I know from recent correspondence with readers that I haven't been the only person scanning the skies with increasing desperation. What began as a casual glance has become a look of yearning: where, oh where, are the swallows and house martins? By most accounts, our house martins were at least a fortnight overdue-the house sparrows, opportunistic squatters, had taken over a number of the martins' old nests for their own uses.
This spring is very different from recent years; the ash tree has beaten the oak into leaf for the first time in many, many years (‘Ash before Oak, we're in for a soak; Oak before Ash we're in for a splash'). I haven't heard a single cuckoo. Had something terrible happened to the martins?
Last Saturday was beautiful, and, if you have a garden, you will have been gardening. I was tending runner beans, when, suddenly, a tiny torpedo slanted across the azure sky and up into the eaves of the house. I gave an involuntary yelp of delight; my house martins had arrived. I felt honoured to have them back. Never had the phrase better late than never felt more appropriate. The lack of the normal south-westerly would appear to be to blame.
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50 years ago, the English country house seemed headed for extinction. Instead it was the start of a new golden ageRather than perceiving the mid 20th century as a troubled period in the history of the country house, John Martin Robinson argues that it was perhaps one of the most interesting, unexpected and enterprising. All photography from the Country Life Image Archive, by June Buck, Paul Barker, Val Corbett, Will Pryce and Paul Highnam.
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'Meat, ale and guns — what else do you need, bar glorious scenery?': William Sitwell on the Brendon Hills, West SomersetWilliam Sitwell chooses the Brendon Hills as his piece of heaven in Britain.
