing European elk (6ft tall and weighing 1,600lb) to the Willington Wetlands, a…

LAIRG LODGE was built as a sporting lodge for the Duke of Sutherland in 1886 and overlooks Loch Shin, about an hour’s drive north of Inverness. Having been owned by the same family for 50 years, it was acquired by two brothers who knew and loved the house and shared a love of fishing. They asked the interior designer Harriet Sale to reimagine the interiors. ‘The views from this room are so beautiful, but it felt underused,’ she explains. ‘One of my big things is comfort and I wanted to create somewhere that felt pulled together, but not too decorated. It needed to be ready for a party, but equally inviting when armed with a good book and a whisky.’ With 10 bedrooms, creating enough seating for after-dinner gatherings was…

FOR Tom Young, painting is like breathing. ‘It’s a very natural thing for me to do, it’s how I respond to the world around me,’ he says. ‘In situations where there is conflict or displacement, or trauma, art can help in some sort of healing process. When there are barriers, it can transcend them.’ Mr Young’s work is all about making connections, finding common ground and shining light on dark places. Art and adventure alike are in his blood: his great-great-aunt was Marianne North (‘Follow the North Star’, September 27, 2023), the pioneering botanical artist who ‘went to just about every corner of the earth. She seemed to be able to settle anywhere,’ he says, admiringly. Her mentor was Edward Lear, who made his name painting the cedars of Lebanon.…

I ENVY the people of Bath. They possess in the Theatre Royal not only a beautiful building, but also a playhouse with a temptingly varied programme. Its latest coup is to have engaged Ralph Fiennes to present a three-play season that kicks off with the premiere of David Hare’s Grace Pervades that offers a witty, elegant and engrossing meditation on theatre itself. Its ostensible subject is Henry Irving, Ellen Terry and her family, but, in reality, it is about the influences that have shaped theatre as we know it today. Sir David’s play is based on a series of oppositions. Irving, the great Victorian actor-manager who gave theatre a new respectability, passionately claims: ‘I am my work. What else am I?’ Terry, his leading lady at the Lyceum and sometime…

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Estates take the lead in greening up All over Britain, major landowners are stepping up to tackle climate change and biodiversity loss. Jane Wheatley reports ENGLAND’S great landed estates have more room, more opportunity and arguably more responsibility than many other custodians of the countryside to tackle climate change. The challenges are huge: ‘Blenheim’s greatest battle for 300 years,’ admits palace chief executive Dominic Hare in Oxfordshire. At North Yorkshire’s Castle Howard, environment chief Guy Thallon wryly observes that changing the intensive-farming practices of past decades is ‘like getting a super tanker to turn around’. Goodwood in West Sussex is faced with offsetting carbon emissions from a motor-racing circuit and two golf courses. As well as greening the estate, Blenheim has a big card up its sleeve: it owns most…

Party political YOU illustrated your article on blazers (‘Going down in a blazer of glory’, June 25) with a rather splendid cartoon (above) that has more to it than sartorial significance—the personages depicted are caricatures of politicians of the day. Lord Salisbury, Joe Chamberlain and Arthur Balfour, for instance, are easily identified (Balfour was Robert Salisbury’s nephew; his appointment as Secretary for Ireland by Salisbury prompted the phrase ‘Bob’s your uncle’). The drawing is of the Tory party at play in about 1890, and a political point is being made. I’d be interested if you or your erudite readers could shed some light on what this point was. Walter Reid, Renfrewshire Deep dive I ADORED your feature on the country’s most beautiful lidos (‘Come on in, the water’s lovely’, July…

SUSTAINABLE’ has become something of a weasel word. Like ‘natural’ or ‘green’ or ‘wild’, it’s slapped onto food labels and adverts to make us feel better. Genuine sustainability concerns food security and resilience, climate change and the environment, human and animal health and wildlife biodiversity. How to take account of all this as we stand uncertainly in a supermarket aisle clutching a shopping list? Consumer choice is more powerful than we might think and, although it’s not easy to be a truly conscious eater or navigate what can feel like a minefield of competing priorities, we owe it to the planet, to livestock and ourselves to try. That could mean doing without or cutting down on the foods we’ve come to take for granted, such as cheap chicken fed on…

LISTENING to a dawn chorus when surveying birds by song, I tune into one little voice pealing out from a dense thicket on this Cotswolds farm. Tiny lungs belt out notes in rapid succession: a garden warbler has flown from southern Africa back to this thicket—his home. His tune is part of a chorus of warblers, indicating that the farm is great for birds in the spring and summer. Walking along the hedge, more avian voices ring out: yellowhammers and linnets and then the classic song of skylarks, which are so high up they seem like feathered astronauts. This is an average-sized, mixed-arable, non-organic farm. Hedgerows, managed for wildlife conservation with sward trims, provide nesting habitat for many farmland birds. Come summer, wildflower headlands will provide insects and seed where…

TREES were once integral to the British economy. A large section of the Magna Carta concerned forestry rights and, in the 18th and 19th centuries, there was a frenzy of oak planting in Britain to supply timber for naval warships. Across the Channel, the French initiated major oak planting for similar reasons in the late 1660s under Louis XIV and one of Napoleon’s responses to defeat in the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805 was to order the planting of more trees. Forestry practices were slow to catch on in Britain. In the late 19th century, landowners were more focused on growing woods to rear pheasants for sport than for timber. By 1919, timber was in short supply and woodland had declined to only 5% of Britain’s original forest cover. Work…

IT feels like a moment of change for the gravel garden. The Walled Garden at Knepp, West Sussex (‘Doing things differently’, June 26, 2024), led the way with its transformation of a flat croquet lawn into an exquisite biodiverse haven, with the plantsmen Prof James Hitchmough and Tom Stuart-Smith casting their own spells on different combinations of sand, gravel and crushed brick. Dan Pearson has followed suit, adding an inspiring sand garden to his beautiful domain in Somerset, and Sarah Price has created a dry garden in the old walled kitchen garden at her Abergavenny home in Wales, removing the topsoil and adding a mix of recycled sand, gravel and rubble to create an immersive space that dances with delicate sun-loving plants and wildflowers. ‘Gravel, sand or crushed lavatory, if…

WITH a wingspan of some 8ft and the heaviest females weighing in at 16½lb, this species isn’t only the largest raptor, it is one of the biggest of all birds in these islands. For sheer size and visual impact, there is nothing to compare with this remarkable creature. The broad tail is curiously short and, as it is white in an adult, it can even look absent as the bird flies. Both factors emphasise the massively broad wings—often likened to a barn door—but our eye is also drawn to the protruding head, which is thickened by long hackles around the neck. Finally, at its prow, a white-tailed eagle (Halia-eetus albicilla) carries an immense beak with the power to flense meat from a dead whale. Often called the ‘sea eagle’, which…

The Restless Coast: A Journey around the Edge of Britain Roger Morgan-Grenville (Icon Books, £22.99) THE spirit that first moves Roger Morgan-Grenville to walk anti-clockwise around the country from the tip of Scotland, Cape Wrath to Dunnet Head, is that sense of adventure familiar to the British. He had already walked the length of Britain during covid for Across a Waking Land (2023), but, watching a yacht and a fishing boat battle their way across the swell (and revealing that Wrath refers not to angry seas, but derives from the Norse word for turning point), he realises that he cannot rest without understanding his island and its natural world ‘a bit better’ by, in an echo of Robinson Crusoe, circumnavigating it. He sets off, crossing beaches, estuaries, harbours and cliffs,…

Quiz of the week 1) Name the Greek demigod who killed Medusa 2) Alexander McQueen, John Galliano and Stella McCartney are among the alumni of which London art school? 3) The pastry dessert baklava is believed to have originated from which former Empire? 4) Vectis is the ancient Roman name for which British island? 5) What is the collective noun for a group of foxes? 1) Perseus 2) Central St Martins 3) Ottoman 4) Isle of Wight 5) Skulk. Riddle me this: An echo Riddle me this You heard me once—and then again. I fade away until you call again. What am I? Time to buy On this day… July 16, 1439 Henry VI issued a proclamation banning kissing in England. Caused by the zoonotic Yersinia pestis bacterium, the bubonic…

VILLAGES have long battled to save their village schools, for the loss of a school tears out the community’s heart. What is more, young families will shun villages without schools and abandon them to the retired. Already, the countryside has a higher proportion of people aged over 70 than in the towns. School closures make that situation worse and leave whole communities to grow old without the vibrancy that young families bring. This process is continuing every academic year all around the country, as tight budgets force local authorities to shut small schools that, per pupil, are significantly more expensive to run. Once, these closures were argued on educational grounds. It is manifestly more difficult to provide the same range of subjects, activities and experiences in a smaller establishment, but…

No 631, Llangyfelach Road, Swansea The home of Royston Jones and Fiona Gray THE frontage of a terraced house can be a deceptive thing. From the outside, No 631, Llangyfelach Road on the outskirts of Swansea, built in 1910, is not a house that would naturally catch the eye (Fig 8). It is built of brick, two storeys high and two window bays wide, with a low-pitched slate roof. The upper floor is pebbledashed and the window frames are of plastic. Step through the front door, however, and any expectations you may have had will evaporate in amazement and delight. Inside is a whole series of ornate neo-Classical interiors executed in proportion to the spaces, which is to say somewhere between rooms on the grand scale and a dolls’ house.…

THERE are plenty of good reasons to question new building projects on our doorsteps and the inevitable accusations of NIMBYism should never be a deterrent. It’s mostly locals who have the time to study the details. My home on the Suffolk coast is overwhelmed by new energy schemes and some of my neighbours, after years of research and campaigning, are now much more knowledgeable about their inadequacies than the experts who originally came up with the plans. Local expertise can frequently identify improvements. However, it’s dispiriting when opposition is based on ignorance rather than hard facts, as it undermines those who do their homework. Country folk can be wary about any change, but most of us do accept that we need a lot more energy from renewable sources and that…

IF sustainability was once the buzz word, now, it’s greenwashing—and we’re rightly wary of how a brand’s mission statement matches up to the reality of putting our planet first. There’s no such thing as perfect when it comes to buying new, but whether it’s lining the larder or splashed on the walls, there’s a joy—and necessity—to knowing that a greener future is the priority for our pick of places and products to scribble on your wish list, each brand having toiled over ways to tread as lightly as possible. Decking the halls and walls Another Country Since Paul de Zwart founded this Dorset-based furniture company in 2010, making everything from standout oak coffee tables to beech stools, the mission has been to create responsibly made pieces that last. Each is…

THE inscription, written by my mother, said something like: ‘To John, Merry Christmas, 1990. Very happy days.’ Christmas 1990 was three years before I was born, and the book was Two Fat Ladies by Jennifer Paterson and Clarissa Dickson Wright. The cover shows Paterson astride that unmistakable Royal Enfield motorcycle with Dickson Wright next to her in a sidecar holding a basketful of field mushrooms. The book was around during my childhood and showed signs of thorough use. Now, I realise it had a deep impact. Food in 1990s Britain was pretty serviceable—pasta bakes and fruit crumbles were king—all about speed and ease. Two Fat Ladies made me realise food could be more than that. It meant people and culture, it meant connecting with the land, it meant Britain. It…