Indholdsfortegnelse for October/November 2018 i Discover Britain

Harrogate The north’s home of cream teas Ask anyone in the north of England to name a tasty afternoon tea and the chances are they will point you in the direction of Bettys. Now a Yorkshire institution with six tearooms, a craft bakery and a cookery school, the first café opened on Harrogate’s Cambridge Crescent back in 1919. Disappointingly, there is no real-life, cake-baking matriarch called Betty behind the empire, but rather a Swiss confectioner, Frederick Belmont, who only alighted here after boarding the wrong train. Such serendipity shouldn’t distract from the fact that Belmont put Harrogate on the culinary map. There are two Bettys Café Tea Rooms in the town today, the flagship on Parliament Street and a second at Royal Horticultural Society gardens at Harlow Carr. It is…

The Cotswolds owes a lot to sheep. This picturesque area of southwest England, which covers 800 square miles from just south of Bath in Somerset to just south of Stratfordupon-Avon in Warwickshire, gets its name from the two Anglo-Saxon words cot and wold, meaning “sheep enclosure” and “rolling hills” respectively. Then there’s the iconic look of the region’s villages. The Cotswolds became a trading hub during the Middle Ages for a breed of sheep known as Cotswold Lion and the profits were used to build churches and cottages in the pretty, honey-coloured stone. Even today, sheep are still valued both for their wool and their meat. The food and drink of Cotswolds is now almost as much of a pull as its landscape. Despite being designated an Area of Outstanding…

HOMETOWN HEROES London is home to many of the finest artworks in the world, let alone the country. However, a new initiative launched by the National Portrait Gallery will see a number of key works returning to their “hometowns” across Britain. Coming Home was announced by Culture Secretary Jeremy Wright MP and sees a 16th-century portrait of Richard III (above) being loaned to Leicester’s New Walk Museum and Art Gallery in recognition of the king’s remains being discovered there in 2015. This generous programme of 50 loans also includes Sir Thomas Lawrence’s unfinished portrait of Hull-born William Wilberforce – the MP who led Britain’s campaign to abolish slavery – on display at the city’s Ferens Art Gallery, while David Hockney’s Self-Portrait with Charlie will return to the artist’s hometown of…

November 1918 by Gordon Brook-Shepherd As the centenary of Armistice Day approaches, the final 100 days of the First World War leading up to the signing of that momentous treaty are recounted here. Although not exclusively focused upon Britain’s involvement, original eyewitness sources add vivid details to the various subplots of a conflict that defined a nation. (Bloomsbury Reader, £20) Darling Winston by David Lough Winston Churchill was just six years old when he wrote his first letter to his mother Jennie, Lady Randolph Churchill. This fascinating volume compiles all surviving correspondence between the two over the subsequent 40 years. Interspersed with context from the author, the letters are a goldmine of family gossip and political thoughts of the man who would become Britain’s famous wartime…

The Chamber of Secrets Many thanks for Discover Britain, the history and guides are most useful. Could I ask one question? Our last holiday included York and my family very much loved taking pictures of the old streets in the centre, just like a Harry Potter book. Could you recommend other cities like this? Lothar Weber, Frankfurt, Germany While York is a rather unique place, other heritage cities with a similar feel would include Canterbury (see page 74), Lincoln and Chester. The colleges of Oxford and Cambridge also retain a Hogwarts-like charm. Find more city guides at www.discoverbritainmag.com. California dreaming I completely enjoyed my recent issue of Discover Britain with the coastal theme [Issue 204]. I have been a California resident for 28 years and I truly do…

To celebrate our food-and-drink themed issue, Discover Britain has teamed up with Welcome to Yorkshire to offer one lucky reader the chance to explore the culinary delights of Harrogate – one of our foodie towns highlighted in the feature that begins on page 12. The trip will centre on a two-night stay at the 90-room Country Living St George Hotel, Harrogate, which is located in the heart of one of Yorkshire’s most beautiful and popular destinations, just minutes’ walk from the iconic Bettys Café Tea Rooms. The hotel’s lunch and dinner menus feature modern classics made with the best of British seasonal produce as well as local Yorkshire meats, seafood and cheeses. To further whet your appetite, the trip will include a Spirit of Gin experience, comprising a vivid history…

In 2014, UNESCO officially named Dundee as one of its “Creative Cities of Design”, placing it in the same bracket as the likes of Shanghai, Montreal and Berlin. That reputation rests in part on successes in textiles, gaming and graphic design, as well as 150-year-old art gallery, The McManus, and the Duncan Jordanstone College of Art and Design, one of the finest in Britain. The city will get a further boost in September with the opening of the V&A’s first outpost outside of London. Designed by the architects behind the new Tokyo 2020 Olympics stadium, Kengo Kuma & Associates, the striking waterfront building is said to be inspired by the Scottish cliffs. There is plenty to enjoy for non-design buffs in Scotland’s sunniest city. The success of the local textiles…

London’s Livery Halls have been shaped by the City’s commercial activities and socio-political hierarchies for more than 600 years On Tuesday, 30 September 1856, an auction was held in Mincing Lane in the City of London. The sale catalogue advertises “the valuable building materials, fixtures, remaining furniture, and fittings-up of Clothworkers’ Hall”, including, among other lots, “500,000 capital bricks”, “eight tons of lead”, “stout oak and fir timber”, “elegant statuary and other chimney pieces”, “the oak screen in hall, with pilasters and capitals”, “15,000 feet of oak and other panelling”, “large lead and slate cisterns”, “7,000 feet super of stone paving”, “stone portico entrance and columns, with carved capitals”, and “wrought-iron gates”. Clothworkers’ Hall, rebuilt for the fourth time after the Great Fire of London in 1666, was now, in…

When it comes to interior design, not many people would choose to have scenes from Hades – complete with the Grim Reaper and plenty of unfortunates thrashing about in eternal torment – painted in their homes. However, this is exactly the scene you will find in Lincolnshire’s Burghley House. The so-called Hell Staircase by Italian decorative artist Antonio Verrio manages to be beautiful, skilful and completely unsettling, not least because the staircase leads to Verrio’s masterpiece, The Heaven Room – a contrasting light and airy space which is full of mythological scenes in pinks and blues. This sort of surprising quirk is typical of Burghley, an Elizabethan beauty veneered with windows and crowned by turrets that make it impressive when approached from any given angle. In fact, it is so…

“Do we represent a British way of life that has been lost? I think people just like to see horses galloping around” I run a company called The Knights of Royal England. We put on medieval jousting tournaments at castles around Britain and Europe, trying to mix entertainment and history all in one. Do we represent a more noble British way of life that has been lost? I think people just like to see horses galloping around. My big hero is William Marshal. He was the most famous jousting man in medieval Britain. For a short time, he was a surrogate king of England. It’s always worth going to see where he was buried, which is an unprepossessing site in the Temple Church just off Fleet Street in London. It’s…

Incandescent and incredulous, the Sheriff of Nottingham, played to pantomime perfection by Alan Rickman in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, rants: “Robin Hood steals money from my pocket, forcing me to hurt the public – and they love him for it?” The 1991 Hollywood blockbuster tells the story, as many have before and since, of the outlaw Robin Hood that has endured since the reign of King John in the 12th century. And it is that easy précis of the character – that he stole from the rich to give to the poor – that is at the crux of the legend’s lasting popularity; one that has endeared and kept him alive to successive generations, and has seen cinematic interpretations from the comic (1993’s parody Robin Hood: Men in Tights)…

Possibly the most glorious thing about the Glorious Revolution in 1688 is that when William of Orange came over from the Netherlands to claim the British throne as William III he brought gin with him. The new spirit – known initially by the Dutch word ‘genever’ – had a malt wine base and the defining flavour of juniper berries. Up until this point gin had been daintily sipped by the upper classes, yet by the 17th century it went mainstream. Is there any tipple as British? An ice-cold G&T (or gin and tonic) in the garden, a James Bond-style martini at The Savoy, or a pink gin in the park: gin smooths the edges off our national reserve. With a whiff of seediness and the hint of ruin, there’s no…

Britain’s first high-speed rail line, HS1, represents the future of rail travel – a 68-mile stretch that connects London with the Channel Tunnel and mainland Europe beyond. This year, however, HS1 will be looking back as well as forward, celebrating the 150th anniversary of the station from which the journey begins. The first train into London’s St Pancras arrived at 4.20am on 1 October 1868. Today, the grade I listed Victorian structure is not only a world-class station but also a destination in its own right, offering a wealth of stylish and premium shops, bars and restaurants all under one iconic roof. Celebrate St Pancras – The People, The Place, The Journey is a series of events, exhibitions and installations have taken place for the anniversary year. It has showcased…

EXPLORE KENT This southeast English county is rightly proud of its status as ‘The Garden of England’, thanks in no small part to Henry VIII who helped change the perception of vegetables as ‘poor man’s food’ and ordered his royal fruiterer, Richard Harris, to plant orchards at Teynham. Hop farms, oast houses and more orchards soon sprang up, leading a character in Charles Dickens’ The Pickwick Papers to famously remark: “Kent, sir – everybody knows Kent – apples, cherries, hops, and women.” Kent’s proximity to France, just 21 miles at the English Channel’s narrowest point, means that it is also considered Britain’s frontline county. When Julius Caesar first invaded Britain in 55BC, his Roman fleet landed on the coast near Dover and marked the start of 2,000 years of encroachments…