Country & Town House - Jan/Feb 2024

A LIFE IN BALANCE

ESCAPE ROUTES

Plan your next (thoughtful) trip

ARE YOU READY?

The Power of Transformation

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Contents

JAN FEB 2024

COLUMNS 18 20

120

THE GOOD LIFE What Alice B-B saw...

THE RURBANIST It takes guts to be Tim Spector, the man leading the Zoe revolution LAST WORD Michael Hayman tackles the topic of transformation

STYLE 23 24 26 28 30 32 34 36

BLUE PERIOD When fashion and china collide THE STYLIST Waste not want not THE EDIT News BEST OF BRITISH Your new shopping edit MAKE AN ESCAPE Colour me beautiful THE MAGPIE Jewellery news WELL GROOMED Men’s style AND THE WINNERS ARE... Celebrating the C&TH Sustainability Awards 2024

HEALTH & WELLBEING

41 42 44 42 46 48

DANCING IN THE RAIN Free yourself BODY & SOUL Shake it off, says Camilla Hewitt BODY LANGUAGE What’s the skinny on exosomes, asks Olivia Falcon BEAUTY DILEMMA How to make the most of hooded eyes by Nathalie Eleni BLACK MIRROR Amy Wakeham meets the journalist upending the beauty industry one newsletter at a time SPA TREK Taking the thermal waters at Grand Resort Bad Ragaz

51

52 58 59 60 62 64 66 68

NEVER FORGET Theatre Ré’s play about memory CULTURAL CALENDAR What to see, read and do ARTIST’S STUDIO Nick Veasey THE EXHIBITIONIST Ed Vaizey digs deep into the RA’s archival exhibition LITTLE GREEN BOOK Lisa Grainger discovers how the app Olio is fighting food waste THE CONSERVATIONIST James Wallace ponders what nature means to him ROAD TEST Jeremy Taylor puts the Hyundai Kona Electric Ultimate to the test C&TH X BYLINE TIMES As climate change worsens, what happens after the flood?

SCARFES BAR Roger Tempest has transformed his ancestral family home, Broughton Hall, into the UK’s most progressive wellness centre

FEATURES 70

70 78

SPANISH STEPS Saddle up, style mavens THE SOUND OF SILENCE For a blessed, nature-rich escape, Lucy Cleland discovers Caballo de Hiero, a private estate just outside Seville

PHOTOS: © DAN HACK

CULTURE

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Contents

JAN FEB 2024

FEATURES (CONT.) 80 82 84

AUX ARMES, CITOYENS! Rachel Arthur on how the French are leading the green revolution VILLAGE PEOPLE Jane Knight meets the American millionaire transforming a sleepy Devon village HOW TO DIE WELL It’s inevitable – so why are we so weird about it? asks Tessa Dunthorne

INTERIORS 87

88 90 92

COME ON IN How one hallway by VSP Interiors says ‘hello’ DESIGN NOTES Interiors news BED IN Why now’s the perfect time to get green-fingered in your garden GO SMALL Transformative pieces for your pied-à-terre

TRAVEL 97

100 102 104 108

TAKING THE PATH LESS TRAVELLED Francisca Kellett seeks out travel with purpose THE ESCAPIST Travel news LEGENDS OF THE FALL Holidaying like American royalty on Cumberland Island CONSERVATION & CONTROVERSY Annabel Heseltine explores Europe’s Yellowstone ONCE UPON A TIME Ellie Smith sleeps like a beauty at Adare Manor

FOOD & DRINK 111

113

SPICE UP YOUR LIFE Judy Joo’s gut-friendly kimchi fried rice GASTRO GOSSIP Foodie news

115

116 ON THE COVER Dress, boots & choker DIOR Hat MARCEL RODRIGUES

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Fashion Director: Nicole Smallwood Photographer: Dan Hack Hair & make-up: Charlotte Reid @ One Represents using Hair

by Sam McKnight & La Prairie Fashion Assistant: April McCarthy Model: Ayse Demirhan @ Le Management Shot on location at Caballo de Hierro, Spain

117 118

HOUSE OF THE MONTH A gorgeous Robert Adam house gets a 21st century makeover FIVE OF THE BEST Renovation projects IN WITH THE OLD How can heritage venues go green?

RUN TO THE SUN Portugal’s housing market is heating up

REGULARS 12 14 38

EDITOR’S LETTER CONTRIBUTORS SOCIAL SCENE

PHOTOS: © MATTY BOVAN

PROPERTY

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F

Editor’s LETTER

or those who want to reduce their carbon footprint, travel has become a conundrum: to fly or not to fly, a loaded but possibly reductionist approach. Most travel does require the ability to cross oceans and that generally means by plane, though not always, of course (Annabel Heseltine headed to the Carpathian Mountains to see an ambitious conservation project in action by train, for example – see page 104). But travel is far more than just a carbon footprint – it is a mindset and one that potentially brings rich rewards to both traveller and destination.

EDITOR’S PICKS SUPPORT It’s hard to know who to support in the climate space, but my pounds go to ClientEarth, which uses the law to create powerful change that protects life on Earth

I was contemplating this as I took a wintry hike along the lower Alpine slopes in Heidiland (yes, that Heidi) in the canton of St Gallen in Switzerland late last year. Gratefully both phone and company-free, surrounded by awe-inspiring nature (nothing beats mountains), yet eyes and ears alert in that seductive tension between feeling completely safe and then deliciously out of one’s comfort zone, I felt a mindexpansive freedom I had not enjoyed for a long time. It’s to that edge that travel can guide us, allowing us to grow and nurture understanding of both ourselves and the world around us. So in this issue, we are celebrating the power of transformation – through travel, yes, but also in all areas of our lives. And, indeed, our deaths. For isn’t our final destination the ultimate transformation? And we’re really, really bad at it. Why? For many reasons, of course, but we posit that it’s in large part due to our disconnection from nature. Death has become another problem to be solved rather than integrated into the natural ebb and flow of life. Intrigued?

Read Tessa Dunthorne’s thought-provoking feature on page 84.

We might be up for transforming a house to sustain it for future generations (see our cover feature on Caballo de Hiero near Seville, for example, on page 78), but what about a village? This is the challenge that tech millionaire – Michael Birch – took on when he heard that the local pub in the Devon village where he had family connections was on the brink of closure. He didn’t stop with the pub, of course, and his mission is to put the village back on the map – with a commercial footing. Read Jane Knight’s story on page 82.

Elsewhere, Charlotte Metcalf discovers how lives are being transformed at the UK’s most progressive wellness centre at Yorkshire’s Broughton Hall (p68), this edition’s Byline Times collaboration addresses how flooding threatens to transform our landscapes and the way many of us will live in the future (p66), and Amy Wakeham interviews Jessica DeFino, the journalist that ‘the beauty industry fears the most’, who wants us to think more deeply about our relationship with beauty. (p46). Transformation comes 32 in many guises.

BUY I’ve joined The Rule of Five – only five new clothing items will be allowed in my cupboard this year – who’s joining me?

STAY Guilt-free weekends beckon at Whatley Manor, which has become the first Climate Positive hotel and spa in the UK today

READ Katherine Rundell is my author crush this year – keep an eye out for anything from her but start with The Golden Mole

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SCAN TO EXPERIENCE

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CONTRIBUTORS

Taking the Path Less Travelled, p97

Spanish Steps, p70

Conservation & Controversy, p104

Aux Armes, Citoyens! p80

FRANCISCA KELLETT

DAN HACK

ANNABEL HESELTINE

RACHEL ARTHUR

How will you change your life in 2024? Do less. Sleep more.

Join a choir. Learn to bake. This list has not changed in a decade.

The most transformational trip you've taken? There was the month I spent camping on a deserted beach in the Andaman Islands, the road trip through Malawi and Mozambique, dodging landmines and sleeping on people’s floors, or just pootling about on a German lake with my kids.

Where are you most looking forward to travelling to in 2024? The Dolomites. Epic mountains, family-owned lodges and scrumptious food: what's not to love?

What book should everyone read this year? I can't stop going on about Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver, a modern reimagining of David Copperfield and mindblowingly brilliant.

How will you change your life in 2024? I plan on diving deeper into my yoga practice and the discovery of the mind. I also hope to be working on more projects with meaning to inspire and create awareness.

The most transformational trip you've taken? Earlier last year I became a qualified yoga teacher, for my own sense of discovery. That was indeed a very transformational month.

Where are you most looking forward to travelling to in 2024? In my work life, anywhere it takes me.

In my personal life, I have no plans right now. I'm enjoying moving at a slower pace.

What book should everyone read this year? The Creative Act by Rick Rubin. Make sure you have a highlighter with you as you read, as you’ll want to remember some things.

How will you change your life in 2024? I would really like to reinstate my daily meditation and yoga practice. And stick to it!

And finish my book.

The most transformational trip you've taken? In 1995, I took the Trans-Siberian Railway to Mongolia to witness the first visit of the Dalai Lama postCommunism. I’ll never forget stepping onto a platform five days after leaving Moscow to be surrounded by horsemen glimmering in red velvet dells.

But interviewing His Holiness was the highlight.

Where are you most looking forward to travelling to in 2024? I train it whenever possible; last year to Greece and Romania, this year, fingers crossed, the Indian continent.

I’d like to spend more time in Mustang near the Tibetan border in Nepal and I want to explore Saudi Arabia.

How will you change your life in 2024? We’re moving out of London to the countryside so that’s set to be quite the change. With our kids nearing school age, it felt like finally time to immerse them much more in nature.

The most transformational trip? I went on a journey of self-discovery to Bali in 2017 (said every person who's ever been there), but it really did change my outlook on life.

Where are you most looking forward to travelling to in 2024? We’ve made a pact not to fly anywhere this year, so we’re heading to Italy by train and I’ve booked a rewilding experience in the UK for my husband’s 40th.

What book are you recommending everyone reads this year? Impossible Creatures by Katherine Rundell – as much about mythology as it is about humanity. An absolute must-read.

WA N T T O K NOW W H AT ’ S ON ?

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LUCY CLELAND EDITORIAL DIRECTOR

EDITOR-AT-LARGE ALICE B-B ASSOCIATE EDITOR CHARLOTTE METCALF DEPUTY EDITOR AMY WAKEHAM ASSISTANT EDITOR & SUB EDITOR TESSA DUNTHORNE SUB EDITORS KATIE BAMBER, RUBY FEATHERSTONE, ANDREW BRASSLEAY FASHION DIRECTOR NICOLE SMALLWOOD BEAUTY DIRECTOR NATHALIE ELENI INTERIORS DIRECTOR CAROLE ANNETT CULTURE EDITOR ED VAIZEY EXECUTIVE RETAIL EDITOR MARIELLA TANDY TRAVEL EDITOR-AT-LARGE FRAN KELLETT SUSTAINABILITY EDITOR LISA GRAINGER PROPERTY EDITOR ANNA TYZACK MOTORING EDITOR JEREMY TAYLOR ONLINE CONTENT DIRECTOR REBECCA COX DEPUTY ONLINE EDITOR ELLIE SMITH ONLINE WRITERS CHARLIE COLVILLE, OLIVIA EMILY ONLINE ASSISTANT MARTHA DAVIES SOCIAL MEDIA MANAGER DANIELLA LAXTON CREATIVE & PRODUCTION DIRECTOR PARM BHAMRA DESIGN & PRODUCTION MIA BIAGIONI ASSOCIATE PUBLISHER ELLIE RIX HEAD OF FASHION EMMA MARSH ACCOUNT DIRECTORS PANDORA LEWIS, SERENA KNIGHT DIGITAL COMMERCIAL DIRECTOR ADAM DEAN SPECIAL PROJECTS DIRECTOR SOPHIE STONEHAM SENIOR ACCOUNT MANAGER SABRINA RAVEN SALES SUPPORT, OFFICE & JOINT B-CORP PROJECT MANAGER XA RODGER TECHNICAL DIRECTOR MARK PEARSON CHIEF FINANCIAL OFFICER GARETH MORRIS FINANCE CONTROLLER LAUREN HARTLEY FINANCE ADMINISTRATOR RIA HARRISON HUMAN RESOURCES CONSULTANT ZOE JONES PROPERTY & MARKETING ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR AND JOINT B-CORP PROJECT MANAGER GEMMA COWLEY CHIEF COMMERCIAL OFFICER TIA GRAHAM CHIEF OPERATING OFFICER JAMES THROWER MANAGING DIRECTOR JEREMY ISAAC CONTRIBUTING EDITORS AND WRITERS TIFFANIE DARKE, JAMES WALLACE, STEPHEN BAYLEY, FIONA DUNCAN, OLIVIA FALCON, DAISY FINER, AVRIL GROOM, MICHAEL HAYMAN, LAUREN HO, RICHARD HOPTON, EMMA LOVE, MARY LUSSIANA, ANNA PASTERNAK, CAROLINE PHILLIPS

THE EDITOR editorial@countryandtownhouse.co.uk FASHION fashion@countryandtownhouse.co.uk ADVERTISING advertising@countryandtownhouse.co.uk

PROPERTY ADVERTISING property@countryandtownhouse.co.uk ACCOUNTS accounts@countryandtownhouse.co.uk SUBSCRIPTIONS subscribe@countryandtownhouse.co.uk

COUNTRY & TOWN HOUSE is a bi-monthly magazine distributed to AB homes in Barnes, Battersea, Bayswater, Belgravia, Brook Green, Chelsea, Chiswick, Clapham, Coombe, Fulham, Hampstead, Holland Park, Kensington, Knightsbridge, Marylebone, Mayfair, Notting Hill, Pimlico, South Kensington, Wandsworth and Wimbledon, as well as being available from leading country and London estate agents. It is also on sale at selected WHSmith, Waitrose, Marks & Spencer and Sainsbury’s stores and independent newsagents nationwide. It has an estimated readership of 150,000. It is available on subscription in the UK for £39.99 per annum. To subscribe online, iPad, iPhone and Android all for only £9.99/month, visit: exacteditions.com/ read/countrytownhouse. For subscription enquiries, please call 020 7384 9011 or email subscribe@countryandtownhouse. co.uk. It is published by Country & Town House Ltd, Studio 2, Chelsea Gate Studios, 115 Harwood Road, London SW6 4QL (tel: 020 7384 9011). Registered number 576850 England and Wales. Printed in the UK by William Gibbons and Sons Ltd, West Midlands. Paper supplied by Gerald Judd. Distribution by Letterbox. Copyright © 2024 Country & Town House Ltd. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without written permission is strictly prohibited. Materials are accepted on the understanding that no liability is incurred for safe custody. The publisher cannot be responsible for unsolicited material. All prices are correct at the time of going to press but are subject to change. While every care is taken to ensure information is correct at time of going to press, it is subject to change, and C&TH Ltd. takes no responsibility for omissions or errors

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COLUMN

The GOOD LIFE What Alice B-B saw while she was trapped in the loo Alice visits a whale research centre in Canada’s Great Bear Rainforest

I

’M LOCKED IN A LOO. It’s not the first time, but unlike the experience in the motorway garage, I could live in this loo forever. A cosy driftwood hut on an island in the middle of the Great Bear Rainforest in British Columbia, with a panoramic window overlooking a bay filled with humpback and fin whales. I’m in Canada with elite travel operator Henry Cookson, known for conjuring up life-changing trips thanks to his curious, wise but boyishly fun sensibility (cooksonadventures.com). We’re sailing through fjords on a hundred-year-old boat, the Pacific Yellowfin; spotting whales bubble-net feeding, kayaking through seal-filled waters, hiking into the world’s largest temperate rainforest and watching black and grizzly bears scoff salmon before the long winter ahead. And today, a perfect blue sky day, we’re at a whale research centre. Marine biologists play us recordings of whale songs, some believed to be love songs rehearsed before heading to Hawaii to find a mate. Then the researchers play a very different recording; the ear-splitting noise of shipping tankers, soon to infest these pristine waters due to a new liquefied natural gas plant in the heart of the Great Bear Rainforest. Who knows how the whales will react. Whether they will disappear from these waters. So when someone came to let me out of the loo, part of me longed to stay and fight for the whales. For now, I’ll be supporting from across the oceans (pacificwild.org).

HELP! It’s easy to forget that we can ask, or pay, for help. But this year there are things I REALLY want to do. So I’ve started working with accredited life coach, Anna Miller, who aims to ‘help women reach their full potential using my practical and transformational method.’ I’ve been having both online and in person sessions every two weeks and so far, so great. She has helped change, improve and super charge aspects of my life. No more procrastinating with Anna holding me to account. (annamillermethod.com) BZZZZ goes my new favourite bit of wellness tech; a band strapped to my wrist emitting soundwaves according to the various states I want to encourage; energy, focus, calm, sleep etc…

It’s called Apollo Neuro (healf.com) and was invented by neuroscientist and psychiatrist Dr Dave Rabin. Working with US army veterans with PTSD, Rabin discovered this novel ‘touch therapy’ that signals safety to the brain. ‘Soundwaves to stimulate the vagus nerve allow us to feel safe and during sleep enables the nervous system to enter REM or deep sleep and a higher level of heart rate variability (HRV),’ explains Rabin. It’s the first scientifically validated device that enhances performance and recovery while improving the body’s resilience to stress. When I first started wearing the Apollo Neuro, my boyfriend Mr Love declared me to be a lunatic. One month later and guess who wants one? n

THIS MONTH I’LL BE...

PICKING out enchanting lampshades by Rosi de Ruig (rosi-de-ruig.myshopify. com) REFUSING to go digital for another year thanks to my watermeloncoloured leather Smythson diary (smythson.com). OBSESSED with Sisley’s Supremya Night cream – it costs a small fortune but worth it for the power to stimulate melatonin in the skin for overnight regeneration (sisley-paris.com).

ILLUSTRATION BY MEI MEI, @MEIMEI_2503

‘We’re spotting WHALES feeding; kayaking through SEAL-filled waters; and watching black and grizzly BEARS scoff salmon’

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INTERVIEW

The RURBANIST

Tim Spector on health misinformation, procrastination, and the power of good red wine

What’s bringing you joy at the moment?

ZOE members stopping me in the street to thank me for the work we do. It’s a huge privilege.

What’s annoying you most right now?

There’s a lot of social media influencers trying to convince people that vegetables are bad for you.

The latest I saw tried to claim that broccoli is bad, which is outrageous. Nutrition misinformation annoys me as it can be harmful and it’s very confusing for those trying to improve their diet and their health.

What advice would you give your 15-year-old self? Stop procrastinating and get on with it!

What keeps you awake at night? I love my

sleep so thankfully nothing at the moment.

Best life hack you can share with us? Don’t

forget to have fun and enjoy what you do. Life is hard so it’s up to us to make the best of it.

A moment that changed everything? Giving my gut microbiome talk at a conference where my ZOE co-founders were sitting in the audience.

The rest is history.

Where do you go to escape? I love skiing with my family in winter and going to the seaside in Spain in the summer. Nothing beats an early morning swim in the sea.

What’s the best way to put a smile on your face? Sharing a good meal with friends or simply

bringing some good cheese and a bottle of red wine over for a catch up at home.

You wouldn’t know it but… I meditate every day and have been doing so for over 30 years.

What is sustainability? Being aware of the wider impact of our choices.

How can we save the world? If I had the answer to that I would already be working on it…

Your greatest failure? No such thing, all opportunities to learn.

Your greatest triumph? Enjoying the ride so far.

What does a life in balance mean to you? Having some flexibility for life to happen and plans to change.

David Bowie, Wild Artichokes and red wine are all a favourite of Tim’s

Tim Spector OBE is a Professor of Genetics and co-founder of gut-health programme ZOE; zoe.com n

SCENT A good red wine. BOX SET Dr House.

CHOCOLATE BAR Cocoa Runners. SONG Life on Mars by David Bowie. DISH My Catalan fish stew. GADGET My bike. RESTAURANT Wild Artichokes by Jane Baxter in Devon.

PHOTOS: UNSPLASH

QUICK FIRE FAVOURITES...

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STYLE Edited by Mariella Tandy

Blue PERIOD We love a quirky hook up. Australian fashion label Camilla, known for its bold, audacious prints, has collaborated with Royal Delft to reimagine its legendary blue and white designs as a delicious collection of dresses and separates. camilla.com

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COLUMN

The STYLIST Waste not, want not in 2024, says Tiffanie Darke

CLOCKWISE FROM ABOVE: Matty Bovan SS24: upcycling with flair and panache; Been London makes its bag from deadstock leather; The R Collective creates reimagined garments from ‘defective’ shirts

PHOTOS: © REBECCA MAYNES

S

ometimes having less can feel like more. Let’s look at fashion.

Scarcity breeds creativity: if I banned you from shopping for the next six months you would be forced to reimagine your wardrobe. You would mend broken garments, perhaps have a few altered into something different, swap with your friends and start styling what you already have in new ways. (I know – I did this last year when I took a vow to buy only five new things).

But what if you were a designer and you decided you weren’t going to work with anything new? Just ask Matty Bovan, the King of Upcycling. Matty is not only a leading light of London Fashion Week (some hail him the true heir to Vivienne Westwood for his compelling designs of creative chaos), he is also a hero of the sustainability scene.

He works mostly with deadstock and upcycled fabrics and produces exclusively in York, where everything is hand-dyed, hand-sewed and handmade.

Why this matters is because of the 100 billion garments produced annually, up to 30 percent may never be sold – one shirt factory in China reveals its 0.01 perfect defect rate leads to 50,000 defective shirts annually. What to do with all these wonky shirts? The R Collective, an offshoot of circular fashion charity Redress has ideas: it gives them to upcoming design talent who excel at designing with less.

Juliana Garcia Bello recently created a limited line of dresses, pinafores and oversized shirting from just £44. The thrill of the design is not just in its inherent beauty (and the pieces are real one offs) but the story behind it.

British accessories brand Been London also makes a virtue of designing with deadstock, estimating 15 percent of the world’s textile production goes to waste. Using nappa leather donated by an Italian factory that makes for luxury brands, Been has just released a 20 piece capsule including the new Lowell (£250) and Noel (£220) bags. Its bags are handcrafted in East London with a Scandinavian design aesthetic that allows you to take them anywhere, anytime. Since launching in 2018, Been has diverted nearly 3,000kg of waste from landfill, by perfecting the art of designing around waste material.

As Christina Dean of Redress says, ‘Factories are awash with redundant materials – there is a wall of waste edging its way out of warehouses and we need to find a solution for it.’ While Matty Bovan, The R Collective and Been London are not making much impact in terms of volume, they do in terms of proving what can be done with waste – with a little imagination. n

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STYLE | News

The

EDIT Mariella Tandy has the latest style news

SUMMER SKIN Transform tired winter skin

If your style resolution for 2024 is to elevate your wardrobe, then Varana is the new name for your radar. The Bangalore-based brand celebrates Indian craftsmanship and material savoir-faire. Its pieces are made from the finest natural materials like silk, cotton, cashmere and wool, and feature one-of-a-kind weaving, printing and dyeing techniques that date back thousands of years. Your wardrobe just grew up. varana.com

SLIP INTO COMFORT

DIVE IN

1 Ilia The Base Face Milk, £58. iliabeauty.com 1 Votary Super Bright Eye Gel, £65. votary.co.uk 1 Mecca Cosmetica Lip De-Luscious, £20. meccacosmetica.com

It may not be quite sandal season yet, but never fear: Ancient Greek Sandals has just launched its new sheepskin collection, which features three cosy soft leather slip-ons lined with shearling. The Vasilitsa, £305, ancient-greek-sandals.com

The swimwear everyone will be slipping into this summer? Meet Kikki-G, the female-owned luxury bikini brand made – ingeniously – from castor oil, rather than petrochemicals. Inspired by and designed in balmy, bougie St Barths, and made in Italy, the pieces are understated and chic, with stylish timeless cuts. Bikini set, £270. kikki-g.com

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SOFTLY DOES IT

CECE JEWELLERY Dragon & Star pendant, from £1,950. cecejewellery.com

Balletcore is here to stay.

Dreamily soft cashmere brand Madeleine Thompson has teamed up with actress-poet Greta Bellamacina to create a capsule inspired by the worlds of cinema and ballet, with a nod to the late 1960s, too.

The collection features heart details, cashmere headbands, a Catherine Deneuve-inspired mini-dress and a beautifully crafted wraparound ballet cardigan. From £78. madeleine-thompson.com

MONTBLANC A Journey Among Dragons The Hovering Dragon LE 8 fountain pen, £POA. montblanc.com

ON THE RADAR Gifts to celebrate Lunar New Year

THE JET SET

TAG HEUER Carrera Chronograph ‘The Year of the Dragon’, £19,650. tagheuer.com

MULBERRY X MIRA MIKATI Mini Antony Tassels, £575. mulberry.com

VISTA ALEGRE Crystal golden dragon whisky decanter, £599. harrods.com

LAURA MERCIER Setting powder & puff set, £34. harrods.com

A tribute to the colourful exteriors of the Louis Vuitton City Guides, which this year mark their 25th anniversary, Louis Vuitton has reimagined its iconic trunks in seven bright and beautiful hues.

Are you packed? £POA, louisvuitton.com

SHOP ’TIL YOU DROP

The Peninsula was one of London’s biggest openings in 2023. Now, the luxury hotel has teamed up with Asprey London to host one of its boutiques. Featuring a generous corner window overlooking Hyde Park Corner, the boutique offers 2,293 sq/ft of retail space, designed by modern luxury design agency Storey Studio.

The shop will display Asprey’s beautiful creations, including this exclusive sapphire crystal tiger decanter, £5,750. peninsula.com; asprey.com

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STYLE | Great British Brands PACK IT IN

Mulberry has done it again – introduced three soon-to-be cult bags to its range.

The Clovelly family features a structural, spacious tote (perfect for smartening up your everyday schlep), a cute mini version of the same, and a modern-yettimeless crossbody that’s ideal for the weekend. From £750. mulberry.com

SINK INTO SPRING

Best of British

All the latest news from your favourite homegrown luxury brands. By Amy Wakeham

Shake up your bedding for warmer days to come with India Hicks’s dreamy new collection for Heirlooms Linens. The humanitarian, designer, author and entrepreneur brought a touch of her life in the Bahamas to the ‘Warm Harbour’ range, with prints inspired by the island – spot shells, spider lilies and Caribbean sunsets. From £35. heirlooms-linens.com

THINK PINK

Pink diamonds could soon be no more – thanks to the closing of the Argyle mine in Western Australia in 2020, which supplied 90 percent of the gems globally. Which makes Boodles’ latest collection, Pink Be Boodles, a very savvy investment indeed – they’re now 100 times more valuable that their white counterparts. ‘They are pieces of art, like a Picasso,’ explains Boodles’ Jody Wainwright. £POA, boodles.com

RAMP UP THE ROMANCE

With V-Day on the horizon, forget the boring M&S meal for two and corner shop roses.

Go all-out with PoB Hotel’s wonderfully romantic Valentine’s escapes, from a Scottish cruise on floating hotel Fingal, to a spoiling spa break at The Elms in Worcestershire – couple’s massage non-negotiable. pobhotels.com/specialoffers

PHOTOS: © BRITTAN GOETZ

BLUE MOOD

New denim without the guilt? Sign us up. Bamford and E.L.V. Denim have the answer, with their new three-piece collaboration featuring 100 percent upcycled denim, created using over 20 panels of material sourced, colour matched and cut by hand to create beautiful shades of blue. The capsule features a mid-blue skirt, jacket and high-waisted kick-flares. Just the thing for a spring refresh. Jeans, £300. bamford.com

28 | COUNTRYANDTOWNHOUSE.COM | January /February 2024

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2024 RACEDAYS

NOW ON SALE A PLAYGROUND FOR THE ELEGANT, THE EXUBERANT AND THE EXTRAORDINARY, THERE’S AN OCCASION AT ASCOT FOR ALL TO ENJOY. BE PART OF IT.

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21ST DECEMBER HOWDEN CHRISTMAS FAMILY RACEDAY

09/01/2024 19:52 11/01/2024 10:02

STYLE | Wardrobe

MAKE AN ESCAPE

Whether sun or snow, inject some colour into your next trip away, says Mariella Tandy

PRELOVED

INVEST

OMNEQUE 1950s necklace, £105. omneque.com

LONDON VELVET Washbag, £465. londonvelvet.co.uk

GUCCI @ HEWI Blue sequin planet skirt, £895. hardlyeverwornit.com

JOHANNA ORTIZ Net sustain dress, £600. netaporter.com

LONGCHAMP Clogs, £455. longchamp.com

RENT CHRISTIAN DIOR @ 4ELEMENT Necklace, rent from £155.

4element.co.uk

MOON BOOTS @ BY ROTATION Rent from £3. byrotation.com

DASKA @ MWHQ Cordelia dress, £100. mywardrobehq.com

PRADA @ COCOON CLUB Bag, rent from £19. cocoon.club

SHOREDITCH SKI CLUB @ VESTIAIRE COLLECTIVE Sofie bomber jacket, £344.54. vestiairecollective.com

PUCCI X FUSALP Fusalp has teamed up with renowned Florentine fashion house Pucci for a colourful collection that looks fresh for the pistes. fusalp.com

SIR @ RITES Armel dress, rent from £59. rites.co

ERIN SNOW @ BLANQO Ski jacket, rent from £79. blanqo.co.uk

ROKIT Jumper, £88. rockit.co.uk

CELINE @ RELUXE Bag, £625. reluxe.com

LOVESHACKFANCY X BOGNER Farina ski jacket $750; Ireen ski trousers, $590. loveshackfancy.com

CELINE @ HURR Ski goggles, rent from £58. hurrcollective.com

30 | COUNTRYANDTOWNHOUSE.COM | January /February 2024

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THE HOME OF COUNTRY CLOTHING SCOTLAND AT ITS VERY BEST

To pre-order a copy of our new Spring Summer catalogue please call 01796 483236 or visit

WWW.HOUSEOFBRUAR.COM

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STYLE | Jewellery WATCH THIS

ALL AT SEA The new Atlantis collection from Minka pays homage to the treasures of the sea and the purity of crystal-clear waters, showcasing aquatichued gemstones and shimmering diamonds set in 18ct gold. From £975. minkajewels.com

The Magpie

Christopher Ward has made history by becoming the first British watch brand to win at the Grand Prix d’Horlogerie de Genève – known as the ‘Oscars of the watch world’. The brand’s C1 Bel Canto was named winner of the ‘Petite Aiguille’ category, which goes to affordable watches between £3,630 and £7,260.

The striking model features an open-work dial, displaying a clever ‘Sonnerie au Passage’ complication that strikes each hour. Pre-order at christopherward.com

V-DAY TREATS

Mariella Tandy has all the latest jewellery news

Cupid couldn’t choose better

ROARING TWENTIES

Silversmith Giovanni Raspini was inspired by Art Deco for his new limited-edition Babylon collection: earrings, a ring and a necklace. ‘I’ve always been fascinated by the movement,’ he says.

‘The creative energy of those years seemed almost uncontainable: a new Babylon of expression, no less.’ From £390. giovanniraspini.com

PUT YOUR STAMP ON IT

Rachel Boston’s new Chunky Charm collection blends sleek 18ct gold bezel settings and Art Deco inspired diamond cuts. They are designed to be worn on a chain or slipped onto hoop earrings. From £3,250. rachelboston.co.uk

1 DAVID HARBER X ANNOUSHKA 18ct gold and diamond armillary charm, £6,900. annoushka.com 2 HAMILTON & INCHES Honos Malachite and diamond pendant, £3,750, and gold chain, £1,200. hamiltonandinches.com 3 MATILDE Gold and diamond Jupiter rings, £2,910 a pair. matildejewellery.com 4 OTIUMBERG Gold vermeil heart earrings, £225. otiumberg.com

PHOTOS: © AMELIA PEMBERTON

CHARM SCHOOL

The hugely popular HW Logo Collection from Harry Winston has two new additions: an elegant solitaire diamond pendant and complementing ear studs, featuring the iconic initials, ‘H’ and ‘W’. A subtle splash of quiet luxury. £POA, harrywinston.com

32 | COUNTRYANDTOWNHOUSE.COM | January /February 2024

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Choosing the perfect villa for your important holiday is not easy, which is why we are here to help at every step, from our Villa Specialists in the UK to our Destination Experts on hand in location. And with 50 years of experience, we know what makes the perfect villa holiday.

cvvillas.com / 020 3991 2633

Greece / Italy / Spain / Portugal / Croatia / France / Morocco / Caribbean / Turkey / Sri Lanka

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17/01/2024 14:40

STYLE | Men’s SUSTAINABALE SOLUTIONS

Oliver Spencer has launched major sustainability initiative Repurpose – a 360-degree circularity solution to reimagine garments and their constituent textiles. Customers can send their unused clothes back to be upcycled, reused and repurposed, and they’ll receive a voucher in return. The ultimate goal is to reduce the brand and customers’ carbon footprints, and to foster more sustainable shopping behaviours. oliverspencer.co.uk

WEAR TRANSPARENT

Well Groomed Slip into New Year’s style, says Matt Thomas

BEST FOOT FORWARD

Stride forth with purpose into the New Year

A NEW REGIME

Our pick of pamperers and pick-me-ups

BAG IT UP

Lightweight, durable, waterproof and with a strap to carry it as a ‘manbag’ when it’s not on your bike. What’s not to love? Back Roller Classic panniers, £150. ortlieb.com

Isto is a new Portuguese menswear label with transparency and responsible clothing at its core. Every stage of production from ethical sourcing to finishing has been considered across a seasonless range of highly wearable workwear and chilled classics. isto.pt

SHOES FOR REFUGEES

Zlin is the newest model from Edward Green.

Named after the Czech hometown of the shoe’s designer, John Hlustik, 15 percent of revenue will be donated to the Disasters Emergency Committee’s Fund for Ukrainian refugees. £1,350, edwardgreen.com

PENELOPE CHILVERS x SUJAN Smoking Slippers, £289. penelopechilvers.com

CROCKETT & JONES The Yale shoes, £795. crockettandjones.com

1 HIBERNICIS Seaweed extract bath and shower gel, £39. hibernicis.com 2 GOLDFIELD & BANKS Silky Woods Elixir, £215. harrods.com 3 CELLCOSMET Hand Cream, £131. fenwick.co.uk

FAIRFAX & FAVOR Holbourne trainers, £145. fairfaxandfavor.com

CQP SAXUM shearling boots, £525. c-qp.com

4 THE GREY Face and body bar, £29. thegreymensskincare.com

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And the WINNERS are...

Twenty-four brilliant brands that won at the Country & Town House Sustainability Awards

A

THE JUDGING PANEL

s the first glossy in the world to attain B Corp certification, Country & Town House takes sustainability seriously.

Advocating for the brands that do better, the products that are kind to the planet, and the people who are leaders of change, we also understand that sustainability must be desirable, playful and fun. This is why we decided to launch our Sustainability Awards, in conjunction with Journey to Zero, our annual live event, sponsored by Skydiamond, that explores why luxury and sustainability must go hand in glove. Yes, companies should consider their carbon footprints, eliminate waste and use materials that are long-lasting and sustainably sourced, but we are also looking for the brands and products with magic. Whether through design, story telling, beauty or desirability, we have to be able to connect with them on a deeper level.

Avril Groom: Jewellery and watches editor and journalist Arizona Muse: Model, activist and founder of DIRT charity Bandi Manzini: Brand specialist Carole Annett: C&TH Interiors Editor Lisa Grainger: C&TH Sustainability Editor Lucy Cleland: C&TH Editorial Director Lucy Johnson: Sustainability consultant and founder of Green Salon Nathalie Eleni: C&TH Beauty Director Thomasina Miers: Chef and campaigner Thomas Bourne: Founder of Greenheart consultancy Juliet Fallowfield: PR and communications expert

Fashion Influencer

Fashion Journalist

Fashion Brand

WINNER: LILY COLE

WINNER: TIFFANIE DARKE

WINNER: STELLA McCARTNEY

WINNER: AMY POWNEY, MOTHER OF PEARL

Supermodel Lily has championed environmentalism for a long time and is the founder of Impossible, a collective of changemakers.

The former editor of Sunday Times Style launched her newsletter It’s Not Sustainable in Sept 2022, and has been leading the conversation ever since.

The brand’s commitment to doing things better and showing how the industry can change is an inspiration to all – and other brands follow in its wake.

Amy is a designer who creates beautiful garments that are organic, traceable, socially responsible, and considerate of animal welfare.

PHOTOS: © RAINY WAGNER

SUSTAINABILITY AWARDS 2024

Fashion Designer

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Fashion Rental Site

Preloved Site

Accessory Brand

WINNER: CERCLE

WINNER: VESTIAIRE COLLECTIVE

WINNER: ELVIS & KRESSE

WINNER: VIVOBAREFOOT

Cercle’s founder, Coco Baraer Panazza, fashion lover, has curated a collection of entirely unique and treasured pieces.

Vestiaire Collective has millions of users worldwide and a huge inventory of preloved luxury items .

Transforming reclaimed materials into beautiful accessories, and donating half its profits back to charity.

A trailblazer in regenerative business, valuing economic, environmental, and social capital, as well as equality.

Jewellery Brand

Beauty Influencer, sponsored

by Molton Brown

Vegan Cosmetics Brand

Cruelty-Free Cosmetics Brand

WINNER: MILK MAKEUP

WINNER: CHANTECAILLE

WINNER: JESSICA DEFINO

Jessica’s newsletter The Unpublishable challenges its reader to think again about their relationship with beauty.

The range is completely free from harmful ingredients including plastic microbes, parabens, sulphates and others nasties.

Since it was founded 25 years ago, it has supported 34 philanthropy collections and donated more than $3 million to conservation projects.

Organic Beauty Brand, sponsored by Yves Delorme

Perfume Brand

Refillable Beauty Brand

Plastic-Free Beauty Brand

WINNER: FFERN

WINNER: FAITH IN NATURE

WINNER: SBTRCT

WINNER: NEAL’S YARD REMEDIES

Based in Somerset, Ffern has a truly sustainable ethos, only crafting the bottles of scent that have been ordered on its ledger system.

Founded by the pioneering Rivka Rose in 1974, with the aim of reconnecting people with the natural world. Its refill stations are based around the UK.

A brilliant new entry into the plasticfree beauty world with its solid-state products that don’t compromise on efficacy.

Candle/Home Fragrance Brand

Cleaning Brand

Florist

Sustainable Chef

WINNER: SEEP

WINNER: BLOOM & WILD

WINNER: SKYE GYNGELL

WINNER: RACHEL VOSPER

Zero plastic, high-quality, natural tools helping to shift the homecleaning industry into being plasticfree, circular and compostable.

A carbon-neutral company that sources its flowers and plants from environmentally aware growers, and uses recyclable packaging.

Skye’s sourcing is impeccable and she is focused on eliminating single-use plastic and reducing food waste from her restaurant Spring.

Country Restaurant, sponsored by Polestar

Regenerative Food Brand

Regenerative/Biodynamic Farm

WINNER: WILDFARMED

WINNER: RIVERFORD

WINNER: THE BULL INN

Changing the way we grow our crops, using a regenerative method, prioritising soil health and biodiversity to provide nutrient-dense food.

A pioneer in the organic food box movement, Riverford has led the way with its regenerative agriculture, shining a light for other farms.

WINNER: 886 BY THE ROYAL MINT

One of the most innovative companies in the UK, using repurposed and recycled metals for jewellery-making, all of which is hallmarked.

A trailblazer in organic body and skincare for over 40 years, always advocating for nature first.

PHOTOS: © RAINY WAGNER

Hand-poured candles and home fragrances, using the finest natural and sustainably sourced ingredients.

London Restaurant WINNER: SILO

Helmed by Douglas McMaster, Silo applies circular thinking, upcycling and on-site farming to close the loop on its food production.

Bringing a holistic sustainable ethos to this magical Devon pub, in the most inventive ways.

Footwear Brand

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STYLE | Social Scene

Rachel Donald

Arizona Muse and Monica Mills

Phoebe Tickell

Dale Vince

Dominique Palmer

Barnabas Kindersley

Ruth Rands

Rosanna Falconer

Net Gains

Anabel Kindersley

Hosted by C&TH and Skydiamond, Journey to Zero put the spotlight firmly on sustainability

Zeenah Shah and Izzy Manuel

W

hat do you get when you put environmental journalists, moral imaginationists, climate activists, brand leaders and sustainability influencers in the same room? An energy that is palpable, exciting, inspiring – and focused, that’s what. Journey to Zero raises the roof when it comes to how we all need to believe in doing things differently – for the sake of our planet and ourselves. Through togetherness, sharing our thoughts, ideas, our triumphs, our failures, our fears, and our learnings, we can tell new stories that can displace the old ones. Sponsored by Skydiamond, a company that literally takes carbon from the sky and transforms it into diamonds, this year we gathered in the sky at Galvin at Windows, and enjoyed a vigorous panel talk on why luxury and fashion need to work harder in this space, hosted by Tiffanie Darke, as well as a riveting conversation between Dale Vince, founder of Ecotricity, and model Lily Cole, whose parting words were, ‘Don’t take no for an answer.’ When it comes to protecting our planet, we wholeheartedly agree.

Madeleine Macey Scott Wimsett

Lisa Grainger

Oliviya Nicole and Savina Nikolova

Kresse Wesling

Beatrice Descorps

Simona Valuckaite Clover Hogan

Claire O’Neill Jess Rogers

Jasmine Hemsley and Lily Cole

Tiffanie Darke Anna Cascarina and Hannah Beaumont-Laurencia

Liz Baillie, Lucy Cleland and Camilla Newman

Sarah Angold and Rachel Arthur

38 | COUNTRYANDTOWNHOUSE.COM | January /February 2024

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A hidden gem for art lovers

Join a community of artists, art lovers and art collectors with membership to the Keeper’s House.

With priority access to see and buy art, including one-of-a-kind and limited edition works by Royal Academicians, starting your art collection has never been easier.

Join today.

roy.ac/house

RA.indd 1

Cornelia Parker RA in the Academicians’ Room © courtesy of artist and Cristea Roberts Gallery, Photo © Sim Canetty-Clarke; Clare Woods RA in the Shenkman Bar © courtesy of artist and Cristea Roberts Gallery, Photo © David Parry; Ice Passage, 2019 by Barbara Rae RA in the Sir Hugh Casson Room, © The Artist, Photo © David Parry.

12/01/2024 09:46

drsebagh.com

Game Changer.

100%

AGREE SKIN IS REPAIRED*

100% agree that skin is preserved 95% agree that skin is hydrated 81% agree that skin is plumped *Clinical trial conducted by SGS, 10.2022

Dr Sebagh.indd 1

29/06/2023 17:42

HEALTH &

WELLBEING Dancing in the Rain

PHOTO: © ALOHA MAKAI, IMAGE FROM THE SOUL SANCTUARY

Soak up the transformational joy of free movement with Camilla Hewitt’s guide on p42.

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HEALTH & WELLBEING | Wellness

BODY & SOUL

Shake it off with some free movement, says Camilla Hewitt

I

f you’re not familiar with The Class, it’s a New York-based fitness phenomenon developed

by Taryn Toomey. I recently tried it and immediately understood why famous fans like Jennifer Aniston, Naomi Watts and Christy Turlington have hailed this cathartic full-body workout as transformational. Part exercise, part emotional release, it combines traditional repetitions (yes, burpees!) with free movement, and full-on shake-it-off moments, all to a soundtrack that stirs the soul (theclass.digital).

Emotional release is something so many of us associate with talking therapies, but Cat Meffan, Embodied Movement Instructor and founder of My Soul Sanctuary, describes free movement as ‘a way we can communicate without words’. We hold so much tension in our bodies, ‘free movement really allows you to tap out of your mind and let your body go wherever it wants to go. It allows you to connect with how you feel on a somatic level, rather than living up in the head, which is what we do in many other forms of movement’ (mysoulsanctuary.co).

For those who feel anxious about free movement, it doesn’t require any dance ability. Cat acknowledges,

Moving freely can be a cathartic experience, as well as releasing endorphins through exercise

‘so many people have a big resistance and are very triggered by needing to dance well’, but she describes free movement as ‘being raw and vulnerable, whatever it looks like – it doesn’t need to have a sequence or a particular rhythm; it just needs to feel right. One day, it might be stamping your feet, and on another day, you might want to sway gently or move more sensually.’ She also adds, ‘We associate free movement with joy and bliss, which is often how it feels, but it can also be a trauma release for rage, sadness, pain, and grief. It’s an opportunity to surrender and to let go.’

In my search for free movement classes in the UK, I also discovered Emma Marshall, founder of Movement is Medicine. Emma’s classes encourage you to find your own rhythm through a series of tapping, bouncing, shaking, and swaying. Emma has a slightly more scientific approach, explaining that tapping engages the parasympathetic nervous system and releases tension from myofascial tissue. She references the primal impulse of animals to shake to release tension, which got me thinking: free movement is something we all do instinctively; the next step is to do it more consciously (movementismedicine.uk). n

STEP UP Optimise your movement

An opportunity to experience Taryn’s unique teaching style against the backdrop of beautiful Ibiza. Inspired by the natural rhythm and light of the Spanish coast, Taryn will use movement, breath, and sound to balance the body, soothe the soul, and clear the mind, in a five-day immersive experience at beautiful Six Senses Ibiza.

BOOK IT: May 1-5, 2024, theclass.com/the-retreatment-ibiza2024

1 Prism² Lucid leggings, £95. prismlondon.com 2 Yogi Bare mat, £74.95. yogi-bare.co.uk 3 Beats Fit Pro earphones, £219.99. beatsbydre.com

PHOTOS: GETTY IMAGES

CHECK IN: THE CLASS RETREATMENT, SIX SENSES IBIZA

42 | COUNTRYANDTOWNHOUSE.COM | January /February 2024

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MAURITIUS Luxury beachfront holidays

DISCOVER PARADISE

Start planning your magical Mauritius holiday today.

Call 01483 445 633 or visit www.beachcombertours.uk

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09/01/2024 09:38

HEALTH & WELLBEING | Review

BODY Language Olivia Falcon is excited about the possibilities of exosomes

I

f like me, you keep a keen eye on what’s new and exciting in the world of beauty, you may have spied a slew of new exosome treatments and products, which promise to reverse the biological clock, creeping onto clinic treatment menus across the country.

Exosomes are tiny sack-like structures that contain a rich blend of growth factors, proteins, and other bioactive molecules that get released into the blood by many types of cells where they travel like couriers through the bloodstream helping intercell communication.

Recently, exosomes have been of great general interest in their role in cell biology and for their potential therapeutic and diagnostic applications, from scarring to anti-ageing. In essence, exosomes can stimulate your skin at a cellular level by activating cells to work optimally and act younger.

So far, so intriguing. However it’s important source to your exosomes from a reputable doctor. In South Korea, where the craze originally exploded, they are often sourced from human blood cells, usually donated by young women in their early twenties. Here in the UK and Europe, where human-derived ingredients are strictly banned, exosomes are mostly derived from plants’ stem cells (often from roses, which have a similar size and shape structure to human exosomes) and they can be applied topically but not injected.

Dr David Jack, one of my trusted, go-to doctors is leading the charge with his ExoTech Therapy (from £580, drdavidjack.com). During the treatment, a refrigerated rose exosome serum is applied and then a micro needling device is used on top to create microscopic channels in the skin allowing the exosomes to penetrate and work their magic.

This is repeated several times to press the serum into the skin and you can expect to be a little pink for a few hours after treatment. For best results, Dr Jack recommends around three treatments, spaced about two to four weeks apart and the real results of smoother, brighter skin is palpable around four weeks post treatment.

This soothing gel, created by superfacialist Joanne Evans, is perfect for post-tweakment skin. It features ingredients such as niacinamide and alpine mallow. It calms everything from laser burn to sunburn. Skin Matters Calming Gel, £65. skinmatters.co.uk

2

Topical creams work a treat too. I am currently addicted to Celltweet ASCEplus Exobalm (£240, evocyte.co.uk), which was originally created as post-procedure care for rapid healing of the skin to calm redness and irritation after laser and needling treatments. But I’ve noticed it works wonders on everyday skin, plumping out fine lines and wrinkles as well as reducing the intensity of pigmentation. It must be kept in the fridge as it comes with a live exosome pellet that you add into the pot of cream to keep the exosomes fresh.

Apply it morning and night for the kind of radiance that might make your friends jealous. n

FEELING FRESH SCRUB

Soup up your double cleanse with this performance-proven formula that contains sea fennel stem cells with hyaluronic, salicylic and azelaic acids to help brighten and calm the skin. The antidote to harsh London water, it also hydrates. Dr David Jack Supernova Cleanser, £45. drdavidjack.com

3

SHINE

Adem is a rising star on the London salon scene (check out his eponymous salon in Pimlico). The star ingredient in this is his specially sourced hazelnut oil that restores hair elasticity and banishes split ends. Adem Pure Hazelnut Hair Repairing Mask, £39. adem.london

4

SLEEP

Beef up your beauty sleep with this innovative overnight serum, with eight different types of hyaluronic acids and Icelandic moss cell extract which boosts cell metabolism and delivers refreshed, flawless skin by morning. ByNacht Hypercharged Glass Skin Serum, £270. bynacht.com

PHOTOS: UNSPLASH

1

SOOTHE

Exosomes are the new magic ingredient to know, offering smooth, glowing and radiant skin

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Beauty Dilemma | HEALTH & WELLBEING

Hooded EYES

CELLDERMA EyeLift, £67.92. cellderma.com

MZ SKIN Hydra-Bright Gold Eye Masks, £75 for 5. mzskin.com

CURRENTBODY Skin RF Radio Frequency Tightening Device, £299. currentbody.com

Nathalie Eleni lifts the lid on making the most of deep-set eyes

S

ome of the world’s most beautiful women, including Jennifer Anniston, Blake Lively and Selena Gomez, have hooded eyes. However, DR SEBAGH if you feel yours make you look tired De-Puff Eye or find make-up more challenging to apply, Treatment, £56. and you want to make the most of them, drsebagh.com here’s what you need to know.

What are hooded eyes? When the skin beneath the eyebrows touches the eyelashes – partially hooded is when there is very little space. Some people have this eye shape at birth, whilst some develop it through ageing. As we age, lack of collagen production affects the already thin and delicate eye area, causing the skin to sag onto the lash line.

Are there any quick beauty hacks? If your liquid liner tends to smudge, apply it to the lash line or as a tight line in the rim of the upper lashes to give a definition that won’t spread across your eyelids. A white/cream kohl pencil applied to the waterline instantly makes eyes look bigger and brighter, as does a cream or gold highlight in the inner corners. Lash extensions or strip lashes can work wonders – get a shape with the longest lashes in the centre and tapering out to the inner and outer corners to give your eyes a much more ‘open’ look.

Flip your under-eye patches and apply over your lids instead.

Will eye cream or gel help? Although an eye cream won’t remove excess skin, Dr Dev Patel, Aesthetic Doctor and Founder of CellDerma Skincare, says, ‘Waking up the eye area to help with dark circles, puffiness, and hydration with a targeted eye product will give a more refreshed and brighter look.’ He suggests a product that’s anti-inflammatory and anti-allergic, like CellDerma EyeLift, which helps to soothe the area and reduce puffiness.

Can micro-current radio frequency help? Debbie Thomas, advanced skin and laser specialist, says, ‘Overall heaviness normally comes from the addition of the brow itself dropping down, due to underlining muscles losing lifting tension.’

Technology can strengthen these muscles, making them stronger and shorter to help lift the brows. FaceStim, a new ‘workout’ for muscles, uses electrostimulation powered by radio frequency (from £275. dthomas.com). For home use, CurrentBody has some fantastic technology that’s easy to fit into your regime.

PHOTOS: SHUTTERSTOCK

Is there such a thing as a non-surgical eye lift?

OMOROVICZA Rose quartz roller, £55. fenwick.co.uk

Dr Marwa Ali, Aesthetic Doctor at The Wellness Clinic Harrods, recommends a chemical brow lift, which uses Botox to relax the depressor muscle to lift and open the eye. This specialist procedure should only done by a medically trained and certified practitioner (from £250, harrods.com). Also available is Dr Haus’s eye rejuvenating treatment using ultherapy, which uses micro-focused ultrasound energy to stimulate the production of new collagen and elastin, and to lift, sculpt and tighten the skin. (£POA, drhausdermatology.com) n

PEEP CLUB Heated Eye Wand, £75. victoriahealth.com

Jennifer Anniston has hooded eyes – and they’re one of her most striking features

IRAYE Eye Revive Cream, £82. irayeskincare.com

OSKIA Eye Wonder Nutri-Active Eye Serum, £58. oskiaskincare.com

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MIRROR

The beauty industry may be flourishing, but Jessica DeFino is determined to show its ugly side – while challenging us to reevaluate our own relationship with it, finds Amy Wakeham

R

ight now, our appetite for beauty is unstoppable. The industry is worth more than it has ever done before and, according to data from McKinsey, it’s predicted to grow to approximately $580 billion by 2027, up from $430 billion in 2022. Meanwhile, cosmetic procedures rose by 102 percent in the UK between 2021 and 2022; TikTok’s #beauty hashtag has 264 billion views; and, scarily, over Christmas 2023 there were anecdotes aplenty about teens and tweens asking for cult anti-aging skincare brands like Drunk Elephant in their stockings.

From the small screens in our pockets to big advertising billboards, every generation is now surrounded by messages pushing consumable beauty: more treatments, more tweakments, more products in endless little plastic bottles. And, as the numbers demonstrate, we’re buying it.

But one person who isn’t is Jessica DeFino, the American beauty reporter who’s been called ‘the woman the beauty industry fears the most’.

Her Substack newsletter, The Unpublishable, has 92,000 subscribers, who each avidly read her missives on things like the politics of appearance

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PHOTOS: GETTY IMAGES; © RAINY WAGNER

Black

PHOTOS: GETTY IMAGES; © RAINY WAGNER

Interview | HEALTH & WELLBEING in the Barbie movie; why Madonna’s plastic surgery is not as subversive as she claims; and how the biggest beauty retailers like Amazon and Walmart donate to US anti-abortion campaigns.

Her stance is intellectual and her research rigorous, and she writes compellingly about the mass marketing manipulations, pseudoscience and consumerism that have become endemic to the beauty industry. She’s also The Guardian’s new beauty agony aunt, with a column called Ask Ugly, and won the prize for Best Beauty Influencer at the inaugural C&TH Sustainability Awards last autumn.

Jessica’s journey to becoming a renegade beauty reporter began in the pageant world, when she started competing aged only five or six. ‘I learned those lessons of beauty really young… that it’s a power hierarchy and it’s important to win. I loved the talent portion of the pageant, which for me was singing, but I internalised that, to do the thing you love, first you have to be beautiful. And I carried that through my entire career trajectory.’

This found her working in 2015 as an assistant editor for the KardashianJenner apps, which at that point were taking the digital world by storm.

‘Suddenly, I was on the receiving end of all these beauty products.

I became obsessed,’ she remembers.

‘After about a year of this and of seeing the behind-the-scenes of how beauty standards – through the KardashianJenners – are manufactured, massproduced and sold to people, I started really questioning my relationship to beauty and why I wanted to be a part of this industry. And then I started working on pivoting into beauty reporting to try and expose some of the not so beautiful things that I had been seeing.’

At the same time, she was struggling with dermatitis, which changed her own personal relationship to beauty. ‘The skin was peeling off my face. I couldn’t wash my face. I couldn’t put on makeup. I still had to go to work. And I just felt like so completely worthless,’ she remembers. ‘But then I started examining it – if I don’t feel beautiful, why do I feel worthless? Had I not built up anything else in my life that I can care about or value? And so a crisis of the skin turned into a crisis of the soul and the self, and really got me to start unpairing my self-worth from my appearance.’

She found it difficult to get her reporting published in traditional media outlets – reliant on advertisers – which led to her setting up her newsletter. ‘I don’t think what I’m saying about beauty or consumerism is anything groundbreaking, it’s simply the truth,’ she says. ‘It’s just that the beauty media has been so corrupted for so long, that it’s hard to articulate the truth. Not to be hyperbolic, but we’ve just been fed so many lies for a really long time.’

She gets a lot of criticism, too. People get very defensive when you start talking about the beauty industry in a negative way, I observe. They take it personally. ‘So much of our identity is tied up in the products that we use, and the ways that we use them,’ explains Jessica. ‘And the rituals we develop, using these products – it becomes an almost religious experience, like an experience of self-discovery. And the beauty industry is so embedded with our concept of the self that to critique the industry feels like a critique of the self.’

Her end goal with her work is to get people to view the industry with a more critical eye. ‘I’d love to get to a point where we understand beauty culture the way we understand diet culture now. I feel there’s been so much great work deconstructing diet culture… I’d like to see people divest from beauty culture and question it, like they have with diet culture.’

Part of that means being more thoughtful about purchasing the products pushed into (and onto) our faces every day, which is something that would also help cut our individual carbon footprints. Jessica advises starting to divest from buying so much skincare.

‘Human skin is actually incredible. It’s capable of doing so much. If you give it the time and space to reregulate, it self-cleanses, self-moisturises, self-heals. The products that we actually need to support skin function are very few.’

She also recommends picking a couple of causes – whether that’s reducing plastic waste, cutting carbon emissions or preventing animal cruelty – and focusing on those, as it’s really hard to find them all in one brand.

Jessica encourages her readers to think a bit deeper ‘I think if everybody focused on about beauty culture the two to three things that they and consumption really care about personally, and went about creating their beauty routines in that way, we could create a more sustainable industry with people who truly care about what they’re buying and are supporting.’

Jessica isn’t the only one trying to offer a more critical view of beauty. Other writers, like Anita Bhagwandas, whose book Ugly: Giving Us Back Our Beauty Standards came out last year, are offering a more critical approach, while current exhibition The Cult of Beauty at the Wellcome Collection, which traces our obsession with beauty across the world and over centuries, often has queues out the door. Plus, 2023 was the year that saw ‘deinfluencing’ become a social media trend; namely, people telling their followers what not to buy. All of which tells us that, despite the engorged industry, there is an appetite out there for a more nuanced relationship between us and beauty.

Ultimately, Jessica doesn’t hate beauty – only the industry built up around it. ‘I think beauty as a concept – true beauty, real beauty – has the power to be a political tool, and to be something that is empowering, to be a force for self expression. In order for it to be those things, we have to critique all the ways it’s being called that and actually doing something else, like the majority of the way industrialised beauty is used today as a form of control, complacency or consumerism.’

She continues: ‘I think beauty is inherently radical.

In order to restore it to its radical roots, we have to deconstruct how it has been commodified and sold to us and framed as something that you can buy in a bottle when it’s really this spiritual, radical force that we crave as human beings. I think it is essential to the project of human flourishing. And in order to get back to that radical nature of beauty, we have to fight the boring thing that beauty has become, which is just something mass produced and pumped into a bottle. That’s so boring. That’s not beauty.’ n January /February 2024 | COUNTRYANDTOWNHOUSE.COM | 47

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SPA Trek

New year, new you? Let one of the world’s oldest spa hotels, Grand Resort Bad Ragaz, give you a helping hand, says Lucy Cleland

‘E

verything is going to be alright,’ blazes out Brit artist Martin Creed’s neon art work from its vantage place atop the stately, elegant Grand Resort Bad Ragaz, in the beautiful canton of St Gallen, Switzerland. Incongruous? Maybe, but the Schmidheinys, fourth generation majority shareholders of one of the world’s oldest – and considered Switzerland’s finest – spa hotels, are art fiends. Sculptures, such as Xavier Mascaro’s colossal iron The Guardians, are everywhere (there’s a 90-minute trail to follow) and the resort hosts the Swiss Triennial of Sculpture – Bad RagARTz – every three years.

But I’m not here for the art, gorgeous though it is.

I’m here for the water and the wellness. Because through the bowels, pipes, fountains, showers, taps and pools of much of this vast resort flows the elixir of natural thermal water – served up at a perfect 36.5 degrees. And with it, its anti-inflammatory, antioxidant, detoxifying, immunesystem boosting, microbiome-balancing, mineral-packed healing benefits.

The source of this wonder water was discovered four kilometres away up the Tamina Gorge (you can walk there in spring and summer) by hunters from the nearby Pfäfers Benedictine monastery, but it was in 1840 that pipes were constructed to carry the water down to Ragaz.

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Wellness | HEALTH & WELLBEING

within the resort – each attracting a different clientele), built by architect Bernhard Simon, who made a deal with the town that he could use the thermal waters in his hotel as long as he built a public bath – the famous Tamina Therme and a public watering hole, and it is here that I’m staying, my spacious golden-hued suite looking out to snow-sprinkled mountains swirling with clouds and trees resplendent in their autumnal glory.

Back to Martin Creed’s motto, I know everything is going to be alright because here resides a crack team of doctors, therapists and practitioners. So well-known are the first-class facilities, in fact, that football teams such as Bayern Munich take camps here; the doctors look after the Swiss Olympic Team and Saudi sheiks and princes fly in incognito and hide away in the private spa suites – with direct access to the facilities without having to mix with the hoi polloi.

For mere mortals like me, there are the scientifically backed NEWYOU wellness programmes, which gently coach guests to bring sustainable wellbeing practices into their everyday lives – not for them a strict regime of broth and chewing on stale bread for a week to send you home ten pounds lighter, only to pile it all on again. Its philosophy is all about education and pragmatism; it wants you to understand and take control of the benefits of looking after yourself – through fitness, nutrition and mental wellness – so that you are able to carry on back home.

Getting a measure of your baseline health with blood tests, examinations and an accurate reading of your metabolism (get ready to drive up your heart rate on a static bike) is where it all starts.

Then programmes are really geared to what you bring to the table.

Are you super stressed? Do you worry about your gut health? (The thoroughly knowledgeable nutritionist, Helena Kistler, will help you with that.) Do you just want some R’n’R? Regimes are implemented through nutrition, exercise, mental recovery and rest. Included is a session with the phenomenal, no BS mental trainer Tina Dyck –

Whether you want to lose weight, tackle ongoing health problems or approach mental ill health, the Grand Resort Bad Ragaz offers realistic and sustainable methods to transform you inside and out

she’ll read you and your issues like the most open of books and has transformational results – she works with the Olympic team too, bringing mental focus and clarity to their ambition.

The sports coaching is integral to the NEWYOU approach; your daily PT sessions are aligned to what your regime is at home – whether you are a gym bunny, a runner, a yogi or none of the above, the team works to give you actionable exercises you won’t ditch a week later because it’s unsustainable. All exercises they suggest are captured on an app that you can easily use back home – you can even book in online lessons with the team to keep yourself really motivated.

But wellness isn’t just doctors in white coats; it’s hiking on vertiginous mountain trails or meandering through alpine meadows in Heidiland (yes Joanna Spyri’s children’s classic was set here and gave the area its name); it’s saunas, steams, tennis and golf; it’s brilliantly accomplished dishes served up by Sven Wassmer, pupil of Nuno Mendes, who presides over Verve by Sven, one of seven restaurants (which share between them six Michelin stars).

The NEWYOU method is thankfully no starvation regime.

Your balanced nutrition is served up as the perfect confection of vegetables, proteins, carbs and fats expertly alchemised into dishes of wonder: delicately sautéed venison escalope with earthy mushrooms, wild cream sauce and comforting red cabbage or roasted pikeperch fillet (skin always crispy) with braised fennel and a delicate bouillabaisse mousse.

And because it’s not just a medi-spa, Grand Resort Bad Ragaz is humming with life – children and dogs roam the restaurant, laughter mingles with the tinkling of glasses, family members share meals with long-term patients in recovery. Life abounds, rather than being shut off in a clinic-like setting where guests in white robes disappear like ghosts come evening time. This is wellness with heart, and water, of course.

BOOK IT: From approx £4,582 pp (exc. accommodation), for a minimum of three nights. resortragaz.ch

Lucy’s return flights had a carbon footprint of approx.

114kg of CO2e. (ecollectivecarbon.com) n January /February 2024 | COUNTRYANDTOWNHOUSE.COM | 49

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16/01/2024 10:55 17/01/2024 11:03

CULTURE Never Forget

PHOTOS: THEATRE RÉ

Theatre Ré’s award-winning and heartstopping Nature Of Forgetting returns for a UK tour with a new cast. Devised in collaboration with leading Alzheimer researchers, the production is a sensitive exploration of a life as told through memory – and what happens when recollection begins to fade. A must see.

All tour dates and venues at theatrere.co.uk

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CULTURE | What’s On

THE CULTURAL CALENDAR

Fantastic ways to fill up your 2024 diary. By Tessa Dunthorne

IN THE NIGHT GARDEN YEAR OF THE DRAGON

See in the Lunar New Year with the street parades along Shaftesbury Avenue and into Chinatown. It’s the Year of the Dragon – representing a fiery annum in terms of health, power and nobility. Discover our pick of roarsome gifts on p27, too. Sat 10 Feb, chinatown.co.uk

Madagascar – within the M25? Kew Gardens is opening the gates to its annual orchid festival a bit later this February with after-hours access.

It’s not all just gorgeous greenery, either. Expect science talks, cooking demos, and a boogie to a joyful Malagasy band. 9-24 Feb, kew.org

ROYALLY GOOD MUSICAL

Dance the night away with the King of Siam.

Call the Midwife’s Helen George reprises the lead role of Anna in the West End arrival of the romantic Rodgers & Hammerstein musical. Until 2 March, nederlander.co.uk

ROUGE FOR THE OPERA

Margaret Atwood’s acclaimed feminist novel The Handmaid’s Tale is revived in its operatic form for the West End, featuring the wonderful Juliet Stevenson (theatre creds include: The Doctor, Mary Stuart, Hamlet) in a non-singing role.

It’s just the fix you need while you wait for the TV adaptation to return for its final season in late 2024. 1-15 Feb, eno.org

JUMP AROUND

Inspired by our cover shoot? Jumpstart your year with Ascot’s Betfair Ascot Chase Raceday – and you'll get to see Kauto Star, Monet’s Garden and Cue Card in action. Gates open 10:45am, 17 Feb. ascot.com

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PHOTOS: © OLIVER ROSSER; © ARGYLLE PHOTO; UNSPLASH; PEXELS

Start (or continue) building an impressive home-gallery collection. London Art Fair gathers emerging and established artists from the very best modern and contemporary galleries around the world. Perhaps you’ll find a masterpiece.

17-21 Jan, londonartfair.co.uk

PHOTOS: GETTY IMAGES; © MARK COCKSEDGE; © NICKY HAMILTON

WALL GAMES

Don't settle for less this Valentine's Day

The Critical LIST

Watch, read, listen

David Nicholls’ One Day has been adapted for a film before, but is now being turned into a series for Netflix, starring Ambika Mod (This Is Going To Hurt) and Leo Woodall (The White Lotus) as the starcrossed leads. Out 8 Feb

TV

THE C&TH GUIDE TO…

VALENTINE’S DAY Whether you’re loved up, single and fabulous, or on the hunt for a beau, this is your guide to all things romance

S PHOTOS: © OLIVER ROSSER; © ARGYLLE PHOTO; UNSPLASH; PEXELS

PHOTOS: GETTY IMAGES; © MARK COCKSEDGE; © NICKY HAMILTON

t Valentine’s Day invariably creeps up on us year after year – but instead of dreading it, whatever your relationship status, why not go full Cupid and try to make it as special as possible for you and yours?

SINGLE AND FABULOUS Celebrate self and all that’s important: wellness hub East of Eden is hosting a self-love mini-retreat involving pilates, journalling, tea and cake, plus a sound-bath (20 Feb, eastofeden.uk). Or take yourself on a date – perhaps to Backyard Cinema’s showing of Romeo + Juliet at Union Chapel in Islington (10-18 Feb, backyardcinema.co.uk) LOOKING FOR LOVE For those determined to join in the fun next year, seek out a speed-dating event or party.

The Happenstance London’s Lock & Key party for 30-45 year-olds takes place on 10 February, providing hope that a beau (or belle) might be caught even before the big day itself (skiddle.com).

ALL THE LOVERS London has a plethora of events on Valentine’s for lovers, with many a cranny in which to shelter and nooks to hide away in. For the nature-loving couple, the Natural History Museum’s late event will tour you through love in the animal kingdom

Matthew Vaughn’s much-anticipated Argylle is an espionage thriller with a twist: Henry Cavill plays the titular superspy, who is actually the fictional creation of novelist Elly Conway (Bryce Dallas Howard). Out 2 Feb

FILM

Love is in the air

– proving it’s not all sex and death – and visitors can expect to be wooed by a harpist and supported by a fully stocked bar (nhm. ac.uk). The musical-loving couple might be disappointed to find that much of London’s West End is booked up for the big day itself (don’t expect to see Broadway transfer and swoony musical Hadestown, for example), but there are still plenty of tickets available for select hit shows on TodayTix and other lastminute sites – perhaps Mamma Mia! (it’s about a wedding) or Moulin Rouge (sexy glamour) will be the tonic. The foodie couple should seek a dose of glamour in the city – Gong Bar at Shangri-La, The Shard, has a luxe package for two offering droolworthy maki at dizzying heights (£110, gong-shangri-la.com). And then, of course, worst case, there’s always snuggling up and ordering a pizza at home.

Fifteen years since his last stage appearance, Matt Smith is returning to theatreland, appearing in Thomas Ostermeier’s reimagining of Henrik Ibsen classic play An Enemy of the People at the Duke of York's Theatre. 5 February to 6 April

PLAY The USP of New Yorkset lockdown novel Fourteen Days? Each character is written by a different author, from Margaret Atwood to John Grisham to Emma Donoghue.

Expect this to be one of the biggest reads of 2024. Out 6 Feb

BOOK

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CULTURE | What’s On

PREVIEW

Ellie Smith looks forward to Yoko Ono: Music of the Mind at Tate Modern

S

he may be best known for being married to John Lennon, but there’s a lot more to Yoko Ono than her Beatles connection.

The Japanese musician and performance artist, now 90, has a fascinating body of work that spans over seven decades – which is being explored in an landmark exhibition at Tate Modern this year.

The largest show of Yoko Ono’s work yet, Music of the Mind will delve into some of the most talked about pieces of her career, from the 1950s to the modern day. Naturally, her London years (1966-1971) will be a point of intrigue: this was period she became intertwined with a nonconformist network of artists and musicians, including Lennon. Her film No. 4 (Bottoms), initially banned by the British Board of Film Censors, will be shown, and visitors will have the chance to participate in White Chess Set, a game with white chess pieces believed to symbolise Ono’s anti-war stance.

But we’ll also get a chance to see Ono’s earlier works, including her famed ‘instruction pieces’, which ask us to imagine or complete an artwork. Photographs of the first ‘instruction paintings’ from her loft studio in New York will be shown for the first time, alongside the typescript draft of her self-published anthology, Grapefruit.

At the end of the exhibition, people will be able to take part in a new iteration of My Mommy Is Beautiful, an interactive installation first showcased in 2004 where viewers are invited to attach photographs of their mothers.

Ono’s presence will be felt elsewhere in the Tate Modern too: the participatory Wish Tree will sit at the gallery’s entrance, encouraging visitors to contribute wishes for peace.

15 Feb to 1 Sept, tate.org.uk

Photographer: Pip Bourdillon; Styling: Harry Clements; Make-up: Min Sandhu; Hair: Chad Maxwell

MY Cultural Life Alex Roach, star of new BBC hacking drama Nightsleeper

Nightsleeper is... a fast-paced thriller, set on an overnight

Add Color (Refugee Boat) (1960/2019) by Yoko Ono

Half-A-Room, from Half – A Wind Show at Lisson Gallery London. Photo by Clay Perry

Glasgow-London train as the passengers discover a hacking device that threatens to kill them all.

I play... Abby, who’s been put in charge of a government agency as head of cybersecurity. My job is to try to hack back into the device and save the lives of these passengers.

My character Abby... was a hacker as a teenager. I’m not sure I’d call the show geeky, but it’s definitely got a STEM aspect.

I'm hoping... that people will believe that I’m incredibly intelligent with computers, whereas – in reality – faced with a problem, I tend to just… switch it off and on again.

I'm tuning into… True Detective: Night Country [on Now TV], starring Jodie Foster in her first major TV role. She’s so incredible – I can’t wait.

What I'm reading... The Creative Act by Rick Rubin.

My favourite painting is... Running Away With The Hairdresser,

by Kevin Sinnott. I love the emotion captured in his work.

My favourite film of all time... The Wizard Of Oz (1939): I admire the complete fantasy of it, and watched it obsessively as a child.

I'm most looking forward to… Seeing more live music across this year.

The band I've got on repeat... Christine & The Queens.

My perfect Sunday is… Enjoying a relaxed late afternoon roast that spills into an evening with friends in the pub.

A nostalgic dish... My grandmother's rice pudding made with condensed milk and cooked in her aga.

Catch Alex as Abby in Nightsleeper from early March. bbc.com

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Books | CULTURE

TRAVELS ON THE PAGE

Richard Hopton selects three novels that’ll sweep you away to a different time and place

1

THE VULNERABLES

by Sigrid Nunez

Sigrid Nunez’s new novel is a lockdown story. It’s a novel in the sense that it tells a tale, albeit impressionistically, but it’s also a meditation on life and literature.

The Vulnerables is sharply observed, crisply honest, and funny. At its heart is the relationship between a young male college drop-out and the narrator, a middle-aged female author, sharing, initially unwillingly, a large flat in Manhattan during the early months of the pandemic. Mediating between them is a parrot named Eureka who also lives in the flat. There is much literary musing in the novel – ‘I like the sliver of ice in the heart that Graham Greene thought every writer must have’ – but it avoids the pitfalls of pretentiousness. Th is is a novel which creeps up on you but stays for a long while.

(Virago, £14.99)

2

SLEEPING DOG,

by Dick Locht

First published in 1985, Sleeping Dog subverts the trope of detective buddies beloved of TV and film. Set in California, this riotously entertaining novel tells the story of the unlikely partnership between Leo Bloodworth, a middle-aged private eye, and Serendipity Renn Dahlquist, an alarmingly precocious 14-year-old girl. It sits astride the world of Hollywood – Serendipity’s grandmother is a soap star – and a sleazy underworld of motels and mobsters. The story is told through interleaved accounts by Bloodworth and Serendipity, which brilliantly illuminate the two characters as well as generating much humour.

Lochte’s prose and dialogue are rough-necked and American, fizzing with vernacular energy: he describes a car crash as ‘a steel Moby Dick bearing down on a poor little minnow of a Chevy.’

(Penguin Modern Classics, £9.99)

3

HARD BY A GREAT FOREST

by Leo Vardiashvili

This captivating star-burst of a novel tells the story of Saba who leaves Tbilisi in Georgia in 1992, aged eight, with his father, Irakli and his brother Sandro, ten. Fleeing the civil war that erupted after Georgia left the collapsing Soviet Union in 1991, they end up, incongruously and unhappily, in Tottenham. Two decades later Saba returns to Georgia, now descended into a state of primitive, chaotic lawlessness, to search for Irakli and Sandro who had gone back to rescue their mother, Eka. Leo Vardiashvili’s first novel is an all-consuming, deeply affecting story of family, memory, courage, perseverance, and brutality, leavened with a little magic and a touch of madness.

Founded on the conflict between imagination and reality, it’s written with an acutely descriptive eye and a pithy turn of phrase. I urge you to read it.

(Bloomsbury, £16.99)

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CULTURE | Books this family’s past and current lives.

What do you miss about Korea?

BIBLIOFILE

I loved day-to-day family life in Seoul. We were very poor: living in one tiny room of another family’s house, with a rusty water pump, an outhouse. No bed, no colour TV, no fancy clothes, no electronic toys. But I remember the closeness with my parents, playing Korean jacks with my mom, her making special lunch treats: ghim-bop, seaweed rolls, yoo-boo-bop. When we moved to Baltimore, we gained material wealth – a fridge, indoor plumbing, my own bedroom – but I lost the closeness with my parents because they worked 18-hour days at a grocery store in a dangerous, faraway part of town.

Belinda Bamber talks to Angie Kim about Korea, careers and childhood

Happiness Falls is about a close-knit KoreanAmerican family in Virginia whose lives are overturned when the dad goes missing and his non-verbal son Eugene is a suspect.

When did you first hear the voice of Mia, the narrator? Mia’s voice has been with me

for over a decade. She was in one of my first short stories. Her snarky, intimate voice, and her family – a biracial family (like mine) with a Korean immigrant working mom, a white stayat-home dad, and three kids – stuck with me.

Where did the ‘Happiness Quotient’ come from? My interest

in happiness theories stems from that immigrant experience of having been poor but happy. Starting Happiness Falls I built spreadsheets to quantify my ideas (I used to be a management consultant!).

I arrived at a formula showing happiness is relative to your baseline experience of ‘normal’.

What is pure happiness for you? Reading a book I love by the ocean while sipping wine on a bright sunny day.

Do you relate to Eugene’s inability to speak?

When I was 11, I immigrated to the US from Korea. I didn’t speak English and I suddenly realised how our society equates oral fluency with intelligence. I felt like a bah-bo, a stupid person stripped of thoughts and words. I still feel that burn of shame.

And the transformative moment when he seems to understand? One of my kids was

a late talker and in trying to figure out why, we discovered he had ulcerative colitis and coeliac disease. I remember the intense joy when he started growing and running thanks to treatment, and, yes, talking, all the thoughts that had been trapped in his head just pouring out. But along with the joy was the guilt of not having figured it out earlier. That gut punch combination of wonder and devastation.

How did your early careers as a lawyer and dotcom entrepreneur affect your writing?

Each gave me insights into the criminal justice system, office and intra-family politics, gender dynamics, sibling relationships, mommy wars, health insurance debacles: so many experiences affected my organic process of writing. But the longest and hardest of my many jobs was being a stay-at-home mother to three boys with medical issues.

Why the slightly open ending? Much as I love neat solutions to real-life problems, my favourite

When did you realise you were a storyteller?

fictional stories teach me about impossible dilemmas with no easy answers. I wanted to interrogate the neat endings to whodunnits and emphasise the real-life side of struggle and confusion: questioning everything about the person you thought you knew and the relationship you thought you had with them. How do you survive that unknowability?

How do you feel about literary genres? I’m wary of labels because they can be confining. Even though Happiness Falls (like my debut, Miracle Creek) contains a mystery element, I think of it as a Trojan horse of sorts, in which the investigation becomes a container to hold all my stories about

I didn’t start writing until I was in my 40s, and published my debut novel the week I turned 50.

But I’ve been a storyteller since I was a child.

Growing up I was only allowed to borrow one book at a time, which meant I read it over and over, acting out post-ending scenarios. I fell in love with improvisational acting, which is essentially creating stories. And my career as a trial lawyer involved telling my client’s story What’s in your book pile? Kiley Reid’s Come and Get It, the late Korean American writer Katherine Min’s novel The Fetishist, Tana French’s The Hunter, my dear friend Julia Phillips’ Bear.

Happiness Falls by Angie Kim is published on 1 Feb (Faber, £14.99). Read the full interview at countryandtownhouse.com/ culture/cth-book-club

Gainsborough’s girls PRETEND all is well in The Painter’s Daughters

by Emily Howes (Phoenix, £20); there’s dorm INTRIGUE in Come and Get It by Kiley Reid (Bloomsbury, £16.99); a mother tries to protect her kids from a terrifying INTRUDER in Nightwatching by Tracy Sierra, (Viking, £14.99); MYSTERY and sadness are at the heart of Monika Helfer’s family tale, Library for the War-Wounded (Bloomsbury, £16.99); DRAMA spills into the life of a theatre critic in Here in the Dark by Alexis Soloski (Raven Books, £16.99). n

PHOTOS: © NINA SUBIN

SECRETS & LIES

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18/01/2024 17:02

Installation of Australian aboriginal hollow log-coffins at the Rebecca Hossack Art Gallery

we are everything all the time always Exhibition runs from 11 January - 15 March 2024

Rebecca Hossack Art Gallery 2a Conway Street, Fitzroy Square, London W1T 6BA, UK T +44 0 20 7436 4899

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info@rebeccahossack.com www.rebeccahossack.com @rebeccahossackartgallery

18/01/2024 09:44

CULTURE | Art The artist created a new medium of fine art when he experimented with an X-ray machine

NICK VEASEY

N

Caiti Grove meets the pioneering X-ray artist

ick Veasey is frank about his younger self. ‘I was obsessive. I was on a mission, I was going to change the world through X-ray,’ he admits. ‘To be really good in the creative world, you have to go through that phase.’

For five years, he dreamt in monochrome X-ray and lied to journalists about his process to prevent theft by copycat artists. One New York Times fact-checker resorted to phoning Nick in exasperation to quiz him about his (entirely fictional) machinery.

Nick discovered the art of the X-ray when his wife Zoe worked on The Big Breakfast with Johnny Vaughan. When Pepsi launched a marketing campaign to find a specific ring pull for a £100,000 prize, Vaughan sat in a truckload of the cans to tell viewers how to scam the brand to win the cash prize. ‘A bit like the Willy Wonka story,’ Nick smiles. His job was to X-ray the cans to find the Golden Ticket ring pull. Fortuitously, Nick and Zoe’s landlord had his own X-ray business, testing the safety of car wheels and aircraft landing equipment. Nick hired the machine and a technician to do his Pepsi project. The X-ray was complete with another seven hours left to play with.

‘The X-ray technician, Lesley, asked, “what you want to do now?”’ Nick recalls of that day. ‘So we tried all sorts of stuff: my shoes, her hat, bags, just whatever was lying about.’ With these images, Nick went to Madison Avenue in New York to present his portfolio to ad agencies. A few were interested. ‘They’re quite open like that, the Americans,’ he explains. Adverts for Apple and Adobe followed, the unseen electronic wizardry explained in X-ray form for the first time. Ten years later, the commercial work tailed off but galleries started calling. ‘They called it fine art, not me. They said, “your work is good enough to show in an art gallery, what about an exhibition?”’

Since then, he has X-rayed a skeleton who appears as different characters, from a Rat Pack-style performer to a guy in his living room complete with

stereo system and headphones, and has taken apart Mini Cooper cars to photograph them piece by piece, before assembling the image back together digitally, a passenger in skeleton form – with a handbag – seated in the back.

His work has been on the cover of Time magazine and he also recently collaborated with Alexander McQueen for its SS23 show.

In 2018, Veasey collaborated with the V&A for its Balenciaga exhibition.

He X-rayed the couturier’s famous dresses to show handiwork concealed from the naked eye. Cristóbal Balenciaga gave only two interviews in his lifetime, and in one proudly stated that he used only fabric to pull in a waist and create his famous silhouettes, unlike his competitor Christian Dior who used whalebone and corsets. But Veasey’s X-ray of a Balenciaga dress made for actress Ava Gardner proved otherwise: he had used all of the tricks available, and the boning and underwire is indisputable. Nick remembers the first challenge of the project: nothing could leave the V&A. ‘I had to find a way of taking the mountain to Mohammed. I’ve got a lorry with an X-ray machine in the back with a lead box and I drove it up to the V&A fashion store in Hammersmith. I was there for one week for Balenciaga, but we stayed over two months,’ he remembers, as museum staff realised the value of the opportunity to see inside exhibit pieces.

Veasey’s new exhibition, Forensic Beauty, in Mayfair gallery Bluerider ART, celebrates British culture – from distorting mirrors, Punch & Judy puppets to jackets from Pearly Kings and Queens – each button clear and exact in theX-ray shot. ‘London’s my town, I love London,’ he tells me.

‘I’ve got the opportunity to say “thanks”. To London, to my family, to my country. I want to do things that are British, not just global.’ As he looks back at how it all started, he reflects, ‘The door was open, I walked through it. I didn’t find the X-ray. The X-ray found me.’

Forensic Beauty, until 17 February. blueriderart.com n

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Art | CULTURE

The EXHIBITIONIST The Royal Academy’s latest exhibition is an important conversation starter, says Ed Vaizey

Naming the Money (2004)

by Lubaina Himid RA

PHOTOS: STUART WHIPPS; GETTY; MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS, BOSTON

O

ne of the biggest issues dominating the arts today are the so-called culture wars. Whether it is toppling statues or long and involved explanatory notes at an exhibition, everyone is involved, and everyone has a strong view.

When I was Culture Minister almost a decade ago, these issues were rarely debated. This is to an extent a recent American import. While I served in government I did however get involved in the issue of diversity. I was awestruck one evening watching Lenny Henry perform Shakespeare, and seeing how different the audience was.

Watson and the Shark (1778) I realised that we needed to do more to

by John Singleton Copley RA open up mainstream arts to different communities. We made progress, even seeing Britain’s first all-Black orchestra, Chineke, established.

At their best, exhibitions and performances simply provide a new context in which we can appreciate art that we already know and value.

In this sense, they are helping transform our views on art, or at least flesh them out.

The Royal Academy of Arts’ new exhibition, Entangled Pasts, does just that. It follows a chronology from the founding of the RA (1768) to the present day, and focuses on

Bust of a Man (1758)

by Francis Harwood

empire, slavery, resistance and abolition, as well as exploring the RA’s own links to colonialism. It brings together over 100 major contemporary and historic works by around 50 artists connected to the RA to explore these ideas. These artists include well-known contemporary artists like Sonia Boyce, Frank Bowling, John Akomfrah and Isaac Julien, alongside works by artists from the past 250 years including Joshua Reynolds, JMW Turner and John Singleton Copley.

The exhibition is set in the main galleries of the Royal Academy of Arts, where visitors can experience large-scale works including the life-size painted cut-out figures of Lubaina Himid’s installation Naming the Money, and Hew Locke’s Armada, a flotilla of ‘votive boats’ recalling different periods and places. Visitors can also view powerful paintings, photographs, sculptures, drawings and prints by El Anatsui, Kerry James Marshall, Kara Walker, Shahzia Sikander, Mohini Chandra and Betye Saar.

The exhibition is a powerful conversation about the past and present, and how art can help us set a new course for the future.

Entangled Pasts, 1768-Now: Art, Colonialism and Change, 3 February to 28 April 2024. royalacademy.org.uk n January /February 2024 | COUNTRYANDTOWNHOUSE.COM | 59

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CULTURE | Sustainability

LITTLE GREEN BOOK

I

f any young woman needs a kick-ass, inspirational, no-nonsense role model to look up to, they could start with Tessa Clarke. The 47-year-old co-founder of the sharing app Olio didn’t grow up in a business world. Her family are Yorkshire dairy farmers, and have been for generations. And very few women in her area had formal jobs. ‘There was perhaps a nurse, or a vet, or a school teacher. Definitely no entrepreneurs,’ she laughs.

Like many school leavers, she had no idea what to do. At Cambridge, she studied social and political sciences, and afterwards became a management consultant, moving between retail and media and financial services. It was only when, on a leadership course, she realised that, ‘when I looked at my own CV and career, I was sick and tired of not being inspired by myself ’. So in 2002 she took herself to Stanford to do an MBA, re-thought her career – and realised she’d made one essential mistake. ‘I thought that to be successful you had to have a great idea,’ she says.

‘Then I realised that you didn’t. You just had to look for a problem you wanted to solve.’

In a time of climate crisis, there are plenty of problems – one of the most obvious being the amount of waste the world is generating, particularly of food.

So, with her fellow Stanford MBA collaborator, Saasha Celestial-One (given her surname by her hippy parents), whom Tessa describes as ‘one of the brightest, shiniest, most optimistic people you could hope to meet,’ she came up with the idea of an app from which you could share food that you didn’t need.

And in 2015 they launched it.

When they looked at the statistics, she says, ‘it blew our brains. A third of all food gets thrown, worth over trillion US dollars a year. Yet the 800 million who go

Tessa co-founded Olio to solve the problem of food waste

to bed hungry could be fed on just a quarter of the food waste of the Western world.’

Even worse, she says, ‘if you compare the emissions generated by food waste, if it was a country, it would be the third largest producer of greenhouse gases after USA and China: more than the fashion industry, multiple times more than the aviation industry. But no one is talking about it.’

Their app, Olio, is a simple solution. You log on. You list the things you don’t want to keep. And someone else who does want it comes to get it. The app has been so successful that it’s now used by big brands from Tesco and Iceland to university canteens and film-set locations, whose produce is collected by Olio volunteers, who then distribute it in their communities.

The figures are staggering: so far, the app has enabled 30 million neighbourhood pick-ups and 143 million portions of food to be shared, been used by over seven million people (half in the UK, half in 60 other countries), and has 56,000 ambassadors, who help spread the word, so everyone in their communities can be helped, or can help.

Not only does that mean less food is wasted, Tessa says. But the environmental impact is enormous: it’s been the equivalent of half a billion car miles off the road and over 20 billion litres of water (to produce an apple takes 70 litres of water).

More than that, she says, it’s had a really positive psychological impact on its users. ‘Most people are waking up to the fact the climate crisis is real but don’t know where to start to take action. Food waste is the biggest lever you have – because household waste is the source of 65 percent of greenhouse gases. And the government is doing the square root of f*** all. So to be able to do something is massively empowering.

If you feel you’re consuming more responsibly you feel happier. You’re linked to your community. And it feels good to share.’

During the cost of living crisis, she says, the app has been a lifeline for many families – who take when they need to, and give when they can.

And now it’s not only food that can be shared – but goods, which you can sell.

‘We all know that one person’s trash is another’s treasure,’ she says. ‘And in a typical household, there are over a billion items within a ten-minute walk.

No one should be going without.’ olioapp.com n

PHOTOS: ©MARTIN DUDEK; GETTY; PEXELS

Lisa Grainger meets Olio co-founder, Tessa Clarke, who is leading the charge against food waste

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CULTURE | Conservation

The POSITIVE DISRUPTOR Nature is not over there – it is all of us, says James Wallace

James reflects on the interconnectedness of life on earth

THINK DIFFERENTLY, ACT NOW

Ways in which you, too, can get back to nature

member, I have become aware of and welcomed a deep and contented knowing that I am just as much an individual as a species, just as much a carpenter as the timber I work, just as much a person as a planet reflecting on its – our – self. I am nature. You are too.

We – all living organisms with feathers, scales, skin, fur or chitinous shells, all animate and inanimate things, all of the ocean, forests, mangroves, mountains, all of the soil, the glowing mantle and beating heart of Mother Earth, all the storm clouds, deserts and azure skies, all of the crops, pollinators and harvests yet to come, even the smiling moon and distant stars – are one.

And most importantly we – all of nature – sustain and therefore need each other. We dance together in rhythmic cycles of exchange, sharing our carbon atoms, kinetic energy, our light, cohabiting in incomprehensibly complex symbiosis.

But with this knowledge of interdependence comes responsibility. Our eyes have been opened to the fragility of ourselves, our nature. Those storm clouds foretell floods and droughts. As our insect pollinators and seasonal rains decline, famine and displacement lurk in the shadows. If we aren’t careful, our extended body will become diseased.

So, armed with this profound understanding, I have no choice but to cherish and protect my life support system and all that makes me, us and the rest of nature the same and yet tantalisingly multiplicitous and ephemeral.

Right now, this is what nature means to me. Everyone, everything, now and forever are in it together. What does nature mean to you?

James is Chief Executive of River Action n

READ James Lovelock’s seminal work on the living planet, Gaia: A New Look at Life on Earth.

(Goatshead Press, £8.99)

BE MINDFUL Try ‘forest bathing’, a Japanese mindfulness practice among trees with the National Trust. nationaltrust.org.uk SWIM Wherever you go, take a dip in a nearby river or lake. wildswimming.co.uk IMMERSE Yourself into nature with the poem Song of Myself, by Walt Whitman, included in Leaves of Grass.

(Vintage, £8.99)

PHOTOS: UNSPLASH; PEXELS

I

was asked by my friend to help her son with his GCSE art project. It proved to be an insightful opportunity to meditate on a question few of us take time to mull upon: what does nature mean to me? This was my answer.

I am nature. I have always had a deep connection with the natural world. Starting with the birds, insects, hedgehogs and visiting foxes in my garden as a young boy, my perceptual journey into nature developed into a deep knowing that I am just as much a roughlegged buzzard, spotted brown trout or babbling brook as I am mammalian me, the not-so spritely 51-year-old bipedal hominid.

The meaning of nature for me has changed from subconscious to visceral. When I grew in my mother’s body from a single cell to fully spined and many-digited baby, I recapitulated the 4.5 billion year journey from barren rock to amoeba, through gill-slitted fish to hairy primate.

As I matured, I learned that when I breathe air out of my lungs, I am being breathed in by the sessile oak trees and purple loosestrife flowers. When I swim in the depths of a glacial lake or kelp-forested sea, I return to the ancestral home of my earlier aquatic evolutionary self.

At one particular time in Devon when I was 30, I remember lying on a woodland floor and looking up at the swaying boughs of trees and their sextillion leaves. I saw the fractal patterns of my every part and the whole of myself as an interconnected man mirrored in the mycelial fungal networks exchanging information and nutrients between every tree beneath me.

In more recent years as a father, employer and community

WATCH Witness the interconnection of life in Fantastic Fungi, a film by Louie Schwartzberg. fantasticfungi.com

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PR O M OT I O N

A FEAST FOR THE SENSES PoB Hotels celebrates British cuisine in its new book The Handle, and an exclusive programme of magical dinners

T

his year, PoB Hotels will be whisking its guests on a culinary adventure around the British Isles. It starts with ‘Seasoned to Perfection’, an initiative that not only showcases the rich and diverse food culture of the British Isles but also provides guests with the opportunity to engage in extraordinary culinary experiences.

This includes ‘Six Hand Dinners’, a new concept for 2024. Offered at PoB Hotels in sublime locations, the exclusive dining experiences, led by three chefs, invite guests to marvel at their culinary artistry and how they are inspired by their remarkable surroundings and local, seasonal produce.

PoB Hotels has also released the latest edition of its highly anticipated annual book, The Handle. This latest captivating edition is dedicated to the celebration of food, featuring over 40 recipes from celebrated chefs within the collection. Discover oodles of inspiration for your idyllic British getaway, delve into sustainable dining practices, explore the art of cultivating your own produce, and glean expert wine-pairing tips. The Handle is your gateway to a host of unique experiences – you can order your complimentary copy at pobhotels.com

TASTEFUL TRAVELS

Three extraordinary culinary experiences

1 2

FARLAM HALL, Cumbria On 29 February join esteemed chef Hrishikesh Desai as he creates magic along his guest chefs from The Torridon and Rockliffe Hall.

PoB Hotels’ chefs celebrate the best local, seasonal and sustainable British produce

WHATLEY MANOR, Cotswolds The Michelin-starred Ricki Weston welcomes you on 13 March to experience a sixcourse extravaganza that he is creating with chefs from The Gilpin and Grove of Narberth.

3

GRAVETYE MANOR, Sussex The best of produce can be seen on 21 March through Michelin-starred chef George Blogg’s creations as he enjoys cooking with chefs from Hambleton Hall and The Relais Henley.

About PoB Hotels PoB Hotels have the most exquisite independent hotels throughout the British Isles, each selected with meticulous care to ensure a unique and unforgettable experience.

Let PoB Hotels guide you to create your own memories. pobhotels.com

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19/01/2024 15:26

Hyundai Kona Electric Ultimate PRICE £43,095 ENGINE 64 kWh single motor POWER 215bhp 0-62mph 7.9 seconds TOP SPEED 104mph MAX RANGE 319 miles STREAMING Dynamite – BTS

Road Test

Is 2024 the year to switch to electric? Jeremy Taylor drives a perfect starter car for EV newbies

TOWN

COUNTRY

RATING: 5/5 HANDBAGS

RATING: 4/5 WELLIES

What springs to mind when you think of Korea? K-Pop, kimchi, the Netflix hit Squid Game? Hyundai should be near the top of that list because the company is currently revolutionising car design.

Just take a peep at the new Kona Electric – the mid-size SUV might have been created especially for a Hollywood sci-fi movie. Not Kona the Barbarian, something considerably more stylish. Transformed from a bland runabout into a four-wheeled cyborg, the second-generation model is now suddenly cool and chic.

Unlike the ubiquitous styling of certain car brands – the ones that all look remarkably similar on a forecourt – Hyundai seem determined to design a range of uniquely different models. Maybe that’s why the latest Ioniq 5 and 6 have won World Car of the Year titles back-to-back.

The Kona Electric was also built to turn heads and may reward Hyundai with a hat-trick of wins come April.

Check out the wafer-thin lights running across the front and rear, a cabin packed with technology and the impressive battery range. It also benefits from a comforting five-year warranty.

Buyers should expect great value for money and reliability with any Hyundai. Best of all, the new Kona, which starts at £34,940, is a car with proper character. Much more than just A to B, this is an EV designed to put a smile on your face.

The five-door Kona may be sci-fi but it isn’t a flying machine.

Performance is more leisurely. Designed as an EV from the ground up, the Hyundai is a silent cruiser, rather than an agile performance car. On a long journey, the ride is relaxed and comfortable.

While the boot is a little small for a family car, the interior is roomy, offering plenty of cubbyhole and storage space. Wireless phone charging, electric seats and a heated steering wheel are available on some models, there’s even a handy, three-pin domestic plug socket in the rear.

The dashboard itself is dominated by a wide, central information screen that controls a multitude of functions.

The driver also has the benefit of a head-up display, flashing information onto the windscreen. While the minimalist design is pleasing, build quality isn’t quite the same as an Audi.

Like most new cars, the Kona also has a raft of safety features that may drive some motorists nuts. Most of them, including the speed limit alert, can be switched off but I for one, am not a fan.

Offered with either a 39 or 64 kWh battery pack, the more powerful 215bhp version I drove will realistically cover 260 miles between charges. The charging port is also well-placed in front of the bonnet.

The new Kona isn’t faultless but won’t bamboozle motorists who are considering an EV for the first time. Easy to drive, extremely practical and very spacious inside, this Hyundai really should be on your shortlist.

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Motoring | CULTURE

THE DRIVE

The Grade II-listed mansion is the perfect backdrop for a Shakespearean drama

Destination: Marrington Hall, Shropshire

If you long for a country house that’s chocolate box perfect, look no further than half-timbered Marrington Hall. The Grade II-listed mansion dates from the 16th century and could be the backdrop for a Shakespearean drama.

Set in a quiet woodland valley, a short drive from the ancient town of Montgomery, this seven-bedroom property is a black and white Tudor masterpiece. The jewel of the Marrington Estate is dog-friendly and perfectly equipped for large family celebrations.

While the outdoor pool and barbecue are naturally covered in the winter months, guests can walk-off a lunch in the baronial dining room with a stroll around the estate. Otherwise, the Hall offers plenty of reception space to flop on a comfy sofa and enjoy an afternoon snooze.

Youngsters can chill out in the cinema room – superfast broadband on tap – bask in front of one of the many wood-burning stoves, or just find adventures around the extensive lawns.

While the kitchen is fully equipped for any function, Checkers in Montgomery is a highly rated restaurant. The Three Tuns pub in Bishops Castle and The Lowfield Inn at Marton are both excellent alternatives.

This corner of Shropshire nestles against the meandering Welsh border, offering historic buildings galore. Stokesay Castle is just down the road – a convenient stop en route to Ludlow Farm Shop, a great spot to stock up on supper supplies.

While water power once turned the mill at Marrington, battery power drives the Audi e-tron GT. The futuristic saloon’s sporty profile isn’t just for show – this barnstorming EV will zip to 62mph in just over four seconds and race on to autobahn speeds.

Refreshingly different, if only because it isn’t

an SUV, the e-tron GT still offers four-wheel drive ability. A dual-motor set-up turns the front and rear wheels, ensuring superb handling on the slippery Shropshire roads.

Long and low, the Audi manages to pack a whopping boot and great legroom, both front and rear. However, backseat adult passengers might curse the restricted headroom, even with a full glass roof. The centre seat is for short journey’s only. A storage area under the bonnet is best set aside charging cables.

The Audi shares a platform with the pricier Porsche Taycan but is comfier and more modestly styled. It’s really a driver’s car that doubles as a grand tourer, despite a real-world range of only 240 miles between charges.

For a more dynamic-looking e-tron GT, try the RS version. Otherwise, the standard GT, minus the fussy trim, is the model to choose.

A consummate, classy performer that could only be improved with a larger battery to compete with a Tesla Model S.

IN THE BOOT

REV UP TRAVEL Take the McLaren of suitcases on a New Year break. This lightweight, carbon-fibre, papaya and fabric trunk is built in collaboration with Tumi. Aero extended trip packing case, £2,075. tumi.com

BOOK IT: Prices from £3,265 for three nights.

marringtonescapes.com

Audi e-tron GT quattro PRICE £88,365 ENGINE 93.4 kWh battery POWER 530bhp 0-62MPH 4.1 seconds TOP SPEED 152mph MAX RANGE 305 miles STREAMING Humming – Portishead

LE MANS LEGENDS A coffee table classic to celebrate the centenary of the world’s greatest road race. 100 Years of Legends by Denis Bernard (Evro, £70).

GLAD BAG This backpack from B Corp brand Roka is smart enough for the office. The Canfield, £64.95. rokalondon.com n

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CULTURE | C&TH x Byline Times

After the Flood I

recently walked more than 180 miles across land that will, almost certainly, soon be lost to the oceans. How soon is soon? The terrifying answer is we simply don’t know.

On the Norfolk coast, I walked for four days past low-lying villages and farmland protected from high tides and storm waters only by sand dunes, shingle ridges and raised embankments.

In the east of the county, I walked three further days along Europe’s most rapidly eroding coastline. There, in front of villages like Happisburgh and Hemsby, the beaches were strewn with fragments of piping, cables, roads and homes that had fallen down the cliff.

But sea level rise isn’t just a coastal problem – for large parts of inland England are already at or below sea level and are highly vulnerable too.

Through the Cambridgeshire Fens and the Norfolk Broads, I walked another seven days across landscapes so low-lying they’re already below the level of the rivers passing through them and only kept dry by complex systems of drainage and defences.

All these places will become harder and more expensive to defend – until the day they can’t be defended any more.

Flooding and erosion are not new threats to the Norfolk coast. At King’s Lynn Minster, in Blakeney and elsewhere, commemorative stones mark the height of the deadly floods of 1953, 1978 and 2013. Defences Dr Charlie Gardner is a climate have been built up and alert scientist and environmental activist systems improved, but residents of these areas live under constant threat. As I was walking there, a surge following storm Agnes added to very high tides which breached the harbour wall at Wellsnext-the-Sea and left hotel guests in Blakeney trapped in their rooms.

As the threat becomes more severe, predicting the precise timing of future impacts is essentially impossible because this isn’t simply dependent on rising sea levels, but also the changing severity and frequency of storm surges and investments in coastal defences. Forecasts of each are racked with uncertainty.

Increases in sea levels are driven by burning fossil fuels, which is heating the planet and causing the thermal expansion of seawater, while adding to it by melting glaciers and ice sheets. The rate of sea level rise has been increasing, from 1.3 mm a year prior to 1971 to 3.7 mm a year in 2006-2018. Future sea levels depend largely on the rapidity with which we stop adding heat energy into our planetary system – and there remains huge uncertainty over that.

The relationship between heating and sea level rise is so poorly

understood it is difficult to forecast future increases even if we could foretell the success of decarbonisation efforts. While the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predicts between 50cm and one metre of sea level rise by the end of the century, it cannot rule out the possibility of ‘low-probability, high impact’ scenarios caused by the destabilisation of ice sheets, which could add an additional metre within the same timeframe.

Higher sea levels lead to higher tides, but it is not simply the highest tides that cause most flooding and erosion. This happens when high tides are accompanied by storm surges. These too are difficult to predict because they are naturally highly variable and their infrequent nature means we don’t have much data (but in Britain and northern Europe extreme surges are now twice as likely to occur as they were in 1960).

Complicating the picture further is our capacity to defend against sea level rises and surges.

When it comes to the costs of maintaining defences, difficult decisions are already being made.

At Heacham in West Norfolk, coastal communities are protected by a five-mile shingle ridge at the back of the beach but the area’s shoreline management plan says this ‘will be difficult beyond the short-term’. If maintaining defences is found not to be feasible or cost-effective next year, the approach will be of ‘managed realignment’ – homes and caravan parks will be moved inland; the sea will be allowed in.

Yet residents of Heacham may see themselves as comparatively lucky. Across much of eastern Norfolk, the Environment Agency has a policy of ‘no active intervention’ away from the largest towns, and there’s no investment going into defences whatsoever. As a result, the land is in rapid retreat and coastal residents live in perpetual fear that the next big winter storm may bring the end of their homes.

Though there’s great uncertainty over precisely when different parts of lowland England will be lost to the seas, it is absolutely certain it will happen. To have any hope of saving these areas, we need to get off fossil fuels as soon as possible. That makes this Government’s recent decision to greenlight exploitation of an oilfield, and backtracking on decarbonisation, more than just a slap in the face for residents in vulnerable places. As many I spoke to on my walk made clear, they feel they’ve been forgotten and abandoned.

Charlie Gardner is Associate Senior Lecturer at the Durrell Institute of Conservation and Ecology, University of Kent n

PHOTOS: © NIGEL WALLACE/GETTY

As we continue to worsen climate change, areas at risk will become harder and more expensive to defend – until the day they can’t be defended any more, writes Charlie Gardner

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Coastal defences are submerged at Hunstanton in Norfolk

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CULTURE | Interview

Charlotte Metcalf meets Roger Tempest, who has transformed his ancestral home, Broughton Hall, into one of the UK’s most progressive wellness centres

IN BRIEF COUNTRY COTTAGE OR PENTHOUSE?

We live in a cottage in the Sanctuary DOG OR CAT?

I’ve always had Siamese cats and I have two called Albus and Sylvia (Plath) GARDENING OR THEATRE?

Anything to do with the earth COUNTRY CASUALS OR CITY SUIT

I’m an eclectic dresser so don’t wear either, especially a suit.

I regard the tie as a form of selfmutilation COUNTRY PUB OR MICHELIN STAR?

I love the Craven Arms in Appletreewick.

It has an annual ferret race

A

PORTRAIT BY ALEXANDRA DAO

t Scarfe’s Bar I find Roger Tempest enjoying breakfast. His paisley florals and flowing locks suggest an aristocratic dandy combined with a hippy – he perhaps embodies a bit of both. He is the New Age revolutionary who has dragged his ancestral Yorkshire estate, Broughton Hall, creaking and crumbling into the 21st century, transforming old buildings into thriving hubs for local businesses and more recently creating Broughton Sanctuary, one of Britain’s most talked about wellness retreat centres.

Roger, his brother and three sisters grew up at Broughton Hall, a beautiful Palladian Grade I-listed pile, so leaking and run-down that it was not unusual for there to be snow on the billiard table. It was depicted in all its chaotic glory by Roger’s sister Annie in Tottering By Gently, her long-running cartoon in Country Life.

In 1988 Roger moved to London to work in newspapers but quickly returned home to help when his father became ill with cancer. ‘I looked around to see what could be done,’ Roger begins. ‘Dad had converted part of a derelict courtyard into an office. It was empty when I arrived, but the idea of normal companies operating in the countryside was very interesting.’ Roger found a client for the office and, spurred on by desperate finances, set about reimagining his decaying home. ‘Everything had gone into decline after the First World War, when my grandfather was seriously injured at the Somme. My parents lived frugally and my mother, a devout Catholic, worked with Mother Teresa.’

Roger set up Rural Solutions to regenerate the countryside, primarily through creating rural business parks. ‘It hit the sweet spot and people kept asking how we did it. At one point we had 200 employees and we sold it well in 2005,’ he says.

Today 52 companies, comprising 700 people, operate from Broughton’s stable blocks, old mills and barns.

Ten years ago, Roger met his partner, Paris, 25 years his junior, at a photography exhibition. ‘I was always interested in spirituality, but Paris was definitely a catalyst for change,’ he says. They began planting 350,000 trees and abandoning all shooting and industrial agriculture to allow nature to recover.

Following the death of Roger’s father in 2017, Broughton was put to ever more multiple uses and has been a location for numerous films and TV series. Alongside, Paris and Roger were creating a wellness sanctuary, which now comprises 20 retreat houses, 130 beds, an addiction clinic and a state-ofthe-art wellness centre called Avalon. ‘I’ve never been a county

set guy but Paris got me involved in nature and wellness, and now Broughton hosts 50 retreats a year. Every week we can see up to 50 or 60 people here changing their lives.

‘Then I started meeting wise practitioners like Peter Levine, who developed Somatic Experiencing to deal with trauma, the addiction specialist Tommy Rosen, and thought leader Andrew Harvey, Oxford’s youngest don, who talks about the decline of civilisation and our human condition.

People are feeling very unsteady and very few young people believe the world is in a good place. I asked myself what I could do to help instigate change. I’m very coal-face and practical and want to be of service. My mother, always a St Francis fan, taught that in giving we receive so I’ve always understood that the greatest thing about privilege is responsibility. As Mother Teresa said, God gave us the gift of life and what we become is our gift to God. ‘With the Sanctuary we’re trying to rise above the chaos and increasingly extreme polarisations and bleak either-or choices we face. We’re aiming to create a different sense of freedom and personal responsibilities. Think of us as a turbo-charged ashram crossed with a kibbutz – with a bit of Claridge’s meets Soho Farmhouse and Daylesford.

‘In a beautiful, safe, comfortable setting we can deal with contemporary problems, ranging from addiction, grief and menopause to trauma, rape and domestic abuse. We represent the area where science meets consciousness and we’re currently putting together a book of 36 visions for the future, all by contemporary, well-known thinkers but writing anonymously so they’re free to speak out without fear of reprisal in our stifling woke culture. By gathering people who are focusing on how to change this failing world order we can release ourselves, rewild our spirits and reignite a much-needed enlightenment.’

To call Roger future-facing and ambitious is to underestimate his determination to halt the downward global trajectory into conflict, chaos and environmental catastrophe. ‘Our systems are broken, but by seeking out and bringing these true visionaries to Broughton, we’re filling that empty leaderless space.’

Roger and Paris have an adored four-year-old daughter, Aya. ‘After 30 generations of primogeniture, Aya will be the next custodian of this ancient institution,’ says Roger. ‘It’s taken centuries for Broughton to find its true purpose but I believe we can help put humanity back on track.’ n

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Roger has turned his family estate into a wellness hub and rewilding retreat

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Bodysuit & skirt Michael Kors Collection Boots Louis Vuitton Hat Marcel Rodrigues Top belt and ring on right hand Jessie Western Bottom belt, bracelets, necklaces and ring on left hand Pebble London

SPANISH STEPS Saddle up for an adventure in style FASHION DIRECTOR NICOLE SMALLWOOD PHOTOGRAPHER DAN HACK

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‘The horse may wish to do оe g, but he who sa les him o er’

(Far left) Dress, boots & ring Louis Vuitton Leather Bridal Hermès Earrings Pebble London Bracelet Jessie Western (Above) Top, skirt & earrings Etro; Boots Ahluwalia Bracelet Jessie Western Ring Pebble London (Left) Bodysuit & skirt Hermès Necklaces Pebble London Ring Jessie Western

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‘The m who does not l e a horse c not l e a wom ’ Cover-Shoot-V6-LC.indd 74

Dress Philosophy di Lorenzo Serafini Coat, earrings & necklace Jessie Western

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Dress Zimmermann Shorts Frame Boots Dior Belt & earrings Pebble London

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‘To te a wom what she c not do is to te her what she c ’

(Top) Dress & jacket Temperley London Boots Ariat Rings & hair piece Jessie Western (Bottom) Poncho & short necklace Jessie Western Swimsuit Zimmermann Boots Borrowed from location Long necklace Pebble London

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Waistcoat Sourced from Ebay Shorts Stella McCartney Hat Jessie Western Bracelet, necklace & earrings Pebble London TEAM Hair & make-up: Charlotte Reid @ One Represents using Hair

by Sam McKnight & La Prairie Fashion Assistant: April McCarthy Model: Ayse Demirhan @ Le Management Equestrian: Jesús Artero Domínguez Shot on location at Caballo de Hiero, Spain

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The Sound OF SILENCE

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t is the silence that catches you first. The inky black sky strewn with stars may draw your eyes in wonder, but it is the deep nourishment of real silence – so rarely encountered – that makes you stop and breathe. It is of course broken come morning when the water features rush, the birds trill and the horses whinny – life awakening in its natural daily ritual.

We are at Caballo de Hiero, a 5,400-acre estate in ‘pata negra’ country, just over an hour north-west of Seville, surrounded by undulating green hills, which in turn are cloaked by evergreen oaks, many over 100 years old. Come summer, this land turns red, dry and arid in the oppressive Andalusian heat – so redolent of Lorca’s poetry – but for now, on this perfect cobalt blue December day, the land is green, alive and epic.

The estate – which is available for guests to take over and use exclusively, with staff – is the legacy project of a Hispanic-Belgian couple whose search for the perfect property took them two years, via the Highlands of

Scotland (‘too cold and wet’) to the fields of the South of France (‘the land too cut up’) before ending in the raw beauty of southern Spain ten years ago. It was the combination of being completely rooted in nature, in utter privacy and remoteness (you cannot see another person nor property for miles), yet being within easy access of the vibrant culture of Seville that sold it to them – and that will attract guests seeking such a rich offering.

Formerly belonging to a farming family, who grazed cows and pigs, this new iteration sees the land naturally filled with fallow and red deer, mouflon sheep and wild boar, while vultures, eagles and falcons soar overhead.

If you’re very lucky, you might, just might, catch sight of a lynx or a timid otter in the river, especially if you’re on one of the beautifully trained, forward-going Spanish or Arab horses, on which you can gracefully explore the terrain in ultimate, sheepskin-padded comfort.

And explore it you must. Weaving your way along disused railway lines, up steep rocky paths to enjoy sweeping vistas and a canter through dew-dropped

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PHOTOS: DAN HACK

Surrounded by nature in perfect privacy, yet within an easy drive of Seville, Caballo de Hiero offers an unrivalled richness of experience, says Lucy Cleland

future generations in mind, they have cleverly denied the need for radiators and noisy, polluting air-conditioning units by designing an underfloor heating system that pumps hot water round in the winter, and cold in the summer, from geothermal, solar powered and heat pump-sourced energy. It is a blueprint for what a sustainable build can be; along with its shutters and thick walls, you are protected from the elements – temperatures drop sharply in the winter at night yet rise unfathomably high come summer. They are also replanting trees, where old-age and disease have overcome them; as well as an orchard for fruit trees, crops that attract birds and pollinators for their bees.

The best months to visit are in the spring or autumn, when temperatures remain deliciously warm, streams refill and vegetation blooms. The owners are quick to point out though that Caballo will not be for everyone – they made it clear to a Hollywood star recently that it was not possible just to walk to a nearby restaurant. However, for those drawn to somewhere blissfully private, with nature at its beating heart and where silence wraps you in its powerful hold, this could be just the place you are looking for.

PHOTOS: DAN HACK

CLOCKWISE FROM LEFT: Jesus is a formidable horseman and cares for his charges impeccably; a new equine addition; the courtyard; overview of the main property ; the landscape is green in spring and autumn

BOOK IT: 11 doubles, plus seven more in two other lodges. Minimum stay three nights. From €750pp per day, all inclusive. caballohierro.com Lucy Cleland flew return from London Gatwick to Seville with a carbon footprint of 240kg of CO2e (ecollectivecarbon.com) n

meadows, which come spring are flower-filled with lilacs and wild peonies, feels gloriously atavistic, so far removed are you from the churn of daily life. There are also fat-tyred ebikes, lakes for swimming in, hiking boots for walks, binoculars for bird-watching. Picnics, laid out by Ramon and Ellie, appear as if by magic in the shimmering light. And if you ask nicely, the on-site equestrian, Jesús, who was born just over the hills, will demonstrate his awe-inspiring dressage skills in the ring. This is a land to sink into.

The house itself was built anew on the exact footprint of the old farmstead yet entirely remodelled as a family home that could also work beautifully for guests. Because it’s located in a national park, building permissions took a long time to secure but once attained, the final build – centred around a typical Spanish courtyard and using as many local and reclaimed materials as possible – took just 18 months. Guest accommodation – all suites with high timbered ceilings, fireplaces, and exquisite furnishings including embroidered headboards and marble sinks – flank the sides of the courtyard, which shines bright white in the moonlight, along with a sauna, steamand massage room, art room, and other spaces for yoga practice or perhaps a flamenco demonstration.

Inside the main house, there are more bedrooms, plus a dining room and a large sitting room with huge fireplaces, piles of books, family photos and deep sofas to recline on. Outside, pale stone steps lead down to the natural pool which is filtered by plants and for the cooler evenings, there’s a small indoor pool. The owners sourced many of the interior pieces, furniture and elements from flea markets, auction houses and reclamation shops. It feels at once lived-in and soulful despite its relative newness.

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Aux Armes, CITOYENS!

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or the first time in over a century, you will be able to swim in the River Seine in Paris. Thanks to a €1.4bn (£1.2bn) regeneration project started in 2018 as part of the run up to the Paris Olympics, three open-air swimming areas will be made accessible to the public in 2025. The historic clean-up has meant fish have returned, the water is becoming clearer and, crucially, it will be safe to bathe in.

It’s not the only environmental change the Olympics in France have welcomed. In a bid to reduce carbon emissions, a ban on short-haul flights came into effect in May 2023 where passengers can instead travel by rail within two-and-a-half hours. It is a world-first, albeit one that was referred to as symbolic by environmentalists who called on the government to impose even stricter rules for it to have an impact.

That need is only becoming more pressing. Last year has been declared the hottest in human history, with record-breaking heatwaves, flooding and wildfires resulting in thousands of deaths and even more displacements worldwide. ‘We are living through climate collapse in real time, and the impact is devastating,’ said United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres.

While France has a relatively small carbon footprint per capita compared to many of its European neighbours, its proactive policy approach to the challenges presented by the climate crisis see it as one of the most influential countries in the region.

‘The EU and other European countries are taking inspiration from what we’ve been doing in France and trying to better understand how it could be applied to their country,’ explains Ellie Dahan-Lamort, advocacy and community manager at circular fashion body Fédération de la Mode Circulaire. Reforming fashion is one industry where French policy has particularly leaned in.

One example is repairs. As of October 2023, French people are able to claim back between €6 and €25 from the government to mend their clothes and shoes. The aim is to reduce the estimated 700,000 tonnes of clothing discarded in the country each year.

Other key policies impacting fashion include a ban on the destruction of unsold garments, compulsory environmental labelling on all items, and an extended producer responsibility (EPR) regulation that means producers have to pay for the collection and recycling of their products at end of life.

As with anyone first out the gate, there are plenty of lessons to be learned.

‘It’s a starting point,’ says Dounia Wone, chief sustainability and inclusion officer at French luxury resale platform, Vestiaire Collective. ‘But any country or institution that wants to be inspired by the French model should think at least of how they can do it better.’

Vestiaire is lobbying within the EU particularly on the volume of textile waste that gets exported to low-income countries. It is only by tackling overproduction and overconsumption that we will get to the true heart of the problem, explains Dounia.

In a study of carbon footprint related to fashion consumption across G20 countries by the Hot or Cool Institute, France was shown to have the lowest per capita consumption among high-income countries. And yet, this is still too high.

In order for fashion to contribute to the 1.5-degree target of the Paris Agreement on climate, fashion consumption will need to reduce by 12 percent in France by 2030. The richest 20 percent of the population will need to go even further, cutting how much they buy by 50 percent. In the UK, this number is 83 percent.

Katia Vladimirova, senior researcher and lecturer at the University of Geneva, and one of the authors of the report, points to recent history as to how this could be possible. In the 1950s-60s, Parisiennes used to own an average of just 30-40 garments, she shares. The idea of a sufficiency wardrobe, something Katia promotes, is thus in living memory.

‘Getting an outfit [at that time] was a rite of passage and respected art, so you chose carefully and it would last,’ explains fashion expert and consultant Camilla Morton.

‘There is much to learn from French society. There is a joie de vivre that I feel in other cultures, which are more consumption oriented, is lacking,’ Katia continues. ‘The French pass time in bookshops rather than in clothing shops; they go to the boulangerie. It’s a different way compared to the UK, for instance, where shopping is a way to console or reward.’

This focus on sufficiency is also coming through at the policy level. In 2022, French President Emmanuel Macron and Economy Minister Bruno Le Maire wore roll neck sweaters instead of shirts and ties to introduce the ‘energy sobriety’ plan. Its aim is to encourage restraint when it comes to one’s individual energy consumption.

That same thought was reflected on consumption more broadly in an awareness campaign from the French ecological transition agency (Ademe) for Black Friday 2023, which encouraged shoppers to buy less and buy better.

It suggested a second-hand phone in one of the ads and keeping the sweater someone is already wearing in another.

Christophe Béchu, French minister of ecological transition and territorial cohesion, said: ‘If we want to complete our ecological transition while preserving our prosperity and freedoms, we have no choice but to move towards greater sobriety in the way we consume.’

The campaign was condemned by various commercial players for potential harm caused to business and employment, but this is perhaps what made it all the more a talking point, suggests Ellie.

A survey from Ademe found 83 percent of French people believe we consume too much. Previous research showed 85 percent are ready to make changes to their day-to-day behaviour.

The balance between what serves the planet and what serves people is a fine one to tread. It’s something the French know well from the ‘gilets jaunes’ movement of 2018, which saw protests against a planned tax rise on diesel and petrol to support the green energy transition, held across the country. But it is also this sort of citizen action that will lead France to continued progress.

‘This protest mindset puts the topic at the forefront of the political agenda, and that’s where we see change happen,’ notes Dounia.

Do the French do sustainability better? They’re certainly laying the groundwork for the rest of us to follow. We can start with a swim in the Seine – ideally wearing a swimming costume we already own. n

IMAGE: LIBERTY LEADING THE PEOPLE BY EUGENE DELACROIX (1830)

RACHEL ARTHUR on France’s new green revolution

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IMAGE: LIBERTY LEADING THE PEOPLE BY EUGENE DELACROIX (1830)

Will France’s history of activism mean it leads the way when it comes to sustainable change in Europe?

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VILLAGE PEOPLE

JANE KNIGHT meets the American millionaire transforming a sleepy Devon enclave

PHOTOS: © MATT AUSTIN

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he village name alone evokes curiosity.

At first bite, you know it’s special. Here are ingredients prepared Woolfardisworthy in North Devon proves quite the in a way you might never have thought of, contributing to layer after tongue twister, which is why the Anglo-Saxon name layer of flavour in dishes such as Birch Farm hogget with parsnip, for Wulfheard’s homestead has been known by the nettles and fermented garlic, or fermented mushroom parfait with shortened version of Woolsery since the 17th century. chantelle and dulse. I had never heard of sea buckthorn before Today, this little village of 1,100 residents with trying it in a tart with hibiscus, pink peppercorn and sweet cicely, its medieval church and small school is attracting attention for but couldn’t get enough of its cantaloupe flavour. another reason. The American-based tech millionaire Michael It’s all a result of the close interaction between former Gidleigh Birch, who sold the social networking site Bebo in 2008 for $850 Park head chef Ian Webber, and head gardener Josh Sparkes, who million, and his wife Xochi have bought and renovated the local runs The Collective’s 16-acre organic market garden. pub, the adjoining chippy and the village store with post office, as On the village outskirts along with a livestock farm of rare heritage well as creating a 150-acre farm to supply them all with produce. breeds. It’s a shining example of sustainable farming.

Last summer, they added four swish rooms above the shop, along The beginnings of a 300-species edible forest have been planted, with three cottages dotted around the village. It’s been quite the perennial crops are favoured over annual ones, and products such as lemon geranium and sumac are grown to minimise food miles by transformation. But it’s not over yet; the Birches are still busy replacing citrus fruit. A storeroom holds row after row of intriguing turning the old village manor into a hotel.

Why the interest? It’s not as if Woolsery, just three miles from jars whose contents range from pineapple weed vinegar to mugwort the gorgeous little Clovelly tumbling down to the coast, could ever syrup. ‘We pickle, preserve and ferment using all those techniques hope to compete in the beauty stakes. To Michael, though, it’s part that have largely been lost,’ said Ian. of his heritage – his maternal great-grandfather built the village Touring the farm, you can see just how much thought and store, his grandmother was born in one of the rooms above it, and passion has gone into it all. The same goes for the interiors of the when he was growing up, he holidayed there with his parents at rooms, suites and cottages, which have been beautifully designed in a style Michael calls a ‘fun period country vibe done very elegantly’.

Easter and during the summer. ‘I loved Woolsery as a child,’ he Statement vintage wallpapers are offset by heritage fabrics, said. ‘For me, it was always the place that represented family.’

When his sister called him in San Francisco and told him antiques rub shoulders with contemporary pieces, and interesting that the village pub was in danger of being turned into flats art hangs on the walls. Bedrooms might feature a delicate petal after its thatched roof collapsed, Michael decided to act. glass lamp, fabric bed headboard, bespoke cabinets made by a local He bought the Farmers Arms in 2014; while joiner, with perhaps a modern interpretation the Grade II-listed building was undergoing of the classic roll-top bath in the bathroom. a four-year renovation, the owners of other ‘I’m obsessed by interior design,’ said properties asked if he was interested in Emily, who collaborated with Hannah Lohan buying them too. The project snowballed from New Heritage Design.

No expense has been spared in kitting the and The Collective at Woolsery was born.

Although locals haunt the buzzy bar, cottages out with high-end goodies, from the challenge was always going to be to Sage coffee makers to Miele washers, dryers entice visitors from further afield. ‘We are and dishwashers, along with light switches not on a drive-through route or on anyone’s that proved a tad too complicated for me. radar,’ said Emily Harmon, who moved You can see that Michael has been quite from America to mastermind the project. the cash dispenser financing it all, though he won’t be drawn on just how many millions ‘To survive as a business we had to attract he has invested. ‘It’s definitely not a moneypeople interested in food.’

They have certainly done that, taking making venture,’ he said. ‘It has become a farm-to-fork dining to new levels in the passion project. The goal is to be cash-flow beamed pub restaurant with blazing fire, positive when the hotel opens.’

Michael and Xochi Birch, who oak settles, wall-mounted cow heads and There’s still no date on when that bought the pub in Woolsery in 2014 might be. Although Wulfheard Manor an unusual menu.

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Chris Jenn, Livestock Manager at Birch Farm, which supplies the pub and other projects in the village

The Farmers Arms hopes to become a destination for foodies, with visitors able to also book a room in one of the cottages in the village

– comprising a Devon longhouse behind a Georgian façade – was purchased in 2014, renovation to make it into a 18-room hotel including barn accommodation has taken far longer than expected.

‘We are at least two years from finishing,’ said Michael.

That won’t please the locals, some of whom have nicknamed Woolsery ‘scaffold city’.

‘What they have done has been lovely but it’s been a building site for seven years,’ said Simon Bennett outside the beautifully refurbished store, named J. Andrew after Birch’s great-grandfather. ‘It will be amazing when it’s finished. Everything was old and decrepit in the pub and now it has been brought into the modern day,’ pointed out Thomas Teather.

Over on the other side of the village, in the community centre’s bar, there was a bit more grumbling about high food and drink prices at the Farmers Arms and the impact the renovation was having on house prices. ‘But it is good for the village economy,’ conceded one local.

Indeed, The Collective employs 70 people, almost three-quarters of whom live in the village. Among them is Sophy Buckley, 22, who works at the Farmers Arms bar. ‘When I was growing up, I couldn’t wait to get out of the village. There didn’t seem to be a future here for me. Now I’ll be staying,’ she said.

Other employees at the farm and the shop include some of Michael’s distant relatives; he sees them when he visits twice a year.

If that makes him more of an absentee lord of the manor for now, he does plan to stay for much longer periods when his youngest child, who is 15, finishes school.

Meanwhile, he said he had no further plans to create anything else in Woolsery as has happened in Cornwall’s Padstow, which gained the moniker of Padstein after the sheer number of businesses run by Rick Stein.

‘I care a lot about Woolsery – what it is and what it becomes,’ said Michael, who even named one of his children Devon. ‘I really believe in community and villages.’

BOOK IT: Cottages from £275 per night. A hamper breakfast costs

£15pp. woolsery.com. n

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How to DIE WELL

PHOTOS: PEXELS; GETTY IMAGES

We’ve lost the ability to ‘do’ death, but it’s one of life’s few inevitabilities – so let’s do it well, says TESSA DUNTHORNE

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‘I

PHOTOS: PEXELS; GETTY IMAGES

was lucky, in a way,’ considers Dr Emma Clare. ‘I was brought up by my grandparents, so I always had that awareness that they were closer to the end of life than most people’s parental figures. We were also very immersed in nature, my grandad always outdoors in the Peak District, and bringing home dead wildlife to look at and appreciate. We especially liked birdwatching, and sometimes he’d find [dead] birds, like hawks, that you don’t often get to see up close – he’d call me outside, we’d have a look, and we’d be like, “wow, isn’t life amazing”.’

Emma is an end of life doula and has a PhD in death competency from the University of Derby. Not dissimilar to the doulas who stand alongside midwives for new mothers, she is one of the palliative and post-life care workers who step up in difficult times to hear the wishes of the dying, facilitate conversations for newly bereaved families, and provide a strand of support that the medical system cannot give. In short, she – and her peers – are the people who make death a bit more human – because, essentially, we’ve lost the ability to die well. And it’s come in no small part from our increasing disconnection from nature.

In a recent episode of environmental journalist Rachel Donald’s podcast Planet: Critical, agroecologist Nikki Yoxall bemoans how we’ve begun to think of death in nature as a waste – as something we should try to fix. She argues that we’re increasingly ‘cleansed from decay’, a cycle within which all living things exist; that the invention of plastic itself can be credited with this alienation, as a material that defies that natural cycle with its foreverness.

We’re also experiencing a wholesale nature deficit. Rewilding Britain suggests that 90 percent of our time is now spent indoors; we’re less food and nature literate, too The biggest indicator of this is how we’re living beyond the limits of nature, having transgressed six of the nine planetary boundaries set out by climate scientists. But it’s also cropped up in an unexpected way: how we interact with and experience the inevitability of death.

Like plastic, we’re now approaching a technological crux in history where we can (to an extent) deny the natural cycle of life and death (just look at the tech bros in Silicon Valley dropping millions in the search for everlasting life). Human beings have also, of course, made strides in medicine that have almost doubled our lifespans. But by doing so, argues Emma, we have also medicalised our experience of death.

‘Medical advancement is obviously a good thing,’ says Emma, ‘but it makes us feel like we’re aside from nature – that we can conquer death. And we think we know how to avoid it, when actually we don’t – we only know how to prolong the dying process.’

Dr Kathryn Mannix, the palliative care doctor behind With The End In Mind (William Collins, £9.99), argues that medicalisation has radically altered our experience of death. Or, rather, ended our experience of death. ‘Instead of dying in a dear and familiar room with people we love around us,’ she states, ‘we now die in ambulances and emergency rooms and intensive care units, our loved ones separated from us by the machinery of life preservation.’

Emma agrees. ‘One of the reasons that this discomfort starts in society is that a lot of our deaths are now behind closed doors, whereas even a

hundred years ago, most people died at home with kids around.’

University of Exeter’s Dr Laura Sangha, a specialist in early modern death cultures, points out that frequent observance of dying in the past didn’t affect the gravitas of loss. ‘Seeing death more, particularly among young children, didn’t mean you grieved less,’ she says, ‘evidence points to parents and children having strong bonds, and parents experiencing heartbreaking suffering when they lost their offspring. But the fact that it was more likely to happen would have meant that you developed strategies to emotionally prepare.’

Other cultures still retain this emotional preparedness, suggests morticiancum-YouTuber Caitlin Doughty in her book From Here To Eternity (Orion, £8.99). It sees her go around the world following different practises of mourning and burial. She found that Westernised society has shed holding space for the bereaved to grieve openly and without judgement.

In contrast, she found that the Toraja people, from South Sulawesi, Indonesia, embalm the bodies of loved ones and maintain them for years after a person dies, until their burial (after which they are often exhumed on special occasions). In Belize, families bring bodies home from the hospital for a full-day wake and pre-burial preparation, rubbing loved ones in rum to help release rigour mortis-seized limbs more quickly. Closer to home, in Ireland, wakes are held to display the body and queues of people come to pay their respects. In these examples, seeing is believing or at minimum the rituals enhance our understand of our place in the cycle; and it encourages a sense of purpose to help us grieve in meaningful ways.

‘Doulas want to bring death back into the community,’ says Emma, ‘we want to get to a point where people have basic knowledge around death.’

Community seems ultimately the key to unlocking our peace with the end. There is a hunger for open spaces for process and grief – you need only to look at the success of Death Café, which, since starting in an East London basement in 2011, has seen 10,000 events take place in 85 countries.

‘My late son, John, had the idea of Death Café because of his spiritual beliefs,’ says Susan Barsky Reid, his mother and co-founder. ‘He was a devout Buddhist, and so examined death and dying daily. I think he thought it would be helpful for people because there is so much death denial around.’

Indeed, From Here To Eternity concludes that the key to a calmer approach to the end comes as a collective. ‘Death avoidance,’ Caitlin explains, ‘is not an individual failing, but rather a cultural one.

Facing death is not for the faint-hearted; it is far too challenging to expect that each citizen will do so on his or her own.’ And Susan points to joy in this shared challenge.

‘My first experience of a death café was life affirming; people laughed a lot and it was very fun. There was such a feeling of intimacy that one got from being with a group of strangers for an hour and a half.’

And then there’s that final link: nature. ‘One of the reasons I’ve been set up to be comfortable with death is because of nature,’ says Emma, ‘because all of nature is constant life and death, and in fact the things we think are most beautiful in nature ultimately tend to be death – like the autumn leaves falling from trees. All of the things we appreciate in nature are only possible because of that cycle from life to death, and I think the more time you spend being really present in nature, the more you feel like part of it, and that normalises being part of the cycle.’ n

W H AT T O D O N E X T

READ Dr Kathryn Mannix’s palliative care memoir, With the End In Mind.

ATTEND A local death café – they take place all over the country (deathcafe.com).

CONSIDER How you might like to be buried – and talk about it with loved ones – even if you think it’s a while off!

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WINTER

SALE NOW ON

Book an appointment www.cphart.co.uk 0345 600 1950

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INTERIORS Edited by Carole Annett

Come On In

PHOTO: © PAUL MASSEY; VSP INTERIORS

Plush upholstery, colourful rugs and soft low level lighting are how this classical-style new build in the Homes Counties says ‘hello’. vspinteriors.com

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LOVE IS KEY

SNOOP WORTHY

Martin Brudnizki’s joined the Newson’s Yard enclave of Pimlico design shops with his accessories showroom, And Objects. Candles from £120, cushions from £200, Easton chair, from £3,800. andobjects.com 1 Forest Floor Celebrate the beauty of the English countryside through Sanderson Design Company’s Arboretum collection. Rug, from £609. brinkandcampman.com

Design NOTES

The story behind the mattress and bed company loved by Hollywood stars and royalty alike. MD Jan Ryde shares his leadership philosophy and explains how any business, in any field, can operate through love. £21.60, hastens.com

What’s caught Carole Annett’s interiors eye this season

2 The Big Squish Eleanor armchair in Elgin raspberry, £1,812. love-your-home.co.uk

HOME COMFORTS

1 Celebrating the beauty of the English countryside 2 What’s not to love? A pillow-soft, deep-set armchair that feels like a big hug 3 Art meets engineering

3 British Engineering Rinato brushed brass and black double wall light, £1,490. bertfrank.co.uk

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News | INTERIORS

CRAFTED Kitsch or cute, you decide

FABLE & MIRTH Ceramic fish vase, £50. fableandmirth.com

IT'S COLD OUTSIDE

Wrap up in artist Evalina Kroon’s Dancing Doll mohair blanket. Her distinctive checkered pattern finds its way onto soft jacquard-woven alpaca. £600 at Layered Interior. layeredinterior.com

DRINKIES

With characteristic bamboo-style fluting, rattan shelf and splayed legs, Trove’s Bar Cabinet is inspired by the legendary island of Avalon and has plenty of space for storing glassware. £7,500, thetrove.co.uk

PALOMAS PRODUCT Pink star dish, £30. palomasproducts.co.uk

MINT & MAY Bee wall hook, £7.50. mintandmay.co.uk

THE WHITE COMPANY Bourton heart jug, £15. thewhitecompany.com

RUGGED LOOKS

Lady Deirdre Dyson’s latest collection, Graduation, resembles the peacefulness of soft watercolour painting – simple, with just a wash of colour. Ingots, hand-knotted design in 100 percent pure wool and silk, from £1,100 per sq/m. deirdredyson.com

GIVE US A WAVE

Channel individuality and playfulness in the bathroom with a vibrant basin in an unconventional form and hue. Tilde basin in brick, £2,700. westonebathrooms.com

SMOCK LONDON X EDIT58 Elsie by skirt shade, from £115. edit58.com

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THE EXPERTS Andrew Timothy O’Brien, garden coach and To Stand and Stare author (DK Life, £16.99) Richard Pearce, head of maintenance, Randle Siddeley Ltd Penny Hemming, head gardener, Riverford Organic

You might be tempted to cosy up over winter – three garden experts reckon you should give attention to a different kind of bed…

1

What should we be doing in January and February outside?

Andrew: There’s still plenty of time to get any tulip bulbs planted for a spring display. Now, when everything in the garden seems asleep, is a great opportunity to prune roses, apple and pear trees (but not plums or greengages, which are more vulnerable to disease over winter).

Richard: In January, it’s time to plant, prune and protect any young trees in your garden. Bare root and root-balled trees, plus hedging, can also be planted now, provided the ground is suitably prepared. Protect any newly planted trees and shrubs from winter by adding a thick layer of dry mulch to keep their roots from feeling the cold.

Penny: It’s best to do very little. Don’t cut back borders if you can help it – all those stems and plant remains are a really important habitat for insect, larvae and general wildlife. But if you haven’t planted any garlic yet, get it in now – best practice is to get it planted prior to Christmas.

This image and above: Late winter gardens by RSL

2

Does anything grow at this time of year – what lovely outdoor plants can we enjoy right now?

Andrew: Some of our earliest flowering plants have evolved to cope with the ravages of the cold weather by synthesising a type of antifreeze within their cells. It’s an adaptation that allows drifts of snowdrops to clothe our winter borders, and it allows the frozen and drooping stems of the hellebore with its shy, freckled flowers to spring back upright with each thaw. A clean, crisp winter’s day is improved even further by the presence of scented shrubs such as daphne, sarcococca and witch hazel, their perfume wafting surprisingly far in the cool garden air.

Richard: The pretty evergreen shrub Skimmia japonica carries deep crimson and creamy white buds through its Rubella and Kew Green varieties, which will pop open in early spring. Winter flowering Camellia (Camellia sasanqua ‘Yuletide’) has a full display throughout winter to the end of January, with glossy green leaves and huge buds of dark red flowers. Another shrub option can be found in the dwarf alpine, Erica carnea – offering sprays of tiny pink, magenta or white petals throughout winter.

Penny: The winter bounty includes: snow drops, colourful stems of dog woods and hazels; hellebores; sweet scented plants such as winter honeysuckles; sarcococcas and daphnes; camellias.

PHOTO: UNSPLASH

BED IN

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Gardens | INTERIORS

3

How should we style our gardens at this time?

Penny: It’s a great time to go to National Trust and RHS gardens to get inspired – look at which plants stand out. Colourful stems like cornus add interest in winter and evergreen plants can add structure and shape.

Richard: Well thought-out lighting installations can bring your garden to life, and intimate social areas with warming fireplaces to allow you to sit out and take it all in during longer, darker evenings.

Andrew: Treat your furniture to some colourful waterproof cushions you can whip out – whenever the weather’s dry enough – to sit outside with a steaming cup of tea. Dress key trees and shrubs with lights on timers (sparkles are not just for Christmas) to draw you out of the house for a wander down the path, and accessorise the garden with your own presence, at least once a day.

4

Riverford’s head gardener, Penny, advises adding organic matter to your flower beds to help improve their health

And is now the time to be thinking about our summer gardens?

Richard: Although it may seem early – late February can be a good time to start mowing the lawn in milder areas. If it’s still too cold just make sure the mower is sharpened and serviced for March! In areas where you wish to add grass, this is a good time to lay turf on prepared areas. However, the ground is most likely still a little too cold to get started on summer planting (reserve this for March onwards), so complete your winter task list instead. Then, you can stay cosy indoors and do a spot of future garden planning!

Penny: These early months are the time to start prepping veg beds for the coming season. Weed these areas and mulch with compost from your heaps, and well rotted manure. This will improve your soil and help enhance your yields. Try to avoid digging too much and leave the structures of the soil as undisturbed as possible. Also adding organic matter to your flower beds helps to improve the health of all your plants.

Andrew: Winter offers a pause in the gardening calendar to plan how you want your garden to look and feel in the coming year. But if you find yourself itching to get going, now is a good time to sow sweet pea seeds into deep pots or loo roll centres, as well as tomatoes and chillies. But now’s the time to decide what you want to grow this year, ordering seeds and summer flowering bulbs. n

PHOTO: UNSPLASH

THREE SEASONAL TIPS

ANDREW If you have any daffodil or allium bulbs left, get them in the ground – they’ll have a better chance of growing than if they’re left to shrivel on the shelf. PENNY I buy myself a gardener’s calendar each year to help me through the months and remind me of sowing times.

RICHARD In February it’s time to ensure garden birds are catered for by putting up bird boxes. These gardener’s friends need some winter assistance as there are less nesting spots!

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INTERIORS | Trend

MAGIC MIRROR With in-built ‘personal trainer’, £1,399. magic.fit

1ST DIBS Contemporary room divider, £8,259.

1stdibs.com

VINTERIOR Mid-century metal red folding chair by Niels Gammelgaard, £98. vinterior.co

GO SMALL

Transform your pied-à-terre, says Tessa Dunthorne

A

ETSY Utensil rail for pans, £24. etsy.com

cosy city bolthole or country cottage doesn’t need to feel cluttered. By careful curation of pieces that double up in use, you can transform your space into a small but mighty home. Perhaps it’s a nest of tables that can be pulled out in a jiff y when an unexpected guest pops over for tea and cake – or perhaps overnight stays are easier to accommodate with a hidden wall bed, handily stashed away in an unsuspecting cupboard.

Who said little spaces couldn’t have a big impact?

THE OLD CINEMA LONDON Mid-century nest of four tables, £495. theoldcinema.co.uk

URBAN SIZE Hallway tidy shelf in dark oak, £185. urbansize.co.uk

1ST DIBS Wood trinket bowl lamp, £1,742.

1stdibs.com

WALLBED.CO.UK Period style transforming wallbed, from £4,768. wallbed.co.uk

HAFELE Rising corner island storage unit, £POA. hafele.co.uk

QORNER APARTMENTS A micro-living apartment in Quito, Ecuador, designed

by Safdie Architects to make use of limited space. safdiearchitects.com

DARLINGS OF CHELSEA Three-seater Launceston sofa bed, £1,343. darlingsofchelsea.co.uk

JOHN LEWIS Wicker umbrella stand, £35. johnlewis. com

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READER EVENT

WARDROBE WIZARDRY

Join Neatsmith and Country & Town House for an exciting and exclusive event during London Design Week

G

reat storage makes life more seamless. Neatsmith is the family-owned British brand that creates and installs luxury bespoke wardrobes, all of which it designs and crafts in London. The choice of leading interior designers such as Tiffany Duggan and Catherine Wilman, and luxury developers like Griggs Homes and Hawksmoor Homes, it offers a range of storage solutions, from beautiful built-in shelves to dream walk-in wardrobes and dressing rooms.

Neatsmith also offers a range of personalised options for living rooms, studies and home offices, all featuring the highest quality materials and finishes that are brought to life by its skilled, artisanal, British craftspeople.

The Great British Brand has six showrooms across London and the South East, with its 4,000 sq/ft flagship located on the King’s Road, in the heart of the capital’s interior design district.

TALKING WARDROBES Directors Philipp, Andrew and Mathew Nagel started Neatsmith to provide high-quality, well-designed wardrobes with a service to match

Join Neatsmith and Country & Town House for an exclusive event during London Design Week, hosted by our Interiors Editor, Carole Annett, and Neatsmith’s Director, Philipp Nagel.

Charlotte Elizabeth

Discover the brand’s beautiful wardrobes – scented by The White Company – with a glass of English sparkling from Gusbourne, and listen to Carole in conversation with Charlotte Elizabeth Interiors plus others from the design and fashion worlds, about exquisite storage ideas, how the right design can maximise your space and streamline your life. Plus, amazing goodie bags featuring The White Company and more.

Wednesday 13 March, 5pm 544 King’s Road, Chelsea, SW10 0UB For more info and to secure your ticket, visit countryandtownhouse.com/ interiors/neatsmith-event

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INTERIORS | Case Study

‘The styling is ECLECTIC, achieved by taking INSPIRATION from a wide array of SOURCES including Swedish interiors, PERSIAN rugs and William Morris’

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OUTSIDE THE BOX

Carole Annett meets a design duo who’ve transformed a new-build in Oxfordshire

‘T

Farrow & Ball’s warm ‘Babouche’ shade welcomes you into House No. 4

he essence of House No.4 was inspired by the hues of Vincent Van Gogh’s masterpiece The Starry Night,’ explains Christopher Cooke and his partner both in business and life, Samin Sahabi – together they founded interior design practice Studio November. ‘It traces back to a cherished memory from our son’s early years – it featured in his favourite music book.’

‘We found the property in Oxfordshire by chance,’ remembers Samin, who met Christopher while studying interior architecture at university (he studied architecture). The home sits on a small, niche development, one of ten houses. The duo embraced the new-build concept. ‘We basically said, “Let’s turn it from a white box into something cosy, lovely and different,”’ says Samin.

The aim was to create a fusion between a modern home and an English country house. ‘While we love frills and tassels and everything you traditionally find in an English country home, we wanted to push the boundary by adding our own stamp – a little bit more of the contemporary,’ explains Christopher. ‘That sits really nicely with us.’

The styling is eclectic, achieved by taking inspiration from a wide array of sources including Swedish interiors, Persian rugs and William Morris. The rooms also incorporate antiques alongside high street finds, achieving a warm and welcoming feel. Two colours headline the house’s palette, both by Farrow & Ball: ‘Studio Green’ and ‘Babouche’, an ochre shade. ‘“Studio Green” has a darkness that I really love,’ says Samin, ‘it grounds everything. Linking the colour through the house, whether on a piece of furniture or a skirting board, helps to achieve coherency, which is important.’

‘Babouche’, the name taken from the hue of Moroccan slippers, greets visitors in the hallway, and forms a backdrop for one of Samin’s favourite embroidered fabrics, by Pollack, an American textile company distributed by Altfield in the UK. ‘It was the first fabric I bought for the house,’ she says. ‘I love it’.

In order to maximise light and fill a void in the corner of the staircase, a curved curtain rail beckons visitors upwards.

Hanging above, a canvas artwork by Mary Scott, one of myriad objects with a story. Christopher explains: ‘Scott buries individual pieces of canvas before creating a collage. We love her work and commissioned a piece for this space.’ The duo have also incorporated art from celebrated Iranian artist Reza Abedini and Swedish weaver Märta Måås-Fjetterström into their home, as well as Christopher’s own work.

The home is a great example of what Studio November can achieve – and the practice’s storytelling is resonating with clients.

‘They love that we’re not obsessed with one style, and are exploring ourselves as well,’ says Christopher. And it’s inspiring to see what can be achieved when you look at things from a new perspective. studionovember.co.uk n January /February 2024 | COUNTRYANDTOWNHOUSE.COM | 95

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charity

Founded by Arizona Muse

@dirt.charity

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HOTELS &

PHOTOS: RIDE EGYPT

TRAVEL Taking the Path LESS TRAVELLED Make your next adventure a meaningful one, says Francisca Kellett

See Eygpt from a different viewpoint with Ride Egypt

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H

ave you ever touched a rhino? Its skin is hard, warm and two inches thick. But slide your hand round into the armpit, and it’s as soft as a kitten. I know this because a few years ago I joined a Phinda Impact Journey in South Africa, which included helping a vet draw blood from a vein behind the rhino’s ear, taking hair samples, and generally standing around having my mind blown that I was getting to do any of this at all. And then a man with a chainsaw strode over and sawed off the rhino’s horn.

Don’t worry, the rhino didn’t feel anything. Rhino horns are like hair, and they grow back. But regularly removing the horn means you remove their value – so poachers are no longer interested. And it was very much tranquilised, otherwise things probably wouldn’t have ended well for us.

Without programmes like this, things might not end up well for the rhino, either. Run by luxury safari operator andBeyond (andbeyond. com), these transformational trips are a clever combination of luxury safari and hands-on conservation, where guests get their hands dirty and pay for the privilege, which in turn funds vital conservation work.

Since starting the dehorning programme, rhino poaching has dropped dramatically. ‘People are really able to engage with it and understand the critical nature of the work,’ andBeyond CEO Joss Kent tells me. ‘It’s a powerful combination of the joy of wildlife spotting and the realities of conservation and leaves a meaningful mark on travellers.’

Leaving a meaningful mark is at the core of transformational travel, and is what makes it so special. These are holidays that make a difference,

not just to the places we visit but to us, too. ‘It’s about leaving a legacy and travelling with purpose,’ says Joss. ‘Travellers hope to leave with more than just great memories. They want a sense of meaning or shift in their mindset.’ I can happily confirm that there is indeed nothing like extracting a vital blood test from a critically endangered rhino to give your holiday a sense of meaning.

For Nicola Shepherd, founder of Explorations Company (explorationscompany.com), that sense of meaning comes through philanthropy. ‘Philanthropic travel enriches a traveller, and lets you make a direct contribution to the region,’ she explains. When her team custom-makes a trip, they first chat to the client to discover their personal interests and then add a philanthropic angle to align with them – like visiting a field hospital if you’re interested in medicine, or spending a day with a women’s empowerment charity if gender equality is your thing. Customers often say this is the highlight of the trip, Nicola tells me, with the win-win of upping donations to good causes.

‘Most individuals feel better when they know they’re making a positive contribution, especially while enjoying themselves on holiday. This, in its very essence, is sustainable tourism.’

It needn’t, by the way, involve rhinos and chainsaws, or hospitals and charities. Transformational travel can be as simple as having a fascinating conversation with someone you meet, or visiting someone’s home. ‘It doesn’t have to mean a huge, life-changing epiphany,’ explains Zina Bencheikh, Intrepid Travel’s (intrepidtravel.com) Managing Director for EMEA. ‘It can be as simple as an experience that helps you connect

PHOTOS: © LAYLA MOTTA; © VALENTINA SOMMARIVA

From rhino dehorning in Africa to rewilding in Yorkshire, there are lots of ways to make your travel more meaningful – and also give back

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Transformational travel | HOTELS & TRAVEL with the destination you’re visiting.’ Intrepid’s tours often include these elements, like hanging out with a local family during a farmstay in Portugal’s Alentejo, or touring the M’Goun Valley in Morocco with the area’s first female guide.

Connecting with nature is key, too, according to Roger Tempest, whose family has owned the 3,000acre Broughton Estate in the Yorkshire Dales since 1097, which now features revamped cottages and a cutting-edge retreat centre. ‘People are feeling the need for this more and more. Overwhelmingly, the feedback from guests is about the impact a stay has had on them.’ As well as hiking, biking and wild swimming, guests can help the estate rewild from what was once an intensive sheep farm, taking part in native tree planting and species data collection – the estate is home to otters, hares and kestrels. ‘They immerse themselves and get hands-on with nature recovery, while nurturing their inner wellbeing.’

If all that activity sounds like a bit too much, well, work, then think about your accommodation. Stay

in a Long Run (thelongrun.org) property and you’ll know that just by being there, you’re doing good.

Collectively protecting 23 million acres worldwide, this umbrella group insists its members adhere to rigorous sustainability measures, where community engagement and conservation is as important as profit. Nikoi Island in Indonesia, for example, is a blueprint for sustainable management, has created marine protected areas and funds thousands of local students’ education. You, meanwhile, get to kick back on white-sand beaches, frolic in turquoise water and snorkel over kaleidoscopic reefs, all in the knowledge that you’re having a positive impact.

Because that’s the thing. Transformational travel has to work for you. If you’re a fly-and-flop type, you can still make a difference – and you’ll feel better about your holiday, which in itself can be transformational.

It’s about thinking a little bit more about how we travel, being a little more conscious of what we’re doing, and perhaps even coming back a little changed.

Rhino-touching? That’s strictly optional.

HEADING OUT

Four transformational trips for your next escape

1

OASYHOTEL, ITALY

Bed down in this 2,500 acre WWF-approved nature reserve in Tuscany, where profits fund the on-site Dynamo Camp, which provides holidays to children suffering from serious illness and their families. From €476 per lodge, B&B. oasyhotel.com

Nikoi Island in Indonesia features rainforest, beaches and coral reefs, where conservation is king

2

KAMALAYA, THAILAND

The Embracing Change retreat at Kamalaya in Koh Samui tackles emotional and physical issues, including treatments, classes and personal lifestyle consultations.

Five nights from £2,399 with Healing Holidays, incl. activities and full board, flights extra. healingholidays.com

PHOTOS: © LAYLA MOTTA; © VALENTINA SOMMARIVA

Guests at Broughton Estate can help with tree planting and data collection as part of its efforts to rewild

3

SUMBA, INDONESIA

NIHI Sumba is the award-winning hideaway on the island of Sumba in Indonesia. It’s become the world’s first spa to offer equine wellness programmes, with horse yoga and meditation, equine therapy and equine sound baths – plus swimming with horses. $1,075 per night. nihi.com

4

GROOTBOS, S. AFRICA

Stay in a vast stretch of protected fynbos on South Africa’s Walker’s Bay, where there’s hiking, riding, whale-watching and trips to see the incredible lodge-funded sports camp for local township children.

Suites from £1,000, incl. activities and meals. grootbos.com n

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ICE TAX

With the goal to become carbon neutral by 2040, keeping up to sustainability standards is a top priority for Iceland. It has become the latest country introduce a new tourist tax, following in the footsteps of other destinations like Venice and Bali. However, while the tax doesn’t solve overtourism – the fees are often too low to detract people from visiting – at the very least, they help fuel the economies and contribute to local communities. visiticeland.com

The ESCAPIST

Lauren Ho selects the best effortless adventures, with the planet in mind BATHE LIKE CLEOPATRA

ON THE RAILS

Québec has just launched Train de Charlevoix, a zero-emission train (the first in North America) that runs solely on green hydrogen. With a schedule that runs from Québec City, Côte-deBeaupré and Charlevoix’s coastal towns and villages, the train offers eco-friendly public transport, but also a fun tourist experience.

There are also short day trips like the Rail Cruise, a one-hour journey that includes a tasting menu of local cold cuts and cheeses, alongside packages at hotels along the route to ensure you make the most of this beautiful part of the world. traindecharlevoix.com

PHOTOS: GETTY IMAGES; PEXELS; BRIAN SIAMBI; TOM JOY

Perched on a peninsula above Paphos in Cyprus, Cap St Georges is one of those hotels that you’ll never want to leave. It’s all about its scenic isolation with several swimming pools, beach bars and restaurants, and 202 rooms and suites with gorgeous sea views. Unfolding over a sprawling 2,500 square metres, the aptly named Cleopatra Spa – because Cyprus was once gifted to Queen Cleopatra of Egypt – is a place of pure pleasure, decked out in luxurious green marble and soft, intimate lighting and offering treatments like the Akamas Journey, which starts with a botanical exfoliator and ends with an aromatherapy massage.

From €542 B&B. capstgeorges.com

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News | HOTELS & TRAVEL ECO CITIES

Global Destination Sustainability Movement has released its annual list of the top 100 eco-friendly cities in the world based on criteria from environmental performance (including public transportation and carbon emissions) to the sustainability of suppliers (like hotels and restaurants). Taking top spot for the seventh time, Gothenburg, Sweden, strives to be one of the greenest cities on earth with an airport that has the highest Airport Carbon Accreditation certificate, and a new sustainable transportation infrastructure with the goal to be completely free of emissions by 2030. gds.earth

SIX HOT NEW OPENINGS

BROADWICK SOHO, London, UK A flamboyantly eccentric townhouse offering designed by Martin Brudnizki, with 57 rooms.

From £455. broadwicksoho.com

ONE&ONLY AESTHESIS, Athens, Greece Bungalows, residences and villas, all anchored by a statement swimming pool and Greece’s first Guerlain Spa. From €720. oneandonlyresorts.com

TAKE A SEX BREAK

With sex known to support your immune system, improve sleep and reduce stress, it makes sense that hotels, spas and retreats around the globe are getting on board with offerings to improve sexual wellness. SHA Wellness in Spain recently launched a new Sexual Health Unit, while Back To the Body offers retreats in locations like Italy and Mexico, and Unyoked – a sustainable eco-cabin brand – has teamed up with sexual wellness company Normal to create Come Together, a downloadable intimacy connection course. With so much on offer, there’s now no excuse to neglect the benefits sex can have on our overall health. shawellness.com; backtothebody.org; unyoked.co

RE CABINS, St Albans, UK This sleeps two, in over eight acres of private, undisturbed meadow, offering a chance to slow down and switch off. From £190. recabins.com

SONEVA SECRET, Maldives An ultra-bespoke resort concept located in the Maldives’ remote Haa Dhaalu Atoll, with 14 beach and overwater villas. From $3,140. soneva.com

THE RESORT CLEANING UP THE RED SEA

PHOTOS: GETTY IMAGES; PEXELS; BRIAN SIAMBI; TOM JOY

Marsa Nakari, a small Egyptian in-land resort, has been officially recognised as one of only 11 eco dive centres by PADI. Located on the Red Sea, the tented resort is one of three under the Red Sea Diving Safari Banner, and the entire company has, from the beginning, focused on sustainability and the environment. This includes water and waste management initiatives alongside its own solar field, which provides 70 percent of the electricity at Marsa Shagra, one of the sister properties. It also offers free certified courses like ‘Dive Against Debris’, where you learn how to safely remove rubbish from coral without damaging it. Diving packages from £315. redsea-divingsafari.com

ANGAMA AMBOSELI, Kimana Sanctuary, Kenya Situated in a haven for Super Tusker elephants, Angama Amboseli features ten suites, each with views of Kilimanjaro. From $ 1,650. angama.com

SIX SENSES SOUTHERN DUNES, Saudi Arabia In the heart of the Saudi Arabian Alnesai desert, with a host of drinking and dining options and its signature spa. From $1,300. sixsenses.com n

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PHOTOS: SHUTTERSTOCK; © PETER FRANK EDWARDS; © LUCY CUNEO; © GABRIEL HANWAY

Nature and nurture are what visitors find when they dock on the island

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USA | HOTELS & TRAVEL

Legends OF THE FALL

Where do American aristocrats go to escape the crowds? They flock to Cumberland Island, says Olivia Falcon

PHOTOS: SHUTTERSTOCK; © PETER FRANK EDWARDS; © LUCY CUNEO; © GABRIEL HANWAY

W

John F Kennedy Jnr and Carolyn Bessette wed on Cumberland Island in 1996

hen John F Kennedy Jnr was looking for a private place to wed ethereal beauty, Carolyn Bessette in 1996, away from the media’s gaze, he flew his small plane to a tiny air strip on Cumberland Island, a wildly romantic and remote isle off the coast of Georgia, USA. At 18 miles long, Cumberland is the largest of the Georgia’s 15 Sea Islands, about a third larger than Manhattan, yet has abundantly rich wildlife. Herds of wild horses, armadillos, bob cats, wild hogs, raccoons and great flocks of migratory birds, far outweigh the handful of human inhabitants, who if you are lucky enough to meet will tell you tales of the glamorous ghosts of Cumberland’s colourful past.

Initially inhabited by the Tacatacuru tribe, colonial settlers rolled onto Cumberland during the 16th and 17th centuries. First came the Spanish, who built a garrison and mission, followed by the English headed by colonist James Oglethorpe in 1733. The island was given its current name by the 13-year-old nephew of Chief Tomochichi who visited England with Oglethorpe and struck up a teen friendship with Prince William, Duke of Cumberland, son of George II. But it is the Carnegies, the American aristocrats who made their fortune in steel, who seem to have the most enduring legacy here. Thomas (brother of Andrew) and Lucy Carnegie laid down roots in the 1880s, building an imposing 59-room gothic mansion they named Dungeness, as a winter retreat to escape the smog of Pittsburgh. The house, which at its peak had 200 servants, was abandoned after the Great Depression, and then burnt down in 1959, (allegedly by a disgruntled poacher who had been caught trapping wild boar and shot in the leg by a caretaker.) The singed ruins still stand proud, looking over the marsh and the ocean beyond. Picnicking here or beachcombing the muddy beach for seashells, shark’s teeth, or if you’re very lucky a megalodon tooth, is a must for the day-trippers or intrepid campers. However, if you want to do Cumberland in style and glimpse into the Carnegies’ wild and private paradise, you need to head two miles north to magical Greyfield Inn, a colonial revival mansion that was built in 1901 for the Carnegie’s daughter Margaret, and now serves as the island’s only hotel.

Getting to Greyfield you need to be prepared to veer off the beaten track. My family and I arrived on a dock at the sleepy coastal town of Fernandina Beach in Florida. Queasy and fairly frazzled after three days of riding rollercoasters in Orlando, we were hankering for fresh air, home-cooked food and nature’s simple rhythms. With no WiFi, no traffic (bicycle is the preferred mode of transport) and miles of pristine beaches, marshes, and pine forest trails to explore, Cumberland Island promised to be the perfect tonic.

Indeed, the kids whoop with excitement as we step onto the Lucy R. Ferguson, a repurposed lobster

trawler now serving as the Greyfield’s private ferry, captained

by Mitty Ferguson (great great grandson of family patriarch Thomas Carnegie). When we dock, he leads us up a sandy track through magnificent groves of 300-year-old oak trees, draped with Spanish moss to the welcoming rocking chairs on the porch of Greyfield Inn. This house has a heartbeat, which I feel as I climb three flights of well-worn stairs to The Stafford Suite, one of the Inn’s 15 characterful rooms (there are also two cottages to stay in). Outside our door a pair of polished riding boots stands to attention and then through its cosy wood-panelled attic foyer complete with Carnegie children’s desks and trunks tucked into the eaves; a dreamy king-sized bed neatly dressed in sea island cottons (a crop that used to be grown by slaves on the island’s plantations). The bedding is sold alongside Greyfield treasures including homegrown honey and oyster shell serving spoons (a favourite I’m told of actor Bill Murray, a regular guest and friend of the family) at the Inn’s quirky gift shop.

As the token English guests, we were quite the curiosity among the Americans who visit on repeat. We made friends over cocktails served up at the honesty bar, before sinking into the blazing orange velvet sofas in the sitting room for hors d’oeuvres of devilled eggs and hush puppies (blue corn fritters) under the portrait of Margaret Carnegie resplendent in her wedding dress – the woman for whom Greyfield was built. Dinner is always a jolly communal affair set around the Chippendale table and conversations extended into the night around a magical fire pit in the garden. My tween girls’ bond with eight-year Atticus visiting from South Carolina – a regular guest, he tells us that Greyfield is his favourite place on earth, and it didn’t take us long to understand why.

While the kids reclaim life’s simpler pleasures: biking down the Palmetto-lined paths, building forts and hunting for horseshoe crab shells on the beach, I tour Greyfield’s kitchen garden with Ava, a Carnegie family member who grows a dazzling array of seasonal produce for the Inn’s kitchen.

I then hop into the Inn’s pick-up truck to explore the island with Greyfield’s resident naturalist Cristina, and bump along the sandy trails to The Settlement, a community set up by emancipated slaves after the Civil War on the north of the island. It’s here I spy the First African Baptist Church, a simple yet enchanting chapel with a red tin roof, which served as the community church for the freedmen of the island and is also where those glamorous young Kennedys wed. Standing on the wooden steps I close my eyes and tap into the joy, excitement, and freedom of all those souls who have celebrated life’s most poignant moments here must have felt – it’s exhilarating and heartening and a memory I’ve returned to regularly since I’ve been home. More than a hidden gem, Cumberland Island is real traveller’s treasure. Go feel it for yourself but please try and keep the secret.

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Conservation & CONTROVERSY H

igh up on the open pastures of Transylvania, I am dining by candlelight with 13 strangers under an oak tree old enough to have witnessed Genghis Khan’s hordes. But this evening, as we tuck into our barbecued steaks everything feels more benign. In the gloaming, sheepdogs guard grey cattle snatching at wildflower stems. A swollenbellied mare wanders up to gaze at us, a foal snug to her shank. She tosses her black mane and passes on. There are no fences, no hedges, no wire to still her or the shiver of silvery grasses flying in the gentle wind towards the far-off Făgăraș mountains because, in this part of the Southern Carpathians, there are no boundaries to tame the wildness. Superficially, it’s a bucolic idyll fluttering with butterflies, but the façade is flawed.

‘There are no young oaks. These ancient Saxon pastures have lost 300 years of growth because of over-grazing. It’s not just the trees but the beetles, insects and lichens which are threatened,’ explains Sir Charles Burrell, owner of Knepp, Britain’s pioneering wilding project, on a dewy walk the next morning led by a whiffy mountain man with the rare talent of being able to imitate 140 different bird calls. Charlie is the chair of

Annabel laces up her hiking boots for a wilderness adventure in Romania

Foundation Conservation Carpathia, which was established by our hosts, biologists Christophe and Barbara Promberger, to protect a staggering 300,000 hectares of wilderness teeming with bears, lynx and the biggest population of wolves in Europe, by turning it into a national park. It’s the ‘Yellowstone of Europe’ says his wife, the author Isabella Tree.

Not everyone sees it that way. The local communities, mainly poor subsistence farmers are, understandably, suspicious. Historically, national parks in Romania signal the end of free grazing, hay and firewood. ‘Nobody understands how it could improve the local economy,’ said Barbara, who has poured money into an extraordinarily complex plan to show them reintroducing wildlife, and creating food hubs for local producers, jobs, education and tourism. That’s where we come in.

Downing tools twice a year, the Prombergers team up with a travel company, Journeys With Purpose, created to support landscape-scale conservation projects. ‘We connect people with ambition for change with the pioneers on the ground,’ explained Partnerships Director Venetia Martin, revealing that 20 percent of each person’s £7,000 fee is diverted into a

PHOTOS: © CALIN SERBAN; © DAN DINU

Conserving swathes of Europe’s very own ‘Yellowstone’, in the Carpathian Mountains, is the mission of biologists Christophe and Barbara Promberger, but it’s not all plain-sailing, discovers Annabel Heseltine

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Romania | HOTELS & TRAVEL specific project. Already two education centres are under construction. They will teach children about the recent beaver and bison reintroduction programmes, with vultures next on the list to complete the trophic cascade.

It is a kind of ‘money-can’t-buy’ experience that usually sells for tens of thousands at London and New York charity galas. Included in our carefully vetted group are an Oxford scientist running an NGO in Mali, an award-winning environmental financier, a couple of farmers with wilderness projects in Portugal and England, a trauma therapist and an organic muffin man who’s also heir to a parcel of Texas.

First up was a horse-drawn cart ride across the Promberger’s Cobor biodiversity farm to meet some bouncy Carpathian sheepdog puppies reared to help mitigate humanwildlife conflict. Once trained they will be given to shepherds practising traditional grazing methods, to keep predators at bay. Grey cattle are bred to replace animals taken by wolves or bears. ‘Financial compensation isn’t good enough,’ says Barbara. ‘Money replaces animals but not the milk or cheese they produce.’

That night we walked silently under damp beech trees until we reached the safety of a hide from where we watched seven bears clambering over logs and snuffling through deep humus. Trips like these are not for the faint-hearted.

Over the next five days we hiked in virgin forests, learnt about wildlife monitoring and reintroductions, camera traps, foraging, organic farming, all the while feasting on local wines and gourmet meals. After abseiling through the forest, an event on the way home highlighted the socio-economic problem. Our guide was leaning over an

PHOTOS: © CALIN SERBAN; © DAN DINU

Careful conservation measures are turning the Carpathian Mountains into the ‘Yellowstone of Europe’

old lady in black with woollen socks lying on the ground. We thought she had had an accident, but she was drunk. Barbara was visibly upset. ‘It’s the poverty and misery,’ says Christophe.

And a salutary reminder of what the biggest national park in Europe could really mean for the local Romanians with the additional income from hotels, restaurants and holiday activities like camping.

The Prombergers had promised us glamping at an abandoned shepherds’ camp. But nothing prepared us for what lay ahead: 20 tepees laid out on an alpine meadow overlooking the forested Făgăraș mountains, and a bison herd that joined us at dinner, staring through a providential electric fence. A helicopter trip sparked debate about the ethics of environmentalists spewing carbon.

Christophe was relentless. ‘It’s only possible to see the scale of this from the sky,’ he shouted over the engines as we flew past granite escarpments thousands of metres high, looking down on alpine meadows carpeted with purple rhododendrons, deep reservoirs, a sole climber on a peak, and valley after green valley.

His motives are rigidly disciplined – he recently turned down a lucrative offer from a travel agent willing to spend six figures helicoptering his clients between camps. But he’s on a mission.

To achieve the national park, he needs the support of over half the 23 local mayors, and time is not on his side.

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HOTELS & TRAVEL | Romania

Journey With Purpose’s Partnership Director, Venetia Martin

confirmed the couple’s worst fears: ‘the forests were fast disappearing, and with that, wildlife habitat,’ said Christophe. According to Interpol, 30 percent of globally traded timber comes from illegal sources, and over half of it is sourced in Romania. Without the protection of a registered national park, the virgin forests are rich pickings for a thriving black market. ‘A Romanian boxing champion once showed up on our doorstep to show that they knew where we lived,’ revealed Barbara. Together, they conceived the idea of buying the land until the government could afford to protect it as a national park. Then they would hand it over.

Funded by backers including Swiss billionaire Hansjörg Wyss, who has donated over two billion dollars, Patagonia, Wolfskin and MFI heir Paul Lister’s The European Nature Trust, they embarked on a shopping spree, buying land, hunting rights, planting 4.5million trees, repairing 1,500 hectares including 50kms of tracks forged by the logging trucks. But 27,000 hectares later they ran into a problem. Not all the land was for sale. Much of it was government or community owned.

Looking around for an alternative solution, they realised they had forgotten one vital component: people. ‘If people like the conservation idea then it becomes sustainable.

If they don’t, it goes nowhere,’ said Christophe. If the local mayors supported the idea of a national park then the government would have to agree but while their electorate were suspicious they weren’t interested. Hence began one of the most audacious PR jobs ever conceived. They

also took the mayors to see other national parks where locals were prospering and brought in carbon credit schemes to satisfy the pockets of wealthier landowners who would lose income from selling logging rights.

Today, FCC is channelling approximately 20 million euros a year into the Southern Carpathian economy and eight mayors are on board; they need four more and think this can be achieved within five years. Meantime, they’ve identified ten other smaller areas needing park protection – it should be easier as FCC’s fame spreads.

On our last day, the Prombergers took us up a bone-rattling track. We clambered over boulders, balancing on tree trunks across swollen streams to see a 300-hectare side-cutting similar to the one which inspired their vision so long ago. That perpetrator is now in prison – small consolation when we learned it cost FCC two million euros to reforest with saplings, borne by donkeys. But there’s light at the end of the forest. Promberger recalled how, recently, they had stopped to help some strangers from Bucharest, lost at the crossroads. When they saw the FCC sticker on his car, they shouted after him. ‘YOU are Carpathia. We love Carpathia.’ And with that memory the Bavarian’s face lit up. The recognition has been a long time coming.

Annabel travelled with Journeys with Purpose, which will be running trips twice a year to Romania, in spring and autumn, from £9,000 per person. journeyswithpurpose.org Annabel’s return trains had a carbon footprint of approx. 86kg of CO2e. ecollectivecarbon.com

The expedition glamped in a clover-strewn meadow

Illegal logging is an ongoing problem in Romania

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HOTELS & TRAVEL | Review

ONCE UPON A TIME Ellie Smith checks into Adare Manor, the Irish grand dame that’s straight out of a fairytale

S

ince reopening in November 2017 following a huge renovation, castle resort Adare Manor in County Limerick, Ireland, has garnered worldwide acclaim, scooping up a string of awards along the way. And over the next few years, more eyes will be on it than ever before, with the hotel set to host the 2027 Ryder Cup, one of the world’s most prestigious golf events.

Preparations are already underway to ensure the hotel looks pristine for its time in the spotlight – though it’s already pretty picture-perfect. A neo-gothic manor house set within a sprawling 842-acre estate, arriving here feels like stepping into an Irish fairytale. With its grey stone exterior and manicured gardens dotted with red topiary (little car-like grass cutters wheel around to keep everything immaculate), not to mention the highceilinged, chandelier-bedecked interiors, it’s nearimpossible to get a bad photo here. But the appeal of this hotel plunges far beneath surface level.

Adare Manor is steeped in history: the building was originally constructed as a stately home back in the mid-1800s, and for many years it was the residence of the 2nd Earl of Dunraven and his wife, Lady Caroline Wyndham-Quin. It was turned into a hotel in the 80s before being bought

by Limerick-born businessman JP McManus in 2015, who transformed the property into the luxury resort it is today.

The revamp involved adding an extra wing with 42 more bedrooms plus, crucially, an 18-hole golf course designed by Tom Fazio. Maverick interior designer Kim Partridge was brought in to create Adare’s modern look, taking care to avoid that cookie-cutter hotel feel by adding fun touches throughout, picking up quirky ornaments and furniture from car boot sales.

Guests travel from far and wide to experience the magic: grand yet cosy rooms (book the Earl of Dunraven Stateroom for a serious slice of luxury), a 111SKIN spa and a shiny new padel club. Food is a big deal here too, with multiple restaurants including the Michelin-starred Oak Room and the 40 metre-long gallery, a majestic spot to enjoy afternoon tea. A wide array of countryside pursuits are also available to book, from archery to clay pigeon shooting to falconry, and next spring one of the estate’s cottages is being transformed into a chocolatier. The sky is really the limit here.

Of course, a lot of work goes on behind the scenes to keep a resort this big running smoothly.

The service is slick yet relaxed and friendly, with over 600 staff ready to help cater for your every whim – and it’s that magical Irish charm that will stay with you long after you’ve left the grounds.

Golfer or not, a stay at Adare Manor should be on everyone’s bucket list.

BOOK IT: £595 per night B&B for

a Classic Room. adaremanor.com

Ellie’s return flights had a carbon footprint of approx. 90kg of CO2e. ecollectivecarbon.com n

PHOTOS: © JACK HARDY

A pristine exterior combines with modern luxury on the inside at Adare Manor

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PR O M OT I O N

SPRING IN THE MOUNTAINS Why Val d’Isère is the place to ski this season

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till haven’t booked your spring ski break?

Val d’Isère is where those in the know are headed this season, thanks to its optimum snow, amazing gastronomy, après-ski activities and spa offerings. At 1,850m above sea level, and in a unique geographic location that guarantees snow coverage from December until early May, it’s the ideal spot for your spring snow escape. From March until May, temperatures are warmer, too, meaning fewer layers are needed.

The resort also has 300 km of legendary slopes, with pistes for all levels, from beginners to black diamond advanced skiers.

Doudoune, Val d’Isère’s famous nightclub, open until 4am. The resort is also known for the infamous Folie Douce, which offers unforgettable cabaret shows every day.

SPOILING WELLNESS... Treat tired limbs to a day in Val d’Isère’s Le Refuge de Solaise hotel and spa, which has just unveiled a new wellness programme for 2024 called ‘The Recharge Ritual’.

Based on the five key principles of regenerate, respire, recharge, reconnect and restore, it involves alternating hot and polar baths, the use of a state-of-the-art pressotherapy device, personalised massages with Theragun and stretching, light therapy and sound healing.

LUXURY ACCOMMODATION...

Val d’Isère has added to its luxury portfolio for the upcoming season with new accommodation, ranging from hotel brand Airelles’ first ever chalet, to Alpine Collections’ new prestige hotel, Silverstone and Le Val d’Isère Hotel’s latest addition, Solaise Apartment, located in the heart of the village. Each accommodation option will complete any visit to Val d’Isère in style, with access to private chefs, luxury spas and impressive restaurants.

Val d’Isère’s unique location means snow is assured until May each year

PHOTOS: © VAL D’ISÈRE TOURISM

NOT JUST SKIING

It’s not just the assurance of great snow that bring skiers back to Val d’Isère year after year.

ENTHRALLING ACTIVITIES... There’s plenty to do off the pistes too, including a tree top adventure, guided tour of the village, farm visits, paragliding, fat biking and dog sledding. Plus, there’s the International Adventure & Discovery Film Festival from 15-18 April 2024.

FANTASTIC FOOD... From French hautecuisine to warming local Savoie dishes, plus food from around the world, there’s something for all tastebuds in Val d’Isère.

EXCELLENT APRES-SKI... Dance in the snow at Cocorico with live entertainment, tasty street food, and an indoor bar. And for those that believe the evening doesn’t end at midnight, head to

Cucùcina, Folie Douce

BOOK IT This spring, Val d’Isère is offering a 40 percent discount on ski passes when booking a hotel or self-catered accommodation directly through the Val d’Isère platform. Available between 20 April and 5 May 2024. booking.valdisere.com/ski-pass-discount-val-d-isere.html

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Indulge in independence with the allure of Windjammer Landing, your ideal blend of luxury and solitude

Our hillside suites and villas offer breathtaking bay views, ensuring tranquility.

Immerse yourself in a relaxed, child-friendly ambiance. Enjoy our secluded beach, many pools, tennis courts, gym, yoga and complimentary watersports including sailing, windsurfing, kayaking, snorkeling, waterskiing, knee-boarding and much more for All-Inclusive guests.

DISCOVER MORE AT WINDJAMMER-LANDING.COM reservations@windjammer-landing.com

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FOOD&DRINK Spice Up Your Life

Say goodbye to winter blues with this warming kimchi fried rice

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KIMCHI FRIED RICE

Judy Joo in the kitchen

PICTURED ON PREVIOUS PAGE

SERVES 4 — — — — — — — — — — —

2 tbsp vegetable oil 2 slices thick-cut bacon 2 carrots, diced 1 clove garlic, grated or finely diced 9 button mushrooms, destemmed and diced ½ courgette, diced 3 spring onions, thinly sliced on an angle 225g drained cabbage kimchi, chopped 2,700g steamed white rice, at room temperature Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper 4 soft sunny-side-up fried eggs

METHOD

In a large pan, heat the oil over a medium-high heat. Add the bacon and cook, stirring occasionally, until crispy, about 2 minutes. Using a slotted spoon, transfer the bacon to a kitchen paperlined plate to drain.

Reduce the heat to medium, add the carrots and garlic and cook for 2-3 minutes, stirring constantly, until the carrots are just softened. Add the mushrooms, courgette, two-thirds of the spring onions and the kimchi and cook for 4-5 minutes until the vegetables are tender. Add the rice with a wooden spoon and combining it with the other ingredients.

Cook for about 5 minutes, stirring occasionally, until the rice is hot. Season and spoon the rice into four bowls and top each with a fried egg and the remaining spring onions.

Foodie TALES

Judy Joo on exploding mixers and always cooking with The Force

TIP: Kimchi can stain your chopping board and the smell has a habit of lingering too. To avoid this, put the kimchi in a bowl and use kitchen shears to cut it into smaller pieces.

Judy loves a seafood shack over a fine dining restaurant

What’s your food philosophy?

Less is more – learn to edit!

What was the first dish you learnt to cook? Kraft macaroni and cheese.

What’s your favourite inseason ingredient? I love pears around this time in late January, when they’re just about to go out of season.

What is your biggest food mistake? Exploding the Thermomix while working at The Fat Duck. So embarrassing!

What is your most memorable meal out? On the fine dining front, in the USA I have to say that Per Se never disappoints, and Thomas Keller is a true culinary genius. In the UK, I absolutely love Pierre Gagnaire’s venue in Sketch – exquisite in every way. For more casual meals, which are more my style, I love seaside shacks where they serve whatever they caught that day, and simply grill it with a drizzle of extra virgin olive oil and a kiss of lemon. Total bliss.

When you’re not in the kitchen, where are you? Probably on my laptop working. If not working… then I am usually doing some kind of activity, such as Pilates, tennis, skiing, etc.

Do you have any unique cooking rituals? Oh yes, I like to use my Star Wars R2-D2 pepper grinder, so all of my food has The Force.

What’s in your fridge?

My homemade kimchi, eggs, fresh fruit, cheese, champagne, King’s caviar, Pierre Marcolini chocolates.

What’s your dream dinner date? Eating on a tropical beach, fresh grilled seafood with lots of veggies, under the stars with a great bottle of champagne… and a cute doggie keeping us company, too.

What is one piece of sustainable food advice you’d give to our readers? Try to eat as seasonally and locally as you can. This ethos is not so hard to follow, as Britain has abundant produce and these items taste the best when in season and at their ripest.

Korean Food Made Simple (Jacqui Small, £22). Judy Joo's Korean Soul Food has also recently relaunched. She is the chef behind Seoul Bird. judyjoo.com n

PHOTOS: © BEMLI BENDIXEN

FOOD & DRINK | Recipe

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Tidbits | FOOD & DRINK

TOTALLY NUTS

FORRIST FRIENDS

The UK’s first plastic-free, organic and plant-based store has launched a discovery box collection for intrigued gourmets. The Choco-nut box includes a range of nibbles, from truffles coated in crushed hazelnuts, to peanut butter cookies and bites of cacao nib.

Monthly sub from £33.20, forrist.com

Gastro GOSSIP

Bringing Greek café culture to the capital for ten years, Carpo celebrates its tin anniversary with a new flagship on Glasshouse Street.

Enjoy a coffee and pore over its aisles of beautiful sweet treats…

Opening early 2024, carpoworld.com

Add these to your shopping list, says Tessa Dunthorne

BOTTOMS UP

FRESH FISH

If you’re in Edinburgh, make sure to stop in for a wee bite at Stuart Ralston’s latest open. Lyla, a 28-seater on the Royal Terrace, boasts an impressive ten-course tasting menu celebrating seasonal fare from the Scottish isles. The chef presents plethora fish, fruits and tasty cuts of beef – most served with a cheeky dollop of caviar and roe. lylaedinburgh.co.uk

Actor-cum-epicure Idris Elba has launched his latest selection: The Petite Porte Noir Rosé Champagne, a fruity blend of 90 percent chardonnay and ten percent pinot noir, bottled in 2020.

The vine-expert launched the blend at Tramp nightclub and hinted that this year’s Porte Noir bottles will mean he can truly add ‘winemaker’ to his CV. £54.99, harveynichols.com

REPEAT BUYS EQUI Hoorah for an energy supplement you can simply sprinkle straight into your porridge.

You’ll barely know it’s there (but you’ll certainly feel yourself zipping around).

From £46.75, equilondon.com

ODDBOX Come home to a delivery of fresh fruit and veg – these bits might be rejects from the supermarkets, but they’ll be a welcome addition to your fridge.

From £11.99, oddbox. co.uk

DIFFERENCE COFFEE Difference Coffee Founder Amir asked why should our coffee pods be less of a luxury experience than a fresh filter or flat white… And made the ultimate caffeine capsule. From £5, differencecoffee.com

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PR O M OT I O N

PRIMED & READY Keylux Property Agency: your new partner in luxury real estate

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eylux Property Agency is the answer to your prime property search, curating the best central and West London homes, alongside brilliant boltholes in Berkshire and Surrey. This privately owned, London-based prime property agency offers high value, discrete and professional sales, acquisitions and advisory services spanning your property journey from end to end while offering a friendly, personalised and tailored service specifically for you.

At the helm of Keylux Property Agency is director Gosia Ludwig, whose unique background in private property investment, finance and tax as well as a science degree from University College London (UCL) lends her a pragmatic touch. Her passion for properties and meeting client needs can be seen through her attention to detail and the quality of services she provides. She is the perfect practical companion through your property journey: easy-to-reach and personable while offering integrity, loyalty and expertise. Gosia will ensure your time expectations are met, in the most efficient manner possible. Whether you’re selling, searching for a family home, or looking to invest in London’s luxury property landscape, she’s a highly skilled advocate with firsthand understanding of your needs.

The bedrock of Keylux’s values are privacy, discretion, expertise and integrity. These are not just ideals; they underlie every client interaction. This commitment ensures actionable, tangible results and an experience that overshoots all expectations – Keylux Property Agency completes dreams, not just properties.

CONNECT WITH KEYLUX: Call Gosia on +44 (0)20 7458 4830 or email her at enquiries@keyluxpropertyagency.com keyluxpropertyagency.com

SUPERB SERVICES

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SALES Keylux Property Agency will prioritise selling your property at the highest price within an efficient timeframe, while safeguarding your privacy. From initial consultation to a precisely crafted marketing strategy, to overseeing the entire sale, Gosia ensures a streamlined and effective sales journey.

Gosia Ludwig, Director of Keylux Property Agency

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STRATEGIC ACQUISITIONS Your dedicated buying agent, Keylux Property Agency focuses on securing your dream property at the best price. This involves a detailed consultation to understand your needs, followed by extensive property searches (including off-market properties), shortlisting, viewings, negotiations and managing the purchase process through to completion and beyond.

Keylux works for you, not the vendor.

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HOLISTIC ADVISORY SERVICES Post-completion, Keylux goes beyond the transaction, managing everything from the moving process to postcompletion project management and tenant-finding services. Those with little ones will appreciate the value of Gosia’s educational and schools advice, as she is an expert at providing insight to families navigating the complexities of schooling in their desired area.

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PROPERTY Edited by Anna Tyzack

HOUSE OF THE MONTH

33 Portland Place, Marylebone, London, £75m 11 beds, 10 baths, over 20,987 sq/ft

Sell it to us in a sentence... One of the most magnificent townhouses in London, representing a unique example of a remarkable 18th century residence. It has recently been restored to its former glory by MSMR Architects and renowned interior and architecture studio, 1508 London.

What’s unique about it? It has been the setting for many moments of cultural significance, from acting as the filming location for the awardwinning film, The King’s Speech, to being the music video backdrop for Amy Winehouse’s hit record, Rehab, or featuring in an advertisement alongside Kate Moss.

What’s its history? Originally built in 1775 by the renowned Georgian architect, Robert Adam, former residents include military engineer John Montresor, who moved into the house in 1779, Joseph Windham, the antiquarian and traveller, and the 4th Earl of Abergavenny and his three daughters, known as ‘The Trio’ for being early pioneers of photography.

Perks of the location? It boasts the best of both worlds: close proximity to the green expanse of Regent’s Park, plus world-class dining, entertainment and shopping in Regent’s Street, Bond Street, Mayfair, and Marylebone High Street.

The current owner says: ‘I bought 33 Portland Place to turn it from a hodge podge of rooms and flats into what it was built to be: the finest home in London. It was run down and tired when I bought it and I spent just under £50m on a seven-year renovation, which was a labour of love. It’s been virtually rebuilt and the entire structure has been reinforced with steel.’

Contact James Gubbins on +44 (0)7751 526757; sothebysrealty.co.uk January /February 2024 | COUNTRYANDTOWNHOUSE.COM | 115

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PROPERTY | Five of the Best

Works in PROGRESS Martha Davies has found your next renovation project

Sedgefield, County Durham, £1m

Currently used as office space, this Grade II*-listed Blue Plaque mansion would make a handsome home (or a fabulous boutique hotel). Its standout features include 12 bedrooms, a rear car park and a bar on the lower ground floor. Aspiring hoteliers, this one’s for you. finestproperties.co.uk

Windmill Road, Buckinghamshire, £4.95m This 14-bedroom country house sits within a gorgeous 10.5-acre estate.

It requires some modernisation, but you’ll spot many enviable features such as elaborate ceiling cornices, decorative panelling, ornate period fireplaces and parquet flooring. savills.com

St Ives, Cornwall, £2.25m

Occupying a dreamy coastal position overlooking St Ives harbour, this home has bags of potential and unbeatable Cornish charm. It provides three reception rooms, four bedrooms and a bathroom, plus garaging, parking and stunning gardens. lillicrapchilcott.com

Shaftesbury, Dorset, £750,000

This charming period house was the inspiration for Old Grove Place, one of the houses in Thomas Hardy’s Jude the Obscure – and it, too, is adorned with a Blue Plaque. With four bedrooms, two bathrooms, three reception rooms and a double garage, it could be a wonderful, characterful family home. jackson-stops.co.uk

Stowe, Buckingham, £3.95m

Always wanted to live in a castle? Now’s your chance.

This one-of-a-kind property dates back to 1741 and offers five bedrooms, five bathrooms and three reception rooms, not to mention a range of outbuildings including an annexe and a party barn. knightfrank.co.uk

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Regeneration | PROPERTY Grade I-listed Home House was designed by Robert Adam

In with the OLD

pumps, and secondary glazing is set for installation in all the property’s bedrooms.

Writing off older buildings as a lost cause simply isn’t an option. Historic England states: ‘Eighty percent of the buildings that we will be using in 2050 already exist. Many are historic, key to the identity of places and matter deeply to the people who live there, as well as being an important resource in terms of embodied carbon.’ Adaptation, rather than creation then, holds the key to cleaning up our cities.

Of course, true sustainability and regeneration reaches beyond the business’ walls (whether old or new), past the end of its supply chains and into the community it sits within and the people it serves. Home House is active in the Baker Street Quarter Partnership and the Marble Arch BID, contributing to local regeneration and improvement. And its members? They can focus their efforts on their own house, because positive action starts at home. homehouse.co.uk; historicengland.org.uk n

How can heritage London venues go green while still conserving their history? Rebecca Cox investigates…

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arm-stay eco-retreats and light-touch cabins in ancient woodlands: ecotourism and considered hospitality are thriving in the UK. But the common denominators for pulling them off? Space, modern eco-builds and on-site resources, all hard to come by in London.

Culture hubs like Shakespeare’s Globe have been using schemes like the Mayor’s Business Climate Challenge to make positive changes, while others are working with groups like B Corp and Positive Luxury to drive forward.

One of these is London’s Home House, a 25-year-old member’s club in a 250-year-old Grade-I listed Georgian townhouse in Marylebone, which in 2023 became the first private members club group to be awarded the Butterfly Mark certification. I’ve been attending for more than a decade and as a visitor nothing has changed (champagne still free-flowing, parties still wild), so how did they do it, without losing their pizzazz?

Alongside supply-chain accountability and optimisation, a key consideration for businesses in the capital are the buildings they occupy. ‘Historic buildings in London must continue to evolve if they are to contribute to a greener future and be fit for purpose,’ Tom Foxall, Historic England Regional Director for London and the South East tells me. ‘If done thoughtfully and carefully, these changes can achieve the complementary goals of protecting our heritage and adapting to a low carbon economy.’

This was the case for the team at Home House, where upsetting the architectural features designed by Robert Adam wasn’t an option. ‘Any alterations must be approached with sensitivity to maintain the integrity of these characteristics,’ Dean Spackman, Group Chief Engineer at Home House tells me. ‘When dealing with a listed property, making sustainability-focused improvements involves navigating a complex landscape.’ Despite this, it has been possible to make real change, replacing all the club’s boilers and water January /February 2024 | COUNTRYANDTOWNHOUSE.COM | 117

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British buyers are flocking to Portugal for sunshine, tax breaks and investment opportunities

Run to the Sun

hile Britain is in hibernation, it’s T-shirt weather in the Algarve in southern Portugal. Saturday mornings can be spent on the golf course, or playing tennis or padel, and there are numerous brunch spots on the beach. This time of year used to be off season, but since the pandemic second homeowners are basing themselves in Portugal for longer stretches. ‘Brexit completely changed the market,’ explains Joana Serra of Quinta do Lago Real Estate.

‘Homeowners got a taste of working from home and prioritising their lifestyle, and now want to use up every second of their 90-day allocation.’

The property market in the ‘Golden Triangle’ between Faro, Vilamoura and Almancil has been buzzing for the past two years, with a new generation of buyers seeking a home from home in the Algarve. Most of the activity is in and around the golf communities of Quinta do Lago and Vale do Lobo, which are widely considered to be the Beverly Hills of Portugal.

‘We have everything from golf, restaurants and shopping to private hospitals and international schools – and 300 days of sun,’ Joana continues. ‘Buyers have confidence in the brand, which means a lot when so much in the world is so uncertain.’ According to Knight Frank’s latest report, the Algarve is one of the world’s most solid lifestyle investment destinations, promising property price growth and guaranteed rental returns.

Indeed, should property owners wish to rent out their homes when they’re not there, they can expect a six to nine percent yield.

It was Portugal’s Golden Visa programme, which granted residency to foreigners investing in properties worth at least €500,000, that lured British buyers post-Brexit. Yet according to Knight Frank, even since the residential part of the programme ended earlier this year, the appetite from British buyers has remained, with increasing numbers of Brits opting to move to the Algarve permanently for a safer, healthier and more laidback lifestyle.

There are tax benefits, too: the Portuguese Non-Habitual Resident

(NHR) programme gives qualifying entrepreneurs, retirees and HNWIs reduced tax rates on Portuguese-source income for ten years, while there is no inheritance tax, wealth tax or gift tax. As such, British and Irish now make up 71 percent of buyers and there are currently waiting lists at Nobel Algarve British International School and Vilamoura International School, which have been forced to grow in size to accommodate the influx of pupils.

George and Kate King from Chiswick in London are among the British families relocating to the Algarve. They bought a tired eighties villa in Quinta do Lago in 2021 as a holiday home, but after spending time in Portugal have decided to move permanently with their three daughters. ‘Lockdown gave us time to think about what we wanted from life and George had such happy memories of holidays in Quinta that we decided to give our kids this experience, too,’ says Kate. ‘The more time we spent here, the more we realised that Portugal is a country on the up: great people, great food, and easy to get around. It’s also more environmentally conscious than the UK – everything about the move feels right.’

The Kings looked at properties in Vale do Lobo and in the countryside outside Almancil, but settled on Quinta do Lago, a country estate three times the size of Monaco, which since the seventies has been sensitively transformed into a lifestyle community that is a prototype for countless others across the world. ‘It hasn’t been overdeveloped – it still feels wild and raw,’ Kate says. ‘My husband can play golf but we also swim in the lake, cycle for miles through the UNESCO Ria Formosa bird sanctuary and can cross Europe’s longest wooden footbridge to a white sand beach.’

André Jordan, the Brazilian-Polish entrepreneur who devised Quinta do Lago (meaning ‘farm by the lake’), believed that the empty fields, pine forests and beaches should be developed in a low impact way that respected nature and the local culture. His masterplan, with two golf courses, shops, restaurants and 560 building plots, was approved by the

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PHOTOS: PEXELS

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Anna Tyzack heads to Portugal to find homes with T-shirt weather on tap

PROPERTY local council, who specified that just eight percent of the land could ever be developed with the rest remaining as a nature reserve. The resort has evolved slowly, adapting to each new generation; the South Course has recently undergone a €7 million upgrade and the latest opening, The Campus, is a high-performance sports hub with a padel and tennis centre, football pitch, spa and outdoor pool.

The final 30 plots were released to the market in 2023, priced from €2.295 million, while the main boulevards of Quinta do Lago are lined with palatial residences worth more than €20 million. Gold-plated values are common across the Golden Triangle, as developers target the younger generation of HNWIs who expect their homes to feature sustainable energy systems, EV charging points and the highest levels of privacy and security. Last year Savills recorded an average sales price of €3.463 million and a 15 percent price increase, making it the second-highest performing European property market.

It's still possible, however, to find a family villa in the Golden Triangle for less than €2 million, particularly if, like the King family, you’re prepared to renovate. A three-bedroom villa with pool in the Martinhal development in Quinta, for example, is on the market for €1.2 million with Vendici Properties, while a five-bedroom house near the beach and lake is for sale for €1.95 million.

By far the most affordable way to own a home in this part of the Algarve, though, is to buy an apartment. A two-bedroom flat with sea views in Vale do Lobo costs around €1 million, while at the Wyndham Grand in Quinta do Lago, a five-star hotel with spa, gym and Michelinstar restaurant, serviced one and two-bedroom apartments are priced from €550,000. Owners can use the properties for up to 12 weeks a year with full use of hotel amenities plus a five percent minimum guaranteed

FROM TOP: The Algarve's beaches are world-famous; Quinta do Lago offers residents a wide variety of restaurants and bars

return. ‘It’s the ultimate turnkey option – you get looked after whenever you’re here, and when you’re not, the property is earning its keep,’ explains Ana Damásio of Wyndham Grand Algarve Residences. Already 70 percent of the properties have been bought, mainly by British and Irish buyers.

The Kings, who don’t yet speak Portuguese, appreciate that there are other English-speaking families to socialise with. But they’re also looking forward to immersing themselves in Portuguese culture and learning the language. ‘I’m not an adventurous traveller and I never saw myself living overseas, but I’m more relaxed in Portugal than I am in Chiswick,’ Kate says. ‘I used to see Quinta as a resort but it’s more of a community than we ever had in London, which is probably why I feel so at home.’ n

PHOTOS: PEXELS

ON THE MARKET

Vale do Lobo, €1.19m Alongside the 12th fairway of the Royal Golf Course, offering spectacular views, this villa has modern, open-plan living spaces, two bedrooms and a garden with a pool and barbecue area.

The Atlantic Ocean is right on your doorstep. valedolobo.com

Quinta do Lago, from €3.5m One Green Way is a new gated community of 89 detached residences bordering the North Course, with access to spa, owners’ lounge, fitness track and padel courts. The properties have lateral living spaces, roof terraces, pools, spas and cinemas. quintadolago.com

Santa Catarina, €POA Surrounded by lush landscaped gardens, this luxury property features a three-bed family villa and additional guest house in a tranquil 13-hectare plot. There's also an outdoor kitchen with a BBQ area and a heated pool with views towards the coastline. fineandcountry.co.uk

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LAST WORD Michael interviews Sir Kenneth Olisa at an event in London

Tales of our Time he urge to transform runs deep in the human psyche. But while we often aspire and yearn for it, in reality it is all too often frustratingly difficult to achieve.

Think about it. From worry to weight loss, from technology to time, family to feelings, which one of these have you tried to transform – with mixed results?

I present a podcast called Change Makers, featuring hundreds of incredible people speaking about transformation. On the face of it you might think I can help crack the code. But that’s easier said than done. While guests often look like they have life sorted, the reality is that successful and sustained change is tough.

I recently interviewed the incredible Sir Ellie White

Kenneth Olisa. He has lived a life of true transformation from a childhood living in a tenement in war-ravaged Nottingham to a life as a successful entrepreneur, which has seen him become His Majesty’s Lord Lieutenant for Greater London.

For Ken, the barrier to transformation is a metaphorical imp on his shoulder: the inner voice that seeds the toxicity of doubt and says that something can’t be done. It is a voice that must be brushed away if you are to have any chance of change.

My own imp is an inner doubt that has always centred on my physical health. I have had a broad goal to improve it for as long as I can remember because from my earliest days, confidence in this area has eluded me.

And while over time I have become very active, I still struggle with it.

I’ve learned that the deliverer of

transformation is habit. Because habit is an action, which requires energy to do it.

In turn, transformation also needs some modesty and humility. Sometimes we overthink it and dream too big to be able to deliver. The truth is that the smallest wins can be the most transformative if you allow them to be.

And transformation also needs a guide.

An expert, an inspirer and, ultimately, a friend. For my own part, I needed someone who would help me not only work on transforming my body but also, and this is the critical part, my mind.

Finally, what I’ve learned about transformation is that it’s not a destination.

It is a journey. That journey needs you to take steps in uncertain directions. And it is worth doing because the best of yourself is waiting for you along the way. n

MAKE A CHANGE POSE Thrive is an online yoga studio run with a transformative approach (ellie-white.com). LISTEN ‘Do well, do good’. Sir Ken Olisa speaks with Michael on Change Makers: (changemakers.works).

CONNECT Visit the wonderful rewilding project at Knepp Castle Estate in West Sussex. (knepp.co.uk). ACT Community Foundations are a great way to bring together people who want to improve their communities. (ukcommunityfoundations.org)

Storks nesting at Knepp

PHOTOS: © CHRIS JEPSON; © SAGE SOLAR AT WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

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Michael Hayman on the power of transformation

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WELCOME TO TITE STREET, CHELSEA, LONDON, SW3

“THE STREET OF WONDERFUL POSSIBILITIES”

Tite Street is the last remaining Godwin house in the world. A Grade II* Listed house, the accommodation includes; magnificent studio room with approximately 6m ceilings, open plan kitchen, dining room, study, principle bedroom with en suite shower room, 4 further bedrooms with one en suite shower room and two bathrooms, two cloakrooms and a west facing garden. 452 sq m (4868 sq ft) Tenure Freehold and Guide Price £13.75 million.

Tom Lamb +44 7870 999 225 tom@tomlambadvisers.com www.tomlambadvisers.com

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