Innholdsfortegnelse for 11-Apr-18 i Country Life

IN 1810, at the height of the Napoleonic Wars, a bull, Comet, sold for the record price of £1,000. He was a Shorthorn, one of the breeds being developed by farmers who were excited by the prospect of improving their stock—making them more productive, faster maturing, hardier, better to eat and even, in the case of the Belted Galloway, easier to see in the dark (page 54). The cows were good for both dairy and beef, but the economics of modern agriculture have forced specialisation: most farmers choose between a small number of super-performing breeds, increasingly kept indoors. One of the great countryside tragedies is the disappearance of cattle from fields. Now that Britain is embroiled in another wrangle with the Continent, it may be the time to look back…

THE Forestry Commission has ruffled a few feathers by announcing it is to take over the maintenance of North Yorkshire’s famous White Horse of Kilburn from locals who have looked after it for more than 160 years. The horse, which looks out across the vale described by All Creatures Great and Small author James Herriot as ‘the finest view in England’, was cut into the hillside near Sutton Bank by local schoolmaster Thomas Taylor and his pupils in 1857. The largest white horse in the country by area at 314ft by 228ft, it differs from the chalk horses in the south of England in that it was cut into limestone and has to be regularly weeded and repainted—which requires a lot of maintenance, historically provided by the residents of Kilburn,…

ANGLERS are demanding a meeting with Defra Secretary Michael Gove after a decline of up to 99.8% in mayfly (below) numbers on parts of the Wiltshire Avon—a Special Area of Conservation. For years, the Salisbury & District Angling Club and Salmon & Trout Conservation have meticulously monitored the river’s fly life. But now, in some parts, the iconic mayfly has virtually disappeared and a number of other flies have been drastically reduced. The club claims that this is ‘caused by excessive phosphates being allowed to enter the river by the Wessex Water company’. However, a company spokesman comments that ‘Wessex Water has invested more than £50 million in phosphorus removal in the Hampshire Avon since 2000, resulting in dramatic improvements in water quality within the catchment’. As well as Mr…

I HAVE been the owner of a tiny, black pug puppy for less than one month, during which time, I have had more conversations with total strangers than in a decade of living in London. The folk of this city will ignore you if you walk into a lamppost and stagger down the road bleeding—a week before my wedding, not that passers-by knew it—but pop to the shops with a puppy in tow and you’ll make friends for life. How fickle they all are, but I don’t blame them. All who meet Parsley are in his thrall. Within just a day at the COUNTRY LIFE HQ, he won the devotion of the entire editorial team, plus a Jack Russell, a Border terrier and two dachshunds, with tiny, playful paws and…

‘ It’s an oft-repeated mantra that the best way to preserve a rare breed is to eat it’ COWS are never out of the news these days: the thousands slaughtered for TB, the dairy farmers targeted by vegan activists and the market nervousness, because 93% of our beef exports and 72% of dairy go to the EU. Then there’s last year’s surprise bestseller, the delightful The Secret Life of Cows by Cotswold farmer Rosamund Young, reminding us that these magnificent beasts have personalities, too. In it, she reveals that, aside from the absorbing process of eating, cows can always find time ‘for extra-curricular activities such as babysitting for a friend, blackberry-picking, fighting a tree or bank of earth, playing tag’. Cows take a lot of the flak for methane output…

Stockists Abigail Ahern (www.abigailahern.com); Cassandra Ellis (www.cassandraellis.co.uk); Dulux (www.dulux.co.uk); Edward Bulmer (www.edwardbulmerpaint.co.uk); Farrow & Ball (www.farrow-ball.com); Fenwick & Tilbrook (www.fenwickandtilbrook.com); Little Greene (www.littlegreene.com); Mylands (www.mylands.com); Paint & Paper Library (www.paintandpaperlibrary.com); Papers and Paints (papersandpaints.co.uk); Rose of Jericho (www.roseofjericho.co.uk); Zoffany (www.stylelibrary.com) Emily Todhunter (020–7349 9999; www.todhunterearle.com ) Neutral Subtle Ivory 3 , Dulux Our go-to off white for ceilings, cornice and woodwork Dark Down Pipe , Farrow & Ball This is a colour we use often, because it works with everything Soft Eau de Nile , Edward Bulmer A pretty, gentle green that works well in a room with a garden view Bright Deep Water Green , Paint & Paper Library An upbeat turquoise that works in rooms that need a little oomph! Emma…

‘We must regard the loss of frost-tender plants as new opportunities’ I AM never quite sure of the veracity of the home-spun wisdom I use to pacify myself after a big freeze in the garden. Avid meteorologists give out chapter and verse on the frequency of these plunging winter temperatures, however, it seems to me that they only occur once every 10 years or so. Freezing conditions will bump off tender plants that we take for granted and remind us that, in spite of climate change, we do still live in what is regarded as a ‘cool temperate’ climate, rather than a ‘warm temperate’ one. The upshot is that we should not be surprised by hard frosts, since they are part and parcel of our lot on the shoulder…

THE Cotswold Antique Dealers’ Association is 40 years old. It’s celebrating this ruby anniversary with a great deal of red on the stands at this year’s CADA Fair at Blenheim Palace (April 19–22), from actual rubies with Howards Jewellers to Thomas Webb red cameo glass with Hickmet. Christopher and Angela Legge, the Oxford textile dealers, could hardly avoid the colour. Among many examples is a small mid-19th-century Tekke Turkoman main carpet with a field design of four by 10 guls, or symbols, priced at about £6,000 (Fig 3). Main carpets, created by every Turkmen tribe, were the primary floor covering in tents and were decorated with the most important gul of a tribe. This carpet can be attributed to the Tekke subgroup of Turkmen nomads based on the specific…

WE return to Lyon and the 43rd World Team Championships for two more interesting deals from the round-robin. Our first from Brazil vs Australia features the charismatic Gabriel Chagas from Rio de Janeiro. Mr. Chagas, 72, is short in physical stature but tall in bridge stature. He even named a card-play technique, the intra finesse, whereby you make a third trick in this layout: You lead the two to the nine, West winning the ten. On regaining the lead, you cash the Ace, noting East’s Knave then lead low to the eight. Declarer, Mr. Chagas, won West’s passive Heart lead (West would have made things easy if he’d led a Diamond) and noted the awkward communications. It is tempting to play on Spades, cashing the King and leading to dummy’s…

FLORIAN SCHWEIZER, the chief executive of The Arts Society, is taking on 50 10km (6.2-mile) runs in this the charity’s 50th-anniversary year (page 50). The aim is to raise £50,000 for the Patricia Fay Memorial Fund, which provides grants for artists and makers. ‘My running routes will take me to some of the most iconic sites in the UK and abroad,’ he explains, ‘as well as lesser-known places connected to arts and heritage—drawing attention to local and national treasures. Exciting destinations include Shakespeare’s Stratford, the Angel of the North, the potteries in Stoke-on-Trent and The Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge.’ Mr Schweizer is six runs and £10,000 down, with a long way to go… For further details and to donate, visit theartssociety.org/runningthearts…

Serious rosé Champagne might sound like a contradiction in terms. Surely the raison d’être of pink fizz is frivolity? A recent visit to the house of Veuve Clicquot in Reims, including a rosé-blending workshop and a traipse around vineyards in the charmingly named village of Bouzy, convinced me otherwise. Why you should be drinking it What gives pink Champagne its colour-which, of course, is an essential part of its charm-is the addition to the blend of a relatively small amount of red wine (mainly Pinot Noir, which is also grown in the Champagne region). The point of the rosé-blending workshop was to show how apparently minor differences in the percentage and quality of the red wine used have a dramatic effect on the final product. The Pinot Noir used…

‘Now, we’ve been reviewed as guests: “nice and polite ”’ WE’VE just spent the weekend in Prague, where we stayed in an efficient, if soulless, Airbnb and where locals echoed the widely held complaint that this service is pricing them out of the city. It makes me feel a bit shifty. We had barely left the apartment when we were asked to review it. Our son, who we were visiting, ordered various taxis for us and had to review the drivers, often while still in the car. Will says he can’t give a bad review to a driver—if, for example, they don’t turn up—because his rating as a passenger will go down and ‘if I drop below 4.5, I’ll never get a taxi’. The first email to pop up…

Into the deep A combination of dark and light shades can be used to draw the eye, creating a sense of depth and flow from room to room. Squid Ink 698 (foreground) and Moleskin 218, from £52 for 2.5L Architects' Matt Emulsion, Paint & Paper Library (www.paintandpaperlibrary.com; 0845 880 5844) Green and pleasant Annie Sloan was inspired to create Lem Lem, her new Chalk Paint hue, after seeing vast fields of green and white allium grown by women farmers supported by Oxfam's Ethiopian Seed Project. Every pot sold raises vital funds for the charity, and costs £19.95 for 1L (01865 803168; www.anniesloan.com) Be inspired This summer, Dulwich Picture Gallery presents a major retrospective of work by artist Edward Bawden RA CBE (1903-89). Be inspired by his achievements as a fine…

CEDRIC MORRIS was born in South Wales of phenomenal vitality’, claimed his partner and manager, Arthur Lett-Haines, in the introduction to a retrospective exhibition at the National Museum of Wales in 1968. The show, which covered Morris’s pictures from the 1920s to the 1960s, brought the artist back into public attention after 25 wilderness years or, in his case, gardening years. ‘The exhibition represents only a tenth of his output which would be mightier still but for the creative experiment in horticulture for which he is celebrated,’ continued Lett-Haines, who had given up his own painting to promote and manage Morris’s and didn’t share his love of gardening. By the late 1960s, Morris had become better known for his plant breeding than his painting. He had turned his eye…

‘Aunt Pooh had spent her life in Borneo, possibly as a spy, and spoke fluent Pidgin’ LADY DAY, the Feast of the Annunciation, was the traditional turn of the year. Life began afresh: resolutions, new contracts, field distributions. When we adopted the Gregorian calendar in 1752, we lost 11 days and, although Lady Day remained March 25 for church purposes, the Exchequer stuck to the old Lady Day, which fell on April 6. I think we ought to start observing Old Lady Day. There are many old ladies who deserve commemoration and celebration. Old is a relative term, of course. When my sister and I were small, we went to live with our grandmother, who seemed like an old person. I daresay she was in her mid-60s. She wore…

The environment Following Scotland's example, a scheme for deposit returns on plastic and glass bottles and metal cans is to be introduced in England, subject to consultation, says Defra New breeds The white Swiss shepherd dog, recognised as a pedigree breed by the Kennel Club last year, has seen a 1,528% surge in interest after it featured in a Range Rover Velar advert Health Last week, the sugar tax for soft-drink manufacturers came into force and brands such as Fanta, Ribena and Lucozade have already cut their sugar content…

IN celebration of the much loved nightingale, and to highlight its daunting and rapid decline—the UK population has reduced by 90% in the past 50 years—the RSPB’s National Nightingale Festival will include an array of events devoted to this remarkable bird (below) and its song. The festival offers opportunities to hear the nightingale sing, including ‘Sounds of Spring’ morning walks with breakfast and a bank-holiday weekend at RSPB Pulborough Brooks, Sussex, renowned for nightingales singing in full view. The festival also welcomes the return of the popular ‘Food, Wine and Nightingales’ events, and enthusiasts can head to starlit woods for Sam Lee’s ‘Singing with Nightingales’ performances, which combine the birds’ glorious song accompanied by some of the finest musicians for an enchanting display. The festival runs throughout April and May—for…

CORNWALL has been described as an ugly painting in a beautiful frame. I was born there, in a small, grim town called Redruth, roughly in the centre of the dismal piece of art. Last week, my parents took me to the house where I was born. Afterwards, I felt lucky to be leaving the miserable town for a second time. In contrast, we went to St Just in Roseland, a very beautiful little church, with a subtropical garden, on a tiny estuary. I was pushing Dad in his wheelchair when he quietly asked, ‘Can we stop here?’. After a while, I realised he was crying. Unknown to me, he was looking at the grave of his great friend from when he joined the Navy. Myles Atkins was killed 60 years…

I HAVE an owl that I caught as a youngster and keep as a pet. It would in a few days feed from the hand and let me stroke it. This one has an amusing habit of turning its head completely upside down if it sees something that it cannot understand. It usually greets me with the owl’s whao-oo, but to my surprise it varies this by mewing like the cat, and actually barked exactly like the dog at times. This is of the smaller, brown variety. If I lived in the country, I would give it its liberty, but I do not think it would go far away…

‘Our parish churches are both wonderful and full of wonders’ FOR all the advantages of divine insight that Athena enjoys, even she is sometimes frustrated in her attempts to get into a locked parish church. The list of numbers or local addresses on the church porch has been exhausted without a response, so she has been forced to turn away and admit defeat. Athena knows that such disappointments are inevitable with the difficulties of vandalism, theft and small and widely spread congregations. Yet the same difficulties also make her all the more grateful for those who fight against the odds and make sure that church doors remain open. They not only provide Athena with infinite pleasure but, more importantly, they do the best by the buildings in their charge. That’s…

‘The encrusted surfaces of the Rouen canvases look like crumbling cliff faces’ NO one thinks of Monet primarily as an architectural painter, but an astonishing number of his canvases include houses, churches, hotels, bridges and railway stations and they are never without significance. Churches help to identify villages; rustic dwellings can insert a human presence in an otherwise bleak landscape; urban apartment blocks and factories are beacons of modernity; and hamlets seen from afar can serve as pictorial punctuation points, the reds and greys of their roofs and walls standing out against the green hues of Nature. This exhibition of 75 pictures —more than a quarter of them from private collections—cuts a vertical slice through Monet’s long life, featuring canvases that he painted right from the very beginning of his…

‘ He’s obliged to rough it at times and we share his misery’ Botany The Orchid Hunter Leif Bersweden (Short Books, £12.99) Orchid Summer Jon Dunn (Bloomsbury, £15.95) REPORTS of the death of botany are greatly exaggerated. The publication, in short order, of two books detailing breathless searches all over Britain and Ireland for our native orchids suggests a large receptive audience for the subject matter. Each author is on a self-imposed mission to locate, record and describe all 50 or so species in the space of a single flowering season, effectively between May and September. The risk of failure is considerable, but as in all suspense-filled yarns, they make it by the skin of their teeth. Or do they? Leif Bersweden’s account, The Orchid Hunter, seems on the face…