Indholdsfortegnelse for September 24, 2025 i Country Life

Future Publishing Ltd, 121–141 Westbourne Terrace, Paddington, London W2 6JR 0330 390 6591; www.countrylife.co.uk IN vain have I struggled. It will not do. My feelings will not be repressed. You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you,’ declared Mr Darcy to Elizabeth Bennet in Pride and Prejudice. Scroll along two centuries and this sentiment might have been distilled to a row of love hearts in a text message. Digital technology has transformed the way we interact, making communication easier and more instantaneous than ever before. Where once there was a single telephone in a household tethered to a wall, most of us now have one in our hands, day and night. The result, however, is that the quantity of communication has replaced the quality.…

Is this British wine’s best year yet? I POPPED into my local Majestic last Friday to pick up two bottles of Champagne. ‘I need a good one and a bad one,’ I told the bemused saleswoman. ‘I’m staying with friends in the country for whom I must bring a gift.’ Blank stare. ‘Ah yes, and some are doing a triathlon on Sunday, so I also need something to hose them down with.’ Lord knows what I ended up buying for the latter, but the gift was an obvious choice—albeit not Champagne per se. A week earlier, Nyetimber’s Blanc de Blancs 2016 Magnum had been crowned Champion Sparkling Wine at the International Wine Challenge (Barometer, September 17). I saw a bottle of the West Sussex label’s Classic Cuvée in the fridge…

Belmont House, Kent The property of The Harris (Belmont) Trust BELMONT is a Georgian creation. Its name, relating to its elevated position and extensive views, was coined by the first builder of a house on the site, Edward Wilks, the store-keeper at the Royal Powder Mills in Faversham, Kent. Successive owners thereafter, including five generations of the Harris family, were soldiers and colonial administrators, so its history is bound up with that of Britain as a military and Imperial power. Outwardly, however, the character of the house—which was built in its present form by Samuel Wyatt (1737–1807)—belies this martial connection, for it is gentle, bucolic and domestic, with not a battlement in sight. It is two storeys high and a soft yellow colour, with broad, relaxed proportions, exuding the elegant,…

WILDERNESS,’ said the American essayist Edward Abbey, ‘is not a luxury, but a necessity of the human spirit.’ He was right—and there is no wilderness like the wilderness of wet sand all around you. Depending on where you draw the upper limit for an island, Britain is the ninth largest in the world with, according to some reports, the 13th longest coastline. However, it is only when you come to understand that, thanks to our huge average tidal range, we have the largest intertidal area of any island on Earth that you begin to grasp the sheer magnitude of the ‘land in-between’—the land that is neither wholly wet nor wholly dry. Our estuaries alone extend to more than 2,000 square miles, an area only slightly smaller than Devon. Variously dotted…

Prime time for Purdey IF you constantly flit between town and country, Purdey’s Autumn/Winter 2025 collection, the first from creative director Giles Deacon, is a gift of sartorial sustenance. It has everything you need for your country pursuits—excellent field jackets, tailored tweeds and knitwear essentials—reimagined with contemporary cuts and luxurious fabrics so they are sleek enough to slot seamlessly into your dualistic ward-robe. It also introduces Purdey’s first House Tweed, a handsome combination of earthy greens, soft bracken and the blue-grey of moorland heather. Personal favourites include the Orsett corduroy gilet in walnut (£695) and the Clifford wool cashmere sweaters (£995) for cold Sunday mornings (both menswear, but I’m shopping anyway). If first impressions are anything to go by, Mr Deacon’s Purdey is poised for a town and country takeover…

If only I’d bought… October 5, 1989…

IN parallel with the British enthusiasm for gardening, we have always had an appetite for gardening books, needing to satisfy our thirst for practical information and our curiosity about the latest plants and ways of gardening. Every month, fresh titles appear, beautifully photographed and packed with suggestions for making better gardens. Carry on through the bookshop to the second-hand section, however, and you’ll find shelves filled with gardening books, generally dating from the early 20th century—as useful now as when they were first published. The way a rambling rose should be pruned in 2025 is exactly the same as it was in 1925. The reliance on chemicals may have changed, some plant names have been reclassified and tastes in garden styles have certainly altered, but the fundamental practice of making…

THERE is a delightful notice in the little church on the island of Bryher that reads: ‘A collection is not taken in the church service. Our visiting vicar has to get the 10.15 boat to Tresco for their service. A collection bowl is on the table in the porch.’ Welcome to island life. The Isles of Scilly consist of five inhabited islands and, depending on the tides, another 140 or so islets, plus more than 500 registered shipwrecks. The landmarks on Bryher are gloriously and splendidly named: Droppy Nose Point, Shipman Head, Hangman’s Island and Hell Bay—pure Enid Blyton. We stayed at the Hell Bay Hotel. Oddly, the main entrance is really the property’s back door, but first impressions are not always right and, once inside, there is that slow,…

Visit Tottering-By-Gently on our website: www.countrylife.co.uk/tottering We are committed to only using magazine paper which is derived from responsibly managed, certified forestry and chlorine-free manufacture. The paper in this magazine was sourced and produced from sustainable managed forests, conforming to strict environmental and socioeconomic standards. All contents © 2025 Future Publishing Limited or published under licence. All rights reserved. No part of this magazine may be used, stored, transmitted or reproduced in any way without the prior written permission of the publisher. Future Publishing Limited (company number 2008885) is registered in England and Wales. Registered office: Quay House, The Ambury, Bath BA1 1UA. All information contained in this publication is for information only and is, as far as we are aware, correct at the time of going to press. Future…

Time is running out on TB target SEVEN years is a very long time in politics. In 2018, Michael Gove was Defra Secretary and he commissioned a review of Britain’s bovine TB (bTB) strategy. This is the disease that has brought severe distress and dread to farmers, caused the deaths of thousands of cattle, hindered trade, cost the taxpayer millions and engendered a fiercely polarised debate that has, in the view of the report authors, seriously hampered progress in controlling the problem. Now, an updated report, chaired by Prof Sir Charles Godfray, which arrived just before yet another change in Defra personnel (Agromenes, September 17), warns that time is running out in the drive to meet the target of eradicating the disease in England by 2038 and that a change…

Out and about WILL HOSIE expresses an interest in dining at London’s ‘notorious restaurant-cum- bookshop-cum-communist newsagents’ The Yellow Bittern (Stuff & nonsense, September 10). I had lunch there myself not long ago and adored it—less because of the food (which is fine) than the owner’s refusal to accept payment by card, which means that the cashpoint outside has become a kind of unofficial overspill zone where guests can chat and flirt, much as they did in the smoking areas of old before the regrettably solitary practice of vaping took over. Emma Hughes, London Cover story THE photo of Stedcombe House in Devon (right) on the cover of your September 3 issue brought back special memories. It was known as The Ink Pot and had an underground passage leading from the…

A CHARACTER looks knowingly to camera. Another bursts into song, lip-synching. The same actor plays two different roles. All these devices are commonplace now, but, when Dennis Potter’s The Singing Detective was first broadcast in 1986, they were ground-breaking. The six-part series, which was first aired on BBC1, hit some of the same notes as Potter’s 1978 drama Pennies From Heaven, in which a 1930s sheet-music salesman falls from grace as he flits between the city and the countryside. This time, however, as The Singing Detective’s hero might have wisecracked, it was personal. A pulpfiction writer (Michael Gambon, giving the performance of his career) is hospitalised with psoriatic arthropathy, a devastating autoimmune condition from which Potter also suffered. Bedbound and feverish, he drifts in and out of hallucinations, during which…

WHEN she decorated the interior of a six-bedroom house in Perthshire designed by Robert Adam, founder of Adam Architecture (www.adamarchitecture.com), Emma Sims-Hilditch approached this guest bedroom with her customary light touch. The owners were keen to create a sense of welcoming warmth. ‘Winters in Scotland can be long, dark and cold, so they wanted visitors to feel cosy and able to enjoy the best possible night’s sleep,’ she says. A large, comfortable bed takes centre stage, accompanied by antique French furniture. ‘Antiques are vital to create character, especially in a new house,’ continues Mrs Sims-Hilditch. ‘Here, we didn’t want to overpower the room with too much dark furniture, so we chose a 19th-century painted commode with a beautiful patina and a pretty beech armchair to create a fresher look.’ Botanica…

LOVE strikes unexpectedly. For art dealer John Martin, it happened at a west London auction 20 years ago. There, tucked incongruously among tribal art and collectables, was an extraordinary panel, ‘a huge, shimmering depiction of the Garden of Eden, its story picked out on aluminium sheets with thousands of tiny punch marks’. God, dressed as an African king, sat enthroned, flanked by angels; animals grazed peacefully in Paradise—but the Serpent rose up to tempt Eve, leading, in the next scene, to the Expulsion, with an elephant flattening a tree and the beginning of the eternal cycle of hunter and hunted. Mr Martin was smitten—and bought it. ‘At the time, I knew nothing of its maker, Asiru Olatunde, a Nigerian blacksmith of the Oshogbo school of artists that emerged in the…

Quiz of the week 1) Name the UK’s newest city 2) Mops was a pug said to belong to which French queen? 3) Which English castle was the landing place of William the Conqueror’s army in 1066? 4) What is the common name for Sirius, the brightest star in the night sky? 5) Incitatus was the favourite horse of which Roman emperor? 1) Colchester, Essex (granted city status in 2022) 2) Marie Antoinette 3) Pevensey Castle, East Sussex 4) Dog star 5) Caligula. Riddle me this: A clock Riddle me this I have a face and two hands, but no legs. What am I? Time to buy On this day… September 24, 1995 The BBC’s adaptation of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, starring Colin Firth and Jennifer Ehle (pictured), was…

THE ingenuity of crooks is often a source of wonder. Who would have thought that the simple business of taking your pet on holiday would give rise to major fraud and considerable cruelty? Agromenes remembers when first we were able to travel with our pet dogs and cats. Before, pets had to be put into into quarantine for six months, which meant that only about 8,000 dogs and cats passed through British ports each year. The coming of effective vaccines and later of pet passports meant that the UK could maintain its rabies-free state and allow people to travel with their pets without any need for quarantine. We jumped at the opportunity and, last year, not 8,000, but 368,000 pets were moved in and out of the country. These numbers…

A fragile fortune PETER FROST-PENNINGTON is the present custodian of the ‘Luck of Muncaster’, a 15th-century glass bowl probably made in Venice, Italy. According to tradition, the ‘Luck’ was a gift bestowed on the Penningon family by Henry VI, when he sought sanctuary at the castle after the Battle of Hexham in Northumberland in 1464. It came with the promise that the family ‘should prosper as long as they should preserve it unbroke’. The earliest reference to the gift is a note inscribed in a 17th-century hand on the wooden box in which the Luck has long been stored. It reads: ‘The Luck of the house left by holy Kynge Harrye, which was Henry the sixth.’ The Luck is one of several such heirlooms associated with families in northern England,…

IT is regrettable that millions of tons of fruit are wasted along our hedgerows and wood-edges every year. Yes, yes, there are always the birds, but I believe they should consider the value of sharing. Nibbling at wild fruit is in our bones, too—we are, after all, hunter-gatherers. Whereas the entrancing idea of food for nothing more than the gentle effort of collection might attract us all, it is the profound pleasure of following our natural instincts that delight us; fulfil us, even. It is a sad child that never learned to pick a blackberry. But where can one pick wild fruits, or anything else? The rules are fairly simple: with minor exceptions, if you have legal access you can pick whatever you like provided it has not been planted…

THERE comes a point in the long summer holidays when we let out a huge sigh and reach for the bulb catalogues. Not this year. If, like us, you find yourself in need of flower power right to the end for some reason—a wedding, perhaps—your tribulations will have been exacerbated hugely by this no-mow, cloudless summer. Mr B annually nurtures many out-sized pots filled with wandering scented pelargoniums—mostly ‘Pink Capricorn’ and ‘Clorinda’—together with tagetes, above which rise plumes and belfries of salvias and brugmansias. Salvia ‘Hot Lips’ is the bomb-proof salvia we would disdain less if it were difficult to grow: put it in a pot and you cannot go wrong. This summer’s discovery was that it flowers almost entirely white when kept thirsty. Unfortunately, white goes with cools and…

The Boundless Deep: Young Tennyson, Science and the Crisis of Belief Richard Holmes (William Collins, £25) RICHARD HOLMES, eminent biographer of eminent literary figures, begins this study of the poet with a simple question: ‘Was Tennyson ever young?’ You get what he means. Alfred, Lord Tennyson is enshrined in national memory as ‘an ancient Victorian bard with a tremendous beard’. Worse, I would have thought, is Tennyson’s cataloguing in the collective recollection as crustily old-fashioned. He did, after all, scribe rousingly The Charge of the Light Brigade about that heroic, if doomed, British military action in the Crimean War—cannon to the left of them, cannon to the right of them. Indeed, Tennyson is so stuck in dusty Victoriana that I doubt 90% of the population could tag him with a…