Shakespeare’s England
William’s WORLD
Discover leafy Warwickshire and beyond – a place of bucolic beauty, historic homes, and pretty villages
Left to right: Anne Hathaway’s Cottage was the family home of the playwright’s wife; the half-timbered Stratford-uponAvon home where Shakespeare was born
Love and adventure brought me to my lavender farm in Builth Wells, just north of Bannau Brycheiniog [the Brecon Beacons – Ed ].
I met Oxford philosopher Bill Newton-Smith at a party in Toronto, started a long-distance relationship with him in 1981, and by 1984 I’d emigrated to the UK to be with him.
The first time I saw Bill ’s farmhouse, which is now Farmers’ Welsh Lavender, I thought it was tremendous, and the landscape was jaw-droppingly beautiful. We went back and forth between Wales and Oxford, and the farmhouse became the place we’d go whenever we could – every weekend, and all his long holidays. I was an international journalist, so I’d find stories I could do in Wales to be here a bit more.
In 2003, someone in the valley sold a huge amount of land and we were able to buy some, and then swapped 12 acres down the valley for six acres around our farm. We discussed what we could do up here in the hills besides becoming sheep farmers and considered planting lavender.
I intended it to be a hedge, and then a farmer neighbour suggested we plant a field. The EU and Welsh government were trying to get farmers to diversify, so he suggested we apply for a grant. I was really intrigued to plant a field, because why not?
We had our eye on a half-acre behind the house, and it would be a nice antidote to journalism and reporting from unhappy, war-torn countries. And then it snowballed into a business. Farmers’ Welsh Lavender was Wales’s first field-scale lavender farm, and we became the first distillers of lavender oil, which we use in our products.
Bill took early retirement when we
WELSH LAVENDER
Left to right: International journalist Nancy found her home and second career in the fields of Builth Wells; the lavender field looks out over the farm’s pond and an idyllic Welsh scene of verdant hills
What drew me here…
Canadian Nancy Durham tells Liz Schaffer all about how she came to be living on a lavender farm in Wales
rewritten Catherine,
Henry VIII’s fifth wife is remembered as being a silly girl who deserved her punishment, but her true path to the chopping block tells a much sadder tale, Henrietta Easton learns
‘Beheaded
For my promiscuity outside of wed Lock up your husbands, lock up your sons
K. Howard is here and the fun’s begun’
These are the lyrics from Catherine Howard’s first solo in the West End musical, Six, which transforms Henry VIII’s unfortunate wives into pop princesses. Ironically for a musical that purports female empowerment, its lyrics perpetuate the 500-year-old misogynistic narrative of Catherine’s tragic life.
Historians have described Catherine as “a natural tart”, an “empty-headed wanton”, and “stupid and oversexed”. Even Catherine’s defenders, such as Karen Lindsey, who wrote the 1995 book Divorced, Beheaded, Survived: a Femininist Reinterpretation of the Wives of Henry VIII, have used her sexuality to define her as “a woman who enjoyed sex”.
But, just 18 years old when she walked to the chopping block, Catherine’s sad tale is peppered with the selfish schemes of manipulative, power-hungry men and should be retold in the context of an inherently misogynistic society.
If you walk along the Haunted Gallery at Hampton Court Palace, it’s said that echoes of Catherine’s screams can sometimes be heard – the desperate pleas of a young girl attempting to save her own life. It’s a beguiling tale that illustrates Catherine’s youth and fear. So, why did history turn against a young woman who made a mistake, and should she really be blamed for it?
Probably born in 1524, Catherine was the 10th child of Lord Edmund Howard, a poverty-stricken younger son of Thomas Howard, 2nd Duke of Norfolk, which also made her the first cousin of Anne Boleyn.
Catherine’s mother died when she was young and she was brought up by her father’s stepmother, Agnes Tilney, the Dowager Duchess of Norfolk, at Chesworth House in West Sussex.
Tracy Borman, Joint Chief Historian at Historic Royal Palaces, said in The Private Lives of the Tudors, that Agnes’s house was “notorious for its immorality. Catherine was probably only about 12 years old when she had her first sexual liaison, with her music teacher.”
This was Henry Manox, a man who undoubtedly took advantage of Catherine and abused his position as her teacher. When Catherine was around 14, it’s well attested that she became sexually involved with a man named Francis Dereham, who had been appointed secretary to the dowager duchess. Tracy Borman says: “according to…one of Catherine’s roommates, they were ‘forever hanging together by the belly like sparrows.’”
The fact that this testimony has been used to incriminate her seems baffling; she was 14 years old. Given Borman’s point that the duchess’s house had a reputation for immorality, it was unlikely she was the only culpable participant. She was a young girl, enamoured by an older man giving her attention
When Catherine was 14, it’s well attested that she became sexually involved with Francis Dereham
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A personal touch
Kate Youde steps inside the National Trust’s conservation studio in Kent to see some of the tireless work that goes into preserving some of our nation’s biggest treasures
Anna Vesaluoma leans towards Lady Ann Bligh and gently rolls cotton wool, wrapped around a swab stick, across the brunette woman’s neck.
The remedial paintings conservator is using a special solvent mixture to remove discoloured varnish from the surface of the 18th-century portrait before it goes on display at Lady Ann’s unusual former home, the half-Palladian and half-Gothic Castle Ward in County Down, Northern Ireland.
She says varnishes – “essentially a protective coating” applied to paintings – tend to turn yellow with age. “They would have been clear when first applied but then with time, with exposure to UV light and with the chemical crosslinking that happens, they turn yellow, which essentially creates this yellow filter over the whole painting,” she explains. “And that can really affect the colours, but also the sense of depth.”
There’s a dramatic change in the tone of Lady Ann’s skin as Anna dabs the flesh.
The conservator is on the top floor of a converted medieval barn on the Knole estate in Kent, the home of the Royal Oak Foundation Conservation Studio. Opened in 2017 as part of a £20m Heritage Lottery Fund project to preserve Knole’s buildings and collection, the space is a hub for specialist work on some of the more than one-million objects cared for by the National Trust.
In 2024 the studio’s nine-strong team, which is supported on some projects by freelancers and the Trust’s separate textile conservation studio in Norfolk, conserved more than 250 items including ceramics, furniture, paintings and picture frames.
“It’s amazing. You literally travel the world by standing here in the studio,” says Studio Manager Emma Schmuecker. “You can see the influence and relationships across
Right: A conservator cleans yellowed varnish off the surface of John Constable’s Waterloo Bridge painting with meticulous care
There’s a dramatic change in the tone of Lady Ann’s skin as Anna dabs the flesh
