Innholdsfortegnelse for July 22, 2015 i Country Life

SCHOOL’S out and all roads lead to Cornwall, a holiday destination that takes on a new exoticism now that the county, which has its own language, is to be guinea pig for the Government’s election commitment to devolve EU spending decisions to local authorities. How using such a far-flung, distinctive and predominantly coastal region will work as a model remains to be seen, but Cornwall certainly deserves help. When visitors leave, the feeling can be one of desolation rather than peace. Behind the cheery surfing schools, cream teas, crowded lobster shacks, verdant gardens, romantic churches and Arthurian legend, public transport is poor and its young people disenchanted. The county council will have to rise to the challenge of spending money imaginatively yet appropriately on ways to make life easier and…

THE former England cricket captain Andrew Strauss (left) will lead a Help For Heroes XI of international players in a Twenty20 game featuring some of the biggest names in the sport at the Kia Oval, London SW8, on September 17 to raise funds for wounded servicemen. Sir Ian Botham will manage the charity’s XI and Graeme Swann, Simon Jones and Darren Gough are playing. The Rest of the World XI, managed by Sunil Gavaskar and coached by Gary Kirsten, will include Brian Lara and Scott Styris. There will also be a match between the Help for Heroes Cricket Club and the England Physical Disability side. Barrie Griffiths, one of the former team, explains: ‘Cricket has liberated me, changed my life mentally and physically.’ The event is sponsored by Old Mutual…

THE GEORGIAN GROUP, which aims to protect some 200,000 buildings and reviews about 6,000 planning applications a year, has a new chairman: Christopher Boyle QC will succeed Sir Mark Lennox-Boyd. Mr Boyle specialises in planning, compulsory purchase, infrastructure and environmental law and is chairman of the advisory board for The Prince’s Foundation for Building Community. He farms in Cumbria where he is currently restoring Kirklinton Hall, a 1680s country house. ‘Without always realising it, many of us across the country are lifted up each day by our experience of Georgian design,’ says Mr Boyle, who adds that having great places to live and work ‘comes with a price tag—eternal vigilance’.…

FROM heraldic embroidery to saddle-making, QEST (The Queen Elizabeth Scholarship Trust), which provides a significant leg-up to people training in the traditional crafts industry, is now accepting applications for this year’s scholarships. The charitable arm of the Royal Warrant Holders Association has provided bursaries worth up to £18,000 to more than 350 craftspeople across 130 different skill sectors. Kate Montagne, a 2013 scholar, worked with renowned architectural sculptor Geoffrey Preston, who has since offered her a full-time job, which has led to her working on the award-winning ceiling of the great drawing room at Great Fulford in Devon. ‘It really has been a life-changing opportunity,’ she states. Painting conservator Caitlin Dowse was able to undertake an unpaid placement at the National Museum of Wales thanks to a QEST bursary: ‘Learning…

JUNE might be peak foxglove flowering season in England, but here in Scotland, swathes of the majestic magenta spires are just coming into their own. I have long loved these most beguiling—and deadly—of wildflowers that rise like skyscrapers from acidic soil. Since the sheep have been removed from the fields around our house, all the wildflowers have been spectacular. The golden display of buttercups was astounding, fragrant meadowsweet is frothing to great heights, tiny purple and yellow petals of various vetches peep through the carpet of grasses and a mere glimpse of the dishevelled beauty of the delicate ragged robin, with its pretty pink finger-lobed petals, is enough to brighten anyone’s day. But there’s nothing quite like Digitalis purpurea in a dappled wooded glade or on a moorland fringe. There’s…

Sir—the British soldier is naturally a mascot lover and the list of creatures which have been adopted by the different regiments is both long and varied. Perhaps one of the prettiest of them is the Jay which is being trained for foreign service by the B Company of the 12th Battalion of the Sherwood Foresters. It is on very friendly terms with the men and is said to know all those of its own company. It is almost omnivorous and takes its fill from the rations of its favourites as fancy dictates. The diet suits it very well and it seems to be, as one of the men put it, ‘in the pink’. It is allowed its freedom and is usually to be seen on the shoulders or hands of…

Harry Eyres Tokay, made from partially shrivelled Furmint grapes in the remote north-east of Hungary, has long been one of the world's legendary wines. The greatest vintages, intensely sweet and able to age not just for decades, but for centuries, used to find their way to the imperial cellars in Vienna and St Petersburg. Then came Communism and a decline in quality as the wine was standardised. Since the early 1990s, private investment-from the Royal Tokaji Company, Oremus, and others-has come into the region, bringing a determination to match the magnificence of the past. Why you should be drinking it The taste of Tokay is difficult to describe-it's like a loft full of drying apples, pears and quinces, perhaps more complex and spicy than that of any other…

A book of the series will be published in October AROUND the high altar of Meesden is this sweeping semicircle of early-14th-century tiles. These are cut into shapes to form patterns and their upper surfaces are glazed. The intended original effect was of a mosaic floor made from coloured marbles. Four colours—rather than the more usual two—are used in the design (now badly abraded): yellow, brown and two shades of green. Another rare detail is that some of the tiles bear impressed or incised patterns. These include numerous types of flowers and, in the corners of the innermost rectangular frame, two shields emblazoned with the Monchensey arms; the family owned the manor from 1265 to 1313. To judge from its closest surviving parallels, notably the splendid 1324–5 pavement in…

THE exhibition ‘Francis Bacon and the Masters’, which closes this week at the Sainsbury Centre, Norwich, can only have served to lessen the artist’s reputation. Even the warmer reviews could find only that vacuous word ‘compelling’ with which to praise it. Granted, there were many works by Rembrandt and other undoubted masters to enjoy, but almost all demonstrated that, although Bacon may have drawn inspiration from them, he did not quite belong in such company. It may well be that, having been lauded so highly both before and since his death—in 1971, he was crowned the world’s leading artist in a poll conducted by the French art journal Connaissance des Arts—with ever rising prices, he is due for a period of reappraisal. It was also in 1971 that he…

WE had power cuts in South Africa last week. Load shedding, as the euphemism goes, is a fact of life in a country where energy planning has gone awry. My mind reverted to Cambridge days in the 1970s, when we stockpiled candles. Cambridge, then no more than a market town with a university attached, has changed since then; friends at Bidwells say that house prices rival London. Academic salaries have been outstripped. This hasn’t gone unnoticed by the university. It’s worried, particularly about the increasing body of post-doctoral researchers who won’t come if they can’t afford accommodation. As a result, the authorities are developing 346 acres in north-west Cambridge, master-planned by AECOM. It’s intended to create a new quartier, with public spaces, communal buildings, cycle ways, gardens, green energy (no…

Although it's based on a pub, with local real ales and perry served from a corner counter in a simply furnished bar that's open all day, this is best thought of as a restaurant-with-rooms. Outside Abergavenny on the Old Raglan Road, it has won a national reputation for its food, which takes pride of place. Carefully chosen seasonal produce is treated lovingly to produce delicious flavours-not cheap, but rewarding. It has a good, wide-ranging wine list. Service is friendly and informal and you can choose between beams, bare boards, a pleasant mix of furnishings and an enormous fireplace in the original building and the extension's crisper, more contemporary feel, with bigger windows for the relaxing country views. Bedrooms are comfortable, the breakfasts superb. (01873 854220; www.thehardwick.co.uk) Alisdair Aird is co-editor…

OUR new garden is on a chalk hillside above the River Itchen and I remembered that Lewis Palmer, raiser of the famous Agapanthus Headbourne hybrids, lived a couple of villages along the valley in the 1950s and 1960s. Agapanthus are amaryllids with narrow, strap-like leaves and most have alluring blue flowers on stems of anything from 6in to 6ft in height, in July and August. Tough, unfussy and drought-tolerant, they are perfect plants for chalky soils. If Palmer raised agapanthus from seed, I reckoned, so could I. I looked at the cultivars we grew in France and decided that the best were Loch Hope and Agapanthus praecox Albiflorus. I made no effort to cross-pollinate them, but the bees must have had their way with the flowers because both plants set…

Hermann’s and spur-thighed tortoises, which originate from the Mediterranean, are the simplest to look after as pets. They usually grow to about 8in in length (measuring the plastron, or underside, of the carapace) When kept in the UK, Mediterranean tortoises require a combination of indoor and outdoor housing and, when outdoors, protection from rats, foxes, dogs and raptors Many owners provide their tortoises with ‘conservatories’ or mini-greenhouses in their enclosures, like a cloche or a cucumber frame, that are up to 10°C warmer than the temperature outside and help with Mediterranean tortoises’ health Always buy a UK-bred tortoise-many pet shops sell licensed specimens imported from Eastern Europe that are likely to have been illegally captured from the wild. In 2002, a Defra report revealed that the illegal trade in smuggled…

Mappa Mundi, about 800 The earliest-known, relatively accurate map of Britain is created in about 1025. It is based on a map from 800, which was probably based on a Roman map. Matthew Paris’s Map of Great Britain, about 1250 The 13th-century historian Matthew Paris, a monk, produces one of the earliest attempts to show the physical appearance of the country. The Gough Map, about 1355 The oldest-surviving route map of Great Britain is produced. Saxton’s Atlas, 1579 Christopher Saxton surveys 34 English and Welsh counties and his maps set the standard of cartography for the next 100 years. It includes no roads, as his customers are more interested in physical features and country estates. Britannia, 1675 John Ogilby's new road maps are unique in that they included distances, landmarks…

Woodcolliers once lived alongside their kilns in woodland when making charcoal to prevent any outbreaks of fire Charcoal's absorbent properties were put to great use in gas masks during the First World War, saving many lives Today, besides being a barbecue staple, charcoal is employed in the medicine, cosmetics, soap and horticulture sectors, as an animal-feed supplement, as an art material, for purifying air and water and, in powder form, for theatrical pyrotechnics There are some 200 to 500 woodcolliers in the UK today, compared with 900 in four demesne woods in the Forest of Dean alone in 1282 Britain imports a hefty 90% of its barbecue charcoal To find your local charcoal supplier, visit: http://ncfed.org.uk/public/charcoal-suppliers/…

Lewisia Dr G. Mawson, Dronfield, South Yorkshire (01246 415097) Visiting By appointment, April to June Primula auricula (alpine) Dr Alison Goldie and Mr Mark Hutson, Menmuir, By Brechin, Angus (01356 660280; www.angusplants.co.uk) Visiting By appointment Magnolia Crown Estate Commissioners Savill & Valley Gardens, Windsor Great Park, Berkshire (01753 860222; www.theroyallandscape.co.uk) Visiting Best from March to June Lavender Isle of Wight Lavender, Newport, Isle of Wight (01983 825272; www.lavender.co.uk) Visiting Open daily (except Wednesdays) Osmunda National Trust at Sizergh Castle, Kendal, Cumbria (01539 69813; www.nationaltrust.org.uk/sizergh) Visiting Best from May to October Anemone japonica Hadlow College (Miss M. McKendrick), Sevenoaks, Kent (01959 522703) Visiting Best time is between September and the first frosts Buddleja Longstock Park Nursery, Stockbridge, Hampshire (01264 810894; www.longstocknursery.co.uk) Visiting By appointment on some weekends Pittosporum Bicton College,…

Biography/history The Mistresses of Cliveden Natalie Livingstone (Hutchinson, £25 *£22) THREE centuries of scandal, power and intrigue’ runs this book’s subtitle and, for these attributes, the name Cliveden resonates like no other. With its disparate cast of characters, from politicians and royals to poets and courtesans, this extensive account of five remarkable women who presided over England’s most notorious country house promises to be a page-turner. It doesn’t disappoint. Begun in 1676 for George Villiers, the Duke of Buckingham, a close friend of Charles II, Cliveden was conceived as a bolt-hole for the Duke and his mistress, the Countess of Shrewsbury. This, however, was never to be. Reputedly ‘one of the most licentious wicked women in Restoration history’, the Countess was forcibly separated from her lover by the House of…

More Warhol at the Antiques for Everyone fair at the Birmingham NEC from tomorrow to Sunday. As well as its antiquarian stock, Lucius Books offers a handbag signed in marker pen and gold ink in 1984 (with dollar signs naturally) by him and Jean-Michel Basquiat. It was carried by Joy Bouldin when she accompanied them to Keith Haring's ‘Party of Life' at the Paradise Garage on May 16, 1984. Two years earlier, Bouldin had thrown up a job in a law firm to become the all-powerful elevator girl and door person at the fashionable Danceteria. If ‘Joystick' did not like you, you were socially dead. She sat to Basquiat several times. Two of those paintings have sold for £1.5 million and £2.6 million and her bag is priced at £10,000.…

The Museum of London Archaeology (MOLA), which relies on a volunteer workforce to help its two professionals record the archaeology of the foreshore of the River Thames for its Thames Discovery Programme, ensures that they receive ‘added benefits'. ‘We have no trouble recruiting help; we even have a waiting list,' reports Nathalie Cohen. ‘We are totally flexible about when and where people volunteer and we give everyone a logbook, which they can use to document the skills they've learned. Several have gone on to be professional archaeologists.' Helen Johnston works full-time as a volunteer coordinator for the Royal National Institute of Blind People, but spends her spare time on her hands and knees piecing together fossils and relics. ‘Charities are being forced to follow the lead of bigger companies that…

A CANINE-BLOOD-BANK charity is urgently appealing for owners to donate their pets’ blood to save other dogs’ lives. Pet Blood Bank UK is asking owners of the bigger breeds to register them as a donors as, due to summer holidays, the charity experiences a shortage of blood, which can make a crucial difference for dogs injured in accidents, going through surgery or battling auto-immune diseases. ‘Summer is a challenge because peoples’ diaries fill up,’ explains Wendy Barnett, founder of the charity that, since its launch in 2007, has registered more than 6,500 donors and supplied just under 19,000 units of blood to veterinary practices. ‘We’re asking all owners of large dogs to schedule just one hour during these holidays to help save a life.’ Doggy donors need to be fit…

THE open-door tradition operated by members of the mid-20th-century arts circle at Great Bardfield, Essex, is remembered in an exhibition at The Fry Art Gallery in Saffron Walden, ‘The Art of Acquisition’ (July 26–October 25). The artists, who counted Edward Bawden as their spiritual figurehead, first invited the public into their homes as a way of celebrating the Coronation in 1953. The venture was a success and further summer open days caught the attention of the press, who dubbed this eccentric creative colony ‘the Montmartre village’. The artists saw the open days as an opportunity to sell paintings and the public enjoyed seeing how they lived. Exhibits include watercolours of rooms in Bawden’s house done by his son Richard, marbled wallpaper designs by Sheila Robinson and John Aldridge—whose home was…

ROSEBUD PRESERVES, a company founded in 1989 in Masham, North Yorkshire, by Elspeth Biltoft, has launched a new honey to be sold in aid of the Bumblebee Conservation Trust. Yorkshire Honey (right) is from local hives, whose residents have collected nectar from blossoms including sycamore, lime and water balsam. The illustration on the jar lid is a bee engraving by the renowned Northumberland illustrator Thomas Bewick. Jars cost £4.95 (01765 689174; www.rosebudpreserves.co.uk).…

THESE tasty, triangular treats date back several centuries and are a tradition unique to Coventry. Originally, they would have been made by godparents as a gift to their godchildren on special occasions, but newspaper recordings suggest they were being sold freely on the city’s street in the mid 1800s. A true Coventry godcake is an isosceles triangle, with the three corners said to represent the Holy Trinity—although some people also think they may be linked to the three spires in the city. Production of the cakes was halted in 2008 when the city’s oldest family bakery business—and the main purveyor of the speciality—Pails and Son, closed its doors. Luckily, the cake’s demise was short-lived; two years later, Leigh Waite, a Blue Badge tourist guide and baking enthusiast, was handed a…

Those who indulge in the special luxury of wall-trained pear trees should now permit themselves the nice refinement of summer pruning. You need to be careful, as the tree can be tall, but, otherwise, a lot of the work can be done from terra firma and the rest from a short fruit ladder. Firstly, go through and remove any vigorous upright shoots altogether. Then, look patiently along each branch and note each new sideshoot longer than your secateurs. Prune the new growth on each of these shoots back to three buds. This will encourage fruit buds to form, rather than mere leaves.…

THEY spill out of cardboard boxes, tumble off shelves and fill every spare drawer in the house. The oldest examples belonged to an 18th-century ancestor, but the vast majority span the period from 1840 to 1960. Where other families pass down, say, antiques or jewellery, ours passes down maps. Not the sort of maps you would find displayed on walls or in museums, either, but practical, working maps. Maps created with the single purpose of taking you from place to place. From my great-great-great-great-grandfather, for instance, I have inherited several of John Ogilby’s road maps, which were republished in pocket form in 1757. These were the first real (although never completed) guides to all the major routes in the country, with directions, landmarks (including, rather gruesomely, gallows) and distances. Judging…

More ways with strawberries Strawberry choux buns Preheat your oven to 210°C/425°F/ gas mark 7 and line a baking tray with parchment. Heat 80g butter with 180ml water in a pan until the butter has melted. Remove from the heat to add 90g plain flour before continuing to heat for a few minutes. Take off the hob to slowly mix in 2 beaten eggs. Using a piping bag, create balls on the baking sheet. Bake for 10 minutes, then reduce the temperature a little and cook for a further 10 minutes. Allow to cool on a wire rack and make small incisions to release steam. Once cooled, slice openings in the sides to fill with whipped cream and strawberries. Finish with a dusting of icing sugar. Strawberry mille feuille…

THE last time Grade II-listed Naldrett House near Rudgwick, on the Surrey/West Sussex border, was seen on the open market was in 2005, when the former home of legendary cricket correspondent, the late Christopher Martin-Jenkins, matched its owner’s elegant, laidback style in almost every way. Ten years on, following a remarkable programme of renovation, extension and refurbishment, the handsome Georgian front façade looks much as it did then; not so the interior, described in an online property journal as ‘a modernist party palace’ with ‘a vast glass-walled contemporary kitchen/family room and entertaining facility—all opening onto a minimalist-style courtyard and fabulous swimming pool area’. Reactions so far have been ‘interesting’, says Michael Parry-Jones of joint agents Grantley (01483 893939), who with Hamptons International (01403 211766) quotes a guide price of £4m…

Huon Mallalieu listens to the results THREE years ago ( Country Life, March 7, 2012), I wrote about the ways in which some painters deliberately insert sounds as well as visual images into our minds. I suggested that sound is very frequently met with in post-Renaissanceandpost-Reformation painting, particularly in Flanders and the Netherlands, but also in the work of later artists as diverse as Courbet, Turner and Maggi Hambling. For the greatest enjoyment, we should learn to use the mind’s ear as well as its eye. Now, in its latest show, the National Gallery has taken up the idea, at least in part. Seven sound artists and musicians—two working in partnership—have each been commissioned to create a ‘soundscape’ for a painting of their choice. Visitors make their way through a…

IF you’re held up at gunpoint after 11 days in South America, don’t tell your mother until you get home. When a policeman in some lawless state accuses you of something you haven’t done and seesaws his hands as if they are the scales of justice, saying ‘we have a problem’ (hand up) ‘or we have a solution’ (hand down), place several notes in the ‘solution’ hand. If you plan to fish, take a sinking tip. Now rediscovering the delights of home turf, Will has described various aspects of travelling in South America that I’m glad I didn’t know about at the time: bird-eating spiders, wolf spiders in the sleeping bag, roads of death—so named because of the number of people who died building the road he assured me—and so…