“Guided by public safety concerns, doctors are having a greater involvement in our pastimes now than ever before.” Historically, certain professions, callings and those blessed by accident of birth have enjoyed an intimate and practical influence in shaping our leafy realm, not least in the development of, and participation in, rural pursuits and their sporting elements. Peers of the realm, squires in the shires, hunting parsons, shooting doctors and litigant lawyers defined the milieu, gentlemen all, and in 1688, cartographer Richard Blome thought to record this. Eschewing his maps he went totally off-piste by publishing The Gentleman’s Recreation, a ground-breaking tome derived from his observations of the social and sporting mores of the time, ‘covering all subjects of interest and use to members of the nobility and gentlemen’.
As he…
