Indholdsfortegnelse for September 10, 2025 i Country Life

Future Publishing Ltd, 121–141 Westbourne Terrace, Paddington, London W2 6JR 0330 390 6591; www.countrylife.co.uk IT is tempting to agree with the actor Stephen Mangan, who recently proposed consigning autumn to Room 101 in the Radio 4 series of that name. Launching an arsenal of D-words—decay, darkness, depression and death—he saw nothing but a doomloop of ever shortening days and withering joy. As the autumn solstice on September 22 approaches, it seems timely to look at the good things: hazel and cobnuts free in hedgerows, breakfasts of fried mushroom buttons that appear magically overnight, giant puff balls and inky parasols; proper rain and lush fields banishing the brown prairies; rushing rivers and running salmon; early-morning trail-hunting as the sun rises over fog-laced stubble, partridge shoots and pub quizzes and the smell…

Proposal etiquette OCCASIONALLY a news story will grow so all consuming that even a magazine such as ours has no choice but to acknowledge it. Taylor Swift, the American superstar who in some parts of the world has become more famous than Jesus, is now engaged to Travis Kelce, an American football player and star of the Kansas City Chiefs. The proposal took place in Mr Kelce’s garden at home in Missouri, US, in a glade with a pergola draped in foliage and urns overflowing with flowers. It was very bucolic, very COUNTRY LIFE, so much so that we received a letter from a reader who reportedly left her granddaughters ‘agog’ after explaining how much work had gone into the backdrop. You might be wondering why we have come to…

AS with so many expressions in common parlance, ‘pomp and circumstance’ is from Shakespeare, in a speech by Othello bidding farewell to his soldiers: ‘Farewell the neighing steed, and the shrill trump…’ It was the phrase the composer Sir Edward Elgar (1857–1934) gave to a series of five marches, the first to a tune that he predicted to a friend would ‘knock ’em flat’. Indeed, at its Proms premiere, in 1901, the audience demanded not one, but two encores. It has been an annual staple of the Last Night of the Proms from 1950 (including this Saturday, September 13), together with the Hornpipe and Rule Britannia. It is best known as the rousing hymn Land of Hope and Glory, set to the evocative words of academic and poet A. C.…

THE late Christopher Lloyd clearly felt he had to make a case for the particular kind of meadow that greets you as you arrive at Great Dixter in East Sussex. ‘Your first sight, on entering the front gate, is of two areas of rough grass, on either side of the path to the house… They are not just plots of grass that we gave up mowing for lack of labour, but were intended from the first.’ Every spring for more than 100 years, the turf here has transformed into a glorious, dancing tapestry of delicate flowering bulbs in long grass: pale silvery Crocus tommasinianus, the wild daffodil Narcissus pseudonarcissus and the chequered snake’s-head fritillary. These two uplifting strips of jewelled meadow light up with different bulbs in succession until the…

Marble Hill, Richmond-upon-Thames, Greater LondonIn the care of English Heritage MARBLE HILL was built in 1724–29 for the courtier Henrietta Howard, later Countess of Suf-folk. Notwithstanding its crisp, sculpted presence, the house is diminutive and was described in 1760 as ‘white as snow, a small building without wings, but of a most pleasing appearance’; distilling all the ingredients suitable for elegant entertainment and retreat. It was erected at a moment when a new architectural style—termed Palladianism after the inspiration it drew from the work of the 16th-century Vincentine architect Andrea Palladio—was set to transform English architectural taste. The story of its genesis is complicated and involved a circle of individuals. One of the leading architects active in promoting Palladianism, Colen Campbell, published a version of the design for the house…

BRITAIN expects. This summer, we’ve had the triumphs of the Lions and Lionesses and a British doubles win at Wimbledon. The British showjumping quartet returned from their European Championships in Spain with a team and an individual silver medal, for the peerless Scottish horseman Scott Brash. The dressage squad’s medal haul in France last month was team silver. Next week, it is the turn of the third Olympic equestrian discipline, eventing, which historically has the best championship record of the three. The eventers are on home ground—usually an advantage, albeit a pressured one—at Blenheim Palace, Oxfordshire. Expectations are high: Britain’s senior equestrian teams have enjoyed a golden run since the London Olympics. The eventers alone have won the last two Olympics, the 2021 and 2023 European Championships and the 2022…

A Year with Gilbert White: The First Great Nature Writer Jenny Uglow (Faber, £25) IN the beginning was the Word, and the Word was that of the Revd Gilbert White in The Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne. This is not quite the blasphemy it seems. White’s book is the foundation text of English Nature writing, a publishing genre so popular these days it is abbreviated to ‘NW’, like ‘SF’ for science fiction (The legacy, February 19). More sacredly, White’s work is infused with wonder at God’s world and everything therein, all creatures great and small. Yet, as eminent biographer Jenny Uglow records scrupulously, her man, as well as adhering to ‘natural philosophy’, was determinedly scientific. ‘One realises White was our first great countryside writer, as well as Nature writer.…

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It’s that gut feeling NOURISH your gut garden!’ is this month’s rallying cry from the Soil Association, guardians of organic food, which last week organised a gathering at Sitopia Farm in Shooters Hill, east London, to hear how good gardening nurtures better health. Growing numbers of us complain of gripes and grumbles, bloating and inflammation, because we lack a decent microbiome to digest food and support our immune systems. This can also make us a misery guts, literally: 90% of serotonin, the body’s ‘happy hormone’, is produced in the gut. This is happening, it was explained at the conference, partly because we don’t eat enough fruit and vegetables—consumption has fallen to the lowest level on record. At the same time, their nutritional value has plummeted to half the levels of…

On the move YOUR correspondent was correct in saying that COUNTRY LIFE’s photograph of Malvernians in Blenheim during the Second World War does not tell the full story (Letters, August 27). Malvern College (below) was requisitioned twice during the Second World War: firstly to accommodate the Admiralty and secondly to house the Telecommunications Research Establishment. On this occasion, its pupils were moved to Harrow School; ironically, several Harrovians had been sent by their parents to Malvern in order to be further from London. Harrow’s splendid Malvern Clock is a permanent reminder. Timothy Straker, by email Poetry in motion I AM glad that Town Mouse enjoyed his family trip to the Palio in Siena (‘Painting the town pink’, August 27). My wife and I have been twice and remember seeing the…

UNLIKE the majority of their forebears, gardeners today are much more likely to be university educated and have a sideline in Latin verse or academic publishing. Indeed, many come from a career in one of the professions—law, accountancy or teaching—but some of the brightest high-flyers are so fired by a love of plants and gardens that they pick up a trowel as soon as they graduate from their academic studies, sometimes before. The three young gardeners we celebrate here have all taken slightly different routes to the jobs they now hold, but all give thanks for the encouragement they received when training and working within a large professional organisation. Gardening is a discipline that combines rarified botany with plunging the hands into the soil. This is why horticultural knowledge is…

WHEN Duncan Skene first came across daylilies in a catalogue he thought the flowers ‘the epitome of exotic’. That was 25 years ago, when British gardeners were only offered a handful of varieties of Hemerocallis, an ancient genus that was first recorded as an edible plant in about 2070BC in China. There, as in Japan and Korea, it grew wild in the woods. Today, there are almost 100,000 registered varieties, which means we now have a dizzying choice of this hardy perennial. Daylilies come in a range of colours and contrasting markings—only blue, black or true white flowers have evaded the breeders. Flower shapes and forms vary from round and blowsy to elongated and refined and, as for their height, they go from a diminutive 8in to a lofty 5ft.…

ON November 18, 1852, a 12-ton funeral carriage processed past London’s Royal Horse Guards on its way to St Paul’s Cathedral. Behind followed a riderless horse, its stirrups bearing an empty pair of handmade boots in tribute to the deceased. Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington, was, of course, the celebrated military leader who defeated Napoleon Bonaparte and was twice Prime Minister of Britain. Yet, for those of us who live in the countryside, his legacy is most commonly felt when we slip on our Wellington boots. This pivotal figure in preserving our national sovereignty was actually partial to ‘Hessian’ boots, from the German province of Hesse, before giving his name to the quintessentially English ‘Wellington’. Curved at the top with a large tassel hanging over the front, Hessians were…

Hampshire, £1.75 million This four-bedroom, Grade II-listed former mill stands in 3½ acres of gardens on the edge of the Test Valley village of Monxton, near Andover, from which are fast train services to London Waterloo. The Pillhill Brook, linked to the Test via a tributary of the River Anton, runs along the boundary and a stream meanders through the garden, crossed by several footbridges. The west-facing walled garden, directly off the kitchen, has always been a kitchen garden, but now requires work to bring it back into full production. A separate one-bedroom mill room could be turned into a self-contained annexe, too. Hamptons (01962 656421) Norfolk, £1.75 million Standing in three acres of gardens near the Georgian town of Holt on the north Norfolk coast is Home Farmhouse, an…

ANCIENT Greeks and Romans seemed to have trouble making up their minds about the Graces. Also known as Charites or Gratiae, they were acknowledged across the classical world as symbols of beauty, but little else could be agreed about them. They were usually taken to be the daughters of Zeus, but the sources give varying parentage, with Helios, the sun god, and Dionysus as possible fathers and a selection of different mothers. They were thought to be three in number, but there may have been only two or as many as five. Although Aglaia (Splendour), Euphrosyne (Joy), and Thalia (Good Cheer) are the most commonly referenced names, thereis a selection of forgotten Graces: Pasithea, Charis, Peitho and Kale among them. However, artists—less interested in such genealogical detail than in the…

Quiz of the week 1) How many lines comprise a haiku poem? 2) Are Jaffa Cakes legally a cake or a biscuit? 3) Who created the Crystal Palace Dinosaurs, unveiled in 1854? 4) What is the national flower of Mexico? 5) Whooper and Bewick’s are both types of what kind of animal? 1) Three 2) Cake 3) Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins 4) Dahlia 5) Swan. Riddle me this: A promise Riddle me this You cannot keep me until you have given me to someone else. What am I? Time to buy On this day… September 10, 1897 George Smith, a 25-year-old London cab driver, was arrested and charged for driving under the influence of alcohol, becoming the first person to be convicted for the offence. The Morning Post reported that Smith’s…

WHAT is Britain doing kowtowing to people that are harming our children’s health? It has been six years since Public Health England sounded the alarm. We’ve had the recent Which? Fund report, a BBC Panorama exposé and a major press campaign, but only now has the Government taken any action on damaging baby food. Even now, after all that delay, the much trumpeted action turns out to be wholly inadequate. Yet the facts couldn’t be clearer. Baby-food manufacturers are misleading parents into buying sugar-laden products, they are claiming unfounded health benefits and they are ignoring well-founded nutritional advice. All this is revealed in the authoritative report produced by the University of Leeds and paid for by the Which? Fund. The Government response is to let baby-food manufacturers off the hook.…

A musical façade GUS CHRISTIE sits in front of the organ in the hall that physically links the house and opera at Glyndebourne. This instrument—and the purpose-built Tudor-style room that contains it—were built after the First World War by the founder of the opera, John Christie (Legacy, April 23), for his composer and friend Dr Charles Harford Lloyd, the Precentor of Eton, as an inducement to retire in East Sussex. Sadly, however, Harford Lloyd died in October 1919, before the organ was completed. The instrument was so powerful that, when it was first played, pieces of plaster fell from the ceiling. Christie went on to buy the Norfolk-based company that built it, Hill, Norman & Beard. Alterations to the neighbouring opera house in the 1950s have left the instrument as…

Antique piece Dating from the mid 19th century, this large Cotswold-stone campana-shaped planter, £3,600, is available from Architectural Heritage (01386 584414; www.architectural-heritage.co.uk) Decorative detail Featuring satyr faces and floral decoration, these Ornate Lemon Tree pots, £950 each, are made from composition stone, by Garden Art Plus (01488 686811; www.gardenartplus.com) Contemporary round The handsome Radius planter is made from glass-reinforced concrete, priced to order, from Urbis Design (01759 373839; www.urbisdesign.co.uk) Steel works The Traditional Steel planter, extra large, £645, is made in England from heavy-gauge galvanised steel with an aged finish, by Arthur Jack (01905 778351; www.arthurjack.co.uk) Statement piece The Faience planter, £3,595, is hand thrown and painted using time-honoured techniques, by Whichford Pottery (01608 684416; www.whichfordpottery.com) Copper choice From the Riveted Cauldron collection, the Copper Green Macbeth planter, £1,173 (left)…

YOU cannot open a gardening magazine in September without finding advice on which bulbs to buy and how to plant them. Journalists love writing these articles: they’re easy to do and they can be re-hashed every year. Their readers are addled by glamorous catalogues and garden-centre notices that invite them to fill a bag for £5. Aren’t we all? There’s too much choice. No one ever says anything about what happens to those bulbs five years later. The tulips will probably have died out, the grape hyacinths will have seeded all over the garden and you will never be rid of the Spanish bluebells or the alliums. The best bulbs, like all the best plants, are those that give maximum pleasure for minimum effort. You plant them and they do…

FEW things sum up the difference between a dream and reality quite as well as the ‘classic car’. Wouldn’t it be nice, you might say to yourself on a sunny afternoon, if I could hop into an E-Type Jag and go for a drive in the beautiful British countryside? Wouldn’t it be dandy, you might ponder, to fire up an Austin Healey and pootle down to the nearest pub with the roof down, feeling the wind in your hair? The realities of owning one can be somewhat different. The ‘classic car’, by its very definition, is of a certain age and things of a certain age have a habit of breaking. If they are of a very certain age and were manufactured in the Midlands, they will have a serious…

IT’S better than any other pleasure in life, a mouthful so wondrous, so suffused with giddy, radiant joy that it surpasses any love felt for mere humans, be they friend, child or paramour. In fact, for just two blessed bites of this seraphic sensation, you would happily hurl yourself to your doom. Yet this is neither nectar nor Manna, ambrosia nor forbidden fruit. Rather, a minced onion salad with purslane and cucumber. Better still, add a few leaves of basil and a tangle of rocket, according to Renaissance man Agnolo Bronzino, ‘and there is no contract that one would not arrange’. OK, so the painter and poet, eulogising In Praise of the Onion sometime during the mid 16th century, has his tongue firmly in cheek. Not only, he argues, is…

THE older I get, the more I realise it’s true that education is wasted on the young. For those who have been following my tales of employment—and lack of—I must update you that I have now gone to The Daily Telegraph as Environment Correspondent. It’s a curiously familial and storied institution. Yesterday, as a ‘new starter’, I attended a talk by the newspaper’s oldest employee, George Newkey-Burden, who is 88 and has been there for some 60 years. Among other artefacts, he proudly showed us the announcement of his birth on the front page of a 1937 edition. It is an impressively industrious place. Even on Christmas Day, there will be journalists chasing stories. News never stops. I thought about how much time we have when we’re young. At school…