Innholdsfortegnelse for 08-Dec-2021 i Country Life

THE UK’s weasel population has halved in the past 50 years and needs legal protection, says a report published in Biological Conservation. Scientists studied 37 mammal species and found that the weasel is declining the fastest, due to fewer voles, mice and hedges. Co-author Prof Fiona Matthews believes a licence should be required before weasels can be culled, proving ‘overwhelming reason’, such as ‘another species of dire conservation concern that needs to be protected’. However, an Exeter professor argues that, although weasel numbers did decline in the 1970s–80s, this was a return to an earlier norm after drastic increases in the 1950s, when myxomatosis led to fewer rabbits and, therefore, flourishing grassland and more voles. ‘To increase the number of weasels, increasing the availability of voles would contribute much more…

CHOOSING the Order of Service for our wedding is ongoing: the bride wants ‘meaning’ in the words; I want hymns that everyone can blast out with lusty volleys. However, I need to avoid I vow to thee my country, as it has too much meaning for me and can reduce me to tears. We shall compromise under the skilled advice of Anthony, who is in his eighties and is coming out of retirement to marry us. There was no need to compromise, however, in the orchard that we planted last week. We seem to have at least one of every fruit tree known to man, from medlars to mulberries. Orchards are very special places throughout the year—from the spring blossom to the autumn fruits and the winter glow of the…

Knowing me, knowing you Q During lockdown, I began speaking to a gentleman via a dating website. He was my rock during a difficult time, but, when we finally met, it transpired that not only had he used photos of someone else on his profile, but that much of what he’d told me about himself was untrue. I feel as if ending the relationship would make me appear shallow and confirm his insecurities, but how can I trust him? N. D., Lincolnshire A Have you ever heard the term ‘catfish’? Well, you have been catfished. If you bought something online and an entirely different item arrived, would you not send it back? Forgive my flippancy—some might say ending the relationship makes you shallow or selfish, that instead you should ask…

OUR orchestras and classical- music ensembles have had a tough two years. The closure of public venues during the pandemic deprived them of places to perform—or even practise—for long periods and many freelancers in the sector were poorly served by the furlough scheme (Athena, July 15, 2020). Amid the continuing uncertainty, other regular aspects of musical life remain paralysed. International tours, for example, hitherto an important source of revenue for many groups, surely remain a long way off given the logistical problems—and expense—of moving large numbers of people under Covid restrictions. Brexit promises future difficulties as well. Classical-music concertgoers in Britain tend to belong to the older demographic that has been most directly threatened by—and cautious in responding to—the pandemic. As a consequence, the revival of audiences has been slow.…

MY visit to the Quantocks (A walking life, November 10) sparked many thoughts about poetry and landscape, among which A Shropshire Lad, A. E. Housman’s famous collection of poems, features large. I often quote from it when I speak about beauty, drawing on the poignant stories of young men going to their deaths in the trenches of the First World War, a copy of A Shropshire Lad in their breast pockets. Often it’s ‘Into my heart an air that kills/from yon far country blows:/ What are those blue remembered hills,/what spires, what farms are those?’ Another is more dramatic: ‘On Wenlock Edge the wood’s in trouble; His forest fleece the Wrekin heaves;/The gale, it plies the saplings double,/ And thick on Severn snow the leaves’. Small wonder, then, that when…

Born in 1910, David Lack, the son of a Harley Street rhinolaryngologist, honed his interest in birds during summer holidays on Kent's Romney Marsh. When at Gresham's School, Norfolk, he took advantage of the proximity to bird hotspots such as Cley, Blakeney and Hickling Broad. His first scientific paper, on night-jars he studied on Kelling Heath near his school, was published in British Birds in 1930. His Birds of Cambridgeshire (1934) was the first full study of the county's avifauna. As well as The Life of the Robin, his other highly regarded books were Darwin’s Finches (1947), based on his observations during an expedition to the Galapagos Islands in the late 1930s, and Swifts in a Tower (1956). Working on radar during the Second World War, the so-called angels picked…

• Serious collectors distinguish carefully between ‘toy soldiers’, made for play, and ‘model soldiers’, intended to be admired as figurines • A box of nine Guardsmen originally cost 1/-, half the average workman's daily wage, but gradually became more affordable • The first moveable arm appeared in the 1896 Indian Army set • Until 1937, all Britains soldiers had moustaches • One of the rarest Britains figures—only three are thought to exist—depicts Kaiser Wilhelm, Queen Victoria’s hostile grandson • Between 1958 and 1972, Britains made outstanding ultra-realistic plastic Swoppets, which had moveable necks, waists and weapons • The first purely Britains toy sale took place in 1968. Prices of the toys peaked in 1987, but have since declined quite considerably • Collector James Opie advises that C&T Auctioneers and Valuers…

THERE’S rather more to the scallop than initially meets the eye. Up to 200 of them, for a start—eyes, that is, green ringed with blue and scattered around their frill. Not so much for looking forward (they face backwards), rather, to watch out for any peckish predators. The king scallop is also a creature of contrasts, managing to be a symbol of both pagan fertility and Christian piety, the sensual and the sublime—as seen in Botticelli’s The Birth of Venus, where the ethereal beauty of the goddess, windswept and winsome on her scallop shell, combines both mythical birth and Christian baptism. It’s a hermaphrodite, too, the orange coral (or roe) sitting next to the creamy-coloured testis (or sperm). In America, they tend to throw away this delectable bite, but, over…

Ron likes nothing better than to wake the residents of Snoringham with a few loud dongs on a Sunday morning. He found the silencing of the bells one of the saddest things about lockdown and, until social-distancing rules permitted a return to method ringing, took on the dismal duty of tolling a single bell to summon worshippers. He's following in the footsteps of his mother and grandfather, who were both ringing into their nineties-who needs a keep-fit class when you can jog up into the belfry half- a-dozen times over Christmas-and can tell a Cambridge Surprise from an Oxford Double. He's desperate to try the eight-bell Exploded Tittums for a Christmas service, but there is resistance from his baffled fellow ringers.…

Lemon ‘Lunario’ ( Citrus x limon ) Widely grown in Italy, this has large, elongated fruits. It is sometimes referred to as the ‘Four Season' lemon because of its reliability in continually producing both fruit and flowers Kumquat ‘Nagami’ ( Citrus japonica x limon ) Lots of scented flowers and plenty of small fruits account for the popularity of kumquats. The skin is sweet, but the interior bitter and full of seeds. In Britain, it will get to about 6ft tall, but is usually much shorter Calamondin ( Citrus x microcarpa ) A compact, bushy tree that is easily pruned to keep it short. This is a hybrid between a kumquat and…

IT is extraordinary what one may learn in the antiques market. When looking at www.moxhams-antiques.co.uk, I found not only the expected stock of the Bradford-upon-Avon dealers, but also letting details for the Domaine de Roubignol, its most attractive house in the Lot, France. This was originally a winemaster’s house and a roubignol is a small red grape, which gives its name to the neighbourhood. However, roubignolles, despite being feminine, is an argot term for a very masculine pair of attributes. Whether, like the English equivalent, it can also mean nonsense, I do not know. I was actually looking for details of a truly splendid toy stable that measures 51½in high on its stand (Fig 1). It is dated 1902 and has shiplap—which I should have known, but didn’t; the word…

A FEW years ago, we bought a yurt. It seemed a good idea because we’d just bought a house with only two functioning bedrooms and because other people’s yurts look so lovely—in the pictures. It took three of us the best part of a day to put it up before we filled it with spare beds and other bits of homeless furniture. Despite not having quite the aesthetic I’d drooled over online, it functioned. Then we began the first significant project at our new house, which was to dig a pond. My mother muttered something about priorities and building actual bedrooms, but I waved gaily at the yurt and told her we had that sorted. A few weeks later we received a letter from the planning department saying it had…

LAST week, Town Mouse attended the Derbyshire Historic Buildings Trust awards at Elvaston Castle. It was an uplifting celebration of some notable restoration projects, but the day was bitterly cold. Walking through Derby before the event, there were a few cars piled with snow, a reminder that Storm Arwen had brought blizzards across the North. Next morning, the town centre was closed off to traffic for a charity run and I briefly watched the long columns of participants jogging past in the freezing cold. Another cheerful bystander commented that merely watching these exertions was as good as standing by a stove. Back in London, a highlight of the week was a school concert in St Martin-in-the-Fields. The church was packed and we listened to an astonishing succession of music groups:…

Grapefruit kick Cave de L’Ormarine, Cuvée Conchylia, Picpoul de Pinet, Languedoc, France 2020. £9, Marks & Spencer, alc 13% With its signature tangy freshness and saline finish, Picpoul de Pinet's popularity shows no signs of abating. This example, from one of the top co-operatives, offers great value for its flavours of white peach, preserved lemon and a grapefruit kick. Perfect with charcuterie Giovanni Rosso, Donna Margherita, Barbera d’Alba, Piedmont, Italy 2018. £14.79, All About Wine, alc 13% A pleasing savoury edge to the cherry and plum aromas of this juicy, easy-drinking wine leads to nice depth of brambly and cherry fruit, buoyed by vibrant acidity. Great value-and perfect with a plate of charcuterie. Ageworthy rosé Dido, La Solució Rosa de Venus la Universal, Montsant, Spain 2018. £13, Justerini…

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THE robin regularly tops the vote in public surveys to find Britain’s national bird. The reasons aren’t hard to imagine. A Christmas-card staple, the bird is familiar and attractive. It has a sweet song, endearingly heard at times of the year when other birds are silent and often in the evenings or late at night, seduced by the glow of streetlights. A regular garden visitor, it’s loved for its tameness. It can be trained to take food from the hand, and may even enter the home to feed or perch on an armchair. It’s fitting, therefore, that it was also the subject of the first popular monograph dedicated to the study of a single species of British bird, David Lack’s The Life of the Robin (1943). Whereas Edgar Chance’s much…

IN 1827, John Talbot succeeded to his uncle’s estates as 16th Earl of Shrewsbury. The family seat at Alton, Staffordshire, was already a substantial building, having evolved from a hunting lodge into a Gothic ‘abbey’. The new Earl immediately doubled it in size, creating one of the largest private houses in Britain. Its Romantic interiors—crammed with art, antiquities and curios—were intended not only to advertise the history of the family, which had received its title in 1442, but Talbot’s position as one of the leading Catholic peers of the realm. Queen Victoria’s description after a visit on October 24, 1832, conveys her awed astonishment: ‘This is an extraordinary house. On arriving one goes into a sort of gallery filled with armour, guns, swords, pistols… then into a gallery filled with…

COVID changed the lives of all of us. Although everyone had to find a way to get through the various lockdowns, safe and sane, garden owners knew themselves to be unusually blessed. Yes, we missed the opportunity to visit other people’s gardens and nurseries, but our own gardens were always there for us. Rain or shine, at every time of the day, I walked through my own woodland garden, listening and looking. I compared my happiness with the fate of my recently widowed sister, locked up in a London flat—although, actually, she did rather well with her window boxes. There was another thing that made my lockdown a source of delight, which was that I took the opportunity to scan all my old photographs and relive my life right back…

Do you have a favourite hotel? Within our group, I’m not allowed to have favourites, but if pushed, maybe Hotel de la Ville in Rome or Villa Igiea in Palermothey’re the newest and I have been fully involved in all the details, including tableware and menus, and I love how they have turned out. Outside of our group, Villa Tre Ville in Positano and Villa Feltrinelli in Lago di Garda… do I just like villas? Have you had any travel disasters? I tend to see travel disasters as travel ‘experiences’. One that stands out, however, is when I was travelling with a friend in Guatemala and, after a six-hour drive, arrived at a tiny hostel surrounded by spectacular waterfalls and rock pools in Semuc Champey. It turned out that the…

you were rely solely on Wikipedia without searching deeper on the net, you might believe that the term ‘dumb waiter' refers only to a service food or linen lift, as it does in American. Almost the only employment of this usage in English is the title of a play by Harold Pinter, who created an important double meaning from it. Further digging is needed to find the British term, which dates back to the 1720s. Here, it was a two- or three-tier portable stand that was brought to the dining table with further drinks and refreshments when the servants retired. Early examples were often circular on tripod or four-legged bases. In the 19th century, they were sometimes rectangular and came in pairs; these are difficult to differentiate from the ‘what-not'…

North Sea Crossings: The Literary Heritage of Anglo-Dutch Relations 1066–1688 Sjoerd Levelt and Ad Putter (Bodleian Library, £40) THIS work covers a period neatly book-ended by two sea journeys: those of Matilda, William the Conqueror’s Flemish-speaking wife, and the Dutch William of Orange in 1688. Between the two dates, the fortunes of Anglo-Dutch literary relations, like those in politics and war, sway back and forth. Flemish writers in the 12th century, for instance, felt rather superior to Englishmen, and seemed to wonder whether they had tails or even if they could be gentlemen. Both Flemish and English-speakers, of course, gave precedence to French, which was more widely spoken everywhere. English “had no status abroad, except in Calais” Indeed, this book takes us back to a period when English ‘had no…

COUNTRY LIFE In our December 1 issue, a last-minute addition to Barometer led to us accidentally listing the National Trust trail-hunting ban in the ‘good week' section. The sub-editor responsible will be dressed as a fox and forced to lay a trail as punishment Calls of nature Britain has lost 50% of its public loos in the past decade and there are questions asked as to why there is no legislation around their provision Red squirrels As further casualties of Storm Arwen emerge, these bushy-tailed friends have our sympathies; the destruction of forest in the North and Borders has wiped out many habitats, which could be further damaged in the clear-up Waste not, want not SAVE Britain's Heritage is calling for the halt of the demolition and rebuild of Marks…

Quiz of the week 1) What relation is Lady Sarah Chatto to The Queen? 2) In which sport might lions play wallabies? 3) Jonathan, Blenheim and Codling are all varieties of what? 4) A gross refers to a group of how many items? 5) A coracle is a type of what? Word of the week Wamble (noun) The rumbling or growling of a stomach Time to buy Necklace Sycamore £68 Reeves & Reeves , , (01460 221630; www.reevesandreeves.com) ‘We Wish You a Merry Christmas’ pair of candles, £14, Heather Evelyn (www.heatherevelyn.com) The Norfolk Nog Cream Liqueur, £20, The English Whisky Company (01953 717939; www.englishwhisky.co.uk) Riddle me this I am the organ that named itself. What am I? Unmissable events Until January 2, 2022 Regency Christmas at Belvoir Castle (pictured), Leicestershire.…

‘To all those robins who patiently bore my rings and permitted my intrusions into the intimacies of their lives’ His dedicatory words in ‘The Life of the Robin’ ‘At least in the robin, the chorus of song early on a spring morning–often called the birds’ Hymn to the Dawn–is a hymn of battle rather than of love’ ‘Detailed study shows that, in fact, there are considerable individual differences among robins, though, of course, their behaviour is far less variable than humans’ ‘Though so tame in taking food, the robin will not make a pet. Trusting it often becomes, but friendly never’…

Use a free-draining compost that has been specially formulated for growing citrus. The ideal pH is 6 To produce plenty of fruits and flowers, citrus need to be well fed. From April to October, use a specially formulated citrus food or a high-nitrogen general fertiliser During the summer, keep plants well watered, preferably with rainwater, but hold off the watering during the winter. Overwatering in winter is the biggest killer of citrus trees, especially young ones, so allow the surface of the soil to dry out before watering Maintain a humid atmosphere by using a hand mister or by standing trays of water close to your plants The most troublesome pest in greenhouses and conservatories is the red spider mite, which causes leaves to fall and eventually kills plants. You…

A glasshouse grapevine should be pruned in the dead of the year, as otherwise sap will flow out of the wounds, resulting in misery. In any case, at this time of year, you can see what you're doing. With care, bring a stepladder glasshouse. Leave ( ) . your way along cutting a couple of buds. Carefully gather up the lengths of surplus growth, shortening it into manageable sections to be removed from the glasshouse. you're up , carry a general inspection.…