Country Life 16th Nov 2022

Miss Charlotte Kate Stephenson

Charlotte is a fashion-design student at Torrens University, Sydney, Australia, and a model with Chadwick Models. She is the daughter of Ned Stephenson and Megan Tassell of Singleton, New South Wales, and follows in the footsteps of her great-grandmother, Mary Gloria Congreve, and great-great-grandmother Pamela Maude, who appeared on the Frontispiece on March 25, 1939, and January 22, 1916, respectively.

Photographed at Linden House, Andover, the home of Charlotte’s great-uncle Tim Stephenson, by Anya Campbell

Hoar-frosted trees near Beeston, Cheshire (Alan Novelli/Alamy)

Cover stories

58 The winds of winter

Summoning up the resilience of our forebears can help us through winter, says Joe Gibbs

72 Cut from the right cloth

Jane Wheatley introduces the woman who is busy reviving Britain’s love of dressmaking

80 Interiors

Amelia Thorpe and Arabella

Youens seek out the experts in creating that timeless feel

114 A delicate balancing act

Finn Hull uses ancient skills and gravity to create his spectacular sculptures, he tells Mary Miers

This week

46 Habda Rashid’s favourite painting

The Kettle’s Yard curator picks out a tense and intimate work

48 Get a grip. Wear more clothes

Complaints and climate change dominate the Farming Life thoughts of Jamie Blackett

50 Masterpiece

Jack Watkins examines the lasting appeal of The Forsyte Saga by John Galsworthy

52 An enduring force for good

John Goodall investigates the history of Drapers’ Hall, one of London’s finest Livery Halls

62 All that glisters

The restoration of opulent gilded furniture calls for exceptional skills, discovers Catriona Gray

68 Fringe benefits

Tassels and trims: Matthew Dennison delves into the long history behind passementerie

88 The good stuff

Hetty Lintell gets wrapped up in luxurious dressing gowns

90 A gentleman never tells Out and About at COUNTRY LIFE’s GENTLEMAN’S LIFE celebrations

104 Pile on the frosting

Steven Desmond is looking forward to a glorious winter display of glittering seedheads

112 Kitchen garden cook

Cauliflower deserves to take on a lead role, says Melanie Johnson

126 Thank you for the music

Michael Billington introduces the musicals hitting all the right notes in theatres this month

Six

Every

94

110

118

122 Books

130 Bridge and crossword

133

138

138

Smoke signals: a collared earthstar (Geastrum michelianum) in the Peak District; the fungus disperses spores when hit by raindrops

Treading rocky paths

WE ramblers, after a hard week’s work in smoky towns and cities, go out rambling for relaxation and fresh air. And we find the finest rambling country is closed to us,’ said Benny Rothman, prime mover behind the Kinder Scout Trespass, at his trial. That was 70 years ago and things have moved on since those unenlightened days—anyone can walk amid the exhilarating bleakness of Kinder Scout, which, in 1951, became part of the first of Britain’s 15 national parks. The CRoW (Countryside and Rights of Way) Act was passed in 2000; there are now joined-up coastal paths and 16 national trails among the 140,000-plus miles of public tracks, many of which, ironically, are hardly used.

Earlier this month, a ‘right to roam’ private member’s bill, an amendment to the CRoW Act, had its first reading in the House of Commons. It proposes that the public should no longer be confined to existing paths, which, apparently, comprise only 8% of the UK. The aim is to increase this to 30% with

access to all rivers and wild camping permitted, as in Scotland and parts of Dartmoor. There is a veritable stampede of elephants and conflated issues in this room, however. Amid her reasonable-sounding arguments, the bill’s proposer, Green MP Caroline Lucas, links the decline in UK biodiversity to ‘society’s disconnection with Nature’. She has a point, but the presence of masses of people does not improve biodiversity—it does the opposite—and equating Britain with a far less-populated country such as Norway, and even England with Scotland, should not pass unchallenged. It is an inconvenient

Six issues for £6*

Visit www.countrylifesubs.co.uk/X820

*After your first six issues, your payments will continue at £39.99 every three months. For full terms and conditions, visit www.countrylifesubs.co.uk/6for6terms

Offer closes January 31, 2023

PPA

Editorial Editor-in-Chief Mark Hedges

Editorial Enquiries

Editor’s PA/Editorial Assistant

Amie Elizabeth White 6102

Telephone numbers are prefixed by 0330 390

Emails are name.surname@futurenet.com

Deputy Editor Kate Green 4171

Managing & Features Editor

Paula Lester 6426

Architectural Editor John Goodall

Gardens Editor

Tiffany Daneff 6115

Executive Editor and Interiors

Giles Kime 6047

Acting Deputy Features Editor

Carla Passino

Acting News & Property Editor

James Fisher 4058

Lifestyle and Travel Editor

Rosie Paterson 6591

Luxury Editor

Hetty Lintell 07984 178307

Head of Design Dean Usher

Senior Art Editor Emma Earnshaw

Deputy Art Editor Heather Clark

Senior Designer Ben Harris

Picture Editor Lucy Ford 4072

Deputy Picture Editor Emily Anderson 6488

Chief Sub-Editor Octavia Pollock 6605

Senior Sub-Editor Stuart Martel Digital Editor Toby Keel Property Correspondent Penny Churchill

Country Life Picture Library

Content & Permissions

Executive Cindie Johnston 6538

truth that the fresh-air-seeking population inevitably converges on the same honeypots. Issues such as the disturbance of riverine life and ground-nesting birds, the trampling of plants and erosion (as at Hadrian’s Wall, Town & Country, page 38 ) should be discussed.

The tone of the bill is resentful, yet it is not, generally, landowners who deny the public, but expense and the parlous state of rural transport. Most rambling groups act responsibly, but it is hard-pressed local councils, farmers and altruistic parishioners that clear up after the rest. Landowners can be unhelpful, but many face serious issues of litter, wildfire, fly-tipping, un-wormed dogs, sheepworrying, injury to livestock and intimidation by activists, even as they try to produce food. Britain has a public-health crisis, but the fact that inner-city dwellers have little green space in which to exercise is a planning issue, not an access one. A better aim would be for every primary schoolchild to be able to go on an old-fashioned Nature ramble each week. The path to a solution has many forks.

Commercial director

Clare Dove

Advertisement director Kate Barnfield 07817 629935

Advertising (Property) Julia Laurence 07971 923054

Lucy Khosla 07583 106990

Luxury Katie Ruocco 07929 364909 Interiors/Travel Emma Hiley 07581 009998

Art & Antiques Mollie Prince 07581 010002

Classified

Tabitha Tully 07391 402205

Advertising and Classified Production Stephen Turner 6613

Senior Ad Production Manager Jo Crosby 6204

Inserts Canopy Media 020–7611 8151; lindsay@canopymedia.co.uk

Back issues www.magazinesdirect.com

To find out more, contact us at licensing@futurenet.com or view our available content at www.futurecontenthub.com

Head of Print Licensing Rachel Shaw

Circulation Manager Matthew De Lima

Production Group Production Manager Nigel Davies Management

Senior Vice President Women’s, Homes and Country Sophie Wybrew-Bond

Managing Director Chris Kerwin

Please send feature pitches to countrylife.features@futurenet.com

Printed by Walstead UK

Subscription delays

We rely on various delivery companies to get your magazine to you, many of which continue to be affected by Covid. We kindly ask that you allow seven days before contacting us about a late delivery at help@magazinesdirect.com

Subscription enquiries

0330 333 1120 www.magazinesdirect.com

Future Publishing Ltd, 121–141 Westbourne Terrace, Paddington, London W2 6JR 0330 390 6591; www.countrylife.co.uk

Town & Country

Edited by James Fisher

A costly winter

What impact will inflation and the cost-of-living crisis have on our historic houses and churches? Eleanor Doughty asks heritage associations and owners about their plans for this winter and beyond

WINTER has been been unbelievably slow to arrive this year, but it surely is coming and with it the need to turn on the heating. Those whose lives revolve around heritage buildings are considering their options carefully. Last week, the National Trust told C OUNTRY L IFE that it will not be closing its properties this winter, despite the cost-of-living crisis. ‘The two big impacts this winter will be energy and inflation, particularly the inflation of the cost of materials and repairs,’ says Andy Beer, director of operations and consultancy. ‘We are accelerating our investment in energy-saving measures and encouraging our teams to be assiduous in keeping costs down, but we want to stay open. What we are not going to do is close anywhere because it is too expensive to heat. What that will mean is that there’s less money to go around.’

Since 2010, the National Trust has reduced its oil and gas use by 50%. ‘That has given us some resilience,’ notes Mr Beer, but ‘energy inflation is several millions of pounds in additional un-budgeted in-year cost. There is not a huge amount we can do apart from soak it up. We are continuing to remove our dependency on oil and gas and to generate renewable energy—using timber from our estates, through sensitively-located hydroelectric schemes and through energyefficiency measures, such as LED lighting.’

Churches, too, are being hit by higher costs and ‘feel caught in the middle,’ reveals Nigel Mills, head of church support at the National Churches Trust. ‘For churches, it is exacerbated because so much of their income is based on voluntary donations. If individuals are struggling, their ability to donate is affected.’ Together with this, says Mr Mills, is the impact that the cost of living is having on church-provided services. ‘Some of the food banks and other services are being delivered by churches, but others are delivered by third parties who are paying to rent space, in some cases at cost. Churches are finding now that this isn’t creating an income for them and they are effectively subsidising these services.’

Why should you stop people who want to improve their home’s energy efficiency?

There is a worry, adds Mr Mills, that ‘there is a bit of robbing Peter to Paul [happening]. They have got to do the day-to-day stuff to keep their heads above water, but, if maintenance and repairs drop off, this is a problem for the future. We much prefer to be funding 10 small jobs rather than one big job.’ Mr Beer

points out that cutting back on maintenance is a false economy. ‘You can sometimes delay a major repair by a year to two, but you mustn’t stop the little-and-often repairs.’

There is little that the Government can do to help in the short-term, beyond giving financial support, says Mr Beer. ‘In the medium term, one of the things that we will have to think about is how we adapt heritage buildings. There is an ongoing dialogue about how we respect the heritage of places, but also allow them to evolve properly.’

Ben Cowell, director-general of Historic Houses, believes the way in which these decisions are made today is insufficient. ‘The current system is not fit for purpose,’ he says. With numbers of local-authority conservation officers having been cut, it’s ‘easy for a planning office to say no to something because that gets the case off their desk’. Mr Cowell adds that measures designed to improve the energy efficiency of historic houses are those ‘that should be given priority—discreetly located air-source heat pumps and solar panels. These are reversible, but there doesn’t seem to be any concession in the legislation for things that are reversible. Why should you stop people that simply want to improve the energy efficiency of their home?’

‘It has long been the firm view of planning authorities that solar panels are an undesirable visual intrusion on Grade I-listed buildings and should, therefore, never be visible when

Alamy

installed,’ observes John Goodall, Architectural Editor of C OUNTRY L IFE . ‘In present circumstances, however, perhaps the values that underpinned this view are changing. For the same reason, there is perhaps less hostility to the visual impact of wind farms.’ Widespread use of listed-building consent orders would help, continues Mr Cowell. ‘The Royal Borough of Kensington & Chelsea has used them, saying Grade II-listed owners are free to install solar panels without needing special permission. Why doesn’t every local authority do that?’ He adds: ‘It is not the job of the listed-building system to do anything other than keep buildings intact. Making

Listed-building-consent orders could allow private houses, such as Broughton Castle, Northamptonshire (above), and National Trust properties, including Kingston Lacy in Dorset (left), adopt green energy measures, such as solar panels, that have hitherto been prohibited due to the detrimental effect on a building’s appearance

changes to a building to make it more liveable is part of protecting it for the future.’

This is what the Hon Martin Fiennes, son and heir of Nathaniel Fiennes, 21st Baron Saye and Sele, has been trying to do at Grade Ilisted Broughton Castle, near Banbury in Oxfordshire. He has already installed a groundwater heat pump to power the heating and hot water, but he hasn’t yet turned it on. Mr Fiennes is grateful that his electricity price is fixed until March 2023, but is planning for this winter to be his 50-year-old oil-powered Aga’s last. This, he says, is ‘not so much about the price of oil, but if you’re going to pay the same amount of money for electricity, it’s better to de-carbonise the house’.

If planning allows, Mr Fiennes, a venture capitalist who ‘earns a living in order to be able to live at Broughton’, has the ambition to install solar panels on parts of the house, as well as a hydro-electric plant, although he points out that: ‘I don’t think the Government should be helping people like me. It’s up to me to work out if we can afford it.’

Good week for Peatland pedagogy

Scotland’s first academic peatlandrestoration course has been launched. It seeks to educate graduates in peatland ecology, hydrology and restoration and increase skills in preservation

Ministerial intervention

Defence Secretary Ben Wallace has ordered the MoD to renew the lease on Larkhill in Wiltshire, so the popular point-to-point meetings can continue there

Dim angen cyflymder

Plans to set a 20mph speed limit on residential roads throughout Wales from September 2023 are predicted to save more than £100m within the first year, due to the reduction of injuries and deaths

Badminton Horse Trials

By happy chance, an additional bank holiday has been granted on the showjumping finale day, Monday, May 8, 2023, to celebrate the coronation of Charles III and his Queen Consort

Bad week for A stink in Swindon

A burst sewage pipe required 11 tankers to tackle the flow of wastewater into Lydiard Brook and the River Ray in a bid to prevent serious contamination and reduce the effects on local wildlife and residents of the Wiltshire town

Chicken farmers

Despite an average price increase of 45p in supermarkets, egg farmers have only received an increase of between 5p and 10p for their produce since March and many are having to reduce their flock sizes in order to afford maintenance and production costs

Scottish MPs

The Boundary Commission’s revised proposals have reduced Scotland’s number of constituencies from 59 to 57 to accommodate for permitted voter numbers and changed constituency sizing AEW

Town & Country

Wait, don’t shoot

THEGWCT has asked for lawmakers to ‘wait for the evidence’ when it comes to changing the rules around woodcock shooting, with a new conservation guide from the organisation stating that the decline in Britain and Ireland’s resident breeding population is ‘likely to be driven by habitat loss’ and fragmented woodland. The guide is being published at a time when Defra is under increasing pressure to introduce a legal ban on the shooting of woodcock until after November 30, two months later than the current start of the woodcock season on October 1. A petition, organised by WildJustice, has asked for the season’s start to be pushed back to December 1 and had 57,000 signatures at time of writing.

The guide, titled Conserving our Woodcock, argues that until ‘more data on the current state of the resident population is available, a legal change to the start of the woodcock shooting season is unlikely to help and may damage woodcock conservation’. The GWCT and the British Trust for Ornithology conduct a national Breeding Woodcock Survey every 10 years, with the next scheduled for 2023. The last survey showed the resident population fell from 78,350 males in 2003 to 55,240 males in 2013, a decline of 29%, which led to the bird being added to the red list of conservation concern. Although not the law, GWCT advice is that guns should avoid

Hope for our heritage

shooting woodcock until December 1, when migrant birds arrive from Europe and the impact of shooting on resident birds would be reduced.

‘Much of the justification for a sustainable harvest of woodcock is based on the benefits of woodland being retained and managed by shoots to support the species,’ says Andrew Hoodless, director of research at GWCT. ‘Enforcing a shorter season now risks alienating them and affecting woodcock-conservation efforts. Based on our research, we think the impact of shooting on woodcock at a national scale is likely to be small relative to other factors, but it could be important at a local level. For that reason, we would strongly urge shoots where there are resident breeding woodcock to postpone shooting until December and to follow the simple guidelines contained in this booklet, which can help protect breeding woodcock during the shooting season.’

In response to the petition by WildJustice, Defra said that it ‘intends to review the list of species, including woodcock, on Schedule 2 of the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981 including the benefits of altering the close season’. The department has not said when the review will be concluded, but added that ‘the reasons for the decline in the resident breeding population of woodcock in Britain are not fully understood’.

THEnumber of entries on the Heritage at Risk register (HRR), revealed last week, has fallen by 66, Historic England has announced. It was announced that 175 buildings and sites have been added due to their deteriorating condition, but that 233 sites have been saved ‘and their fortunes secured’ (statistics don’t include sites that were removed for reasons such as de-designation or loss). Historic England was awarded £8.66 million in repair grants to 185 sites for 2021/22 and the body is keen to emphasise the work of ‘dedicated teams of volunteers, community groups, charities, owners and councils’.

Highlights of the sites removed from the register include two well-known sections of the 73-mile-long Hadrian’s Wall: Steel Rigg in Northumberland—where damaging numbers of selfie-takers have been deterred by making the ground more uneven—and Port Carlisle in Cumbria have been protected and have left the HRR on the wall’s 1900th anniversary.

Significant additions to the register are the Victorian Papplewick Pumping Station in Nottingham, England’s only pumping station with all of its original features intact. It is suffering from ‘age-related deterioration’. King Arthur’s Great Halls in Tintagel, Cornwall, is also under threat. The building, which houses artworks and is ‘synonymous’ with the legend of King Arthur, faces ‘major repairs’.

‘It is central to Historic England’s mission that we pass on to future generations the rich legacy of historic buildings and places we have inherited from previous generations,’ says CEO Duncan Wilson. ‘Our Heritage at Risk programme is a key contributor to this ambition. With the help of local communities and partners, imaginative thinking and business planning, we can bring historic places back to life.’

He adds: ‘As the threat of climate change grows, the reuse and sensitive upgrading of historic buildings and places becomes ever more important. Finding new uses for buildings and sites... avoids the high carbon emissions [of] demolishing and building anew.’ Visit www.historicengland.org.uk

Alamy; Historic England Archive, James O. Davies; Simon Roberts; National Trust Images/James Dobson

King Arthur’s Great Halls have joined the register

An open-top double-decker bus trundles through the bucolic Wiltshire countryside on its way to the abandoned village of Imber. This image, captured by Simon Roberts, is part of a new book, This Pleasant Land, written by Rosalind Jana, that looks at ‘new terrains, memories and myths’ of our contemporary British landscape through the eyes of some of ‘the world’s most exciting photographers’. It will be published on November 24 by Hoxton Mini Press (£30)

Secrets revealed in a sketch

APORTRAIT of Elsie Palmer by John Singer Sargent has returned to the country house in which it was painted. The painting, a sketch in oil, was preparation for his famous portrait A Young Lady in White, of the same subject, and painted at Ightham Mote in Kent. The preparatory sketch was acquired by the National Trust, which owns the house, from Elsie’s granddaughter Jane Kasmin.

Elsie moved to Ightham Mote from Colorado, US, with her mother, Queen Palmer, in 1887. Queen was a popular hostess with the Aesthetic Movement, welcoming Singer Sargent, Henry James, Ellen Terry and Alice Comyns Carr to her rural ‘salon’. Elsie went on to socialise with the Bloomsbury Set, including Virginia Woolf, J. B. Priestley and George Orwell.

‘Sargent painted Elsie at one of the most creative moments in his career, before he was ensnared by popular success,’ says Richard Ormond, Sargent’s great nephew and an art historian. ‘Unlike the finished portrait, in which

Country Mouse Earth to earth

ALTHOUGH the dahlias are over for the year and the runner beans have finally been pulled up, a lot of the garden around our home in Hampshire is still growing strongly.

I dug up the first of our parsnips this week and the winter brassicas that were battered by hungry caterpillars all summer long are now looking rather fine. The rain and warmth appears to have got the wildflower meadow, which was sown a month ago, off to a flying start. We’ve also planted thousands of bulbs in the beds around the house—spring is going to be magical.

In other good news, it looks as if our builders will finish here in about a month’s time. They have been terrific during the past 18 months, but we shan’t miss the mud when the drive—the final job before they leave—is completed.

The mud will now be with us until the middle of March, when it will miraculously disappear. If, like us, you live on clay, you’ll know there is nothing that can be done about it. Every type of soil has its pros and cons and although, at the moment, I’m missing the chalky earth at my last cottage, getting to know your soil is all part of the challenge. MH

Town Mouse Social graces

MY wife is about to start a new job and, this week, we enjoyed a round of farewell events to celebrate her departure from the old. Two of them were drinks parties, one at home for colleagues and the other at work for a wider circle. The children were at both. At the first—predictably enough—they quickly vanished upstairs. I just managed to catch one as they attempted surreptitiously to carry off an enormous bowl of crisps.

Elsie is seated, the sketch intriguingly shows her standing, demonstrating how much thought went into the design of the portrait before the final pose was selected.’

‘This latest acquisition is a rare and highly significant addition for Ightham Mote,’ adds general manager Bernadette Gillow. ‘We are thrilled that Elsie has come home, so we can share this charming depiction of her with visitors.’

At the second, there was no such escape and I worried that they would be bored. To my amazement, however, I watched them circulate round the room with easy confidence. Over pizza afterwards, they were eager to discuss the speeches and what they had talked about and with whom. A particular highlight, apparently, was a hilarious conversation with some of the younger members of staff about favourite vegetables.

We also learned that one of the troubles of talking to grown-ups is that you have to shout and speak slowly, also that some have nothing to say to children. And how, I enquired, do you move on from such awkward conversations?. ‘Easy,’ came the reply. ‘You just say that it was nice to talk, but you think a parent is beckoning.’ Would that they ever came when one was. JG

Town & Country Notebook

Quiz of the week

1) Who succeeded Edward III in 1377?

2) Which is the world’s heaviest flying bird?

3) Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical Cats is loosely based on which T. S. Eliot work?

4) Which is the UK’s largest forest?

5) Nicholas Hawksmoor was a notable practitioner of which architectural style?

100 years ago in November 18, 1922

Paws for thought

Dog trainer Ben Randall offers his advice

Barking up the wrong tree

Edited by Carla Passino

MODERN furniture design has been recently discussed in these pages, and the forthcoming Arts and Crafts Exhibition at Burlington House will contain many specimens. This will be in connection with the Winter Exhibition and is held under the auspices of the Royal Academy... It is a great opportunity. But what happens?… A special stipulation has been made by the Academy that only the names of individual designers or workmen will be appended to each exhibit and names of firms only mentioned as the patrons or instigators of the pieces! Does the Academy dream that Chippendale, Sheraton or any of those great men, when they produced their finest work, actually worked on chairs and tables? If firms of cabinet-makers cannot be allowed to exhibit as such and to build up reputations on their products, the exhibition had better be of three-legged stools and deal tables and have done with it.

Q‘My dog has a nervous disposition and I believe that’s why she barks at people. She is more likely to bark when we set off on a walk and she’s excited. Any tips, please?’

T.R., via e-mail

AIt could be that your dog has a nervous disposition, but it could be that she believes you are the nervous one and she feels she needs to protect you both. Here’s how to help her: 1. Use the ‘leave’ command —if your dog barks once, a quick, verbal ‘leave’ and ‘heel’ should be all that’s required to defuse the situation. 2. Apply positive

Time to buy

Terrain: The Houseplant Book, £27.99, Artisan Books (www.artisanbooks.com)

reinforcement. Once your dog ignores the distraction and you have walked past, reward her with a piece of kibble. 3. Stop the chase, but not the fun. Allowing your dog to chase a moving object, such as a tennis ball, will increase her prey drive and can over excite her. 4. Try a memory retrieve instead. Keeping the dog on the lead, place a tennis ball on the grass, give the ‘leave’ command, then move away with her at heel. She'll learn that the closer she walks to you, the more quickly she will notice you stop, turn and send her back for the ball. 5. Give your dog multiple memory retrieves on each walk and, between each one, she will be in a calm frame of mind. To pose your own canine conundrum, email paws-for-thought@futurenet.com. For details about Mr Randall and his training app, visit www.gundog.app/trial

Hand blender with accessories, £149.95, Smeg (https://shop. smeguk.com)

Cherry embroidered leather gloves, £49, Mabel Sheppard (www. mabelsheppard.co.uk)

Riddle me this

What can you break through play, even if nothing actually gets broken?

Word of the week

Peristeronic

1) Richard II 2) The great bustard 3) ‘Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats’ 4) Galloway Forest, Dumfries & Galloway 5) English Baroque. Riddle me this: Boredom

‘We are all so afraid, we are all so alone, we all so need from the outside the assurance of our own worthiness to exist’

The Good Soldier, Ford Madox Ford

(adjective) Belonging to, or relating to pigeons

In the spotlight

Goldcrest (Regulus Regulus)

Wines of the week

Just add sparkle

Domaine des Dieux, Claudia Méthode Cap Classique Brut, Western Cape, South Africa, 2015. £19.95, Stone Vine & Sun, alc 11% Four years on lees and one under cork lend a lovely complexity to this traditional-method sparkler. Stewed apple and pear with creamy touches of crème brûlée and brioche, and a rich, honeyed-lemon core. What did the Germans ever do for us?

In numerous districts, goldcrests are noticeable at this time of year, although, in the 18th century, the naturalist Gilbert White declared them ‘almost as rare as any bird we know’. Large numbers arrive from Scandinavia and Eastern Europe, hoping for a winter sojourn with tolerable temperatures, adding many thousands to our resident population.

You’re likely to hear these sociable creatures before you see them, their high-pitched tinkling calls raining down from the treetops, particularly conifers. It’s unmistakable, yet it is one of the first songs

Unmissable events

Until December 23 ‘Look Up! A Journey Through Print Land’, Gallery by the Lakes, Pallington, Dorset.

Nine artists showcase their work in a celebration of contemporary printmaking (07887 906818; www. gallerybythelakes.co.uk)

Until March 26, 2023 ‘Most Loved Works’ exhibition, Stanley Spencer Gallery, Cookham, Berkshire. A collection of 30 paintings, drawings and sketches by Spencer (01628 531092; www.stanleyspencer.org.uk)

Until April 23, 2023 ‘Sussex Landscape’ ( pictured ), Pallant House, Chichester,

Did you know?

that cease to be registered by the human ear when hearing deteriorates with age.

Even smaller than wrens, softly bottlegreen and beige goldcrests weigh in at only 6g (a little under ¼oz)—half that of a blue tit. They flit about in restless flocks, often with their equally diminutive relatives, the firecrests, as well as tits, searching out insect morsels and eggs, in bark crevices and the leaf-undersides of evergreens.

Historically, goldcrests became known as ‘woodcock pilots’, as they seemed to arrive from across the North Sea on the backs of the large birds.

Marks & Spencer, Found Weissburgunder, Pfalz, Germany, 2021. £9.50, Marks & Spencer, alc 12.5% Subtle and restrained, with delicate hints of stone fruit. There’s both freshness and fullness here, with some bitter lemon. Made for M&S by respected German winemaker Gerd Stepp, it’s light and easy to drink. Would pair well with seabass and buttery greens.

Hidden gem

West Sussex. How the county’s natural beauty inspired artists as different as Turner, Constable, Ravilious and Andy Goldsworthy (01243 774557; www.pallant.org.uk)

November 18–January 2, 2023 Christmas at Blenheim Palace, Blenheim Palace, Woodstock, Oxfordshire. The Kingdom of the Snow Queen is re-created inside the palace

rooms; the gardens are the backdrop to an illuminated trail that includes an installation suggesting the Aurora Borealis (01993 810530; www.blenheim palace.com/Christmas)

December 1 A Classical Christmas, Cadogan Hall, London SW1. The Royal Philharmonic’s Christmas concert features suites from Tchaikovsky’s The Nutcracker and The Sleeping Beauty, Vaughan Williams’s ‘Prelude on an Old Carol Tune’ and Humperdinck’s ‘Prelude’ from Hansel and Gretel. Conducted by Shiyeon Sung (020–7730 4500; www.cadoganhall.com)

Spillers Records, in Cardiff, is thought to be the world’s oldest record shop. Henry Spiller opened it in 1894 to sell phonographs and phonograph discs and the store has continued trading ever since, facing off the music-industry crisis, rent spikes and several premises moves across the city.

Collin Bourisset, Mâcon Rouge, Burgundy, France, 2020. £6.99, Lidl, alc 13% Red Mâcon is unfamiliar to many UK wine lovers, but is worth exploring. Made from a blend of Gamay and Pinot Noir, this is an easy-drinking, unoaked red with plenty of crunchy strawberry and raspberry fruit. Tangy and appetising— try serving with charcuterie. The future is rosé Château Barbeyrolles, Pétale de Rose, Côtes de Provence, France, 2021. £29.75, Corney & Barrow, alc 13% Vibrant and intense, this combines restraint and grace with grip, texture and power. There are notes of jasmine, white peach and citrus, plus a savouriness from the high proportion (27%) of Mourvèdre in the blend. A great gastronomic rosé from Régine Sumeire.

For more, visit www.decanter.com

Alamy; Getty/Dorling Kindersley; Dreamstime; ‘Chichester Canal’ by

J.

M. W. Turner/Tate/Tate Images

Letters to the Editor Mark Hedges

A fire to count on

Letter of the week

A man of style and substance

IFEEL confident that John Jervis would have been pleased to be praised 250 years later in C OUNTRY L IFE for his uniform (GENTLEMAN’S

L IFE , November 2). When he joined the Royal Navy in 1748, aged 13, he was given £20 by his father to cover the cost of his uniform and other expenses. When this ran out, his father would provide no more and Jervis had to sleep on the bare deck for three years. It probably explains why he became such a strict disciplinarian. Shortly after the Cotes portrait of 1769 featured in your issue was painted, Jervis stayed up all night with Capt Luttrell and a pistol to confront the ghost at Hinton Ampner, Hampshire, where his sister was living. I am not aware which uniform he wore that night.

Andrew Parker-Jervis, Essex

The writer of the letter of the week will win a bottle of Pol Roger Brut Réserve Champagne

A burning issue

OH , the sadness of an unlit fire. ‘The Grate Debate’ (November 2) sparked the thoughts of the glory and hypnotic effects of a few logs smouldering on an open grate.

Returning recently from a road trip to Cotswolds, North Wales and The Wirral, I was more than disappointed by the lack of fires in hotels and pubs. A log fire encourages all sorts of emotions and has many beneficial qualities for the customers, as well as the landlord and hotel manager. No fire is probably the most disappointing factor of entering any social room in a hotel or pub.

David Lambert, East Sussex

FORTY years ago, when we were renovating a cottage in Worcestershire, my father said we must have a Rumford fireplace. He proceeded to build it according to the 1790s design of Count Rumford (right): relatively small, shallow, with wide angled side walls and a ‘smoke shelf’ within the chimney, creating circulation of smoke, heat and outside air. The fire itself was laid on the flat brick hearth, with no need for a grate. Thirty years later, we built another in a Regency townhouse in Cheltenham, to the derision of builder and chimneysweep. Again, it works perfectly: lots of heat and no smoke. A new fire can be laid on the ashes for days.

Count Rumford started life as Benjamin Thompson in Massachusetts,

Pipe dreams

US, but was forced to leave when identified as a possible English spy. He had a colourful career, during which he founded the Royal Institution. His fireplace was a sensation in late-18thcentury London, where most of them smoked. Still well known in the US, it’s hard to know why the design disappeared in Britain, especially as testing has shown a Rumford fireplace is as efficient as a clean-burning stove. Ours certainly keeps us warm.

Diana Pollock, Cheltenham

OH, the undiluted joy of seeing a photograph of a gentleman with pipe in hand (GENTLEMAN’S L IFE , November 2). It took me straight back to my childhood, which was perfumed by my father’s pipe smoking. I was even sent out to the corner shop to go and buy his tobacco: ‘Condor Twist’ at 6s 8½p an ounce, with the remaining half pence to be spent on a lollipop. Happy days. Jane Moth, Staffordshir e

Kings of the sea

MR REYNOLDS’S surprise at finding swans happily at sea (Letters, November 2) is no surprise to us, as they are a common sight on the Exe Estuary. We have always had swans at Lympstone, but, this year, the usual three or four families turned into a remarkable fleet of 34.

Col Graeme Wheeler, Devon

Country Life, ISSN 0045-8856, is published weekly by Future Publishing Limited, Quay House, The Ambury, Bath, BA1 1UA, United Kingdom. Country Life Subscriptions: For enquiries and orders, please email: help@magazinesdirect.com, alternatively from the UK call: 0330 333 1120, overseas call: + 44 330 333 1120 (Lines are open Monday–Saturday, 8am- 6pm GMT excluding Bank Holidays). One year full subscription rates: 1 Year (51) issues. UK £213.70; Europe/Eire €380 (delivery 3–5 days); USA $460 (delivery 5–12 days); Rest of World £359 (delivery 5–7 days). Periodicals postage paid at Brooklyn NY 11256. US Postmaster: Send address changes to Country Life, Airfreight and mailing in the USA by agent named WN Shipping USA, 165–15, 146th Avenue, 2nd Floor, Jamaica, NY 11434, USA. Subscription records are maintained at Future Publishing Ltd, Rockwood House, 9–16, Perrymount Road, Haywards Heath, RH16 3DH. Air Business Ltd is acting as our mailing agent. BACK NUMBERS Subject to availability, issues from the past three weeks are available from www.magazinesdirect.com. Subscriptions queries: 0330 333 1120. If you have difficulty in obtaining Country Life from your newsagent, please contact us on 0330 390 6591. We regret we cannot be liable for the safe custody or return of any solicited or unsolicited material, whether typescripts, photographs, transparencies, artwork or computer discs. COUNTRY LIFE PICTURE LIBRARY: Articles and images published in this and previous issues are available, subject to copyright, from the Country Life Picture Library: 01252 555090/2/3.

Editorial Complaints: We work hard to achieve the highest standards of editorial content and we are committed to complying with the Editors’ Code of Practice (https://www.ipso.co.uk/IPSO/cop.html) as enforced by IPSO. If you have a complaint about our editorial content, you can email us at complaints@futurenet.com or write to Complaints Manager, Future Publishing Limited Legal Department, 3rd Floor, Marsh Wall, London E14 9AP. Please provide details of the material you are complaining about and explain your complaint by reference to the Editors’ Code. We will try to acknowledge your complaint within five working days and we aim to correct substantial errors as soon as possible.

A war on culture

ATHENA (November 9) is rightly concerned about the fate of Odessa. This is a wonderful city, founded by Catherine the Great as a St Petersburg on the Black Sea, and has a splendid classical air, which certainly lends itself to a UNESCO listing. Another city, at the other end of Ukraine, is Lviv, a treasure house of buildings dating from the Renaissance to the Habsburg classical era. It does carry a UNESCO listing, but Russian bombing has already hit parts of the city. If it were damaged, as Athena so rightly says of Odessa, it would be a severe cultural rebuke to President Putin and his war. He has vandalised too much of Ukraine, already.

Tim Brown, Cumbria

Bad behaviour backfires

ONCE again, this week has shown exactly how different agriculture is from any other industry. The eruption of avian flu means that farmers have had to destroy whole flocks of birds destined for the Christmas market. It means that turkeys will be in short supply, free-range chickens more expensive and many farm businesses will be pushed into free fall. Contaminated land and buildings often cannot house birds for 12 months after an outbreak and many of those hit this year will miss out on Christmas 2023 as well. Government compensation helps, but it doesn’t cover the loss. Family businesses that have been built up over many years will have to start all over again.

Beauty is in the eye of the magazine holder

THANK you so much for GENTLEMAN’S LIFE (November 2). I would appreciate it if you would let me know where I can purchase the (very rugged) gentleman facing page 68.

M. E. Clayden, Devon

Farmers also face the problems of other businesses: rocketing input costs, supply shortages and huge increases in interest payments. On top of that, they are continuously vulnerable to the weather and to disease. Some 3.5 million turkeys have already been culled in this outbreak as bird flu has ravaged the eastern counties. Last week, the Government extended preventative measures to the whole of England, forcing all domestic birds—even single pets—to be kept inside or within wired compounds. These regulations are designed to stop any contact with wild birds and limit the spread of the disease.

This particular strain is especially virulent, both in its effects and the ease with which it is transmitted. Originating in China, it has moved across the world, mutating into its current vicious state. It is unlikely to affect human health, nor does it mean that meat or eggs are unsafe, but it is devastating in its effects on birdlife, particularly the seabirds that migrate to Britain during the summer. The virus is only one more of the animal diseases that are becoming a greater threat in a warming world. It all adds ever more

pressure upon a farming community that needs our support and understanding.

However, farmers have to play their part in gaining that support, particularly now the majority of country people no longer work in agriculture. Farmers share the countryside with many others: the retired and the part time; small businesses and those who work from home; environmentalists and public employees.

It, therefore, does agriculture no good when farmers act arrogantly: strewing the lanes with mud, chopping their hedges when birds and small mammals most need them and siting farm buildings where they damage other people’s view. Even the small irritations matter hugely, as Agromenes noticed this week when he and a dozen other drivers were piled up behind a big modern tractor, so wide that it had to move into laybys to allow oncoming traffic to pass. Yet the driver never stayed aside long enough to let the cars behind pass. It wasn’t good PR for farming!

We as a society, however, have to learn again much more widely to treat others more civilly. There are far too many people, so sure of their position or the rightness of their cause, who feel justified in ignoring and inconveniencing others. That’s why Agromenes was so cheered last week by the direct language of the vice chancellor of Germany, a Green Party MP. He strongly condemned extremist climate campaigners for holding up traffic and making it impossible for emergency vehicles to get to accidents in time. An ardent environmentalist, he told them they were harming their cause, putting lives at risk and making action on climate more difficult.

It reiterates what COUNTRY L IFE has already said (Leader, November 2), but it was particularly welcome coming from a senior Green. We have to convince, not seek to impose our views, however urgent and important they are.

Too many people are so sure of their rightness that they feel justified ignoring others

Athena Cultural Crusader

Politics have no place in the Arts

THE grants offered by Arts Council England (ACE) to a sector still struggling to recover from covid were always going to generate controversy. About 1,700 organisations made applications for the funding period of 2023–26, the largest number to date, up 600 on the previous round. However, the good news—that £446 million will be distributed to 990 organisations over the next three years, the highest-ever number of recipients, 276 of which have never received money before—must not obscure the limitations of what has happened or its failings.

The former Secretary of State Nadine Dorries insisted that ACE funding be transferred from London. In response, in the name of ‘levelling up’, ACE aims to provide access to cultural activities of quality on people’s

doorsteps in ‘villages, towns and cities everywhere’, as well as reflecting the cultural diversity of 21st-century Britain.

These laudable goals, however, hardly seem realistic with the budget available. By contrast, in a single month, the ‘Eat Out to Help Out’ scheme, which sought to bolster the hospitality sector, cost £849 million. No wonder that ACE’s chairman admitted in the press conference held to announce the spending round that there were ‘invidious choices’ to be made. They seem also to have been hurried and ill considered.

a range of opera and dance whilst maximising it as a commercial asset’. Athena would welcome the move if it seemed to be driven by anything other than politics.

It has been reported that ACE’s funding decision was announced with 24 hours notice to the institution in question—in other words, before the practicalities and costs involved could possibly have been considered—and without consultation with neighbouring Opera North (a body that, ironically, began its life as an initiative by ENO to work outside the capital). This is not a thoughtful attempt to redistribute cultural resources, but a response to a political agenda that is neither properly funded nor considered. It strikes Athena as destructive, potentially wasteful and callous to ENO’s staff, not to mention an abuse of financial power.

The initiative that has stimulated the most controversy has been the decision to cut English National Opera’s core funding of £12 million and the offer instead of £17 million if it relocates outside London. The company has responded by saying that it will move, ‘potentially to Manchester’, but intends to continue to ‘manage’ its venue, the London Coliseum, ‘using it to present

ENO has a formidable track record when it comes to widening participation in culture through—for example—its free broadcasts of performances, unlimited free tickets for under-21s and a hugely successful production of Porgy and Bess with an almost entirely black cast. Incredibly, 51% of its audience last season was attending opera for the first time. Evidently, for ACE, the achievement of actually providing universal access to high-quality culture can’t eclipse the political sin of a London base.

The way we were Photographs from the C ountry L ife archive

A smiling and magnificently bearded estate worker poses with an empty wheelbarrow on a warm day in late spring beside a sawmill at Downton Castle, Herefordshire. Around him are chaotic piles of logs and timber. The sawmill still survives, despite the detail of slipped tiles in the roof.

Every week for the past 125 years, COUNTRY LIFE has documented and photographed many walks of life in Britain. More than 80,000 of the images are available for syndication or purchase in digital format. To view the archives, visit www. countrylifeimages.co.uk and email enquiries to licensing@ futurenet.com

It strikes Athena as destructive, wasteful and callous to ENO’s staff

My favourite painting Habda Rashid

The Casting Call by Noah Davis

Habda Rashid is senior curator of modern and contemporary art at Kettle’s Yard and the Fitzwilliam Museum, University of Cambridge. The ‘Paint Like the Swallow Sings Calypso’ exhibition at Kettle’s Yard runs until February 19, 2023

I have an interest in artists that create dialogues with historical art traditions within a contemporary setting and, in this work, I feel as if there is a conversation with Degas and his ballerinas. Davis’s claustrophobic composition creates both tension and intimacy; the low-ceilinged room is crowded and, as with all of his works, his subjects’ faces are obscured, so eye contact with the viewer is mainly denied. There is a nod to abstraction with the prominence of a grid-like floor, which I feel is deliberate and aimed to interrupt any straight or representational reading of this scene, so you sense it’s not a real place. Davis deliberately made his work accessible for a wide audience, it was important to him to do so, as well as engaging with art history and the language of painting, thereby also attracting art-world nerds like me

The Casting Call, 2008, oil and acrylic on canvas, 60in by 62in, by Noah Davis (1983–2015), the estate of Noah Davis

Charlotte Mullins comments on The Casting Call

BLACK women pose in white swimwear and strappy sandals, hands stretched over their heads, legs bent to add alluring contrapposto, as if they were classical statues. One woman falters and looks down, hands awkwardly by her sides. It is only then that we notice the guarded eyes of the front woman and the closed red doors. The ceiling presses down and the walls close in. The painting’s title suggests these women are competing for a job, but a job doing what?

Noah Davis’s paintings often have a disquieting atmosphere, something we can’t quite put our finger on. At times, fantastical elements, such as portals and unicorns, creep in and his works have an otherworldly feel, as if we remember them from a dream. Most are

scenes from everyday life, a man reading a newspaper by a chainlink fence or kids hanging out on an elevated walkway. Davis wanted to reinstate black bodies into the artistic canon, much as the generation of African-American artists who preceded him did, including Kerry James Marshall. But Davis’s spare, muted style owes more to the European tradition of Marlene Dumas and Luc Tuymans.

Davis was winning international attention before his untimely death aged 32 from cancer. Three years before he died, he established the Underground Museum with his wife, brother and sister-in-law. It was an ambitious project to bring museumquality art to Arlington Heights in Los Angeles, US, supported by the LA Museum of Contemporary Arts. It ran until spring 2022.

The Estate of Noah Davis

/ Courtesy The Estate of Noah Davis and David Zwirner

Farming life

Jamie Blackett

Get a grip. Wear more clothes

THE woman, let’s call her Cruella, folds her arms with an unnerving glint in her eye. ‘OK, I suggest you go away and decide how much of a rebate you are going to give us and we’ll think about the review we are going to put on TripAdvisor.’

Whenever holiday-chalet boilers fail, it is the female of the species that proves more deadly than the male. Her husband, for whom I have started to feel sorry, has been the ‘nice cop’ all week as she has exuded an air of menace whenever I have stuttered grovelling apologies about the heating failing.

The worst of it is that it is inexplicable. I checked there was gas in the bottles before the guests arrived, yet they ran out within 24 hours and we had to replace them. It was as if a goblin had come in the night and taken the hose off. Then the water pressure kept dropping for no reason when we were away. The husband claimed to know a bit about plumbing and I talked him through the drills. It worked, but now it has failed altogether.

Looking for a home: the Blacketts’ puppies are adorable and will keep you warm, too

The next day, boiler engineer Angus arrives. He looks grave. ‘Are they asking for money back?’ I nod glumly. ‘Well, I wouldn’t give them any. This boiler’s been tampered with. See there? That valve’s been closed. They obviously kenned what they were doing—most people wouldn’t have been able to get at it.’

Fortunately, the guests didn’t write a review, thus avoiding tiresome litigation, and we never heard from them again. They must have lost their nerve when they passed Angus’s van on their way out. That was years ago and was our first introduction to the professional complainant. The situation—which is largely owed to online reviewing sites—has not improved.

Autumn, when the inside temperature hovers above 20˚ so the thermostats leave the heating off until later, always generates awkward Fawlty-esque conversations. I wouldn’t mind, but the plaintiff is often wearing nothing but

a T-shirt and an air of entitlement. It is a puzzling feature of the Counter-Enlightenment that society has responded to climate and financial emergencies by shedding garments and turning the heating up. I long to see the headline: ‘Cost-of-living crisis latest. PM: “Get a grip. If you are cold, wear more clothes”.’ COP 27 delegates on their sun-loungers in Egypt might consider limiting the settings on thermostats to 18˚ and a directive to the world’s population to make up the difference in their body temperatures with animal fibres.

At least we now have conclusive proof that farmers—or some farmers—are officially part of the climate-change solution, rather than the problem. Last week, I interviewed the recipient of the first carbon-sequestration contract that does not involve covering yet more hillsides in sitka spruce. Leicestershire farmer Hylton Murray-Philipson, who farms in a similar regenerative fashion to my own system, has a deal where the carbon-credit business Respira pays him annually for any extra carbon measured in his soil, net of any greenhouse gases that his farming emits.

He is sequestering a lot of carbon and the payment now forms the second-largest income stream on his farm after wheat. Guess what? He has 550 sheep and cattle on his farm and methane from their burps forms part of the

top line of the calculation. Celebrity vegans may care to ponder this inconvenient truth.

Autumn is now in with a vengeance. We wake to curlew adagios from the foreshore and driving around the lanes winnows mesmerising flocks of fieldfares from the hedges. Where potatoes grew only a fortnight ago, there is a tentative fluff of winter rye emerging and lapwings, rooks and gulls rake over the soil looking for grubs and any remaining tatties. The milk yield is on a downward curve, but much creamier, as if Nature knows that colder weather requires more fat.

Our utility room is now a puppy nursery. An autumn whelping means we can’t play our usual trick of making a run at the summerhouse end of the lawn, but Pippin probably had other things on her mind at the time. Now they are weaned, the Chief Kennel Maid and her hapless assistant are ministering to the puppies’ every need. Productivity elsewhere has plummeted, but they are cute and great conversationalists. Two boys need homes. Anyone wishing to indenture themselves to a Norfolk-Lucas cross terrier—for life, not just for Christmas—should get in touch.

Jamie Blackett farms in Dumfriesshire. His new book, ‘Land of Milk and Honey’ (Quiller) is out now

Professional complainants come to stay, but there’s hope for farming’s fightback against climate change

Sheri Blackett

The plaintiff is wearing nothing but a T-shirt and an air of entitlement

Britain’s greatest masterpieces

The Forsyte Saga

by John Galsworthy

ON Saturday, January 7, 1967, the centenary year of John Galsworthy’s birth, the BBC broadcast the first episode of a lavish, 26-hour-long adaptation of The Forsyte Saga. The public reaction was so favourable that, little more than a year later, the series was repeated. The knock-on effect was a rise in the sales of Galsworthy’s books to levels not even reached at the height of his popularity in the 1920s. Suddenly, his reputation, after years on the slide, was on the rise again.

The amalgamation of three Galsworthy novels under the name The Forsyte Saga (The Man of Property, In Chancery and To Let, published separately between 1906 and 1921, together with the short interludes Indian Summer of a Forsyte and Awakening) and with one cover in 1922 had been a commercial success, but the author’s critical standing had taken several knocks since. D. H. Lawrence

accused Galsworthy (1867–1933) of peddling ‘cheap cynicism smothered in sentimentalism’ and Virginia Woolf dubbed him ‘a stuffed shirt’ after his death.

Lawrence reckoned Galsworthy’s characters had ‘no blood and bones’ and there is certainly something ploddingly lifeless about the early stages of The Man of Property, as well as the author’s manner of introducing the Forsytes, arguably the most smug, sniffy, self-entitled and over-privileged gathering ever to have appeared on the pages of a serious 20th-century novel. Painting them as frequently trivial, invariably materialistic and calculating, their creator appears to have had little time for any of them. However, Galsworthy once told his sister that he was not for or against any particular character, rather that he felt ‘more like a sort of chemist, more cold, more dissective’.

Galsworthy’s family was as wealthy as that of the Forsytes, their money acquired in similar ways, via farming, building and property ownership, but he had humanitarian instincts. Although he came late to writing, initially

Eric Porter (standing, centre) stars as Soames and Susan Hampshire (seated, third from left) plays Fleur in the BBC’s The Forsyte Saga

A man of film

John Galsworthy could never have imagined the impact a television dramatisation of his most famous work would have on his legacy, but his output had already been associated with the moving image in his lifetime. Celebrated actor-manager Gerald du Maurier starred in a silent film adaptation of his play Justice in 1917 and in a talkie version of Escape in 1930. In 1931, Alfred Hitchcock directed an intriguing version of Galsworthy’s great West End success The Skin Game

That Forsyte Woman was a Hollywood adaptation of the first novel of The Forsyte Saga (The Man of Property) in 1949, with Errol Flynn as Soames ( pictured ), but it took the BBC serialisation of 1967 to kickstart a Galsworthy revival. As biographer Alec Frechet has written, its airing week after week and repeated over several years ‘showed characters on the television screen that became like members of the family circle’. It made stars of Eric Porter,

publishing under a pseudonym, one of his earliest novels, The Island Pharisees (1904), showed a concern for poverty. His first play, The Silver Box (1906), demonstrated the contrasting attitudes of the law, a subject in which the qualified barrister Galsworthy was steeped, to the rich and the poor. Indeed, he was frequently ahead of his time. The Mob (1913) was an anti-war play that railed against the moronic whipping-up of patriotic fervour.

as the repressed Soames, and Nyree Dawn Porter, as Irene. Susan Hampshire won an Emmy for her part as Fleur. Remarkably, Kenneth More, playing Young Jolyon, was two years older than Joseph O’Conor, who played Old Jolyon. The Forsyte Saga underwent further successful television serialisation in 2002–03, with Gina McKee, Rupert Graves and Damian Lewis in lead roles.

What they said

‘For the Forsytes what cannot be bought does not exist; art and things of the spirit are objects to be collected, but not for their own sake, rather as manifestations of success in life’

Walter Allen, ‘The English Novel’

‘The Forsyte Saga, ambitious in scale, variously bold and subtle in ironies, and quietly gratifying in its human dramas, has well deserved its popular success. This great chronicle of an era is pervaded by John Galsworthy’s critically observant but generously kind temperament’

Cedric Watts, introduction to ‘The Forsyte Saga’ (Wordsworth Classics edition)

‘Without intending to produce an historical work, [John Galsworthy] tried to hold a mirror up to his country’

Alec Frechet, ‘John Galsworthy: A Reassessment’

Yet although The Forsyte Saga depicts the pursuit of wealth across three generations of an upper-middle-class family and the artificialities and hypocrisy required to maintain social status, Galsworthy did, as the saga unfolded, succeed in humanising some characters and enlisting reader sympathy. One of the most likeable characters is the head of the dynasty, Old Jolyon, a man of limited imagination, but great dignity, modelled on Galsworthy’s solicitor father. Soames Forsyte, the ultimate ‘man of property’, is the deadliest figure in the book, bullying and

A commercial success on its publication a century ago, The Forsyte Saga is today recognised as a John Galsworthy classic

cold, yet he has a counterbalancing decency and honesty. He may not be a character readers can love, but, by the end, they may feel a certain sympathy towards him.

Although Galsworthy’s detached writing style can be heavy going, he has his moments. He was fond of the work of Nature writers such as Richard Jefferies and W. H. Hudson. Although most of his characters seem cut off from Nature, a feeling for the outdoors

shines through in a well-written early chapter where Galsworthy describes a beautiful burst of warm spring weather that arrives just as the passion between the outsider architect Bosinney and Irene, the wife of Soames, is blossoming.

As an evocation of late-Victorian and Edwardian life among the upper echelons, The Forsyte Saga remains unsurpassed. Jack Watkins

Painting them as materialistic and calculating, it appears their creator had little time for any of them

An enduring force for good

Drapers’ Hall, Throgmorton Street, London EC2

A restoration project revives the spectacular interior of one of London’s finest Livery Halls.

John Goodall looks at the origins and history of the body that created it

Photographs by Will Pryce

ANYONE who passes along Throgmorton Street in the heart of the City must have their eye drawn to an enormous sculpted doorcase, supported on the back of two larger-than-life turbaned figures and crowned with a huge heraldic achievement (Fig 1)

Fig 1 above: The front door of Drapers’ Hall. Fig 2 right: The grand Livery Hall

This is the front door to Drapers’ Hall, an institution that traces its history back into the Middle Ages and ranks third in precedence in the hierarchy of the Great Twelve City Livery Companies.

By its scale and quality, this entrance proclaims itself to be important. Set within a long frontage of numerous sections, however, it’s not immediately apparent what the doorcase relates to. That is because, in the 1890s, the Drapers’ Company redeveloped the commercially valuable street frontage of its hall as shops. The arrangement accentuates the visitor’s astonishment when they cross the threshold and discover one of the most opulent and spacious historic buildings in the City.

The Drapers’ Company can securely trace its history back into the 14th century. In 1388, Richard II instituted an enquiry to discover the customs, privileges and possessions of religious fraternities across the realm. Documented in the returns was a Brotherhood in honour of ‘Our Lord Jesus Christ and his sweet Mother Saint Mary of Bethlehem, in which place of Bethlehem the Star appeared to the Shepherds and gave and showed light to the three Kings of Cologne’.

According to the return, this brotherhood had been established on the feast of the Purification of the Virgin (February 2), 1361, by the ‘Drapers of Cornhill’ and ‘other good men and women’ for ‘the amendment of their

lives’ by ‘the assent of Brother William Tytte’ of the Hospital of Our Lady of Bethlehem, London. It’s not now clear how the association with the Bethlehem Hospital colloquially known as ‘Bedlam’ (then standing on the site of what is now Liverpool Street Station) came about; nor the nature of the assent given by Tytte, who later became the last Master of that institution.

The return goes on to describe the essentially conventional organisation of the fraternity, which was governed by elected ‘wardens’. Its brethren—both men and women—gathered four times a year, on pain of a fine, to pay collective dues towards a common fund that could be used for devotional and charitable purposes. The chief of these gatherings fell on February 2, when there was an annual audit of accounts, followed by a communal feast. On this occasion, the brethren paid their share of the cost, as well as that for any guests they brought.

The essential structure of this fraternity has shaped the life of the Drapers’ Company ever since. Particular importance has always been attached to splendid hospitality, a tradition recently explored in an edition of The Dinner Book 1564–1602 (London Record Society, 2019) by Sarah Milne. It continues, of course, to the present. Brethren in 1388 also paid for a distinctive livery that had to be worn for all formal gatherings, including

for the funerals of their fellows. There were fines for wearing the livery in inappropriate situations, such as when playing games.

At the conclusion of the return, there is a note that three years previously—in 1385 —the brethren had invested money in a property on St Swithun’s Lane, with the intention of using its revenue to endow the post of a chaplain. In the event, legal wranglings over the ownership of this property preserved it for another use, as we shall see. In the meantime, the founding connection with those

Fig 3 left: The main stair of 1898 with its rich marble finish by Thomas Graham Jackson. Fig 4 right: The drawing room is predominantly an interior of the 1860s with furniture by John G. Crace. The carpet was added in the 1920s. On the far wall is an unexpectedly alluring image of Aurora standing at the Gates of Dawn by H. J. Draper

involved in the trade or ‘mystery’ of drapers —merchants who dealt with wool woven into cloth—began to transform the fraternity.

High-quality wool was the cash crop of England’s medieval economy. Royal attempts to regulate this vastly lucrative business forced the specialist professionals involved in each stage of converting wool into cloth to define the remit of their labour and protect it. Consequently, in 1364, Edward III issued a licence that granted exclusive right to London drapers to practise their ‘mystery’

—as distinct from the mysteries of dyers, weavers and fullers—in and around the capital. He further handed over the task of policing the arrangement and maintaining quality to the same individuals, represented by four elected warden drapers.

In the first quarter of the 15th century, the terms of the 1364 royal licence became institutionalised within the framework of the fraternity. This must have seemed a perfectly natural evolution and one that was reinforced by the personalities involved.

In the meantime, connection with the mystery brought a steady flow of valuable bequests to the fraternity. As a result, the link with Bedlam was replaced with connections to the City parish church of St Mary le Bow (and, from 1503, to St Michael’s Cornhill).

Such was the confidence of the fraternity that, in 1425, it began a purpose-built hall on its St Swithun’s Lane site. The first feast was held there in 1430. Whether by design or good fortune, part of the plot of land on which it stood demonstrably formed

a tenter ground for drying newly fulled cloth that had been owned in the late 12th century by Henry Fitzalwyn, the first Mayor of London. From this connection grew the story, vigorously promoted from at least the 16th century, that Fitzalwyn was a draper and that the history of the company—albeit undocumented —could be traced back to his lifetime.

In 1438, the fraternity was incorporated by Royal Charter, a change that effectively formalised its transformation into the governing body of the mystery of drapers in London. Accompanying these changes was an intriguing shift in devotional emphasis, from the Purification of the Virgin to the Feast of the Assumption of the Virgin (August 15), a triumphal celebration of Mary’s glorious entry into Heaven and her coronation there.

These themes informed the arms that were granted to the ‘Mystery of Drapers’ the following year. It incorporates the repeated motif of an ‘imperial’ or triple crown set on a cloud with sunbeams issuing from it, a reference

to the Virgin as the mother of the ‘imperial sun’, Christ. It’s a device that appears throughout Drapers’ Hall today. The common seal, created at the same time, shows the Virgin crowned with a triple crown sheltering the members of the mystery beneath her cloak.

The Drapers’ Company remained in its first hall until the Reformation, by which time the building no doubt appeared modest. Exactly how wealthy the company had become was reflected by its successful negotiation, in 1543, to buy its present premises, the former home of Henry VIII’s disgraced secretary, Thomas Cromwell, created next to the monastic foundation Austin Friars by the incremental purchase and appropriation of land. It cost the princely sum of 1,800 marks (£1,200).

From its new home, the Drapers’ Company continued to expand. In 1560, it received a second foundation charter from Elizabeth I and, in 1607, it was incorporated (again) by James I. As were many City companies, it was involved in the Plantation of Ulster.

Over the same period, the charitable activities that the company had long undertaken began to be extended and formalised. In 1574, it assumed responsibility for the almshouse called Queen Elizabeth College, Greenwich, and, in 1593, was entrusted with the management of its first school at Barton, Staffordshire. Such philanthropic work remains central to the role of the company today, which directly supports 24 educational establishments, as well as many other charitable endeavours.

The Great Fire of London in 1666 completely destroyed Drapers’ Hall and a replacement building was completed to the designs of Edward Jerman by Thomas Cartwright, both professionals who were otherwise widely involved in the reconstruction of the City. Work to the shell of the building was finished in 1671, but the fitting out took much longer. By then, the importance of the wool trade had diminished and membership of the company was increasingly by descent or ‘patrimony’, a tradition that continues to

Fig 5: The 1660s Court Dining Room enriched by Crace. The Gobelin tapestries and ceiling painting depict The Golden Fleece

the present. Such were its inherited resources, however, that it could afford the huge rebuilding costs of more than £13,000.

The new building comprised a series of firstfloor reception rooms organised around a central courtyard. This essential arrangement has been preserved, but only one 17thcentury room, now the Court Dining Room (Fig 5), survives. The subsequent evolution of the interior has been described in detail by John Martin Robinson (C OUNTRY L IFE , November 15 and 22, 1979). In 1778, after another damaging fire, the rooms on three sides of the courtyard—that to the south overlooking Throgmorton Street, the Livery Hall to the east and Court Room to the north—as well as the staircase that gave access to them, were rebuilt or adapted by London architect John Gorham, also Surveyor of the Company.

One of his successors in that role, Herbert Williams, working with the support of the surveyor of St Paul’s Cathedral, F. C. Penrose (such joint endeavours are a recurrent peculiarity of the company’s building projects), then attempted to improve and enlarge the hall from 1866. Their plans grew steadily in ambition and eventually resulted in the creation of the present heart of the building, the Livery Hall (Fig 2) . It combined in one huge volume the space that had been formerly occupied by the hall’s predecessor and Gorham’s staircase. This enlargement consequently demanded a replacement stair, which was incorporated behind the rebuilt street façade. At the same time, a new drawing room (Fig 4) was created to the west of the internal courtyard and the courtyard itself was reconstructed with sculpture by Edward Wyon. All was executed in a Renaissance Italian style.

The reordered building was then decorated and furnished throughout by John G. Crace and Sons at the massive cost of £9,113. Additions they oversaw include the heraldic decoration of the Court Dining Room and the painting of the Legend of the Golden Fleece by Félix-Joseph Barrias inserted in its 17th-century ceiling. The same subject, which has an obvious relevance to drapery, is also depicted in the Gobelin tapestries purchased in 1881 and hung here and in the Court Room

(Fig 6) , the space used today for meetings of the governing body of the Company.

Further alterations followed from 1897 with the reconstruction (yet again) of the street front in its present form, with shops, by the company surveyor, Sir Charles Reilly, working with the architect Thomas Graham Jackson. It was Jackson who designed the splendid front door, as well as the present main stair (Fig 3) and a gallery along the street front in 1898–99. In 1903, the artist H. J. Draper was commissioned to paint several works for the company, including the ceiling of the Livery Hall with scenes from Shakespeare’s The Tempest and A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Fig 7 ) . Finally, the interior was completely redecorated before the First World War by White Allom.

This complex overlay of different periods of decoration—augmented over time by specially commissioned furniture and art of the highest quality—has created interiors of exceptional magnificence. The least satisfactory of them, however, was the hall, which suffered serious damage in the Second World War. Its interior, as completed by Crace in 1870, had also been much simplified. Recent improvements to the room began in 2015, with the installation of a new carpet designed by Helen Owen and woven by the Grosvenor Wilton Company in Kidderminster.

The forced closure of the premises during lockdowns last year gave the opportunity for further improvements overseen by the architectural practice Purcell with both Hirst Conservation and Coniston consecutively acting as contractors. Paint advice for the complete redecoration of the interior was given by Tim Dolby and executed by Hare & Humphreys. It absorbed 70,000 sheets of gold leaf. Sutton Vane Associates designed the lighting scheme and the pendant lights were made by Hector Finch of Herefordshire, inspired by drawings of long lost Victorian fittings. The work required 7½ miles of scaffolding poles. Rehung with its sequence of royal portraits, it’s the perfect backdrop to the life of a company that, through its numerous charitable endeavours, aims for the present and future to be ‘an enduring force for good’.

Visit www.thedrapers.co.uk

Such philanthropic work remains central to the role of the company, which supports 24 educational establishments

Fig 6 above: The Court Room. Its 18thcentury interior was decorated by Lady Casson in 1973. Fig 7 left: The Livery Hall, with its buffet and ceiling of Shakespearean scenes painted by Draper

The winds of winter

Joe Gibbs summons the fortitude of our forebears in a bid to survive the cold season in an old house with rattling windows, draughty chimneys and a leaky roof

Illustrations by Adam Larkum

FOR those still alive who spent their childhood in country houses during the war years, now, perhaps, is their finest hour. As the price of gas fluctuates and lamps go out on boilers all over Britain—shall we see them lit again in our lifetime?—the wartime generation can recall to us that period when the great houses of the kingdom froze majestically in defiance of Hitler. We—be we baby boomers, millennials or snowflakes, if such vulgar collective nouns can be applied to anyone inhabiting a country seat—who shiver now in defiance of Mr Putin, must allow them the satisfaction of telling us how ice formed on the inside of their nursery windows and of the invigorating qualities of cold baths long before Mr Wim Hof was invented.

In the Scottish Highlands, where our own modest pile stands, there was ever a disregard for the inconveniences of a northern latitude. I recall witnessing a Perthshire host angrily dismiss a heating-oil lorry that had had the temerity to approach his castle. If our teeth chattered in his bedrooms, he noted that it was a well-known phenomenon that temperatures dropped when there were ghosts about.

When lucky enough to be asked by my neighbour, the late Col Angus Cameron of Aldourie, to spray some lead after his pheasants, the key to a comfortable day was to struggle into thermals and plenty of layers

How not to shiver your timbers

Self-immersion If you can afford it, it’s much cheaper to heat water for a few hours than have the central heating on. Keep the heating off and cheer yourself up with a long, hot soak in the bath by candlelight, which saves on electricity and gives an attractive ambience.

Draught dodging The movement of air across the body causes heat loss by convection, so seal up all those doors and windows in rooms you use a lot.

Take up your bed and walk There are wearable sleeping bags on the market with zip-off hands and booties. You may resemble a Teletubby and fashionable daughters will moan, but these suits are

just before lunch in the dining room. Even if the weather was balmy for the season, the interior of the castellated stone pile only ever had one setting—Baltic. As a concession to guests, Judy, the colonel’s wife, might

switch on one bar of an antique electric fire, which fizzed and popped alarmingly. Heaven knows how the fuse board stood it. Even the open fires were barely used. When Aldourie hosted the premiere of the

incredibly warm and can be worn at all times, except, perhaps, at smart dinner parties or during The King’s speech. Set your pants on fire The main point of being a bicyclist is the gear you wear and designers have come up with tailored carbon-fibre heated trousers and jackets for the MAMIL crowd. You can also get self-heating hats, socks and insoles. You have to use electricity to charge the batteries, of course.

Four-legged hotties They will far prefer to stay by the Aga, but order them down inside your bed. Large or small, they make wonderful hot-water bottles, so long as they get on with each other.

Internal combustion

In the case of open fireplaces, an absurd amount of warmth goes up the chimney. Replace them with wood-burning stoves or, if you hate that steampunk look in your Canova fireplace, with something like a Jetmaster open grate, which is efficient.

Internal combustion, take two

Fourteen units of alcohol a week is the recommended limit, but desperate times call for desperate measures and half a litre of supermarket-value whisky will keep you feeling warm for an entire long, dark evening at a cost of only £8, which is two hours’ worth of heating oil for a large boiler at current prices.

As a concession to guests, the colonel’s wife might switch on one bar of an antique electric fire

film Loch Ness, some hypothermic members of the attendant press corps tried to light a blaze in the fireplace of a turret room where they were skulking. The chimney burst into flames due the generations of jackdaw nests crammed down it. The colonel was furious at this naked display of lily livers and I met the unfortunate hacks as they shot out of the mouth of the spiral staircase like pinballs on the end of his boot.

It seemed as if my hosts, encased in their ancient tweeds—like so many of their generation—were impervious to the cold even when the blood thinned. When the colonel died and I asked Judy, who had by then moved into a small, warmer house in Inverness, how she was enjoying her new-found comfort, she observed only that it was so much easier to turn the pages of The Times when not wearing woollen gloves.

Those were the days when winters were the real deal, which, thankfully, they appear to be no longer. One Christmas Northern Meeting ball was held in a marquee at Fort George in temperatures of -23˚C. Guests wore

their furs and overcoats during dinner and there was not a wallflower to be seen when dancing began. The newly-married Sicilian wife of a neighbour shed copious tears of disbelief at the discomfort she had brought upon herself in choosing a Highlander.

As that Devonian commentator on landed life, Sir Francis Fulford, opined in 2004 in his book Bearing Up: The Long View, you don’t need to be rich to live in a big house: ‘You merely need to keep the roof on, the central heating off and the wife away from the shops.’ You shouldn’t, he advised, live in a big house as you would a little house.

‘In a small house you turn the heating on in October and off in April. We had ours on for four days last year. Otherwise, it’s wood burners and the Aga if it’s cold.’

Ah yes, the Aga. Where would we be without its gentle, snoring presence in the kitchen. It’s expensive to run, but it will have to stay on or the house will seem like a dead thing. The central heating, however, is another matter. My grandfather’s sole concession to night-time thermal comfort was an early

version of double glazing, which used lead to seal in the secondary panes. When we renovated the house, we extended heating into the bedrooms, but the irony is that this winter we cannot afford to run it.

I have been preparing the family for what lies ahead when we gather round the Yuletide log in a very tight circle. Usually, the oil central heating would go on for a few hours a day from November to April. This year, in full compliance with the Fulford maxim and with the possible exception of Christmas Day, it will not feature. Other measures have been taken. All electric heaters, boiler and immersion controls will be under lock and key. Christmas has gone utilitarian and presents must contribute to personal warmth —hand warmers, thermal underwear and fluffy slippers are acceptable.

This year, it will be only the wind and hydro barons whose homes glow. The rest of us will have to summon the resilience of our forebears. Come the Feast of Stephen, when that poor man comes in sight gathering winter fuel, he may be none other than you and me.

All that glisters

Little conveys opulence more than gilt furniture, but restoring fading pieces

says Catriona Gray

Photographs by Richard Cannon

THERE’S something wonderfully opulent about gilded furniture. Symbolising good fortune and success, it has adorned the grandest of interiors ever since it was popularised in Europe by Louis XIV in the 17th century, when he built the gleaming palace of Versailles. Almost every surface was embellished and rimed with shining gold leaf—it’s hardly surprising that the French monarch became known as the Sun King. The fashion soon spread across the Channel and the English aristocracy began to decorate their new Palladian-style country houses in a similar style. Even today, plenty of gilt furniture graces Britain’s great homes, from Chatsworth to Waddesdon.

Beautiful as it is, however, it comes with its own set of problems—notably, how to care for it and restore it. Delicately carved and often supremely fragile, gilt furniture ranks among the trickiest of antiques to preserve, requiring an enormous array of skills to stabilise and reconstruct even relatively straightforward items. You need the dexterity of a master wood carver, the analytical ability of a laboratory technician and the steady hand of a specialist gilder, teamed with the inquisitive nature of a detective, to uncover the history of each piece and restore it sensitively.

It’s thus understandable that specialist gilded furniture restorers are extremely few and far between. Outside of institutions such as the National Trust, which retains its own team of experts to collaborate on maintaining its collections, there are very few companies that provide a one-stop restoration service for gilded furniture. One of the busiest is Carvers & Gilders, which was founded in 1979 and, for more than 40 years, has designed,

Glittering once more: the restored State Bed at Harewood House, West Yorkshire

is a challenge that requires exceptional skill,

made, conserved and restored fine carving and gilding from its workshops in south London. A long-time Royal Warrant holder, it has an impressive client roster, including Windsor Castle, Berkshire, Hampton Court, in south-west London, Woburn Abbey, Bedfordshire, and Uppark in West Sussex.

Christine Palmer, one of the original founders, still runs the company, together with six other members of staff, including several specialist conservators and carvers. Having earned an art degree in the early 1970s, she became interested in applied techniques, such as carving and gilding, and went on to study at City & Guilds. After a spell at Arnold Wiggins & Sons, which specialises in antique and reproduction picture frames, she worked at the National Gallery’s framing department, before setting up Carvers & Gilders.

‘Gilded furniture is quite a specialised niche,’ she explains. ‘There’s a lot of overlap in technique with picture framing, although the training is even more specific for furniture. I came to it because I became very interested in carved ornament, which characterises that type of furniture. If you look at original antique pieces, the ornament and the carving was done with the finish in mind—whether it’s parcel gilded or painted, oil gilded or water gilded. Master craftsmen didn’t simply carve something and then decide to gild it. It was preconceived.’

A trained eye will be able to identify the age of a piece simply by looking at the style of the carving. In the mid 18th century, for example, furniture was characterised by very bold carving, with not much detail in the wood, covered with a thick layer of gesso— a chalky base used to provide a smooth surface for gilding—onto which finer details

State of the craft

• Gilded furniture restoration is mostly the preserve of large institutions, such as the National Trust, with few private practitioners

• Emerging craftspeople are scarce, due to the lack of practical courses that teach both carving and gilding. The two skills have been separated, despite being traditionally interlinked

were applied. As time went on and gold leaf got progressively thinner, the surfaces it was applied to also had to get finer and smoother, which resulted in more intricate flourishes.

When a piece comes in for restoration, the difficulty often lies in working out what it looked like originally, as historic repairs and ‘improvements’ may have completely annihilated its true form. The gilding might have been painted over, original detailing rubbed away and carved sections lost. A treatment proposal is submitted to the client and, once approved, work might be done by one person or multiple members of the team, depending on the size and the nature of the piece.

‘At Carvers & Gilders, we’ve all got a good knowledge of the different processes involved, so we tend to work on multiple aspects, from carving to gilding and everything in between,’ says Ms Palmer. ‘If you don’t understand the carving, you’re not going to put the gesso on properly and you’re not going to apply the gold correctly or burnish it in the right way.’ Where feasible, original methods and materials are used, to make the restorations as sympathetic and seamless as possible.

One of the company’s most memorable commissions was at Harewood House in West

• Most conservation courses teach academic history and scientific methods, as opposed to practical skills

• Apprenticeships are vital for aspiring restorers to develop the breadth of skills necessary

• A list of craftspeople specialising in gilded furniture restoration appears on the Institute of Conservation’s website (www.icon.org. uk), together with details of apprenticeships

Yorkshire, where the team reconstructed a Chippendale state bed. It had been stored in pieces since the 19th century, so the task of reassembling it was akin to doing an enormous jigsaw puzzle, with sections unearthed from their resting places around the house. ‘We found some acanthus-leaf carving that had been shunted around in a box and gone black and damp, then found a break on a piece elsewhere. Miraculously, when we put the two together, they fitted perfectly. One bit was blackened and almost rotten, and the other part looked as if it had just been gilded.’ After analysis, new sections were carved, original treatments applied and the bed now appears in its former glory and in its proper position in the state bedroom at Harewood House.

Ms Palmer and her team also worked on another Chippendale state bed at Dumfries House, following the timely intervention by The King to prevent the house and its contents being broken up and sold in 2007. As the bed had been altered and changed over the years, their brief was to return it to the original concept, so they carefully carved pieces to replace historic losses and drew new valences based on Chippendale’s original designs.

The team at Carvers & Gilders has even created new pieces of furniture from scratch —one impressive example is a faithful copy of an 18th-century palm mirror by John Vardy, which now sits in splendour in the Palm Room at Spencer House in London, SW1.

Illustrious as some of her commissions are, Ms Palmer is happy to advise clients on the simplest of repairs, with prices starting from a modest £100. If you’re lucky enough to own a piece of gilt furniture, there’s no excuse not to return it to its former, glittering glory. Visit www.carversandgilders.com

The carving was done with the finish in mind, parcel gilded or painted, oil gilded or water gilded

Dexterity and detective ability: being a master gilded-furniture restorer involves a vast range of skills, to reveal the history of a piece of furniture and return it to its former glory

John Steel Photography/Harewood House Trust

Fringe benefits

ASERIES of exacting patrons, which ranged from members of the court of Jan Sobieski in Poland to Louis XIV—who appointed him his official painter of hunting scenes—and Louis XV in France, presumably sharpened French painter François Desportes’s eye for detail. In the collection of the Manufacture Nationale de Sèvres is a sketch in oils by Desportes of a plump velvet cushion. A preparatory study for a canine portrait, it lacks its fourlegged sitter, but the picture’s interest lies in the details of the cushion itself: a rectangle of garnet-coloured velvet bound with embroidered gold braid and, on each corner, a fat gold tassel of metallic threads that continue to glister after almost 300 years.

For centuries, trimmings, including tassels, fringes, cords and braids, have been used to decorate upholstery. In the V&A Museum is an early-16th-century Italian cushion cover. Made from pile-on-pile velvet the colour of overripe damsons, it retains its original edging of rosy silk cord and, like Desportes’s cushion from Versailles, four corner tassels made from silk and metal threads. Cord and tassels in this instance are purely decorative. Examples of the art of passementerie, they invest this simple square of fabric with voluptuous luxury.

Passementerie, from the French passements, or ‘trimmings’, is the ultimate decorative top dressing. Created by nomadic tribesmen of the Middle East, women mercers in medieval Europe and the weavers of northern Italy, it has played a part in interiors across the globe. In 15th-century England, passementerie was the province of ‘sylkewymmen’ or ‘silkwomen’, who made tassels, laces, ribbons, braids, and frog-and-button

fastenings from silk; they made cords as decorative accessories for sword hilts and, from small shops or wooden stalls clustered along Cheapside in London, some also sold gloves, veils and coifs for headdresses.

Although the silkwomen’s accessories were widely esteemed for their beauty, as well as the levels of skill involved in their making, in 1455 a group of silkwomen, threatened by the import of goods from overseas, petitioned Parliament for protection against foreign competition. English monarchs offered support in the form of ongoing custom, although, over time, the goods supplied to the Court— including ‘frenge of gold of Venys’ and ‘sylver tyncell’—were predominantly intended to ornament the extravagant clothing of the period. As its name suggests, the trade in passementerie for interiors came to be dominated by French craftsmen. Today, some of the most prestigious passementerie available in the UK, through Royal Warrant-holders Turnell & Gigon, is produced by the family-owned Les Passementeries de l’île de France, based in the village of Belloy-en-France, north of Paris, formerly a centre of passementerie-making.

The sumptuous fringes, braids, tassels, pompons and tiebacks made by the workers of Les Passementeries de l’île de France would have delighted French Huguenot exile Daniel Marot. Court dessinateur to William and Mary, Marot played a key part in the development of upholstery in English interiors, including the use of passementerie, following publication of his designs from 1687 onwards. The pale Chinese-silk linings and upholstered headboard of the bed commissioned by George Melville for the state bedroom of Melville House, Fife, in about 1700, clearly show the influence of Marot’s

Fat, often glistening metallic tassels, fringes, cords and braids–known as passementerie–have been beautifying interiors for centuries, reveals an admiring Matthew Dennison

The corner tassels invest this simple square of fabric with voluptuous luxury

Tassels and braids and frogging, oh my: passementerie designs require a high level of skill, first developed in France

strapwork-inspired designs. Densely embroidered with crimson braid and fringing in a tactile, three-dimensional pattern, these were probably the work of another French emigré, the Pall Mall-based upholsterer Francis Lapiere, who had previously worked for the 5th Earl of Exeter at Burghley and the 1st Duke of Devonshire at Chatsworth in Derbyshire—an account book from the

All the trimmings

Gimp is a woven braid, often of elaborate design, used to add a layer of interest to the upholstery of chairs and beds and on curtains. John Fowler used two-colour ‘Gothic’ gimps in several projects, as well as guilloché-patterned gimps. Today, gimp continues to be used, as a decorative means of covering upholstery tacks, for example. Less conspicuous than fringing or tassels, as well as fulfilling this functional purpose, gimp adds pattern, colour and textual interest.

hangs popular in Regency England. This was the fashion adopted by the 6th Duke of Devonshire when he created a series of new bedrooms, including the Alcove Bedroom, on the upper floors at Chatsworth. Today, curtains of this sort can be seen in the restored 1820s library at Ickworth in Suffolk. Similar passementerie was sometimes applied to furniture of the period, too. A giltwood sofa, after a design of about 1802 by Thomas Hope, formerly in Hope’s Surrey home, the Deepdene, is decorated with a deep fringe of black and gold ornaments.

That passementerie can be more than an afterthought is clear in the work of John Fowler, doyen of interior designers, in the mid 20th century. Indeed, he is credited with keeping the British passementiers B. A. Clarke in business through the scale of his orders. Fellow decorator Chester Jones, describing Fowler’s approach, highlighted his attention to detail: ‘The silhouettes of the turned wooden moulds for the tassels were given as much thought as the colouring of the yarns and their interaction with one another.’ For Fowler, a tassel was more than merely a fabric-covered beech or birch bobbin on a cord: every aspect of its shape and style merited assessment.

house of September 1697 records Lapiere’s partly unpaid bill of £470 for a similar bed.

The Parisian upholsterer d’Hallevant never dominated fashionable English taste to Marot’s extent, but his designs for braided, fringed and tasselled curtains, published in France between 1802 and 1835 and by Rudolf Ackermann in London, influenced the elaborate, passementerie-enhanced curtain

In the archives of Les Passementeries de l’île de France are designs that may never be made again on account of their complexity: tassels, braids and gimps supplied to Napoleon III and Russia’s Nicholas II. Braided curtain tiebacks trimmed with handmade silk flowers, in the Victoria Mansion in Portland, Maine, in the US, reveal similar levels of luxury. But elaborate, bespoke passementerie is very much alive. In the dining room of a London townhouse, Nicholas Haslam covered Chippendale chairs with white loose covers and commissioned a beaded tablecloth with a silver fringe. In place of fabric tassels, he used snowy ermine tails, suspended from gilt-bronze medallions.

Variations on passementerie abound, from pleats to tassels and embroidered ribbons

Cut from the right cloth

In a brick building full of bolts of pretty plaids, a rainbow of linen gingham and baskets brimming with lemon bon-bon buttons, Jane Wheatley meets Carolyn Denham, the woman reigniting Britain’s passion for dressmaking

Photographs by Michael Topham

JUST along from the ancient landgate into the East Sussex town of Rye is Merchant & Mills, draper, haberdasher and field of dreams, where you could happily lose yourself for an afternoon. Arriving to meet founder Carolyn Denham, I notice a tall, elegant woman browsing rolls of fabric; she is still there when I leave, three hours later.

The double-height brick building, a former warehouse, is filled with autumn sunlight; there are bolts of fabric in plaids, stripes and solid colours and big wicker baskets of samples. Whitewashed walls are hung with dresses in simple, unstructured designs, each with a square of contrasting gingham knotted around the shoulders. The patterns for making them are laid out on shelves below. Here is a box of darling little buttons, each one named and dyed to match a fabric—lemon bon bon, demon scarlet, calamine, speckled blue.

If making a dress feels too daunting, you could start with a bag—choose a dry oilskin in mustard yellow or terracotta, pick a length of leather for the strap, then a buckle in brass or nickel. For the more accomplished, there are patterns for dungarees in denim or a jacket in blue and white upholstery ticking. Staff are there to answer questions: can I make this dress in this fabric? Will it need lining?

Sometimes, an idea finds its moment— slightly ahead of the curve—offering

Carolyn Denham and Michael Jones, the leaders of the dressmaking renaissance

something you didn’t know you wanted until you saw it. In 2010, two years after the banking crisis, the then Chancellor George Osborne had launched his austerity programme, consumerism was a grubby word and concern for the environment was reaching into all our lives. What to do? You could recycle, take the bus to work, learn to cook chickpeas. But few of us thought of making our own clothes. That year, Mrs Denham abandoned a successful career in the fashion industry to start a business selling patterns for entry-level dressmakers.

She grew up in Sheffield, South Yorkshire, where the mills were still working, and learnt to sew. ‘The markets were full of fabrics,’ she recalls. ‘You could go around the stalls and make yourself an outfit for a Saturday night.’ She did a degree in fashion and went on to work in New York, US, and Italy, designing for labels such as Diesel and Benetton.

‘I never felt it was really me,’ she confesses. ‘The fashion cycle is relentless; you put in all this effort and then it’s, right, what next? You want to revisit a piece, do it differently, but no, you must make something new. I like design, but my passion is for making, putting the two together. I came back to England and told people, I’m going to open a shop where you

can buy a pattern for a dress and the fabric to make it yourself. Everyone said it was the stupidest idea: “Don’t do it; nobody sews.”’

They were right, at the time. Polly Leonard, founder and editor of textile magazine Selvedge, explains: ‘There was a shift in the 1980s: with the growth of fast fashion, the global textile industry’s race for the bottom meant the

naysayers, she sold her flat, so she had money to live on as she got going, and roped in her partner, photographer Roderick Field, to do the graphics for a website and packaging. ‘It took off,’ she recalls. ‘We filled our tiny house in Herefordshire with patterns, sewing machines, fabrics, packing materials, computers in the living room. I went to see [London’s department store] Liberty: they said “this is something we haven’t got” and snapped it up. We had hit on something new that no one else was doing.’

Twelve years on, we are talking in her lofty mezzanine office above the showroom; these days, the company employs 30 staff, sources fabrics from around the world and, since the pandemic put a halt to globetrotting, increasingly designs its own cloth to be woven by British mills.

financial incentive for dress-making disappeared; it was no longer cheaper to make your clothes. With this shift, knowledge of garment and fabric construction was lost within a generation. By the early 2000s, the general public was no longer familiar with the vocabulary of a raglan sleeve or a rolled hem.’

Yet Mrs Denham had a hunch that, with the right encouragement, dressmaking could make a comeback. Undeterred by the many

The rails overlooking the shop are hung with samples of a new fabric in different shades of linen gingham designed by general manager Michael Jones; he joined the company from his job in product development for manufacture in the Far East: ‘I was looking for something more wholesome,’ he explains, ‘and it was so much fun. We built this place—it was an empty brick shell—painted walls, waxed floors and worked around

Forget high fashion, the cornucopia of ribbons, buttons and fabrics that fills the halls of Merchant & Mills will spark your imagination

Liberty said “this is something we haven’t got” and snapped it up. We had hit on something new

the clock to keep up with production, assembling tool rolls, packing and mailing. What I really respected and liked was the quality of it all, from the fabric to the pins. Everything had to have that: does it have a reason to exist, is it beautiful and sustainable enough?’

century, answering our hunger for things that are made to last: materials such as linen and tweed, the integrity of tools, the appeal of make do and mend, offering a measure of atonement for the careless consumerism of past decades. The fabric list reads like an incantation: flax dry oilskin, beeswax cloth, soft poplin, military-weight wool, plaid, seersucker. ‘Notions’ are tailor’s chalk, bodkin, betweens, nickel bulb pins, jack tar hardware kit, ten eyelets brass, fine work gold scissors.

named, Mrs Denham tells me, after the family who hosted her mother when she was evacuated to Wales in the Second World War. I love the way everything here has a story.

It seems I am not alone in my neophyte enthusiasm. ‘We love people new to sewing,’ says Mr Jones. ‘You sell a pattern and cloth to someone and they come back two weeks later wearing it, beaming with pride. I think if you’ve made something, you wear it differently.’

They gradually took on more staff, including those qualified in textile design, weave and pattern cutting: ‘Everyone did packing for the first two years,’ Mrs Denham tells me. ‘Each person learnt on the job and was promoted from within. We are creating new patterns all the time. When I started, all our patterns were really simple, because people didn’t know how to make them. Now, I’ve done jeans and parkas, because those skills are out there. And lots of other pattern companies are producing lovely stuff and wonderful choices.’

Would she come down to the shop with me and talk through some of the stock? ‘Yes, let’s go to have a neb.’ A what? She smiles: ‘It’s a Yorkshire word for having a nose about.’

The space has the heft of an old-school draper with an aesthetic curated for the 21st

I am entranced; I haven’t sewn anything except a button since the fifth form, but now I want, very much, to make something. Under supervision from a friend who has a whole room in her house dedicated to sewing, perhaps I could manage the Factory Dress inspired by a photograph Mrs Denham saw of a factory worker in the 1920s wearing a simple cotton shift. I could garden in it, I thought, feed the hens, then go out to dinner in it. I’ll make it in the black and white linen called Mrs Lewes,

Tools of the trade

Betweens Short needles for sewing hems

Bodkin For inserting elastic or thread into a casing

Beeswax Thread pulled through it becomes stiff, the better to insert in a machine needle

Mrs Denham nods: ‘It is slow, producing something timeless and beautiful that will last. People innovate, too; they might join two patterns—if it’s interesting, we’ll do a blog post.’

The company is about to resume its sewing classes, abandoned during the pandemic: ‘We hold them upstairs,’ explains Mrs Denham. ‘It’s a lovely atmosphere of peaceful, studied concentration. Making is good for your mental health, paying attention, being in the present; you lose yourself.’

Visit www.merchantandmills.com

Pin magnet For summoning naughty pins that have escaped Point turner For perfect corners on collars and cushions

Straws Extra long needles for speedy tacking, basting and pleating

What’s in the starter box?

8in tailor’s shears

Wide bow scissors

25 finest needles

Bamboo point turner

1oz dressmaking pins

Tailor’s chalk

Seam ripper

Measuring tape

You sell a pattern and cloth to someone and they come back later wearing it, beaming with pride

A gallimaufrey of sewing equipment, from beeswax cloth to zips, once familiar to households everywhere, is being given new life

Perfectly polished

A spirit of the past

The best restoration services and suppliers of timeless furniture and fittings, selected by Amelia Thorpe

Rare find

Attributed to Giles Grendey (1693–1780), this fine George II bureau cabinet features an exceptional red japanned surface with extensive chinoiserie gilt decoration, including birds and figurative and architectural motifs. The secretaire fall front opens to reveal an assortment of pigeon holes and drawers, arranged around a central shaped mirrored cabinet and lock, and secret compartment. It costs £265,000, from Jamb (020–7730 2122; www.jamb.co.uk)

New life

Blake & Bull takes the three classic Aga rangecooker styles, installed since 1941, renews them to their original standard and converts them to run efficiently on electricity. This Heritage Reimagined electric model in Northern Counties Cream costs £9,054, including delivery and installation (01225 541006; www. blakeandbull.co.uk)

Gilt edged

The Traditional Giltwood coffee table, £1,540, is by classicalfurniture specialist Brights of Nettlebed, featuring a solid mahogany base, oil gilded using Dutch metal over a red foundation (01491 641115; www.brightsofnettlebed.co.uk)

Top floor

Family-run British stone specialist Artorius Faber creates bespoke flooring, paving and internal architecture from its Somerset base, including this elegant Cradley English limestone flooring with blackslate cabochon, £285 per sq m (01935 847333; www. artoriusfaber.com)

The timeless Usk bath, fully clad in gleaming brass, would take centre stage in any bathroom. It costs £10,740, from Drummonds (020–7376 4499; www. drummonds-uk.com)

Interiors

Welcome home

An impressive and traditional design, the Zeus hanging lantern in Zinc finish, extra large, and available in a version suitable for exterior undercover use, £2,022, will add elegance to an entrance, Hector Finch (020–7731 8886; www.hectorfinch.com)

Country life

Artichoke creates bespoke fitted furniture and traditional joinery for every space, including the humble boot room, which should act as what the company describes as a valve between the outside world of mud and rain and the interior of a country house. Prices for a boot room start from £80,000 (01934 745270; www.artichoke-ltd.com)

Authentic appeal

Catchpole & Rye enjoys a fine reputation for its authentic, antique-inspired baths, made in its workshops in Kent, which included—as shown here—The Painted Nickel Bateau, with a Silver Nickel interior and Charcoal exterior, £8,100 (01233 840840; www.catchpoleandrye.com)

Hand finished

From its foundry in East Sussex, Beardmore produces an extensive collection of traditionally cast, handfinished architectural ironmongery. Prices for a decorative cupboard knob in antique brass start from £90 (020–7351 5444; www.beardmore.co.uk)

Silver screen

The Small Pimlico fire screen, from £5,592, features five panels, each with an elegantly arched top and finely worked mesh insert, shown here in Nickel with Brass mesh, from Charles Edwards (020–7736 8490; www.charlesedwards.com)

Classic seat

Based on a Georgian design of about 1760, the Camelback sofa is custom made with a mortice and tenoned solid beech frame and walnut legs, distressed to match the antique. It costs £15,350 plus 15m of fabric, from Max Rollitt (01962 791124; www.maxrollitt.com)

Period piece

Based in Somerset, Distinctive Country Furniture specialises in period architectural joinery and furniture, from oak-panelled rooms to bespoke pieces, such as this Jointed Oak bench with carved rails, £1,500 (01935 825800; www.distinctive countryfurniture.co.uk)

Making history

Antique stone floors have a timeless charm and a distinctive sense of history, making these reclaimed 18th-century English sandstone flags, £474 per sq m, a particular find—and a sustainable choice, from a selection at Lapicida (01423 400100; www.lapicida.com)

Interiors

Specialist service

Stevensons of Norwich specialises in the restoration and installation of plasterwork, from replicating existing cornice and ceiling roses to more extensive restoration projects, currently including an ornate barrel ceiling in the School Hall at Eton College, Berkshire, designed to match the 19th-century original and handmade by the firm’s craftsmen in Norwich, Norfolk (01603 400824; www.stevensons-of-norwich.co.uk)

Ask the expert

Andrew Miller, director of James Barclay

Is it worth repairing my rug?

Specialist paint

Classic lantern

The design of the Burley brass wall lantern is based on a vintage piece, with clean lines and a classic feel. It costs £767, from Vaughan (020–7349 4600; www.vaughan designs.com)

Rose of Jericho is the name to know for traditional limewash, distemper paints and a host of specialist materials required for the conservation, repair and decoration of historic buildings. Products include Soft Distemper, a permeable and matt decorative paint, £48.38 for 2.5L (01305 237499; www. roseofjericho.co.uk)

Royal experience

The legacy of King Dagobert, ruler of Austrasia (629–639), lives on in the Dagobert wooden lavatory throne, £12,457 from West One Bathrooms. As the lid is lifted, a music box plays the classic French children’s song, Le bon roi Dagobert, which tells the story of the King arriving late for a council meeting with his trousers inside out (0333 011 3333; www.westonebathrooms.com)

There are several considerations to help you decide. Firstly, how extensive is the damage? Major harm from moths, pets or flood water may make it uneconomic to repair a rug, although we can come to the rescue of most problems. If your piece is very old—typically before 1880— or highly collectable, then it generally makes sense to repair it, because the rug will be difficult to replace. The same applies to antique rugs with colours, such as certain greens, salmons and purples, that soften over the years and are difficult to replicate with chemical dyes. Finer rugs are typically more costly to repair, but they are also more expensive to buy. Of course, the value of a rug may not be a monetary one—a piece that has been in the family for generations comes with its stories and sometimes priceless sentimental value.

How can I tell the age and origin of my rug?

Certain designs and motifs are typical of some areas and the back of the rug will reveal the way it was woven, such as with Turkish or Persian knots. An experienced eye can tell a great deal from the colour. Some rugs are signed and dated by their weavers, but this can be faked, which is why the colours are so useful: you can’t replicate the way that colours have mellowed over the years. These things

are difficult to tell from photographs, so it’s always worth consulting an expert in person. This is also the best way to obtain an accurate quotation for repair, because two rugs can look similar in a photograph, but one may have tougher foundations than the other, making repair more difficult.

How long can I expect my antique rug to last?

Good-quality Oriental and Persian rugs can be expected to last for more than 200 years, so restoration can represent excellent value for money. It nearly always makes more sense financially to repair a rug than replace it, because the cost of a repair is unlikely to be anything like the price of weaving it from scratch, not to mention its rarity and collectable value. It’s much better, too, from a sustainability perspective, to pass a beautiful rug on to future generations.

020–3174 2427;

www.jamesbarclay.co.uk

The secret of premature ageing

ONE of the idiosyncrasies of English country-house decorating and its enduring appeal is a preference for houses that have aged gracefully. And even if they haven’t, it’s vital that they look as if they have; shiny surfaces, unnatural, perfectly straight edges and anything that screams of newness are mostly shunned in favour of what could be described as a settled, mature look of a room that has come together in an organic fashion. Fundamental to this unwritten list of rules are sofas that are designed to be sat on (by both humans and dogs, ideally together) and bear witness to the wear and tear that inevitably follows.

There’s a delicate balance to strike, however, between this nuanced approach and the temptation to be steadfastly faithful to one period. The goal is a look that can’t be pinpointed to any era or decorative trend and, instead, has become an accretion of layer upon layer. Interior designer Nicola Harding believes the key to achieving this is to create a simple foundation of furniture and paint colours that reflect both the architecture of a house and its location. ‘The result will be reassuring and feel authentic—as if it belongs to the building,’ she explains. ‘But once you’ve got that in place, you can have a sense of mischief and start to play with it.’ Only then can you make unexpected twists; ‘if you inherit a chair that doesn’t work in a scheme because everything else is too perfectly placed, the chair will jar and look out of place’. If there are a number of things in a room that are slightly off kilter, the overall effect is more accommodating and forgiving, adds Miss Harding. Art, objects, antique rugs, a riot of patterns and piles of books are key. ‘These details make a house feel distinctive

and that it belongs to one family and their stories—and that’s so important.’

When starting from scratch, as interior decorators are often asked to do, antiques play a protagonist’s role in preserving character. ‘We rely on antique pieces that tell stories and create a dialogue between the past and present,’ says Ben Johnson, co-founder of Albion Nord, a London-based interior-design company known for its deft interpretations of modern English country-house style. ‘With each design, we try to inject material texture and warmth wherever we can,’ he says.

Both believe that a home should reflect its owner’s interests to help root one foot of the house’s identity in the present and the other in the past. Furniture designer Alfred Newall concurs. ‘What makes a house feel timeless is a lot to do with the storytelling that takes place within it,’ he explains. ‘It’s so obvious when someone has bulk bought from a shop

rather than building up a personal collection over time. The result lacks the interest and insight into the lives of the occupants that should be revealed by pieces they have chosen to display, paintings that have been picked up on travels. I love to see carpets laid on top of others and objects fighting for space with each other.’

Materiality also plays a role in conjuring this timeless design. Mr Johnson believes natural materials such as timber, wool, sisal and linen bring a sense of enduring honesty to a scheme. For Mr Newall, natural materials add muchneeded character to a space. ‘A table or chair doesn’t need to have age and patina to underline the workmanship that has gone into the piece,’ he explains. ‘Bespoke pieces can bring a certain freshness to a room, as well as demonstrating something of the relationship between the client and maker, which will have a lasting impact on a space.’

Whenrestoring a house, both perfection and historical correctness can kill its character. Three experts tell Arabella Youens why antiques, materials and imperfection will keep it alive

We rely on antique pieces that tell stories and create a dialogue between the past and present

Furniture and paint colours are key to creating a timeless feel, suggests Nicola Harding

The good stuff

Men’s Duke Cashmere Navy dressing gown, £2,800, Derek Rose (01260 296700; www.derek-rose.com)

Shawl collar duvet robe, £129, The White Company (020–3758 9222; www. thewhitecompany.com)

Embroidered Aviary dressing gown, £3,500, New & Lingwood (0800 0835 102; www. newandlingwood.com)

Artist’s stripe dressing gown, £225, Paul Smith (0115–968 5821; www.paulsmith.com)

Gown in one

Hetty Lintell chooses some luxurious dressing gowns in which to enrobe this season

LOUNGING at home is a serious business—as Dylan Jones charted in the recent edition of G entleman’s L ife (November 2). I’ve been longing for a fancy dressing gown and there are now many companies making special pieces, designed to last (some can even be worn outside the house, open over a shirt and trousers). They make perfect Christmas presents, as you can never have too many and you need gowns for different occasions.

I’d have this quilted duvet style from The White Company and the floral from Olivia von Halle.… oh, but wait, the cashmere and silks are nice too… help!

Athens

Butterscotch

Winter Flower printed silk twill robe, £565, Asceno (07368 854932; www.asceno.com)

cotton robe, £310, Desmond & Dempsey (020–3925 3956; www.desmond anddempsey.com)

Country Toile gown, £85, Kew Shop (020–8332 3124; https://shop.kew.org)

Women’s silk-lined cashmere robe in Claret, £950, Bonsoir of London (01460 200460; www.bonsoir oflondon.com)

Capability Florens silk satin robe, £950, Olivia von Halle (020–7700 1007; www.oliviavonhalle.com)

Silk dressing gown, palm print cerise, £310, Yolke (020–8964 2098; www.yolke.co.uk)

Yellow aubrey forest dressing gown, with liberty fabric, £295, Sirplus (020–7127 4213; www.sirplus.co.uk)

Out and About GENTLEMAN’S LIFE party

A gentleman never tells

Photographs by Lucy Young

THEBloomsbury set would have approved of the subterranean location of our GENTLEMAN’S L IFE party—to celebrate the publication of our annual supplement (November 2). Welldressed gentlemen and ladies gathered at The Bloomsbury Club, London WC1, to sip Gusbourne’s English sparkling wine and Berry Bros & Rudd No 3 gin martinis and left clutching the famously weighty goodie bags, full of treats from Ettinger, Baz & Co, Pentire, L’estrange, Artisan Coffee Co and Pantherella, plus Mr Trotter’s Pork Crunch.

G ENTLEMAN’S LIFE Editor Hetty Lintell and Henry Conway

Guests had the chance to win a bespoke shirt from Emma Willis. Here, she and Lizandra Cardoni measure William Sitwell

Emily Anderson, Lucy Ford, James Fisher, Emma Earnshaw and Heather Clark

Renee Juzdan and Cyrill Ibrahim

Levison Wood and Ross Turner

Mark Hedges, Editor of COUNTRY LIFE

The goodies

Farhad Heydari, Anna Nash and Emily Sitwell

Max and Emma Bassadone, Arthur Lintell and Peter Stojanovic

Olivia Poulet, Adam Hay-Nicholls and Sophia Money-Coutts

Charlie Lovell and Dominic Rowntree

Zenouska Mowatt, Olivia Burt and Hilary Peltz

Guy Robinson and Hugh Maconochie

Jon Holt and James Massey

Nina Brooke and Georgia Wilkinson

Rebekah Pennington, James Vaulkhard and Patch Lister

Ed Rook and Chris Kerwin

James Aiken and George Bullard

Tommy Coleridge, Tor Chase and Nicholas Coleridge

Property market

TODAY’S C OUNTRY L IFE heralds the launch onto the market of two idyllic Cotswold country houses—the Grade II*-listed Edgeworth Manor, near Miserden, and Grade II-listed Rookwoods, near Bisley, Gloucestershire—both once part of the same historic, 1,500-acre manorial estate, but now separate entities, each one overlooking its own hidden valley in one of the most sought-after areas of the Cotswolds AONB. Ed Sugden of Savills (020–7409 8885) and Bruce TolmieThomson of Knight Frank (020–7861 1070) are joint agents in the sale of both properties, quoting guide prices of £20 million for Edgeworth Manor and £10m for Rookwoods.

According to the Victoria County History, Gloucestershire—Vol 11 (1976), lands

later known as the manor of Edgeworth were held by Roger de Lacy in 1086, but forfeited on his banishment in 1096 when they were granted to his brother, Hugh. Following various divisions, the manor passed via the Edgeworth and Helion families to Thomas Raleigh, who was sole owner in 1379. In 1602, George Raleigh sold the manor to Sir Henry Poole, after which ‘it descended with Sapperton until about 1650, when it was sold to Nathaniel Ridler to help alleviate Sir William Poole’s debts’.

The present house dates from a rebuilding by Nathaniel Ridler in the late 17th century, the east front, the oldest part of the house, being dated 1685. It was built on two storeys with attic dormers and a basement. The west

front of the house was identical to the east, apart from a porch at its southern end. Of the interior, the original staircase and one room lined with 18th-century panelling, remain at the east front.

The most dramatic changes in the shape and scale of Edgeworth Manor came when, in 1879, Francis James, a London barrister, paid more than £44,000 for the manor and its farms, including Rookwoods. In her book Rookwoods (2007), Juliet Shipman reveals that James’s purchase was funded by the considerable fortune inherited by his wife from her uncle Sir William Tite, a municipal and railway architect associated with many of London’s great buildings, who had disinherited his only son for marrying against his

Two superb, historic and eminently desirable Cotswold properties come to the market this week

The great and the good

Penny Churchill

wishes. From the outset, the 17th-century house was too small to accommodate the James family and their eight children, so a Tudor-style wing was replaced by a north wing added in 1882, when the house was remodelled by Gloucester-based architect Capel N. Tripp.

In 1899, James’s eldest son, Arthur, who inherited the estate in 1895, engaged Sir Ernest George to substantially alter the country-house style of the earlier building to that of a baronial hall. The west front is now in Cotswold Tudor style, with stone mullions and transoms and a gabled porch, whereas the new north wing was demolished when the estate was broken up and sold off following Arthur’s death in 1935.

|The ground floor is still dominated by George’s great baronial hall and drawing room in the south wing.

Still largely hidden from the outside world, Edgeworth Manor stands high on its hill overlooking its 56 acres of Grade II-listed Victorian gardens, woodland and the enchanting valley of the meandering River Frome, which rises nearby. Here, in the course of the past 20-odd years, the owner has created a family home that is warm and welcoming, yet makes the most of the grand spaces, architectural integrity and fine detail that are evident throughout the house. Notable features include barrelled and ornately carved ceilings, oakpanelled rooms, bright stone-mullioned windows, detailed cornicing, ancient oak floors and staircases and wonderful fireplaces.

The scene is set by the panelled entrance hall, which opens onto the majestic baronial hall with its huge fireplace of ancient carved stone, flooded with light from four large, stone, arched windows. The dining room is wonderfully theatrical, with its barrelled ceiling depicting the four British nations, 17th-century panelling and stone fireplace. The sitting room has three tall windows overlooking the grounds and original panelling, alcoves, bookcases and a decorative fireplace.

The last of the main reception rooms, the eastfacing study, has fine oak panelling, a 17thcentury carved stone fireplace, window seats and ornate ceiling plasterwork.

The first floor houses the principal bedroom suite, comprising two bedrooms, two bathrooms and a walk-in wardrobe, together with a guest-bedroom suite, two further bedrooms and a family bathroom. Four further bedrooms, two bathrooms, a kitchen and sitting room are located on the second floor. The lower ground floor is a surprising addition to the house, with large, naturally lit rooms, including a games/cinema room, a library, a large scullery and an inner hall with a spiral stone staircase leading down to three barrel-vaulted wine cellars. Outside, a glazed porch leads to a conservatory and a spectacular indoor swimming pool, with further staff or guest accommodation provided in the three-bedroom Coach House, the three-bedroom North Lodge and the four-bedroom Keepers Cottage.

It’s a stone’s throw from the manorial splendour of Edgeworth to the rustic charm of Rookwoods, a beautifully renovated, late17th-century former manorial farmhouse set in 50 acres of landscaped gardens, meadows, paddocks and woodland overlooking the unspoilt Holy Brook Valley,

Left: Grade II*-listed Edgeworth Manor is a fine Cotswold country house set in 56 acres of listed Victorian gardens, grounds and woodland near Miserden in Gloucestershire. £20m. Above: The theatrical barrelled ceiling in the dining room depicts the four British nations

The owner has created a warm and welcoming family home that makes the most of the grand spaces

Property market

deep in the Cotswold Hills. Although the earliest records of Rookwoods date from 1190, the most prominent family to have lived there were successive generations of Butlers, from the end of the 17th century. Its Historic England listing mentions restorations dated ‘W. T. 1835’, which were probably carried out by William Taylor, who owned the property in 1844. The present inhabitants, whose family home it has been for more than 20 years, have restored and extended the house, its outbuildings and grounds to create the perfect country retreat.

Approached through electric gates down a long drive, the main house offers more than 8,000sq ft of cheerful, light-filled living space, including a dining room/reception hall, kitchen/breakfast room, garden room, family room, snug, study, flower room and butler’s pantry on the ground floor; with the principal bedroom suite, five further bedrooms, two bathrooms on the first and second floors and a self-contained guest suite on the ground and first floors.

The drawing room occupies a wing originally built in 1954 and extended by the current owners, whereas the kitchen is a large

open-plan family room, built in about 2000, with a vaulted ceiling of fine oak timbers and fully fitted with Mark Wilkinson units. Outbuildings include a stable yard built by the owners in 2006; a traditional Cotswold stone barn built in 2006 and comprising a large games room with a state-of-the-art Art Deco cinema designed by the American home-theatre designer Theo Kalomirakis; the one-bedroom Jockey Cottage, renovated

in 2003; and the self-contained Audio Barn, which could be used as an additional cottage or office space.

The gardens and grounds have been reconfigured by the owners to include a delightful kitchen garden, a children’s playground with a tree house, a hard tennis court, a spring-fed lake with a jetty and an outdoor swimming pool with a Cotswold-stone surrounding wall for added privacy.

Above: Grade II-listed Rookwoods stands in 50 acres of beautiful gardens and grounds in Gloucestershire. £10m. Right: The large open-plan kitchen boasts a vaulted ceiling

Properties of the week

You’re on the list

Cornwall, £765,000

In a prime location with views towards Launceston Castle, St Stephens House is a Grade II-listed Georgian townhouse that offers substantial and highly flexible accommodation in a sought-after location. Dating back to the 1730s, the property was once the principal house of the parish of St Stephens and retains many original features, including wooden floors, granite cills and open fireplaces. With six bedrooms in all, the house also offers three kitchens, meaning the property can be sealed off and divided up in various different ways, offering potential for holiday lettings or privacy from friends, family or unruly children. The interiors are a little dated, making St Stephens ideal for those looking to add their own touch to the property. Fine and Country (01566 771919)

Somerset, £3.5 million

It takes something quite special to stand out (in an architectural sense) in the World Heritage Site of Bath, but Charlcombe Manor has that X-factor. Dating from the late 17th century, the property is believed to be the only Jacobean house of its kind in the city. Charlcombe Manor sits 1½ miles north of the city centre in about one acre of gardens and grounds, providing the ideal mix of convenient city living with privacy and space. A hillside setting frames tremendous views of the surrounding countryside to boot. Inside, the property aches with period charm, with wood panelling throughout, a large entrance hall and main staircase, fine plasterwork ceilings and stone mullioned windows. The phrase ‘manor house’ is bandied around all too often these days, but this five-bedroom family home certainly lives up to the description. Knight Frank (01225 325992)

James Fisher

These listed properties demonstrate every wonder of our grand architectural heritage and make fine family homes to boot

Properties of the week

Vale of Glamorgan, £1.1 million

When doing the rounds at various drinks parties, it is not uncommon for people to say, when they find out I work at Country Life, that they ‘love those gorgeous thatched cottages in your property pages’. Well, herewith Upper Porthkerry Farm, a property about as close to the concept of country life as you are going to get. Moving past the water-reed thatched roof and charming exterior, Porthkerry’s real power lies in its superb interiors, which include high ceilings, handcrafted kitchen and a divine master bathroom with a free-standing roll-top bath. The property offers five bedrooms in all and, outside, the gardens are boosted by a separate annexe (with potential for a home office, guest accommodation or anything in between), an entertaining space and a covered heated swimming pool. Mr and Mrs Clarke (07884 231242)

Co Durham, £4 million

With 41 acres of land centred around the majestic Victorian Grade II-listed Sadberge Hall, this estate on the outskirts of Darlington is the perfect rural retreat. The main house exudes the charm of the Queen Anne style and the impressive exterior is matched by the characterful interior. With five bedrooms, a leisure suite, including a swimming pool, spa and sauna, and a self-contained apartment on the second floor, the home is versatile and ideal for entertaining or family living. Outside, the extensive gardens and grounds are perfect for those with equestrian interests, with a riding school, Monarch horse walker, all-weather canter track and impressive stabling. If that’s not enough, the gate lodge by the driveway entrance offers three further bedrooms and there are 10 acres of gardens and grounds. Finest Properties (01434 622234)

Wiltshire, £2 million

Dating back to the 14th century, with substantial additions in the 15th century, Grade II-listed Burghope Manor, near the village of Winsley, is a symphony in Cotswold and Bath stone. However, behind the charming wisteria- (and other climbers-) clad façade, the property is a revelation in the modern ‘country-house’ aesthetic. The bespoke kitchen is centred around a beautiful range cooker and is a superb place for entertaining; the other reception rooms have been refurbished to a high standard, yet retain all their period charm. Burghope offers seven bedrooms in total, two of which are styled as a ‘teen wing’, with a shower space and access to the loft. Outside, the property stands in almost an acre of gardens, which includes lawned areas for entertaining, as well as a productive kitchen garden. Hamptons (01225 220216)

Pile on the frosting

Resist the urge to tidy the garden and, come

Steven Desmond

THIS has been rather a good year for the admirer of garden fruits of every kind, due, no doubt, to the exceptional weather in August. I was recently travelling in Yorkshire, where I witnessed the bumper crop of cordon apples in the kitchen garden at Nostell Priory and the arresting sight of elegantly ripe passion fruit on a garden wall in Hull. As this was a fruit I often enjoyed eating from the garden fence in rural Zambia as a boy, this naturally gave me pause for thought on several fronts.

The garden in autumn is always full of fruits of many forms, whether from trees, shrubs or herbaceous perennials. This is one of the endless list of minor pleasures for the observant gardener and a constant reminder both of the wonder of seasonal change and the unpredictability of British weather. Although things may certainly be warming up, those familiar vagaries continue, so we are never quite sure what is coming next.

As uncertain as the weather and its consequences is the progress of fashion. Until recently, the standard advice was that, when the weather finally started to close in after the clocks changed, the plants in the herbaceous border should be cut down to the ground. Now that the enduring influence of Karl Foerster and his disciples has finally brought a new approach to herbaceous planting, we are more inclined to think of keeping the plants standing, imagining them looking superb on frosty mornings, at least until

Delicate, airy sprays of Thalictrum rochebrunianum stand up well in winter

the frosts, you will be rewarded with a glorious display of glittering seedheads, avers

the end of the year. Certainly, the imagination is a wonderful tool, but practical reality balances out such excess with a general sobering up. Those looking for the singular beauty of seedheads in the border will have to do their homework carefully and consider how to address the consequences of their actions. Let’s start with some good doers. Top of my list is the genus Eryngium, the sea hollies, native to many lands from Spurn Point to Afghanistan and Argentina. The one thing those places have in common is deep sandy soils. I pick out one favourite, Eryngium bourgatii. The steely-blue flowers change

Above: Rudbeckias produce strong and distinctive seedheads. Left: The yellow cases of climber Celastrus orbiculatus split to reveal scarlet fruits hidden inside

imperceptibly into prickly seedheads as autumn approaches and they look stiffly stately even after the seeds have been shed or taken by mice, which can sometimes be seen hanging on for grim death. The seedlings appear in the spring, when it is the gardener’s task to spot them at an early stage and either cherish them or ping them out with the point of a fern trowel.

This is a key point. If you leave everything standing so that you can revel in the lasting silhouettes, there will be seedlings everywhere in due course and you will have to manage the situation, either with meticulous rigour or by watching the survival of the fittest. Like all gardening, it doesn’t do itself. You need to make decisions and act on them.

Others in the same mode include the various rudbeckias, surely at the height of

The feathery heads of dwarf fountain grass Pennisetum alopecuroides ‘Hameln’

Above: Betula utilis subsp. jacquemontii ‘Grayswood Ghost’, with echinops seedheads. Below left: Aquilegia will scatter seeds with gusto. Below right: Echinacea purpurea

their public fame right now, and alliums, the ornamental onions, the purply-blue sculptural heads of which turn gradually to silver-white and then brown over summer. Their grassy seedlings are tedious to winkle out, so the same philosophical debate is called for. A favourite of mine is Asphodeline lutea, a silvery, slender thing with yellow flowers that turn into shiny black seeds. These fall close to their parents, so, in no time, an individual becomes a burgeoning clump. That’s more in my line.

If your inclination is more to semi-natural gardening, the teasel will be your friend. This has the capacity to lie dormant for years until disturbance and light come its way, when it forms such an elegant thing with its fascinating oval blooms featuring a plimsoll

line of lilac a third of the way up. The seedheads are equally compelling with those Velcro-esque soft hooks. Mind you, it will be with you for life in seedling form. The same applies to honesty, Lunaria annua, with its moon-like vertical discs. I find this turns up in scruffy corners and is generally welcome. This is just as well, as it will keep turning up after you’ve gone.

If you get bored with dry seedheads, try something fleshier. I’ve always admired the genus Actaea for its waxy berries, black, red or white according to species. The plants look superb in a woodland-garden context. It is true that they are poisonous, hence the name baneberry, but then so are lupins, foxgloves, laburnum and many more. You decide.

Then there are the various Eucomis, the well-named pineapple lilies from southern Africa, which look consistently gorgeous in leaf, flower and fruit. They do need exactly the right spot, such as the botanic garden at Ventnor on the Isle of Wight, where they luxuriate in abundance. The last word in visual fascination along these lines is Rheum alexandrae, the noblest of rhubarbs, the pendulous bracts of which attract the curious all season long, whether in bloom or seed.

If we allow our eyes to wander from the border to the wall and fence, some climbers are worthy seed-bearers. Every clematis is variously festooned with old man’s beard of one kind or another. I remember the hopeless chaos of trying to sow clematis seed in

Left: The familiar hedgerow seedheads of Clematis vitalba or old man’s beard. Right: Eryngium giganteum or Miss Wilmott’s ghost

From left: Frosted common fennel, Foeniculum vulgare; lanky Verbascum chaixii ‘Album’; splindly Eryngium pandanifolium

potting-shed trays as a novice before I realised that it pays to cut off the furry tails that float so readily in the air. While I’m on the subject, the same attraction and frustration applies to the seedheads of the lovely genus Pulsatilla, the pasque flowers.

A wall shrub worth cultivating for its seeds alone is Celastrus orbiculatus. This seems never to have caught on here, but is among the handsomest of its kind. It is related to the genus Euonymus and its seeds look like a designer version of our native spindle bush, with its scarlet, shiny seeds emerging from four-part yellow cases. The spindle-bush version is orange and pink, an unnervingly zingy combination, abundant this year in hedgerows, with its autumn foliage raspberry red.

It doesn’t do itself.

You need to make decisions and act

In some ways, the classic flower for seedhead appreciation is helianthus, the sunflower. This has everything for the family garden: it grows ridiculously tall, the flowers have a cartoon quality, it does that thing of following the sun, and the seedheads are so much loved by birds that it needs to be visible from the kitchen window. Bearing in mind those disadvantages of which I spoke earlier, it has the whip hand in that its decaying, soggy black form can simply be pulled out, cut up and composted when all is done, as it is an annual. Now there’s a thought.

Hydrangea

Papery immortelles in a range of forms, all durable. They will last until spring and make excellent cut flowers

Helenium

Crisp cones, like rudbeckia only taller, carrying the late-summer flower power through to autumn

Cardiocrinum giganteum Heroic in scale, worth climbing a ladder to admire, continuing the fairy-tale quality of everything about this magnificent bulb

Mature fruits of the aptly named Chinese lantern plant, Physalis alkekengi

Arum italicum ‘Marmoratum’ Sealing-wax brilliance, reliable and neat. This is the best garden form, with finely patterned leaves

Lotus

The most superb and exotic thing, an Art Nouveau shower head for flinging seeds, rising above the singular sunray foliage

Seed capital: plants with outstanding winter form

Alan Titchmarsh

Sharp practice

AGE shall not weary them, nor the years condemn’... words that we are accustomed to hearing at this time of year in relation to those who gave their lives in the two World Wars. They are words of great solemnity, yet I find myself musing upon them when it comes to tilling the soil in my garden and my veg patch, for the implements I use are, with a few exceptions, very old.

Far from wearying them or condemning them to the scrapheap, the years have done much to improve their performance, rather than diminish it. Their handles are silky smooth from the repeated caress of calloused fingers; their blades perhaps reduced in size from decades of use, but, therefore, lighter on the sinews and sharpened by the emery-like effects of soil abrasion as they turn or skim through the earth.

There is deep satisfaction to be felt in using a garden tool that has been handed down from generation to generation—a feeling engendered by sentiment, as well as practicality. If the implement has remained in the same family, that connection is quite raw, but, even if it has not, the knowledge that you are working with a spade, a fork, a rake or a hoe that has been a helpmate to someone growing flowers to brighten their life and fruit and vegetables to sustain them in times of privation makes for a powerful sense of attachment.

Whether handed down or found in junk shops, old garden tools sharpened and smoothed from regular digging are a joy to use

The spade that hangs in my toolshed, and which I still use for all but the most robust of tasks (lest it should snap when doing something as meaty as digging out an old tree stump), has been in our family for nigh on a century. The only slight disappointment here is that my father was not a keen gardener. He was a plumber and used it for mixing cement and concrete— there are still traces of it where the blade meets the metal shank. He blamed his lack of interest on the fact that his father and grandfather were both professional gardeners and made him

Horticultural aide-mémoire Sweep leaves

There are enough deciduous leaves down by now to justify sweeping them up. Eschew the noisy leafblower and, instead, retrieve the spring-tine rake and yard broom from the toolshed. You will have chosen a still day for this. Rake across the lawn, an activity that scarifies the turf as well. When the leaves are heaped, shift them into a barrow using rectangular boards. Then cart them off to the compost heap or make a separate leafmould bin for future crumbly splendour. You’ll have to do it all again before long, but then, it is good for you. SCD

weed among their vegetables when he was a boy. For this, they paid him a penny a bucketful. There was clearly, from Dad’s point of view, no future in that line of work. It must have come as something of a disappointment to him when I announced that I wanted to be a gardener, but he hid it well and only 10 or more years later did he reveal that my chosen profession mirrored that of his forebears.

to brighten her kitchen table. I remember still the blackberry canes that were trained over old brass bedsteads and the glittering silvery lids of Cadbury’s cocoa tins that he would string among his sweet peas to frighten away the sparrows.

On the shaft of the ‘T’-handled spade is stamped the legend ‘James Potts Cherry Tree No.1’. A trawl of the internet reveals an advert for James Potts & Son, Ltd, Old Hill, Staffs. The advert is dated 1938, but the company was established in 1882. Whenever my spade was made, it is certainly about 100 years old and owes much of its smoothness of handle and sharpness of blade to my grandfather.

But the spade I use comes not from Dad’s side of the family but Mum’s. Her father, George Herbert Hardisty, was a ‘ganger’ in the council highways department. His spare hours were spent on his allotment where—trilby on head, black waistcoat decorated with watch chain—he grew Savoy cabbages and cauliflowers, potatoes and onions, together with sweet Williams and sky-blue-flowered scabious that he would take home to my grandmother

Alongside it hang rakes and hoes of similar vintage, bought over the years from junk shops and garden fairs where they can still be had for the same price as newer models. Check them for soundness in wind and limb —especially for cracks in the handle and the secureness of connection between the wooden shaft and the metal shank—and they will be in fine fettle for your cultivations and to hand on to your children and grandchildren. Keep their blades well oiled in winter using a ponica bucket, as they are known in Yorkshire, another relic from a bygone era. A bucket of sharp sand, into which has been mixed a can of engine oil, is a handy addition to the potting shed. Push the blades of forks and hoes and trowels into it after scraping off most of the soil and waggle them around a bit. The sand will help rid the blades of mud and the oil content will prevent rusting. An old-fashioned idea? Yes, but, like my grandfather’s spade, it has stood the test of time.

Next week Lucian Freud

Alan Titchmarsh’s new book The Gardener’s Almanac is out now

Alamy

My spade is certainly 100 years old

Kitchen garden cook Cauliflower

by Melanie Johnson

More ways with Cauliflower

Roasted cauliflower, maple and miso soup

Cut half a cauliflower into florets and place on an oven tray. Add a peeled and roughly chopped red onion and toss everything in olive oil. Roast in a hot oven for 25 minutes or until the edges are beginning to char. Once cooked, add to a blender (saving a few pieces to decorate) with enough vegetable stock to just cover, together with one tablespoon of white miso paste and two tablespoons of maple syrup. Process until smooth. Divide between two bowls and add a few of the reserved roasted-cauliflower pieces to the top with a drizzle of olive oil, a scattering of chopped, toasted hazelnuts and fresh thyme leaves.

Cauliflower-cheese croquettes with cheat’s black-garlic mayonnaise

Method

Grate the cauliflower into a large bowl and add the grated cheeses, chives, breadcrumbs and plain flour. Whisk in the eggs, add seasoning, and mix until even.

Shape even, golf-ball-sized spheres from the mixture. Take three bowls and place flour in the first, beaten egg in the second and breadcrumbs in the third. Roll the individual croquettes in each of these in turn to crumb them. Repeat until all have been formed. At this stage,

you could refrigerate them until you’re ready to serve. Add butter and oil to a large frying pan and, when the butter is foaming, fry the croquettes until golden on all sides. Remove to a plate lined with kitchen roll.

Make the cheat’s blackgarlic mayonnaise by simply processing black-garlic cloves with the mayonnaise. Serve three balls on each plate, dot with the blackgarlic mayonnaise and scatter over the capers.

Ingredients

Serves 4 as a starter

1 (300g) small cauliflower

300g mozzarella, grated

300g mature cheddar, grated

2tbspn chopped chives

60g breadcrumbs

3tbspn plain flour

2 eggs

To pané

2 eggs

50g plain flour

100g breadcrumbs

To serve

100ml mayonnaise

1 bulb black garlic

4tbspn capers

Easy roasted gochujang cauliflower on garlic flatbreads

Cut a cauliflower into florets and then toss in one tablespoon of a neutral oil, one teaspoon of sesame oil and one tablespoon of gochujang (a Korean chilli condiment available in supermarkets or online). Place on a baking sheet and roast in a hot oven until charred. Remove from the oven. Heat garlic flatbreads, spoon over the roasted cauliflower, scatter with coriander (or parsley if you’re a hater, as I am) and serve.

Melanie Johnson

Once a mere back note, cauliflower now takes centre stage on menus

A delicate balancing act

Photographs by John Paul

IN the old walled garden at Bighouse, on Sutherland’s north coast, Finn Hull is positioning a small stone prism onto a rhomboid boulder balanced point down upon the uppermost of three larger blocks. Perched on a trestle, face intent beneath a mop of dark hair, he cups the stone between spread fingers, feeling with tiny movements for the miracle balance point. Beyond the garden, the wind is getting up over the Halladale. In storms, spray breaks over the high walls and scorches the borders, but, today, all is peace within the autumnal enclosure, the intensity of Mr Hull’s concentration amplifying the stillness. ‘You can balance anything; it simply depends how long you’re prepared to give it,’ he tells me, stepping back to admire his completed work. Mottled white and yellow with lichen bloom, angular profile large-nosed and bosomy, the piece reminds me of a Picasso woman, although its name is William after the first of the Bighouse Mackays. Representing the ‘genealogical figurehead’, it’s the largest of a group of balanced-stone ‘sculptures’ that Mr Hull has recently completed as the centrepieces to six stands of rowan, crab

Forged using ancient skills and gravity, Finn Hull’s unusual stone sculptures are a precarious and captivating sight to behold, says Mary Miers of this young artist’s first installation

Master of physics: Finn Hull at Bighouse in Sutherland with his balanced boulders

apple and sycamore. Some suggest Cubist figures, others abstract birds; each has an English or Gaelic name.

Bighouse stands on a spur flanked by grassy cliffs, gorse and dune banks, around which the spate river that runs north from the Flow Country of Strath Halladale sweeps in a great S before entering Melvich Bay. It’s a wild landscape, within which the garden, with its borders, paths and herbaceous beds, seems an unlikely sanctuary. In contrast with the animal sculptures in stainless steel, Mr Hull’s works appear rooted in the landscape, their ancient, weathered textures those of the surrounding buildings and dry-stone dykes running up Rubha an Tuir.

The stones are recycled—river boulders, slabs of Caithness flag and other material that once formed part of the 18th-century walls, but had been discarded in an overgrown area of wooded ground following rebuilding and repairs. Having moved the selected pieces by wheelbarrow, Mr Hull lifted all but one into place by hand. It’s difficult not to stare in disbelief at the apparent defiance of physics.

‘As a kid, I would take things apart constantly and I was very good at jigsaw puzzles,’ admits Mr Hull, whose innate sense of gravitational pull enables him to envisage boulders of different shapes and weight joined by balance, yet barely touching.

He insists no glue was used, but declines to divulge his novel technique—a ‘trade secret’.

Considerable thought goes into the sculptural effect, yet ‘there’s only so much impact I can have on a finished work,’ he reveals. ‘The stones dictate the forms; that’s what makes my pieces look so natural. The material has an autonomy of its own.’ He stresses that each stone is exactly as he found it; he never cheats. No cutting to fit or glueing: ‘My only tool is balance.’ Often, when halfway through a work, he’ll remember a piece he spotted earlier— ‘that one with a tiny dimple, which I memorised and put to one side, or this top one here: it’s got this perfect square, which must have been cut out when it was used in a wall at some point. I went and retrieved it and it brought the whole piece together.’

Although composed and created as freestanding sculptures, Mr Hull’s permanent installations have to be secured. ‘Birds could easily knock the tops off and the Bighouse pieces must withstand ferocious gales. Pinning the oddly angled boulders was the most difficult and lengthy part of the whole process.’

Completed last month, the Bighouse project marks a dramatic turning point in the career of the 23 year old, who studied psychology and neuro-science at King’s College London and graduated in 2021. ‘It’s been a rollercoaster year,’ he concedes, explaining how a chance encounter on a beach in April resulted in him quitting his new job as a management consultant and taking on his first commission.

Until then, he’d practised stone balancing entirely for enjoyment, always on the same strip of beach at Seaview in the Isle of Wight, where his family have a holiday home. ‘I’ve been doing it since I was six. I’d make small stacks on the sand and my Dad and I would sit on the sea wall, throwing stones to topple them. That was the thing: the fun of knocking them over and then running out to put them up before the tide came in. As I got older, I became more interested in building different forms, selecting stones and trying out balancing techniques. I also found it very relaxing.’

Over the Easter Bank Holiday, he was at Seaview having a break from work, gathering sea-scoured boulders, pebbles and discs and building them up into a series of totemic figures at the highwater line. ‘It was very busy. Loads of people were coming up to talk to me or stopping to watch the wind blow the tops off and the incoming tide destroy the stacks—as it always does,’ he recalls. ‘Then

a man who’d been observing me for two days came over and asked if I did it professionally. I said I didn’t, but he suggested we meet to discuss a potential commission.’

Mr Hull’s first patron turned out to be the co-owner of the Bighouse estate and, within weeks, he was on a plane to Scotland. ‘I had no idea what the landscape or the stone would be like, but I made two pieces and he liked them and commissioned four more.’ Since then, he’s picked up several more projects and is working on pieces for the gardens at Hall Place in West Meon, Hampshire, and Hazelby House, Newbury, Hampshire.

In recent years, many have been inspired to take up the ancient skill of stone balancing, either as a fashionable wellness therapy or as a form of land art, as pioneered by the likes of Adrian Gray. Although rooted in this practice, Mr Hull sees his work as exploring a new dimension that is less about the balance itself and more about the combined aesthetics of material, form and setting.

Mr Hull is based in West Sussex, but hopes to find a studio near London with space to store a reserve of materials. ‘I’ve got so many ideas; every night, I’ll do a page of drawings to flesh out a concept,’ he enthuses. ‘I’m considering fusing natural materials with metal—I’d love to work with a foundry.’ The excitement is palpable. We should keep an eye on this promising young talent and his new venture.

www.finnhull.com

Above, from left: Defying gravity: Aodh, Mae and Muir : three of the six Bighouse pieces. Facing page: The artist beside the Halladale, where it flows into Melvich Bay

Each stone is exactly as he found it; he never cheats. No cutting to fit or glueing

High stakes

THE internet is undoubtedly a boon for sellers at auction, but perhaps less so for those who search it for sleepers. If one seeker has spotted an overlooked treasure in a sale, most probably several competitors will also have done so. Last month, there were several striking instances of auctioneers’ estimates being greatly exceeded.

In one such case, admittedly, the strong price was also due to more traditional marketing. Bellmans of Wisborough Green, West Sussex, had taken space at 4, Cromwell Place to give the highlights of a week of sales a London viewing. These included a small, but choice group of books from a Scottish collection, headed by an important illuminated manuscript on vellum of a Latin Bible (Fig 1), most likely from a Parisian workshop in the 13th or early 14th century. It was expected to sell for up to £30,000, but fierce bidding on phones and internet, with participants trying to speed things up by proffering higher increments, resulted in a price of £107,156.

Another book to sell well above estimate, at £31,200 (from £5,000), was a rare copy of the first edition of The xiii Bukes of Eneados of the famose Poete Virgili translated into Scots by Gawin Douglas,

Bishop of Dunkeld, and printed in 1553. It had originally been bound by the remarkable Pergamena bindery, which originated in Germany during the 1550s and has been located in New England, US, since the 1830s, always in the same family. The book had been finely rebound by Riviere in the 19th century.

The biggest discrepancy of Bellmans’s week was also the most expensive lot, two oval portraits of Col Arent DePeyster (1736–1822) and his wife, Rebecca

DePeyster (neé Blair, d.1827) (Fig 2). The portraits were found by Bellmans in a cupboard in a South London house clearance and catalogued as late-18th/early19th-century English School, with an estimate to £250.

DePeyster was an American Loyalist who commanded Fort Michilimackinac and Fort Detroit during the American Rebellion and afterwards retired to Dumfries in Scotland. During the Napoleonic Wars, he was involved with the local militia, in which

Robert Burns served. He was the dedicatee of a Burns epistle beginning: ‘My honor’d Colonel, deep I feel Your interest in the Poet’s weal…’ He is well remembered in the US, despite being on the losing side, and two American bidders fought the price to £48,032.

The portraits are going to the Mackinac Island State Park Commission, an agency of the State of Michigan, for its permanent museum collection. It operates several historic sites at the Straits of Mackinac, including

Last month saw a rush of bidding and well-overestimate prices, including for an illuminated manuscript and a Sino-Tibetan gilt-bronze figure

Fig 2: Portraits of Col Arent DePeyster and his wife, Rebecca, are destined for Michigan, US. £48,032

Fig 1: An important 13th- or 14th-century illuminated manuscript on vellum of a Latin Bible. £107,156

Fig 3 above: A cast-bronze incense burner. £11,500. Fig 4 below: A SinoTibetan gilt-bronze figure. £120,080

a reconstruction of Fort Michilimackinac, where DePeyster commanded from 1774 to 1779. Steven C. Brisson, director of the agency, comments: ‘We have been aware of the existence of these portraits for many years and have used black and white copies, provided by the National Portrait Gallery of Scotland, in several publications and exhibits. We are extremely pleased to acquire the originals.’

at the bottom of a chest with other Asian items ‘mainly of little value’ (it is to be hoped) and was estimated to £1,000. This vendor, too, should have been more than pleased with the price of £120,080 paid by an Asian telephone bidder.

Chiswick Auctions was offering Islamic and Indian art, including a fourth session from a major collection. An 11th- to 12th-century cast-bronze openwork incense burner from eastern Persia or Afghanistan sold for a doubleestimate £11,500 (Fig 3), despite the hinged head and neck and the tail being restored or replaced.

There was a similar tale in the session of Chinese works of art, where the most expensive item was catalogued as a Sino-Tibetan gilt-bronze figure of Tara on a stand (Fig 4). Tara in this sense is a female Bodhisattva revered as a meditation deity in Tibetan Buddhism. The figure was seated on a double lotus and flanked by two winged wyvern-like creatures and on a base decorated with semi-precious stones measured 12½in high. It had been found

The portraits were found in a cupboard during a house clearance

Zoomorphic incense burners are symbolic of Seljuk metalmaking.

After the Turco-Mongol Timur conquered vast tracts of Persian lands from 1370, his descendants continued to rule parts of his empire until the suppression of the Indian Mutiny put an end to Mughal rule in Delhi.

lustreware

One of the arts revived in early Timurid Iran was lustreware and, here, a moulded and copper-lustre pottery funeral tile measuring 9½in by 13½in and dating from about 1400 sold for £4,650 (Fig 6) . It solicited prayers for the deceased Mir Muhammad.

A much later period of Persian history was represented by a fine

8in by 12¾in watercolour of a shot deer running, but about to collapse (Fig 5). It was by Forsat al-Dawla (1854–1920), a poet, scholar, artist, educationalist and reformer, who deserves a whole article to himself. Estimated to £3,000, this sold for £4,940.

Next week Fair stands

Pick of the week

Now for something rather more earthy. No doubt to the irritation of online bidders, Roseberys in south London was offering Islamic art at much the same time as Chiswick Auctions in the west. One of the star lots at Roseberys was a late16th-century illustration (right) to an erotic poem by Sa’idi of Shiraz (d.1292).

Chaucer would have relished this tale of a young man who wished for a divorce from his unappealing wife. The father-in-law refused permission, so the young man set himself to make love to the whole family and entourage of all sexes. When only he was left, the fatherin-law relented. This lusty tale was shown on the one sheet, which sold for £20,800, having been estimated to £5,000. Illustrations of Sa’idi’s bawdy works are rare before the 17th century, but this appears to date from the 1560s.

The top price in this sale was yet another massive leap from the estimate: £114,400 against up to £5,000. It was paid for a hexagonal tile (right) decorated with a cintāmani pattern—that is, clusters of three roundels paired with wavy stripes, an Ottoman motif signifying strength and power. Made in 16thcentury Syria, this came from the estate of the Academy award winning stage and film costume designer Anthony Powell (1935–2021).

Fig 6: This moulded and copperlustre pottery funeral tile dates from about 1400. £4,650

Fig 5: A watercolour of a shot deer by Forsat al-Dawla. £4,940

One of the arts revived in early Timurid Iran was

Edited by Kate Green

Following in Ransome’s footsteps

36 Islands: In Search of the Hidden Wonders of the Lake District

Robert Twigger (Wiedenfeld & Nicolson, £20)

SWALLOWS and Amazons for grown-ups? Robert Twigger has inexhaustible curiosity, a childlike desire to explore and bags of energy. You can almost sense John, Susan, Titty and Roger nodding approvingly in the background as Mr Twigger finds his way from lake to lake and island to island. He’s sometimes disappointed, often deflated as rain catches him out again, but much more often entranced by everything, from the smallest detail of an acorn’s leaf to the largest bird (a golden eagle, really?).

Mr Twigger’s book was inspired by Swallows and Amazons and we hear a lot about Arthur Ransome’s own motivations, anxieties and purpose, but we get a lot else besides—the author is full of stories. Sometimes they are ghoulish ones about people (speed-seekers) who have died on the lakes, sometimes apparently irrelevant, but you learn something from them all.

Red Devils Mark Urban (Penguin, £25)

NEW regiment, with a new way of getting to war, is a start-up story for military historians,’ writes Mark Urban. In the case of the Parachute Regiment, the only regiment of the British army with as many regular battalions today as it had when National Service in peacetime started in 1949, the story is one of both external and internal tensions.

After D-Day, when airborne troops secured the flanks during

Burdened with a rag-tag of camping gear, his old car (in which he often sleeps), an inflatable canoe, a packraft named Bertha and, in the early exploits (madly), a battered old luggage trolley, Mr Twigger sets off to visit all 36 islands of the Lake District. Each stop is beautifully

Athe night for the dawn landings, the ‘Red Devils’, as the Germans had called them, were under constant threat of being grounded. Infantry reinforcements were scarce and the 16 battalions of the Parachute Regiment committed to the war in north-west Europe were sucking out some of the best men from the line regiments. Besides, they were held ready for ‘strategic’ operations rather than the daily slog towards Berlin and some considered the cost too great.

The internal tensions arose from the need to ‘endow it [the new regiment] with the symbols, rites and ethos that bind its people together

and an abandoned pair of swimming trunks. Nothing seems to daunt him. The islands vary greatly. Some can be camped on, others are barely worth a glance. Some have extraordinary stories associated with them; others are, annoyingly, already occupied by paddle boarders; some he can get lost on. Nearly all are technically out of bounds.

Robert Twigger’s map points the way to a trove of Lake District adventures

illustrated and annotated with maps and commentary.

Hoping for romance, he more often finds the prosaic remains of other people’s adventures: at best, traces of a campfire, footprints on the beach or—once—a heart shape made of shells hanging from a pine tree; at worst, beer cans, duck poo

and bring them success in battle’. The British army was intensely tribal; the two regular battalions of even the same infantry regiment would often do things differently. How, therefore, to bring together several thousand men from different tribes and get them, as it were, to speak the same language?

There were certainly high-level ‘misunderstandings’. For example, the remarkably named Geoffrey Pine-Coffin—Eton, Cambridge, Devonshire gentry, commissioned into his county regiment—was removed from command of 3 Para in North Africa by the brigade commander, Gerald Lathbury

Only at Elterwater does he find something approaching wilderness. He visits all the well-known lakes (and some not—who has heard of Devoke Water?), exploring islands that inspired Beatrix Potter and William Golding, as well as the ever-present Ransome. It’s usually raining, but he is an irrepressible optimist, even when writing about dark and difficult things. His chat can irritate, but nearly always produces a smile. The world is a better place with adventurers such as Mr Twigger about.

Fiona Reynolds

(Wellington, Sandhurst, a military family in India, commissioned into the Ox and Bucks Light Infantry who thought themselves sans pareil ). He was then given command of a new Para battalion, which would fight hard in Normandy and the crossing of the Rhine. Pine-Coffin himself would win two DSOs. This is the story of the men who earned the Paras their nickname and the operations in which they proved it. Mr Urban has observed the profession of arms for more than 30 years and tells that story forthrightly, perceptively and with admiration.

Allan Mallinson

Some islands can be camped on, others are barely worth a glance

Books

The Art of Tapestry

Helen Wyld (Philip Wilson Publishers, in partnership with the National Trust, £45)

FROM the late 14th century, tapestry established itself as the most sumptuous of all room decorations; colourful, rich with imagery and highly expensive. This book, focused on the large collection of tapestries spread between properties owned by the National Trust, looks at this art form through time to the present day. It examines the subject in technical and arthistorical terms and is profusely illustrated with images that convey the diversity and appeal of these remarkable—and sometimes undervalued—works of art. JG

Great Irish Households. Inventories from the Long Eighteenth Century Transcriptions

by Jessica Cunningham and Rebecca Campion

(

John Adamson, £75)

HISTORIC household inventories recording the contents of rooms are an essential documentary tool for understanding the use and appearance of houses in the distant past. For anyone with a serious interest in Irish Georgian houses, this collection of 18 trans-

Auld Greekie: Edinburgh as the Athens of the North Iain Gordon Brown (Fonthill Media, £30)

THE architectural transformation of Edinburgh that took place between about 1810 and 1840 won the city its reputation as a ‘Modern Athens’. This book looks at the circumstances behind this change of perception.

cribed inventories, each prefaced with a short introduction on the house in question, is an essential work of reference. The inventories include those of Kilkenny Castle in 1705; Hillsborough Castle, Co Down, in 1746 and 1777; Baronscourt, Co Tyrone in 1782; Borris House, Co Carlow in 1818; and Mount Stewart, Co Down in 1821. JG

By happy coincidence, it’s published on the 200th anniversary of a crucial year in the story it tells: 1822 was variously the year of George IV’s celebrated visit to the city; the laying of the foundation stone of the National Monument on Calton Hill; the start of work to W. H. Playfair’s Royal Institution (now the Royal Scottish Academy); and the first exhibition of Greek watercolours by Hugh William Williams. The book is accompanied by a rich selection of more than 100 images with long captions. JG

English Victorian Churches James Stevens Curl (Boydell and Brewer, £50)

DURING the 19th century, money was poured like water into the construction and furnishing of church buildings in England. The sheer quantity, variety and—most important of

Knole. A Private View of One of Britain’s Great Houses

Robert

Sackville-West (Rizzoli, £47.95)

KNOLE has been the home of the Sackville family for more than 400 years and has long been celebrated for its architecture, collections and parkland setting. This authoritative account traces the building’s history from the 15th century, when it belonged to the Archbishops of Canterbury, to the 20th century and its transfer to the National Trust. It is lavishly illustrated, with images by Ashley Hicks. JG

all—quality of what was achieved is unfailingly astonishing. This book offers a chronological survey of this material. It sets church building of the period in historical context and crosses the denominational divides that so often obscure an overall understanding of what was going on. The book is illustrated with large numbers of excellent colour images. It is a timely reminder of the extraordinary riches of English church buildings. JG

House and Home in Georgian Ireland.

Spaces and Cultures of Domestic Life

Edited by Conor Lucey

(Four Courts Press, £45)

THIS well-illustrated volume of nine essays examines diverse aspects of Georgian domestic life in Ireland, from the use of ceramics to the experience of giving birth; and from the furnishing and fitting of dining rooms to the analysis of house types. There is a much fresh material, drawn from correspondence, accounts and visual sources. JG

This tapestry from Croome Court, Worcestershire, is now in New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art

This collection is an essential work of reference

Mick Hales/Country Life Picture Library

The Advent calendar issue

Presents galore, glorious food, ultimate wines

Jane Austen, Roald Dahl and King Arthur

Thank you for the music

There is a musical theme running through this month’s recommendations, from Elton John to Arthur Sullivan

MUSIC dominates this month’s theatre and what strikes me is the many uses to which it can be put. It can be the evening’s main motor, a pleasing accompaniment or even a way of getting inside a character’s head: however, it is rare these days to find a work that relies on the power of words alone.

In the case of Tammy Faye at the Almeida, we have a ritzy, fullscale musical that is anchored in a strong book by James Graham, who understands the significance of cathode-ray culture. His superb play Best of Enemies, currently at the Noël Coward Theatre, dramatises the clash between Gore Vidal and William F. Buckley Jnr

in televised political debates. In this new show, he considers the long-term effect of populist American television preachers, such as the eponymous heroine and her husband, Jim Bakker. Their aim was to put ‘God’s vision into television’ and ‘the fun into fundamentalism’. Eventually, they were undone by their greed and personal peccadilloes, but they were outlasted by the figure of Jerry Falwell, who saw that the votes of evangelical Christians could sway presidential elections.

The musical has a point to make, but it does so with the aid of an exuberant score by Sir Elton John and lyrics by Jake Shears. I can’t say my memory was permanently invaded by the tunes, but the mix

of rock, gospel music and honkytonk shows how the so-called electric church depended heavily on showbiz pizzazz. Katie Brayben as Tammy also emerges from the evening a copper-bottomed star. She delivers her solo numbers with real style and leads the final chorus, See You In Heaven, with an impassioned fervour.

Miss Brayben makes us see that beneath Faye’s hunger for fame and fortune lay a good heart, as proved by her television interview with a gay pastor during the Aids epidemic. It was this that especially outraged the religious right, and Jerry Falwell in particular, and he is so well played by Zubin Varla that I wish he had been given more stage time: although

clearly deploring everything Falwell stands for, the fair-minded Mr Graham implies that, in a world of swaggering opportunists, he was at least true to his principles. That is a mark of the intelligence of a musical that, with its lively direction by Rupert Goold, colourful costumes by Katrina Lindsay and stand-out performance by Miss Brayben, looks set to have a long life.

We have light opera at the Coliseum, where Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Yeomen of the Guard is being staged by English National Opera (ENO). The day after the first night, it was announced by the Arts Council that the company’s survival was dependent on its moving out of London, probably

Genuine emotion and impressive stage puppetry combine to astonishing effect in My Neighbour Totoro at the Barbican in London

to Manchester. I understand the need for cultural levelling-up, but I was still saddened by the news, as ENO’s famous powerhouse seasons in the 1980s provided me and many others with an operatic education.

I wish I could say that the current Yeomen was one of ENO’s highlights, but Jo Davies’s production is a bit of a mixed bag. The decision to update the action from the time of the first Elizabeth to that of the second makes little sense: Anthony Ward’s design gives us a grim prison rather than the expansive colour of Tower Green and too many of the songs are accompanied by a trio of prancing dancers, whose busbies put one in mind of the Hollywood choreographer Busby Berkeley, rather than officers of the guards.

Having said that, there is still much to enjoy. The orchestral playing, under Chris Hopkins, is first rate, Richard McCabe brings out the sweaty desperation of the professional jester, Jack Point, and Alexandra Oomens as Elsie Maynard has a soaring soprano voice that belies her diminutive stature.

If Sullivan’s score is a central source of pleasure, Joe Hisaishi’s music for My Neighbour Totoro at the Barbican is only one of the many delights in a truly astonishing evening. I admit I came to the show knowing nothing of the 1988 film or the animated work of Japan’s Studio Ghibli. I was all

the more taken aback by the way Phelim McDermott’s RSC production, with a text by Tom MortonSmith, combined genuine emotion with the most impressive stage puppetry I have ever seen.

Many people will know that the story concerns two sisters who move, with their father, to the countryside outside Tokyo to be near their hospitalised mother. However, it is their meeting with otherworldly animals that gives the story its momentum: there are soot sprites, Catbus, a giant inflatable feline, and Totoro itself,

which is a vast, furry, muddy creature that put me in mind of an old Daily Mail strip cartoon character, Flook. Basil Twist has created these puppets, but the point is that they are all operated by visible, black-clad figures in the style of Japanese Bunraku Theatre. The music, performed by a live band on a raised platform with Ai Ninomiya as an impressive solo singer, adds to the quality of a magical evening.

by the music that swims through his head: everything from sublime Schubert to a Bavarian oom-pahpah band. It is a compelling play, made all the stronger in Dominic Cooke’s production by Mr Tennant’s great capacity for enlisting our sympathy.

Music plays an important part in C. P. Taylor’s 1981 play, Good, revived at the Harold Pinter Theatre with David Tennant in the lead role of a humane, Goethe-loving German professor who descends into Nazism. The argument is that decent men are capable of endorsing evil through a series of moral compromises, but the play also suggests that the hero is at the mercy of an inner life symbolised

Even Rona Munro’s Mary at Hampstead Theatre has a minimal amount of music, but the main focus is on whether Mary, Queen of Scots voluntarily married the upstart Earl of Bothwell or was raped and forced into a disastrous union. At 90 minutes, the play feels like a footnote to Miss Munro’s cycle of plays about Scottish history, but it is forcefully acted by Douglas Henshall as Mary’s most loyal courtier, Rona Morison as an accusatory Protestant and Brian Vernel as a self-seeking servant. It is a modestly enjoyable play, but, with only the briefest glimpse of Mary herself, it feels rather like Hamlet without the Prince.

‘Tammy Faye’ until December 3 (020–7359 4404); ‘The Yeomen of the Guard’ until December 2 (020–7845 9300); ‘My Neighbour Totoro’ until January 21 (020–7870 2500); ‘Good’ until December 24 (0333 009 6690); ‘Mary’ until November 26 (020–7722 9301)

The English National Opera’s production of The Yeomen Of The Guard at the Coliseum is a mixed bag

Manuel Harlan; Tristram Kenton; Marc Brenner

It is rare these days to find a work that relies on the power of words alone

Andrew Rannells (Jim) and Katie Brayben (Tammy) in Tammy Faye

Crossword

A prize of £25 in book tokens will be awarded for the first correct solution opened. Solutions must reach Crossword No 4756, Country Life, 121–141 Westbourne Terrace, Paddington, London, W2 6JR, by Tuesday, November 22. UK entrants only

ACROSS

1 Old sailor, man reportedly making explosive substance (9)

5 Make an impact as a nobleman (5)

8 Unusual sanity required at first where work may pile up? (2-5)

10 Your compiler’s in middle of new road, wearing fur (7)

11 Arrested top officer, say— for trial here? (5,7)

14 Two-piece rubbish container beside a railway (6)

15 Allow little Violet to enter: that’s to be aspired to (8)

16 Firm man introducing great feature of pit (8)

18 European drinking-den accepting new salad ingredient (6)

19 Notes in maths oddly producing great surprise (12)

23 Ancient vehicle prompting talk around Brazilian port (7)

24 A sort of pudding said to pacify? (7)

25 Joker aboard four-wheeled vehicle (5)

26 Badly needs rise, identifying tone quality of oboes, say (9)

DOWN

1 Change position of support in roller-coaster? (10)

2 NE European in a hut in LA, surprisingly (10)

3 Girl’s benefit going up (5)

4 Note about priest upset football team (7)

5 Friendliness of fellow MP in a broadcast on vessel (13)

6 Reportedly brings in vessels for tea (4)

7 Current beginning to trouble fish (4)

9 Seeking a style—to some extent (5,1,7)

12 Destroy old boy able to read and write (10)

13 Inflexible soldiers made fewer advances (10)

15 Former partner on English river (3)

17 Small farmer needing credit more frequently? (7)

20 One publication beginning to enhance perceived character (5)

21 Small farm animal in unpowered barge (4)

22 Disallow girl’s initial hairstyle (4)

Bridge Andrew Robson

OULD you play a game in which the other player gave you £5 one time in ten, and no money changed hands the other nine times? Of course you would. Can you seize the extra chance on today’s pair of not dissimilar Three Notrumps?

On our first, West leads the Seven of Spades and you happily beat East’s Ten with the Queen. Plan the play.

1) Stayman, asking for four-card majors.

2) Natural and game-forcing

a Diamond). The 4-1 Club split was a blow and he could do no better than concede a fourth Club to set up two long cards.

SOLUTION TO 4755

ACROSS: 1, Family doctor; 8, Truss; 9, Bethlehem; 11, Astounding; 12, Last; 14, Stride; 15, Straiten; 17, One-on-one; 19, Escape; 22, Even; 23, Bedraggled; 25, Stilettos; 26, Dowel; 27, Acknowledged. DOWN: 1, Flutter; 2, Misguiding; 3, Libido; 4, Detonate; 5, Call; 6, Oxheart; 7, Steam shovels; 10, Matinee idols; 13, Sausage dog; 16, Undertow; 18, Elegiac; 20, Allowed; 21, Triste; 24, Lean.

The winner of 4754 is Maya Joo-Thomson, London

At the table, declarer hurriedly cashed the King of Clubs and crossed to the Ace, disappointed to observe West discard (a Spade). With Hearts wide open, he had to cash nine fast tricks so, after cashing the Queen of Clubs, West discarding another Spade, he had no choice but to cross to the KingQueen of Diamonds, cash the Ace of Spades and overtake the Ten of Diamonds with the Ace (hoping East’s second-round Knave was false-card). It was not—and there was no ninth trick. One down.

After winning the Queen of Spades, declarer should have cashed the King-Queen of Diamonds—a cost-nothing play to take advantage of the Knave dropping. When it does, declarer can cash the Ten plus the Ace of Spades, and only then cash the King of Clubs and cross to the Ace-Queen. The Ace of Diamonds is his ninth trick—game made.

How would you play our second 3NT on the six of Spades lead?

At the table, declarer ran the lead to his ten to ensure a fourth Spade trick. Expecting overtricks, he cashed the Ace of Clubs and crossed to the King-Queen (West discarding a Spade and

The defence was perfect. After East won the Knave of Clubs and West discarded another Spade, East found the one card in his hand to scupper the game: the Ten of Hearts. Declarer covered with the Queen (or the Ten would have won), but West won the King and returned a low Heart. East won the Ace and fired through his third Heart, West winning the Seven and cashing the Knave, beating declarer’s Nine. One down.

Note that the defence can win all four Heart tricks only if East leads the first round—not if West does. Declarer should have won West’s Spade lead in dummy with (say) the Ace and at trick two lead a Club to the Nine (key play). He is happy to lose a Club trick, provided it is to West. Let West win the Knave and switch to a low Heart to East’s Ace, for you can cover East’s return of the Ten with the Queen. West is welcome to the King-Knave, but your Nine stops the suit. Game made.

Note East’s fine switch to the Ten of Hearts as play went. He would have had to switch to the Knave holding King-Knave-low; and the Ten holding Ten-low-low.

A couple of final questions. Would you take the safety play in Clubs at Pairs? Probably not. And should West really have led a Spade given that dummy’s bidding shows four Spades? On an aggressive opening Diamond lead to the Queen, declarer has no chance.

4756

CASINA

Spectator Lucy Baring

The trouble with technology

IDON’T have, want or need Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, TikTok or LinkedIn. I will never think pumped toothpaste is progress. But there are times, such as this morning, when I’m driving along, listening to a William Boyd novel as a screen guides me to my destination, and I think how remarkable such a thing is. And I love it—until I don’t.

Modern cars are very bossy. Mine beeps at me when it thinks I’m too near the centre or edge of the road (no pothole/cyclist sensor, however) and gives me a school-mistressy eco-score at the end of every journey. It is now flashing melodramatic messages about tyre pressure, which I decide to ignore. I am nearly home.

A few yards on, the car becomes difficult to steer and, when I stop, there is smoke coming off the front tyre, which sags in an unmistakable way. I have no idea how to change a tyre. Actually, I do, but that’s very different to execution. I open the boot and am surprised to find there is a spare

tyre. How old fashioned! My last car had a canister of foam.

I ring the garage we use, which is just down this road, but they can’t come, so I ring Dennis who is, fortuitously, in the neighbourhood. My car doesn’t have a jack

I realise this makes it sound as if I did more than offer Dennis fruit pastilles, which is what I actually did. Dennis would help anyone and has got me out of a lot of roadside dramas in the past. In fact, the two of us on the side of the road makes me feel young. Or perhaps old. I’m not sure.

last bit out,’ I say. ‘Oh.’ He looks crushed. ‘How did you know?’ I had one in the 1970s, I explain.

(mixed messages from the manufacturer), so we try to use his, which is too small. We go to the garage, borrow a jack, come back, can’t make that work either, finally do, change the tyre, head back to the garage with jack and old tyre and so on.

Annie Tempest

When I get home, I step over the leaflets (care homes, retirement villages, healthcare) that are shoved through our door most days, but spy, among them, what looks like a real letter. It’s from a friend who came to stay so he could pick grapes on the last day of the harvest and who ranks as most surprising volunteer to date. He lives in London, doesn’t own a car, only shops on Instagram (he tells us with an irony that’s lost on me), spent a year in his youth picking pears in Australia and wants to see if he’s still got the knack. Or revisit his youth. He’s not sure.

‘I’ve bought you a present,’ he hands it to me. ‘You’ll never guess what it’s for.’ ‘You put your toothpaste in it and wind it to get the

His next Instagram item is a pair of sharp blades attached to thimbles he puts on his thumb and forefinger before flourishing them in a snipping motion, very Edward Scissorhands: ‘To give me the edge.’ He looks around the room for affirmation: ‘I’ll be the fastest picker on the team.’

The next day, with the final crates of Pinot Noir grapes being pressed in the new winery, we celebrate with a barbecued haunch of venison and toast one another with red wine. Our friend has his overnight bag at his feet, primed for a lift to the station. I know I shouldn’t ask, but can’t resist. ‘Broke on the first bunch,’ he says despondently. Someone suggests: ‘They may be for trimming basil.’

The toothpaste winder doesn’t work either but, then, it never did. Perhaps that’s why pump actions were invented. I’m not buying it.

Next week Joe Gibbs

The car is flashing melodramatic messages about tyre pressure, which I decide to ignore