Indholdsfortegnelse for August 27, 2025 i Country Life

Future Publishing Ltd, 121–141 Westbourne Terrace, Paddington, London W2 6JR 0330 390 6591; www.countrylife.co.uk AS parents wave their children through the school gates next week, there will be a certain hope, societal and personal, that their learning might involve ‘appreciation of Nature’. The forthcoming Natural History GCSE, painfully slow in its gestation, was, after all, prompted by popular demand, not dreamed up by a policy think tank. The disconnect of children from flora, fauna and farming, apart from a few admirable, but isolated initiatives, and the soul-less barrenness of young lives with faces transfixed by mobile phones, is an issue of these times. What can schools, burdened with health-and-safety responsibility, do? It was so much easier ‘back in the day’. A child’s love of all things countryside came naturally through…

The great porpoise panic AUGUST has thrown up a number of stories about dolphins. At the start of the month, a motorboat was blamed for injuring a pod off the coast of Cornwall, with footage on social media showing their dorsal fins sliced open or cut off. Two weeks later, a porpoise nicknamed Reggie allegedly tried to drown several people off the Dorset coast, with observers noticing that the lone male had a penchant for women in wetsuits. Reggie was also spotted mocking a group near Lyme Regis, coming up from behind and miming them treading water. As his legend grew, so did the number of admirers: paddle-boarders seeking him out at sunset were criticised for ‘surrounding’ the wild animal. Dolphins are funny old creatures: playful, agile and fiercely intelligent.…

SEAFARERS, aviators and chronic insomniacs are familiar with the Beaufort Scale, the empirical measure of wind force so soothingly delivered on the Shipping Forecast. It was developed on board HMS Woolwich by its then commander, Irish-born Francis Beaufort (1774–1857). Beaufort’s first seafaring position was as a cabin boy aged 14 on the East Indiaman Vansittart, soon learning the value of accurate charts when she hit a shoal off Indonesia and was wrecked. In 1790, he joined the Royal Navy as a midshipman, even then ‘expand[ing] his journal from the required notation of the weather every 12 to 24 hours to reports of it at two-hour intervals’. From then on, until three days before his death aged 83, he kept a daily weather journal, with notations of wind, temperature and barometric…

FOR more than half a century, Hal Moggridge has enriched, enhanced and entertained the world of landscape architecture and garden design. His huge contribution will be given deserved recognition in a special symposium on September 11. The course of his career was set in 1969 when, aged only 33, he was taken on as a partner by the renowned landscape architect and garden designer Brenda Colvin, then 72 years old. Their partnership lasted for 12 years until Colvin’s death in 1981 and demonstrated the positives of opposites; not only their ages, but their characters. When interviewed for a biography of Colvin, Mr Moggridge said: ‘We found ourselves surprisingly compatible. Her wisdom and experience tempered my extravagantly enthusiastic ideas, helping to mould them into practicality. I found her deep understanding of…

THE Americans are fanatical collectors of glass, but the British have always been devoted to ceramics. Their passion hasn’t waned, although it has developed in new directions. Traditionally, collectors sought rare pieces of porcelain, such as bowls, tea cups and, before that, figurines. With the development in the 1920s of the studio-pottery movement in the UK, led by Bernard Leach, brown pots became de rigueur. The emphasis was on wheel-thrown stoneware, functional forms and Japanese aesthetics rooted in Mingei (folk craft) values. By the 1960s, the second wave of potters, such as Richard Batterham working in stoneware and Clive Bowen in slip-decorated earthenware, held sway. The more adventurous sought out functional ware that was increasingly sculptural and modernist in form, by potters such as Lucie Rie and Hans Coper (some…

North Ampleforth College, North Yorkshire: September 13 (www.ampleforthcollege.org.uk) Aysgarth Prep School, North Yorkshire: October 11, November 7 (www.aysgarthschool.com) Durham School, Co Durham: October 11 (www.dcsf.org.uk) Giggleswick School, North Yorkshire: October 11 (www.giggleswick.org.uk) Glenalmond College, Perthshire: September 20 (www.glenalmondcollege.com) Repton School, Derbyshire: October 4 (www.repton.org.uk) Rossall School, Lancashire: October 4 (www.rossall.org.uk) Sedbergh, Cumbria: September 13, October 4 (www.sedberghschool.org) Stonyhurst, Lancashire: October 4 (www.stonyhurst.ac.uk) South Benenden, Kent: October 4, November 8 (www.benenden.school) Cottesmore, West Sussex: October 4 (www.cottesmoreschool.com) Hilden Grange Prep School, Kent: October 10 (www.hildengrange.co.uk) Lancing College, West Sussex: September 13, October 11, November 15 (www.lancingcollege.co.uk) Mayfield School, East Sussex: September 19 (www.mayfieldgirls.org) Roedean School, East Sussex: September 13 (www.roedean.co.uk) Rose Hill School, Kent: October 3 (www.rosehillschool.co.uk) Sandroyd School, Wiltshire: September 19 (www.sandroyd.org) Seaford College, West Sussex: September 20 (www.seaford.org) Sevenoaks…

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Water, water nowhere THE years 2023 and 2024 were the warmest recorded and the trend shows no sign of abating. Now, in these dry, dusty dog days of August, following the driest six months to July since 1976, we are dutifully hanging up the hosepipe, throwing washing-up water on the garden and turning the tap off during toothbrushing. At least, some of us are—Britain is apparently the most profligate nation in Europe when it comes to water. In addition, no new reservoir has been built here for 30 years and Ofwat, the water-company regulator, has been declared unfit for purpose in the Cunliffe Report (Town & Country, August 6). A recent suggestion to delete quantities of emails—digital clutter consumes millions of litres of water—was subsequently pooh-poohed by veteran tech analyst…

Chilling stuff HOW right Country Mouse is about the nether regions of chest freezers (‘Season of fruitfulness’, August 13). Long after our French house’s hen-sitters had left, I was rooting through my own frozen time capsule when my hand closed around a mystery package. When I opened it I got a ‘fowl’ surprise, complete with feathers, which turned out to have been caused by the language barrier. One of the hen house’s occupants had died when I was away and I had told the sitters to ‘leave her’—they must have heard ‘freeze her’. Zeta Lovell, by email Home and away YOUR photograph of boys from Malvern College in Worcestershire studiously reading in Blenheim Palace, Oxfordshire (right), doesn’t tell the full story (The way we were, August 6). When my prep…

The Battle of the River Granicus ‘This tapestry hangs today in Apethorpe Palace–home of the largest collection of period tapestries in the UK. It covers the entire wall of the King’s Chamber in the State Apartments built by James I for “the more commodious entertainment of his Majesty”. It belongs to a set of eight unique tapestries depicting the story of Alexander the Great and made in 1582 in my ancestors’ atelier in Tournai. The scene is the Battle of the River Granicus, Alexander’s first major victory over the Persian Empire. This battle can be seen as the first historical clash between East and West. Victory proved Alexander’s tactical superiority, thereafter emulated by Caesar and Charlemagne, and ultimately leading to the rise of Christian civilisation’ Charlotte Mullins comments on The…

IN 2023 Fiona, Britain’s loneliest sheep, was rescued from below cliffs in Cromarty in the Highlands of Scotland after spending two years on her own. She has since found socialising with other ewes difficult. Sheep, of course, are naturally flocking animals, but a surprising number of British species live their lives almost entirely alone. The famously co-operative honeybee is, in fact, an exception among its kind. The vast majority of bees—as many as 250 out of the 270 UK species—are solitary, including the delightfully named ashy mining bee (Andrena cineraria), the wool carder bee (Anthidium manicatum) and the hairy-footed flower bee (Anthophora plumipes). Solitary bees nest in the ground or in ready-made spaces, such as beetle holes, and their species are the ones most likely to use manmade bee hotels.…

IN its previous incarnation, the kitchen of shoe designer Penelope Chilvers’s house in Gloucestershire had plenty of character, but was short on space. Whenever she entertained more than four guests, the party had to be split between two tables, one in the kitchen and the other in the next-door dining room. The stone-built house was originally three workmen’s cottages, which had long ago been knocked together, the result being a range of room sizes and ceiling heights. The kitchen, in one of the oldest parts of the house, hadn’t been touched since the 1960s. To create a larger space, it was clear that the dividing wall had to be removed. ‘It was really important to Penelope that the room should retain its cottagey feel and that the new kitchen should…

Somerset, £2 million The Old Rectory is set in a little over an acre of gardens on the edge of Camerton, a village on the south-western fringe of Bath, and is built in the familiar honey-coloured stone. The six-bedroom Georgian house stands next to the village church and near Grade ll-listed Camerton Court, a larger property that did attract the attention of the listings inspectors back in the 1950s. Much of The Old Rectory has been subject to a recent programme of renovation, which has maintained historic details, such as working shutters. Fine & Country (01225 320032) Herefordshire, £675,000 Lane Gate Cottage is a pretty, stone-built, three-bedroom thatched cottage on the edge of the National Trust-owned Bircher Common and the Fishpool valley. Described as a ‘delightful retreat in a beautiful…

Quiz of the week 1) Rock band Black Sabbath formed in which English city? 2) In which Jane Austen novel would you find the character Captain Hunt? 3) Name the animal found on the Toblerone logo 4) Aspirin was originally obtained from the bark of which tree? 5) Goblin, wobbegong and cookiecutter are all types of what? 1) Birmingham 2) ‘Northanger Abbey’ 3) A bear 4) Willow (‘Salix’) 5) Shark. Riddle me this: Anteater Riddle me this I am an animal named after the animal that I eat. What am I? Time to buy On this day… August 27, 1869 Declared by The Times as ‘henceforth ever immortal in Anglo-American annuals’, the first international boat race (above) between an American and an English university was held on the Thames. A…

WHEN it’s hot, it’s a good idea to carry some water when you are travelling. It is, however, not a good idea to tell us to do this every time we catch a Tube train. Agromenes likes a bit of a nap on a train journey from his home in the country to London. He does not need to be woken every 20 minutes in order to be instructed: ‘See it, say it, sorted.’ Nor, when we are trying to restrain public expenditure, does he require a new warning notice on the steps to the exit from the Underground platform he uses. It’s a station in central London where, for 168 years, the steps have been successfully managed without any instruction. Now, in case you hadn’t thought of it, you…

SOME are pinned to leaves like delicate jewel brooches, whereas others are disfiguring bulbous growths that squat on plants like alien invaders. Galls—abnormal growths on plants and trees caused by parasitic organisms—are among the most intriguing of Nature’s creations and can be both beautiful and horrifying. The charming cherry gall, for example, adorns oak leaves with delicately speckled red baubles and the unseemly horned oak gall wraps itself around branches like the clawed toes of a hideous monster. All capture the imagination and all are formed from the plant’s own tissue, altered by physical injury or alchemised by chemical secretions. The most common culprits are invertebrates: often tiny gall wasps, less than half an inch in length, or flies, mites and aphids. As aphids nibble plants, chemicals in their saliva…

IN the first week of May 1971, in the basement of London’s Grosvenor House Hotel, Lady Celestria Noel was preparing for her big moment. As a debutante attending Queen Charlotte’s Ball, she had been chosen alongside five other girls to escort a 3ft-high cardboard birthday cake through the hotel’s Great Room on a trolley. The cake’s destination? Parked in front of the 100 or so debs preparing to curtsy to the guest of honour, Margherita, Lady Howard de Walden, who ‘cut’ the cake. This was a key moment in the debutante season—one that had, by then, been repeated for nearly 200 years. Yet, oddly enough, Lady Celestria (now Hales) remembers, the ball wasn’t that glamorous an occasion. ‘My dress cost £28 and we didn’t wear jewellery. You wore flat shoes…

ENGLISH gardeners can take pride in two of our greatest inventions—landscape parks and herbaceous borders. The landscape movement was a development of the old deer parks, but we owe the borders to our mild, damp climate and our love of flowers. The history of herbaceous borders goes back a long way. In the 18th century, Philip Miller clumped different plants together for ornamental effect at the Chelsea Physic Garden in London and, by 1800, our ancestors were making mixed borders of shrubs and hardy plants. It was the writings of William Robinson and, especially, of Gertrude Jekyll, however, that turned herbaceous borders into essential features of any respectable country garden. Jekyll’s books Colour in the Flower Garden (1908) and Colour Schemes for the Flower Garden (1919), both of them published…

Moonlight Express: Around the World by Night Train Monisha Rajesh (Bloomsbury, £22) A DECADE ago, overnight train travel was all mothballs and service suspensions, but fresh lines are being opened up and soon you will be able to kip between Brussels, Prague and Venice, from Munich to Bologna and Warsaw. A new service, Nox, is promising to improve the experience and cut the cost. Ah, the cost. I have travelled—at someone else’s expense—from Madrid to London (wonderful), Gdansk to Cracow (atmospheric), London to Transylvania (good in parts) and, like the author, on Royal Scotsman from Edinburgh to the Highlands (deluxe). However, when we took the family from Paris to Venice, I paid, and the Orient Express it was not. The corridors were full of sinister loafers and the loos overflowed…