The White Tower, London, begun by William the Conqueror in the 1070s and completed in about 1102. This prodigy building has given the whole castle its familiar name as the Tower of London. When it was begun, there was no English precedent for a masonry tower on this scale, so the design was probably copied from the lost tower of Dukes of Normandy in Rouen. Castles were a new building type introduced by the Normans.

The chapter house of St Augustine’s Abbey, Bristol, now the cathedral. The Augustinian monastery here was generously patronised by the future Henry II in the 1150s. This opulent interior illustrates the growing richness of Romanesque architecture in the 12th century.

Richmond Castle, North Yorkshire, was integrally planned with a new town by Alan Rufus, a kinsman of William the Conqueror. In the foreground are the ruins of Scolland’s Hall, probably built in the 1080s and one of the earliest secular buildings in stone to sur-ive in England. Sockets for a lost timber gallery that ran along the face of the building are clearly visible. In the background is the great tower or keep of the castle, probably dating to about 1160.

The interior of the keep of Castle Hedingham, Essex, probably begun in 1142 after its builder, Aubrey de Vere, was offered the title of Earl of Oxford. Such castle towers were a statement of status. This richly decorated room, warmed by a large fire and with encircling galleries, was presumably intended for grand ceremonial use. The arch spanning the interior is one of the largest to survive from Norman England.

The monumental nave of Gloucester Abbey, now the cathedral. The church was completely rebuilt by the first Norman abbot from 1089 and was probably finished in the 1120s. It was common for ambitious building projects to span several decades. The tops of the walls were remodelled when the vault was added in the 1240s.

The tower of Castor, Cambridgeshire, built in the early 12th century. A monastery was founded on this Roman site in about 664 by Kyneburgha, a daughter of King Penda of Mercia. As rebuilt by the Normans, it served as a parish church. The parapet and spire are later additions.

The crossing of St Alban’s Abbey, Hertfordshire, now the cathedral. Rebuilt from 1077, it used materials from the neighbouring Roman ruins of Verulamium, outside which, by tradition, St Alban was martyred. The Normans promoted many extant saints’ cults.

The interior of the Chapel of St John in the Tower of London, one of the earliest Norman interiors to survive substantially intact in England. It exemplifies the monumental austerity of early Norman architecture. With arches and stone vaults, it also illustrates the debt of Norman masons to Roman example (hence the use of the term Romanesque to describe the style of the buildings that they created). The interior was probably enlivened with wall paintings.

The huge piers of Durham Cathedral, rebuilt from 1093. Their decoration with abstract patterns was widely copied. Composed of standard elements set in regular courses, they are evidence of the Normans’ ability to quarry and fashion stone at scale.

This feature originally appeared in the September 2 2026, issue of Country Life. Click here for more information on how to subscribe.

Where is it?

In Cirencester. My first, my only and my last house in the country. We have tried to sell it, but it didn’t want us to and it’s now raising the standard for multi-generational living. There are two independent units, one for myself and [my wife] Jackie and one for [my daughter] Hermione and her family.

We’ve also built a house out of a garage block for my other daughter Cecile and her family. We’re all on the same courtyard — rather like a Birmingham back-to-back.

A quick description.

It’s an eyecatching, Grade II-listed farmhouse on the edge of a village that’s sited at the slummy end of the Cotswolds, close to the King and the late Jilly Cooper rather than the Beckhams. If I sat on my roof I could probably see Swindon.

The house has a reputation for being haunted, although I’ve never seen anything. Perhaps they’re star-struck or freaked out by the wallpaper and so they have decamped to an abandoned nunnery.

It was pretty affordable at £1.2 million, but having been used as an antique dealer’s den it originally had no kitchen. We stripped it right back and because we had a great rapport with our planners it all went rather well. People always go in fighting, but the secret is to talk to them.

How did you find it?

Twenty years ago when we were living in Greenwich, Jackie decided that there was something rather vulgar about living in London in your 40s, and so we decided to make a run for it. We saw it advertised in Country Life. There was no shopping around. Jackie viewed just this house and she rang me while I was filming in India, saying: ‘I really like it. Shall I buy it?’ You can watch the entire moment on YouTube as I had a camera crew with me.

What sold it to her?

It ticked a lot of our boxes; for example, it had a cottage for Jackie’s PA, it was a project, the garden was nudging a couple of acres, it was on the way to our cottage in Cornwall, and it was near a station — Kemble, the poshest in the world.

Was it a smooth purchase?

We were more or less cash buyers, nobody lived there, and so it was pretty straightforward, which is just as well as we had a camera crew following our buying journey. They were, however, rather disappointed as they like ‘jeopardy’.

What do you love about the area?

Its people. When I told a producer that we were moving to Gloucestershire, he said: ‘Why are you moving to the poshest county; they hate telly folk,’ but they really didn’t and it was lovely. One neighbour was a little disappointed as he had been looking forward to meeting Bullseye’s Jim Bowen. On the school run you bump into your planner, or the Earl or the Amazon delivery man.

We also love our multi-generational living, which grew out of lockdown and which makes us amazingly happy. Until the 20th century, this is exactly what everyone had been doing for thousands of years, so the 20th century was wrong and I’m so pleased it’s gone. Let’s not do anything like that again.

Favourite aspect of the house?

It’s basically L-shaped and Jackie and I live in the older bit and Hermoine’s crew have the Grand Designs extension that was put on by the 1640s equivalent of Kevin McCloud. The refurbishment in the 1980s to turn it into an emporium meant that they raised the ceilings, meaning some really weird window placements. I adore our drawing room and as part of its refurbishment I went out of my way to make it as 1980s as I could. It is now shades of salmon and apricot, and there’s a large, unrepentant pattern going on.

I remember describing all this to Jilly Cooper, who was laughing like only she could laugh, and it’s a great sadness to me that she died before she got to see our Jilly-inspired Rivals-esque drawing room. It is a complete antidote to the Cotswolds cliché of puritanical minimalism and shades of greige, with a couple of bits of very, very uncomfortable modern furniture and a pitchfork in the corner.

Best memory of living there?

I can’t commit to one as the memories keep coming. This is the longest we’ve ever lived anywhere, so this house has been all about children going away to boarding school, university and film school, children coming home, then returning with husbands, getting married and grandchildren being born.

This house is a repository of us. You need to see your home as the museum of you and the background to everything important that ever happens to you. It’s a big emotional investment. Don’t treat it lightly and think, ‘I’ll find something better and make a couple of quid’.

Actually, there’s so much more to it than that. We have now moved away from that Noughties obsession when we all had to be Sarah Beeny and we worshipped Kirstie and Phil as minor deities. Property is a very irritating way of making money, and it’s a bad way of making happiness. Find somewhere you love — and love it. The more you put into it and the more you do to it, think about it, redecorate it, the more you make it you and the more powerful and supportive it becomes.

Biggest indulgence?

The biggest psychological indulgence was laying a vinyl floor in the kitchen to my own design. It doesn’t take any prisoners; it is orange and lime green and it’s a festival of 1970s Spanish-inspired tile motifs. To make it worse, I covered the large fridge in the same pattern. It’s inescapable, but I think this is one of the reasons the house is enjoying having us. It loves our larger-than-lifeness.

Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen is an artist, interior designer and TV personality. He helped to set up the Llewelyn-Bowen Emporium, 42 Castle Street, Cirencester, Gloucestershire, which is now run by his daughter Cecile. He is also the design curator for Rangeford Villages luxury retirement villages.

A shorter version of this feature appeared in the print edition of Country Life on September 9, 2026. Click here for more information on how to subscribe.

Imagine having so much faith in the postal system that you’d be willing to trust it with a centuries-old, 45-carat diamond. It’s impossible to fathom now — I’m still waiting for a thank you letter I sent in February to arrive at its intended destination — but that’s exactly what Harry Winston did with the Hope Diamond in 1958.

The dark greyish-blue gemstone — which inspired the fictional Heart of the Ocean necklace in the 1997 film Titanic — was sent wrapped in plain brown paper from Winston’s New York office to the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C, where it remains to this day. It is estimated to be worth between $200-350 million.

The jeweller acquired the probably now priceless sparkler in 1949 from the estate of the mining heiress and socialite Evalyn Walsh McLean (1886-1947), but it was far from his most legendary purchase. The Jonker Diamond (726 carats), the Vargas Diamond (also 726 carats; Winston chased the stone across three continents in order to get his mitts on it), the Star of Independence (75.52 carats) and the Taylor-Burton Diamond (a meagre 69.42 carats, but purchased in 1969 by actor Richard Burton for his wife, actress Elizabeth Taylor) all passed through his hands. So prodigious was Winston’s collecting that it is estimated he handled one-third of the world’s most famous gemstones during his career, earning him the moniker ‘King of Diamonds’. In a 1952 LIFE feature, it was claimed that Winston’s collection of historic jewels was second in size only to the Royal Family’s.

Winston (né Weinstein) was born in 1896 in New York to Ukrainian-Jewish parents who ran a modest jewellery shop on the city’s Upper West Side. He was a natural gemmologist with terrific taste. When he was not yet a teenager, he spotted a two-carat emerald in a pawnshop, bought it for 20¢ and sold it, two days later, for $800 — about $30,000 in today’s money.

The world leader in the diamond trade died of a heart attack in 1978, but his eponymous brand remains synonymous with the acquisition of exceptional stones. ‘There was a stone that came to auction, five years ago, called the Pink Legacy,’ says Sam Stirrat, a bespoke jewellery designer specialising in engagement rings and fine jewellery, and the founder of Blackacre, who went to admire it while it was briefly on display. ‘It was an 18-carat, Fancy Vivid pink diamond and it sold for a world-record price [$50 million or $2.6m per carat].’

The stone was sold by Christie’s, which remarked at the time that Fancy Vivid pink diamonds of more than 10 carats are virtually unheard of, and that in 250 years of their auction history, only four such stones have ever appeared for sale. ‘I spoke to the people at the auction house [Christie’s],’ continued Stirrat, ‘and they didn’t expect it to be bought by a jewellery house.’ But bought by a jewellery house it was — in a minor bidding war that lasted for only five, fast-paced minutes — and there will be no prizes for guessing which one.

Unsurprisingly, demand for pieces produced during Winston’s lifetime remains high and when they come up for sale they tend to disappear fast. This then is your public service announcement to sharpen your elbows because Hancocks London is selling a pair of Harry Winston diamond ‘day-to-night’ chandelier earrings that date to the 1950s. Set with approximately 28 carats of the lustrous stones, the studs feature a scrolling loop of baguette-cut diamonds next to a cluster of marquise-cut ones at the top, off of which drops an articulated cascade of more baguette-cut diamonds. This cascade can be detached.

The earrings belonged to Hazel Brooks, the second wife of Cedric Gibbons, the man who designed the Academy Award statuette. An 11-time winner of the very award he created, for art direction, Gibbons’ name appears in the credits of nearly 1,500 films. He had ‘an eye trained on design at the highest level,’ says Amy Burton, creative director of Hancocks. ‘He would have known exactly what he was looking at in a pair of Winston earrings this exceptional.’

The vintage diamond and platinum chandelier earrings are POA. Call 020-7493 8904 or visit the Hancocks London website for more information.

Even the world’s best equestrians aren’t exempt from some blunt riding instruction. Much of it, Scott Brash says, can’t be repeated in Country Life, but the Olympic gold medallist and gentle horseman extraordinaire received a memorable one-liner at his first-ever Nations Cup at La Baule in 2010, where Brash had help with his horse from his teammate Peter Charles. ‘Just as I was trotting into the ring, Peter was behind me and said, “Scott, Scott, stop, stop, stop!” I stopped and was like, “what’s wrong?” And he said, “Grow some balls and jump a clear round, will you?”’

Sixteen years later, Brash is a steady purveyor of clear rounds. They are fluidly delivered, with calm and quiet riding on horses he imbues with beautiful lightness and elasticity. He is also something of a unicorn: in 2015, the Scotsman became the first and so far only rider in history to claim the mythical Rolex Grand Slam of Show Jumping trophy with his horse Hello Sanctos, by consecutively winning the CHI Geneva, the CHIO Aachen and the CSIO Spruce Meadows ‘Masters’ in Canada. Newly announced as a Rolex testimonee that same year, Brash certainly made quite the entry into the Swiss luxury watchmaker’s family of top athletes.

‘Yeah, that was good timing,’ Brash says with a chuckle. ‘Being part of history, it’s quite surreal when you think back about what you've achieved and how difficult it is to do. I’d like to think it’s not changed me. I still think I approach each horse differently as individuals. I’m still as hungry as ever to go and win it again.’ Supported by Lord and Lady Harris and Lord and Lady Kirkham, this month, Brash’s eye is on the Spruce Meadows ‘Masters’, the world’s biggest Grand Prix, which he has won a record three times (September 9-13). ‘It’s the place I watched as a kid on TV growing up, thinking I’d love to compete there one day.’

When we meet up on home turf at the Royal Windsor Horse Show, Brash and his chestnut mare Hello Folie have just jumped clear in the 1.55-metre Defender Stakes. As soon as they’re over the last fence, Folie walks out on a long rein in a stretchy, relaxed outline that would thrill any biomechanically nerdy horse person. ‘She’s so cool in her brain. When she goes in the ring, she comes alive and loves jumping, but the minute you finish, she’s so calm,’ Brash says, stroking the mare’s face as she enjoys a hay net in her stable hotel room after withdrawing from the jump off. ‘She jumps the Grand Prix on Sunday, so I thought there’s no sense for her to gallop round this. She’s done good.’

It’s this sort of horsemanship that makes Brash a standout rider. To Harry Charles, son of Peter Charles and one of the leading young showjumping talents shaping the future of the sport, Brash has always been a role model. ‘Naturally, as a young kid with a dream of doing this, you idolise someone, and Scott was that for me,’ Charles says when he joins us. ‘I could tell you if it was a silhouette going around, that’s Scott. I wish I could make all my horses go the way I’d like to. But Scott can do that so easily and so effortlessly. And he lets each horse go in their own way. He doesn't try to force anything.’

When Charles first joined the big show circuit, Brash was the one who made him feel welcome and would sit with him at breakfast and ask how it was going. ‘And I’m happy now even to call him a very good friend,’ Charles says. In 2024, they won Olympic gold together, a repeat of Brash’s London 2012 feat with Papa Charles. ‘Harry has always been a very good rider, even from the 12’2 days,’ Brash says. ‘Coming into the top sport and being in the Olympic games as a young person, he coped really well with those situations. And he thrives under the pressure now. His whole riding has become very one. He has a very, very top future ahead of him.’

If their schedule allows, Brash and Charles can be spotted on the golf course together. ‘He’s fantastic. I’m terrible,’ Brash says of their game. As a fellow Rolex cohort, Charles — who was snapped up as a teenager by the watchmaker to become their youngest ever equestrian testimonee — quips he hopes Rolex will stay with him when he pivots to golfer. Rolex hasn’t just kept time for him all these years, but also limbs. When Charles fell off at a wall in Aachen in 2022, the main horseshoe stud went straight through the bracelet of his white gold Sky-Dweller, breaking the bracelet but saving his wrist. He went on to win bronze with Brash and Ben Maher at the World Championships three weeks later.

Neither Brash nor Charles learnt to ride on ready-made ponies but had to get on with it onboard the self-governing kind. ‘I wasn’t appreciative at the time, but now I’m so lucky I was made to,’ Charles says. Brash, who was seven when he caught the horse bug, on a pony shared with his sister, had the same. ‘Lots of different ponies that were tricky and naughty, but it really taught you to ride. And understand the horse you have.’

To this day, it’s the Brash way: ‘Play to the strengths and work on the weaknesses,’ he says, noting that while a slower or bigger horse might need more time on a rollback turn, they can take a stride out down a long line to win time. Time, of course, is of the essence in a discipline where milliseconds decide a winner, which makes Rolex’s involvement no coincidence. ‘I’ve always thought of it as a reaction sport,’ Charles comments. ‘Obviously you can have a plan. But if a horse jumps a bit left or goes a bit high, a bit forward, you've got to make instinctive decisions really fast. Especially in a jump off. We feel if we’re a bit behind, and then your plan maybe has to change in a split second.’

Outside the ring, they both say horses respond best when you don’t look at the clock. ‘It’s a balance, and it’s knowing when the horse is ready to put that sort of pressure on them,’ Brash says, adding: ‘Sometimes we can make a mistake and set them back a bit. But then you take a step back to move forward later on. Horsemanship is so important, to produce those moments in time.’ At home, Brash does lots of hacking as the horses see enough schools at shows. His less-is-more style is shaped by his start in the landscape of Peebles, where — in lieu of an indoor school or arena — he would ride up and down the Scottish hills and through a river on the farm.

‘I could still have the horses very fit going to a show, probably fitter than a lot of the other riders. It’s more natural for them. And when they're happy, they love it.’ Mindful of the sport’s increasing travel, he is careful not to get into ‘that hole of chasing ranking points. When a horse is good, it’s easy to be jumping in Shanghai last week and be here this week. You’ve got to pick and choose; the horse can’t do everything. They’re not machines.’

What would Brash and Charles like to see more of in the horse world? ‘A bit more patience,’ Charles says, noting that his family don’t back their horses until around the age of five. ‘You never know with so many horses what it could have been if they weren't galloped at these young horse championships as a five-year-old.’ And, he adds, a little less focus on the glitz and glamour of horses that the media sometimes focuses on. ‘We’re out in the mud, the rain, turning all the foals out in the field. They’ve been bred literally in our gardens. But they want the VIP and the who’s there, which is a shame because that’s a very small proportion of our sport. That’s not why we do it.’

‘They are our life,’ Brash adds of their bond with the horses. ‘They’ve taken us around the world, into scenarios, that, good and bad, have taught us about life.’ They will also surprise you, like Hello Sanctos at the London Olympics. ‘The first day going in, I could feel his heart pounding out of his chest. I thought, oh God, how’s the week going to go now because of this enormous atmosphere? But that showed what an amazing character he was, because every day he grew and got better and better.’

What continues to floor Brash is the trust horses have in us, like a young horse following you onto a horsebox for the first time. ‘They’re incredible, amazing creatures who really want to please us in whatever we’re trying to do in life. Different horses teach us different things. I’m still learning.’

The Country Life quiz runs daily every afternoon, with new editions published at 4pm.

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Arguably the most hilarious anecdote in Amy Odell’s biography of Gwyneth Paltrow, published last summer, hails from the actress’s high-school yearbook. Gwyneth’s ‘worst fear’, according to classmates, was obesity: an answer that turned out to be prescient. ‘The day I tried on the fat suit,’ she said 11 years later of her role as the corpulent Rosemary, in 2001’s Shallow Hal, ‘I walked through the lobby of the Tribeca Grand… It was so sad… so disturbing. No one would even look at me.’

During the pandemic, Gwyneth started drinking ‘seven nights a week’, admitted to ‘making pasta’ and — worst of all — to ‘eating bread’. I hate to think what she would have made of the health retreat I attended earlier this summer, in which wine and focaccia were served with every meal and no one seemed to care much about calories.

Health-oriented hotels tend to be self-selecting when it comes to the clientele, yet at LEFAY Resort & Spa Dolomiti, things are quite different. It offers something of an antidote to the asceticism of today’s more ‘cutting-edge’ programmes: the atmosphere is warm and sociable; the feeling not of privation, but of growth. Our culture tends to view health pursuits as inherently monastic — a red herring contiguous with the switch from wellbeing to wellness. The change in suffix is important: it indicates an effort to theorise, to tame, to domesticate. A managerial approach to the body, rather than an explorative one.

The wellness industrial complex, currently valued at $6.8 trillion (about £5.06 trillion), has made a fortune of selling expensive and often dubious versions of health that subtract more than they add. Actual foods are swapped for supplements. Chemical peels remove layers of our skin with the aim of keeping us young — yet without, for such, stopping the sands of time. This wasn’t always the case. Wellbeing in the 1970s extolled the virtue of acid trips. The Ancient Romans believed nudity and occasional banqueting were conducive to vigor.

LEFAY attempts to find a middle-ground between the two: somewhere that pushes you out of your comfort zone while presenting you with health in every form — including the sort of meals that bring a smile to your face rather than a grimace (‘but it’s good for you… just tell it yourself it’s good for you’). The sheer size of the site — a whopping 27,280 square metres, plus 2,377 square metres of outside space — is the reason it can offer things in such abundance: aromatic saunas, sensory waterfalls, phytotherapy, ice pools, a tepidarium, a calidarium, salt pools, and yet more besides.

LEFAY sits in an unenviably competitive region of Italy. Yet it stands out, notably, for its commitment to the landscape. ‘The properties are designed to allow less dispersion of heat and energy outside,’ the receptionist explains. ‘Both the original property on Lake Garda and this one in the Dolomites face south, and the large glass windows that feature in both resorts allow natural light to flood the rooms and common areas while providing a high level of thermal insulation. The heating and cooling of rooms is achieved through low-temperature radiant systems installed within the floors and ceilings’ — a system which prevents both draughts and noise.

There are three swimming pools, one one of which is divided between indoor and outdoor areas, and all of which are heated. A small, cavernous sauna for stretching post-workout sits beside a large, Finnish sauna with views of the mountains. Some find it overwhelming. ‘I don’t think my parents would enjoy this,’ my travel companion notes. ‘It’s all a bit woo-woo for them. They prefer when things feel simple.’

To fully enjoy LEFAY, one ideally does need to commit. It demands a certain surrender to the spirit of the place: to float in saline water and appreciate how different smells impact how we think or meditate. Still, the creature comforts are far greater here — and the novelty factor more accessible — than in rival outlets like the Mayr Clinic. A garden bustling with insect life encircles the Finnish sauna and frames the Dolomites beyond. A gym occupies the lower ground floor and a spa offering myriad treatments the second.

One is permitted to dip in and out of the extracurriculars. Many guests are not here for the indicatively-named Active Balance programme, but simply to enjoy a week in the Alps — an increasingly popular destination in summer among travellers fleeing the canicular conditions of the seaside. For those unsure of committing to the max, the health programme can be tailored. The canonical version is five-days long, but occasionally is shortened to three.

At every stage, participants are joined by guides, be it a masseuse or the trekker in the mountains. Before the spa-based activities begin in the afternoon, mornings are usually spent outdoors: participants are shuttled to the Dolomites for hikes, cold plunges and various grounding exercises, and shown the rare and precious beauty of the region through its flora and fauna (even I, a notorious cynic, was convinced to hug a few trees). The guides hail from Mountain Friends, a local school of hiking and mountaineering. Ours was a 23-year-old firecracker named Andrea: a competitive skier who did not mince her words, pushed us out of our comfort zone and made sure we got as much out of the experience as we possibly could.

Still, overall, the Active Balance programme promotes a kinder and more accommodating approach to living well than health retreats usually allow. It is underpinned by the belief that asceticism is inimical to la dolce vita, and that relaxation is as vital to wellbeing as exercise. Our quest for health and happiness cannot have too much of one without the other. In other words: every Yin needs its Yang.

These Ancient Chinese concepts are not mentioned in a vacuum. The programme is structured around four pillars, each one rooted in Ancient Chinese medicine and one for each day you are here (an extra day is left aside for leisure and travel; the three-day programme prioritises tenets one and two). The Red Phoenix — one — is for pushing oneself; The Black Tortoise — two — for finding one’s zen; The White Tiger — three — for focus and meditation; and The Green Dragon — four — for the art of self-reflection. At the heart of this square is The Centre. ‘Each season,’ the programme notes, ‘folds for a while in the centre before on to the next’. It does, admittedly, all sound rather Goop-y.

But then you get to dinner. The main hotel restaurant is located on the third floor: an A La Carte menu rich in staples from the wider Trentino-Alto Adige region comes with wine, cocktails, and baskets of focaccia that are topped up ad infinitum. The pasta is unctuous, the sauces unrationed, and while the Active Balance programme suggests its own regimen (a four-course menu on a separate printout), the waiters give you permission to deviate from these strictures and mix and match both specialist and A La Carte meals however you see fit. A Michelin-starred restaurant occupies a smaller tranche of the third floor, which is well worth a visit on your last night here.

The service, in true Italian style, is uninvasive and unhurried: you never can forget that you are here to relax. LEFAY, in every sense, is somewhere that treats its guests like adults. You are free to be healthy just as you are free to indulge. Ashtrays adorn coffee tables on the balconies while an assortment of wine bottles make up the restaurant’s centrepiece. This understanding of wellness and hospitality as being natural bedfellows, rather than enemies, is perhaps best encapsulated in the hotel’s signature scent. Smell is the first thing you notice upon arriving at the resort: the warm, aristocratic whiff of Juniper courses through the corridors. Aromas have always been essential to wellness — the Romans, for one, exploited the healing properties of rosewater and myrrh. Alongside aromatic saunas enveloping punters in scents of frankincense and orange, the smells of the kitchen — of grilled meats and pasta sauces — are equally vital, wafting through the dining room akin to an embrace.

It is a tribute to its founders, Domenico Alcide and Liliana Leali, that LEFAY can operate at both such a scale and such a level of excellence. The hotel in the Dolomites counts 88 suites and 21 residences — all of which were built, remarkably, in under two years. Its maximum occupancy stands at 258, a number it has reached each winter since opening in 2019. The neighbouring village of Madonna di Campiglio has long been a favourite of the Italian ski set — yet in high summer, when out-of-season construction projects tend to blight the resort, punters flock instead to Pinzolo. With the Active Balance programme, the Lealis hope their hotel will become even more popular.

Deluxe suites start from €835 euros per night in high season, on a bed and breakfast basis. Visit the LEFAY website for more information and to book.

Do supercars sparkle in the rain? The answer, somewhat sadly, is no not really. But they still stand out, especially when presented on the lawns of Blenheim Palace in Oxfordshire. For the aspiring aesthete, you would struggle to find a trinity quite as holy as the Vanbrugh designed palace, the Capability Brown gardens and some of the finest cars ever made. We are, of course, at Salon Privé.

Regardless of the rain or the shine (and on Wednesday, it was very much rain), this was still the place to be last week, and the lineup of four-wheel wonders was as sublime as ever. Here are five takeaways from the show.

Form is temporary, class is permanent

So the old saying goes, and the McLaren F1 certainly has the latter. Some 34 years after it first rolled out the doors of the factory in Surrey, the F1 still turns heads wherever it goes, and Terry Bramall’s example from 1995 was a worthy first winner of the new joint top prize, the Concours d’Excellence.

Restored by Lanzante to its original factory specifications, Bramall’s silver F1 held pride of place in front of Blenheim and was never without a crowd of fans desperate to have a look inside the record-setting three-seater hypercar.

One thing that ever gets old about the F1 is how modern it looks. Even today, it looks profoundly more aerodynamic and futuristic than its modern counterparts. As Salon Privé chair Andrew Bagley said: ‘In an exceptional field, this particular F1 stood out as a superb example of a car that fundamentally changed our understanding of what a road-going supercar could be.’

The other top-prize winner was Amir Ravan and his Lamborghini Miura P400 S, which took home the esteemed Best of Show Concours d’Elégance. The first true supercar, this was a glorious example in gun-metal grey.

‘For me, the Miura represents a genuine turning point in automotive history,’ Ravan said. ‘The engineering, the proportions and Gandini’s extraordinary design came together to create something that still feels remarkably special nearly 60 years later.’

Either the F1 or the Miura will carry the flame for Salon Privé at the Peninsula Classics Best of the Best in January 2027, against winners of other concours such as Villa d”Este, Cavallino Classic and The Quail.

Big does indeed mean beautiful

The first thing you notice about the 1935 Duesenberg SJ Gurney Nutting Speedster is its sensational black and orange colourwork, which pairs beautifully with its whitewall tires. The next thing you notice is the size. In true American fashion, she is larger than life.

Every Duesenberg is special, but this one is certainly more special than others. A one-off commission for Maharajah Holkar of Indore, it is the only chassis bodied by the celebrated coachbuilder Gurney Nutting. It was a winner of the Peninsula Classics Best of the Best in 2023, continuing a rich tradition of picking up top prizes, after it was awarded a 99.5-point score at the Eastern Grand Classic in 1963.

Highlights among the whitewall tires, the covered wheel arches and sensational bodywork are the red and blue lights mounted on the front wings to indicate whether it was the Maharajah or his wife travelling in the car. In a surprise to absolutely no-one, the car also won this year’s prize for Most Exceptional Coachwork.

Polestar position

I’ve long been a fan of Polestar and their delightful mix of speed and practicality. Salon Privé was the first time I laid eyes on the new 5, their extra-sporty Grand Tourer, and I was suitably impressed. It’s muscular in all the right places, sits on a gigantic pair of wheels and features a full four-door layout. It’s aggressive but chic, everything a proper GT should be. I’m looking forward to seeing a few on the road sooner rather than later.

Silent style for the Lady Mayor

One of the great joys of Salon Privé is that there’s always a surprise lurking around the corner. You expect the McLarens and the Lamborghinis and the Ferraris, but who could possibly expect to see an electric 1973 Rolls-Royce Phantom VI created for Alderwoman Dame Susan Langley DBE — the 697th Lady Mayor of the City of London.

And yet, that is exactly what Electrogenic turned up with. The Rolls is the official limousine of the City of London Corporation, and its electrification is part of the Corporation’s drive to achieve net-zero emissions from its own operations by 2027. It comes with, among other things, a 120kW electric motor, 310Nm of torque and a 62kWh battery pack, as well as a dedicated ‘ceremonial’ driving mode for ‘slow-and-stately progress’. Quite right too.

‘We were honoured to be asked to electrify this significant motor car, and to play a part in the City of London Corporation’s journey to net zero,’ said Electrogenic CEO Steve Drummond. ‘When it was launched in the late 1960s, the Rolls-Royce VI was the most refined and dignified limousine on the road. Now, thanks to electrification, its core character has been enhanced further: it is whisper quiet, effortless to drive with swift performance, and emits zero tailpipe emissions.’

Bristol is back

It’s not easy to make a lot of noise at a show like this, but the return of Bristol Cars made a racket in more ways than one. Metaphorically, the unveiling of a newly completed Fighter was quite something, and was more than a reasonable birthday present for the company’s 80th anniversary. Physically, the machine is powered by an 8.0-litre V10 engine from a Dodge Viper, produces up to 600bhp and a claimed top speed of 210mph. Noisy stuff indeed.

The Fighter was originally conceived in the early 2000s and was the firm’s final production model before manufacturing ended in 2011. The chassis on display at Salon Privé is one of five that were preserved and are now confirmed for a limited continuation programme. Each car will be hand built in the UK, available in either left or right-hand drive, and if you want to know how much it costs, you can’t.

‘Bringing Bristol Cars back is about far more than reviving a name; it is about bringing back the spirit of a marque that has always stood apart,’ Paul King, director of Bristol Cars, said. ‘Bristol has a remarkable story, from its roots in aviation and engineering to the extraordinary and exclusive cars it crafted. We want to honour that heritage while giving Bristol a future that is every bit as distinctive. To bring Bristol back to making cars in Britain, and with Richard Hackett returning to the company, we have brought together an exceptional combination of heritage, knowledge, engineering and craftsmanship. This is the beginning of Bristol’s return, and there is much more to come.’

We very much look forward to seeing it.

Glorious leaf colours are one of the joys of autumn. They fill our landscapes and gardens with red, orange and yellow — colours unknown in summer. Yes, the process is actually a by-product of the leaves dying, but it also serves a definite evolutionary purpose and brightens our way from summer sunshine to winter gloom. Autumn colour is a time to celebrate.

Why and how do trees and shrubs do it? The ‘why’ question is easy to answer. Trees started to evolve about 390 million years ago. All were evergreen and operated in warm, sunny climates. The emergence of deciduous plants about 135 million years ago was a logical development. They learnt to shed their leaves so that they could survive in cold areas with long, dark winters.

However, that does not explain why the dying leaves take on such brilliant colours. Everyone knows that leaves are green because they contain chlorophyll — a photosynthesiser that uses the sun to create the foods, mainly sugars, that plants require to live and grow — but other colours are present in foliage that are overpowered by chlorophyll’s green. Autumn’s hues come from useful flavonols and carotenes — respectively yellow and orange — and, later in the season, from red anthocyanins, which are a by-product of change. These compounds, and their colours, occur all through the vegetable kingdom, not only leaves: raspberries contain anthocyanins; yellow raspberries are dominated by a carotene called lutein.

Chlorophyll does not live forever. Scientists tell us that the individual chloroplasts break down and are constantly replaced throughout the summer. However, as autumn approaches, rather less green chlorophyll is recycled, so the underlying colour of the leaves is revealed. Some leaves turn pure yellow and others mainly red, with endless variations in between. The exact mixture of these compound chemicals varies between individual plants, as well as between species — hence the degree of yellow or red colouring in the dying leaves. An important part of the process is called abscission: the tree or shrub starts to lay down a layer of cork where the leaves are attached to the branches and, eventually, the leaves fall off.

Frost accelerates the process. The best autumn colour comes from hot, sunny days and cold, cloudless nights — what we call an Indian summer. If autumn is mild and wet, the process slows down and enough chlorophyll survives to mix with the reds so that the leaves appear brown. Most of us had a hot and sunny summer. Provided we have cold nights, autumn colour this year will be all the better for it. That said, the leaves of our red maples Acer rubrum and scarlet oaks Quercus coccinea will never match the splendour of those in New England and Canada because our summers — even this one — are cooler than theirs and our autumns usually damper.

You can see the carotenes in such trees as poplars, ginkgos and birches, each of which turns to a distinct and uniform shade of brilliant yellow or gold, but without even the merest hint of the reds that come from anthocyanins. Not all trees and shrubs make anthocyanins. Unlike the ever-useful carotenes — which help with photosynthesis — anthocyanins are not present in the leaf throughout the growing season, but a sign that the sugars are breaking down in the presence of bright sunlight. Japanese maples, liquidambars and rowans are some of the best — the most dependable — trees for good leaf colour in our climate.

Anthocyanins have another significant purpose: when the leaves fall to the ground they inhibit the development of rival plants. The technical term is allelopathy. Walnut trees and sycamore are good examples, but so are the tree of heaven Ailanthus altis-sima and the Canadian sugar maple Acer saccharum: they keep their competitiveness by killing off their rivals.

How long does autumn colour last? It varies between species. The tupelo Nyssa sylvatica may hold its brilliant scarlet colour for a week or 10 days, but the sweetgum Liquidambar styraciflua retains its autumn leaves for up to six weeks. The process is gradual and individual leaves die by stages, so a tree will have leaves of many changing hues as autumn progresses.

Hot, dry weather can also bring on a change of leaf colour. If you saw birch trees turning yellow in August, it’s because they are surface-rooting and suffered more than most trees from the heat and drought of summer. Their survival strategy is to shut down prematurely.

Japanese maples and cherries are among the first to show their autumn colour. Normally we have to wait a couple of weeks before our native trees start to turn. The beechwoods of the Chilterns and the oakwoods of Sherwood and Savernake are at their best in early November. The brown tinge to their leaves comes from tannins left inside when the chlorophyll fades away; they overwhelm the carotenes.

Elm trees are among the last to turn colour and drop their leaves. Young beeches and hornbeams hold onto their dead leaves until spring. Marcescence is the scientific word for this phenomenon and there are many reasons for it — but that is another story.

This feature originally appeared in the September 9, 2026, issue of Country Life. Click here for more information on how to subscribe

The Country Life Quiz is published every weekday at 4pm.

Missed a day? Want more quizzes? Catch up on previous editions, here.

The English-American actor Cary Grant was a Hollywood star with a generous streak: not only did he give his own gold watch to the woman who cared for his mother in her old age, but he also covered her nursing home fees. The family of this woman, Maggie Leach, are now selling the storied timepiece.

The watch will go under the hammer on September 10, at Clevedon Salerooms, as part of the auction house’s Autumn Specialist Sale of Antiques and Collectables. Born in Bristol, Grant rose to fame in classics such as North by Northwest and To Catch a Thief.

‘It’s not often a piece comes to us with a story quite this personal,’ says Henry Michallat, an auctioneer at Clevedon Salerooms. ‘This watch is a lovely reminder that even one of Hollywood's biggest names never forgot where, and who, they came from.’

The watch in question is an 18-carat gold, Bueche Girod ladies bracelet-style treasure, likely made in the 1970s. It has Roman numerals on its face and a lapis lazuli crown.

Charity seems to be the flavour of the month. On September 28, four unique, gem-set Rolex Oyster Perpetual Cosmograph Daytona watches are heading to auction to raise money for the brand’s Perpetual Planet Initiative.

The watches come in four colourways, each one inspired by a different season, and the proceeds will go towards the Federer Foundations and Re:Wild.

The former was founded by Roger Federer and champions early learning for children in southern Africa and Switzerland; the latter, founded by Leonardo DiCaprio, protects and restores wild eco-systems. The tennis player and the actor are longtime Rolex testimonies.

If the ‘Fab Four’ aren't your speed, the first proper wristwatch of Zinedine Zidane, the French football manager and former player, is coming up for sale tomorrow. His Cartier Pasha will be offered in Christie’s Rare Watches auction and proceeds will benefit ELA International — of which he has been a patron for more than 25 years.

The charity is a non-profit organisation that coordinates research and funding to fight leukodystrophies (rare genetic diseases of the central nervous system). Zidane’s watch features a stainless steel bracelet and sapphire cabochon-set pushers.

‘This Cartier Pasha was the first watch I bought for myself with my first salary when I was playing in Bordeaux,’ says Zidane. ‘I purchased it nearly 35 years ago and it has remained with me ever since… I hope it will also hold special meaning for the person who acquires it.’

Here's a look at some of what you'll find inside.

Choices, choices

With a seemingly endless array to select from, Country Life contributors reveal the tulips they will be planting for spring.

Catch a falling leaf

Charles Quest-Ritson is hoping for warm days and cool nights to fuel a spectacular display of countryside autumn colour

Who let the dogs out?

Music and Man’s best friend go hand in hand. Harry Pearson collars canines calling the tune

Well, hello Salar!

David Profumo heads for the West Country in the wake of his fishing hero Ted Hughes

Luxury

Jonathan Self is dazzled by Coco Chanel jewellery and Tiffany Daneff is talking trugs

George Saumarez Smith’s favourite painting

The architect chooses a bold graphic linocut of the feline form

Country-house treasure

John Goodall admires the revival of the Tapestry Drawing Room at Castle Howard, North Yorkshire

The legacy

Tiffany Daneff pays tribute to the family who cooked up the secret recipe for Pulhamite rock

Grandstand views

An inspirational outlook makes for a magnificent garden at Mount St John, North Yorkshire. Kendra Wilson surveys the scene

Hot pots

Amelia Thorpe picks standout planters to showcase top tulips

Forever flowers

Blooms of Hydrangea paniculata are a must for every garden, suggests Charles Quest-Ritson

Why build a new country house

George Saumarez Smith weighs up the allure of a new country house in place of an historic pile

A point of prospect

John Goodall finds a striking new memorial tower worth the climb at Doddington Place, Kent

Picture this

Independent rural cinemas will always offer the best big-screen experience for Madeleine Silver

Interiors

A feast of design ideas awaits visitors to key events such as Focus/26, reveals Amelia Thorpe

Back to the future

Harry Pearson meets the art conservators giving historic paintings a new lease of life

Shell we?

The secret to dressed-crab perfection is keeping it simple, as Tom Parker Bowles reveals

Lord of the flies

Fruit flies are more than a mere pest — Ian Morton reveals their critical role in medical research

New series: Countryside mysteries

Otherworldly cramp balls — or King Alfred’s cakes — fire the imagination of John Wright

Travel

Gabriella Le Breton unpacks the winter latest, from new Swiss ski lifts to the high life in Courchevel

Arts & antiques

Benvenuto Cellini’s golden Saliera is a 16th-century cellar worth its salt, as Carla Passino discovers

And much more

Who would have thought that a mirror could have sex appeal? Historic paint expert and interior designer Edward Bulmer does — at least when it comes to the Drawing Room at Northumberland House, which he calls a ‘sexy mix of mirror, gilt and sparkling coloured glass’. What survives today is only a fragment of the Percy family’s opulent London residence, saved from ‘the wrecking ball’, as he puts it, that destroyed the rest and now preserved at the V&A Museum, London SW7.

Even in partial form, these mirrors retain a powerful charge. It is easy to imagine the social choreography that once unfolded within the room. Under candlelight, a glance could be caught, angled and returned in many ways; a fan flickered; an eyebrow raised. Mirrors create, as historian Sabine Melchior-Bonnet puts it, a ‘fictive space in which an imaginary scenario is played out’, a setting for a game of love and ‘seduction’, or war and peace, as the case may be.

Elsewhere, the looking-glass was employed as a tool of restraint. In her memoir Wait for Me!, Deborah, Duchess of Devonshire recalled the hours spent training to be a debutante, learning how ‘to stand still, to sit still, and not to fidget — which was far harder than it sounds’. Here, the mirror was less an object of admiration than a quiet instructor in composure. ‘Mirrors have always shaped social behaviour,’ concurs Rupert Bevan, a leading specialist in antique mirrors and glass. ‘Today, they still subtly choreograph how people gather, pause or orient themselves, especially in transition spaces such as halls, staircases and drawing rooms.’

That choreography, however, was once reserved for the few. In the 18th century, long before electricity, a large piece of glass was a feat of engineering and a declaration of wealth: sheets of Venetian and, later, French glass were carried across Europe at vast expense. Consequently, as Bulmer explains, ‘the amount of mirrored glass you owned was a very obvious status signal, just as with the number and quality of candles you burnt’. In the ‘Mirror Room’ at Kensington Palace in London — the colloquial name for The King’s Gallery and adjoining Cupola Room, used for receptions, audiences and courtly display — mirrors became instruments of power, rather than decoration. They were designed to extend space, broadcast wealth and double the presence of courtiers, uniforms and jewellery. Visitors saw not only themselves, but their place within society, reinforced by the deliberate placing of a mirror.

Mirrors were positioned not for private vanity, but to amplify light and sociability. Most commonly, they appeared as pier glasses, set between windows to catch and return daylight or candlelight, doubling brightness and extending space. Others rose magnificently as overmantels, integrated above chimneypieces and treated as part of the wall architecture itself, or on the back of shutters to create one long, extended sparkling scheme. As furniture dealer and interior designer Jermaine Gallacher wrote tellingly in Vogue: ‘A mirror should be more than the surface we pass by.’ In short, they remain one of the most powerful ways to shape a space.

How they were framed also mattered. According to furniture historian Adam Bowett, by the early 18th century, the grand frames of looking-glasses had become architectural constructions in their own right, designed to organise rooms and animate social life, rather than simply surround glass.

Blenheim Palace in Oxfordshire provides a classic example. Here, the effect of the magnificent Baroque pier-glass mirrors in the State Rooms was not about intimacy, but command. The visitor is made acutely aware of space, symmetry and order — the visual language of governance — thanks in large part to the ornate frames designed by the Duchess of Marlborough’s ‘oracle’, as she called him, the royal cabinetmaker James Moore. His authority lay not in signatures, which were rare, but in scale, patronage and recognition. Even Thomas Chippendale did not routinely sign his work, despite regarding mirror frames as among his most prestigious and costly commissions. Nevertheless, as Bulmer points out, ‘account books of the period frequently show glass having cost well in excess of the fancy carved frames it was set in’.

Sir Alastair Pilkington, who invented the float-glass process in the 1950s, effectively democratised what was once a rare luxury. Bulmer reveals that he tends to allow for a mirror in most rooms, because ‘they are cost-efficient in terms of providing incident at scale compared with large pictures — and, of course, they suit most tastes’.

As furniture-maker Jonathan Sainsbury observes, an 18th-century country house was designed from the outset to accept the furniture, mirrors and objects fashionable at the time. ‘What’s interesting is that the same thinking has returned,’ he reflects. Those tastes now seem ever-more oriented towards mirrors, thanks to a new wave of post-covid, post-crypto country-house buyers faced with acres of spare wall space. ‘Mirrors have become very important items,’ believes Charlie Thomas, UK group director at Bonhams. ‘They are seen to work as functional art and add to the atmosphere.’ This is particularly the case if the glass is foxed.

This type of glass, which mists over time and was once dismissed as flawed, is now prized as a trophy: it is seen as proof of age, lineage and survival, with a frisson of ghost-story glamour. ‘An antiqued mirror gives a much more subtle and soft look, with character and a feeling of warmth,’ explains Bevan. ‘The effect is more organic, with not one panel the same.’ In effect, it re-creates the softness of candle-light on glass, a quality that remains flattering in an age of mobile-phone selfies. Where once a raised eyebrow caught in a mirror might convey a message across a room, today, that image can travel far beyond it via social media. ‘The rise of the selfie has perhaps heightened self-awareness, but, in refined interiors, mirrors tend to soften rather than sharpen self- consciousness, offering atmosphere rather than confrontation,’ Bevan believes.

A renewed appetite for mirrors sits alongside a broader shift in thinking: a growing determination to preserve great country houses in their entirety, rather than carving them up. This inevitably brings fresh attention to how their walls, rooms and sequences once worked together.

When Nick Ashley-Cooper, 12th Earl of Shaftesbury, unexpectedly inherited both his title and St Giles House, his ancestral home in Dorset, he was DJing in New York. The house had been left derelict for decades. Working with his neighbour Sainsbury, a specialist in historically accurate mirrors, he came to regard them not as decorative afterthoughts, but as integral to the identity of the house and the way its rooms functioned. The originals had long since been sold and were ‘arguably the finest English mirrors of their type ever made,’ believes Sainsbury. ‘It became clear that, for the rooms to function properly again, the mirrors would need to be made identically for their original locations,’ he adds. This marks another shift in the social life of mirrors. ‘Replica’, once a pejorative, is no longer a dirty word.

If mirrors affect the behaviour of a room and its contents, so, too, do they influence the behaviour of those within it. In the 18th century, to be polished was not merely to be well dressed, but to be socially refined, a word that draws directly on the physical act of polishing surfaces, glass among them. Think of a glance adjusted, a posture corrected, a gesture softened. For servants, however, mirrors were among the most difficult household objects to clean. The 19th-century servant diarist Hannah Cullwick repeatedly recorded having to wipe away soot after evenings of company, together with the pride taken in producing a shine.

Mirrors also have a habit of misbehaving. By candlelight, reflections could waver or double; a face might appear where none was expected. It is hardly surprising that they slipped easily into ghost stories. In many houses, mirrors were traditionally covered with sheets during periods of mourning and were rarely placed opposite beds, lest they weaken the spirit or invite restless dreams. At Blickling Hall, Norfolk, where Anne Boleyn’s ghost is said to return, sightings are often described as fleeting and indirect: figures glimpsed in mirrors or glass, rather than confronted face to face. At Glamis Castle in Angus, Scotland, the Earl of Strathmore once ordered a mirror be boarded over altogether after a spirit was said to be trapped within it.

If such unease clung to mirrors in some places, Sir John Soane positively revelled in it. At his home, now Sir John Soane’s Museum, London WC2, he played with reflection and visual illusion impishly, placing mirrors above bookshelves and within arches so that rooms appear to open where none exist. Visitors still ask guides how to reach these phantom spaces. Here, the mirror’s ghostly tricks are used for wit, creating a deliciously labyrinthine sense of depth in a remarkably small house. In doing so, Soane neatly demonstrated the late Duchess of Devonshire’s belief that ‘a house must be full of light, movement and people if it is to feel alive’.

Mirrors, after all, keep rooms animated even after their occupants have left — whether the legacy they leave behind is ghostly, theatrical or, indeed, a rather provocative one

This feature originally appeared in the May 13, 2026, issue of Country Life. Click here for more information on how to subscribe.

'An actor who knows his business ought to be able to make the London telephone directory sound enthralling.' So said Sir Donald Sinden, the late British actor renowned for his distinctive voice, commanding stage presence and remarkable versatility. That voice was his greatest treasure, honed by a training exercise as a young actor in which he tested his lungs by making sure he could be heard while bellowing from a quarter of a mile away across the South Downs. The result is a voice that his one-time co-star Judi Dench described as 'a Christmas pudding of a voice, soaked in brandy.'

Sinden — whose home is currently up for sale — reportedly fell into acting by chance during the Second World War, stepping into his cousin’s role in an amateur production. Before long, he was appearing in films in the 1950s alongside some of the era’s biggest stars. His credits included The Cruel Sea with Jack Hawkins, Mogambo with Clark Gable, Ava Gardner and Grace Kelly, and Doctor in the House and Doctor at Large with Dirk Bogarde.

Sinden became a household name after the stellar start to his career, but raised his domestic profile still further in the 1970s and 1980s as he starred in the popular sitcoms Two’s Company and Never the Twain. In later years, he again became a familiar face on the small screen with his role in the legal drama, Judge John Deed.

The screen might have brought the great fame but Sinden was happiest treading the boards, note least performing Shakespeare with the RSC. He sunk his teeth into a myriad of high-profile roles over the years, from the Duke of York in The Wars of the Roses and Benedick in Much Ado About Nothing, to King Lear, Malvolio in Twelfth Night, and Othello. For all that he still believed that comedy and farce are harder to do than tragedy. 'Any old fool can play Hamlet,' he once said, 'but to succeed in farce is the highest accolade you can hope for.'

His passion for theatre even extended to the props. According to the Guardian, Donald would regularly appear on stage with a treasured theatrical item: Henry Irving’s boots, Fred Terry’s eyeglass or John Martin Harvey’s hat apparently all found their way into his own props department.

He worked continuously — he claims to have only had five weeks of unemployment in 60 years — and earned a knighthood in 1997.

And throughout almost his entire career, there was once constant: the countryside idyll where he lived, a place with the unlikely name of Rat’s Castle, near Tenterden in Kent, which is for sale for £1,000,000 via Harding Green.

Despite its title, Rat’s Castle is very much a house — albeit one with a rather extraordinary history, given that this is a man who rubbed shoulders with Dirk Bogarde and Richard Burton, and who counted Dench, Penelope Keith, and Ronnie Corbett.

The house is being sold reluctantly, with Sinden's granddaughter, Harriet, having put it on the market. It's a place that holds many happy memories of the Christmas, Easter and summer holidays she spent there as a child – and more recent times too. 'The Easter egg hunts in the garden were epic,' she says. 'We have this huge hedgerow maze so the Easter bunny did very well hiding all the eggs there. And what’s nice is we’ve continued that with our kids as well.'

The house has clearly had something of a makeover since Sinden's days at Rat’s Castle. This is no theatrical time warp. The period features are still very much there — exposed beams and lovely fireplaces. But the interiors are light, bright and modern.

The kitchen and two reception rooms are the heart of the home. The walls are lined with bookshelves built by Sinden to accommodate his book collection. 'There’s a bookshelf over the doors looking out over the terrace from the dining room that fits Shakespeare scripts — tiny ones — perfectly,' says Harriet.

She fondly remembers the family sitting around the dining room table doing crosswords together. 'Being the youngest grandchild at the time, and living in a family of actors, trying to get a word in edgeways, was not the easiest thing,' she laughs.

Also on the ground floor are two bedrooms, a bathroom and a loo. Upstairs, there are three further bedrooms, each with their own bathroom.

Outside, there’s a garden house which Harriet and her family used to call the rabbit hutch. It was, she says, Sinden's man cave which was full of his theatrical memorabilia.

It’s still put to good use and 'provides exceptional additional space, featuring a fully equipped games room, workspace, and flexible accommodation for guests', according to Harding Green.

The garden itself is quite the oasis, featuring a hot tub and far-reaching views of the surrounding countryside.

'He put a lot of effort into the garden for my grandmother because she had great aspirations of matching Sissinghurst Castle Garden,' says Harriet. 'They actually planted the yew hedge. He admired his work of cutting the edges very straight.'

Natasha Moore, of Harding Green, says: 'What makes Rat’s Castle so remarkable is not simply its beauty, but the sense of history and creative spirit woven into its fabric.

'Once the home of the celebrated actor Sir Donald Sinden, and distinguished by its coveted blue plaque, it has welcomed generations of family, friends, and fascinating guests, yet it remains wonderfully warm, welcoming, and unpretentious.

'Its wisteria-clad façade, elegant interiors, and breathtaking views across the Isle of Oxney are the epitome of idyllic English country life, while the generous accommodation, enchanting gardens, and versatile garden house make it exceptionally liveable.'

Rat’s Castle is for sale at £1,000,000 via Harding Green - see more details.

Rampant lions take artful poses, a wolf plays a trick on a crane, and excitable dogs chase their own tails: the Bayeux Tapestry, commissioned shortly after the Battle of Hastings to convey a Norman version of the conquest of England, depicts more animals than humans. Around 200 of them are horses — royal mounts, workhorses and cavalry — all stitched onto 70 metres of linen in wool dyed with woad, madder and weld. As they charge through the embroidery’s nine panels, they pass a barking, quacking, roaring menagerie of over 500 other creatures: from frogs, foxes and fire-breathing dragons to what one commentator describes as a pair of Monty Pythonesque dead parrots.

The Bayeux Tapestry and its extraordinary bestiary is currently on view at the British Museum until July 11 2027. This visit, the first in almost 1,000 years, is something of a homecoming. Though commissioned in Normandy in the 1070s, most likely for display in the Bayeux Cathedral, the tapestry was sewn on English soil. It was a decision intended, not to rub our noses in the victory of William, Duke of Normandy (William the Conqueror) over King Harold II, but to take advantage of Canterbury’s reputation for superior artisanship.

At first glance, the inclusion of this animal kingdom, much of it occupying the margins, appears to be decorative. ‘Pairs of animals in compartments were a traditional form of ornament on textiles,’ explains Gale Owen-Crocker, author of The Design of the Bayeux Tapestry (2026) and Professor Emerita of Anglo-Saxon Culture at the University of Manchester. Creatures of fur and feather, both real and fabulous, were a familiar feature of 11^th-century design. Even within the tapestry’s story, sculpted animals embellish architecture, form the figureheads of ships and are carved into the seats of claw-footed thrones.

Yet the animals frolicking in the borders offer function as well as form, appearing to comment on the central story. They are like a string of colourful emojis inserted beneath a status update, or — for those who remember them — a medieval version of the Muppets’ chattering critics Statler and Waldorf, appraising the action from their theatre balcony.

The marginalia help indicate ‘the emotions and characteristics of the persons’, says Prof Owen-Crocker. The howling dog or wolf beneath King Edward’s coffin conveys grief, she suggests, while the peacocks over William and Harold’s meeting in Rouen hint at the hubris that will contribute to Harold’s downfall. Sometimes the animals seem to play a more lighthearted role. When Harold feasts in Bosham, for example, jaws and beaks in the margins are also filled with food.

Even the smallest details were crucial to telling the story. ‘Most medieval men read pictures rather than words,’ points out Arthur C. Wright in Decoding the Bayeux Tapestry (2019): the tapestry’s Latin tituli would be lost on them. ‘The animals and birds provide the sound-track,’ he adds. ‘And they also seem at times to speak directly to the viewer, to us.’

Vignettes taken from Aesop’s fables, suggesting moral failings or foreshadowing future events, pepper the tapestry, providing a brief diversion from the main action while reinforcing its principal themes. According to R. Howard Bloch, author of Animal fables, the Bayeux Tapestry and the making of the Anglo-Norman world (2005), they reinforce this central tension between human and animalistic urges as the two claimants compete for the throne. ‘Almost all the fables stage some form of drama pitting bodily appetite against the logical faculties,’ he says.

So keen is the tapestry to moralise, Aesop’s fox and crow pop up three times — the foolish bird repeatedly dropping its prized food into the jaws of the fox as it falls for the animal’s flattery. ‘It is hard to believe that the fable of the fox and the crow was not deliberately included as an ironic commentary on the unfolding drama,’ argues Andrew Bridgeford in The Hidden History of the Bayeux Tapestry (2004). But was it Harold or William that was tricked by the cunning fox? That all depends which side you’re on, Bridgeford suggests.

A cast of obliging animals also help set the scene, offering insights into medieval rural life. Livestock and game prance in the margins and a horse churns the earth with a harrow. ‘I believe this is the earliest illustration of a horse collar that enables horses to be used for draught,’ points out Prof Owen-Crocker. There’s also seed-scattering and bird-scaring, copied from bible manuscripts. ‘Somebody is sowing the seeds of a dynasty for himself,’ she proposes, ‘and doesn’t want any interference.’

Elsewhere, the animals help immerse us in courtly life and the country pursuits of the nobility. Harold rides through the second scene bearing a falcon, with collared hounds bounding ahead, while hare and deer are chased in the margins. Such details also serve as a reminder that the Battle of Hastings took place in autumn, when hawking and hunting were in full swing, and they reinforce the central theme of pursuit and dominion. Some images are overtly violent. A bear tied to a tree and attacked with a sword may simply reference the popular pastime of bear baiting, but it’s also possible it functions much like the fables: emphasising the animal instincts of the combatants, where aggression has overtaken reason.

The unfortunate bear is one of several exotic animals lurking in the borders, sure to have delighted eagle-eyed viewers. Two Bactrian camels with dark coats hover over William in an early scene — symbols, perhaps, of international trade; while the numerous lions, tongues lolling in defence of their territory or adopting heraldic postures, are most likely emblems of royalty that interact with the central story by evoking courage and strength.

One thing that has not changed in 1,000 years is that ‘big’ denotes ‘better’. Stallions — especially the well-endowed — are used to confer status, and, as one would expect in an embroidery commissioned by the Normans, William gets the steed with the largest appendage. ‘Riding a stallion suggests masculine assertiveness, especially when accompanied by spurs and a bird of prey on the hand,’ explains Prof Owen-Crocker. When Harold’s ship is blown off course and he is captured by Guy of Ponthieu and held for ransom, his mount changes from a stallion to a gelding or mare, reflecting, she adds, his ‘temporary reduction in status and power’. Guy gets even rougher treatment for this diplomatic disaster and is mounted on a mare with ass’s ears and mane, chiming, she says, ‘with a prolonged portrayal of Guy as a fool’.

Comic interludes such as this are offset with moments when darker forces seem at play as mythical creatures descend on the tapestry, from part-human centaurs and sphinxes to two-headed dragons: figureheads for malevolent forces whose presence issues a warning. Such beasts may suggest the conflict between intellect and savagery or reflect the Norman view of Harold as a two-faced traitor who broke his oath to uphold William’s claim to the English throne; while fork-tongued wyverns spouting bile hint at the venomous rumours and lies undermining William’s authority.

But for all these formidable creatures, it’s the open-beaked birds who perhaps speak to us most directly. As they flap their striped wings between the wobbly-lined borders and crane their necks to view the action, we can almost hear their cacophony. Their reaction to the story, writes Prof Owen-Crocker in Squawk Talk (2006), is much like our own. The tapestry amuses, fascinates, delights and horrifies us ‘just like the feathered watchers in the border’, she says. ‘We are the birds; the birds are us.’

The Country Life Quiz is published every weekday at 4pm.

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The summer might have been hot and sunny, but there was a definite gloom in the property market analyses that emanated from Britain's top estate agents over the last few months.

'The summer slowdown deepens' wrote Knight Frank's Liam Bailey at the end of July, while the research team at Savills lamented that 'levels of supply remain high and sales are slow', pointing to Zoopla figures that show three-fifths of houses put on the market in 2026 so far remain unsold.

Ongoing wars, rising mortgage rates, an uncertain economy and political change all feed in to this wider picture, but Strutt & Parker's Matthew Henderson explained the impasse succinctly. The prime property market, he wrote in his summer review, 'continues to suffer from either buyers or sellers differing market views,' explaining that sellers remain convinced that prices should be rising, while buyers are just as certain that a 'correction in values' is imminent. 'This has led to slow moving markets across the country where it takes an ever-increasing time to agree a price and complete a transaction.'

Every so often, though, a house comes up for sale which throws all those reports on their heads — and the Red House in Godalming, for sale through Knight Frank at £1.35 million, is the perfect example.

Julie Harding covered the launch in the print edition of Country Life last Wednesday, but by the time the September 2 issue hit the newsstands, the Red House was sold (the issue in question, incidentally, is absolutely superb and full of timely things about the Norman influence on Britain).

A cursory look at the listing — designed by by Sir Edwin Lutyens, 12 bedrooms, almost 7,000 sq ft of space plus a leafy, secluded plot in a sought-after part of the Home Counties — might make you think 'well, of course it did', but as you'll see from the pictures here, this is a house that hit the market with some caveats to do with its condition. There is work to be done.

The Victorian Society describes the Red House as an ‘early and seminal house’ by Lutyens, which has both a Grade II*-listing and a reputation as being one of the most inventive domestic works of one of Britain's finest architects.

It was built in 1897–99 for the Revd Henry James Evans, a retired housemaster and honorary chaplain of nearby Charterhouse School (the house looks over the school's site).

Constructed in red brick with dramatic chimney stacks, it stands on a steeply sloping hillside with a garden of just under an acre, the design of which was influenced by Gertrude Jekyll.

Having been in the hands of the current owners since 1975, and (according to Tim Harriss of Knight Frank), was reroofed, replumbed and rewired in 1991/1992 with a grant from English Heritage.

There are beautiful original fireplaces, joinery and windows, and a wonderful Arts-and-Crafts grace and beauty to the architecture and interiors. That said, you'll also see stained and peeling walls and ceilings, and plenty of higgledy-piggledy bits here and there that feel like they might need attention. This is not a house for somebody expecting slick perfection. But it is a house for somebody who loves period charm.

Outside, there's also a lot to love. The gardens, set into the hill and amid mature trees, are not listed as designed by the great Gertrude Jekyll, whose house at Munstead Wood is just outside Godalming, but they are certainly influenced by her, with their series of terraces, pathways and charming planting to create a succession of 'garden rooms'.

All that considered, and added to the fact that at this price in this postcode you'd normally be shopping for a four-bedroom new build home, it's hardly surprising that the Red House sold so quickly. We wish the new owners well, and can't wait to see what they do with the place.

See The Red House in Godalming at Knight Frank's website.

In recent years, ‘Ottolenghi’ has become a byword, used almost exclusively by middle-class dinner party hosts, for ‘I am better than you’. It stands for quality, flavour and, above all, almost unpalatable levels of smugness. No longer do people in the UK prepare ‘Middle Eastern food’, they now prepare ‘Ottolenghi’ food.

‘Drama in the mouth’ is the cooking philosophy of the restaurateur and author. But who is the man behind the moniker? The one who is responsible, surely, for the largest uptick in supermarket sales of tahini and pomegranate molasses this country has ever seen.

He is a flamboyant dresser, for starters. When I meet Yotam (so famous is his last name, that I have momentarily forgotten he will even have a first name) the 57-year-old is beaming, wearing a white shirt patterned with pink turtles. We are here to talk about his new cookbook, Ottolenghi Simple Too, which he assures me that even I, a chronic fish-fingers-in-the-airfryer type of cook, will be able to make something from. The recipes look delicious.

‘This is a book that’s been percolating in the back of my mind since the first Simple, which was published in 2008,’ the Israeli-born British chef and restaurateur says. ‘I am always asking myself: how do I make the food super accessible for a busy world and people who are just looking to find a way into the kitchen that is not too demanding?’

Along with his colleague and co-author Verena Lochmuller, he has collected recipes ‘that are really easy and simple’. ‘It all came together into something that I’m so proud of, because I think it’s really tempting, but also very achievable,’ he says.

This emphasis on easy and simple recipes may be a product of Yotam becoming a father. He has two boys, aged 11 and 13, who he shares with his ex-husband (the pair divorced last Christmas). ‘I cook for my kids very often and for them I know I need to get dinner on the table quite quickly,’ he says. Has being the children of Ottolenghi gifted them a sophisticated palette at all? ‘Unfortunately the answer is no. They love their chicken nuggets,’ he says.

It’s hard to imagine Yotam doing any other job, particularly one without lashings of za’atar, but he has an extremely varied CV. First a stint in the Israel Defence Force, then a short period working for newspapers, before he eventually came to London to study French pastry cooking at Le Cordon Bleu. It’s certainly not the classic chef pipeline.

‘I was planning on becoming an academic, because that is my background,’ he recalls. Yotam’s father was a Chemistry professor and his mother a high school principal. ‘I was thinking that this was going to be my world,’ he says, but after a degree and a masters, he decided the world of academia was too insular for him. ‘I wanted to speak a language that everyone understands. Food is that — whether a person likes cooking or they don’t, they still eat.’

When he hosts, he does still feel the pressure. ‘To put a meal on the table for a group of people is not easy… I still get stressed because I want it to be the best it can, but I also know that the expectations are quite high.’ Without those expectations, however, he thinks ‘you kind of lose your touch.’ Yotam definitely hasn't lost his.

Your aesthetic hero

One of my closest friends, Ivo Bisignano, was a Sicilian designer. He passed away a few years ago, and we worked together on many projects. He really understood food, and I loved how he dressed. He was like a style guru for me, in the sense that anything he touched, he did so well. He was definitely my inspiration in many ways.

An exhibition that has really impressed me

I saw a Louise Bourgeois exhibition in Bilbao, Spain, more than a decade ago. She had her famous spiders. It just stayed with me as something so powerful and intense. How they occupy a space in the room is in a very science fiction way.

The last thing of note that you bought for yourself

I bought some pink birkenstocks for the summer.

A possession you would never sell

I have a tiny statue that I have from childhood, which is one of these office toys of a man balancing. You cannot, whatever you do, push him off centre. I inherited it from my dad.

Your favourite painting

Recently, because the death of David Hockney reminded me, I'd say I really love his works from California. The collages of bits of torn paper he made of the roads and deserts, I found those very impactful. I was exposed to them at a young age and they really shape, somehow, this distorted view of reality which is familiar and unfamiliar. I found them very powerful and I just love them. They really take you somewhere but they also challenge you.

A book you found inspiring

I just read Whistler, by Ann Patchett. I found it very inspiring and very readable, and I love her in general.

The music that you work to

Yesterday I was listening to a lot of music while I was cooking. Do you know Christine and the Queens? I always listen to their music. I don't understand French, but I find it beautiful to listen to.

The last podcast you listened to

I listen to The Rest is History quite religiously.

The person that would play you in a film of your life

Jeff Goldblum.

What you’d take with you to a desert island

A good knife, olive oil and a bowl of lemons.

The thing that gets you up on the morning

I get really excited about starting my day. I can’t wait to come to work, because I love my job so much. I'm not just saying it, I really do feel very excited to come to work.

The items you collect

If I do collect anything then it would be ceramic bowls. They’ve taken over my kitchen.

A hotel to could go back and back to

We opened a restaurant in Geneva a few years ago in the Mandarin Oriental Hotel. I go there and I don’t pay and get great food. I love that hotel, although I realise it might not be affordable to everyone.

The best present you’ve ever received

Recently someone came back from Paris and bought me some chocolates from my favourite chocolate shop. It’s called Plaq. It’s a very bougie little chocolate shop. They do very exotic flavours and they taste so good. I highly recommend.

The most memorable meal you've ever eaten

I went to Mallorca a few years ago and went to a restaurant called Sa Foradada. It does paella and the view is incredible. It sits on a cliff overlooking a cove. You can only get there by boat or if you walk down a hill for an hour. It's just the most incredible location.

'Ottolenghi Simple Too' by Yotam Ottolenghi and Verena Lochmuller (Ebury Press, £30) is out now. All photography by Jonathan Lovekin.

Charlotte Anne Fletcher was just 12 years old when she inherited her family's business. Her early years were split between London and the more tranquil surrounds of Peel Hall (not to be confused with Kenyon Peel Hall, in the same Lancashire village) — a new-build property, reportedly designed by Charles Barry for her grandfather, Matthew Fletcher.

The Fletchers’ wealth came from coal and it was this 'black gold' that Charlotte inherited following the untimely deaths of her mother, Anne, in February 1857, and her father, Jacob Fletcher Fletcher, two months later.

In 1870, after her guardians released her inheritance, Charlotte spent some of her mammoth wealth on Park Hall, a beautiful Elizabethan house on the edge of the market town of Oswestry, in Shropshire. A Latin motto was inscribed above the front door: 'Quod tibi fieri non vis Alteri feccris', or, 'Do not do unto others what you do not want done to yourself'.

In 1866, 20-year-old Charlotte had married the Hon Robert Wellington Stapleton-Cotton. Though she bore him two children, the marriage was far from a happy one and Charlotte petitioned for divorce in 1879, citing abandonment. The case was reported in the national press. Evidence included an astonishing, three-year-old letter from Stapleton-Cotton:

‘I have behaved to you as badly as a man could do, and by the time you receive this I shall be far away with another woman. You may blame me, but you must own that we were never suited to each other. Forget me if you can, and think of me as never having belonged to you. It will be no use in to make us go back, as nothing will ever make us retract from the step we have taken. If you can be kind to my brother and sister as regards to the allowance they have had from me, I implore you to do so.’

A divorce was granted, though it appears that Charlotte was left to pick up the costs. It was to be one of the best decisions of her life.

In 1886, she remarried. This time, happily, to Major Alfred Wynne Corrie of Itchen Abbas, Hampshire. By this time, Charlotte was so respected for her charitable deeds that the Mayor of Oswestry presented the happy couple with a diamond star, on behalf of the town.

It was a great union. The couple set up home in Park Hall, managing to modernise it (including installing a lift in 1910), without compromising any of its historic charm. Wynne Corrie went on to become Mayor of Oswestry, a Deputy Lieutenant and Justice of the Peace, dedicating his life to the service of his new community.

In 1903, they invited Country Life to visit Park Hall. The writer was enchanted, describing it as ‘commodious and comfortable’, and a ‘mansion of very excellent and original character’. Photographs from the article, reproduced here, show intricate and detailed woodwork and carvings throughout the principal rooms.

Nine years later, the couple celebrated their 25th wedding anniversary at home.

On June 18, 1913, Charlotte was in the lift, heading downstairs for dinner, when its rope snapped. She died two days later from shock and her injuries.

Alfred put Park Hall up for sale a year later, by which time the First World War was looming large. It failed to sell and so, like others, he offered his land to the military for training purposes. He then volunteered for service and served as an honorary Major in the Volunteer Defence Force for the duration of the war.

In the ensuing years, Park Hall’s land became a temporary home to thousands and thousands of men — including the poet Wilfred Owen (1893-1918) — as they perfected the terrifying art of trench warfare. It eventually housed a sizeable prisoner of war camp.

Months after the hostilities had finally ceased, another disaster struck. On December 27, 1918, a fire took hold in the chapel. It quickly spread through the wooden hall, consuming the entire building in hours.

Wynne Corrie died four months later. He had remarried in 1916, but was laid to rest with Charlotte in his childhood home of Itchen Abbas.

In August 1919, the Government announced that it had purchased Park Hall’s land for an undisclosed sum from the executors of Wynne Corrie’s estate. The plan was to use it as a training ground for demobilised soldiers who wanted to become market gardeners, but nothing came to fruition. Instead, an existing hospital continued to operate; during the Second World War it was used as a military camp and, after that, by troops on National Service.

The land has finally found a semblance of peace in the 21st century, as a new estate of 110 houses. And Park Hall’s former farm is now an adventure park where children can interact with the animals, drive small tractors and run around in trenches as they are taught the history of the land on which they stand.

The Country Life Image Archive contains more than 150,000 images documenting British culture and heritage, from 1897 to the present day. To search and purchase images directly from the Image Archive, please register here.

I like to think that I demand little in life for health and happiness besides a working fireplace, access to Spotify Premium and a functional railway system. Yet like all human beings, I have my gripes. Three things inspire opprobrium: British Airways; the website via which our office is forced to reserve a desk; and Southern Rail. Of the three, the latter is the worst, by the kind of country mile that it seems unable to journey through without breaking down.

UK trains, once a symbol of industrial advance, have become a laughing stock. At best, they are slow and the price of tickets ludicrously expensive. At worst, they are the bane of Britain, costing £1.5 billion in lost productivity each year. South-East England, our hottest region, is worst hit, with derailments and faltering infrastructure causing entire lines to shut down. Compensation via the Delay Repay scheme now surpasses £150 million per annum.

Patience is wearing thin — particularly for those in commuter towns who are also reliant on cars and forced to contend with sky-high parking costs up to five days a week (most station car parks now charge some £10 a day). The Telegraph revealed in July that passengers had lost at least 42 million hours to delays and cancellations since last summer, a figure no doubt matched by the hours spent lamenting the problem. Trains are both a political lightning rod (Labour and the Green Party want to renationalise our railways) and a flashpoint at dinner parties. If all roads lead to Rome, all railroads must lead to anger-management classes.

Successive governments have promised track upgrades and a ‘streamlining’ of ticket prices; yet Labour’s strategy — to bring the latter down and funnel all projects through a single channel — is managerial, at best. It will take more than one term in office to see through any pledges. To move past such sclerosis, the debate ought to move to design. Most of our carriers have a monopoly on the line that they serve. Using an Open Access system to spur competition — and build better trains — is the fastest way to bring down prices. The Government should also make track upgrades a national priority, diverting public money currently being spent elsewhere. Trust me: it’s better spent here.

In the meantime, one could do worse than to take a leaf out of Stop! That! Train!, the cinematic event du jour co-produced by RuPaul Charles (creator of RuPaul’s Drag Race). The film unfolds within a ‘Glamazonian Express’ train hurtling towards a ‘stormaganza’, with five drag queens manning the convoy. It is a masterclass in glamour and absurdity. We already have the latter; why not both?

Sticky fingers

More than 65 works of art have been ‘misplaced’ from the Houses of Parliament since 2024, according to reports — including a portrait of Benjamin Disraeli and a 19th-century engraving print of William Wilberforce. This is not unusual: a freedom of information request issued by The Times in 2018 found more than 220 artworks had been lost in the parliamentary post, labelled ‘missing’ on the internal system. Politicians? Nicking stuff? Well, I never!

Neither is it unusual for these to magically reappear. As my late grandfather, a man of disorderly ways, often said of misplaced bills and invoices: ‘It’ll turn up.’ We must continue to hope ‘it’ does: the parliamentary collection is said to be worth more than £10 million. Nothing to be sniffed at, although mere pennies besides the collections housed at various members’ clubs (The George in Mayfair owns several works by David Hockney), and where sticky fingers have allegedly pocketed stuff every now and again.

Architectural ironies

An urgent repair order was issued last month to the proprietor of Mentmore Towers, a Grade I-listed building in Buckinghamshire that was once home to the Rothschild family. The home is uninhabited and the roof deteriorating.

Owned since 1999 by property developer Simon Halabi (net worth: £2 billion in 2008), plans to build a hotel and conference centre on site never materialised and the country club and golf course that used to be on the site closed in 2015. The house is of the utmost significance, being the principle extant work of Joseph Paxton (designer of the Crystal Palace) and arguably the pinnacle of Jacobethan Revival style in England. It could be the next Wentworth Woodhouse. Why isn’t it?

From this debacle, however, one of the funnier architectural ironies of 2026 has arisen. Mentmore Towers was used as the location of Wayne Manor in Christopher Nolan’s Batman Begins from 2005; bat droppings were identified by Historic England during its site inspection, prompting the issue of a compulsory bat survey.

You reap what you sow.

This feature originally appeared in the September 2, 2026, issue of Country Life. Click here for more information on how to subscribe.

My father was never too interested in cars, but he has always liked things. Contraptions fascinate him, whether they are aircraft from the Second World War, or lawn mowers, or CD players. If it spins, or vibrates, or moves, or takes an input and produces an output, he will stare at it with a watchful gaze, processing the motions of its mechanics, not always particularly interested in how it works, but seemingly overwhelmed with gratitude that it does.

My father is 79 years old. He is retired and lives in the countryside, while I am not retired and live in London. Time spent with him is rare and will get rarer, because that is what happens when people get older. What it also means is that he has seen a great many things; the Moon Landings, the assassination of JFK, the Falklands War, the trial of O. J. Simpson, and so on. What he has not seen, and was almost certainly not even aware of, is a Bugatti Veyron.

As we prowled the tiered parterre garden behind Heveningham Hall in Suffolk, weaving in and out of various Ferraris, Porsches, Bentleys and Astons Martin, I had the pleasure of being his tour guide. We stopped by the new Ferrari F80, which was described as ‘looking a bit like something from Miami Vice’. I explained how the Cosworth V12 in the Gordon Murray T.50 is one of the fastest and highest revving road-car engines ever made. I tried, and likely failed, to explain the difference between AC and Shelby Cobras.

We compared the elegance of both the original Mercedes 300 SL ‘Gullwing’ and its more modern interpretation, the SLS. I droned on about how a Ferrari F40 was the last car that Enzo Ferrari had ever signed off on, or how a Porsche 911 with lots of modifications and a big wing at the back wasn’t actually a Porsche at all, but something called a Singer DLS Turbo and how it cost many millions of pounds. I pointed at a Peugeot Type 15 Double Phaeton from 1898 and asked my father if that was the car he grew up in, because we like to have a laugh every now and then.

All of these things were interesting to me, but what was fascinating to him was the Veyron. I explained that it was the first production road car to produce 1,000bhp, and it was powered by two V8 engines welded together to create something called a W16. I told him that the indicator stalks were made of magnesium. He nodded and his eyes were wide. ‘And how fast can it go?’, he asked. ‘About 250mph,’ I replied. ‘Wow’. And then we moved on to the next thing.

Heveningham Hall is one of Suffolk’s finest buildings, and as much as it is the work of Sir Robert Taylor and James Wyatt, it is mostly the work of Jon Hunt. He purchased the Grade I-listed house in 1994 and has since spent millions on restoring and renovating the building. He also returned the gardens and grounds of some 500 acres to original plans laid out by Capability Brown. As ‘large country piles’ go, it is difficult to think of one in better condition than Heveningham, and it is also why it is such an apt landscape for this particular concours. The themes of restoration, renovation and elegance are consistent, from the front bonnet of Nick Mason’s Ferrari 250GTO to the Grade I-listed orangery. It is worth having nice things and there is value beyond money in looking after them.

A ‘Concours d’Élégance’ is a zoo, and the exhibits are made out of metal and meat. I have been to plenty and they roughly follow a similar pattern, which is that various millionaires and billionaires show off their prizes of great value and provenance and then have a lovely party at the end to congratulate themselves. At most, there is an invisible barrier between ‘us’ and ‘them’, but that is also part of the allure. Like a zoo, or museum, these are things that we do not expect to see, but take pleasure on the rare occasions that we do. The other difference is that when you go to look at a nice painting in the National Gallery, you wouldn’t expect to find its owner standing next to it, enjoying a nice glass of Champagne. Like Halloween, a concours is when that invisible line between us and them is at its most transient, and at Heveningham it is very transient indeed.

Much of the great and the good of Suffolk are here this weekend, as the show runs concurrently with the Heveningham Hall Country Fair. While the restrained magnificence of the car collecting world hides behind the main house, out front, JCBs dance and steam engines roar and whistle, while young children with faces painted like tigers bury their faces in spun sugar.

Conservation and restoration is more than just looking after old fancy buildings and old fancy cars. In this period of nationwide malaise, where it feels that so much isn’t working the way it’s supposed to, it’s also about preserving, restoring and conserving a sense of community. Not only does the Heveningham Concours and Country Fair give the locals something to do, but it also raises money for various local charities.

Further afield, the nearby Wilderness Reserve is also under the auspices of Hunt, who aims to conserve and re-wild the 4,500-acre Sibton Park estate, underwriting the efforts by providing high-end luxury guesthouses where sheep will wander in through open doors and the windows vibrate with birdsong. It sits in stark contrast to the formal lawns and pastures of Hunt’s home; an ecological yin to the man-made yang of Heveningham.

The concours event is not large and it is not long before my father is tired and in need of a glass of Pimm’s. We find a space to sit overlooking Horsepower Hill, where various drivers compete to reach the highest top speed along one of the private roads that webs across the Capability Brown parkland. The winner this year is a Porsche Taycan Turbo GT Weissach, which rips up to 127mph. A disgruntled spectator complains that an electric car is ‘cheating’ and I am sure plenty in attendance are inclined to agree with him.

Electric Porsches aside, the grounds resonate with the sound of petrol and pistons, as everything from an Aston Martin Valkyrie to modified Ford Fiestas fresh from a McDonald’s carpark races up the hill in a cloud of tire smoke. Overhead, a P-51 Mustang, the ‘Cadillac of the Sky’, swirls, dipping its wings at the assembled spectators below.

I ask my father what his favourite car of the day has been. Was it the Best-in-Show winner Bentley Blower No. 1, from 1929? Nick Mason’s Ferrari 250GTO, one of the world’s most iconic cars? A Jaguar XK120 Roadster perhaps. But his mind returned to the Bugatti Veyron. He wasn’t particularly interested in the price, the provenance, or how it worked. It just looked quite cool. It was a contraption, a machine with a purpose, that spins and vibrates and drives very quickly, but could also play his Bob Marley CD. It didn’t win a prize, and it wasn’t the most exotic car there, but that wasn’t the point. It was something he’d never seen before, which at his age, is a gift that is difficult to give.

My father was never too interested in cars, but I always have been. I remember when the Veyron first appeared, as whispers, then in a triumphant roar, in 2005. The idea of a road car having 1,000bhp was beyond exciting to a 12-year-old, who would spend his Sunday evenings watching Top Gear while his parents played bridge downstairs. It was one of many posters on my walls, and I have never got bored of seeing a Veyron in the flesh.

And so what was just another car show became something more special. A moment where my father finally understood why it was that I cared so much. As we paced up and down the immaculately presented tiers, and I pointed and explained the things that made each car special, I could see a genuine interest in his eyes and a sense of wonder. I never cared that he didn’t care about cars, but for one afternoon, we were on the same page. A special moment, in a special setting, surrounded by special things.

Heveningham Concours and the Heveningham Hall Country Fair will take place on June 26-27, 2027.

In spite of their propaganda effort with the Bayeux Tapestry, the Normans have generally had a bad press. Sweeping like mailed gauleiters across the face of Anglo-Saxon England after 1066, they were certainly violent and greedy — yet no one can deny that they had energy or that they transformed England in ways that have since rippled across the globe.

Across the country, they rapidly flung up mottes and baileys, those earthen hills topped by a wooden palisade and a rough, fortified dwelling. Rebellions were repressed with iron-fisted severity. By the time the Domesday Book was compiled in 1086, swathes of Yorkshire and Durham were described as ‘wasta’, testament to the scorched-earth policies they adopted in the grim Harrying of the North. Those Anglo-Saxon nobles, the thegns (or thanes), who survived Hastings were dispossessed: in a generation, 95% of their lands had been turned over to Norman knights. Most of the people who lived on those lands became serfs, trapped in the intricate hierarchy of the new feudal system.

The English Church — the seat not only of faith, but of learning, gentility and art — was likewise purged. The last Anglo-Saxon Archbishop of Canterbury, Stigand, was replaced by a French monk, Lanfranc, in 1070 and the whole church hierarchy was restaffed with Continental bishops and clergy, with papal blessing. Close on the heels of the clergy came the lawyers, as the old system of shire government met the strictures of Roman law, which favoured the Crown.

Small wonder, then, that, over time, the Norman settlement seemed to cast a baleful shadow across the sunlit uplands of Anglo-Saxon England. The country, people said, groaned under the Norman yoke. The Diggers and Levellers of the Civil War looked back to pre-Norman England as a golden age for the working man. Thomas Jefferson took the free, egalitarian Anglo-Saxons as his model for America and considered the Normans to be a bunch of carpetbagging foreign toffs. Victorian Protestants admired pre-Conquest England as a land beyond Romish influence; even Monty Python condemned the Normans as rude and snobbish. ‘Your mother,’ says a castle guard in Monty Python and the Holy Grail, with a thick French accent, ‘was a hamster, and your father smells of elderberries.’

William of Malmesbury was a 12th-century historian with a Norman father and English mother and took quite a different line. The incomers, he wrote, ‘breathed new life into religious standards, which had been declining everywhere, so that now you may see churches and monasteries rising in a new style of architecture in all the towns, villages, and country places’.

A whitish freestone the Normans brought from Caen in France was the foundation of the new style. It takes carving easily and was used liberally. From an intricate chancel arch at St Peter’s in Tickencote, Rutland, to the rounded apse of London’s St Bartholomew the Great, Norman churches exude an air of confidence, as simple as they are sublime — soaring to the indescribable glories of Durham Cathedral, work on which was begun in 1093. Embellished, damaged and restored down the centuries, the stone churches the Normans built for their new estates remain today at the heart of the English parish system.

The Normans were especially keen on towers. They experimented at Caen in 1067 and swiftly brought the idea across the Channel. By the time of Henry I’s death in 1135, every Saxon cathedral in England, at Winchester and Rochester as at Worcester and Ely, had been torn down and rebuilt in a massive Romanesque style, with suitable towers (even before the Conquest, Edward the Confessor, brought up in Normandy, used Norman masons at Westminster Abbey and sent Norman knights to build castles along the Welsh border).

Then, the Normans gave us French. Nobody knows how these Norse men managed to learn French so quickly themselves, having arrived in Normandy as rude Vikings barely a century earlier, but they did. The English, typically, eventually managed to cram French vocab from the Normans, but utterly failed to master the grammar. By the time we gave up the effort and reverted to writing in English (Henry IV, who reigned from 1399, was the first king to speak English), we had absorbed thousands of words. In particular, French terms for government and law made their way into common English, words such as parliament, court, jury, justice, crown, tax, prison, judge and verdict.

The result of the collision of Norman French and Old English is a language truffled with French terms and equivalents, such as royal/kingly, enquire/ask, insane/mad. The French equivalent still implies status, so although you might live in a flat, you offer to sell an apartment. Curiously, scholars dismiss the widespread belief that as the lords ate beef and pork, the peasants looked after cows and pigs. The so-called Norman food myth ignores the fact that the way the words are used today only began 500 years after the Conquest and may simply reflect the later prestige of French cuisine.

Much of what the Normans introduced to England in brutal and simple form would mellow into something more suited to the English temperament. The free and easy Saxons never bothered much with castles, but the Normans were wild for them, creating architectural marvels such as the White Tower at the Tower of London or Rochester Castle in Kent, which thrill the visitor to this day. Castles were useful for subduing the locals and good insurance against being murdered in your bed by the disgruntled peasantry you had just reduced to serfdom.

The feudal system, which the Normans imposed on England, buttressed by those forbidding castles, tended to produce a highly tenacious landowning class with a firm grip on its acreage and a penchant for deer parks and productive farms. Soon, aristocrats were to be found adding creature comforts to their strongholds and hanging their halls with self-aggrandising mottos and escutcheons (it was the Normans who wore devices on their shields, to identify them in battle, which slowly morphed into the intricate glories of 13th-century heraldry).

Having established the pattern, the baronial landholding softened in style as the centuries rolled by. The grip, however, remained firm. Castles, chilly and cramped, gave way to manor houses and fine country houses, ‘amidst their tall ancestral trees’. English estates came complete with home farm, deer park and hunting rights and, sometimes, even a surname (Old French sur and nom) based on their location. The feudal idea of land as the basis of hereditary rank, held from the Crown, was buttressed by the idea of primogeniture, which saw estates pass down intact to a single heir, rather than being divided among children. Primogeniture wasn’t a direct Norman import, in the way of fallow deer or escutcheons, yet it was implicit in how the law developed after 1066, reinforced by strict laws of entail.

Under the Normans, the shift from Winchester to London accelerated, not least because English trade, in wool especially, now ran in a southerly direction. Wine came back together with the stone and so did the skills to maintain and expand the English wine industry. The conquerors also brought fallow deer for the hunt, as well as introducing dovecotes for pigeon flesh, eggs, manure and feathers. As to whether the Normans brought rabbits, the jury — something else they introduced — is out on that one.

Dovecotes and vineyards appear in the Domesday Book, commissioned two decades after the Conquest and completed in only two years. A unique investigation into rights, duties, landholdings and resources, nothing like it was to appear anywhere in Europe for another 800 years. The Anglo-Saxons had laid the administrative groundwork, but it was the Normans that made the system serve central government, so the Crown could tax, adjudicate and govern England with confident precision. Named for the chequered cloth that covered the counting-table and making twice-yearly audits at Easter and Michaelmas, the Exchequer grew directly out of this Norman appetite for prying and recording — as did the concept of juries, embodied in those sworn juries of local men (English and Norman) that gave evidence to Domesday’s royal commissioners.

The Anglo-Norman amalgam worked so well and was so sophisticated for its time that it also shielded England from later developments in Continental law. Magna Carta, which curbed the power of the monarch and established the early notion of English liberties, was the consequence.

Hampshire — £18,000,000

Undoubtedly one of the grandest estates for sale in the Home Counties at the moment, this is a grand country house in 151 acres that comes with everything from tennis court and walled garden to its own bluebell wood.

For sale via Savills — see more details and pictures.

Kent — £5,250,000

Just half a mile from the middle of Tunbridge Wells, this elegant mansion of more than 8,600 sq ft is immaculately refurbished, and offers a complete blank canvas for its new owners.

For sale via Knight Frank — see more details and pictures.

Buckinghamshire — £1,700,000

An Art Deco home set amid 21 acres of countryside, with wonderful equestrian facilities.

For sale via Michael Graham — see more details and pictures.

Hampshire — £5,750,000

A modern country house — completed only last year — on a breathtaking hilltop within the South Downs.

This is modern living in an ancient landscape, and while it's not traditional, it is beguiling.

For sale via Strutt & Parker — see more details and pictures.

Wiltshire — £2,500,000

A rare combination of thatched charm and hugely spacious family home, this remarkable seven-bedroom property has delightful gardens, stables and a pool.

For sale via Strutt & Parker — see more details and pictures.

Pity the dogs of the Middle Ages, for their collars could be distinctly uncomfortable. Although some hunting images show hounds wearing leather bands, in others, says Ciara Farrell of the Royal Kennel Club (RKC), they sported formidable, broad, iron collars fitted with spikes, which were intended to protect their necks from wolves and bears and would later be echoed in the models with sharp protruding teeth at the top and bottom rim used for animal baiting.

Rather more stylish, although probably not terribly comfortable either, was the pearl-encrusted collar, complete with coat of arms, that was recorded in the inventory of Philip II of Spain in 1558. Before making his way to the neck of Spain’s royal pooches, it had belonged to the Duke of Burgundy.

The oldest specimen in the RKC collection dates from 1692: made of brass, it belonged to a dog of Somerset merchant George Balch, who would later become MP for Bridgwater. ‘We don’t know the breed of dog that wore the collar, but its value to its owner is clearly signified by the manufacture and wearing of this item,’ says Farrell.

Brass collars, bearing the dog’s name and the owner’s address, became increasingly popular over time: the band was usually adjustable and featured rolled edges to avoid chafing; some models were even articulated. Auctioneer Cheffins is offering two dating from the 18th century at the Fine Sale on September 16: both belonged to the dogs of a William Turbutt Esq of Ogston, Derbyshire and one is articulated.

By the 19th century, brass collars had become so commonplace that Henry Mayhew, in his book London Labour and the London Poor, recorded street traders selling them in the city: prices, explains Farrell, ranged from sixpence for small ones to three shillings for larger examples, with matching padlocks available.

Much rarer, but also popular for pugs in the late 19th and early 20th centuries were medal collars, such as the one now preserved at the RKC. It was worn by Ch Little Geisha, the dog of a Mrs Benson, who Farrell describes as ‘a well-known pug fancier of the time.

The silver medals all date from 1900–02 and were won at shows as far apart as London and Liverpool, with an Edward VII coronation medal in the centre’.

The RKC also has the carte de visite of Ch Little Geisha: it shows her wearing her collar, with Benson sporting an equally eye-catching hat.

At the age of nearly 90, Quinlan Terry has decided to retire. This is a major event in the history of British architecture since the Second World War. Terry, a symbol of the enduring power of tradition, is widely revered for his knowledge of Classicism and load-bearing construction, for which he has earnt a dedicated following of admirers both in this country and the USA.

Beautifully crafted, often from well-chosen stone or handmade brick, his buildings may look even better after half a century of weathering than when first unveiled. Equally, he has been the lightning rod for architects of a different persuasion, the Modernists who felt threatened by a resurgence of tried-and-tested styles associated with The King. They became particularly incensed whenever Terry expanded his range beyond the country house, his acknowledged forte, and into the commercial areas that they regarded as their preserve. The triumph of Richmond Riverside, a range of office buildings next to Richmond Bridge in west London, in a Picturesque medley of historically inspired façades (Fig 8), showed that there was an alternative to the ugly monolithic blocks being offered by most conventional practitioners.

Mr Terry has also designed college buildings in Cambridge, a cathedral for Brentwood, Essex (Fig 5), and a small hospital at the Royal Hospital, Chelsea, London SW3 (Fig 6). He never designed a classical airport, but some challenges must be left to his successors in the movement to revive Classical architecture, which he did so much to foster.

Born on July 24, 1937, Mr Terry grew up in Hampstead, the son of a lawyer father and an artist mother who were close friends of the Modernist architect Ernö Goldfinger; during the Second World War, the Terrys and Goldfinger were evacuated together to the house that Berthold Lubetkin built for himself at Whipsnade Zoo in Bedfordshire. They met an even more famous Modernist, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, when he came to receive the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) gold medal.

Acutely sensitive to the horrors of comprehensive redevelopment that took place as he was growing up, the young Quinlan reacted against his parents’ liberalism. After Bryanston in Dorset, where he excelled at art, he enrolled at the Architectural Association (AA), which did not prove to be a spiritual home — the tutors for his fourth and fifth years were prominent Brutalists.

His despair at the state of the world was expressed in a linocut ironically entitled The House of Joy, depicting a ruined chapel adorned with Biblical quotations on the theme of desolation and decay. It was at the AA, however, that he met the young Polish girl, Christine de Ruttié, descended from one of Napoleon’s generals, whom he married. His happy family and deep Christian faith became the rocks on which his life was built (Fig 3).

That life would not be based in London. In 1962, he drove his 1929 open-topped Alvis to Constable Country on the Essex/Suffolk border (trouble with the car meant that he arrived untypically late) for an interview at the Dedham office of Raymond Erith. Erith himself had left the capital in the 1930s.

Although he had been commissioned to restore the most famous Georgian townhouses in Britain — Nos 10, 11 and 12 Downing Street — after the Second World War, Erith’s practice was restricted both by its rural location and his dedication to Classicism. Previously, Mr Terry’s rebellion against the Modernist orthodoxy had taken an Arts-and-Crafts form, but in Classicism he found an answer to his spiritual need for order and human scale. Erith accepted him, effectively as a pupil.

The firm survived on a diet of bathroom extensions, leaking roofs and smoking chimneys, and might not have kept going at all had Erith not had a private income, but the experience acquired during the 1960s and 1970s gave Mr Terry an intimate understanding of traditional construction and building materials.

He had enough free time to decorate the family home — a converted farmworker’s cottage, aptly called Winter-floods — in trompe-l’oeil. Although he became Erith’s partner in 1966, work was so slack that he could leave for Rome in 1968 on a scholarship, where he drew monuments from the ancient world to the Baroque. The Roman Sketchbook that he assembled would be the foundation stone of his later career.

During his absence, a ray of hope shone into the old timber-frame building, once used as a rural telephone exchange, that was the Erith and Terry office. Sir Thomas Pilking-ton had enquired about rebuilding his Victorian country house, Kings Walden Bury in Hertfordshire. By the standard of Erith’s previous commissions, often exquisite, but usually small, the new building was to be on an unprecedented scale — so much so that Erith urged his colleague to keep a notebook of the creation of what then seemed might be the last hurrah of the country house.

This he did, creating a visual diary of the greatest elegance, accompanied by a doom-laden text; he also made a linocut, which is a masterpiece of its genre. After the completion of Kings Walden Bury in 1971, the office was kept afloat by another remarkable commission — an enormous temple for the Bahá’í faith’ in Tehran, Iran. This project did not survive the fall of the Peacock throne in 1979, but for several years provided the mainstay of Erith and Terry after Erith’s death in 1973.

Although Terry built his subsequent career on that of his mentor, he and Erith were fundamentally different personalities. Worshipping Sir John Soane, Erith was a rationalist whose spare style, although Classical, was suited to its time: he dreamt that it might be possible to combine Modernism and Classicism, although the idea never took root. Terry, by contrast, loathed Modernism, the structural failings of which were illustrated by the partial collapse of Ronan Point, a 22-storey block in east London, two months after it was opened, causing the death of five people.

By temperament, he was drawn to ornament more than austerity. He excelled in the design of finials, urns, fountains and free-standing columns, often with self-imposed complications. This meant that he was ideally positioned to take advantage of the new mood of confidence among private clients that characterised the 1980s, gung-ho individuals who wanted to demonstrate the triumph of free enterprise in stone.

Alistair (later Lord) McAlpine, Margaret Thatcher’s treasurer of the Conservative Party, commissioned numerous follies for his garden at West Green House, Hampshire, leased from the National Trust, including a nymphaeum and an elliptical gadrooned urn with spiral flutes that took Terry a whole month to draw out. For Michael and Anne (later Lord and Lady) Heseltine at Thenford, Northamptonshire, he designed a Mannerist orangery-cum-swimming-pool pavilion in contrasting colours of stone, marmalade Horton for the walls and oat-coloured Clipsham for the columns, pilasters and dressings.

A handful of clients pioneered the revival of the country house (Fig 2). They usually trod carefully, unsure of how long the boom times would last. Building a new country house was likely to excite comment. People with big ideas scaled them back, trimming the dimensions of rooms to an extent that they regretted when they came to live in the finished home.

Externally, these compact buildings can betray Mr Terry’s frustration as an architect, as they may be too small for the architectural exuberance that they support. Flamboyant façades may be the prelude to quite basic plan types, dominated by an overlarge staircase hall: they did not always suit families wanting a big live-in kitchen. A client who wanted, for example, an old rectory to be refaced might be rewarded with a dazzling Baroque façade, composed of a superimposed order of banded columns, walls and niches of knapped flint, and a skyline of extravagantly shaped urns, which could stand as a piece of sculpture by itself. This is what happened at Fawley House, near Henley-on-Thames in Oxfordshire.

As time went on, some owners were able to commission on a bigger scale and Terry now had a canvas appropriate to his architectural ideas. From 1994, the master was joined by his son Francis: for the decade after 2004, the firm became Quinlan and Francis Terry, a partnership that dissolved when Terry Jnr left to found his own practice, Francis Terry and Associates, in 2016. These years saw the construction of a castle on Brecqhou, in the Channel Islands, for Sir David and Sir Frederick Barclay, built around four sides of an internal courtyard (Fig 9). Sir David arrived with a sketchplan whose essentials were thereafter followed, creating what the late Prof David Watkin described as ‘the largest house built in Britain for at least two centuries’ after its completion in 1996.

This was followed, in 2000–02, by Lord and Lady Rothermere’s Ferne Park in Wiltshire, (Fig 1); when the main block — reduced from the original scheme — proved too small, cuboid wings with Venetian windows were added in 2011–12. In its sublime parkland setting, Ferne is the very ideal of a country house, handsomely proportioned, crafted from lightly mottled Chilmark stone, and detailed with exceptional refinement (Coun-try Life, May 5 and 12, 2010).

The firm did not rest on its laurels. After Ferne came Kilboy in Co Tipperary, Ireland, previously thought of as a ‘lost’ Irish house (it appeared in Country Life on September 7, 2016). It rose again in splendour, thanks to Shane Ryan, son of the founder of Ryanair, Tony Ryan. Kilboy is remarkable for its rich plasterwork and central hall with its sweeping staircase, lit by a coffered dome (Fig 7).

Although country houses occupied the bulk of Mr Terry’s working life, he did not confine himself to rich private clients. Richmond Riverside was designed for a developer who needed planning permission for a site near Richmond Bridge, London TW9. Proposals for a Modernist monolith had, thankfully, been turned down. In its stead, Mr Terry created a kind of architectural caprice, comprising a terrace of separate offices, each with its own façade, Palladian, Regency or Venetian.

Critics have scoffed, but, opened in 1988 by the Queen, it proved an instant hit with the public, the lawns that front the terrace now packed with cheerful crowds during the summer. Tourist guides can be heard to describe it as a precious survival from the 18th century, a mistake Terry regards as a badge of honour.

In 2010, work started on Queen Mother Square at Poundbury, Dorset, where no fewer than nine of the buildings were designed by Quinlan and Francis Terry, in a public space conceived by Léon Krier (Fig 10) . Arguably, the concept is too grand for its role as the centre of what is not a new town, but an urban extension to Dorchester, but it is undoubtedly splendid. Even the local supermarket (a branch of Waitrose) is a dream of propriety. One of his more recent small buildings is the jewel-like Tudor library tower (Fig 4) that arises for Sir Nicholas and Lady Coleridge’s Worcestershire house.

As Terry transitions from being — as some have termed him — ‘The King’s favourite architect’ to squire of Higham Hall, the Suffolk house in the manner of Soane where he and his family have lived since 1980, he can look back on a long career of personal achievement and much battle against the forces of Modernism.

Softly spoken and immaculately tailored, Terry may seem an unlikely controversialist, happier in the well-crafted arcadia of his home life than in the media, yet it was he above all others who kept the flame of Classicism alive through several dark and blusterous decades. This was a service to Western civilisation, given the centrality of the Classical tradition. His office continues under Roger Barrell. As he relaxes in his garden beside the Brenta, as Suffolk’s River Brett is sometimes called in this Palladio-loving household, we wish him a long and peaceful retirement.

This feature originally appeared in the August 5, 2026, print edition of Country Life. Click here for more information on how to subscribe.

A few days ago I took a look at Ripley Grange, a 20th century home that is a perfect reproduction of a grand Tudor country house. Today, it's the real thing: the exquisite, Grade II*-listed Old Cloth Hall in Cranbrook, Kent, which is for sale through Will Peppitt of Savills for 'offers over £2.5 million'.

As its name suggests, the magnificent timber-frame building, clad in red brick, was originally built in the 15th century as a cloth hall, reflecting the Wealden town’s once-thriving broadcloth industry. So prosperous was it, in fact, that Elizabeth I is believed to have stayed here during her tour of Kent.

Following the decline of the wool trade, the building was converted to a house in the 16th century, with a later 17th-century wing added, as well as some 18th-century cladding, before it was restored and extended in the early 20th century.

Old Cloth Hall as it stands today is an enchanting country house set in more than five acres of beautifully landscaped gardens and paddocks.

The house has been lovingly maintained by its dedicated owners, Julian and Jane Newyss, who moved there six years ago after selling their family home of 35 years in the Cotswolds. They now plan to retire to a smaller house in Devon.

They leave behind a country house of rare distinction, which offers more than 6,000 square feet of characterful living space on three floors, with a wealth of fine architectural features, including leaded-light windows, exposed beams, grand fireplaces, parquet flooring, oak panelling and, unusually for a house of its age, remarkably high ceilings.

Old Cloth Hall's accommodation includes an entrance hall, three principal reception rooms, a garden room/snug, study, kitchen/breakfast room, utility and cellar.

There's also a temperature-controlled wine room, a gym/studio, a pump room and laundry room. Above, you'll find three bedroom suites, two further bedrooms and two bath/shower rooms.

Amenities include a one-bedroom annexe, an attached triple garage, and sporty types will be delighted to hear that there is a swimming pool and pool house, a stable block with three stables, a barn, tack room, and all-weather arena.

As well as its royal connection, Old Cloth Hall has had several high-profile owners, including Bernard Rubin of the famed ‘Bentley Boys’ motor-racing team, the first Australian to win the Le Mans 24-hour race in 1928 — a feat he achieved despite his car being badly damaged in a crash. Rubin bought Old Cloth Hall in 1935, following its appearance in Country Life.

It was also home to Enzo Plazzotta, the Italian-born sculptor who spent his working life in London and is best remembered for his studies of movement in bronze, many of which adorn London’s streets.

Old Cloth Hall is for sale through Savills — see more details and picture.

I wasn’t born with a double-barrelled name. It’s something I invented, and I’ll admit as to why. By the age of 13, I wanted to be taken seriously in Aston Martin showrooms. Often in life one has to overcome existential hurdles, and in this case the rather obvious hurdle was that I didn’t look anywhere near old enough to drive. Nor did I have the £80,000 in my Midland Live! Cash account needed to buy an Aston Martin. Yet, to my prodigiously strategic mind, a double-barrelled name suggested I might have a parent who had the readies and therefore, by gifting me a brochure for the new DB7, Stratstone of Mayfair was making a very wise publishing-based investment.

The truth is that my father, whose surname was Hay, had died and been replaced by a man called Nicholls, so that explains the eponym. With Bentley, Bugatti and McLaren all offering such inviting dealerships and particulars I wished to Blu Tack to my bedroom wall, the deed-poll paperwork was filed.

Others inherit these things from birth, which can be a mixed blessing. Sophia Patience Money-Coutts, of this parish, describes her nomenclature as ‘laughable… like the sort of soppy, button-nosed simpleton who keeps fainting in a Georgette Heyer novel.’ What makes it funny, of course, is it suggests she can’t get enough of the green stuff and, thanks to family connections, she — unlike the single-barrelled Nigel Farage — will never be de-banked. Sophia’s parents took an even greater liberty with her magician brother, Drummond, who shares his name with the Royal Bank of Scotland’s private arm. I mean, how many financial institutions can you squeeze onto one birth certificate?

The British tradition of double surnames comes from aristocratic estates that sought to preserve names that would have become extinct due to the absence of male heirs. This is how we wound up with the Spencer-Churchills and the Stopford-Sackvilles. Also, even the term ‘double-barrelled’ hints at an affinity for tweedy outdoor pursuits.

Having a double-barrelled name doesn’t mean that you come from money, of course, or, indeed, that you’re even posh; although when Sophia insists that you pronounce her name ‘So-Fire’ it feels like she might have been going for that after all.

More and more families are combining the mother and father’s surnames — something that feels very modern. What do we want? An end to the patriarchy. What do we need? A hyphenated compromise. But one does need to be careful that the two names work together. I know a Danish girl whose parents decided to combine their surnames, and as a result she goes by the eyebrow-raising name of Lise Munch-Busch. And just now, on the internet, I was reading about a couple who applied for an insurance quote: a Mr and Mrs Child-Harmer. I’m going to assume that the Child-Harmer clan doesn’t date back to the Norman conquest and was simply the result of too much prosecco at the registry office.

Monty Python was a font of excellent double-barrelled names. The Upper Class Twit of the Year sketch did as much to instil the compound name as aristocratic in the public consciousness as it did satirise it. Who can forget Nigel Incubator-Jones and Oliver St.John-Mollusc. Another Python character, Raymond Luxury-Yacht, insisted that his surname was pronounced very differently from how it was spelt. ‘It’s pronounced Throatwarbler-Mangrove.’

To hyphen or not to hyphen? It’s a personal choice; one doesn’t indicate it’s posher than the other. Tom Parker Bowles, also of this parish, is sans-hyphen, as is Iain Duncan Smith, Kristin Scott Thomas and Helena Bonham Carter (although some of her relatives disagree). I doubt The Queen’s son has this problem, but the danger is people will assume it’s a middle name. And people who go by their full names have a tendency to try and assassinate the American president. Shout out to John Wilkes Booth and Lee Harvey Oswald there. I can only assume it was this confusion that led Prime Minister David Lloyd George to add a hyphen upon his elevation to the peerage.

Of course, if you want to be really silly, why stop at two-barrels? Why not have an entire Gatling gun of surnames. The Anstruther-Gough-Calthorpes and Van-Tempest-Stewarts are fundamentally outflanked by quadruple-barrellers such as the 9^th Baron Thurlow, Roualeyn Robert Hovell-Thurlow-Cumming-Bruce (b.1952) and the champion quintuple-shooter Temple-Nugent-Brydges-Chandos-Grenville (ret.), from which one could claim four houses at Stowe!

Size matters in this game. The longest name on record in England was that of a British Army captain who died at the Somme in 1917. His name was Leone Sextus Denys Oswolf Fraudatifilius Tollemache-Tollemache de Orellana Plantagenet Tollemache-Tollemache. His father wasn’t a landowner. The only slightly silly sounding Ralph William Lyonel Tollemache-Tollemache was, in fact, a bankrupt priest. Like Jacob Rees-Mogg, Tollemache-Tollemache senior took eccentric pleasure in giving his 15 children absurd names.

The perception of poshness often increases with anything that whiffs of deposed European royalty. A ‘von’ or a ‘de’ or a ‘du’ confers an automatic sense of entitlement. If you’re a de Beaufort or a von Bismarck, you’ll get party invitations based on the ‘of’ alone. Sometimes you don’t need an ‘of’ or a double-barrel. I’d suggest the surnames Rothschild and Astor can get you past any velvet rope. But they’re not much fun, are they? So let us tip our hats to the man who created the world’s longest and most unhinged name of them all. A name so long it’d take up half the phone book and is about to put me well over my character-count.

He was a German-American typesetter born Hubert Blaine Wolfstern in 1914. That wasn’t interesting enough for Wolfstern, so when he left Germany to settle in Philadelphia on the eve of WWII he changed it. He decided to take 26 christian names for each letter of the alphabet, and to give his surname a limousine-like extension. Please be upstanding for Adolph Blaine Charles David Earl Frederick Gerald Hubert Irvin John Kenneth Lloyd Martin Nero Oliver Paul Quincy Randolph Sherman Thomas Uncas Victor William Xerxes Yancy Zeus...

(Deep breath)...

Wolfeschlegelsteinhausenbergerdorffwelchevoralternwarengewissen-haftschaferswessenschafewarenwohlgepflegeundsorgfaltigkeit-beschutzenvonangreifendurchihrraubgierigfeindewelchevoraltern-zwolftausendjahresvorandieerscheinenvanderersteerdemenschderraum-schiffgebrauchlichtalsseinursprungvonkraftgestartseinlangefahrthin-zwischensternartigraumaufdersuchenachdiesternwelchegehabt-bewohnbarplanetenkreisedrehensichundwohinderneurasse-vonverstandigmenschlichkeitkonntefortpflanzenundsicher-freuenanlebenslanglichfreudeundruhemitnichteinfurcht-orangreifenvonandererintelligentgeschopfsvonhinz wischensternartigraum.

[Ed note: we have had to insert hyphens into the name, otherwise it wouldn't fit on the page. The name does not in fact have any hyphens.]

That is a 604-letter surname. This typesetter really loved type, didn’t he? It wasn’t always practical when filling out forms though, making introductions and suchlike, so he would often go by the more modest Hubert Blaine Wolfeschlegelsteinhausenbergerdorff. In an interview in 1965, he explained the benefits of having an unusual name. ‘When somebody calls my name, I don’t have any trouble finding out who they mean… I don’t like being part of the common herd.

Those more likely to commission a portrait than buy an abstract painting are probably already queuing outside the door of Jonathan Yeo (b. 1970). It was from his studio that The King’s huge red official portrait emerged in 2024.

However, many English artists painting today are not interested in producing a specific likeness. Rather, they are drawn to the possibilities of the figure itself.

Lynette Yiadom-Boakye (b. 1977) paints swiftly and assertively. Her black bodies, on show until September 17 at the De La Warr Pavilion in Bexhillon-Sea, East Sussex, as part of the Hayward Gallery touring exhibition ‘To Improvise A Mountain: Lynette Yiadom-Boakye Curates’, dance, leap, ponder, read or pose in socks and underpants.

All make their presence felt, despite being drawn from her own imagination, as do the figures of American-born Chantal Joffe (b. 1969), who has lived in England since the age of 13. She works from life (and from photographs of her own family), but her paintings of mothers and children are not intended solely to represent specific individuals — rather, they consider the complex states of motherhood and parenting.

English painting has had a long and fruitful relationship with artists born overseas — one-quarter of the founding members of the RA came from abroad, including the Swiss-born Angelica Kauffman and American Benjamin West. They brought with them new ideas and styles and joined forces with English-born artists to debate and exhibit great art.

Today, England is an important world centre for figurative painters who were born overseas — the late Paula Rego (1935–2022) moved here from Portugal in 1976 and stayed until her death more than 45 years later. London is also home for Celia Paul (b. 1959) and Kudzanai-Violet Hwami (b. 1993), born in India and Zimbabwe respectively. Paul’s solitary self-portraits speak of an introspective life; Hwani’s explosive colours fuse family snapshots with accumulated images from a digital life.

This is part one of our five-part series on the new school of English painting. They will be published every Thursday afternoon throughout September.

Click here to read part one, on the new abstract painters.

Cricket is being played leisurely on a nearby field while wild deer and sheep strut around with carefree abandon. All Dumbleton Hall needs is a scantily-clad MP embroiled in a TV-franchise war to make it a location right out of Dame Jilly Cooper’s Rivals.

Set within a 16-acre estate of ancient cedar trees in the North Cotswolds, this refurbished country house hotel is a star in the making. Dumbleton closed in December 2023 and re-opened this year after a two-year refurbishment. The interiors of the Grade II-listed building have been reimagined with all the glamour of the roaring 1920s: think leopard-print rugs, tasselled lamps and plush velvet armchairs in-front of crackling fireplaces.

Originally built in 1830, Dumbleton was the home of the Women’s Land Army during the Second World War. It has previously been visited by the likes of Charles Dickens, Elizabeth Gaskell, the Mitford sisters and Charles Darwin, and has an innate elegance that extends far beyond its recent rejuvenation.

The rooms

One of 34 individually designed suites, our room was originally two bedrooms, which the owner and his partner — who is an interior designer — had decided would be better as one. Because of this, it was enormous, with sweeping views out to the grounds and woodland beyond from our bay window.

The epitome of old-school elegance, our room was decorated with William Morris prints, stylish antique furniture and autumnal shades.

A chocolate brown four-poster bed was the most eye-catching feature, although the nearby freestanding bathtub did give it a run for its money.

Decorated in shades of deep green, soft brown and classy teal, it was the perfect place to unwind — with a complimentary glass of Chablis in hand.

Eating and drinking

Executive chef Dean Westcar certainly knows what he’s doing. The gluten-free lemon drizzle cake in our room was a thoughtful touch and just the start of a stay packed with delicious food. The royal blue dining room of the hotel’s restaurant, Cedar 1905, was a sophisticated setting for dinner. The service at the restaurant, which celebrates modern British cooking with locally sourced ingredients, was exceptional — and that’s before you even get to the food itself.

There were plenty of tasty-sounding options to choose from, but I opted for Isle of Wight tomatoes with basil, balsamic and ricotta as my starter. My dinner partner tucked into Cornish crab on top of a crumpet, garnished with cucumber and watercress. For our mains, I enjoyed more Cornish seafood, still reeling from my crab envy. Cod with charred leeks, sea vegetables and smoked pike roe was delicious, and the way my dining partner greedily tucked into his main – South West lamb with courgette, red pepper and basil — indicated that his was too.

The showstopper, however, was pudding: a summery take on an Eton mess with elderflower jelly, fresh slices of nectarine and a scoop of strawberry sorbet. I’d go back to Dumbleton for that alone, and to sample the fine-dining tasting menu in the hotel's Orangerie, which will be opening soon.

How they’ll keep you busy

Long walks through the countryside along the Winchcombe Way followed by cocktails next to the fire.

What else to do while you’re there

Visit the nearby lavender field and — if you’re a Jeremy Clarkson fan — tour Hawkstone Brewery. If you are staying longer, why not take a day trip to nearby Stratford-upon-Avon and brush up on your Shakespeare?

Who it’s for

City workers looking for a relaxing weekend close to home. And, because this is the Cotswolds, Americans inevitably.

What gives it the ‘wow’ factor?

The grounds, complete with scenic lake views, wild sheep and deer and woodland right on the doorstep.

The one thing we’d change

There were a few teething issues during our stay, but I put this down to Dumbleton’s recent reopening and relatively new staff.

The one thing I could not abide, however, was the lack of a phone in our room. Ordering room service over WhatsApp is not particularly dignified. I suggest a phone in each room. Maybe even two. And preferably rotary models.

Rooms at Dumbleton Hall start from £311. Visit their website for more information and to book.

David and Sandra Burbidge have lived at Cedar House since 1975, but their garden has only begun to expand during the past few years as David plunges ever more deeply into enjoying his remarkable creation.

Cedar House was Wasperton’s vicarage, sold off by the Diocese of Coventry in the 1930s and renamed in honour of the immense cedar of Lebanon that is still a fine feature of the woodland garden. The church itself was substantially rebuilt in the 1840s by Sir George Gilbert Scott, with some input also from Augustus Pugin, and is so close to Cedar House that the Burbidges made the little spire on its west end an eye-catcher when laying out their garden.

In their early years at Wasperton, it was Sandra Burbidge who ran the garden — well enough for the county organiser of the National Garden Scheme to suggest that she should take on the job as his successor. She did so, and headed up ‘the Yellow Book’ in Warwickshire for some eight years, during which time the Burbidges felt that they should open their own garden as part of the scheme. Looking back, they say that the garden wasn’t really good enough at that time, although it has been much praised since it reopened in 2023.

David has always been a keen gardener, but, until 2018 — when he reached the age of 75 and felt the time had come for a change — this had to play second string to his career as a manufacturer of upmarket furniture and to his many public and charitable undertakings. Plants, designs and new features are now his constant companions in the major overhaul of his six acres, turning them from a pleasant, conventional garden with many underdeveloped areas into a major showpiece that fizzes with excitements.

The site is flat and the soil sandy gravel, but surprisingly fertile, with a pH that allows for acid-loving plants to flourish. Within those six acres, there is now a great number of distinct gardens and habitats all maintained by one full-time gardener and three part timers who, together, equate to a second full timer.

Some 1,500 tulips are planted every year, mainly along the driveway and around the house. They are followed by a huge planting of dahlias. Such bursts of colour are also delivered by his more permanent plantings. The cultivars of Acer palmatum — he has some 40 plants — are a particular favourite, but he has also collected many other trees and shrubs that have caught his imagination. He is particularly pleased with his unusual forms of Ginkgo biloba, the ‘living-fossil tree’ with ancestors that date back to the Middle Jurassic period. They include ‘Fastigiata’ and ‘Obelisk’, both of them neatly columnar, even pencil-shaped.

Many of the great number of young trees and shrubs now happily growing at Cedar House are the fruits of advice from experts and mentors such as John Massey of Ashwood Nurseries in the West Midlands and Robert Vernon of Bluebell Arboretum and Nursery on the Derbyshire/Leicestershire border. These join many of the original trees that were in the garden, such as native oaks whose shade has provided for extensive under-plantings.

Hellebores, ferns and snowdrops are among the genera that the Burbidges have been collecting. Many magnolias and camellias enjoy the light shade and there is a fine double border almost entirely composed of rhododendrons and azaleas. The garden’s development has also been aided by visits to other gardens and getting to know the owners of famous private gardens such as Anne Chambers of Kiftsgate near Chipping Camden in Gloucestershire, Nicola Taylor of Evenley Wood in Northamptonshire and Neil Lucas of the Knoll Gardens near Wimborne, Dorset.

The Cedar House garden is watered via a borehole, 138ft deep. This has enabled the Burbidges to add a substantial new feature — an expanse of water too small to be called a lake, but too large to be merely a pond. The spoil from excavating the site was piled up to one side, where a sheltered viewing platform now overlooks the new aquatic plantings.

Water lilies break the surface of the water — our native yellow-flowered Nymphoides peltata has flourished — and a great number of marginal plants frame the water from every viewpoint. Gunnera manicata (the ‘giant rhubarb’), Lysichiton americanus (‘skunk cabbage’) and Eutrochium maculatum (Atro-purpureum Group) ‘Purple Bush’ (the form of Joe Pye plant with dark flowers and purple leaves) all look as if they have been growing for many years, as do our native bulrushes Typha latifolia. Ornamental grasses surround much of the lake and the mound around the viewing platform is thick with Verbena bonariensis all summer long.

There is a good sprinkling of sculptures from around the world all giving character to the views within the garden. The Burbidges have also made a stumpery in the woodland garden, which is not the usual pile of excavated tree stumps, but a collection of specimens laid on the surface around the fat trunk of a large beech tree that fell in 2018 and created a space for lots of new plantings.

The woodland gardens are best in spring. More than 20 witch hazels, cultivars of Hamamelis, are first in the year to make a big impact, not least because they are planted together as one substantial grouping in a well-chosen glade. They are followed by several forms of Cercis canadensis, the American redbud or Judas tree, many cultivars of flowering dogwoods and rare selections of Styrax japonica, the Japanese snowbell tree, including ‘Pink Snowbell’ and ‘Purple Dress’. Hydrangeas are another interest, as are ornamental crab apples — the Malus Walk has been extended several times. David champions Malus ‘Evereste’ as one of the best, for its abundance of deep-pink buds and white flowers, fine autumn colour and a crop of yellow, orange and red crabapples that last through to the new year and are excellent for making jelly.

David's favourite season is late autumn. The first of the trees and shrubs to colour up are his groves of Betula utilis subsp. jacquemontii and Betula utilis subsp. jacquemontii ‘Doorenbos’, both of which follow through with beautiful bark in winter. For autumn colour, he recommends the Canadian maple Acer x freemanii ‘Autumn Blaze’ and Chinese Cercidiphyllum japonicum ‘Boyd’s Dwarf’, which, despite its name, grows to 12ft and remains in scale with the rest of the garden.

What of the future? A new gravel garden, inspired by Beth Chatto, is under way and there are plans to make a feature of the area around a vintage sycamore, perhaps 200 years old, which is listed as ‘notable’ by the Woodland Trust. Its trunk is squat and thick, with a gnarled and knobbly surface.

David admits to being a man in a hurry. It will be fascinating to see how every part of the garden — already so beautiful, impressive and mature — continues to develop and intensify.

Cedar House Gardens and Arboretum, Wasperton, Warwickshire, opens for the National Garden Scheme and for groups by prior arrangement — see their website for more details.

This feature originally appeared in the August 26, 2026, print edition of Country Life. Click here for more information on how to subscribe.

Founding Father Thomas Jefferson’s childhood home in Virginia is on the market with Frank Hardy and Sotheby’s International Realty. The five-bedroom home — which comes with 557 acres, including agricultural land and equestrian facilities — will set you back $17 million (about £12 million).

As well as serious historical significance, the estate comes with formal gardens, a series of outbuildings and an original, one-room schoolhouse — perhaps for the private tutoring of future presidents, if you have ambitious offspring.

This is where America’s third president, who was also an architect, was educated, and where he first encountered a classically domed ceiling. Jefferson (1743-1826), who went on to become the principal author of the Declaration of Independence, lived here from 1745 to 1752, during which time his father managed the estate.

The unique H-frame house was constructed by William Randolph III (1712-45) — whose first cousin was Jane Randolph Jefferson, Thomas Jefferson’s mother — in two stages. A lot of its original architecture remains, including full-height walnut wall panelling and period windows.

Available for sale for the first time in almost a century, Tuckahoe’s new owners will need to make peace with the darker side of its history — it operated mainly as a tobacco plantation and relied heavily on enslaved labour.

One of the most complete early 18th-century plantation layouts in North America, largely unchanged for generations, and a crucial window into an exploitative and complicated part of America’s history, Tuckahoe, which sits alongside the James River, is a designated National History Landmark.

Tuckahoe is for sale at $17 million through Frank Hardy Sotheby's International Realty — see more details and pictures.

The Country Life quiz runs daily every afternoon, with new editions published at 4pm.

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Cartier

Founded in Paris in 1847, 50 years before the inception of Country Life, Cartier grew from a small jewellery workshop into one of the world’s most celebrated maisons. Under the direction of Louis, Pierre and Jacques Cartier, the family expanded into London and New York, winning royal patronage and an international clientele. Queen Alexandra, Maud Alice, Lady Cunard, Victoria Sackville-West, Baroness Sackville, Nancy Astor, Viscountess Astor and Consuelo Yznaga, Duchess of Manchester were notable British-based clients.

Cartier’s jewels are synonymous with the great styles of the 20th century, from the garland style of the Belle Époque to the geometric exuberance of Art Deco. The house pioneered combinations of platinum and diamonds, while its fascination with India, the East and exotic materials produced some of its most distinctive creations.

Boucheron

Frédéric Boucheron opened his atelier on the Place Vendôme in 1893, becoming the first major jeweller to establish himself there. The house embraced the naturalism of Art Nouveau before moving towards Art Deco; all the while, its designers experimented with unusual materials and sculptural forms.

Boucheron’s celebrated clients included royalty, Maharajas and society figures, notably the Maharaja of Patiala. In August 1928, he arrived at Boucheron’s Paris premises carrying six iron safes filled with his own gemstones: more than 7,500 diamonds and 1,400 emeralds, as well as rubies and pearls. He commissioned Louis Boucheron to turn them into 149 pieces of jewellery, including emerald-and-diamond collars, multi-strand pearl necklaces, belts, earrings, sarpeches (jewelled turban ornaments) and bazubands (armlets).

Kutchinsky

Hirsch Kutchinsky fled Poland because of persecution and founded his jewellery house in 1893, in London’s East End — drawing on his family’s experience as jewellers to the court of Ludwig of Bavaria.

Under Hirsch’s grandson Joseph, Kutchinsky flourished after the Second World War, moving to Knightsbridge in 1958. Large-scale jewels in textured gold, diamonds and vivid stones such as turquoise, coral, lapis lazuli and tiger’s eye became its signature. The business was sold to Moussaieff in 1991.

Tiffany and Co.

Tiffany’s & Co. is arguably the world’s best-known jewellery brand. It was founded in New York in 1837 and by 1886 had perfected and introduced its six-prong Tiffany Setting, a single, brilliant-cut diamond elevated above the band by six slender prongs — better allowing it to capture and refract light.

Its gemmologists introduced Americans to rare stones including kunzite and morganite. In the 20th century, Jean Schlumberger introduced fantastical, nature-inspired jewels; Elsa Peretti revolutionised everyday jewellery with sculptural silver and fluid forms; and Paloma Picasso introduced bold colour and graphic motifs. Together, they established Tiffany as a byword for American jewellery.

Mappin & Webb

Founded in Sheffield in 1775, Mappin & Webb evolved from a silversmith into one of Britain’s leading jewellery houses, opening its first London showroom in 1849. Its jewellery became closely associated with royalty after Queen Victoria granted the firm a Royal Warrant in 1897, followed by commissions from royal households around the world.

The house produced elaborate diamond and gemstone jewels, embracing the changing fashions of the late Victorian, Edwardian and Art Deco periods. Its commissions included striking jewels for the Siamese royal family in the early 20th century.

Garrard

Garrard started life as a goldsmith serving aristocratic patrons. In 1843, it was appointed the first official Crown Jeweller by Queen Victoria and subsequently created generations of royal jewels, from Queen Mary’s tiaras to Diana, Princess of Wales’s sapphire and diamond engagement ring.

The house is famed for its love of cluster settings (a design technique where multiple small gemstones are set tightly together to create the visual effect of one large, brilliant centrepiece or an ornate pattern), utilising it to create treasures such as a sapphire-and-diamond brooch, given to Queen Victorian as a wedding present by Prince Albert.

CHANEL

Gabrielle Chanel dipped her toe into the fine jewellery world in 1932 with Bijoux de Diamants, an audacious collection of more than 45 pieces. Its celestial motifs — comets, stars, moons and suns, alongside ribbons, feathers and fringes — remain central to CHANEL’S haute joaillerie vocabulary.

Chanel famously applied the principles behind her fashion designs to her jewellery, rejecting rigid clasps and favouring transformable pieces that could be worn in different ways.

CHANEL’s first dedicated fine-jewellery boutique in London opened in April 1997, on New Bond Street. Contemporary reporting in The Independent describes it as the first European CHANEL jewellery store outside Paris.

The first picture that appears on the Wikipedia article for 'Breakfast' is ‘a typical American breakfast, composed of a waffle, fruits, juice and scrambled eggs’. The meal in front of me at Simpson’s In The Strand looks rather different. Styled on the menu with a cartoon of a Devil’s head, it is called The Ten Deadly Sins. For the princely sum of £28.75, one is served the following: eggs any style, Cumberland sausage, streaky bacon, black pudding, lamb chop, devilled kidneys, bubble and squeak, grilled tomatoes, mushrooms and fried bread. As my colleague James Fisher put it: ‘Ah yes: you ordered the gout express.’

Breakfast, we are often told, is the most important meal of the day. The catchphrase was first cooked up by Lenna Cooper in Good Health magazine and later lionised by Dr Kellogg of Kellogg’s Cereal. It is catchy, but it’s also nonsense: nutritionists are quick to call the aphorism a mere marketing tool and Prof Tim Spector, founder of the health app ZOE, has been vocal about the lack of clinical evidence suggesting that breakfast is more important than lunch. The Ten Deadly Sins would suggest that it isn’t especially virtuous. Why, therefore, am I here?

I am putting to test a theory that breakfast meetings are the best way to start one’s day. A press release recently informed me these were making a comeback in the capital and, although Londoners’ overall excursions to the restaurant have decreased in the past few years, breakfast outings have held steady. In a few lucky spots, they’ve even multiplied. Advocates of the breakfast meeting believe it offers something the lunch-hour talk cannot: a clear head, unencumbered by the tasks that pile onto one’s desk the moment one reaches the office and a feeling of carpe diem.

‘Breakfast meetings are chic,’ says Ed McGovern, a theatre producer. ‘You achieve something before the rest of the world gets going.’ It also encourages participants to have an early night and get their inbox down to zero so that the influx of messages that lands during breakfast does not end up tipping an already heinous number over the edge. What of the other draws? ‘It’s a smart way to take out someone for a meeting who you wouldn’t necessarily want to spend more than one hour with,’ says a source. McGovern confirms that breakfast meetings ‘typically last no longer than 45 minutes’.

You might think that, sooner or later, people would cotton on to the fact that some are using breakfast meetings as an avoidance strategy — a polite way of telling someone that they are second rate. ‘This is one of the reasons why I hate breakfast meetings,’ Fisher says — and he’s not the only one. ‘The other day, a contact from the motoring world asked me to a breakfast meeting and I suggested, instead, that we have a drink after work. Not only did he agree to it: he seemed relieved.’ Why suggest the breakfast meeting in the first place? ‘It’s a safer bet,’ Mr Fisher admits. ‘It is seen as unintrusive, inoffensive and risk free; the right choice, professionally.’

As someone who is categorically not a morning person and for whom the first two hours of the day have long been held sacred, a breakfast meeting seems inherently more intrusive than a pint after the working day. In truth, I have been a refusenik for close to 10 years, my mornings consisting of a glass of water and a coffee ever since I discovered the joy of going out and lying in at university. With so many now singing breakfast’s praise, however, I reasoned it would be professionally negligent not to try it out for myself.

Thus, I resolved to take a different breakfast meeting every day for an entire working week, inviting several experts to join me in my quest — with all of whom I would happily spend more than one hour. I prioritised those I knew would keep me most entertained at a time when I am usually still half asleep. Finally, I laid down some ground rules. One: thou shalt not order yoghurt, granola or avocado on toast, but try the star meal on the menu each time. Two: thou shalt choose a spectrum of establishments to study the range of early punters and how they interact with one another. (Is their heart truly in it?) Three: Martino’s, SW1, being close to thy house and among the less gouty options, shall bookend thy week of breakfasts in the hope of not developing scurvy. Four: thou shalt skip lunch wherever possible and exercise more than usual.

In between my trips to Martino’s, I decided to pay a visit to Simpson’s, WC2 — the grande dame of Zone 1 — then Claridge’s, W1, and, finally, the Regency Café, SW1. ‘I love it here,’ says Hannah Crosbie, The Observer’s wine critic, whom I take along to the latter. ‘But, you know Will, I don’t normally eat breakfast.’ Why? ‘Something about eating puts me in an inherently relaxed mood,’ my companion explains. ‘It signals to my body that I am now not working; that I need to rest; in short, that I am off.’

Crosbie is far from the only one to admit, once seated, that the most important meal of the day isn’t their usual cup of tea. ‘I so rarely do it, either,’ says Adam Hyman, founder of Code Hospitality, as we tuck into a pre-Ten Deadly Sins honeycomb crumpet at Simpson’s on Tuesday. The commonly held view seems to be that breakfast, on its own, is a bit of a waste of time, but incorporating a meeting into it gives the first meal a purpose.

The Regency Café hums with life when Crosbie and I arrive just after 9am. It is stocked to the brim with tourists, tradesmen and a few locals from the Grosvenor estate. ‘Please order at the counter — and wait for your number to be called’ reads a blackboard hooked above the menus. I opt for the most popular order: the set breakfast deal, consisting of a fried egg, two rashers of bacon and a sausage served with either beans or tomatoes; tea or coffee; and toast or bread (£9.99). Crosbie orders fluffy scrambled egg whites with mushrooms, bacon and a Cumberland. Can I learn to love this? It’s 30˚C outside: hardly breakfast-friendly weather.

The atmosphere inside is warm and convivial: a good spot for a natter, although not entirely conducive to the breakfast meeting’s more habitual trappings. For one thing, you have to interrupt your conversation to pick up your order when ready. It doesn’t prevent Crosbie and I from talking shop. A professional woman about town, she tells me about the book deal she’s just scored with 4th Estate: a collection of pieces and short stories capturing a moment in the culinary zeitgeist that she is too humble to admit she had a heavy hand in creating. I make sure to write down all her tips.

At the other end of the spectrum is The Foyer at Claridge’s: somewhere that not only means business (Swedish former footballer Zlatan Ibrahimović is a few tables down from us with someone who appears to be his accountant), but where the acoustics are designed for you to hear only the person opposite you. This, naturally, means people are desperate to eavesdrop. My guest, the menswear journalist Nick Carvell, orders an omelette as I tuck into an Arnold Bennett: a hotel menu favourite, alongside the Full English. It is creamy and delicious: Scottish haddock poached in milk, topped with a mustardy béchamel sauce and copious amounts of melted cheese (£32). An iced Americano accompanies this beatific monstrosity.

Carvell has just returned from a holiday in Sweden, coincidentally, where his husband was running a marathon, for which a decent breakfast is definitely necessary. ‘I am learning Swedish on Duo Lingo,’ he tells me. ‘It teaches you entirely useless phrases, such as jag älskar pengar.’ ‘What does that mean?’ ‘I love money.’ We laugh and look around: everyone here loves money. The diners communicate in a manner I have only ever seen in five-star hotels and is best summed up by that time-worn phrase: ‘A withering look speaks 1,000 words.’

Claridge’s remains London’s most celebrated hotel for a reason. The room is a mix of both guests and wanderers who planned their breakfast here weeks ahead as if part of a pilgrimage. For Peter Rosengard, a life-insurance salesman after whom a dish is named on the menu — two scrambled eggs, hyper-crispy bacon and toast, which he has been ordering since 1981 — the matter is closer to ritual. This is the spot in which he has chosen to take nearly all his important meetings for the past 38 years. According to The Times, he has hosted as many as 10,367 breakfasts at Claridge’s — which means that, for every 10 days, he’s spent seven to eight in The Foyer closing a deal before most of us have even left the house.

To fully understand breakfast, one has to approach the subject linguistically. The word itself is a corruption of the Latin desjunare (to break one’s fast) — which, before giving us ‘breakfast’, gave us ‘dinner’. The latter was, for a long time, our chief fast-breaking meal, until the advent of lunch in the 15th century meant our largest gap in eating would happen overnight. Understanding which daily meal constitutes the breaking of the fast — and how this varies from culture to culture — might explain why the French like to take a three-hour lunch (desjunare gave them their déjeuner) and eat only a croissant for breakfast as we swallow a Prêt sandwich at our desk at noon and, occasionally, indulge in a Full English.

Simpson’s In The Strand has all the hallmarks of a place where one might break their fast regardless of which meal they’ve elected to do this in. Hyman and I are here during half-term, which means it’s quieter than usual by the time we arrive at 9am and busier than usual by the time we depart at 10am. ‘City boys like to take their meetings really early,’ he explains. ‘It’s a flex.’ It’s another reminder that I was never cut out for the world of finance or insurance. Words will have to do.

The breakfast at Simpson’s ends up being my biggest indulgence of the week. I learn there and then that breakfast meetings — like all others — are mainly about pace. An omelette is a savvy order, light enough to digest easily, yet giving you lots of energy. Smoked salmon is refined, but comes with the risk of small pieces getting caught between your teeth. An Arnold Bennett is a bold choice — for it is often smelly — although the one at Claridge’s suffers no such problems and is still light enough to leave room for waffles. This should be understood only in proverbial terms: no one should ever order waffles or pancakes during a breakfast meeting that isn’t expressly with a work colleague who has graduated to the status of close friend and confidante and won’t judge you for it.

Finally, The Regency Café is a gem of a spot in which to conduct a surreptitious interview and assess someone’s balancing skills when they carry two trays over to the table. Presumably important if joining the circus or MI6.

The star dish at Martino’s, where my week both begins and ends, is a cacio e pepe scrambled egg with focaccia soldiers. This is soft and buttery, best paired with grapefruit juice and shared with the kind of person with whom you really don’t want to rush a meal. The menu offers an Italian spin on British classics, the baked eggs arrabbiata packing just enough of a punch to serve as a substitute to a Bloody Mary — should one wish to avoid drinking before a client. The room is dotted with the kind of clientele who would once have been called ‘ladies who lunch’, as well as a few tourists in search of postcode supremacy.

I bring along my friend Hugh Rowan, a barrister, for my first outing. He is no stranger to an early breakfast. ‘Dad and I used to eat at Granger & Co down the road from where we lived,’ he explains, ‘leaving the house at 7.15am and getting there for opening. I was working late hours back then and it was a great way for us to spend some time together, as we couldn’t predict when I might get home in the evening.’ I realised that breakfast offers a kind of intimacy that other meals do not. Dinner, which Hyman claims as ‘most people’s big, communal meal of the day’, is a collective endeavour.

Lunch, in this country, is often al desko — and solitary. The common denominator among all my breakfasts this week, from opulent brasseries to local caffs via five-star legends, is the level of access it gave me to the people eating opposite me: pre-emails, pre-stress, simply human beings in their purest form. I return to Martino’s on Friday with Fisher, my fellow breakfast refusenik, and we order pancakes.

This feature originally appeared in the July 1, 2026, issue of Country Life. Click here for more information on how to subscribe.

As we unloaded the final box, there was an enormous ‘and... breathe’ moment. For the first time in months, I felt as though I could catch my breath. All the noise of London had disappeared — the stress, the panic, the constant feeling that I needed to be somewhere. Suddenly, I had time. I had nowhere to be; I could simply be.

From that very first day, I knew this was going to be the best decision we had ever made. It wasn't just going to change our lives — it was going to shape our children's lives too.

I had completely underestimated how much surrounding yourself with nature could improve your wellbeing. It has an extraordinary ability to heal, calm and ground you, while somehow giving you more energy.

I thought I would still long to be back in London — for lunches, dinners and drinks — but even a year later, I have no desire to go back. I still nip in and out when I need to, but I always want to come home.

There is something magical about that in-between stage of moving. Everything feels new and full of possibility. It's a little like the beginning of a relationship, when everything is exciting and you can't wait to discover what's next.

We arrived during the most idyllic summer. One memory, in particular, will stay with me forever: the girls collecting blackberries with their dolls tucked into prams beside them, while our son raced around on his bike, pursued by our two furry companions. It was one of those ordinary moments that somehow captures everything. This was what life was all about — or at least what I wanted it to be about.

As you might have gathered by now, patience is not one of my strengths. I'm very much a ‘I wanted it done yesterday’ sort of girl. But this house forced me to slow down. It was too special to rush, and it deserved better than that.

I had several conversations with myself about enjoying the journey rather than racing towards the finish line. There's also something incredibly valuable about living in a house before making too many decisions. You begin to understand how the rooms work, how the light changes throughout the day and how your family naturally uses the space. I was determined to embrace the fact that Rome wasn't built in a day and to enjoy creating our home properly.

Of course, parts of it were overwhelming. I still remember walking into a kitchen full of boxes and wondering where to begin. Thankfully, a few deep breaths, plenty of laughter and the knowledge that almost everything could be moved later made it feel much less daunting. We'd spent a lot of time planning the kitchen before we moved, deciding exactly what would go into every cupboard and drawer, so, in the end, it was surprisingly straightforward.

One of my first priorities was getting rid of every last moving box and bag. I wanted to see piles of books instead of stacks of storage crates. There was still furniture to buy, layouts to experiment with and countless decisions to make, but we had time.

We unpacked steadily while making the most of the summer and enjoying the children. Three weeks after moving in, we went away for a week's holiday. At the time, I wasn't sure whether it was the right decision, but it turned out to be exactly what we needed. Stepping away gave us fresh eyes, and we returned feeling recharged and inspired. Packing for that holiday, however, was another story!

I'd managed to organise most of the bedroom curtains before we moved, which made a huge difference. Luckily, my husband and I make a great team. Ned naturally gravitates towards structure, layout and architecture, while I focus on colour, interiors and the finishing touches.

Writing this a year later, I'm happy to say we've finally found our people — our gang. I think that takes time. Everyone has busy lives, and friendships can't be forced. In fact, rushing them can sometimes have the opposite effect. People often say it takes about a year to find your tribe after moving somewhere new, and I think they're probably right. Perhaps it even becomes harder as we get older. Maybe we're more discerning - or perhaps we're simply more protective of our time.

I also think the house helped us settle. Because we'd all been involved in its renovation, we already felt connected to it before we'd even moved in. The children immediately felt at home. Our situation was perhaps a little unusual too, as Ned had grown up nearby. He'd swum in the same river, bought penny sweets from the village shop and explored the same countryside as a child. It meant the area felt familiar without preventing us from creating our own memories.

Am I glad we moved? I honestly couldn't be happier. We took a leap and it paid off. We're all calmer, happier and more present. I feel as though our children can simply be children again — climbing trees, building dens and running around carefree. Within days of being somewhere new, life begins to feel normal. Humans are remarkably good at embracing change.

The moment I treasure most is opening the front door first thing in the morning, green tea in hand, and breathing in the fresh country air. I stand for a few quiet moments, listening to the birdsong as the countryside slowly wakes. It's my little ritual, usually enjoyed alone, although I'm sometimes joined by one of the children, or one of our four-legged friends. It sets the tone for the day ahead.

The house is almost finished, although, is a house ever really finished? The rooms no longer feel as though they're under construction, and our attention has turned to the garden. Somehow, that feels even more important. It's where we'll really put down roots.

We're planning to build a shell grotto — not an extravagant one, just something made from shells collected on family holidays over the years. Creating it together feels like the perfect way to finish our home. Those are the things that matter most: the memories woven into the walls and the garden, not the price tag attached to them.

Looking back, life now feels a little like being on a permanent holiday. The Sunday night feeling has disappeared. We've experienced every season, and each has brought its own joy. Winter simply gave us another excuse to light the fire, slow down and embrace cosy evenings at home. We've found our favourite walks, our local market, the best pub and the places that have become part of our everyday life.

Most importantly, I've found home.

Looking back, moving to the countryside wasn't simply about changing our address. It changed the rhythm of our lives. It gave us space to breathe, time to enjoy our children and the opportunity to build the life we'd always imagined. We laugh more, spend more time together and appreciate the simple things that once passed us by.

Without question, moving here was the best decision we ever made.

Read part one here, and part two here.

It's long been said that if there was to be a 'positive' of a warming climate, it would be English wine. But it seems that organic English wine is the real winner, with organic viticulture in England is increasing by between 15%– 20% annually, a trend already seen in Europe as growers convert vineyards to contend with extreme weather conditions.

As the hot sun beat down relentlessly this summer on the vineyards at Oxney Estate in East Sussex, owner Kristin Syltevik admitted that a warming climate is ideal for her organic grapes. ‘It’s the silver lining of climate change; I go to wine tastings around Europe and everyone says: “How can you make this kind of wine in England?”’

Fourteen hectares (35 acres) of vines were planted on the estate in 2012 and organic standards focus on cover cropping and composting to preserve topsoil and encourage deep root structure. Every once in a while, Syltevik’s vines receive tisane, which is made from yarrow, nettle and horse tail, steeped for several weeks and delivered from a large agricultural sprayer. ‘I make all my own compost,’ Syltevik revealed. ‘A neighbour grazes his sheep and cattle here and pays me in muck. I add woodchips made from willow, which has medicinal qualities. Organic is like a religion for me.’

Twenty miles inland over the Sussex High Weald into Kent, winemaker Will Davenport agrees that a warming climate makes growing grapes in England easier. ‘It is still marginal, but watch this space,’ he said, adding that ‘growers in Burgundy and Bordeaux will have to adjust their systems [following the wildfires] to cope with the weather — and we may be the beneficiaries’.

Davenport planted his first vines in 1991 and joined the Soil Association in 2000. ‘Our vines are good at coping with drought because of all the organic matter we put into the soil. That helps with heavy winter rainfall, too.’ The Davenport vineyards were picked last week. ‘It used to be September 20; we’re now looking at planting later-ripening varieties.’

Beyond wine, organic products form part of every-day British life, with 83% of households plumping for certified items, a trend that is behind the boost of organic sales values for the year to mid June. These rose by 5.4%, versus 3.7% (conventional), with volume up 0.1% versus -0.1%, according to market research tool NielsenIQ Scantrack.

Two major drivers of organic volume growth are eggs and milk, with the former rocketing by 16.3% (versus 1.8% for non-organic eggs) and the latter by just over 9% (versus 0.4% for non-organic milk).

Separate questioning of 2,000 adults by Mortar showed one in five trying to avoid pesticides, food contaminants and GMOs when food shopping and almost three-quarters admitted to being concerned about exposure to the likes of pesticides and PFAS ‘forever chemicals’. Meanwhile, only 44% of consumers trust food labels.

With suspicion over sustainability, sourcing and animal welfare, most shoppers admitted that seeing an organic logo would give them more faith in a product. ‘Attention-grabbing headlines around the contamination of everyday food and drink products with PFAS, glyphosate and artificial pesticides — including some pesticides that are still sprayed on produce in the UK, despite being banned in the EU for health reasons — is no doubt driving more consumers to buy organic, which people recognise as a healthier and safer option,’ said Alex Cullen of Soil Association Certification.

The Country Life quiz runs daily every afternoon, with new editions published at 4pm.

Missed a day? Want more quizzes? Catch up with all our previous quizzes here.

You’d be hard pressed to find a contemporary television character more likely to be a loyal subscriber to Country Life than the 13th Duke of Halstead. Theo James’s aristocratic Barbour-clad, gun-toting lead in Guy Ritchie’s Netflix hit The Gentlemen is exactly who most people picture our average reader to be (drug-selling side hustle aside). He returns today in the show’s much anticipated second season.

Speaking from Los Angeles, from his ‘little place in Venice Beach’, it’s easy to imagine Theo’s lifestyle is not far removed from his incredibly wealthy on-screen persona, until he admits: ‘I am sitting in my car because there’s a playdate happening with the kids, as well as a cleaner and other stuff happening in my house, so I thought I’d just get out of there.’ Perhaps, not so glamorous after all — although still good for a speedy getaway.

This is a love he shares with his on-screen character. ‘Most things that I own, I can get rid of, except for cars,’ he says. ‘I've always been into cars.’ So much so that ‘car’ was the actor's first word. ‘I seem to keep hold of them, which is a really middle-aged thing. Being a 40-year-old, I'm like “Is it cool? Or is it just that I'm becoming a middle-aged t**t?”’ He doesn’t look like any of the middle-aged t**ts that I know, that’s for sure.

Fast cars aside (there are plenty of them in The Gentlemen), in this season the Duke shows more of a dark side, ‘which was always the plan,’ Theo says. ‘You need to, as much as it’s entertainment, push people’s expectations a bit.’ The actor thinks that the fascination with the British countryside on screen — one need look no further than Rivals, Clarkson’s Farm and the upcoming Pride and Prejudice film for further proof — is down to the fact that ‘it’s an emblem of hyper wealth colonial Britain at a time of its peak, which no longer exists’.

‘Now, it’s a form of class structure that is fascinating, because it’s so archaic in many ways. Also these houses are beautiful and the grounds incredible.’ Much of the action was filmed at Badminton House in Gloucestershire, the Grade I-listed Palladian building which gave its name to the racket sport. It was also recorded in the Domesday Book. ‘Guy Ritchie likes, you know, “land porn”,’ says Theo. ‘The Gentlemen is a celebration of the quirks of Britain.’

It’s a far cry from another film of Theo’s that celebrates ‘the quirks of Britain’, and what I like to think of as his breakout role — The Inbetweeners Movie (2011) in which he played James, an obnoxious night club rep. However, it is a lesser cry from his most memorable turn as the rich but meddlesome Cameron Sullivan in the second season of The White Lotus (2022). Theo also starred in the dystopian Divergent film series.

Now that he has two children with the actress Ruth Kearney, he admits that he’s less keen on recurring projects. ‘Since early on in my career, when I was kind of trapped into coming back for multiple films, I’ve always been super allergic to returning to something because of that experience, but it was much more pleasant this time.’ Something about The Gentlemen has kept him coming back for more. He is very fond of working with the cast and crew. So, will there be a third season? ‘I hope, if there is more, that we will be able to evolve it even further.’

Your aesthetic hero

My touchpoint for dress was always my grandfather. He was Greek from Athens and a highly cultured man. He was a doctor, but not someone who would tell anyone about it. He loved classical music, painting. He was a very classy man. My touchpoint is a picture of him on the streets of Athens when he was 22. He has a thick moustache, impeccable hair and he’s wearing a blue double-breasted suit with small sunglasses.

An exhibition that has really impressed you

My wife and I got married in Tuscany and our honeymoon was spent driving back to London. We took our time and stopped on the way, and when we were in Paris for a couple of nights there was a tiny exhibition of some of Picasso's lesser known works. I have always loved him and was super taken with that.

The music that you work to

I don’t work to music. I love music, but I find I listen to lyrics too much and it’s distracting for me.

Your favourite painting

It’s like saying ‘Do you have a favourite album?’, I think it’s impossible to say: ‘Do you have a favourite painting?’ I like Georgia O’Keeffe’s stuff, we’ve got lots of her books around the house, but in terms of a favourite singular painting I couldn’t say.

The last podcast you listened to

I listened to the latest episode of The Rest is Politics and I have been listening to the audiobook of London Falling, by Patrick Radden Keefe.

The last thing of note that you bought for yourself

I remember what I bought yesterday, which was a small toy dog for one of my kids. In terms of buying something for myself, I’m stumped.

The person that would play you in a film of your life

F**k knows, and I apologise in advance.

A possession you’d never sell

I have a signed picture of Jimi Hendrix, playing in 1969. I got it from a friend when I was in my twenties, someone classier and who had more dough than I did, and it has been with me since I was 19 and travels to every different place. I wouldn't get rid of it because, although I don't think it's worth that much, it was the first possession that I had that I felt had not only monetary value, but also staying power.

What you’d take with you to a desert island

A pair of pliers.

A book that has inspired you

Ernest Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea and Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness. I loved travelling as a young man, and I still do. But you know, you have different expectations in life about being able to get off the grid. But both of those books, in different ways, are about a singular journey into complicated times.

The Old Man and the Sea is one about a man against the elements, and I love the ocean. Heart of Darkness is about a descent into chaos. I've always been fascinated by the Congo, and hopefully I might go next year. Obviously, that book is also about the problems of colonialism and pillaging of other cultures. Given that we’re still in a world which is very much dominated by a different form of colonialism — be it oligarchical or American, European, Chinese or Russian — it’s still very much a part of our culture, so that’s a fitting choice.

The thing that gets you up in the morning

My children.

The items you collect

I have some old cars, and they’re the bane of my life because they’re constantly breaking down, but I am addicted to the smell of them, the way they look and the memory of the past they came from.

A hotel you could go back and back to

Hotel Il Pellicano, in Tuscany.

The most memorable meal you’ve ever eaten

I opened two restaurants, one is in Hackney, Ornella, and the chef makes a burro e parmigiano — tagliatelle with butter and parmesan — which is quite simple but that’s one of the best dishes I have. Even though it’s, you know, my restaurant, it’s simple but beautifully made.

The best present you’ve ever received

My brothers, for one Christmas, gave me the impression that they were going to get me a remote control car and they wrapped up a bunch of rocks. When I opened it they were laughing hysterically, so that’s probably the best Christmas present I’ve ever got.

You can stream season two of ‘The Gentlemen’ on Netflix now.

Novelist H. G. Wells (1866-1946), widely considered the father of science fiction, wrote about war, loss and grief in Mr Brightling Sees It Through and devised the rules of miniature battle gaming from an unlikely spot in the Essex countryside.

The author who penned over 100 novels in his lifetime, including The War of the Worlds and The Invisible Man, spent the third chapter of his career writing about politics, history and social reform.

This coincided with his move from Hampstead, London, to a rented Georgian house called Easton Glebe on the Easton Lodge Estate where he observed English country folk in wartime, partied with the literary and arts glitterati and embarked upon a well-documented affair.

In a strange twist, the Grade II-listed entertaining barn on Wells's land and the remaining wing of the original lodge — no longer part of the same estate — have come up for sale at the same time, under different ownership and a century after Wells closed the book on his life in Little Easton.

The village of Little Easton is seven miles east of the market town of Bishop's Stortford and Stansted airport and was once dominated by the Easton Lodge Estate. In the 16th century, Elizabeth I granted politician Henry Maynard 10,000 acres of the estate on which he built an Elizabethan mansion to become Easton Lodge.

The house and grounds developed in line with the times until 1847 when a fire all but destroyed the Elizabethan part of the building. The Jacobean west wing remained and the rest was rebuilt in Victorian Gothic style.

Frances 'Daisy' Maynard inherited the estate as a child and went on to marry the 5th Earl of Warwick. As the Countess of Warwick she was well-known for her nine-year liaison with Edward, Prince of Wales (Edward VII) and her weekend-long parties. In fact, she added a stop on the trainline at Canfield for her guests.

Maynard was very involved in her community and campaigned to improve employment skills for women and social reform and would go on to stand as a parliamentary candidate for the Labour Party in the General Election of 1923. Her weekend set included George Bernard Shaw, Gustav Holst, A. A. Milne, Charlie Chaplin and Wells.

However, her lavish lifestyle meant she racked up a lot of debt, building a water tower and a stable yard which are still in situ today. Her most famous investment was the commissioning of architect and garden designer Harold Peto to landscape the grounds — which were snapped for Country Life in 1907.

In 1918, a second fire hit Easton Lodge. The story goes that one of Maynard's pet monkeys was convalescing in a blanket by the hearth when the material caught fire and the little primate ran around in a panic trailing the flames around the house. The monkey survived and so did the west wing, now a detached house called Warwick House which Savills is now selling for £2 million in 6.2 acres of the Peto gardens. The property is recognisable by its ornate Dutch gables and although the estate fell into disrepair after Maynard's death in 1938 the gardens have been recently restored.

On the other side of the village, no longer part of the estate following Maynard's sale of land, is a home linked to Wells. He lived at Easton Glebe (still a family home today) and Wells Court was his entertaining barn with a pool. During his time here Wells started an affair with the journalist, novelist and travel writer Rebecca West who lived on a farm in Hertfordshire where she raised their child in secrecy. Adam West went on to become a writer himself and wrote an autobiography of his father.

The Grade II-listed Wells Court, a three-bedroom home, sits in 4.75 acres with equestrian facilities: six stables, paddocks, tack and feed rooms, outbuildings and a car port and is being sold by owners John and Sally Wilson who no longer need so much space.

The history of the Easton Lodge Estate, the Countess of Warwick and Wells himself were a draw to the property when they too made the move from central London in 1998. 'It was certainly talking point and in the early days literary tourists would turn up to see where Wells lived,' says John. At times it must have been like living in a different age, surrounded by so many historical characters that spent time on the estate.

Or as Wells would have put it: 'We all have our time machines, don't we. Those that take us back are memories... and those that carry us forwards are dreams.'

Wells Court is for sale for £1.5 million through Beresfords — see more details and pictures.

Warwick House is for sale for £2 million through Savills — see more details and pictures.

Almost exactly 960 years ago, on October 14, 1066, William, Duke of Normandy, emerged victorious from the hard-fought Battle of Hastings. It was a confrontation he regarded as a trial by ordeal for the throne of England, bloodily fought out as part of a wider three-way struggle — don’t forget the formidable Harald Hardrada, King of Norway, whose brief invasion underlines England’s ties with Scandinavia — in the neat span of a single year.

In 2026, the anniversary of the battle coincides with the much-publicised display of the 11th-century embroidery familiarly known as the Bayeux Tapestry at the British Museum. The Tapestry is a compelling work of art with a distinctive visual language that makes it instantaneously and universally recognisable. It is a foundational document of our history.

The narrative of the Tapestry now concludes with the flight of the English from the battlefield, a section of unknown length having been torn off at some point. In some ways, that lost ending is appropriate because the legacy of the battle itself — and the Norman conquest that it secured — remains open to widely contrasting interpretation.

One view has been that the Norman Conquest is something to celebrate. By some in the 19th century, it was even characterised as a crucial step in the nation’s march towards global dominance. In reaction to this positive assessment, there has been a romantic characterisation of the Anglo-Saxons as an honest population cheated of their rightful inheritance by brutal and corrupt foreigners.

Alternatively, there have even been attempts to try and write the Conquest out of history. By this analysis, one social elite was replaced by another leaving society at large unchanged. A simple characterisation of the Norman Conquest, however, is impossible. Not least because it entirely overlooks the longstanding role of the Battle of Hastings as a national foundation myth.

Never has there been conflict in which so many people wished to claim an ancestral presence, but only on the winning side. It became, indeed, to popular late-medieval English sensibility what the Tudors have become to us; a historical horizon beyond which everything was obscure.

This week’s issue of Country Life takes advantage of the popular interest catalysed by the display of the Bayeux Tapestry to revisit the legacy of the Normans. At this distance of time, we are not obliged to take sides. Nor should we allow the pain and destruction their conquest of England undoubtedly caused to blind us to their achievement. In terms of the castles and churches that stud our landscape, and even some of the language we use, 1066 still casts a shadow. We would all do well to know more about this fascinating and tumultuous period.

This feature originally appeared in the September 2, 2026, issue of Country Life. Click here for more information on how to subscribe.

Colours come in and out of fashion, but black is forever. While the rest of the watch world spent the last two years dabbling in sorbet — Rolex's Oyster Perpetual in matte pastels, TAG Heuer's Formula 1 Solargraph in pastel green and lavender-blue — TUDOR was working on something completely different.

Its monochrome Black Bay Ceramic (£6,030) is not only eye-catching, it’s the company’s first model with a fully ceramic bracelet, designed to match the 41-millimetre, matte ceramic case and satin-finish charcoal dial. It has a self-winding mechanical movement, a 70-hour power reserve and is waterproof to 660 feet.

Ceramic, for the uninitiated, is a nightmare to work with — it doesn't bend to a maker’s will the way steel does — so building an entire bracelet from it, clasp included (above), is a notable feat of patience and engineering.

The Black Bay follows in the footsteps of some notable timepiece titans: the CHANEL J12, which is credited with transforming ceramic’s reputation from obscure technical material into something fashionable and luxurious; Omega Speedmaster Dark Side of the Moon; Hublot Big Bag Integral Ceramic; and Audemars Piguet Royal Oak Perpetual Calendar in black ceramic, which is one of the more impressive examples of ceramic being used in haute horlogerie.

Short on time? Here are five things you need to know about watchmaking ceramic:

1. On the Mohs scale, ceramic scores a nine — bested only by diamond. On the Vickers hardness scale, ceramic measures around 2,300, compared with just 200 for standard stainless steel. However, ceramic is more brittle than steel, gold and titanium, and can crack or splinter on a hard impact — so it's wonderfully scratch-proof, but not indestructible
2. The ceramic used in modern watchmaking is closer to the ceramic NASA uses to protect satellites and spacecraft from extreme heat than it is to the ceramic in your kitchen crockery. It's produced by superheating materials like silica until molten, then cooling and milling them into shape — a world away from a potter's wheel

3. Rolex doesn't use standard ceramic at all — they've developed a patented alloy called Cerachrom. Others have gone further still: Omega blends ceramic with gold to create Ceragold, while Hublot has Magic Gold — both designed to stop soft gold from scratching by fusing it with something nearly indestructible
4. Despite feeling like a thoroughly modern material, the first ceramic watches actually date back to the mid 20th century. It took until the mid 1980s for the technology and material science to mature enough for ceramic to become genuinely attractive to watchmakers at scale
5. Ceramic is hypoallergenic — good news for anyone with a nickel allergy who can't wear stainless steel. It’s also highly UV-resistant, meaning it won't fade or discolour even after years in direct sunlight, unlike gold or dyed materials

The Country Life quiz runs daily every afternoon, with new editions published at 4pm.

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Gazing across the River Thames from the balcony of The Savoy Hotel's Terrace Suite recently, I was reminded that Claude Monet checked in here for extended stays three times between 1898 and 1901 to paint those iconic fog-shrouded scenes of Waterloo Bridge from the very same vantage point.

Elsewhere, the hotel’s new collection of freshly refurbished Art Deco rooms leans on its history as a venue once synonymous with the most progressive designers of the time. ‘It’s not about recreating the past,’ says general manager Frank Arnold, ‘but about interpreting its spirit for the future.’

As recently as the early 2000s tales of hardscrabble artists, writers and designers seeking refuge in hotels, clubs and restaurants would abound. Indeed, much of The Groucho Club’s famed art collection is made up of works offered up by skint YBAs unable to pay their tab. But with nights in Savoy suites nudging £10,000 it’s fair to say you won't find any jobbing artists seeking board and inspiration there today.

It’s hardly a novel point to make that London hotel prices have become increasingly steep as operational costs have risen (what hasn’t?), but if the ever-expanding luxury market here remains fixated on chasing that most ungainly of acronyms, the UHNWI (ultra-high-net-worth individual), what happens to the creatives, the bohemians, the free-spirited flâneurs that, in lieu of spending power, have always given such places their place-to-be-seen allure?

It’s a hot topic during the soft-launch buzz of Savoy’s new north bank neighbour, St Clement, the brainchild of Soho House founder Nick Jones. Given its prime panoramic position and immediate star power (The Rolling Stones launched their new album here) they could really have charged what they like. ‘But we don't want to just take anyone,’ explained Jones on a recent showaround. ‘We want people who are kind, not flashy, who really respect what we're trying to do and so we really respect them.’

And so regular guests, locals and ‘friends’ will receive a preferential £600-a-night rate and a welcome into its semi-private bar, Bobbi’s. Plus the local cabbies got free coffee, breakfast and late-night burgers on certain dates this summer. Could it be taken as something of a vibe shift? A timely reminder that the best hotels have never belonged exclusively to their guests, but to their neighbourhoods too?

Oliver Milne-Watson hopes so: ‘The great London hotels earned their reputations because they weren't just buildings, they were meeting places.’ Milne-Watson is the general manager of The Newman which opened in Fitzrovia at the start of the year. Its storied but often overlooked central London neighbourhood has been at the heart of the hotel and portraits of local characters line its walls. ‘It has a remarkable creative history — we wanted The Newman to reflect that spirit rather than simply borrow its aesthetic. A neighbourhood hotel has to contribute to the life of its area, not just benefit from its postcode,’ says Milne-Watson.

Its Neighbourhood Club is one such initiative that gives local members discounts at the hotel restaurant, bar, and spa and at a growing network of independent businesses with all profits from membership donated to Fitzrovian charities. ‘The challenge for the industry is finding ways to maintain that openness while still running a sustainable business. But luxury and accessibility don't have to be opposites.’

Charles Berkeley stands next to the splendid French late-Gothic arch that dominates the courtyard of Berkeley Castle. Incredibly, this iconic castle — built shortly after the Norman Conquest, and the site of King Edward II's notoriously gruesome murder — has been in the ownership of the Berkeley family since the 12th century.

Both the arch and the inset doorway, richly carved with figures of angels, saints and apostles, were among the imported fixtures and fittings installed during the wholesale restoration of the neglected castle in the 1920s by Randal, 8th Earl of Berkeley.

A chemist educated in France, the Earl aimed to restore the neglected castle to its medieval state, reversing changes to the fabric, but also to modernise its facilities. The work was undertaken by the London firm Keeble, which specialised in the sale of historic interiors and the restoration of houses.

It’s difficult to be certain where the arch came from, but it dates to about 1500 and was possibly supplied by Parisian antique dealer Bacri Frères in 1923. Certainly, he sold a doorcase to the Earl that was supposedly associated with Anne de Bretagne, wife of Charles VIII of France.

The door was cut down to fit the arch and may be from Brittany or Normandy. To confuse matters, the achievement has been re-carved with the Berkeley Arms.

‘It’s my favourite doorway here,’ says Berkeley, ‘very much in keeping with the 8th Earl’s stylish additions to the castle.'

Berkeley Castle is open to visitors — see the website for details.

This feature originally appeared in the August 26, 2026, print edition of Country Life. Click here for more information on how to subscribe.

Country-house agent Tim Phillips quotes a guide price of £10.5 million for Grade II*-listed Ripley Grange at Theydon Bois, Essex, which stands in more than 40 acres of formal gardens, woodland, open pasture and established parkland on high ground abutting Epping Forest, with views over its own gardens and the surrounding countryside towards the distant London skyline.

The house enjoys total privacy within its own grounds, yet central London, the City and Canary Wharf remain readily accessible, with Theydon Bois Central Line Underground Station only a mile away.

Ripley Grange was built in the Tudor style between 1928 and 1930 for Charles Frederick Clark, whose fortune was derived from the manufacture of carbon paper and type-writer ribbons at his Caribonium factory in Leyton, south-west Essex.

First listed in March 2020, Historic England’s decision was largely based on the building’s importance as ‘an interpretation of a Tudor house inspired by some of the most significant and impressive buildings of the Tudor period, every element of which demonstrates craftsmanship of the highest order’.

Clark left no stone unturned in his search for the perfect site on which to build the house, which he regarded as the crowning success of his life. After touring Essex and Hertfordshire for two years, he bought 40 acres of farmland at Loughton between Epping Forest and the River Roding, a picturesque and hilly location that, following the arrival of the railway in 1856, saw the construction of a large number of good late-19th- and early-20th-century houses for discerning commuters.

Wallis, Gilbert and Partners, the designers of Clark’s Art Deco factory, later demolished, were commissioned to design the house of its owner’s dreams. Their brief was to create a perfect reproduction of a grand Tudor mansion, drawing upon the Tudor and Jacobean buildings Clark most admired, with individual rooms influenced by Hampton Court Palace in Surrey, Penshurst Place in Kent, Lavenham Guildhall in Suffolk and Plas Mawr in Conwy, Wales.

Work started in 1928 and took 15 months to complete, although Clark continued to make substantial alterations throughout the 1930s, resulting in today’s spectacular country house, which offers almost 15,000sq ft of accommodation on three floors.

Highlights include the oak-panelled Great Hall and the drawing room overlooking the formal gardens; the morning room inspired by Lavenham Guildhall and Plas Mawr.

Another standout is the library with its linenfold panelling and modelled plaster ceiling, while there is a smaller private study that retains its original joinery.

There's a fine kitchen, which has been modernised and adapted for contemporary family life.

Nine bedrooms and five bathrooms are laid out across the first and second floors.

Ripley Grange is for sale at £10.5 million through Tim Phillips — see more details and pictures.

Cruz Beckham made his Reading Festival debut this bank holiday weekend, North West appeared on the latest cover of Dazed magazine and Kaia Gerber and Homer Gere are starring in the new 80s-themed Disney+ series The Shards. 2026 is the summer of the nepo baby.

The life of a nepo baby, however, can be a win-win or a lose-lose. You could profit from a successful career without any talent of your own, riding on the coat-tails of a famous family. Or, you could be talented in your own right, but no matter how successful you become people will always accuse you of not having ‘earned’ it.

Our obsession with celebrities' children has only increased in recent years with the rise of social media. An increasingly difficult job market, too, has thrown their success under the spotlight. You’d be within your right to assume that Emily Roux may have lived to rue the day she entered the family trade. But fear of nepotism allegations has not deterred the granddaughter of Albert Roux and daughter of Michel Roux Jr. Her Michelin star restaurant, Caractère, now nearly nine years old, has been going from strength to strength.

The fine dining restaurant in Notting Hill, which the 35-year-old co-owns with her husband, chef Diego Ferrari, previously of Le Gavroche, is immensely popular. With hospitality struggling amidst the cost of living crisis, Caractère’s success cannot be put down to the Roux surname alone. Although it may have helped her to get a foothold in the industry, it has taken years of grit and determination for Emily to step out of her father and grandfather’s towering culinary shadow.

That shadow began with Albert Roux, the renowned French chef, who opened Le Gavorche in Mayfair with his brother Michel. It was the first restaurant in the UK to gain three Michelin stars, and was taken over by Albert’s son, Michel Jr, before its closure in 2024.

‘The passion for food, eating out, has always been there,’ Emily says. In her early teens she spent a few evenings at Le Gavroche. ‘It opened my eyes to the camaraderie and little family that you had in the kitchen. I’m an only child, and I thought, I quite like these older brothers and sisters. It seemed like a lot of fun.’

Combined with a phobia of ‘sitting down and being behind a computer in an office’, cooking soon became ‘the only thing [she] wanted to do’. Her father is now 66, and enjoying a life away from the day-to-day business of running a world-renowned restaurant. This means he is regularly free to babysit Emily and Diego’s young children.

It’s clear that he couldn’t be prouder of his only daughter. ‘I think it was fairly obvious that she was going to end up in the hospitality industry,’ he says, although he is quick to add, ‘We never pushed Emily into cooking, that’s for sure.’

‘She was always interested in food… at a very young age she already knew flavour profiles and what was good, what wasn’t good.’ Michel Jr remembers going to restaurants with Emily as a little girl aged six. She would give him feedback after each meal.

‘On the way back home we would talk about it and she would make a note and say: “This one deserves a star, this one doesn’t.”’ Little did she know, she’d one day have a star of her own.

Emily decided not to take on the family business, and instead strike out on her own. Michel Jr says: ‘I took some advice from my father, but it was always more inspirational, and I think my father was always putting his nose in my business, so I tried not to do that with Emily.’ He adds: ‘It was a struggle in itself because he never really let go, and the actual business was struggling immensely. It was not making money. In fact, it was losing money — loads of money. So it took a long time for me to address that and to make it back into a profitable business. But Emily and Diego started from scratch.’

Emily adds: ‘He’s always a phone call away,’ and recalls how, during covid, she was on the phone with her father every other day, discussing how their restaurants’ respective landlords were reacting and how they would organise things to ensure the future of their businesses. ‘There’s always been help in the background. Always,’ she says.

When Emily studied at the Institut Lyfe in France as a young chef, she enjoyed anonymity — Roux is a much more common surname in France. ‘It was ideal,’ she says. ‘I was Joe Bloggs, and treated like everyone else. Most of the places that I worked never knew my family history or where I came from, probably until the time I was about to leave. It was perfect. I just lived my young commis chef life as anyone would.’

The pair agree times have changed since Michel Jr started out in the industry. ‘I think my team has a good work/life balance at the moment… I think that wasn’t the case when I started out in my career,’ says Emily. Her restaurant is shut on Sundays and Mondays, as well as for the Christmas and New Year period — ‘It’s a time when I want to be with my family, and I think everyone wants to be with their families’.

They also close for the last two weeks of August to coincide with the Notting Hill carnival and grant a reprieve for those with children, and are only open for lunch on Fridays and Saturdays. ‘We have lunch when they arrive. We have dinner together,’ she adds, about her staff.

Michel Jr says: ‘I worked 100 plus hours a week when I was training, and Emily probably not far off the same, at times. We have to do better than that. But I certainly don’t look back at my training period with any anger or ill feelings.’

Now his daughter is a parent to young children, does he reflect on his life as a busy chef with a young family? He is certainly on duty as a grandfather a lot of the time these days. Emily’s eldest son, a precocious six-year-old, enthusiastically interrupts our interview a few times, clamouring for his grandad’s attention, or perhaps a Michelin-starred snack.

‘Emily was put into a nursery and daycare as a child, so it certainly didn’t stop us working,’ says Michel Jr. ‘I tried my best to spend as much time as possible with Emily, because I felt that my father didn't spend enough time with me when he opened Le Gavroche, but it wasn't easy. I was still working ridiculous hours.’

For Emily, things were slightly different. ‘We already had the restaurant when the kids were born and they adapted to it as we did… but we make a really good effort to spend a wonderful day with them on a Sunday when we’re all together at home, and on Monday afternoons.’

What about that adage about ‘too many cooks’? Especially considering Diego, Emily’s husband, is in the mix too. ‘It works very well,’ Michel Jr says. ‘They’re coming over to France very soon and Diego might do a barbecue, I might do the vegetables, Emily might do something else.’ Emily adds: ‘It’s very natural and very easy. If there’s three of us, well, there’s three more ideas and three more hands to do something.’

Rivalry would not be unexpected in such an accomplished family, especially in a business that can be measured in awards. For Emily and Michel Jr, however, working with food brings them together.

The only downside seems to be that Emily’s children have a distinguished palette, like she did as a young girl. They eat the same food as the adults in her household. ‘He’s never had a dull pasta,’ she says of her eldest. ‘So when we go to a restaurant at an airport, for example, inevitably he won’t enjoy it and will be very disappointed.’ Ditto grandma’s homemade pizza dough, Michel Jr relates sadly. But, if this is the only problem, it seems the family are doing very well indeed. In this instance, too many cooks don’t spoil the broth, or in this case, the roux, at all.

Emily and Michel Jr will be collaborating on a Christmas menu at Caractère. Visit their website for more information.

The Country Life quiz runs daily every afternoon, with new editions published at 4pm.

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When the new tenant of this house on the Blenheim estate in Oxfordshire engaged the team at Blyth-Collinson Interiors, he had a very specific brief, says founder Saskia Blyth. ‘His instruction to me was that, with the exception of beds, fabrics and towels, nothing else could be bought new. He wanted to walk into the house and feel as if it had been around forever.’

Armed with a guideline of colours from her client, Blyth set to work. The deep electric blue (main image) was inspired by a photograph spotted in a book; it was mixed on site and applied by decorative painter Will Foster.

Other colour transformations include a study where all the walls and the ceiling are painted black, green lacquer in the dining room and a hallway in rust. The generous sofa here (main image) was sourced by the decorator, who had it upholstered in an oatmeal-coloured Belgian linen. Over the top are several rugs and blankets that were found in various markets and antique shops.

The coffee table was made bespoke by FRD. The Dorset-based designer, who established his workshop in the mid 1980s and produced designs for Sibyl Colefax & John Fowler, is described by Blyth as ‘the best metal-worker known to man’. The top of the table is made of polished brass with a hammered effect on the surrounding sides. Either side of the sofa are lamps by Vaughan. The table against the wall was a family piece and the blue lamp was found at Guinevere. At the windows is a pair of curtains in a heavy red velvet from de Le Cuona (all main image).

This feature originally appeared in the August 19, 2026, issue of Country Life. Click here for more information on how to subscribe.'

Here's a look at some of what you'll find inside.

Majesty reborn

Edward Impey admires the ambitious attempt to revive early-12th-century interiors at Norwich Castle keep in Norfolk

What did the Normans ever do for us?

Jason Goodwin examines how the 1066 invasion by William the Conqueror changed the character of England forever

Walk on the wild side

Nicholas Crane re-creates the 1,000-mile, 12th-century journey undertaken by Gerald of Wales, Britain’s first great travel writer

Architecture as power

The monumental castles and churches the Normans left behind still express their strength in stone, reveals John Goodall

That sinking feeling

Quicksand is the stuff of many a nightmare. Harry Pearson tries not to get sucked in

Arts & antiques

Artists have long been inspired by the Battle of Hastings, as Carla Passino discovers

Michael Whitehall’s favourite painting

The podcast co-host chooses an arresting work expressing movement and fleeting beauty

Save our seeds

Seed Detective Adam Alexander issues an appeal to gardeners to revive the Victorian tradition of gathering life-giving pips

The legacy

The fossil-hunter Mary Anning helped put palaeontology front and centre, finds Kate Green

Country-house treasure

The golden Jean Tijou gates at Burghley House in Lincolnshire catch the eye of John Goodall

New series: Countryside mysteries

In the first of a series on rural riddles, John Wright cracks the old conundrum of strip lynchets

Yell for leather

Corinne Julius meets the animal-hide experts conserving historic objects from their Leicester HQ

You little cracker

The neglected Kentish cobnut is making an overdue come-back, suggests Susan Low

Luxury

The runway returns and Amie Elizabeth White’s earthy tones

Interiors

Amelia Thorpe picks out elegant fittings to elevate the bathroom

London Life

Will Hosie asks what makes a pub a pub and eyes properties with a pop of colour, plus our writers have all you need to know this month and Gio Fio marvels at the reinvention of the north bank of the Thames

Out on the prairie

American plants may be the answer to our warming climate, reports Charles Quest-Ritson

Travel

Pamela Goodman roots around in the Nadder Valley in Wiltshire

And much more.

Whenever I drive one of my vintage cars, I make a bet with myself that at the first traffic stop someone will lean out of a modern car and gravely assure me: 'They don’t make them like that any more.' This is undeniably true. But then they also don’t make electric light bulbs or radio sets, or so many other things, like they used to, so why do we car enthusiasts drive — and by choice, in all weathers — cars of such great age?

This is an easy question to ask, but has many answers. For me, the first reason is that I like it. Vintage motoring is fun. Old cars are all characters, some good, some bad, whereas modern cars, with several notable exceptions, do not possess such charisma. Most look alike, many are alike. They are totally bland, suitable for a sanitised society, where to conform is too often considered too important. Cars, like clothes, mirror social and political change.

When the old cars that I prefer were new, the world was a livelier, larger place and the cars made then reflect these characteristics. In addition to such famous makes as Rolls-Royce, Bentley, Bugatti, Delage and Alfa Romeo, there are many others less well known. All have their own personalities, often stemming from the attitudes and outlooks of their entrepreneurial designers and manufacturers.

What motor manufacturer today, for example, would proudly advertise his tiny two-cylinder car as having 'The Pull of an Elephant and the Appetite of a Canary'? Or, in describing its performance, would claim, 'With Spurs, would climb Trees'? Jowett from Yorkshire did for years, and in its day was very successful.

Then there was the enormously long Burney, designed in 1930 by the R100 airship engineer, Sir Dennistoun Burney, with a wheelbase of 13 feet and 5 inches, and an eight-cylinder engine hanging out for several feet beyond the rear wheels. At another extreme, the Trojan ran on solid rubber tyres, powered by an engine lying on its side under the front seat, and behind a bonnet empty except for the petrol tank. And what modern car, even with ABS braking, possesses the style of the mighty American Duesenberg, whose driver could adjust the brakes as he drove with a control marked Dry, Rain, Snow, Ice?

These days, my old-car driving is mainly confined to three cars, in order of seniority: a 1935 Auburn cabriolet, a 1936 Cord roadster (both made by the firm in Indiana which produced the Duesenberg), and a 1937 Jaguar SS100.

The Cord has a coffin-shaped bonnet, blunt as a blue-nosed whale; the sort of car Toad of Toad Hall would have enjoyed. The little SS100, so called because it was made by the SS car company, later Jaguar, and could reach a speed of 100mph, is light-footed as a mountain pony, slightly built and, in the wet, skittish as a trainee ballerina.

No one could deny that the Cord is well made. Clutch and brake pedals move on roller bearings, every nut and bolt is plated, and after 50 years, the body of high-grade metal is still free of rust. It was also the first American car to combine innovations such as retractable headlamps, independent front suspension and an engine and gearbox built on a special frame for easy removal.

The Cord had an integral body, totally soundproofed and without running boards, a built-in radio, rheostat-controlled instrument lighting, variable-speed windscreen wipers, headlamp main-beam warning light, concealed door hinges, and many more examples of ingenuity. But it had — and has — a weakness that neither time nor the expenditure of large sums of money by subsequent owners to experts of various kinds has been able to cure completely. This is its means of changing gear.

As an early front-wheel-drive design, the car has the gearbox laid out in front of the engine and front wheels. Gear changes are made by moving a tiny electric switch in a miniature gate on the steering column. No doubt, this seemed a very good idea at the time, because it did away with any need for complicated mechanical linkages. This switch activates solenoids, to open and close valves controlling vacuum servos, which, in turn, manipulate a lever that actually changes the gears. Many a garage mechanic, contemplating for the first time this nest of magnets, wires, valves, tubes and levers, must have echoed Shelley’s words: 'Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair.'

I have often felt this despair acutely when, after half a century, the solenoids suddenly show their age and I realise with alarm that I cannot engage any gear at all. I coast around roundabouts or across intersections, usually in rush-hour traffic, with irate drivers hooting, my V8 engine racing away, but not transmitting any power whatever to ever more slowly turning wheels. Then, miraculously, energy returns to the stricken vehicle, and the gear changes as slickly as ever.

The Auburn takes its name, not from the colour, but from the town of that name where it was made, and provides another kind of vintage motoring. In contrast to the Cord, it is as temperamental as a superannuated building society clerk. The engine’s eight cylinders fire obediently in line, pistons the size of flower pots pound up and down, and the car’s sheer size metamorphoses even the shortest drive into a stately progression.

An ingenious device, controlled by a small lever in the centre of the steering wheel, enables the driver to change the back axle ratio as he drives. This has the effect of doubling the gears available (six forward gears instead of three) and also enables him to drive long distances without changing gear manually — useful in the conditions for which the Auburn was designed, tooling leisurely along broad American highways under a high mid-Western sun.

The Auburn was intended, after all, for a big country and an unhurried time when in the USA petrol cost less than the equivalent of 2½p per gallon — and in Britain not much more than 5p. At such prices, who but a miser would complain of the speed at which its Carter carburettor drinks the 20 gallons of petrol which the tank contains?

While the SS possesses such a narrow cockpit that driver and passenger sit thigh to thigh, so close together that the doors have cut-away tops so that their right and left elbows respectively can hang outside in the slipstream, the Cord and Auburn have high doors and weigh around 2½ tons. The feeling is of travelling in an open tank. A 4.7-litre engine churns away about 6ft in front of the occupants’ legs and somehow seems totally divorced from the wheels. In all three cars, after a few miles on a warm day, there is a sensation of heat and the constant drone of many mechanical parts all working hard that is, of course, totally absent in a more modern car.

I acquired a Cord more than 20 years ago, after putting an advertisement in the London Evening Standard. This brought a reply from Australia. Apparently, a ship’s engineer who owned the car had bought the paper in Southampton, but did not read it until his ship docked in Sydney. On his return, he sold me my first Cord. I then heard of another that had lain in a shed in Staffordshire for years and bought that and, out of the two, built one.

I liked this car so much that I 'gave' it to a character, Doctor Jason Love, whom I created in a series of adventure novels. When the first, Passport to Oblivion, was filmed, I was asked to hire the car to the studios in Elstree. It lay neglected in the studio garage for months, next to the yellow Rolls-Royce that appeared in the film of that name.

No one heeded my warning that old cars, like old people, can become very crotchety and temperamental if not constantly cared for. Then, the Cord was suddenly required one morning for David Niven, as Doctor Love, and John Le Mesurier, as an intelligence agent, to drive through the winding lanes of Hertfordshire.

A studio employee drove it to the rendezvous, near Aldenham, but the old car was clearly much put out at being summoned so summarily and 'driven without feeling' by a stranger. The battery was flat, the tyres soft, and the engine overheated in protest. To show its total displeasure, it refused to start when the actors were ready. So, just out of camera range, a rope was attached to the front bumper for members of the crew to pull, and I pushed at the rear.

Then, as if to atone for this behaviour, the engine started perfectly and Niven and Le Mesurier drove away in splendid style to the next location.

Here again, temperament prevailed, the radiator boiled and the car stopped in clouds of steam. At this, the director wisely decided to shoot a completely new scene in which this unexpected breakdown had a part to play.

Now every time I see this film on TV — called Where the Spies Are —for reasons never made clear to me, I recall this instance when art imitated not nature, but mechanical mishap.

Since those days, the Cord has been totally rebuilt. In July last year, my eldest son Jeremy and I took it to Brooklands for the annual Reunion of the Brooklands Society, dedicated to keeping fresh the memory and traditions of what was the world’s first — and most famous — purpose-built motor-racing course.

The day was warm and, surprisingly for a Sunday in summer, the roads nearly empty. The big old car bowled along effortlessly. One sits higher up than in a modern car and is able to see over the tops of fences and hedges and the roofs of other cars. The shortest journey thus becomes as important as its purpose, to be enjoyed as an outing for itself, not simply as a means to an end.

Another reason why driving an old car can be rewarding is that something about its appearance, whether it is large or small, brings out the best in other users of the road. Camaraderie between drivers returns — and of course when these cars were new it was customary for motorists approaching each other in cars of the same make to wave a friendly greeting.

Once, I had a puncture, and the feeble jack I had borrowed for the journey from my modern car could not cope with the weight. Other cars stopped, and their drivers offered aid or advice, but the heavy metal defeated them all. Finally, the driver of a passing coach saw the little group of people in the layby with jacks of various types spread about, and instantly assessed the problem.

The driver pulled off the road and produced a huge hydraulic jack that could lift a bus, and once more the Cord was mobile. None of his coach passengers objected to the involuntary stop. They all climbed out and surrounded the car, praising its looks and workmanship. Old cars remind older people of their youth, when they might have owned models of that make. Younger people enjoy seeing examples of individual minds and a pre-computerised age.

While the Cord is a Cunarder among cars, the SS100 provides totally different sensations and reactions. The big car gives an easy, soft ride, but the SS, with its cart springs and shock absorbers set up tightly, feels like riding on a board. If the windscreen is folded flat it provokes such a rush of air that goggles are necessary. Similarly, the wind whips round the side of the screen, even if it is raised, so a leather jacket is a wise precaution. The car has a skimpy aluminium body so that the rear wings can buckle if anyone attempts to push it over the headlamps, and behind the windscreen two cowls that rise like metal breasts to shield the instruments, were not in the best of taste.

A deeper reason for this coolness was that the SS100 could outperform other cars that cost nearly twice as much.

The SS100 reeks of the open road — and, to some, of the open roadhouse — and so in my latest adventure novel, Tank of Serpents (Collins), when I needed to provide a raffish character with a pre-war sports car, I chose this one, which is rather unfair, since I have owned four SS100s and all have given me an enormous amount of fun at very low cost.

Indeed, I can remember being let down by a mechanical failure only once. This was on an unusually hot day, when the engine overheated, causing the condenser in the distributor to lose its ability to condense. I simply coasted off the road, allowed a few minutes for the engine to cool, fitted a replacement condenser, and went on my way.

Spares for vintage cars are rarely a problem. There are clubs for nearly every make, and dozens of small firms make replacement parts. The Vintage Sports Car Club caters for the interests of all vintage car enthusiasts. (By definition, 'vintage' cars refer to those made between 1919 and 1930, so my trio are all post-vintage Thoroughbreds.)

Samuel Johnson wrote that 'a man used to vicissitudes is not easily dejected'. By this reasoning, drivers of vintage cars have to be people of resource and resilience, and, in my experience, they are. Our cars come to possess almost human qualities and failings. In essence, they reflect the personalities and idiosyncrasies of the people who built them — and our own. Perhaps this is really the reason why we like them so much?

This article first appeared in the October 16, 1986 issue of Country Life. Click here for more information on how to subscribe.

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