Innholdsfortegnelse for 18-Apr-18 i Country Life

‘ Denial isn’t only an African river, it’s a sorry state of countryside affairs’ THIS year, the People’s Trust for Endangered Species and the British Hedgehog Preservation Society released a report entitled ‘The State of Britain’s Hedgehog’. Like many other accounts of our beleaguered wildlife, it charted the demise of Mrs Tiggy-Winkle through habitat loss, intensive farming, road kill and predation. Then the blame game started. When the issue was debated on Countryfile recently, a spokesman for the Farmers’ Union of Wales cited badger predation and an ecologist said that intensive farming was ‘the main problem’, adding that, although badgers do eat hedgehogs, they can live together. When the million-dollar question is asked as to whether badgers or intensive farming are to blame for the steep decline of mister pricklepin,…

AT last, some real warmth to wake up the countryside. My farming friends have been waiting and waiting for the soil temperature to warm up. In many places across Britain, spring cereals have had to be sown several weeks later than normal due to waterlogged soil. However, the late spring has its bonuses for some—the winemakers will be delighted that the risk of frost will have all but disappeared, unlike the disaster of last year, by the time the vines start flowering. The RHS Chelsea Flower Show is less than five weeks away and, by then, the verges will have sprung up waist-high in cow parsley. The next few weeks are a miracle of growth triggered by the sun’s energy. Last week, there were large numbers of swallows swooping across…

ONE pint of milk, one yolk of egg, six ounces of semolina, one ounce of cheese, one ounce of butter, pepper and salt. Boil the milk in a stewpan. As soon as it comes to the boil sprinkle the semolina into it, add salt and pepper. Stir it over the fire until done —it will take from fifteen to twenty minutes—then beat in the yolk of an egg: sprinkle a dish with cold water, turn the mixture on to it, spread in a layer half an inch thick. When cold cut into pieces. Arrange the gnocchi in butter in a fireproof dish, sprinkle with cheese and the butter melted, and place in a hot oven to brown. Serve very hot.…

‘If free sites are to thrive, EH needs to persuade communities to help’ WITH all the rain that fell over Easter, it was a damp start to the national visitor season. Athena suspects that she was not alone in finding some attractions remarkably free from crowds. Hopefully, things will improve as the weather does. One visit, however, did depress her. Byland Abbey in North Yorkshire is a medieval monastic site of European importance. Its great ruined church is a defining building in the development of English Gothic and preserves spectacular fragments of encaustic tile floor. The west front, with its broken rose window, has long been celebrated and has recently been the subject of a £100,000 conservation project by English Heritage (EH), which manages the site. Byland has never attracted…

‘ This depiction of Elizabeth I impressed me deeply when I first saw it more than 60 years ago. She refused to be deflected by marriage from her duties as Queen and kept England safe. Her courage and charisma were inspirational. Most women were confined to a spectator’s role in public affairs for another 350 years. Breaking the mould was still hard going when I tried to become an MP, but I persevered. Even so, my becoming Speaker of the Commons was unthinkable until the House elected me for what I was, not for what I was born. I like to think Good Queen Bess would have approved’ John McEwen comments on The Commons Petitioning Queen Elizabeth to Marry SOLOMON JOSEPH SOLOMON was the son of a rich London businessman.…

‘If you’re spending £3 on sourdough, you don’t want to slap any old spread on it’ I STILL love eating it, especially on really good bread,’ Grant Harrington tells me, casting an affectionate glance at the butter churn standing in his Oxfordshire workshop. He pauses. ‘And, you know, sometimes just by itself.’ Like cheese, I ask? He grins. ‘Like cheese.’ At just 25, Mr Harrington is putting British butter back on the map. Four years ago, the former chef launched & (Ampersand). Today, he supplies handmade cultured butter to the UK’s top Michelin-starred restaurants, as well as amateurs who bulk-buy online and pick it up from Maltby Street Market in south-east London. He’s a man on a mission: he wants us to treat butter with a little more reverence. It…

THE land wears its dreariest face, sodden with late rain. Tractors have poached the verges and, all along the lanes, mud and soft grass are sculpted into the sheep wire. The bare hedges are patchy and blown, their branches splintered and raw where the flail has been. Grass slides underfoot like the skin on a rice pudding. It’s like living in a Ted Hughes poem. Throw in the sight of a crow trailing after a thin lamb and another badger carcass on the side of the road and you begin to wonder why anyone would live in the country at all. In the Hebrides, we once followed a van belonging to Scottish Power bearing the amusing legend ‘Delivering Electricity to the Highlands’. BT apparently delivers the internet to rural Dorset…

Dizzying heights For reasons unknown, the Devon village of Willand is rising fast, by 2cm (nearly an inch) every year, finds the first satellite-based radar survey. There are fears the M5 and rail line to Exeter could be affected Seals seeking sustenance Heavy rainfall has led a seal to swim 50 miles inland from the North Sea to the banks of the River Swale, near Thirsk, North Yorkshire. It looks fat and ‘really happy', say locals The planet Waitrose has announced that, come autumn, disposable coffee cups will be removed from its stores, a saving of 52m a year. Loyalty-scheme members must use their own reusable cups…

MOBILE-NETWORK operators aren’t even trying to improve coverage in the most poorly connected rural areas, says the CLA, which has obtained new data across England and Wales. Rutland boasts the worst 4G coverage of any local-authority area in England, with just 3.42% indoor 4G coverage, yet not one planning application for a new mast there has been made since 2014. Other local authority areas where no applications have been made over the same period include the Forest of Dean and Tunbridge Wells. CLA Deputy President Mark Bridgeman says that ‘the mobile industry is willing to abandon rural areas to the digital wilderness’ and that ‘mobile operators have no market incentive to improve coverage in these rural areas’. ‘We expect government and the regulator to take a tough line on this,’…

ALL parents are an embarrassment to their children. I’m still at the early stages of discovering the truth of this platitude from a parental perspective, although I’m conscious that it’s not a one-way street. During the Easter holiday, we joined a guided tour of a country house in Ireland. I was loitering at the back of the group when the guide launched into an encomium on a piano in the drawing room. After explaining the importance of the instrument, he invited anyone who could play to entertain the company. There was a predictable silence, but just before we moved on, a familiar voice from the front volunteered their talents. I watched, powerless to intervene, as a small figure, not known for any pianistic skill (they’ve just started the cornet), took…

Letter of the week From the ashes OUR house is approached by a majestic avenue of 150-year-old ash trees. One is a pendulous, weeping giant, 65ft wide (right). When we heard about ash dieback, we commissioned three artists to produce work based upon the trees, so that they would have some sort of legacy. All three focused on the weeping one. The trees are, thankfully, still healthy—touch wood—and we contacted the National Tree Register recently, which identified the weeping tree as one of only 10 examples of Fraxinus pendula Wentworth in the UK. It seems to have arisen in Cambridge in the 18th century, so how on earth did it get here, to the wilds of west Dorset? Its rarity has made us even more anxious about its…

BORDEAUX is the world’s largest fine wine region. You may associate it above all with some of the grandest names in wine—Lafite, Latour, Margaux, Pétrus—but the vast majority of the châteaux of Bordeaux are relatively down-to-earth operations. Château may conjure up a pompous edifice with pinnacles, but your average example is a dwelling place with a cuverie—a shed or hall which houses a press and fermentation tanks—and a chai, or big airy room, for barrels. Most of these are not in the famous appellations such as Pauillac, Margaux and Pomerol, but in the backwoods and outlying areas such as the northern Médoc, the southern Graves, Bourg and Blaye on the north bank of the Gironde and the wider Bordeaux and Bordeaux Supérieur appellations. From these sub-regions, come a host of…

‘ It’s more about technique than strength and you never stop learning’ EVERY Sunday, in about 5,000 bell towers up and down the country, assorted groups of people climb spiral staircases and assemble in circles at the end of candy-striped ‘sallies’. When they hear the words ‘look to, treble’s going, she’s gone’, they pull the ropes that sound the bells and a cascade of sound ripples out over the countryside. Despite regular media reports of a national shortage of bell-ringers, the craft is still enjoyed by an estimated 40,000 enthusiasts, including young people, who all know their plain bob minors from their grandsire doubles. The elegant twin-towered Wimborne Minster in Dorset has been especially successful in attracting younger ringers and, every Tuesday evening, several teenagers ascend the 72 twisting stairs…

‘Photography was “high-born... nursed by a most respectable Mrs Chemistry” BY the middle of the 19th century, photography was hammering at the door of the pantheon of the Arts. Many sought to bar its entrance, at best patronisingly relegating it to a subordinate role as a handmaid to fine art. The pioneering photographer Oscar Rejlander was not adverse to painters using photography as a helpful tool for their own work, but for him, this emerging art form was no lowly servant. Instead, the Swede insisted, it was ‘high-born…nursed by a most respectable Mrs Chemistry.’ That chemical nurse was the wet-plate collodion process, a dramatic improvement on the earlier daguerreotype and calotype methods, which allowed not only for greater detail, but for greater speed in the capturing of that detail. Those…

WHAT will Leonard Bernstein, born 100 years ago, be best remembered for? Will it be for compositions such as his three symphonies, his Mass and the Chichester Psalms? His long tenure as music director of the New York Philharmonic? Or for his astonishing work, educating a new generation about music, on American television? All are massively important. My guess is that his contribution to the American musical will prove to be Bernstein’s most durable legacy. His father, whose use of English was often haphazard, once told a reporter that ‘Lenny was never an infant pedigree’, but he was still pretty precocious. At school, Boston Latin, he read voraciously and won countless prizes. As a music student at Harvard and the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia, he showed himself to be…

DOG-OwNERS have cause for concern due to the increasing appearance of deadly Alabama rot. It’s a rare disease, with only 153 confirmed cases since 2012, but 30 of those are from the first three months of 2018. Although the exact cause is not known, the recent cold, wet weather ‘is typical for the appearance of this condition’, say vets, who are advising owners to wash their dogs thoroughly after muddy walks and to be vigilant over any sores that appear, which is the first sign. Also known as cutaneous and renal glomerular vasculopathy (CRGV), only 15–20% of dogs survive, says the Royal Veterinary College. The most cases this year have been in or around Bolton, Lancashire, and Manchester, with further cases all over Britain. It’s thought to be contracted from…

ONE of the most sought-after jobs in the world of garden writing is shortly to become available with the departure of Kathryn Bradley-Hole from Country Life , in June. Kathryn has distinguished the post of Gardens Editor with her deep knowledge and evocative writing for nearly 20 years. The successful applicant should have a thorough understanding of plants and gardens, a comprehensive contacts book, the ability to create good relationships with garden owners and imaginative ideas for features and ways to extend and embellish Country Life’s gardens coverage. The new incumbent needs to be well-organised and a team player, participating in the weekly life of the magazine in its Farnborough office. Apply to the Editor, Mark Hedges, either via email (rosie.paterson@timeinc.com) or by post at Country Life, Pinehurst II, Pinehurst…

AN osprey, Eurasian beaver, pool frog, large blue butterfly, stinking hawk’s-beard and sand lizard have gathered together, probably for the first time, in a new collection of Royal Mail stamps (above). The unlikely posse represents six species that have been successfully reintroduced into the wild after they had become extinct or endangered. It’s estimated that more than 400 species have become extinct in the UK since the 1800s and, with 900 species currently under threat, reintroduction programmes such as these six examples are significant success stories. The stamps, with illustrations by Wiltshire-based artist Tanya Achilleos, are now available in Post Offices and at www.royalmail.com/reintroducedspecies…

IF all talk of Brexit leaves you befuddled, help is at hand. COUNTRY LIFE columnist Harry Eyres and author George Myerson have written the tongue-in-cheek Johnson’s Brexit Dictionary, inspired by the good doctor’s original. Published last month to coincide with the first anniversary of the triggering of Article 50, the compendium includes irreverent definitions, such as this one for buffoon: ‘One employed to make a mirthful entertainment of Brexit with low jests and antick-postures; a hack pudding’ (£7.99, Pushkin Press).…

The move towards Pinot Noir or Spätburgunder in Germany is gathering pace. The red grape of Burgundy is now making its presence felt in nearly all the great German wine areas, from the damp, cool Ruwer to the sunnier, warmer Pfalz and Franconia (Franken). Why you should be drinking them More than 30 years ago, my friend Rainer Lingenfelder convinced me that very good Pinot Noir could be made in the Pfalz using Burgundian techniques. His pioneering efforts have inspired many others and a warming climate has helped. Nowadays, there seem to be few poor vintages in Germany. Prices can be almost Burgundian, too, but fortunately some producers are offering entry-level wines. What to drink Gerd Bernhart makes excellent and well-priced Pinot Noir in the southern part of…

‘“Buckie” is to the committed Glasgow drinker what Easy Start is to the reluctant diesel engine OUR youngest, naughtiest daughter, Jeanie, is rumoured to be reading History of Art at Glasgow. To be fair, it hasn’t been easy to apply herself while her lecturers picket the university buildings. Instead, she has taken her enquiring mind into pubs to investigate the fine art of drinking in Glasgow. There, she has found universal relief that the proposed halving of the alcoholic content in Buck-fast Tonic Wine has turned out to be fake news. ‘Buckie’, or ‘Wreck the hoose juice’, to give it its proper Glasgow moniker, is to the committed Glasgow drinker what Easy Start is to the reluctant diesel engine. At 15% proof, a quick snort of its caffeine and…

‘Watercress is one of Nature’s healthiest gifts, so although this recipe is an indulgent cheese feast, there’s plenty of goodness in there, too’ More ways with watercress Watercress-mayonnaise toasts with peas, watercress and lemon ( below ) Put 2 egg yolks in a blender and, with the motor running, slowly drizzle in 300ml of olive oil. Add salt and a squeeze of lemon, to balance the acidity. Drop a handful of washed watercress into the blender and blitz again. Spread the mayonnaise on toasted bread and top with lightly cooked peas, fresh watercress and a squeeze of lemon. Serve immediately. The mayonnaise works well with steak, too. Chicken, artichoke and watercress sandwiches Cut a chicken breast into thin strips and combine in a bowl with…

‘I shall haunt the gardeners who call them toadflaxes, OF all the ludicrous names that people give to plants, surely the silliest is ‘toadflax’. Some people will suggest that no description could be more appropriate: its flowers resemble a toad’s face and its leaves a plant of flax. And it’s an old English word, whereas Linaria was concocted by the botanist Philip Miller in 1768. Our native yellow toadflax is Linaria vulgaris, but what common name would anyone give to Linaria kulabensis from Tajikistan or the endangered L. tonzigii from Italy? It’s best to use Linnaean Latin; over-fanciful names are fatuous and unhelpful. I make an exception for ‘foxgloves’. I am not the most herbaceous of gardeners, but I have never been without foxgloves or linarias. They are the…

Nature Curlew Moon Mary Colwell (William Collins, £16.99) THIS book charts a determined woman’s 500-mile walk through the British countryside to highlight the plight of the enigmatic Eurasian curlew. Whether or not you know what a curlew is, by the end of this well-crafted and thoughtful adventure, you’ll wonder quite how we have let this iconic bird slip through our fingers to near extinction. The author’s love of Nature, people and religion is woven in and out of various encounters along the pilgrimage, which turns into a crusade to reverse the fortunes of this much-cherished wader. It’s easy to understand how the curlew has got under our skin since the beginning of time, thanks to its haunting calls and role as a harbinger of spring and the new moon; an…

IT’S back to Lyon for the 43rd World Team Championships. The event has reached the quarterfinal stages. The English Women finished sixth in round-robin to qualify (the English Open Team and Seniors failed even to make it to Lyon). Our Women reversed a loss to Russia in the round-robin to beat them and advance to the semi-final, where they would meet the powerful and very young Swedish sextet. Only one declarer in the whole event survived the five-nil Heart split and make Six Hearts on our first quarterfinal deal. That was Mike Passell of the USA 2 team (uniquely, the USA historically field two teams). The key was the low Heart lead (unwisely) chosen by the Italian West. Declarer had the rare pleasure of winning the first trick with the…