Argyll and Bute — £1.25 million

Only a short boat ride is required to access the 9¾-acre Harbour Island from Crinan Harbour near Lochgilphead, and, once there, the architect-designed, recently renovated principal house offers four bedrooms.

Additionally, there are two sitting rooms — one on the ground floor and one on the first floor, the latter forming part of an impressive light-filled open-plan space with a vaulted ceiling that also features the kitchen and the impressive 30½ft by 14¾ft living room.

Glazed doors lead outside to a raised timber deck, which offers direct access to a wood-fired hot tub.

‘Harbour Island represents a onceinalifetime opportunity,’ says property agent Iona Conn. ‘It is rare to find a private island offering this level of privacy, seclusion and panoramic views, all within a remarkably short 300m [985ft] trip from the mainland.’ Additionally, there is a self-contained cabin known as The Witch’s Folly.

For sale via Savills — see more details.

Isle of Wight — £1.775 million

St Winifreds sits above Totland Bay and overlooks one of the Isle of Wight’s finest sandy beaches and the western approaches to the Solent and Christchurch Bay.

The former convent with ornate ceilings, decorative fireplaces and an elegant staircase has, over the past three years, been significantly upgraded and turned into a chic and comfortable six- to eight-bedroom home, where there is even a spacious cinema room on the first floor.

The principal rooms, such as the dining room and the 32½ft by 21ft drawing room, are of impressive proportions, making them perfect for entertaining or large family gatherings. The kitchen overlooks the swimming pool and the near-one-acre garden that is mainly laid to lawn.

For sale via Knight Frank — see more details.

Devon — £695,000

In 1373, Geoffrey Chaucer visited Dartmouth; in 1620, Mayflower briefly put into the town’s Bayard’s Cove with the Pilgrim Fathers before they set sail for America; and, more recently, Flora Thompson, author of Lark Rise to Candleford, lived in this place with an extraordinary heritage. She chose to make her home in Above Town, one of the oldest and most sought-after residential areas in this town that is on the River Dart and only a stone’s throw from the sea.

A recent addition to the market is the four-bedroomed 60, Above Town, which has a ground floor sitting room, a snug/television area and an open-plan kitchen/dining room.

There's also an alfresco dining terrace, a hot-tub terrace at the rear of the house and glorious river views.

The agent says of 60, Above Town that it ‘offers beautifully appointed accommodation, thoughtfully designed to maximise space and light.

The views of the estuary are superb, and the interior coastal design, which runs throughout the house, is both elegant and relaxed’.

For sale via Jackson-Stops ­— see more details.

Northumberland — £1.1 million

Imagine uninterrupted views stretching from Bamburgh Castle to Holy Island. Seahouse, a former colliery owner’s home that is sited a mile from Scremerston and three miles south of Berwick-upon-Tweed, offers just such views from its exceptional location, on a cliff top and only yards from the shore of the North Sea.

A substantial five-bedroom, stone Georgian property that boasts many period features (including high ceilings, decorative tiling, sash windows, feature fireplaces and panelling), Seahouse has three reception rooms — a drawing room, dining room and a smaller snug.

The imposing kitchen/breakfast room contains an electric Aga and is sited close to the boot room and tack room.

The nearby sandy beaches are perfect for dog walkers and horse riders alike and, indeed, Seahouse may interest keen equestrians, as there are almost four acres of land, some made up of paddocks, plus, for those four-legged friends, there is a timber stable block with two loose boxes.

The self-contained attached cottage has two bedrooms, making it perfect for either multi-generational living or as a commercial prospect.

For sale via GSC Grays­— see more details.

This is the third part of our series on the experts' experts, in which we spoke to two dozen members of the Country Life Top 100 about the artisans, dealers and writers whose work and wisdom have played a huge part in their careers. The previous instalments saw them name the greatest craftspeople working in Britain and the best furniture designers.

Tim Crump, Oakwrights: I like the look of old painted furniture against the oak frames of our homes, so I recommend John Cornall Antiques, Warwickshire, who has simple painted pieces, occasionally, Shaker in style, which are hard to find in the UK. Although not an antique dealer, Shaker of Malvern, Worcestershire, makes beautiful Shaker furniture—which will be the antiques of the future.

Meg Boscawen: Katie Turton, the founder of Perpoli, has an eye for sourcing truly special pieces and a natural talent for uncovering objects with character, history and soul.

Edward Smith, Artorius Faber: Jack Laver Brister always seems to have some interesting things.

Chloe Willis, Sibyl Colefax & John Fowler: Ed Foster and his mother, Val, of Foster and Gane, have an Oxfordshire shop full of interesting pieces, from antiquities to 20th-century works, and I always find something I love. My friend Molly Alexander has opened a store near us on Pimlico Road, London W1, and it is sensational. Strength, restraint and effortlessly chic.

Geoffrey Preston: Su Daybell has a brilliant eye. Her Tetbury shop, Twig, in Gloucestershire, is a place to look for unusual and unique pieces.

Shankar Kothapuram, Tom Stuart-Smith Studio: Darren Jones of Lichen Garden Antiques, Oxfordshire, always finds what you want, even before you knew you wanted it!

Bee Osborn, Osborn Interiors: Liz Morris Decorative Interiors, specialist in French, Swedish and English furniture and interiors, and Martha’s Attic, Oxfordshire, for all kinds of decorative antiques.

Angelica Squire, Studio Squire: We have found some wonderful pieces at Dorian Caffot de Fawes, London NW8, and also eagerly await the Friday drops by Four Quarters Home and Passé The Store.

Hugo Bugg, Harris Bugg: Darren Jones at Lichen Garden Antiques is our go-to dealer. He has an exceptional range of stone and garden antiques, an outstanding eye and sources that are impossible to match.

Lonika Chande: 8 Holland Street, W8, and Sauce, E10, are both wonderful for 20th-century pieces with personality, whereas Lorfords, Gloucestershire, is always a favourite for its breadth and inspiring mix of antiques and decorative objects.

Robbie Kerr, ADAM Architecture: Tim Corfield has been fantastic to work alongside, helping to bring his amazing depth of knowledge to shape clients’ searches.

Francis Terry: I am a huge fan of Will Fisher at Jamb, whom I have known for many years. He has such a great instinct for antiques and a love of classical architecture. He also has immense energy and, together with his wife, Charlotte Freemantle, has developed a wide range of excellent reproduction lighting, fireplaces and other antiques.

Rupert Cunningham, Ben Pentreath Studio: Molly Alexander recently opened the most beautiful shop on London’s Pimlico Road, SW1, a few doors down from her mentor Will Fisher’s great Jamb showroom. Inside you’ll find a beautifully curated blend of 18th- and mid-20th-century pieces.

In 1982, the Guinness World Record for the longest-ever after-dinner speech was broken. It lasted 12-and-a-half hours and it will probably not surprise you that it was delivered by Gyles Brandreth.

Fortunately, when I speak to Gyles over the phone, he is on his way to the ITV studio where he will be filming This Morning. The journey is only 30 minutes long. Otherwise, I fear I would’ve been here all day.

When he is not talking — a rarity — Gyles is listening on his award-winning podcast, Rosebud, where he interviews celebrities about their early memories. ‘To Country Life readers who haven’t yet discovered podcasts, I say to them: get with the programme. There is more to life than Radio 4.’

The podcast, which is ‘totally apolitical’, has so far featured high profile celebrities and politicians, including Sir Ed Davey, Kemi Badenoch (who Gyles is a ‘great fan’ of) and Sir Keir Starmer.

Would he interview Nigel Farage? ‘Yes, certainly,’ Gyles says. ‘I am interested in people. I wouldn’t be voting for him, because I want a credible party with clear long term views and the knee-jerk reaction of Farage doesn't interest me but, as a person — of course.’

Who would he have if he could have any guest, living or dead? He replies that he doesn’t know if I am old enough to be eligible (I am 26 and baby-faced, but certainly out of childhood), but that he’d choose me. I suspect that this is a line, but still feel very flattered until he follows this up with: ‘I don’t mind who we have, seriously.’

Podcast host is the latest job in a long and varied career. ‘I used to be a Member of Parliament, and when I lost my seat in 1997 I wasn’t sure what to do. My wife [Michèle Brown] said: “do whatever you want to do.”’ So he did.

Gyles has been a politician, television presenter, theatre producer, journalist, author and publisher. As a young MP, ‘I think I aspired, probably, to be Prime Minister,’ he admits. He is still, he says, ‘waiting for the call’ and ‘very much’ a Conservative, as is his daughter Aphra Brandreth, who is the MP for Chester South and Eddisbury.

Now nearly 80 years old, he suggests that he may be trying yet another new role. ‘I am listening to some songs at the moment because of the Edinburgh show I’m doing. My co-performer and I may be singing,’ he says.

‘She’s a friend of mine called Harriet Jaine. She is the producer of my podcast. We did a charity show last year to raise money for Great Ormond Street Hospital with Joanna Lumley and Jim Broadbent, and I invited Harriet to come on and sing some songs. She was a sensation, so I said: “Will you be in my show?” It’s called Up Memory Lane!.’

Singing doesn’t really seem the most natural fit for Gyles, but given that the PM job looks set to be filled, what choice does he have? And looking back on Gyles’ talent as a career chameleon, I am sure he’ll find his voice, as he always seems to.

Your aesthetic hero

I mean, I’ve got so many answers. I’m going to say Oscar Wilde, because I feel like I’ve known him, personally, all my life. At my boarding school, the founder was a very old man who has been a friend of Wilde’s. So, as a boy I knew a friend of Oscar Wilde’s, and now I’m lucky enough to be a friend of Oscar Wilde’s grandson, Merlin Holland. I’ve written seven murder mystery novels based on Wilde’s life and am president of The Oscar Wilde Society. My favourite line of his is: ‘Murder is always a mistake. One should never do anything that one cannot talk about after dinner.’

A book you’ve found inspiring

A book of mine that I keep on my bedside table is Dancing by the Light of the Moon. It’s an anthology of poetry, so it’s not really mine. I keep it there because the poems in it are inspiring — and the great thing about poems is that they’re often quite short, so you can get a quick adrenaline rush by reading one. At the end of the book is a poem called ‘Everything is Going to be Alright’, by Derek Mahon. That is the inspiration I need.

An exhibition that has really impressed you

An exhibition of portraits by John Singer Sargent. His portraits are immaculate. The exhibition was at the Tate Britain not that long ago and his paintings were wonderful. I love them. People are often a little bit more elongated than they might have been in real life but, because I’m interested in people and I like people, the Sargent paintings are great. You feel as though you’re meeting some of the most interesting people in the world, because he’s caught them on canvas.

The last thing of note that you bought for yourself

Almost certainly a yoghurt with granola from Grosvenor House on Park Lane where we record my Rosebud podcast. That’s my go-to treat. I spend almost nothing on things. I mean, I haven’t bought clothes in literally 30 or 40 years, as you can see — look at me! I only wear one pair of shoes — the same every day.

Your favourite painting

There’s a painting in St Petersburg in the Hermitage Museum called ‘The Return of the Prodigal Son’, by Rembrandt. It is the only painting that I’ve seen when, on sight, it moved me to tears, which is why I remember it.

The music you work to

I don’t work to music, I work in silence. It’s not possible. I am a male, therefore I can only do one thing at a time, right? I do listen to music, and if I want a lift I listen to the songs of Charles Trenet. I listen to the same songs endlessly. For example, in the kitchen at night, when I'm doing the washing up or clearing up, I could listen to the same song 10 times in a row.

A possession you’d never sell

My problem is: I’m a hoarder. I have a whole room, in the basement of our house, that is my jumper room. The moment I die, my wife has got the skip company on rapid dial. I cannot give away or sell anything. I don’t find it difficult — I find it impossible. I have a wonderful bust of William Shakespeare, given to me by a friend some years ago, and I certainly wouldn’t give that away.

The last podcast you listened to

This is awful. The last podcast I listened to was my own. It’s ridiculous. Every night when I‘m getting ready for bed and cleaning my teeth, I listen for 30 minutes. We do three episodes a week and interestingly, when you’re actually doing it, it just sort of happens to you — and you don’t know what the episodes are really like until you hear them back. Curiously, they often land differently from the way they sound when it’s happening. It’s a different experience listening to them on audio to watching them on YouTube, too.

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

Well, I think Leonardo DiCaprio is getting a bit old now. Of course, I wouldn’t mind playing myself. But, when I was young, the actors I liked were Terry-Thomas, George Sanders, David Niven. But maybe… I tell you, The Muppet Christmas Carol is a great movie. I wouldn’t mind Kermit playing me.

What you’d take with you to a desert island

I’d take yoghurt and granola so I’d have a quality breakfast. I would take the obvious things too: The Complete Works of Shakespeare, the King James Version of the Bible, the Book of Common Prayer — because I love all the language of that, and I might take the Oxford English Dictionary to improve my vocabulary.

The items you collect

I have a collection of teddy bears. We had so many of them that when we got to a thousand, my wife said: ‘Enough,’ so they now live at Newby Hall, near Ripon in North Yorkshire. They have built for us the Brandreth Bear House there — and that’s where our teddy bears live, so I share them with the world. I collect everything. Teddy bears, jumpers, books.

The thing that gets you up each morning

I wake up — that’s what gets me up, and I get going. I’ve never been somebody for lying in bed, really. I’ve spent a lot of my adult life on breakfast television, so I’m used to getting up quite early.

A hotel you could go back and back to

The Randolph Hotel in Oxford on Beaumont Street. I was there this week. It’s a Hilton hotel now and it’s wonderful. It's quite old school in many ways, but I love it because I first went there when I was a student at Oxford a long time ago. I then lived there for a while when I ran the Oxford theater festival because the Playhouse theater in Oxford is right next door, They've done it up beautifully and they've given it an Alice in Wonderland theme — which I have had a lifetime obsession with.

The most memorable meal you’ve ever eaten

Well, I can’t say yoghurt and granola again. But yes, it is yoghurt and granola from Grosvenor House.

The best present you’ve ever received

Probably my wife, but she wasn’t a gift. She didn’t even come gift wrapped, so I’d say my three children.

For tickets to Gyles' Edinburgh Fringe show, see here. To listen to his podcast, see here

According to Waitrose, the ‘rosé tipping point’ — the outdoor temperature at which Britain’s middle classes start glugging the salmon-pink lady petrol with the same enthusiasm of a water-starved castaway — is 20˚C. Given that the Isle of Wight averages 37 hours of sunshine a week, you’d be forgiven for thinking islanders are popping the cork all year round and in truth, you’re probably right.

The pretty Victorian seaside resort of Ventnor, on the south-east coast of the island, enjoys both above-average sunshine hours and its own microclimate with air, according to The Times in 1841 ‘assimilated to the mild climate of the island of Madeira’ and, to paraphrase Sir John Betjeman, areas of garden so full of exotics, you almost expect a bird of paradise to flit from bloom to bloom. Others have drawn comparison with the Amalfi coast, with Ventnor’s breakneck precipices, zig-zag roads and steep steps echoing those of Positano.

Along the esplanade, directly behind where Ventnor’s 478 foot New Victoria Pier once jutted proudly out to sea, stands The Terrace Rooms & Wine, an immaculately restored Italianate-style villa — with turrets that are said to have inspired Prince Albert’s designs for Osborne House — that offers a more indulgent restorative for those that need a tad more than sea air and sub-tropical climes: wine.

Owned and run by Tom and Ashley Fahey, the six-bedroom boutique bolthole oozes relaxed epicurean indulgence. The rooms are light and airy, conceived in muted tones of putty, peach and artichoke; a pleasing blend of period features complemented by mid-century furniture, sumptuous super-king Hypnos beds and soothing sea views. The dusky scent of rose geranium and cloves gently wafts from the sensorial La-Eva products found in the bathrooms. We stayed in Room Five, an expansive split-level option that also offered views of the beautiful Cascade Gardens (designed at the turn of the 20th century by then town surveyor Edgar James Harvey) that tumble down towards the lapping sea. For those that insist on travelling with their four-or-two-legged shadow(s), sizeable Room Six (The Annexe) is both dog and child friendly.

Downstairs, the residents’ drawing room yawns out onto a sunlit glass pergola overlooking the coppery shingle and golden sand beach. If the view alone isn’t enough to feast on, prepare yourself for the exquisite four-course breakfast served in this room. I’ve eaten many hotel breakfasts and I can say, hand on heart, this was one of the best. Highlights include — but were not limited to — homemade Irish soda bread and bite-sized sausage rolls, a deconstructed full English (including Isle of Wight tomatoes — yes, please), Oxfordshire’s finest Ue coffee and local Briddlesford Farm milk, fresh from their Guernsey herd.

Now, back to the main event — the bottled poetry. Tom is ranked a Top 12 UK Sommelier (2025) and the hotel holds both the UK’s best rosé wine list and best New Zealand wine list (Star Wine List Awards 2025). In essence, you’re in excellent hands. Each evening, residents are invited to a wine tasting in the magnificent wine library, home to about 1,200 bottles which line the walls and almost every available surface. The tastings are gloriously unpretentious and, as Tom assures a fellow guest, ‘there are no rules here.’

As he pulls out three bottles — two rosés (one pale, one dark) and a red — all produced by Château du Cros in Bordeaux, we discuss the UK’s preference for the palest of the pale. He explains that in 1985, Château Barbeyrolles created the style we all now know as pale Provence rosé using a winemaking method called ‘direct press’. Meanwhile, Californian White Zinfandel was swiftly becoming the gateway wine of an entire generation, embedding the idea that dark rosé is sweet and estates such as Miraval, Domaines Ott and Chateau D’Esclans were turning pale rosé into a yachties lifestyle brand.

‘This is now a crisis for many wine regions,’ Tom sighs. ‘It is now almost impossible to put quality dark rosé on a shelf and expect anyone to look twice at it. The standard order for “your palest” or “the one most like Provence” rosé has negatively impacted traditional — and ironically bone dry — styles from Navarra, Tavel, Bordeaux and Montepulciano. Producers in these areas must palewash or die.’

Feeling a little ashamed of my own misconceptions, we taste the three Bordeaux on the table. The 2022 endangered dark rosé is lusciously dry with notes of dried peel, pink grapefruit and baking spice — the perfect Christmassy winter wine or in fact, is it a year-round rosé? It’s a revelation.

As we mull over what we might like to sup in front of the roaring residents room fire that evening, I dare to raise the question of ice — is it an oenophile’s faux pas? Tom reveals that at the low soaking temperatures during the winemaking process, the skins lend colour and flavour, but none of the astringent tannin that often leads consumers to shun ‘too dry’ red wines. ‘They are not simply winter rosés, but a superb red alternative all year round,’ he confirms. ‘And — whisper it! — they often take an ice cube far, far better than their under-flavoured pale cousins, creating an almost Campari or negroni like feel to a slightly longer and — unlike vermouth — bone dry drink.’

Rooms at The Terrace Rooms & Wine start from £250 a night including four-course breakfast and nightly wine tastings. Visit the hotel website for more information and to book.

There can be few garden designers who have a longer relationship with a particular garden than Tania Compton has with Fonthill House in Wiltshire, for it goes back half a century before she was born: her grandparents first set eyes on each other there. ‘They were the lucky recipients of a blind date set up by [the then owners] Hugh and Lady Mary Morrison,’ she explains, ‘and met over tea on the south lawn.’ We are talking on that same south lawn today, with its tremendous views to distant Win Green and the Dorset downs. The outlook may be the same, over the titanic stone bastions that support the garden on its steep hillside, but if her grandparents were to turn around, they would be astonished to see the change behind them.

The Fonthill they knew was an enormous, many-gabled mansion with, at its centre, a Jacobean manor house, which, before the First World War, had been painstakingly dismantled and rebuilt on this new site by the architect Detmar Blow. Its owner, Hugh Morrison, was one of the richest men in Britain, thanks to his grandfather, James. Known as ‘the Napoleon of shopkeepers’, James Morrison made one of the great Victorian fortunes, starting out in haberdashery before moving into banking and railways. He bought the Fonthill estate in the early 1830s, but eventually found it too far from London and gave it, in about 1845, to his second son, Alfred, who lived there for the rest of his life. Alfred’s son, Hugh, inherited in 1897, but, as his mother showed no signs of moving out of the main house, he engaged Blow to build him a home of his own on the eastern edge of the estate.

They chose a wonderful site, on a sunny hillside sheltered from the north and east by the steep escarpment of Little Ridge Wood. In those pre-war days of cheap, abundant labour, the hillside was sculpted into great stone terraces on an almost Mycenaean scale, planted with an Edwardian abundance of roses and bedding. For the first few years, the Morrisons lived in an exquisitely reconstructed Jacobean manor, at that time called simply Little Ridge, but, after children and further inheritances, the original building was repeatedly extended and renamed Fonthill House. Photographs from the Country Life archive reveal it to have been a beautifully picturesque exercise in the 17th-century style — the kind of house of which Sir Edwin Lutyens would have been proud.

Unlike many other country-house owners, the Morrisons survived both wars with their fortune remarkably intact, but, after Hugh’s death in 1931, changing social lives and staffing shortages made huge private houses such as Fonthill almost impossible to live in and, by the early 1970s, his son, John — made Lord Margadale a few years before — had decided to demolish the whole thing.

A late campaign to get Blow’s masterpiece spot-listed, led by Sir Nikolaus Pevsner and the Victorian Society, failed largely because officials at the Department of the Environment had got it muddled with one of the other houses on the estate, which they were under the impression had been demolished years before. By the time they realised their mistake, Blow’s house lay in ruins, to be replaced in 1972 by the current neo-Regency villa, which stands at the middle of the original terraces, although not, maddeningly, quite on the central axis.

Tania Compton’s involvement began about 20 years ago, in her bathing costume. ‘I was over for a swim one afternoon,’ she recalls, ‘soon after Lord Margadale [Alastair Morrison, who inherited the title in 2003] moved in, and I made some disparaging comments about the dwarf-dahlia bedding. It was something of a throwing-down-the-gauntlet put-down, but they knew changes were needed and I was the lucky person to be asked to come up with a masterplan.’ The previous two generations, as she puts it, ‘had been horse rather than horticulture aficionados’ — the first Lord Margadale established the Fonthill Stud, which bred Classic winners under his son — and the once-fine Arts-and-Crafts gardens had suffered decades of neglect, with lank leylandii hedges half hiding tumbledown fruit cages.

Her plan divided the garden into sections, enabling the work to be done in stages, keeping the best surviving trees and shrubs. The house is approached by a sinuous, mile-long drive, which crosses a bridge over Fonthill Lake, then winds gently uphill through woods and pastureland. Finally, it enters what feels like a dark, narrow cutting before emerging, in a brilliant coup de théâtre, into a huge amphitheatral space carved out of the hillside, with flights of steps sweeping up from either end above an arched central loggia. The last stretch of the drive is framed by handsome Persian ironwood trees, Parrotia persica, alternating with clipped box and standard holm oaks, Quercus ilex, underplanted with massed white narcissi, the alliums A. ‘Mont Blanc’ and A. stipitatum ‘Mount Everest’ and Japanese anemones.

To the west of the house, the unlamented leylandii have given way to three distinct spaces, their grassed centres divided by yew hedges, with the original wall along one side and a long retaining wall below, which boasts a fine collection of fan-trained figs. Closest to the new house, the Drawing Room Garden occupies the space where the 1920s drawing room once stood. Designed to feel like an extension of the house, this is one of the most intensely gardened areas, all red, purple and pink, with masses of Rosa ‘De Resht’, ’Bleu Magenta’, ‘Penelope’ and ‘Ispahan’, plus the annual poppy Papaver somniferum ‘Lauren’s Grape’. Beyond is the Cornus Garden, initially intended as a cricket pitch, but now dominated by a group of eight Cornus kousa var. chinensis, some standards and others multi-stemmed.

The sequence culminates in the Fountain Garden, centred on a serene William Pye fountain. In spring, its deep borders are yellow and white with Magnolia stellata and the flat white dinner-plate flowers of Viburnum plicatum, underplanted with chrome-yellow Paeonia daurica subsp. mlokosewitschii. In autumn, the colour scheme switches to pinky-purple, with Hydrangea paniculata and a 164ft ring of Sedum ‘Herbstfreude’ (now Hylotelephium × mottramianum ‘Herbstfreude’).

The south side of the house opens onto a formal lawn, supported by stone walls more than 20ft high, flanked at lower levels on either side by two further gardens — one framing the swimming pool and another, slightly wilder one centred on a small lily pond. The swimming pool sits in the middle of what had been the Edwardian rose garden, complete with Blow’s pretty corner pavilion, now wreathed in wisteria. A hedge of headily fragrant mock orange, Philadelphus ‘Belle Étoile’, runs along one side and the awkward slope towards the house is disguised by four standard Elaeagnus ‘Quicksilver’, which at first glance look like olive trees.

Of the south lawn, the designer says: ‘Given how many walls and steps and other areas of stone there are, we wanted it to offer a visual rest and be all green, yet remain structural.’ The outer three sides are enclosed by her trademark triple hedges, with clipped box sandwiched between two layers of white Rosa rugosa, their stems hidden in a bed of nepetas.

‘I use rugosa everywhere,’ she adds. ‘It looks great, it’s tough and it’s cheap as chips. If you’re creating a long rose hedge, why spend hundreds of pounds on named varieties when you can buy rugosas for 99p a pot?’

It’s a sentiment of which James Morrison would surely approve.

Tania Compton’s cornus champions

Cornus kousa var. chinensis
The most elegant of all the Chinese cornuses, with horizontally inclined, arching branches studded with beautifully spaced starry bracts, which have the profusion of blossom. It has the natural elegance of a selection over the clunkier hybrids, an abundance of dangling strawberry-red fruits and fabulous autumn colour. Its close relation, ‘China Girl’, bred in Holland in the 1970s, has slightly larger bracts, but similar refinement.

Cornus kousa ‘Miss Satomi’
This Chinese dogwood has all the attributes of C. kousa var. chinensis, but with pink rather than creamy white bracts. It’s one of the most gorgeous shrubs for any garden that has rich, neutral to acid soil that doesn’t get too dry. In full flower, it has a similar effect to Viburnum plicatum f. tomentosum ‘Pink Beauty’, which makes a beautiful partner where their spreading canopies have space to make gracefully layered sheets of inflorescence.

Cornus x elwinortonii Venus
This one is the opposite of everything elegant and refined. Its bracts are the starched white handkerchiefs of the Cornus tribe, but it proved irresistible to try it at Fonthill in its Chelsea debut year, and it is thriving in the deep, humus-rich greensand on the edge of North Wood.

Cornus ‘Eddie’s White Wonder’
Where a more rounded silhouette is wanted, this American hybrid has large, rounded, overlapping bracts. It thrives in spring after a long, hot summer, so is getting more reliably dazzling for British gardens. Other than C. kousa var. chinensis, all these cornuses come with an Award of Garden Merit from the RHS.

The gardens at Fonthill are open to visitors on select days — see their website for details.

This feature originally appeared in the June 17, 2026, print edition of Country Life. Click here for more information on how to subscribe.

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When one British nobleman wanted to propose to his girlfriend and it was clear that no ordinary diamond would do, he turned to Karine Zacharias of KZACHARIAS, formerly of Gem Trails. ‘The bride said that, if she ever got married, she wanted an 18th-century, pear-shaped diamond from the Golconda mine. It was a very particular and exclusive piece,’ explains Karine.

Eight months and €800,000 later, the five-carat diamond was acquired through her network of Indian contacts, gathered when she was living in Jaipur. (The girlfriend said yes.)

Karine is one of a number of jewellery detectives using an extensive network to replace a loved piece that has been lost or stolen (although finding the exact item is another matter). Another common request is furnishing a nostalgic ancestor with a beautiful piece similar to one that their grandmother once owned.

Lee Siegelson in New York shares this enthusiasm for sleuthing: ‘I had someone request a specific Cartier bangle owned by the Duchess of Windsor. I knew where it was and I was able to get it quickly and offer it to the client, who purchased it and was thrilled.’

Each request is different and Lee keeps track of who owns important pieces wherever possible: ‘The ideal scenario is when someone asks for something and I already know where it is — or I already own it.’

He relies mostly on phone calls and his established and trusted contacts. ‘The big reveal is exciting, when you’ve managed to acquire the right object, but the behind-the-scenes detective work might appear boring to observers.’

Fuelling the market for jewellery sleuths is a surge in interest in Art Deco pieces and signed works by the likes of Suzanne Belperron, Louis Comfort for Tiffany and Andrew Grima. Tutti Frutti by Cartier is in hot demand and there’s a surprising resurgence in brooches.

Another sleuth who thrills in the chase is Guy Burton of Burlington jewellery emporium Hancocks, who also helps with replacing pieces that have been stolen. ‘The reality is that the likelihood of finding the exact same jewel is very slim and expectations need to be managed from the start,’ he reflects. ‘Pictures of the original pieces are absolutely essential, so we always recommend keeping good records of your jewellery collection. An important place to consider starting with is the Art Loss Register and we would be able to do research through our international sources to see if the item is on the market.’

If the original can’t be found, Guy is likely to be able to locate something similar. Auction houses are another good source. Don’t discount smaller ones, such as the well-respected Chiswick Auctions and Fellows in Birmingham, but the big three are, of course, Sotheby’s, Christie’s and Bonhams, especially when it comes to tracking down standout gemstones.

‘I have a very important private client who collects top-quality gemstones,’ says Mei Y, the then director of private sales (jewellery) at Christie’s. ‘She wanted a pair of very rare yellow Zimmi diamonds. We found them for her in Switzerland by trawling through cutters and manufacturers and set them into ear studs.’

Kristian Spofforth, head of Sotheby’s London jewellery sales, is often tasked with trying to trace or replace a stolen piece. ‘It can be really hard if the piece is very old, as, sadly, people give descriptions, not records,’ he explains. ‘If it’s from a large jewellery house, such as Van Cleef & Arpels, we can contact the company and say Mr X bought this in 1942. Its archive department is often able to help.’

When the search proves successful, however, the rewards are rich. ‘When the client says “that is exactly like my grandmother’s, it’s what I’ve been looking for”, it’s really satisfying,’ concludes Kristian.

If pushed, most estate agents operating in the country-house market will admit that getting a sale done this year has felt like being stuck on a winding lane behind a load-bearing tractor. The data supports this, with prices for high end rural homes falling 7.8% during the 12 months to March 2026, according to Savills.

This is, in part, a reversal of the covid 'race-for-space' boom as millions of workers have returned to the office at least three days a week. Stubborn inflation, sticky interest rates, the cost of living and the burden of stamp duty are all taking their toll on transaction levels too, along with increased economic uncertainty cause by the war in the Middle East.

The dream of owning a country house or living in a village is certainly not dead, but the buyer — now more than ever — needs to balance fantasy and practicality, to create the illusion of living in the middle of nowhere while being within easy-ish reach of the office.

New research by Savills and Country Life unveils those villages across the UK that present the best of both worlds. The first in a 'best villages' series, this article will pinpoint those idyllic locations with the fastest journey into London. Each of the top 10 is within an hour's commute into the capital from a mainline railway station — and each still has the countryside on the doorstep.

Hassocks, West Sussex

The northern gateway to the South Downs, Hassocks is one of the most rural locations on the list, surrounded by vineyards, golf courses and windmills and yet seven miles from Brighton and with a direct line into London.

The modern iteration of the village grew up around the railway station built in 1841. A tightknit but burgeoning community, it has four churches, three schools, five pubs, two post offices and a library.

'Hassocks is an excellent choice for buyers looking to relocate from London or even Brighton, thanks to its convenient rail connecting,' says Jemma Smith of Hamptons. 'It is appealing to a broad range of buyers from downsizers to first-time buyers, young families and professional couples'.

There is a lot of housing stock on the market, with mid-century and new build family sized homes starting from £700,000.

Denham, Buckinghamshire

The village of Denham was home to Denham film studios (now luxury housing) and became an A-lister hotspot in the mid-century. Sir John Mills moved there in the 1940s. Roger Moore and Dusty Springfield followed.

The film heritage lives on in these parts: Pinewood Studios is in neighbouring Iver. 'The area appeals to creatives and a younger mix of residents than you might expect in a village of this size,' says Elle Coles of Strutt & Parker. The village is part-conservation area and sits in the Colne Valley Regional Park in between the M25 and Greater London with a steady stream of families moving out from northwest London.

There are some significant country piles on the outskirts of the village, not least the 43-acre Denham Place once owned by the Star Wars franchise co-producer Harry Saltzman, on sale for £45 million (if that sounds like a lot, bear in mind that the asking price was £75 million when it was first launched).

In the village itself large family homes start well above the £1 million while three-bedroom cottages and terraced homes sit between £700,000 and £800,000.

Iver, Buckinghamshire

The number of entries and exits to Iver station has risen by 52% since the pandemic as homebuyers seek a village lifestyle, lower house prices than in the capital, and a quick commute on the Elizabeth Line.

The high-speed line has opened up the City and Canary Wharf to the western commuter belt. It has a bustling high street with a gym, a village hall, a fish and chip shop, a convenience store, and a primary school (with a good rating from Ofsted).

The amenities and secondary schools of Slough are on the doorstep and the station is a short cycle or a 30-minute walk away, in neighbouring Richings Park. Family-sized houses close to the high street and the station typically start from £800,000. Substantial rural trophy homes with multimillion price tags can be found on the edge of the village.

West Horndon, Essex

Between Upminster and Basildon is the village of West Horndon. It is surrounded by parkland — Thorndon County Park South, Heron Country Club and golf course and Longdon Nature Park.

The village has its own primary school, a pub (the Railway Hotel) and a café-bistro (the Hideaway). Its location and house prices make it an attractive proposition for families, with shopping facilities and sports clubs in nearby Brentwood and Basildon. There are family-sized new houses in the centre of the village for £725,000 and a host of bungalows for sale for those wanting a wide plot.

One word of caution: as it expands in popularity, West Horndon may also expand in size. It is an area earmarked for housing development, which will bring both more homes to this side of the capital, and more consternation for those who live here already.

Brookwood, Surrey

Five and a half miles to the west of Woking, and surrounded by woodland, Brookwood appeals to a range of buyers — and in particular first-time buyers, families and young professionals.

It is better value for money than London and the 'pricier Surrey villages', according to Hamptons' Julian de la Poer Beresford. 'Buyers are drawn by the balance of connectivity, green space and a strong community feel,' he says.

Basingstoke Canal runs through the village, and it is home to the UK's largest Cemetery, covering 220 acres, with a parkland and ground. There's a nature reserve, heathland, and West Hill Golf Club. The village has its own primary school, takeaways, and cafés.

Bourne End, Buckinghamshire

Bourne End sits in the Thames golden corridor running west out of London and long popular with celebrity homebuyers who wish to tuck themselves away in multi-million-pound rural piles down country lanes.

It is fitting then that Cliveden House — the hotel at the centre of the Profumo Scandal — is on the doorstep. Prices reflect its beauty, location and rural glamour. Within the village itself, £1 million will buy a four-bedroom, detached cottage.

Charles Fraser-Sampson of Strutt & Parker describes Bourne End as one of the most desirable villages in south Buckinghamshire with buyers coming from local towns and London in equal measure.

Weekend life revolves around the river with people out on boats from the marina, or at the sailing club or on paddleboards on the slipway. The Bounty pub overlooking the water is bound to be a busy spot this summer.

Burnham, Buckinghamshire 

Burnham is a large village on the edge of Slough, close to Maidenhead, to the north of the River Thames — and not far from Bourne End, as listed above. It has a wide array of housing stock — from apartments and starter homes to large family properties on the periphery of the village.

'It's popular with families who want to be mobile within the area and move up and down as needs dictate,' says Laura Collins of Hamptons. 'Many of them want the village feel with commuter access to London and many move out of London to use the Elizabeth Line'.

The Buckinghamshire grammar school system is a draw too. There is shopping at Windsor, Beaconsfield and Maidenhead as well as country walks at Burnham Beeches nature reserve and watersports on the local rivers and lakes.

Within the village itself you can find a detached Edwardian house with five bedrooms for £875,000 — considerably cheaper than the equivalent property in west London. And if you have the means to spend more, you'll be spoilt for choice.

Brookmans Park, Hertfordshire

Commuters in the 1920s discovered Brookmans Park. The village sits between Potters Bar and Hatfield to the east of the A1.

It was a quiet rural spot until the arrival of the railway station in 1926 which sparked the development of new homes as families moved out of London and into the commuter belt.

Steeped in sporting culture, the Brookmans Park tennis club is older than the railway station and the golf course is considered one of Hertfordshire's finest surrounded by mature parkland. This was also home to Spurs captain and England player Gary Mabutt (the village, not the golf course — although he has been spotted on the fairway).

Residents exercise dogs and children at nearby Gobion Wood Nature Reserve or in the grounds of North Mymms stately home — which hosts weddings and film shoots, including The Crown and Bridgerton.

There is a 'good' primary school in the village along with a butcher, a baker, a library, a dog groomers and a small supermarket.

Down the surrounding lanes are large new build mansions set back, built with footballers in mind no doubt, whereas in the village itself three-bedroom cottages and apartments range from £300,000 to £700,000.

Oxshott, Surrey

Oxshott is one of Surrey's designer villages in what is dubbed the CEO corridor of the A3. It is the most expensive village on the list.

Oxshott attracts wealthy families moving out of Chelsea, Fulham and Wimbledon as well as international buyers.

The latter like the wide new build homes that offer the lateral living within gated communities or on private roads. Prices for such homes start from £2 million and can reach £8 million to £9 million.

'Buyers are able to get a lot more square footage for their money and often landscaped gardens which are difficult to replicate in central London,' says Paul Trafford of Hamptons. 'However, the market is very price sensitive and buyers have high expectations of presentation and realistic pricing'.

There's a village store and two pubs — The Victoria and The Bear Oxshott — plus the estate agents, dry cleaners and interiors shops that are staples of any self-respecting Surrey village high street.

Plumpton, East Sussex

Buyers in this neck of the woods typically start their search in Lewes, but shift to Plumpton, on the same train line, where their budget will go further.

Adrian Passingham of Strutt & Parker says Plumpton has the key components of village living but without feeling too remote.

There is a primary school, village shop and two pubs and it's 11 minutes to Haywards Heath on the train for more amenities. In the other direction it's just seven minutes to Lewes and 16 miles to Seaford Beach.

'There's a whole host of clubs and local groups which create a friendly and well-established community and the village's position on the edge of the South Downs plays a big role in day-to-day life with easy access to walking, cycling and riding routes,' says Passingham.

There's a Bordeaux rule of thumb that years ending in five turn out great. This is by no means infallible: 1965 was one of the most disastrous vintages of the late 20th century. However, when you consider the legendary 1945, then add 1975 (uneven, but classic in parts), 1985 (precocious and lovely), 1995 (firm and fine), 2005 (magnificent across the board) and 2015 (ripe and forward), the theory, which has no scientific basis, seems worth entertaining.

What’s in no doubt is that 2025 is another very fine ‘five’ vintage in Bordeaux. Could it be even more than that — a vintage that for once, and for its own special and unique reasons, justifies the torrents of hype that gush out from wine merchants some six months after the harvest, as they send out their en primeur offers for wines that are still in barrel and will be bottled in the spring or summer of 2027?

The en primeur system has not had a good press in recent years. The case against it is pretty compelling: this seems to be a system that favours the seller (the châteaux) more than the buyer. For the châteaux, there’s an obvious attraction in getting money up front for a wine that’s a long way off being ready to drink or even bottled. For the consumer, there is a number of risks: for a start, the development of very young wines is always somewhat unpredictable. Wines that present attractively in extreme youth may go into their shells and never quite emerge, as with 1928 and 1975.

Secondly, how can you be sure the sample that you (or your merchant) taste is an honest reflection of the final bottled blend, rather than a particularly well- favoured component? Thirdly, there is always the risk that the merchant you buy from may go out of business, leaving you with a problematic claim on some of the contents of a barrel. Fourthly, and probably most importantly, you may find that you can acquire exactly the same wine, at a lower or not higher price, several years down the line, as has occurred with recent good, but large vintages, such as 2019, 2020 and 2022. Your en primeur purchase could turn out to be the opposite of a bargain.

Why, in this case, therefore, is your wine correspondent proposing a reverse ferret? There are a number of reasons. To answer the question about whether the vintage is truly special, a recent tasting of 2025s in London convinced me that this latest ‘Bordeaux 5’ is exceptional. To put it less formally, I fell in love with the vintage. I can’t remember a year that had quite these qualities: a sort of delectable spring in the step combined with ripeness, a perfect dancing balance.

What is special about the 2025 vintage is the combination of great ripeness — this was one of the hottest summers of recent times — with finesse. Alcohol levels are lower than in some recent warm vintages — often about 13.5%, as opposed to 14% or 14.5%. Although there was extreme heat in August, with 10 days above 35˚C, nights were quite cool and the rain that came in September was generally (if not universally) welcome. Yields were also low, in some cases dramatically so. This evokes comparison with 1961, that greatest of all vintages, and also the thought that these wines will not be as easy to come by in the future as those from bigger vintages.

This is a Mozart, not a Beethoven vintage. The wines are already attractive; tannins on the whole are not massive and forbidding. For the mature en primeur purchaser, there is hope that these wines will be ready to imbibe before the hopeful drinker passes the point of no return. Finally, in a time of such global gloom, a beautiful vintage surely gives cause for innocent celebration and enjoyment. My favourite poet Horace, who enjoined us to savour the day, would surely have given the thumbs-up.

This feature originally appeared in the June 24, 2026, issue of Country Life. Click here for more information on how to subscribe.

It was the shortest reign in the history of England. On July 10, 1553, Lady Jane Grey was proclaimed Queen of England and Ireland, only for the Privy Council to depose her nine days later and place her cousin Mary on the throne. Lady Jane first lost the crown, then her head and, ultimately, thanks to French painter Paul Delaroche, even her dignity.

‘The art around Jane Grey is absolutely dominated by the 1833 portrait of her, kneeling with the executioner on one side,’ says historian Philippa Gregory, the author of The Last Tudor, a novel on the Grey sisters, who finds the painting ‘an absolute classic image of female weakness painted onto a woman who was not weak.

'It’s the most irritating portrait there is: Jane is on her knees. She’s blindfolded. She’s dressed in a white nightgown. It’s silk. It’s off the shoulder. It’s absurd. Her hair is all a mess and all down and, behind her, there’s a woman who ought to be supporting her, but is actually fainting for grief.’

As for the executioner on the right, clad in red tights, says Dr Gregory: ‘He’s literally saying: “I am the patriarchy.”’ Much truer to the life of the nine-day queen, in her view, is another, far less known painting from about the 1590s, the so-called Streatham portrait, now at the National Portrait Gallery (despite historian David Starkey disputing the sitter’s identification as Grey).

In it, explains Dr Gregory, ‘she’s wearing Tudor clothes. Her hair is under a cap, as it would have been, and under her hand is a book of theology. She was an absolutely outstanding scholar, extraordinary, a child savant. She taught herself Greek and Latin and I think was learning Egyptian writing.

'She had a tremendous interest in theology and was a convinced Protestant, a reformer of the church. She knew that the consequence of not changing her faith would be death — and she took that decision in a very conscious and deliberate, and you may say, saintly way’.

Dr Gregory stops for a moment, then almost explodes with rage: ‘She was a very young woman of extraordinary scholarship and extraordinary courage, and to see her turned into this image of failure and victim-hood is a disgrace.’

Time, then, to set aside 19th-century notions of feminine frailty and romantic death and restore the history of one of Britain’s most brilliant minds.

This feature originally appeared in the print edition of Country Life on July 8, 2026. Click here for more information on how to subscribe.

Mayfair has always rewarded those who understand that a building’s worth lies as much in its setting as its stonework.

It is fitting, then, that London Square, the multi-award-winning developer behind some of the capital’s most quietly distinguished addresses, and its parent company Aldar, have chosen Bruton Place, W1, for its new private venue, showcasing its London-wide portfolio for the first time, and for elegant entertaining in the rooftop space.

London Square is joining forces with Country Life and Swaine — the oldest name in British luxury leather goods, purveyor to royalty and gentry alike since the 18th century — for a summer celebration and drinks reception on Bruton Place on Wednesday, July 29, from 6pm to 8pm.

Guests will hear from Swaine’s brand director, Monty Corry, on the heritage behind its workshops and have the opportunity to admire a range of finely crafted leather goods and accessories.

Founded in 1750, Swaine celebrated its 275th anniversary last year, an astonishing feat unmatched by any other British luxury house. The firm has evolved with remarkable grace, becoming purveyors of fine leather goods, umbrellas and military regalia to kings, diplomats and the occasional secret agent.

By comparison, London Square was established only 16 years ago and yet shares a similar commitment to quality, creating homes with exceptional design. Now owned by Aldar, the Abu Dhabi-based property group’s backing has underpinned London Square’s expansion into the capital’s prime and super-prime markets.

From Westminster to Kensington, Battersea to the Royal Boroughs, the company’s portfolio reads like a map of London’s enduring character, which makes its summer campaign, Iconic London Beautifully in Focus, less a marketing flourish than a statement of principle.

The evening will also offer a first look at three of London Square’s most compelling developments: Westminster Tower, SE1, on Albert Embankment opposite the Palace of Westminster, offers apartments from £2.5 million, as well as two extraordinary pent- houses; Fifty Brook Green, a gated cluster of Victorian residences in a former school- house in west London, begins at £1.43 million; and Ransome’s Wharf, SW11, set around its own historic dock on Battersea riverfront, starts from £1.1 million

The evening will also offer a first look at three of London Square’s most compelling developments: Westminster Tower, SE1, offers apartments from £2.5 million, as well as two extraordinary penthouses; Fifty Brook Green, a gated cluster of Victorian residences in a former schoolhouse in west London, begins at £1.43 million; and Ransome’s Wharf, SW11, set around its own historic dock on Battersea riverfront, starts from £1.1 million.

To attend the event on July 29, simply RSVP to RSVPcountrylife@londonsquare.co.uk.

To find out more about the developments, see their individual websites at www.westminstertower.co.uk, www.fiftybrookgreen.co.uk and www.ransomeswharf.co.uk, or @londonsquaredevelopments on Instagram.

All houses have stories to tell. Few could tell a tale as extraordinary as that of Cotchford Farm, in the Ashdown Forest in East Sussex.

What's even more unusual is that while Cotchford has been standing in this spot near Hartfield for five centuries, its fame is connected to three iconic figures of the 20th century. And one of those three isn't even human, for this is the house where Winnie-the-Pooh came in to being.

Cotchford Farm has been put on the rental market, with an asking price of £9,995 per month through Hamptons, but 101 years ago it was listed for sale. The buyer was a poet and playwright writer from London named Alan Alexander Milne, who took the place on with his wife, Dorothy, and their only child, the then-five-year-old Christopher.

The place, now and then, was a wonderful old remnant amid a landscape made for stories. 'There we were in 1925 with a cottage, a little bit of garden, a lot of jungle, two fields, a river, and then all the green, hilly countryside beyond, meadows and woods, waiting to be explored,' wrote Christopher Milne in his 1974 memoir The Enchanted Places. Places to be explored, then, and stories to be told by a father to his son. And like any good father, Milne Senior made the hero of the story his son, renamed Christopher Robin, and his son's favourite toy, a bear named Winnie.

Winnie-the-Pooh was published in October 1926, becoming an instant critical and commercial success, selling 150,000 copies in the first two months alone. It made Milne famous enough that Country Life sent a photographer to take pictures of Cotchford Farm in 1931; the images were never published in print, as Melanie Bryan explained in an article last year, but they do remain in the Country Life Image Archive.

A.A. Milne staying at Cotchford for the rest of his life, dying in 1956, following which it was sold to an American couple, who added the swimming pool, and eventually sold the place in 1968 to legendary Rolling Stones guitarist Brian Jones.

The musician had struggled appallingly with the pressure of music, fame and drug abuse, and sought a country escape. It wasn't enough; he ended up leaving the Band in 1969, and a few weeks later tragically died at the house, aged just 27.

The house has changed hands a few times since then, but as the pictures here show, the current owners have done an excellent job of refurbishing and updating, while retaining the house's original character.

There are exposed timber beams, leaded windows, huge fireplaces, and floorboards on which the real-life Christopher must have sat while playing with the original Winne-the-Pooh.

Yet while there are reminders everywhere of the house's history — not least statues of Owl and Christopher Robin in the garden — it's also every bit the liveable family home. There is 3,400 sq ft of space across three floors, with six bedrooms and three elegant reception rooms.

The latter incude a magnificent oak-panelled dining room, library/music room and family room, while there's also a beautifully updated kitchen.

The whole feel is of a home of exceptional warmth and character amid a setting of beautiful gardens, with outdoor swimming pool and a tennis court.

In recent times the owners have rented the house out for short stays, with a two-night minimum, but now they are seeking a longer term tenant.

Cotchford Farm is available to rent through Hamptons — see more details.

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

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

In the Frida Kahlo Museum in Mexico City, there is a small plaster cast, made for a woman’s torso. Kahlo wore it to protect her crumbling spine — one of the many indignities she was forced to endure during a lifetime of infirmity that led to her premature death at the age of 47.

On its surface, she painted a hammer, a sickle and a foetus: revolutionary zeal and motherhood firmly entwined in the body politic. Kahlo lived the intense and prolific life of a semi-invalid. As it did the writer Marcel Proust, illness shaped her personality. She endured polio as a child, which left her with a pronounced limp, but it was a bus crash at the age of 18 that did the real damage, driving a metal handrail through her womb and spinal column.

Most people, at some point in their lives, have experienced overwhelming, engulfing pain, but it is a solitary experience. For nearly three decades, through multiple operations and miscarriages, Kahlo painted that experience, depicting herself as a shipwrecked survivor, isolated and wounded in an exotic fantasy, but still defiantly living. To watch oneself from the outside is a text-book sign of post-traumatic stress.

Kahlo returned obsessively to her own image and at times her paintings look hallucinogenic — a reminder perhaps of the ready availability of drugs she took to numb the pain. The batwing eyebrows, the faint moustache, the hair tightly knotted into elaborate styles are, without a doubt, gloriously confrontational and she certainly deserves her reputation as a proto-feminist, but a darkness and a paranoia have settled in.

Her self-portraits reverberate with the sound of being stared at. Now, a new exhibition at Tate Modern, ‘Frida: The Making of an Icon’, assesses the legacy of the artist, one of the most important of the 20th century. Across some 30 self-portraits, it explores ‘Fridamania’: how Kahlo’s life and image have been read, appropriated and commodified into a global brand.

No fact is entirely secure and nothing is certain, but at the heart of it all is the face of an artist who understood her destiny. Born in 1907, Kahlo grew up in Coyoacán, a wealthy suburb of Mexico City. It was, by her own account, ‘a marvellous childhood’.

Her father, a German immigrant, ran a photography studio and her mother, a devout Catholic, was of Mexican-Spanish and Oaxaca heritage. From this dual inheritance of European intelligentsia and indigenous ancestry came a productive tension that would shape Kahlo’s art and her personality. The painting My Grandparents, My Parents and I (1936) considered this duality by painting her maternal Mexican grandparents as the land and her German grandparents as the sea.

A bright, accomplished child, she had planned to study medicine, but, after the bus accident, she started painting, turning her forensic gaze onto herself and unpicking the wounds of her broken body. Artworks such as The Henry Ford Hospital (1932) recall the anatomical drawings of a medical textbook. ‘I am my own muse. I am the subject I know best,’ she once said.

As a card-carrying member of the Mexican Communist Party, she held to the belief that the struggle for her homeland’s emergence in the modern age would be through collective action. Surrealist André Breton once described her as a bomb wrapped in a ribbon and the paintings of her disfigured body are sometimes read as an allegory for the shattered dreams of Mexican liberation.

In Self-portrait on the Borderline between Mexico and the United States (1932), she straddles two worlds, embodying the predicament of a country caught between a pre-industrial past and the economic might of its bullying neighbour. In 1928, Kahlo fell in love with the famous muralist Diego Rivera, more than 20 years her senior. He was the great explainer of the Mexican Revolution (although he had, in fact, been in Paris with Pablo Picasso at the time of the outbreak).

She became his beautiful wife, photographed in Vogue in traditional Tehuana dress and street jewellery, with her hair decorated with roses. It would take time for her art to emerge from his colossal shadow. Their relationship was intense and melodramatic.

With his vast frame, bullfrog eyes and animal energy, Rivera had a prodigious appetite for sex and even seduced Kahlo’s sister Cristina. Between bouts of illness, Kahlo, too, had affairs — most famously with Leon Trotsky who, having escaped Stalin’s Russia, briefly lived with the Riveras in their home, Casa Azul.

After their relationship came to an end, she gave him the painting Self-portrait dedicated to Leon Trotsky (1937). Breton described it as having ‘all the gifts of seduction’. Kahlo and Rivera eventually divorced in 1939, but remarried the following year. During that brief, brittle separation, Kahlo cut off her hair and painted a self-portrait dressed in a man’s suit, her black tresses strewn over a barren landscape like writhing snakes.

Rivera worried anxiously about her finances (she sold little) and persuaded his patrons to buy her work, something Kahlo was furious to discover, writing to him of the determination to be a success on her own terms. As the years progressed, however, her health continued to deteriorate and fantasy became a way to survive and explore a reality that was, at times, too grotesque to bear. She sometimes painted herself with a monkey and, although she was never specific about its symbolism, the ancient Mayans believed that monkeys were humans transformed.

Over the course of her life, she underwent 32 operations and had some toes amputated and eventually her right leg. Her response was unequivocal: ‘Feet, what do I need you for when I have wings to fly?’

At her first solo exhibition in Mexico in 1953, she was too ill to stand, so her four-poster bed was placed in the gallery in which she held court — a spectacle that had all the drama of a Catholic Mass. Soon afterwards, she retreated to her bed, where the porous line between dream and reality gradually washed away; she died the following year.

If there is one anecdote from her extraordinary life that might give some indication as to the strange, semi-delirious nature of her art, it is one the novelist Angela Carter picked up on. At the moment of the bus crash, as the rod pierced her spine, her clothes were wrenched off and a bag of gold powder, held by a fellow passenger, exploded all over her.

A shattered, gilded body, it is almost as fantastic as any painting she created. Life is often stranger than fiction — Viva La Vida, as she wrote on one of her last paintings.

The life and times of Frida Kahlo

1907, July 6 — Born in Coyoacán, Mexico. She later claims 1910 (the start of the Mexican Revolution) as her birth year to align herself symbolically with the new Mexico

1913 — Contracts polio at the age of six, which left one leg thinner than the other. This early experience with illness begins her lifelong exploration of the body and pain

1925 — A devastating accident shatters her spine, pelvis and other bones. She undergoes numerous surgeries and begins painting when bedridden, using a mirror to create self-portraits

1928 — Becomes politically active and joins the Communist Party, shaping her identity as both an artist and a revolutionary

1929 — Marries the famous mural painter Diego Rivera. Their relationship is passionate, turbulent and deeply influential on her work. They divorce in 1939, but re-marry the following year.

1931 — The couple visit the US. Despite his communist beliefs, Rivera falls in love with America, seduced by its fast cars and industrial might. Kahlo is less impressed, angered by the country’s obsession with money and the extreme poverty she encounters. She describes American high society as boring

1937 — Leon Trotsky and his wife, Natalia Sedova, arrive in Mexico after Rivera invites them to stay at Casa Azul. Kahlo has a brief affair with Trotsky, but later distances herself from him. He is assassinated in 1940 by Ramón Mercader with an ice axe. Kahlo is briefly suspected of the murder and is arrested and held for two days

1938 — André Breton visits Mexico. He declares Kahlo a natural Surrealist and helps organise an exhibition of her work in Paris. She rejects the label, saying: ‘I never paint my dreams or nightmares. I paint my own reality’

1944 — Paints The Broken Column, depicting her body split open with a fractured spine — one of her most powerful expressions of physical suffering

1954, July 13 — Dies aged 47 at her home, La Casa Azul.

‘Frida: The Making of an Icon’ is at Tate Modern until January 3, 2027

This feature originally appeared in the print edition of Country Life on June 24, 2026. The box out originally appeared in the print edition of Country Life on July 8, 2026. Click here for more information on how to subscribe.

As you enter through the gatehouse arch at Broadwoodside, the centre of the first of two courtyards is dominated by an imposing iroko aviary, modelled on the fruit cages designed by Arabella Lennox-Boyd for the Rothschilds at Ascott House in Buckinghamshire. This is the summer home to William, an African grey parrot, who has been in residence since the Dalrymple family — Robert, Anna and their four children — moved here in 2000. The archway and an ogee-roofed pavilion in the corner of the second, which were among their additions, gently meld with the buildings of a once-dilapidated former steading dating back to the 17th century.

Mr Dalrymple is a book designer of some renown who has worked with many of the world’s leading publishers and galleries. If one were comparing him to a bird, it would be a gimlet-eyed magpie, picking up ideas, both artistic and horticultural, and shamelessly transporting them back to his nest just outside Gifford in East Lothian. Possessed of an enquiring mind and a penchant for a play on words, as well as fingers turned deep green from more than 25 years of planning and planting the garden (indeed, it first featured in Country Life on February 22, 2007). It is also clear that he is not a man who takes himself too seriously.

Near William’s quarters, he points out a large gnarled and desiccated branch of native juniper. ‘It succeeds entirely as a Louise Bourgeois spider,’ he says, in the fruity cadences he shares with his historian brother William (after whom the chatty parrot was named), punctuated with barks of cheery laughter.

‘From whatever angle you look at it, it has a satisfactory composition. I thought I had taken pretentiousness to a new level, but actually it has gone down well with the general audience.’

We move on to a column of wood cubes alternating with short rods of glass supporting a glass sphere, which has burnt the wood below it through the sun’s refractions. ‘My daughter did a course at the furniture school down the road [Chippendale International School of Furniture] and I found these glass bars. She drilled the wood and we assembled it together; it does a Roger Ackling.’

Other gleaned examples around the garden include A Load of Balls (literally, a pile of plastic, stone and glass spheres, inspired by fashion designer Dries Van Noten’s father’s garden in Belgium) and the Three Sisters, made from leftover roofing slates and inspired by an installation at the Hannah Peschar Gallery in Surrey by Herta Keller. ‘The writing is on the wall’ (indeed it is) is inscribed in the loggia, used for feasting à la Balthazar on warm summer days, and, placed along a grassy path, a stone tablet displays ‘Ore stabit fortis arare placeto restat’, a donnish joke best read in English.

The garden cannot escape an intellectual nod to the late Ian Hamilton Finlay’s creation at Little Sparta, a mere 40 miles away. Yet this is no pastiche, as, together with the buildings new and old, each area makes sense in its context and has a harmony and lightness of touch that comes together as something traditional, yet deeply personal and original.

Mr Dalrymple’s design background is the presiding genius here and the layout is strongly linear, with repetition, rhythm and symmetry being key and each sightline considered, whether along a path to a focal point within the garden or out into the arable land and woods beyond. He uses the layout of these buildings or existing farm walls as the frames. ‘It is somehow less fanciful than simply dividing up a big garden into rooms.’

The first courtyard, with Palazzo William at its centre, was created so there is always some-thing pleasing to look out at from the house, even during long, dreich Scottish winters. It was inspired by John Stefanidis’s garden in Dorset and is laid with a chequerboard of 25 squares of cobbles, grass and neatly clipped evergreens, such as box, rosemary and teucrium, coloured seasonally by alliums and grasses, and self-seeders, including foxgloves and Verbena bonariensis, out of which rise hard clipped standard Norway maples. Mr Dalrymple admits mistakes were made in the early days. ‘We moved to a building site and I thought: “that will be depressing”, so I spent quite a lot of money on mature prunus trees that I had read about in a Penelope Hobhouse book. They had been in about six months and got canker and died. These are the replacements.’

The next hortus conclusus, beyond a low wall and reached down a step to further emphasise the change of scene, has a more child-conducive central lawn (there are now nine grandchildren), traversed by a cruciform flagstoned path. To the north is the ‘thug bed’, filled with the likes of eupatorium, macleaya and Japanese anemones. Against the sunny west-facing wall is another opportunity for a joke, ‘blackberry and apple’: Rubus fruticosus ‘Oregon Thornless’ and Estivale apples, purchased from Crocus in a sale for their formal, goblet-trained bush, but, in fact, ‘the best-tasting apple we have’.

Although Mr Dalrymple’s disciplined hand is to be seen in the repeated plantings, the symmetrical vistas, the avenue of fastigiate hornbeams that were a present from his grandmother and the pollarded circle of willows near the drive, Mrs Dalrymple does get a look in. ‘She always wants more flowers. It is a creative tension,’ he admits, with another bark of laughter. ‘It is the Vita and Harold cliché. I do the straight lines; she does the abundance.’

There are, indeed, flowers aplenty, especially in the kitchen garden, at the centre of which is a long formal pond, and areas such as the Hall Garden, on either side of a path leading from the drive to a large room used for parties and tour groups, which has something more of the sweet disorder favoured by Mrs Dalrymple. Limes that started off with the intention of being pleached, then turned into pompoms are now parasol-trained to shade the path. As to the planting, ‘it is really a free for all,’ says Mrs Dalrymple. ‘It starts off quite orderly in March, with a complete covering of scillas. Then you get Euphorbia epithymoides and yellow tulips and then brunnera and then it starts to become the law of the jungle.’

Order may yet prevail, as the Hall Garden has just been refreshed and replanted by Nanette Wraith, who replaced Guy Donaldson last year after he’d spent 25 years as the gardener. Do the two have plans for any new areas? ‘No bigger, thank you,’ says Mrs Dalrymple firmly.

Broadwoodside welcomes visitors by appointment, and on selected days for the National Garden Scheme — see more details at the website.

This feature originally appeared in the print edition of Country Life on June 24, 2026. Click here for more information on how to subscribe.

In a world of Amazon, Netflix, Deliveroo and Hinge, there is little that can’t be summoned with the tap of a few keys, from furniture and films to pizzas and paramours. The result is a collective impatience that has entwined itself with almost every aspect of our lives, including our homes.

For many, the combination of online shopping and social media has turned creating a home into a process akin to Supermarket Sweep, based on poor decisions and little or no product knowledge. It’s a retailer’s dream; enticing backlit images create desire that can be sated with a couple of clicks and three payments on Klarna. It’s also a far cry from the tradition of the trousseau that once existed in many cultures, which was used to collect linen, silver and household goods in anticipation of establishing a home.

The combined effect of rash decisions and poor quality is having a disastrous impact on the environment. Little of what we’re now buying is likely to last a decade, let alone be passed to the next generation. Most of it is destined for landfill. Yet we need little reminding of the benefits of both quality and timelessness; historic houses are furnished with pieces that have lasted for generations, not only because they were made with care, but also because they could be maintained and, when necessary, mended. They are integral to houses that owe their beauty and sense of place to evolution rather than revolution.

Online shopping has put even greater distance between the source of production and the end user. It’s one of the reasons why, this week, we publish our annual Experts’ Experts feature, which includes recommendations by designers on our Top 100 list of specialists who put their heart and soul into the goods and services they provide, from stone fireplaces and Windsor chairs to garden furniture and exquisite brass bookshelves, made in rural workshops from Herefordshire to Hampshire.

These carefully crafted pieces are made with materials that don’t diminish with age, but instead develop a patina that lends them a distinctive personality all of their own. Nor will they ever date; quality never does. Better still, they will last a lifetime, not only because they are beautifully made, but because we are more likely to treat them with the respect they command.

Few of the experts listed here will rank at the top of an internet search; instead, their success is based on a mix of word-of-mouth recommendations and a cast-iron reputation for genuine talent. It’s not only craft skills that are the basis of their appeal, it’s trustworthiness, creativity and the wisdom that is only ever attained through experience — qualities that speak far louder than any Instagram post.

The full list of experts' experts can be found in the July 8, 2026, edition of Country Life magazine — and will appear online over the next week. We start with the list of the finest craftspeople working in Britain today, which you can read here.

This leader article appears in the July 8, 2026 print edition of Country Life. Click here for more information on how to subscribe.

Tim Crump, Oakwrights: I ride my bike past Hugh Peachey’s workshop, The Masons Yard in Herefordshire, and it is brilliant to see the beautiful fireplaces he is carving. A clean carved stone fireplace is a great complement to an oak-frame house and Hugh hand creates some fine examples.

Meg Boscawen: Without hesitation, Rupert Bevan in Shropshire. His work spans such a diverse range of disciplines and products, all executed with exceptional raftsmanship and beautifully considered detail. There is a timelessness and elegance to everything he creates that I find incredibly inspiring.

Ben Naylor, Jack Badger: I respect Mike Dennis for his passion for traditional crafts, deep knowledge of historic building techniques and commitment to sustainable, time-tested methods. He also has a remarkable ability to communicate the history and principles of traditional joinery in an engaging and accessible way.

Edward Smith, Artorius Faber: So many, but North Yorkshire-based Linda Fenwick’s shell work is exquisite.

Sarah Vanrenen, Vanrenen Hanbury: Beardmore supplies the most beautiful architectural ironmongery, from cabinet handles to bespoke front-door furniture. Everything is handmade in the company’s foundry on the Sussex coast and the showroom in Chelsea, SW10, is an absolute treasure trove.

Chloe Willis, Sibyl Colefax & John Fowler: What Edmund Le Brun, Flore de Taisne, Nada Debeaumont and the whole team at Ishkar are doing to support Afghan artisans is so important. They have opened a door to brilliant craftspeople, from rug-makers to glass blowers and now embroiderers. I am probably biased, but my mother, Cecilia Willis, produces beautiful bowls and moon jars, which find their way into every one of my projects. Wonderful colours and strong brushmarks.

Geoffrey Preston: Britain has so many brilliant craftspeople, it is hard to pick just one. Instead, I’ll nominate Heritage Crafts, the national charity for historic skills and a great champion of all manner of traditional crafts.

Hugo Bugg, Harris Bugg: Jeremy Weiss of traditional rural skills training and consultancy Proper Edges in Devon is that rare thing: a practical craftsman who is deeply invested in conservation and teaching. Skilled at hedge-laying, hedge banks, gate-making and scything, he now runs hedge-laying courses, too. A laid hedge is a living fence that keeps stock in as well as feeding and sheltering hedgerow wildlife, all without a yard of wire, and a scythe will out-mow a strimmer in a wildflower meadow with no noise, no fumes and no harm to slow-worms or seedheads.

Greg Tirri, RW Armstrong Group: I am blown away by the quality, precision and depth of the work of Mathew Bray of MBMC Studios, encompassing decorative arts, architectural finishes, joinery and furniture.

Shankar Kothapuram, Tom Stuart-Smith Studio: Thomas Rösler works with large pieces of timber in an almost intuitive way. There is much skill involved in his approach and a real sensitivity to materiality that makes the work feel both considered and instinctive.

Angelica Squire, Studio Squire: Gloucestershire-based furniture and cabinetry specialist Ed Keyser is a long-time collaborator of ours; we adore working with him and his team. His attention to detail and skillset make the process and end result a real pleasure.

Lonika Chande: We are lucky to work with many extraordinary craftspeople. Thinking about wall finishes alone, London-based decorative artist John Harragan creates beautiful finishes with real depth and, in East Sussex, Tess Newall’s incredible murals bring huge charm and individuality to a room.

Ross Sharpe, Yiangou: Geoffrey Preston in Devon is a true artist in plasterwork and plaster decoration and a very nice chap to boot.

Robbie Kerr, ADAM Architecture: London-based sculptor, carver and gilder Clunie Fretton really understands materials and every piece comes to life with extraordinary skill. Decorative-arts specialists Mathew Bray and Matthew Collins of MBMC Studios bring so many wonderful crafts together under one roof, all executed to perfection.

Francis Terry: When we were building the new Tapestry Drawing Room at Castle Howard in North Yorkshire, we were nearing the opening date and needed someone to carve the head of Pluto at speed. The amazing Clunie Fretton managed to carve the piece in the required timeframe and, now installed, it looks convincingly like a piece of genuine Baroque sculpture.

Rupert Cunningham, Ben Pentreath Studio: Matthias Garn is a master mason and carver who learnt his craft in his native Dresden in Germany, before settling in York to study under the great Dick Reid. He now has his own workshop and has established himself as one of the pre-eminent craftsmen in the North of England.

I love old maps. The older the better: yellowing, gnarled at the edges and fraying at the folds, perhaps the odd tea stain from a thermos cup rested down during a hike. Heaven.

But I also like new maps, not least because you can, with a click of a button, zoom in on pretty anywhere in the world — from the concrete canyons of Manhattan to the endless spaces of the Namib Desert. The internet might taketh away some of the charm of life, but it doesn't half giveth as well.

I paused to think about this when taking a look at the tiny village of Selmeston, almost in the far south-eastern corner of the South Downs National Park, not far off the road between Lewes and Eastbourne, because it reminded me of how this ancient part of Britain is jammed with fascinating and beautiful places.

There are chalk figures carved into the hills, in the form of the Long Man of Wilmington and the Litlington White Horse; there are the wildly spectacular white cliffs of the Seven Sisters; the picture-perfect village of Alfriston; Virginia Woolf's home, and the shed she worked in, at Monk's House; and, of course, the sapphire sea that sweeps, swirls and crashes onto the pebbles at nearby Seaford.

For those wishing to live amid this landscape, a house has come for sale that will cause a stir: the timeless, Grade II-listed Sherrington Manor, set in 177½ acres of gardens, grounds, woodland and pasture. Phillippa Dalby-Welsh of Savills country department is overseeing the sale, at a guide price of £6.65 million.

The manor, twice mentioned in the Domesday Book, passed to John Selwyn in the mid 14th century, following his marriage to the heiress Katherine Sherrington, and remained with the Selwyns until the early 1500s. In 1626, it was acquired by Matthias Caldecott, who may have built the original T-shaped house, the west wing of which is 17th century or earlier.

According to its listing, the taller north-south wing was originally timber-frame, rebuilt in the 18th century in red and grey brick under a hipped tiled roof. Two ground-floor bays date from the 19th century, with modern additions to the south and west.

In 1993, the Rees family — the current vendors — bought the estate and over the next couple of years built a leisure complex that comprises an indoor swimming pool, tennis court and entertaining pavilion within the vast walled garden.

In 1997, they added the New Hall, which echoes the style of the north-south wing, and whose main room is, blissfully considering our recent run of weather, air conditioned — a rare find in a proper country house.

In total the manor house provides more than 11,500sq ft of accommodation on two main floors, with a cellar and wine store below.

The ground floor houses the entrance hall, New and Old Halls, five reception rooms, a kitchen/breakfast room, a conservatory, gun room and various utilities.

You'll find a gallery, library, nine bedrooms and seven bathrooms on the first floor.

Secondary accommodation is available in the thatched, three-bedroom lodge. A range of traditional Sussex outbuildings includes a coach house and stable courtyard, and an unconverted flint barn.

The farmstead, some 166 acres in all, offers a further range of farm buildings, with the land laid mainly to pasture interspersed with banks of woodland and ancient ponds.

Sherrington Manor is for sale through Savills — see more details.

It is always a pity to sully the pleasures of collecting watches with the taint of filthy lucre, but the soaring value of a certain model of wristwatch can function as a helpful barometer of shifting tastes.

Five years ago, one result in particular sent the mercury shooting up the scale to command the attention of the market. Trophy models by Patek Philippe and Rolex frequently fetch six- and seven-figure sums, but, on November 10, 2021, after fierce bidding, a Cartier Crash watch from 1970 quadrupled its low estimate of 200,000 Swiss francs to sell for 806,500 Swiss francs.

It was an astonishing result, made all the more remarkable because included in the sale was an insurance valuation for the watch from 1997 that valued the watch at £40,000.

The Cartier Crash was invented in the London branch of the famous jeweller in the late 1960s. Until they were reunited in the 1970s, Cartier’s three main boutiques, in Paris, London, and New York, were separately owned by different members of the family and were known for producing their own distinct styles of products.

For instance, for much of the first half of the 20th century, the London branch conducted a brisk, sometimes roaring trade in tiaras, because they were still required for Court occasions, coming-out balls and so on.

But, by the 1960s, London Society had changed: King’s Road fashions rather than Queen Charlotte’s ball dictated tastes and Cartier reflected this shift in the centre of social gravity, offering groovy designs with strange shaped cases and bold dials with large Roman numerals.

Of these far-out creations, none was further out than the Crash. The name referred to the watch’s creation myth that a timepiece damaged by a car crash had been brought in for repair. Everything about the watch was, to use a technical term, wonky: the case asymmetrical, the buckle twisted off centre, even the concealed lugs, invisible when the watch was on the wrist, were at crazy angles. It was so strange that even Cartier was unsure about issuing it, as I was told some years ago by Dennis Gardiner, a veteran designer of Cartier London, who started work in 1947.

‘Mr Emmerson [Mr Gardiner’s colleague and co-designer] was a great designer and I think there was a little bit of the Salvador Dalí in the Crash. Mr Cartier would not make it at first. He said it was too much like Carnaby Street of those days, but the first one sold immediately and they became a cherished item.’

Even so, they were too avant-garde for many traditional Cartier customers. Stewart Granger bought one, but returned after a week to exchange it for something more conventional. Such was their complexity of manufacture that only about a dozen were made in London in the late 1960s and early 1970s and a couple more on very special order during the 1990s.

London Crashes are true grail watches, but even more common, later examples made in larger numbers by Cartier Paris are increasingly sought after. In the 21st century, the design has been revisited and reinterpreted, including this year, with the release of the Cartier Privé Crash Skeleton in platinum. The collector's item first received a skeletonised dial treatment in 2015, nearly 50 years after the watch's debut, but the 2026 itineration marks the introduction of a new movement, designed to fit and follow the warped case.

However, although it may be the most spectacular of shaped case watches, the Crash is far from being the sole non-round wristwatch to find popularity in recent years. Nor is the shaped case a new thing: indeed, it is as old as the wristwatch.

In 1810, the Queen of Naples commissioned a watch from Breguet that is believed by some to be the first wristwatch. Known as No 2639, it took 2½ years to make. Emmanuel Breguet, the current historian of the Breguet brand, describes it as 'of revolutionary construction and unprecedented sophistication, consisting of a repeating watch with additional refinements, oblong and exceptionally slender with a wristlet made of hair intertwined with gold thread’.

Although this watch is commemorated by the Breguet brand today with a distinctive, egg-like oval watch for women, it would be another century before the wristwatch began to be taken seriously.

As the 19th century drew to a close, the practicality of the wristwatch for active men began to be appreciated: during the Battle of Omdurman in 1898, British soldiers wore pocket watches in cup-like wristbands. Yet even during the early decades of the 20th century the jury was still out as to whether watches should be worn in the waistcoat pocket or on the wrist and many wristlet watches, as they were called, continued to be made from converted pocket watches or ladies pendant watches.

It was in order to stress their modernity that designers of purpose-built, rather than converted, wristwatches chose non-round designs. In this, Louis Cartier was a leader, making the small, square Santos wristwatch for the eponymous Brazilian-born aviator, who was a frequent sight in the skies above Belle Epoque Paris, scooting about in his powered airships.

The Santos set a precedent and, emboldened by its success, even more esoteric models were launched including Tonneau, which found favour with the ultra-modern composer Stravinsky; the tortoise-shaped Tortue; the bell-shaped Cloche; and, of course, the Tank with its numerous derivatives. These watches are spectacular to look at and, after many years in the shadows, Cartier has once again reissued many of its quirkier watches to be worn by both women and — since the trend for oversize watches has receded — men.

Cartier was not alone in adopting non-round shapes to differentiate its early wristwatch production. At roughly the same time, Patek Philippe was supplying the Brazilian jeweller Gondolo with tonneau and rectangular watches shaped to follow the curve of the wrist — so significant were these watches that, even to this day at Patek, a non-round watch is called a Gondolo.

At Vacheron Constantin, between 1919 and 1921, a cushion-cased wristwatch was created for the American market. It was made truly different by the presence of the winding crown at the top right-hand corner of the case, roughly where one would expect to see half-past one. In 2021, the watch was revived, to appeal to 21st-century tastes.

This year is the 95th anniversary of one of the most famous of non-round watches, the Jaeger LeCoultre Reverso, a watch that, as its name suggests, can be turned over on the wrist. This innovation was conceived to protect the watch glass, the most fragile part of the watch at the time. Although synthetic-crystal watch glass has long ago obviated the need for such a protective measure, the flip-over functionality has remained as an opportunity for including either a second face for the watch, with additional functions, or as a canvas for the artists at Jaeger to use to embellish its appearance.

Whether engraved with a coat of arms or decorated with enamel painting (some art-collector clients have even had their paintings reproduced in miniature), the effect can be eye-catching.

Today, the visual effect of the shaped case wristwatch is winning new converts. When Rihanna was photographed announcing her first pregnancy, she wore a pink anorak and ripped jeans, festooned with jewellery. Distended abdomen aside, it was her wrist that attracted attention. She was wearing one of the rarest of Rolexes, the King Midas.

First appearing in the early 1960s, the King Midas used solid gold throughout. ‘Never before — a watch so daringly new, so outrageously different, so harmoniously classical. Named after the legendary king with the golden touch, sculptured from a block of solid 18-carat gold, the King Midas is a watch designed for the most discriminating people in the world’ enthused an early advertisement.

Straight on one side, angled to a point on the other, when laid flat on its edge it evokes the pediment and tympanum of a classical building. ‘We created this as a modern tribute to ancient Greece’ explained one tagline.

Even the box was truly remarkable, taking as its inspiration a masterpiece in the British Museum, the famed Midas stamnos, a lidded pottery vessel combining aspects of vase and amphora that was created in about 440 BC. The black ground is decorated with red figures depicting Silenos led before Midas.

I never saw Rihanna as a student of classical antiquity, but it seems that the strangely shaped Rolex King Midas has finally brought out her inner Mary Beard.

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

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Highclere became world-famous in the 2000s as the impossibly grand Hampshire house used as the location for the filming of Downton Abbey. Yet it was a place celebrated long before ITV's film crews turned up to create the classic period drama, not just for its architecture, but also for the treasures that lie within.

The most famous of these are its Egyptian antiquities, collected by the 5th Earl of Carnarvon, excavator of Tutankhamun’s tomb; and its Napoleonic memorabilia, including the Emperor’s chair and desk, personal effects sold from Longwood House on St Helena after his death in 1821.

Today,, though, the Earl and Countess of Carnarvon stand in the Smoking Room at Highclere, an interior redecorated and rehung in the 1990s, in front of a different antique: a table that incorporates decorative panels representing birds and fruits made of ‘hard stone’ or pietra dura.

Making decorative use of stones such as lapis lazuli, onyx, cornelian and sardonyx enjoyed particular popularity in the late 16th century and Ferdinando I de’Medici established a workshop — the Opificio delle Pietre Dure — in Florence in 1588 that became a centre for its subsequent production.

The panels here are thought to date to the 17th century, but were subsequently united in this table, probably in the 19th century. In several cases, the stones actually project from the surface of the panel, giving it real depth.

‘We both love Italy and think the craftsmanship of this table is exceptional,’ says Lord Carnarvon.

‘I love the idea of Nature set into marble, frozen and made eternal. John Keats explores this in his celebrated poem Ode on a Grecian Urn, published in 1819; this table is our urn.’

A version of this feature originally appeared in the print edition of Country Life on June 24, 2026. Click here for more information on how to subscribe.

For a Victorian hostess, serving ice cream at dinner, turned out from thrilling moulds shaped as beehives, asparagus or swans, was the 19th-century equivalent of showing off on Instagram, ‘afford[ing] the cook the opportunity of making some of the prettiest dishes it is possible to send to the table’.

Leading the charge was the original cookery influencer, Agnes Bertha Marshall (1852–1905), an English culinary entrepreneur who became a leading cookery writer, producing two of the most important books on ice cream — Ices Plain and Fancy: The Book of Ices (1885) and Fancy Ices (1894) — earning herself the title ‘Queen of Ices’.

Born in Haggerston in the East End of London, Marshall was an illegitimate child, raised by her grandmother in Walthamstow. Little is known about her early life — or where exactly she learnt to cook — but it is believed that she trained in Paris, detailing in the preface to her 1887 tome Mrs A. B. Marshall’s Cookery Book that her recipes are ‘the result of practical training and lessons, through several years, from leading English and Continental authorities, as well as a home experience earlier than I can well recall’.

Her promotional tour for this title saw her cook elaborate luncheons in front of large audiences across the country, securing her reputation as a household name. In 1878, she married Alfred William Marshall, a union that allowed her to take advantage of the 1882 Married Women’s Property Act. In 1883, she bought a plot of land and opened the Marshall School of Cookery at No 67, Mortimer Street, London.

In 1885, Marshall patented a device that could freeze a pint of ice cream. The hand-cranked machine promised ‘smooth and delicious Ice produced in 3 minutes’. She also toyed with using liquefied gas as an ultra-rapid freezing agent — a century before Heston Blumenthal popularised the liquid-nitrogen technique in the pursuit of molecular gastronomy. When he called the ‘Queen of Ices’ one of Britain’s ‘greatest culinary pioneers’, he wasn’t exaggerating

As well as teaching Londoners how to cook, she ran a domestic staff agency business, sold domestic and cooking equipment and campaigned for better standards of food hygiene. Her 1888 recipe for ‘cornets with cream’ would put edible ice-cream cones on the culinary map, using finely chopped almonds, fine flour, caster sugar, one egg, a pinch of salt and a tablespoon of orange flower water, mixed to a paste.

Once baked, cornet shapes were quickly cut out of the paste and wrapped around a cornet tin, baked again ‘till quite crisp and dry’ and then filled ‘with any cream or water ice’. This serving suggestion was a novel concept to Victorian Londoners. Cheap ice creams had hitherto been served in small glass containers called ‘penny licks’, which were rarely cleaned between customers. They were eventually made illegal in 1926 for their role in spreading diseases such as tuberculosis.

The High Weald National Landscape is deceptively huge. Stretching from Horsham in the west to Winchelsea in the east, and from the outskirts of Tonbridge to the coast at Hastings, it's almost fifty miles across and 30 miles from north to south, covering 560 square miles of rolling hills and ancient forests, all dotted with charming villages. This, as Octavia Pollock wrote in Country Life in 2020, is 'the archetypal image many of us have of rural England'.

Not far from the dead centre of this stretch of England, between Heathfield and Battle, you'll find one of those aforementioned villages: Dallington. And on the edge of this village, stretching across 337 acres of East Sussex, you'll find the historic Oldcastle Estate, which is now on the market at £7,035,000.

Oldcastle, which has been in the Buckley family for over a century, consists of a hugely impressive principal house, three cottages, one farmhouse and one farmyard, and hundreds of acres of productive farmland. Will Matthews of Knight is handling the sale, either as a whole at the full guide price, or in up to nine lots.

The estate’s focal point is Grade II-listed Oldcastle, the original part of which is a two-storey, timber-frame, late-17th-century building. It was bought in 1910 by Mr Justice Henry Button Buckley, a distinguished barrister and judge, who had the place — then still called Old Castle — restored and enlarged between 1910 and 1912 by Ernest Newton.

It didn't take long for the Justice Buckley to have a fine title to go with his new home: he was created Baron Wrenbury of Old Castle in 1915.

This original part of the house, which boasts some fine 17th-century panelling, forms the central section of the present building, with Newton’s 1910 wings added at either end.

For most of the 20th century Oldcastle remained the country home of the Buckley family, though it housed children refugees during the war, served for a time as a girls’ finishing school, and was even a guest house for a spell, according to the agents, before the 3rd Baron Wrenbury made it the Buckley family home once again in 1961.

The original house, available as Lot 1a at £1.95 million, provides 8,235sq ft of traditional accommodation, set amid 13 acres of delightful gardens and grounds that include easily-seen remnants of those original, 900-year-old castle walls.

The space is set across three floors, and is an object lesson in keeping a period home updated while retaining its character.

There is a fine entrance hall, kitchen, grand dining room, beautiful drawing room, billiard room and more on the ground floor, which has a wine cellar and gun room below.

One side of the house is arranged as a self-contained, three-bedroom annexe, ideal as either staff accommodation or multi-generational living.

The principal bedrooms are all on the first floor, and all with fascinating names which speak of more history to uncover — Chapel Bedroom, Aunt Joyce's Bedroom and so on.

There are also upstairs spaces currently designated as a nursery and a longroom, but depending on the new buyer's needs things could be reconfigured to make this a ten-bedroom home.

The three cottages on the estate — being sold together as Lot 1b — are The Gardener's Cottage and The Engine House, both with two bedrooms, and the three-bed Stables Cottage. The latter is more than just a pretty name: there is indeed a stable included, with three separate bays.

The remaining lots take in the hundreds of acres of farmland — mostly laid to pasture — and woodland, with one of the parcels including a four-bedroom farmhouse.

The Oldcastle Estate is for sale through Knight Frank — see more details.

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

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

There was, in the 1990s, a counter-cyclical knee-jerk among interior designers against fussiness in its forms. The previous decade had been amazing, but quantity had subsumed quality and, suddenly, most inhabitants of fashionable west London postcodes under-took a dramatic decorating detox, painting their floorboards and hanging cream blinds.

The joy was that the look was cheap. A few litres of white paint are so much less expensive than wallpaper, knicker blinds, paint finishes and acres of beige Wilton. The look sparked a new publishing genre: interior books, all with the word ‘simple’ in the title, featuring simple pictures of simple things and text that offered statements of the blindingly obvious. In the USA, the cult of simplicity got its own magazine, Real Simple, which at its peak sold 7.6 million copies a month.

As part of the reinvention of country houses, a new focus on materiality has seen designers and architects paring back houses to their structural framework, revealing stone, brick and beams that a generation ago would have been plastered or carpeted over.

Spaces have been simplified, too, particularly in smaller houses, where removing a wall, pushing into the eaves or opening up staircases can transform the humblest cottage into something quite light and airy. It’s a look that French architects and builders have always understood, especially in the south, where stone farmhouses lend themselves to being unpicked and unpeeled.

It’s an approach to the look that has become a hallmark of estate houses, cottages and pubs, such as The Wild Rabbit at the Daylesford estate in the Cotswolds, where Lady Bamford has been unwavering in carving out her own aesthetic that seamlessly blends texture with modernity.

Never let anyone persuade you that this rural reductivism is simple; reinventing buildings so that they appeal to a modernist sensibility requires clever design, artful construction, ingenious structural engineers and lots of hidden steel beams.

If the technical aspect of the challenge sounds complex, however, it’s not as hard as the spatial planning and sourcing of materials that will add richness and warmth to rooms that could otherwise look austere. Unlike more layered interiors, there’s no hiding behind colour or clutter, nor strategically placed artworks to cover a multitude of sins.

What is refreshing is its honesty; it is blissfully devoid of the pastiche and nostalgia that have been a mark of country houses for far too long.

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

The Experts’ Experts

Country Life asks architects, designers and specialists on its Top 100 list to delve into their little black books to reveal the talented craftspeople and suppliers they turn to for inspira-tion on their own projects  

Why haste creates waste

Hold off on that online-shopping impulse buy — there’s no substitute for carefully crafted quality 

It’s getting hot in here

Ben Lerwill sets his tastebuds a-tingling as he meets the British chilli-sauce makers adding to the spice of life  

Luxury

If you only buy one suitcase, make it a classic GlobeTrotter, suggests Amie Elizabeth White

Winging it

Mark Cocker looks beyond the raven’s grim reputation to seek the truth about our largest corvid

Sir Lindsay Hoyle’s favourite painting

The Speaker of the House of Commons is captivated by the Westminster riverfront in a work with a photographic quality  

On top of the world

Kirsty Fergusson applauds the stamina of the hardy souls who tend the spectacular clifftop gardens at Chygurno, Cornwall 

Country-house treasure

John Goodall stands in the stead of William Tyndale behind a preacher’s pulpit at Bucklebury House in Berkshire  

The legacy

Agnes Stamp salutes Agnes Marshall, the Queen of Ices 

While the cat’s away…

David Glasper lifts the lid on the cat flap, the means by which the regal feline can come and go precisely as it pleases  

An architectural evolution

Jeremy Musson charts the rise of Selwyn College, Cambridge, from its origins as a memorial to a 19th-century missionary  

The raw deal

Tom Parker Bowles savours the lip-smacking summer freshness of that Peruvian classic ceviche 

Travel

Rosie Paterson unpacks the latest in luxury-yacht looks and follows in Frida Kahlo’s footsteps 

Arts & antiques

Beauty and function were fused in the form of the sedan chair, the conveyance of choice for the upper echelons of Georgian society, reveals Carla Passino 

Art to dine for

Intriguing art can be a meal-time conversation starter in country-house dining rooms, as Melanie Cable-Alexander discovers 

Catch of the day

Collector Paul Martin shares his tips on amassing a school of exquisite antiquarian fish prints 

And much more

It can be hard to tell one Volvo from another, but perhaps that is the point.

What do you, dear reader, think about when you read or hear the word Volvo? Do you think of a long line of station wagons at the school gates? A car packed to the rafters with luggage and dogs on its way to the Continent for a family holiday? Safety? Swedishness? Style? Do you think of anything at all, or is the purpose of a Volvo not to be thought about at all — to be locked up and forgotten, an idol of pragmatism on four wheels lost in a Waitrose carpark.

It is one of the many compliments that you can pay to Volvo that it is so many things to so many people. To me, Volvo has been the car of the Fisher family since I took my first steps, starting with the 240 Estate, then the V70, then the XC70 and, most recently the XC60. I have spent a lifetime in Volvos, and they have grown alongside me, a mirror of my own advancing years, but also a constant tether. Safety means many things, especially to the good people of Gothenburg, but to me it is the sight of my mother in her XC60 picking me up from the train station car park at Christmas-time.

It is rare perhaps to consider La Condition Humaine through the lens of a Swedish carmaker, but here we are. Volvos are often considered as cars that do not require thought — Plain Janes that serve a wholly practical purpose of getting kids, dogs and groceries to and from places. But consider this instead: not only are they practical, but they have long had an understated beauty that works in concert with their usefulness. These are cars that are thoughtfully designed by thoughtful people with a penchant for herrings. Practical yes; the three-point seatbelt, designed by Volvo and given to the world, has saved many lives. But also beautiful: the P1800, the best-looking car you’ve never heard of, also holds the world record for most miles driven under a single owner (3.2 million, in case you were wondering). Another good example is the marque’s latest SUV, the EX60.

The EX60 is based on the top-selling XC60 that was introduced in 2008 and has sold more than 2.8 million units. It is a very important car for Volvo on their march towards the electrification of all things — will this be the car that convinces the middle classes to swap petrol for solar power? It is certainly a promising effort.

You would be foolish for thinking that the EX60 is simply an XC60 with a battery where the petrol tank should be. This is essentially a brand-new car from top to bottom, plonked on top of the firm’s new SPA3 platform, which means many things, but principally means that it’s the latest (and by the far the most refined) version of Volvo’s electric offerings.

As well as electric power, the EX60 is also something of a computer on wheels, using various Norse-named computing systems to deliver a seamless driving experience, while the car also benefits from voice-controlled Google Gemini, allowing you to plot driving routes, stops, music, radio and so on. Somewhat alarmingly, it works very well, although having a conversation with yourself while you drive along the motorway might take some getting used to.

Back to La Condition humaine. You may (or may not) spend a lot of time thinking about Volvos, but it pales in comparison to the amount of time that a Volvo is thinking about you. Or, perhaps more accurately, how much thinking about you a Volvo can do at any given time. The EX60, which is perhaps the cleverest Volvo yet, thinks about you 254 trillion times per second, which is an awful lot. If it were a person, you could describe it as clingy. But because it is a Volvo, it is trying to keep you safe and comfortable, which is preferable.

And therein lies the real joy of the Volvo: because it thinks so much, you have to think oh-so little. Very few cars are as relaxing to drive as the EX60, because it plonks you in a well-appointed cabin, nice and high off the road and surrounded by nice things, and it sees the world before you do. Some might consider this level of technology to be a bit incongruous with Volvo, but it’s anything but. Volvo have always been innovators, but like all reasonable people (and unlike many other car makers), they are subtle about it. The EX60 has no interest in telling you about all the many things it can do, or is already doing, to improve your life on the road. It just does them.

It’s an ideology and aesthetic that extends beyond the microchip. The car looks and is sustainable and Scandi, in that the interiors are made from a wealth of recycled and eco-friendly materials, but still feel achingly premium to the touch. The cabin is uncluttered and simple, dominated by a large central screen (where Gemini/HAL9000 lives) and most of the control buttons live on the steering wheel. Any other available space has been given over to storage, underlying the car’s purpose as a family wagon. I liked the cupholders that slide out horizontally from the arm rest, and I really liked the bucket shaped storage space under the dash, which means you can root around for charging cables or whatever without having to take your eyes off the road. It's simple things like this that Volvo is famous for, but probably never gets the appreciation it deserves.

So much new stuff on wheels is overdesigned at the moment, especially in the SUV EV segment, but the EX60 is both contemporary and traditional. The shape is new, but it is also very much Volvo, especially the hipped vertical taillights that are an obvious nod to more vintage versions of the V70 and XC90. The retro renaissance clearly hasn’t passed the good people of Gothenburg by.

To drive, it is as a Volvo should be, which is inoffensive, unobtrusive and comfortable. The steering is light, the ride is soft and the single electric motor in the P6 is smooth and potent. The lineup is fleshed out by the dual-motor AWD P10 and the 671bhp P12, which can hit 0-62mph in 3.9 seconds, should you be really really late in picking up the kids. The advertised range for the P6 is 385 miles, while the P12 is claimed to be able to make over 500 miles on a single full charge, which is very impressive indeed.

Not everything is perfect, but most of it is. Because this is a car company, something that we’ve never had an issue with before has had to be re-designed, which in the EX60’s case are the doorhandles, which are now not handles, but small fins that you rub or gently grab for access. The key is now on your phone or a key tag. It all works very well when it works, but for simple but essential tasks like ‘getting in’ or ‘getting out’, I would always prefer something mechanical over digital. Volvo’s justification for the door fins is better aerodynamics. We will have to take their word on that.

Volvo have long known what they are doing when making big cars, so it stands to reason that the EX60 is spacious and practical, with plenty of room for five full adults and 523 litres of boot space. Overall, despite looking similar to the bridge of a luxury pleasure craft from the future, the interior feels sturdy and well crafted and it should certainly have no issues dealing with the rough and tumble of daily life.

That’s the thing with the EX60 and with Volvo in general. Here is a car that is well made, sustainable, elegant, futuristic and well thought out. It has what it needs, and it does more than you could ever know. So the next time you see a Volvo, whether that’s the EX60 or any other, and think maybe it’s a bit boring or a bit understated, I would urge you to maybe think again.

Some properties sound amazing when you pop a few details down in writing. Just the other week, for example, we looked at Kirtlington Park in Oxfordshire, one of Britain's greatest privately-owned mansions, with 36ft ceilings, 17 bedrooms, 37,000sq ft and gardens landscaped by Capability Brown. That little lot alone took care of the headline.

Today, we have something: 'two-bedroom pilchard cellar for sale' doesn't really sell the place as the stuff of dreams — particularly when you hear that this pilchard cellar has an asking price of £1.295 million, and less than 1,500sq ft of space.

Thankfully, the picture above, of The Cellars and its stunning location, does the heavy lifting, painting its thousand words and then some. Those views, and the access to the deep blue seas off the Lizard Peninsula, make this house a rare catch.

There's more good news: The Cellars might have started life as a 19th century pilchard cellar, but it's long since been converted into a quite wonderful seaside home on the Lizard Peninsula, just along the coast from the southernmost tip of mainland Britain.

The fishy history of this picture-perfect coastal home is goes back to the 19th century, in the days before surfing tourism and Rick Stein restaurants, when fishing was a vital part of life and the economy in Cornwall. Then as now, it seems the annual visitors had seasonal habits: large shoals would gather around this spot in the summer months, allowing the fishermen to catch them and take them to buildings such as this for processing, where they were spread on the floor and salted.

The fishermen who did this are, of course, now long gone and The Cellars is a very different place, having undergone a restoration that has retained its original form and materials, but introduced glazing and a sheltered courtyard spine that imbue the place with a contemporary aesthetic.

The sitting room, at 23½ft by 11ft, offers plenty of space for entertaining or family time. Across the courtyard, the kitchen and dining room are of similar proportions.

The principal bedroom — one of two where new owners and their guests can rest and relax — occupies the entire first floor.

The position of The Cellars, within Church Cove on the Lizard Peninsula, offers sea views from the house and raised gardens, plus easy access to the South West Coast Path — perfect for keen walkers or birdwatchers.

For sale via Rohrs & Rowe and Finest at £1.295 million.

So many of us dream of writing to our idol, but few pluck up the courage to actually do so. If we can muster it, even fewer receive a response. I remember, aged 10, the excitement I felt when my favourite author, Helen Dunmore, wrote back to me. Imagine, then, how Eileen Elgar must have felt when she received a reply from J.R.R. Tolkien (1892-1973).

Elgar started corresponding with the author in her fifties on the advice of her daughter, who suggested she write to him with some of her questions about his books. Relationship established, Elgar went on to make suggestions on how Tolkien's works could be improved and this eventually led to the writer visiting Elgar at home, and the pair striking up a surprising friendship.

Now, six books, signed by the author, and five correspondents written by him to Elgar, are going up for auction with Sotheby’s.

Tolkien described Elgar, who lived in Bournemouth, as an ‘admirer’ of his in a letter to his grandson in 1963. He added that she was ‘highly intelligent & well read’ and ‘stone deaf’, which necessitated communication ‘by writing pad’.

An autographed note, tucked into a copy of Fellowship of the Ring, is clearly Tolkien's attempt to explain his thought process behind the mythic creations of the race of Dwarves, and includes ‘significant detail regarding Middle Earth Creation lore’. The book and note is part of a single lot of three volumes of The Lord of the Rings from 1961.

In a different title, The Adventures of Tom Bombadil, a loosely inserted letter references Tolkien's sadness at hearing of the death of C.S. Lewis.

William Passey, of Sotheby’s Books and Manuscripts Department says the most surprising thing about these correspondences is ‘how intimate they are, and how much time [Tolkien] was willing to devote to answering Eileen's questions in depth.’

He adds: ‘I suppose the lot that really stands out for me is the set of Lord of the Rings with the note about the creation of the race of the dwarves in it. What’s remarkable about that is the nerdy detail that Tolkien gets into, and obviously the fact that it is not a letter, but something that was written during the course of conversation.’

Elgar, who lived near the Hotel Miramar, where Tolkien and his wife would holiday each year, died in 1980. The letters date from 1961-4 and the works are spread across five lots (lots 83-87). In total, they are estimated to sell for around £39,000-55,000.

Tolkien, born John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, was best-known for his fantasy novels. He published The Hobbit in 1937 and the first part of The Lord of the Rings in 1954. He died in 1973 at the age of 81 in Bournemouth.

The demand for his work is still extremely high. In 2023, a second-edition set of Lord of the Rings books that were inscribed by Tolkien in Elvish sold for £95,250 with Sotheby's. The following year, a set of 21 Tolkien letters were sold by the auctioneers for £228,000. The Tolkien Society, founded in 1969, has around 4,000 members in more than 60 different countries and this year, The Lord of the Rings topped The Guardian readers’ top 100 novels of all time list.

Passey of Sotheby’s says: ‘It is worth noting that Tolkien has done exceptionally well at auction in recent years.’ He credits ‘millennial collectors, who are from outside the traditional book collecting world, and have maybe grown up watching the films,’ with this recent boom.

Tolkien expert Pieter Collier told The Observer, of Elgar: ‘I believe she was one of the very few people he could think of as a peer.’ He added that Elgar should ‘get much more credit and respect for her communications with [Tolkien]. He actually listened to what she said.’

‘One cannot help wondering what kind of scholar she might have become had deafness not isolated her from academic life.’

Elgar’s granddaughter, Helen Dutfield, told the BBC that Elgar had ‘a very rich imagination’ and was ‘fascinated by the ancient civilisations’. Of Tolkien, she added: ‘His wife was quite jealous and she was curious about who this woman was that he was going to talk to.

‘We laugh about that because my grandmother was old before her time, she was terribly intense — not the sort of person you could imagine he would have fancied.’

For more information about the sale, visit Sotheby’s website

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

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

Sarah Corbett-Winder (below) is a fashion consultant, sometimes referred to as ‘The Wardrobe Whisperer’, and founder of Kipper clothing.

She recently moved from London to a historic farmhouse in the Welsh countryside, where she lives with her husband, three children and two miniature sausage dogs.

Gucci mega cuff coat

Obviously a piece from my wardrobe had to feature. It has been very hard to pick (I wanted to say the whole lot), but it would have to be this.

She is a recent friend I picked up from Sign of the Times — so good for vintage finds.

I had no intention of buying, but she fit me like a glove and made me smile so much that she had to come home with me.

I like to wear her in expected and unexpected situations, such as the Monday-morning school drop off or in the supermarket.

Not only does she bring me joy, but also others, and I hope to pass her onto my girls.

Engraved necklace

The day before our wedding day, my husband gave me a necklace. A penny-sized, very classic gold disc on a thin gold chain with ‘N&S 14.12.13’ — our initials and wedding date — engraved on it. I haven’t taken it off since that day.

I cherish it with all my heart and hold it when I need that extra boost or support in my life. A piece that is totally and truly tailored to my husband and I.

Portrait of a Lady EDP by Frédéric Malle

It has become a bit of an inside joke that you can usually smell me before you see me.

I have been wearing this for about seven years now and I am still in love with it. It’s such an unusual, slightly masculine, yet very feminine smell.

I am yet to smell another perfume that gets me like this one. It’s a mixture of rose, patchouli and sandalwood — a real piece of art.

It also comes as a body lotion, which might be my next luxury…

Margaret and Marigold

My two wonderful pooches. Margaret is four years old, my short-haired dappled friend, and Marigold is nine months old, my long-haired dappled friend.

They bring me so much joy and insist on being next to me or with me at all times, like my own private security. There is sometimes a competition to see who can be closer to me… Margaret always wins.

They make me feel so loved and special. A lot of my day is spent admiring my pooches, particularly when they are wearing one of their silk neck scarves (nearly always — they have a rather extensive collection!).

This feature originally appeared in the April 29, 2026, issue of Country Life. Click here for more information on how to subscribe.

Strawberry Hill remains the undisputed icon of the Gothic Revival movement. Built by Horace Walpole from 1749 (making it, technically, a precursor to the current which it helped to create), the jet-white edifice conceals a dark and moody interior that was designed to accommodate Walpole’s collection of antiquaries. He referred to this particular decorative style as ‘gloomth’ — warmth and gloom coming together in harmony.

These days, house buyers prefer to err on the side of light rather than dark — but occasionally we come across the home that manages to do a little of both. That is emphatically the case with a house just down the river from Walpole's home, in the beautifully-named Strawberry Vale. Here, a double-fronted Victorian home is up for sale at £4.75 million with Dexters and Inigo. This six-bedroom villa is flooded with light, but its bold colour scheme brings the gloomth to striking effect.

The house, with its long garden that trails right down to the Thames, forms part of a conservation area comprising nine other houses. and spread across four floors, with a beautifully preserved porte-cochère leading to the raised ground floor.

A glass-covered awning connects the street to the building, where each storey, save for the attic floor, is blessed with at least four or five street-facing windows — and there are even more at the back.

The proportions are vast, with the first floor dedicated to the master suite (complete with a walk-in wardrobe and a balcony) and a guest room.

The ground floor has a gym, plant room, cinema room and a store leading to the garden. Three bedrooms, with a lateral balcony, occupy the second (and top) floor.

These are, as industry parlance goes, very good bones indeed. The current interiors, the world of interior designer Claire Botha, are bold, flamboyant, and a decidedly 21st century take on Walpole’s vision of handsome riverside villas with cosy, moody interiors.

Some elements are timeless and classic: the front door, decked out in stained-glass windows; the exposed brick wall in the kitchen; the elegantly-tiled master bathroom with panelling and a mantlepiece. But safe to say that the look won't be for everyone.

Proximity to Teddington and glorious Richmond Park should typically lure buyers with an appreciation for period finishings.

The riverside garden, 150-ft long, comes with private mooring and a boathouse — both real rarities this close to central London. Parties here will be a thing of beauty. It is perfect for a large family, with one or two dogs.

For sale at £4.75 million through Dexters and Inigo.

Unlike its namesake, Papillon Hall managed to live a lot longer than a brief spell. But, still, it perished far too quickly.

On May 4, 1912, Country Life published a supplement focused on the latest works of Edwin Lutyens (1869-1944). One of the prolific architect’s works under the microscope was his modernisation of Papillon Hall in Lubenham, just outside Market Harborough, Leicestershire.

In the opening years of the 20th century, Lutyens had been called in by Captain Frank Ashton Bellville, heir to the Robinson’s Barley Water and Keen’s mustard fortunes, to greatly extend his octagonal, 17th century, semi-fortified home.

The heart of Bellville’s home, built — and lived in, for some time — by the French architect David Papillon, came with one small, but seemingly potent problem.

According to local legend, Papillon, the person, not the house, had a Spanish mistress who he kept prisoner in the attic after she fell from his favour. The poor woman died in mysterious circumstances sometime around 1715. When Bellville acquired the house, he also took possession of her 'cursed' brocade shoes. Locked behind a grille, legend (and legal documents) had it that if the shoes ever left the house, misfortune would befall its owner.

The original hall was retained at the centre of Lutyens' designs, and an extra storey added to it. There were four new wings, built in the shape of a butterfly, which contained a dining room, billiard room, kitchen and servants' hall. To the south was a sunken pond, dotted with water lilies; to the east, the flower gardens were replanted inside the wings, in the cottage garden style of Lutyen’s great friend, Gertrude Jekyll.

For the duration of the works, the brocade shoes were kept at Bellville’s solicitor's offices.

Reports show that work progressed slowly; contractors pulled out at the last minute and there were numerous accidents and one death. The skeleton of a long-dead woman, presumably Papillon’s mistress, was discovered in a bricked up cavity in the roof. Then, in August 1905, Captain Bellville was badly injured when he was thrown from his jaunting car (a small horse buggy). Against all the odds, he recovered.

However, the shoes were on the move again — this time, to a museum. Soon after, George Rathbone, an electrical engineer, died in a car car crash. He was in Bellville’s car being driven by Bellville’s chauffeur. Sarah Clark, a servant, was accused by later acquitted of infanticide after a dead baby was found in her room. Lastly, Bellville was flung from his polo pony. (Amazingly, he recovered, again, which somewhat disproves the lucky shoes theory.)

Bellville died in 1937, at the age of 68, and Papillon Hall passed to his son, Rupert.

Rupert was described in contemporary news reports as a sportsman, airman and one-time amateur bull fighter. He also fought alongside General Francisco Franco's troops during the Spanish Civil War. In fact, at the moment his father died, he was in Spanish prison.

Rupert reportedly fell into the enemy's hands because he presumed Santander had been taken by the Spanish nationalists, so flew himself and the head of González Byass to the latter's headquarters, to pick up a few cases of celebratory sherry. Upon landing, he discovered a) his error and b) the opposition.

The sherry-seeking Franco fighter was released following a series of heated negotiations and, when he arrived home, set about painting every gate on the estate in the dictator's colours. Then, in 1938, he put it all up for sale. However, it failed to actually sell.

During the Second World War, Papillon Hall hosted the 319th Glider Battalion and the 82nd Airborne Division of the American Army, who, naturally, were not overly worried about building and garden conservation and Lutyens' unique creation fell into a state of seemingly-terminal disrepair.

After the War, the decision was taken to demolish it, but not before Rupert’s wife 'saved' the remaining slipper (Rupert had taken one with him to Spain which explains quite a lot). Today, only small parts of the garden remain; the shoes are on display at the Harborough Museum.

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.

Pity the man who never got to fly on Concorde. Your correspondent was but four when the aircraft was discontinued and, akin to many, has been awaiting the return of supersonic flight with glee. Let us rejoice, for a successor has finally landed: the European Space Agency is currently developing a jet called Invictus that aims to travel at five times the speed of sound. This, we are told, will deliver passengers from London to Sydney in only three hours.

Against these soaring ambitions stand our airports: once-proud institutions that have, in recent years, become pandemonium. Practically no one enjoys them anymore. Two-thirds of the British public believe they are overcrowded and, according to Sail Croatia, three of our main hubs — Stansted, Gatwick and Heathrow — rank among the five most stressful airports on Earth.

The EU’s new Entry-Exit-System, reliant on biometric data, has been blamed for a recent hike in delays and missed flights. During the US government shutdown at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta earlier this year, paid entertainers were hired to alleviate tensions among those facing superqueues — a strategy akin to putting out a fire with a comedy skit.

If aerospace engineers are capable of building a jet that reaches Mach 5, you’d think that those in charge of our airports would manage to improve things here and there. As David Mitchell says: It's not rocket science. Yet the decline appears terminal. There is perhaps no better metonym for it than the screens that appear after security with four smiley faces, ranging from happy (green) to irate (red): a lazy substitute for adequate staff training. Indeed, a 2025 report from the device’s parent company showed that, even on the best of days, more than one in ten travellers said they’d had a bad time.

With a fall in service comes a fall in glamour — not for lack of trying from some. Designer Anya Hindmarch now has a shop, Air Anya, selling luggage tags and passport holders reminiscent of the 1970s. If only the people at the airport check-in counter were even half as fun. Instead, I have been forced to watch as British Airways asks Gold members to check in hand-luggage small enough to serve as Playmobil.

Isolated attempts at progress are often futile. Where London has done away with the 100ml limit on carry-on liquids, others have not: a fact worth remembering as people plan to bring home large bottles of Factor-50 for the next heatwave. These will be confiscated, unless one remembers to put this in the suitcase that BA has made them surrender as cargo. A more capacious overhaul is needed. I’d put the engineers in charge.

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

You join me on a shore of Lake Como for a scene from a James Bond film. We are at the palatial Villa d’Este, the famed grande dame hotel that’s hosted the Who’s Who of Hollywood, from Chaplin to Clooney and Garbo to Gaga. A hundred impeccably-dressed and well-heeled guests, drawn from around the world, sip Telmont Champagne on the gravelled terrace. Others totter into Riva tenders to get a closer look at the action. On the water, almost silent, is the stealthy spectacle they’ve come to witness: A bunch of 'Star Wars'-inspired hydrofoil speed boats duking it out around a rippling race track marked by buoys.

This is Spanish entrepreneur Alejandro Agag’s latest production. Having created the first electric car racing championship, Formula E, more than a decade ago, and done the same with off-road rallying in the form of Extreme E, he has now taken to the seas. Formula E was about making electric motorsport credible, and giving car manufacturers a global platform to develop and show off their EV tech. Extreme E was about taking cameras to places where the environment is under threat and funding climate initiatives. E1 Series, this all-electric regatta, intends to make battery-based mobility glamorous.

There are 10 teams fielding two drivers each: a man and a woman. In addition to the drivers and technicians, the bijou paddock that’s been formed alongside the Villa d’Este’s floating swimming pool is populated by investors, socialites and influencers. Forget grandstands full of punters like you’d find at Silverstone, or Wimbledon or Wembley for that matter. This is essentially a garden party. I daren’t imagine what the cost of this event is divided by the number of spectators in situ. Tickets can be bought for €1,500 a pop, which includes lunch and an open bar. Yet E1’s proposition is that motorsport is no longer merely competition, it’s content. E1 Series is custom made for watching on TikTok. It’s got crashes, speedy technology and sexy locations. It’s highly ‘clippable’, it’s aspirational, and it boasts personalities that social media goes crazy for.

Porsche, Mercedes-Benz, BMW, Audi, Jaguar; many well-known automotive brands invested in Formula E. They all have a fan following. Now I’m sure boatbuilders have their own loyal base, but Sunseeker, Benetti and Princess don’t have the same cut-through. The pilots don’t have the same name recognition either: Sir Lewis Hamilton isn’t battling Sir Ben Ainslie out there, alas. So Agag had a brainwave. Celebrities can bring their own brands. They can invest in teams and be the face of the series.

E1’s team owners include movie star Will Smith, DJ Steve Aoki, basketball legend LeBron James, NFL GOAT Tom Brady, footballer Didier Drogba, cricketer Virat Kohli, goalkeeper Thibaut Courtois, pop star Marc Anthony, and tennis sensation Rafael Nadal. They post about E1 to their millions of Instagram followers. Some, apparently, get quite hands on with the teams themselves. I’m told Brady is almost unbearably competitive, and Nadal is much the same. Jamie Copas is E1’s CEO. He explains the model of team ownership: ‘The celebrities are investing their time, their brand and their social media profile. It’s about their engagement.’

I asked Thibaut Courtois, who plays for Real Madrid, why he signed up. ‘I love the water, boats. My wife, she loves it, she has her skipper licence. And obviously the electrical thing, it’s not polluting the nature. Electric propulsion, I think it’s the way forward.’ Would he like to drive one of these E1 boats himself? ‘I’m 6ft 7in. Unfortunately I can’t fit.’

Aside from the very expensive hotels and indulgent spreads, the logistics and operational costs, much of the budget goes towards the boats, christened RaceBirds. These stock racing machines, which cost about €1 million, are fascinating pieces of engineering, with advanced propulsion and hydrofoils that can lift them clear of the water. Carbon-fibre foils reduce drag and the RaceBird makes significantly less wake than a conventional powerboat. The result is a cross between a fighter jet, a Formula E car and that thing Pierce Brosnan rode up the Thames in The World is Not Enough.

Don’t imagine it’ll go as fast as an F1H20 world championship powerboat, though, because it doesn’t. An F1H20 boat has a 400bhp internal combustion engine and a top speed of 140mph. E1’s RaceBird’s electric motor produces 200bhp and can only muster 58mph. Despite that, when the racing is close and they start banging into each other, it’s exciting.

‘I wish they were faster, but we do still go airborne a lot,’ says Sara Price, 33, who is the first American woman to win a stage of the Dakar rally, and who races in E1 for Will Smith’s team. ‘We haven’t flipped yet, but we’ve been close. But it’s pretty safe. Off-road is way harder on your body.’

The 20 drivers — or pilots — are drawn from different disciplines, which is also compelling. Ten come from four-wheeled motorsport, six from powerboating, two from sailing, and there’s one jet ski champion and one kitesurfer.

Oban Duncan, 19, is a ten-time British powerboat champion. She’s also a health-and-safety consultant in Glasgow. This endeavour doesn’t seem very health-and-safety-ish, I proffer. ‘No, it isn’t, but it’s my passion. I’d be very bored sitting at home if I wasn’t here.’ She undertook testing duties when the RaceBird was still in its development. Having grown up on the water, does this give her an advantage over those that only raced on land before? ‘The RaceBirds are so different to any other powerboat,’ she says, ‘because of the hydrofoils. It’s a lot harder, it’s about balancing the boat.’

Before getting into motorsport, Jamaica’s Sara Misir, 28, was an equestrian. ‘It’s the pilots who make a difference. Everyone gets the same thing; same weight, same engine, so it’s about strategy, team communication, and adapting to your surroundings. It’s not like on a race track where the surface and the braking points stay the same. On water, every single lap is completely different; the water’s getting rougher, the wind, the turbulence, the current; there’s a lot going on. Also the locations we visit are very different. Lake Como is fresh water and deep. Jeddah is open water, saltwater, with very different waves and grip levels.’

I would have thought those with powerboat racing experience would have a marked advantage, but apparently not. Catie Munnings, 28, who also works as a TV presenter, says she’s had no difficulty adapting despite coming from rallying. ‘I was matching the lap-times of the powerboaters straight away. The throttle, the steering wheel, the racing instincts; it’s all the same. I love it. Where the main difference, though, is that with cars the more you push, the more aggressive you are, the more you’re rewarded. Here you don’t, you just fall off the foil. You need to have a real feel for it to be competitive. One advantage I think we have over the powerboaters is that the way you trim, which is controlling the angle of the engine, is the complete opposite of how you would drive a boat without foils. In a way, we car racers don’t bring any bad habits.’

Munnings and many of the other pilots didn’t even have their powerboat licence before getting called up. ‘I got it in November and the first race was in January. It was very last minute. Imagine racing in the World Rally Championship three months after driving a car for the first time. The thing is, the boats aren’t that hard to drive, they’re just hard to get the maximum from. You basically stay on full-throttle the whole time, even around hairpins. When you start to turn, the drag from the foil pitches you into the corner and it’s like applying the handbrake. You’re concentrating on the trim levels, moving the engine at 0.1 of a degree at a time to power out of corners, and that’s the tricky bit.’

The series is now in its third season, and has already visited Jeddah, Venice, Puerto Banus, Monaco, Doha, Dubrovnik, Lake Maggiore, Lagos and Miami. Luanda, in Angola, and the Bahamas appear on the calendar for the first time this year.

‘The future is in the USA,’ Agag tells Country Life. ‘We need to expand a lot there. We have great potential, given the team owners we have: Tom Brady, LeBron, Marc Anthony, Will Smith. We have Miami. We need to have New York, LA, San Francisco, Chicago, Washington DC. We need to make it bigger, consolidate it, make a fanbase.’ There are eight races scheduled in 2026. I’d like 12 races a year, with six of them in the USA. And we have room for another couple of teams.’

Who is paying for all this? Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF) own 50% of E1. The main commercial partners are Hublot and Bombay Sapphire. Angola and Nigeria are putting money in to sponsor Smith’s Westbrook Racing team and Drogba’s Global Africa team and will host the rounds in Luanda and Lagos in September and October respectively. In addition to its social media reach, the series is broadcast in more than 140 territories. In the UK, you can watch it live on ITV4, ITVX and YouTube.

Powerboating was big in the 1980s, but it got overtaken by Formula One and MotoGP. E1 hopes that its many overlaps — motorsport, celebrity culture, telegenic locations, innovation, sustainability and environmental storytelling — can draw Gen Z to the water’s edge. The plan is to grow its young, tech-savvy, glamour-hungry audience and attract bigger blue chip sponsors. But PIF announced in April that it’s to stop funding LIV Golf, citing mounting losses. War in the Middle East is causing the money taps to be turned off. That’s got to make Agag nervous.

E1 is exclusive and excessive. It feels rather like pre-war motorsport or F1 in the 1960s and ‘70s, when there were no sponsors. A lot of money was spent on having a good time and they’d worry about how they’d settle the bill on Monday. Once upon a time we’d have referred to it as a playboy’s sport — but of course half the heroes here are women, and cheers to that.

Whether E1 proves a commercial success remains to be seen, but in the meantime, it sure is a lot of fun.

Round 4 of the 2026 UIM E1 World Championship will take place in Monaco on July 17-18. Will Smith’s team Angola Westbrook Racing, with pilots Sara Price and Lucas Ordonez, are currently in the lead.

The Sealyham terrier has the sort of face that suggests it has seen a great deal of life and approved of only some of it. Small, white and faintly dishevelled, with dark intelligent eyes peering out beneath extravagant eyebrows, it resembles nothing so much as a retired colonel who has wandered out of a country house in search of a whisky and an argument.

Few dogs combine such comic dignity with such complete certainty in their own judgement, which may explain why Sealyham people become so devoted to them.

The breed began life, improbably enough, as a serious working dog. In the 1850s, Captain John Edwardes of Sealyham House in Pembrokeshire, required a small terrier game enough to go to earth after badger, otter and fox, while keeping pace with his pack of otterhounds. He insisted the dog be white, so that, underground or in the thick of a hunt, it could never be mistaken for its quarry. Edwardes kept no records, so the exact recipe is lost, but the now-extinct English white terrier, the Welsh corgi, the Dandie Dinmont and a little bull terrier are all thought to have had a hand in it. The result had to be fearless enough to face a badger underground, yet civilised enough to behave respectably indoors afterwards — a curious marriage of ferocity and good manners that has charmed owners ever since.

After the First World War, the Sealyham became the dog to be seen with. It swept the show ring, taking Best in Show at Westminster four times between the wars; Alfred Hitchcock adored them and famously appeared alongside two of his own, Geoffrey and Stanley, in the opening moments of The Birds. Princess Margaret reportedly insisted hers, Johnnie and Pippin, be brought to her room with her breakfast tray each morning; Cary Grant was so fond of the breed that he gave one his original name, Archie Leach. Agatha Christie kept them too, which seems entirely fitting because I imagine they would have made excellent witnesses.

The Sealyham is lazy compared to its terrier compatriates and very happy to while away several hours on the sofa. They like their own people best and are in no hurry to be charmed by anyone else.

The Kennel Club registered more than 1,000 Sealyhams in 1938; by 2008, the figure had collapsed to 43 puppies, placing the breed among the most endangered native dogs in Britain. Even now only about 100 or so are registered in a typical year. Country Life itself sounded the alarm, devoting a 2011 cover to the cause: ‘SOS: Save Our Sealyhams’.

Salvation, such as it is, has come from a devoted few who speak of them with unguarded affection. The interior designer Bee Osborne, who keeps the breed, calls them simply the perfect small dog: loyal, but not needy, sturdy and brave, friendly and kind-spirited. The only real drawback, she admits, is practical rather than temperamental — for a dog this low to the ground and this emphatically white requires bathing rather more often than one might like. Her devotion runs further than most: she has named a whole range of paints after her Sealyhams.

And there are flickers of a revival. A younger generation is beginning to rediscover the breed. In an age of dogs bred to be relentlessly agreeable, there is something appealing about one that reserves the right not to be. Watching a Sealyham trot across a lawn, whiskered face set in faint but unwavering self-belief, one feels it belongs to a Britain quietly disappearing. The Sealyham, characteristically, seems unconcerned. It has always expected the world to come back round to its way of thinking — eventually.

Herefordshire — £9 million

Huge excitement for this launch: Dinmore, ome of the most incredible properties in Herefordshire, has come on to the market. The ivy-clad cloisters with a tower at one end are breathtaking.

For sale via Savills — see more details and pictures.

Oxfordshire — £6.5 million

CS Lewis and JRR Tolkien used to meet regularly at Studley Priory, an outstanding 11-bedroom house that was, back in the day, a country hotel. Now, this venerable old building is a home once more — and what a home it is.

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

Norfolk — £4.5 million

An unbearably handsome Queen Anne house — plus four cottages — on this 47-acre estate in Great Hockham. This is a proper, rural playground, with superb grounds, swimming pool, tennis court and more.

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

Monmouthshire — £1.895 million

Penyclawdd Court is a remarkable, Grade I-listed country house in a wonderful rural spot near Abergavenny. Full of character, six bedrooms, and no chain to worry about.

For sale via Powells — see more details and pictures.

Kent — £2 million

In a rural setting between Canterbury and the coast, this early 20th century home is peaceful and calming. A separate coach house is run as a successful holiday let.

For sale via Hobbs Parker — see more details and pictures.

It's not only beauty that is in the eye of the beholder. It is, we are assured, also the answer to that perennial query: ‘What’s the difference ’twixt a wildflower and a weed?’ The Oxford English Dictionary is definitive, defining a weed as a ‘wild plant growing where it is not wanted and is in competition with cultivated plants’.

The common dandelion (Taraxacum officinale), with its lovely golden head, will serve as an example. On the verge, we see it positively as prettifying, but growing on the grassy village cricket pitch, in front of the stumps, it is an obstruction that requires ‘weeding’. That’s that, then. The answer to ‘weed or wildflower?’ done and dusted.

Whether a wild plant is a weed or wildflower is a matter of its location — plus human perception. The moseying dog-walker admires the dandelion on the lane, the groundsman mowing the cricket pitch’s infield regards it as a problem. Ah, the dear old dandelion, put on Earth to rebut the wisdom of lexicographers and to weed out ontological glibness.

To itself, of course, Taraxacum officinale’s status as ‘wildflower’ or ‘weed’ is immaterial. It exists unto itself, what the German philosopher Immanuel Kant — who rather early got the hang of this being and perception stuff in The Critique of Pure Reason (1781) — posited as the state of ‘noumena’. Humans can only know things as they appear to us or as ‘phenomena’.

Neither do the 50 or so insects the dandelion supports care a fig about its classification, Kantian or otherwise. The bees of early spring are glad to visit it wherever it appears. They need the dandelion’s sweet pollen, which is as energy-giving as the primaveral sun.

In France, the dandelion, far from being in competition with cultivated plants, is a cultivated plant, a salad. Take note, too, of dandelion’s Latin tag, the officinale meaning that herbalists of the past granted it purpose as a medicinal herb — not a weed, or a wildflower mind you — and would have picked it wherever it popped up. Dandelion, among its medicinal attributes, is a powerful diuretic, hence its French name of pissenlit. Edible plants are plants. The end. Dig into history and the people of the past were clearly crop/weed/wildflower fluid.

Tollund Man, the bog-preserved corpse from the Danish Iron Age, consumed porridge containing cultivated barley and fat-hen (Chenopodium album) for his breakfast before being hanged. If the barley of his last meal was cultivated, the fat-hen may equally have been farmed or foraged.

Highly nutritious, the Iron Agers grew it or allowed it to grow — an eminently sensible approach to food provision: let the edible plant that flourishes flourish, whether wild and sown by breeze or planted by a horny-handed human with a digging stick. Fat-hen was sold by hawkers as a leafy vegetable in Britain as recently as the 18th century, yet today? It is a bane ‘weed’ of agriculture.

What did the Romans ever do for us? We may gawp in awe at Hadrian’s Wall and Bath’s baths, but the empire’s legacy also includes ground elder (Aegopodium podagraria), which was introduced to the isles as a pot herb. The perennial jumped the villa wall to take root elsewhere. As John Gerard noted of ground elder in his Herball (1597), ‘where it hath once taken roote, it will hardly be gotten out again’. Centuries of gardeners wail their woeful accord.

Those gardeners, together with small children, will doubtless be bemused to find that the plants once cultivated but now damned as weeds include the stinging nettle (Urtica dioica). Fairservice, the gardener in Walter Scott’s Rob Roy (1817), raised it under glass as an early spring green. Oh, the irony. What we regard as the ‘weeds’ of farm and garden were made more prolific by… farming and gardening.

The turning of soil favoured poppies and the midden — the farm muck heap — was a source of nitrogen beloved by the nettle. There was, however, in the past many a virtuous link between ‘weeds’ and farming, as recorded by the plants’ common names, which are often floral memorials of their ancient utility. Galium aparine, that sticky climber of the hedge, was known as ‘goose-grass’, as it was fed to goslings and Heracleum sphondylium, the airy white umbels of which liven the lane in June, was ‘common hogweed’, as it was free fodder for porcines.

Time has hardened the distinction between wildflower and weed. As agriculture rose and rose, the plants that competed with crops took on the negative nomenclature of ‘weed’, the word itself entering the English language in the 9th century. The division was more than botanical, agricultural, it was political.

Cultivated crops, especially cereals, became regarded as signs of orthodoxy and order, whereas weeds became symbols of anarchy and wildness. It’s there in Shakespeare, always the mirror to the age, when Cordelia says of her father in King Lear, Act IV, Scene 4: 'He was met even now/ As mad as the vex’d sea — singing aloud;/ Crown’d with rank fumiter and furrow weeds,/ With burdocks, hemlock, nettles, cuckoo- flowers,/ Darnel, and all the idle weeds that grow In our sustaining corn.' Or put plainly, Lear is an insane regent wearing a parodic crown composed of the parasitic weeds choking the grain that feeds his subjects.

By the opposite token, when Gerard Manley Hopkins railed against the Victorian taming of the countryside, his chosen emblem of poetic protest was weed, not ‘wildflower’: 'What would the world be, once bereft/ Of wet and of wildness? Let them be left,/ O let them be left, wildness and wet;/ Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet.'

When Hopkins wrote Inversnaid (1881), the industrialisation of agriculture was in full march and the weed became more than an issue, it became an enemy. The widespread use of chemical herbicides post-1950 allowed a Final Fix to the problem of ‘weeds’. One contemporary agrichemical company boasts its herbicides ‘fight weeds with a vengeance’. You and I might ponder whether or not flora is wildflower or weed, but ‘weedkillers’ rarely make such distinction.

Weed and wildflower alike are to be suppressed. Hence all those monotone cereal fields across the land. The poppy (Papaver rhoeas) is the blood-red wildflower of Remembrance, yet for the maker of broad-leaved herbicide it is merely a menace to the sustaining corn. Thus is the cornflower (Centaurea cyanus), which is the blue of sky, condemned; so, too, the little scarlet pimpernel (Lysimachia arvensis), whose name is its description, pink and shyly peeking, and corn chamomile (Anthemis arvensis), elegantly limbed and sweetly daisy-headed.

Weeds gave colour to the countryside, as well as food and habitat for our native creatures. When the weeds went, so did the wildlife. The grey partridge (Perdix perdix) declined by 92% between 1970 and 2013. The bird’s chicks are crucially dependent on insects whose hosts are arable ‘weeds’.

I am a serial re-creator of early Victorian wheatfields with their riotous wildflower/weed chromatics. I admit, my cereal yield has been a smidgeon less than conventional agriculture, but my arable wild plants have succoured the buzzing, flitting pollinators on which farming depends. The cattle have loved and thrived on the wild flora baled in the straw. I have gained, not lost. It helps to be pretty. Is that not part of the wildflower versus weed division?

I’ve deliberately sown corn chamomile, yet I have never sown broad-leaved dock (Rumex obtusifolius), a plant so plain Jane that Mrs Bennet would struggle to find it a suitor. My mistake. Although classified as ‘injurious’ in the 1959 Weeds Act, meaning that the government may enforce its removal due to toxicity/destructiveness, recent research from the Biological Husbandry Unit in New Zealand suggests that small populations of docks in pasture help prevent bloat in livestock, as well as providing mineral-rich nutrition.

The American philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson was more right than he knew when he defined a weed as ‘a plant whose virtues have not yet been discovered’ — or have been forgotten.

This feature originally appeared in the June 24, 2026, print edition of Country Life. Click here for more information on how to subscribe.

On June 24, 1348, in the course of a tournament at Windsor Castle, Berkshire, Edward III famously instituted a fellowship of 25 knights under his personal leadership. The Order of the Garter, as it was known, was established at a moment of martial triumph in England. One of the founder members of this new order was Thomas Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick, who personified the confidence and belligerence of the moment. ‘The Devil Warwick’, as his enemies called him, had fought side by side with Edward III’s son, the Black Prince, at the Battle of Crécy in 1346 and otherwise enjoyed a formidable reputation as a soldier. He was also a great builder and, as the modern visitor encounters it outwardly, Warwick Castle is substantially his creation.

William the Conqueror first founded the castle in 1068 within the defences of a fortified settlement or burgh. The burgh, created in 914 by Æthelflæd of Mercia, occupied a hill top that had been naturally cut back as a cliff on one side by the River Avon. William constructed the castle along the cliff top (Fig 1), from where it commanded a river crossing. According to the Domesday survey of 1086, four houses were demolished to make space for it. William’s castle seems to have taken the conventional form of an artificial mound — termed a motte — and an associated enclosure or bailey. The motte, albeit heavily reworked since the 11th century, still survives and it’s assumed that the bailey followed roughly the line of the later walls. These earthworks were presumably fortified in timber.

Warwick Castle was subsequently granted to a Norman, Henry de Beaumont. The exact date of this grant is uncertain, but it was through Henry’s close connection with the Conqueror’s son and heir, William Rufus, that he was able to constitute a vast patchwork of estates extending across the Midlands, South Wales and Normandy. It helped, too, that, in 1088, he became Earl of Warwick, with exceptional powers within his titular county. The Earl seems to have played a crucial role in securing the succession of Henry I to the throne in 1100 and, in 1118, towards the end of his life, became a monk. At that time he seems to have divided his estates, passing those in England to his eldest son, Roger.

By contemporary assessment, Earl Roger was a failure. Henry I almost immediately compelled him to yield up a very considerable portion of his Warwickshire estates to a royal favourite, Geoffrey de Clinton, who established a rival castle about five miles away at Kenilworth in the same county. The stories of these two great castles remained inextricably linked until the latter was demolished in 1649. During the Civil Wars fought after Henry I’s death in 1135, the Earl was forced to hand over Warwick to a royal garrison. He is described as dying of shock in 1153 after hearing the news that his wife, Gundreda, had tricked Warwick’s garrison into surrendering the castle to the supporters of the future Henry II.

Through the 12th and 13th centuries, the architectural development of Warwick Castle is a near blank. For a building of such importance, this is surprising. Documentary sources reveal the existence of a chapel and, in 1191, a certain Ralph the Mason inspected minor repairs, implying the existence of stone buildings or fortifications. These presumably replaced the original timber structures of the 11th century. It is also asserted by the 15th-century historian of Warwick, John Rous, that, when supporters of Simon de Montfort sallied out of Kenilworth and captured the castle in 1264, they had ‘beaten down the walls from tower to tower’ to render the fortifications useless to Henry III. He goes on to say that the walls of Warwick Castle were substituted by hedges.

In 1268, soon after this event, the Earldom of Warwick was inherited by William Beauchamp. Neither William nor his son, Guy, who succeeded as 10th Earl in 1298, are known to have improved Warwick Castle, although the latter did use it for the brief imprisonment of Edward II’s notorious royal favourite, Piers Gaveston, in 1312. Gaveston, who dubbed the Earl ‘the black dog of Arden’, was famously led from the castle to nearby Blacklow Hill — significantly the property of another inveterate enemy, Thomas, Earl of Lancaster — and executed. Guy died in 1315 and the castle passed to his son, another Thomas. Perhaps the state of the building — hedged and without new buildings — inspired him to transform it so completely.

Thomas was just over a year old when he inherited his father’s estates and was a minor throughout the turbulent events and military humiliations of Edward II’s reign. He secured his estates in 1329, shortly before Edward III — his near contemporary — dramatically seized control of the realm from his mother, Queen Isabella, and her lover, Roger Mortimer, in 1330. His building work at Warwick is not documented, which makes it complicated to date, but its character cannot be properly understood without reference to the King’s enthusiasms and concurrent activities at Windsor.

The Order of the Garter was directly inspired by the example of the Knights of the Round Table, whose fabled exploits enjoyed European popularity in the late Middle Ages. Edward III had previously built a ‘Round Table’ in the Upper Ward at Windsor in 1344 and attended tournaments splendidly dressed in Arthurian persona. Rooting reality in legend was intoxicating and, in Warwick, Thomas had his own chivalric hero to promote. The legend of Guy of Warwick, notionally set in the period of the Danish invasions, became popular in the early 13th century and exists in multiple versions.

According to it, Guy won the hand of Felice, daughter of the Earl of Warwick, by performing daring feats of arms across Europe. Following his marriage and the conception of a child, Reinbrun, however — and, according to some versions, when staring into the heavens from the top of the tallest castle tower — he suddenly realised the vanity of fighting for a woman; he ought to have been fighting for Christ. Leaving the tearful Felice, he set off once again on his adventures until miraculously summoned back to England to vanquish the Danish champion Colbrond. After this duel, he became a hermit outside Warwick and, on his deathbed, sent for the faithful Felice, who immediately followed him to the grave.

Thomas Beauchamp’s enthusiasm for this legend first found expression in the 1330s. Not only did he name two of his sons Guy and Reinbrun, but he was almost certainly the creator of an 8ft-high sculpture of the dead hero carved in the living rock at so-called Guy’s Cliffe (Fig 6), the supposed site of his hermitage close to Blacklow Hill (Country Life, July 21, 2010). Beauchamp’s will in 1369 also makes mention of ‘the coat of mail sometime belonging to that famous Guy of Warwick’, which was bequeathed to his son and namesake. Guy’s legend was assuming reality.

At Warwick Castle, meanwhile, Beauchamp built an entire suite of domestic chambers, with a hall, services and withdrawing chambers in stone along the cliff top (Fig 5). He also constructed the main entrance façade (Fig 2). This comprises a central gatehouse with an outer fortification or barbican (Fig 4) flanked by towers at each outward corner of the castle. The pairing of the towers masks their colossal scale. Both are prodigy buildings, taller than anything comparable of the period in England. Each principal floor within them is vaulted, an astonishing expense, and seems to have served as a self-contained lodging.

The towers have been known since at least 1644 as Caesar’s Tower and Guy’s Tower, names suggestive of deep history. If the names are medieval, the latter could be an architectural evocation of the tower on which the legendary Guy of Warwick experienced his conversion to Christ’s service. Whatever the case, this building has long enjoyed admiration and, as early as the 15th century, inspired copies at Cardiff (another Beauchamp possession) and Raglan Castles. Curiously, the Earl did not build on the motte, the natural focus of the castle. He did, however, create a gateway on an octagonal plan immediately beside it (Fig 3). This highly unusual form suggests a connection with royal building projects in Wales.

Beauchamp might have begun redeveloping Warwick Castle at any time from 1329, but it’s likely that he only acquired the necessary resources a decade or more later. His additions to the castle could also have grown in scale as time went on. Might his appointment as Marshal of England in 1344; or the first formal gathering of the Knights of the Garter on St George’s Day, 1349; or the victory at Poitiers in 1356, at which the Earl fought, have prompted fresh building initiatives? Certainly, despite the striking overall uniformity of the buildings attributed to him, close analysis of the fabric shows that there are minor changes in such details as the moulding of vault ribs. This could suggest a prolonged period of construction and the involvement of different masons.

What can be said with confidence is that a starting date in the mid 1340s would agree with the dating of one building that bears close technical comparison with what seem to be the very earliest additions to Warwick. This is the castle built at nearby Maxstoke by William Clinton, a close companion of Edward III (and a descendant of the builder of Kenilworth), which was licensed by the King in 1345. The designer of Maxstoke clearly knew the character of Warwick well and even created elaborate chimneypots that evoke in miniature its main 14th-century towers.

Both in scale and form, however, the most obvious parallel for Beauchamp’s domestic apartments at Warwick is the outstanding royal building project of the late 14th century. This was the palace begun in the upper ward of Windsor Castle by Edward III in 1359, which was paid for by the proceeds of Poitiers. It incorporated a single coherent frontage comprising a hall, chapel and chamber, raised on a huge vaulted undercroft. Ideas from Windsor also informed rebuilding work at Kenilworth by the King’s brother, John of Gaunt, in the 1370s and, in a neat symmetry, these also relate back to Warwick. In particular, they evoke Beauchamp’s last major architectural project, the construction from 1367 of a suitably magnificent collegiate church at Warwick, now the parish church of St Mary (Country Life, April 16, 2025).

When Beauchamp died in 1369, he was succeeded by his son and namesake. Thomas, 11th Earl of Warwick, certainly finished his father’s work to the collegiate church and he may also have had to complete the castle buildings, because the usually reliable 17th-century antiquarian, William Dugdale, cites a payment of £395 towards Guy’s Tower in a medieval account of 1393/94, now frustratingly lost. The Earl also entered further into his father’s enthusiasm for Guy of Warwick. A sculpture of the hero was carved for the choir of the collegiate church and a suit of tapestries ‘wrought with the arms and story of Guy of Warwick’ hung in the castle in 1399. Guy’s armour, sword and harness are also mentioned in his will. These, and such other imagined relics as Guy’s poringer, can still be seen in the castle today.

The castle continued to evolve through the 15th century. In the 1420s, Richard Beauchamp, 13th Earl of Warwick, another flower of English chivalry, created a huge stable complex outside the walls of the castle strikingly decorated in plaster of Paris. This was later demolished, but something of its scale is apparent in the surviving 16th-century stable at Kenilworth, which seems to be a copy of that at Warwick. The Spy Tower was probably added to the withdrawing apartments in the 1470s by George, Duke of Clarence, who married Isabel Neville, the co-heiress of the Warwick estates (Fig 7). With large windows and access to the roof leads, it offered spectacular views over the neighbouring park.

Warwick subsequently passed to the Duke’s brother, the future Richard III, and thus into royal ownership. Richard entertained ambitious plans for the castle and began a massive artillery tower to reinforce its defences, but construction was cut short by his fall from power in 1485. What remains of this building now forms part of the line of the castle walls (Fig 8). Henry VIII repaired the castle, but it was in the reign of his daughter Elizabeth I that it acquired renewed significance, as we will explore next week.

See more details about visiting the castle at the Warwick Castle website.

This feature originally appeared in the print edition of Country Life on June 10, 2026. Click here for more information on how to subscribe.

The scenic Roseland peninsula, bounded by the Fal estuary to the west and the open waters of Gerrans Bay to the east, lies within the Cornwall National Landscape and is one of south Cornwall’s most beautiful and heavily protected regions.

Rosteague, one of the most private coastal estates there, is tucked away at the southern end of the peninsula, two miles from the village of Portscatho. It is for sale for the first time in 25 years, at a guide price of £12.5 million through Truro-based Lillicrap Chilcott.

Its appearance on the market is certain to cause a stir. Prior to the sale in 2003, the house hadn't been sold since 1945 — and back then, the clamour was so great that buyers are said to have raced down from London in their Rolls-Royces in order to secure a deal.

The estate comprises a Grade II*-listed manor house and stable block, a lodge, cottage and equestrian facilities set in 183 acres of historic gardens, woodland, arable and pasture, with more than a mile of direct frontage to Gerrans Bay.

This is a wonderful wide horseshoe sweep of water, with the towering cliffs of Nare Head at one end and the ancient fishing village of Portscatho at the other. A notorious haunt of smugglers in the 18th and 19th centuries, the deeply indented coastline is today an area of gently rolling farmland, hidden coves and glorious unspoilt beaches, much of it accessible only on foot or by water.

Rosteague Manor dates from 1363, when Ralph de Restak was its first recorded resident. In 1401, John Petit and his wife, Mary, had a licence to celebrate divine service at their chapel at Resteak.

During the 16th century, the estate was held by the influential Mohun family, one of whom was Reginald Mohun, one of Sir Walter Raleigh’s captains; the impressive Elizabethan façade of the present house dates from this period.

In about 1620, Rosteague was acquired by Nicholas Kempe (about 1593–1646), whose grandson, also Nicholas (1643–1710), married the heiress Mary Spry of Place House, St Anthony in Roseland, which is now owned by the National Trust.

The younger Kempe, who inherited the estate in 1669, established its formal walled French knot garden, and, in about 1700, remodelled the 15th/16th-century manor house.

It was later extended in about 1820 for Henry Harris, whose father bought Rosteague from the Kempes in 1780. The Grade II*-listed Victorian stable block dates from the mid 19th century.

The estate was occupied by the Land Army during the Second World War and, in 1945, was acquired by the McKenna family, who converted the old Cider House into an impressive music room. The McKennas remained at Rosteague until 2003, when it was bought by its current owners, who have extensively renovated and enhanced the property.

Rosteague Manor, its medieval, Elizabethan and Georgian evolution reflected in a wealth of historic detail, sits within a sheltered fold of the landscape, hidden from view, yet commanding an immense outlook across Gerrans Bay and the open waters of the English Channel.

It provides 6,384sq ft of well-ordered accommodation on two main floors, including four grand reception rooms, a large modern kitchen, a breakfast room and study. There's also a dedicated flower room, which was once a medieval chapel.

Above, there is a vast principal bedroom suite, five double bedrooms and three further bathrooms. The look and feel of the decor is truly something: this is a home of exotic wallpaper, four-poster beds and polished copper baths.

Further accommodation is provided in the pretty, Grade II-listed, three-bedroom Lodge designed in the Arts-and-Crafts style by Charles Harrison Townsend, plus a three-bedroom farm cottage and a one-bedroom groom’s flat.

The six acres of gardens, which enclose the manor house on three sides, are a delight. Stone steps beside the house lead through a wrought-iron gate to the celebrated French Garden, of which Prof Timothy Mowl wrote in his 2005 book Historic Gardens of Cornwall: ‘Rosteague, sheltered behind a slate-roofed wall of granite and cob, has preserved that holiest of horticultural relics, one possibly unique in England, its original box parterre.’

More than 20 acres of amenity woodland provide enchanting walks. The remaining 110 acres of land include 31½ acres of well-drained, mostly post-and-railed paddocks; for keen equestrians, the house also has an all-weather manege.

For selling agent Ian Lillicrap, however, the defining attribute is the extent of the shoreline, which includes ownership to mean low water, ‘a rare and precious asset in a county where coastal property is revered and private ownership on this scale is truly extraordinary’.

Yet, despite its sense of seclusion, Rosteague remains accessible, with the cathedral city of Truro 17 miles to the north-west and Newquay airport some 19 miles away.

The Rosteague Estate is on the market with Lillicrap Chilcott — see more details.

A company’ muses Gilbert Huph, the vertically challenged insurance manager in Pixar’s The Incredibles, ‘is like an enormous clock. It only works if all the little cogs mesh together.’ His is a statement intended to satirise a culture of corporate naivety. He wants employees to turn a blind eye and bury their heads in the sand so long as they make a profit. Think too hard and they might not.

The same statement, however, can be made of the world’s greatest sports ground without a trace of irony. To see Wimbledon in action is to realise that a company — or, in this case, the All England Lawn Tennis & Croquet Club (AELTC) — is a thing of beauty precisely because it is run like clockwork. What in The Incredibles’ fictional location of Metroville, California, sounds like an indictment of late-stage capitalism rings, in this patch of south-west London, as an ode to collective success. When one thinks of Wimbledon’s shining stars — the people who keep the cogs ticking besides the players themselves — one thinks of the umpires; the ball girls and ball boys; the camera operators; perhaps the wait staff. The ticketing officer may sometimes get a nod, as might the stewards shepherding punters from Southfields station to the grounds.

Behind such public faces, however, is an ecosystem without which the perfection attained by the tournament’s front-of-house staff for close to 150 years could never be reached.

Wimbledon is often lauded for embodying the best of Britain. It is a bucolic marvel, with 50,000 plants spread across 42 acres. It rewards sportsmanship and casts such a spell over the crowd that punters behave almost as gracefully as the players themselves. It is a paean to our past (the UK, after all, invented lawn tennis — and still today all participants must wear white) as well as our future, consecrating our nation as a breeding ground for talent. It is at Wimbledon, where grass courts mean the neon balls travel faster than on any other surface, that people come to watch the greatest games in the world. Matches here are more often discussed in dramaturgical terms than in the traditional language of sport.

Centre Court, the jewel in AELTC’s crown, was said by John McPhee to resemble ‘an Elizabethan theatre’ in a 1968 New Yorker article on ‘The Lawns of Wimbledon’. The tournament’s most renowned finals — between Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal in 2008, and Federer and Novak Djokovic in 2019 — were more adrenaline-inducing than top action films of the 1990s. This is the stage that gave rise to Björn Borg and Pete Sampras, as well as today’s equally captivating rivalry between Jannik Sinner and Carlos Alcaraz.

Yet, as all good directors know, a film or play is only ever as good as the sum of its parts. The minutiae, in other words, are as important as the big picture. Without the crew, no one can bring the cast to life; and this crew (its youngest member new to Wimbledon, its eldest a veteran of the grounds) embodies the very qualities — devotion, dignity and perfectionism — that punters come here to celebrate.

The timekeeper — Dan Bloxham

When a player emerges from the locker room and walks onto Centre Court, he is accompanied by a man wearing beige trousers and a white shirt with a tie and AELTC’s signature navy blazer. On his feet are white tennis shoes: the same as those once worn by line judges. Known familiarly as the player escort — and officially as the master of ceremonies — Dan Bloxham has been here for more than 25 years.

His role, on the face of it, looks easy. Yet anyone who’s ever been a personal assistant to the great and good will know that getting them where they need to be on time is no mean feat.

‘Thirty years ago, players weren’t too worried about getting ready,’ Dan says. Today, it’s a different game. ‘Everyone’s in the gym, throwing balls, running, doing exercises right up until it’s time to get onto the court. I have to kick the players out of the warm-up areas, one from one side and one from the other, and there’s always the risk that, when you’re accompanying one player, by the time you return, the other’s not there.’

This comedy of (unforced) errors speaks volumes of the ever-growing quality of tennis at Wimbledon. ‘Nowadays, the quality at the end of a five-hour match is just as good as it is at the beginning,’ Dan notes. This is because players will only compete if they are at their fittest. To many a fan’s chagrin, Alcaraz has pulled out of this year’s tournament due to tenosynovitis. ‘You can’t have so much as a chink in your armour anymore,’ the master of ceremonies states.

Dan assumed his current position about a decade into his Wimbledon years, in 2008. He remembers his first day, accompanying an already seasoned Federer onto the court. It was a stressful first assignment, he says, although he now seems to do this with eyes closed. His predecessor, Steve Adams, had given him only one tip: to ‘take control’. ‘My job is to try to make the players feel special,’ Dan explains, ‘and realise that they’re playing on the greatest court in the world.

‘They are part of a club here,’ he continues, ‘not only a facility. I might introduce them to members and key staff on the morning of their match as they walk down to see the court. It’s an entirely different way of getting there than it is at any other event.’ He is also the club’s head coach (‘when I’m not in my uniform, I’ll make sure I wear my sports kit, so the players know I have a clue’) and jokes about being able to tell a competitor’s nationality by their choice of warm-up (‘Italians tend to run at each other’). Federer, he says, would make his rivals nervous by doing the opposite. ‘He didn’t run around — not at first, although he eventually started doing yoga, throwing the balls around, even some football drills.’

Learning to navigate these differences and approach players when in the throes of preparing for a life-changing match is, Dan says, the most difficult part of his job. Yet it’s one to which he’s risen with aplomb. As well as being a timekeeper, he is also Wimbledon’s chief diplomat. ‘There have been moments where a player’s kit looked great, but they put a tracksuit top on right before walking out onto the court — and it’s not white,’ he laughs. ‘You’ve got their agent saying it’s white… but you know it’s not.’

One aspect of the job he no longer has to worry about is bringing the trophy onto the court. ‘I had to do that for the 2008 final,’ he tells me. ‘First of all, it’s an incredibly heavy trophy — you’re constantly thinking: don’t drop it — and you always end up holding it for a lot longer than you think because the players take five minutes to go into the crowd and come back around.’ As in the parts of his job for which he’s still in charge, patience is key.

The guardian — Christopher Boucher

It’s not only players who need minding — or their time managed. SW19’s more than half a million attendees also need directions, so they know where to be and when. The order of play is sacred and cannot be interrupted: fans are only allowed out of their seats, for instance, during a change of ends or set break.

Enter the stewards, whose military uniforms — often handsomely gilded — dot the grounds with flashes of black, red and gold. It is they who ensure the athletes are fully immersed in a game by keeping crowd disturbance to a minimum. They also look after the crowd itself: the tournament being held in July means it can sometimes get very hot and people can be taken ill. It reached 35.7˚C last summer, Christopher Boucher, the head steward, informs me. ‘It’s our job to attend to them and call first aid if anyone passes out.’

The stewards serve as human compasses for the punters, steering them in the right direction, whether they need food, water, medical assistance, a loo break, directions to their seats or help with spillage. With their uniforms, however, are they not the ones most at risk of overheating? ‘We wear only a short-sleeved white shirt and black trousers inside Centre Court,’ Lt Cdr Boucher reveals, ‘which keeps things a little cooler.’

The stewards — about 25% of whom are now women — number 500 in total. This year, there were 1,400 applicants. They hail from military backgrounds — Lt Cdr Boucher, a serving member of the Royal Navy, shows me the medals with which he has been presented for service in the Gulf and Bosnian wars, together with his Jubilee, Coronation and Long Service and Good Conduct Medals — meaning that some are forced to drop out of Wimbledon at the last minute because they’ve been deployed somewhere on duty. A reserve list makes up the shortfall.

Their job begins on the Sunday before the Championships, with a safety briefing and assignment to a specific team. After that, they get quizzed every day so that they remain up to scratch (‘by day four or five, they’re all over it’) and all take two weeks of annual leave in order to volunteer. A team of 50 mans the Royal Box, greeting each visitor and circulating throughout the day with water.

The year 2021 was particularly challenging because covid was lurking and any steward testing positive meant their gangway of four volunteers had to be replaced with those in the wings. The extra logistical planning, Lt Cdr Boucher notes, was immense. ‘We had about 100 people on standby at once — and can you imagine having to wear a mask in this heat?’

The chronicler — Emma Traherne

No.1 Court was never meant to be made of grass. The 1922 architectural plans conceived it as a hard court before the idea was scrapped. When the new No.1 opened in 1997, it did so as a sunken court for which soil had to be removed and harvested, eventually giving rise to what we now know as Henman Hill.

We know this because Emma Traherne and her team of 12 keep the architectural plans intact — together with the rest of the archive. Emma has been the curator of the Wimbledon Museum for seven years, having previously looked after the historic furniture and decorative arts in the Houses of Parliament. ‘We have more than one million historic assets in SW19,’ she reveals, ‘many of them photographs, as well as 60,000 physical objects, such as clothing, rackets and paintings.’

Among the artefacts in the Wimbledon Lawn Tennis Museum archive, there are some that date back to the sport’s earlier iterations (even before the invention of lawn tennis). On display is a first edition of the first book to mention ‘tennis’, written by Antonio Sciano in 1555, in which the game being discussed is an ancestor of real tennis.

The museum has about 1,000 materials on show at any one time, as well as a dedicated exhibition space that changes every 12 months. Currently on display is ‘A Slice of History: Food & Drink at Wimbledon’, which explores the role of food at the tournament for both players and fans. Alongside strawberries and cream, an entire segment is dedicated to the evolution of player nutrition. Pickle juice, Emma explains, is the modern player’s drink of choice during matches, as it allows salts to return to the body at speed — a far cry from Suzanne Lenglen’s penchant for sipping brandy between games in the 1920s.

Roughly 120,000 people a year visit the museum, which documents the tournament’s evolution, as well as its relentless pursuit of excellence. Some 30% visit in the first two weeks of July; yet Emma observes her job is a marathon, not a sprint. ‘We do a huge amount of work in the four weeks before the Championship and install about 35 displays across the site,’ she explains, ‘which we take down once they wrap mid July. It’s not before early August that we are able to take a break.’

Perhaps the most important part of Emma’s role is the annual trophy engraving. No fewer than 84 trophies and salvers are worked on by five engravers over finals weekend. Emma says the spell-check process is ‘extremely thorough’. Have there ever been mistakes? ‘Not in my time.’

In the event of something going wrong, the situation is salvageable. The magic of Wimbledon, Emma says, is its efficiency. ‘It’s a very short turnaround,’ she explains. ‘As the victors are handed the full-size trophy by The Princess of Wales on Centre Court, the engravers are hard at work behind the scenes, engraving names onto the three-quarter-size replica of the trophy which the winners get to take home.’ Even one mistake, she says, could add half an hour to what should be a 20-minute job. The full-size trophy — the one viewers can see — is returned to the Club post-presentation and is on permanent display at the Wimbledon Lawn Tennis Museum.

If AELTC has anything resembling the Firm’s Operation London Bridge — a contingency plan in case, despite rigorous spellchecks, an error is made during the engraving — all decline to say what this is; although one imagines that Wimbledon’s quest for perfectionism would naturally involve some Plan Bs.

The wingmen — Donna Davis and Rufus

More than any other tournament, Wimbledon strives for perfection. Part of its appeal is how spotless the place is: there is no litter or gum on the floor and, perhaps more importantly, there are no rats or pigeons. This is all thanks to Rufus, the 18-year-old hawk who has been guarding the grounds at SW19 since 2008 — far outclassing his predecessor Hamish’s nine-year tenure.

His handler, Donna Davis, tells me he learnt to fly here at 16 weeks old. ‘We were very lucky,’ Donna says. ‘Hawks can exhibit very different personality traits from one bird to another and Rufus was always great around people.’ His day will begin with a quick turn around the court on Donna’s arm, to do a recce and check what birds are around. Some species, she tells me, should not be disrupted. The grounds are home to little pied wagtails, ‘who are naturally curious and chatter away, yelling at Rufus on the roof’. He has been taught largely to ignore them. When they get truly pesky, he flares his wings at them and they instantly dissipate.

Rufus, who travels from Northamptonshire for the Championships, is only freed from Donna’s jesses when too many birds congregate in one spot (typically, a roof or a balcony). When it’s time for him to come back, she tempts him home using lightly cooked strips of his favourite food: quail. ‘If he doesn’t get it from me,’ Donna reveals, ‘he’s off to the Debenture lounge.’ As Rufus is a Harris hawk, his form and plumage are adaptable to the sometimes harsh conditions of his native America. A bit of rain, therefore, is not a problem, although he is a ‘sun worshipper,’ Donna admits. As for the wind, he can use it to his advantage. Heavy downpours, however, are a problem. ‘He doesn’t like that.’

Rufus hasn’t yet fraternised that much with players. ‘We need to start making some moves in that direction,’ Donna says. ‘I know that Serena Williams doesn’t like him…’ How does one build up trust with a hawk? ‘It comes with time and spending every day together,’ Donna explains. ‘Historically, you had priests train hawks for kings and bishops and get them used to human voices by reading them scriptures. Rufus is used to the sound of my voice, which I don’t think is quite so soothing, but really, it’s about food motivation. He knows he doesn’t need to exert himself too much to have his favourite meal if he’s near me.’

The botanist — Robin Murphy

There are more plants and flowers across AELTC — currently expanding to include a fourth site at Wimbledon Park — than there are in Regent’s Park’s Queen Mary’s Gardens. ‘Our main ethos,’ explains lead gardener Robin Murphy, ‘is to create tennis in an English garden.’ It is a huge part of what makes the Championships so special and lends Wimbledon the heritage quality sought after by punters.

‘Everything we plant is a nod to the English-garden style,’ Robin says. ‘Of course, we have to evolve and change things every year — we follow the principle of “always the same, like never before” — so we replicate a feeling, rather than an actual design.’

There are more than 2,200 trees across the grounds and an additional 1,000 trees and shrubs in stock to be reused in July. To these are added 32,000 perennial summer flowers — ‘to create the tournament overlay,’ Robin explains — and 15,000 petunias that hang on the buildings’ façades. Recent years have favoured pollinator-friendly planting. ‘Nurturing biodiversity is a big part of what we do,’ the lead gardener says. ‘We aren’t afraid to trial new plant species and to roll their number up if they prove successful.’ Still, they try to keep things native wherever possible. Foxgloves, for example, are conspicuously popular.

There are 13 full-time gardeners on the main site, Robin tells me, although they are supplemented in the weeks leading up to (and during) the Championships by seasonal gardeners, as well as more on the parkland across the road and at the satellite location in nearby Raynes Park, SW20. Many of them return each year and have become ‘as integral as the full-time staff,’ he notes.

Robin has been involved in the Championships since 2004, but became employed directly by AELTC in 2014. In 2016, he interviewed for his current position. ‘I stumbled into horticulture, really,’ he says. ‘I trained as a carpenter when I left school, but needed some summer work. My dad, who was a gardener, had a company that had a small contract on site and I came to help out that year. There used to be a lot more contractors dealing with different parts of the site, but it’s been streamlined since then.’ One can ‘absolutely tell the difference,’ he says, since the work was taken in house. There is a sense of cohesion unmatched anywhere else.

‘The weather always presents its challenges,’ Robin notes. ‘Too much heat requires more water, whereas too little sun might slow down flowering. I think the biggest difficulty is the fact that there are so many groups working on top of one another’ — competing cogs, as it were — ‘which makes scheduling work quite an ordeal when you experience delays caused in other areas.’ Much as the stewards attend to guests on court, the gardeners must often help those on Henman Hill.

‘Our most common call-out is when people have dropped their phone or sunglasses in the water feature we’ve installed at the top of the hill,’ he laughs, ‘so they can be fished out.’ Not all heroes wear Nike.

The bouncers — Ben Edwards and Boris, Faye Benson and Moo

It wouldn’t be Wimbledon without dogs. Keeping their noses out and alert to the slightest fracas, SW19’s anointed sniffers travel from far and wide to ensure that everything runs smoothly. That way, spectators and players alike can keep their heads down and enjoy the tennis. Boris, a Russian terrier, has been serving as a general-purpose patrol dog for five years.

‘We walk around the grounds and keep an eye out for anyone trying to gain access or exhibiting anti-social behaviour,’ his handler, Ben Edwards, explains. ‘It rarely, if ever, happens. Boris is big enough to act as a deterrent. We prevent these things from happening before they do, which makes our life easier.’ Boris and Ben travel to the site from their farm in Kent. ‘He’s got quite a deep voice,’ his handler smiles. ‘It’s amazing: any problem and he tends to nip it in the bud.’

For Moo, a 2½-year-old black labrador, Wimbledon is a brave new world. This is hers and handler Faye Benson’s first time at the Championships (the two previously worked at Royal Ascot). ‘She’s quite lively when she’s working,’ Faye tells me, ‘and quite calm when she’s not working. Perfect.’ Unlike Boris, Moo is more highly specialised and looks out for explosives. ‘We are lucky enough never to have found any in real life — only during training,’ Faye says.

Once a month, Moo goes through a refresher course to make sure she is up to speed. ‘We’re also undergoing some extra training here right before the Championships start,’ her handler mentions.

The juggler — Andrew Chevalier

The ball girls and boys are among the Championships’ most recognisable figures. The balls they run to fetch, however, are not distributed at random. There are three kinds of balls pre-sent in any one game,’ says Andrew Chevalier, ball-distribution manager: threes, fives and sevens. These figures are based on the number of games in which each ball has been used.

Andrew is in charge of a team of eight whose job it is to get each ball where it needs to be — both during practice and the Championships themselves. ‘There isn’t enough space to store all the balls used in a match on the court,’ he explains, ‘so these are constantly being replenished.’ Each match begins with 21 cans on the court. Ball girls and ball boys will always have two cans on the go, which translates to six balls. Every nine games, these are replaced as the umpire asks for new balls. A men’s game typically uses 16 cans (or 48 balls) and a women’s game 10 (or 30).

‘Many people don’t realise what happens when a ball accidentally lands among the crowd,’ he says, citing this as one of his principal challenges. ‘We leave a secret tin under the chair of each umpire — one which, according to tracking, has been used for three, five or seven games.’ This is because the quality of the ball needs to match that which has been shot into the crowd. The umpire then drops the relevant ball into the game.

In the background, Andrew grades the balls he collects after the umpire requests a change. At this stage, he assesses how many games they can still be used in; or whether they should be tossed, by looking at the Slazenger logo on the ball and seeing how battered it looks. ‘Rain delays, during which the umpire will sometimes suspend play, pose a particular challenge,’ Andrew notes. When play eventually resumes and players are asked to warm up again, the rule dictates that they must do so using ‘fives’ (they cannot use new balls, which are saved for when the actual match recommences — and the majority of balls collected during suspension have been used up to nine times already, making the more desirable fives hard to find).

‘We need to sift through thousands of previous days’ balls to find these fives,’ Andrew explains. If all 18 courts at AELTC are affected by a suspension (and six ‘fives’ are needed on each one for the reprisal), that means finding 108 such balls. Sometimes, the same court will face multiple suspensions of play within a single day.

Still, Andrew maintains the kind of stoicism that appears synonymous with Wimbledon. ‘If I’m doing my job correctly, no one should notice I am doing it at all.’ He has worked here since 2018 and as ball-distribution manager from 2021. ‘I step into the Wimbledon world for a month every year,’ he says, ‘and forget that anything else exists.’ In his day-to-day life, he freelances as an actor and writer.

As McPhee did in The New Yorker in 1968, he draws an analogy between Wimbledon and the theatre. ‘It’s a load of departments coming together to put on a world-class production,’ he explains. His job is to keep plates spinning ‘and keep my team happily engaged in what they are doing. It’s important for everyone to appreciate how special it is to work here.

‘What I’ve learnt over the past eight years of working here is that the managers of all the different departments are some of the most dedicated people in the country,’ Andrew beams. ‘It’s 14 days of work, non-stop. Every single office and every single member of staff is exhausted by the end of it, but I wouldn’t have it any other way.’

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

It must be hard to craft a beautiful poem with ‘a million kids running around’ you, but such is the challenge faced by George Mpanga, better known as George the Poet. The 35-year-old father of two is multi-talented. The spoken-word artist, poet (obviously), author and host of Have You Heard George’s Podcast? began his career as a rapper, signing a music deal with Island Records aged 22.

He turned to poetry and podcasting after taking a step back from music. He is currently doing a PhD at UCL about the economic and cultural potential of black music and has just written an exclusive short story for Venice Simplon-Orient-Express, a Belmond Train, as part of Writers on the Rails. Last year he published a book, Track Record: Me, Music and the War on Blackness. He’s done a lot so far, but he started very young.

Born in 1991 in north London to Ugandan parents, his creative ambitions formed at around 11 years old. ‘I remember writing down: “I would like to be an entertainer with influential ideas” — something like that. I thought I was going to be a singer or rapper, and perhaps also a public speaker — poetry wasn't on my radar,’ he says.

It was through rap music that George’s interest in poetry awakened. ‘More specifically UK grime music,’ George explains. ‘From the age of 15 I was a grime rapper… and I just felt like there were layers that I could peel back when it came to the performance. I felt like I didn’t really need the music.’ He adds: ‘Being a rapper is a little bit like being a professional wrestler, there's a lot of bombast involved, and that’s not really me. The more I started to pull away from those elements, the more I was left with what I could only describe as poetry.’

It was while studying politics, psychology and sociology at King’s College, Cambridge, that George’s career really started to take off. ‘I ended up spending more time off campus because there was a growing demand. One moment I’ll never forget was in my final year. I was supposed to be in the exam hall, and I was filming a poetry special for Formula 1 at the Monaco Grand Prix. I had to write it, memorise it, deliver it to camera, fly back to uni and sit the exam in about 36 hours. At that point I realised that this was probably going to be my career,’ he recalls.

George’s EP, The Chicken and the Egg, was released in 2014 to critical acclaim. His first book of poetry, Search Party, was published in 2015 and, in 2018, he was elected as a member of the national council of Arts Council England. He opened the BBC coverage of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s wedding with a love poem and was offered an MBE in 2019 that he declined because of the British Empire’s treatment of Uganda, which he termed ‘evil’.

Perhaps his success is in part due to his wife. He has two children with Sandra Mpanga, who is also his manager and events producer. ‘She’s the best person I’ve ever worked with,’ George gushes. ‘The most successful events that I’ve done have been produced by her.’ The pair have known each other since their school days.

Recently they’ve been enjoying seeing the world together. ‘My wife and I got married not long ago, in 2021, and we started travelling quite a bit. It really did ignite this new passion in me, because obviously it’s a mind-expanding experience. You meet new people, you see different things.’ On his work with Belmond, he adds: ‘There's something about the Venice Simplon-Orient-Express journey passing through all of these different landscapes, from the rural to the urban, that I'd actually never really seen before or taken the time to appreciate. It was such a rich opportunity to write for travel.’

Your aesthetic hero

This is a little bit of a wild card that I don’t think people will expect from me, but probably the pop star The Weeknd. He's a master of aesthetics, in my opinion. When he first came out he had a very unique sound, but he also had a mystique around him, and there was this big question in the early years, as he became a superstar, of how he would navigate that — not being mysterious anymore. However, with every album cycle he reinvents his aesthetic. He's got a concept: sometimes he's looking like a mad scientist, other times he's looking like a parody of a Hollywood has-been. He treats his physical appearance like a canvas as much as his music.

An exhibition that has really impressed you

There’s an artist called Phoebe Boswell. I went to an exhibition of hers some time ago. It was just beautiful art and it really played with the idea of the female body a lot. There's a lot of art that is capturing my attention from Uganda as well. I have an artist that I'm obsessed with called Hatimax, and I also did some very, very, very interesting work with a digital art gallery last year called Frameless.

They're based in London, and they create immersive installations out of classical art pieces. That also left a big impact on me. I wrote a piece to a painting by the Victorian-era artist John Atkinson Grimshaw. It was beautiful, I got lost in that.

The last thing that you bought for yourself

I bought myself a watch. For day-to-day, nothing extravagant.

Your favourite painting

To be honest with you, my favourite painting is not known. It's a piece that I had made about my family. It hangs in our living room and I adore it. The artist I mentioned earlier, Hatimax, made it. I gave it to my wife for Valentine’s Day.

A possession you’d never sell

Apart from that painting I just mentioned, I’ve won a fair few trophies — they would never be sold.

A book you’ve found inspiring

I always come back to Malcolm Gladwell, Outliers. It was a very interesting take. The whole thesis of the book is that there are factors that go into success that sometimes are staring you in the face, but they are not necessarily highlighted when you talk about the great successes, like in the computing or sporting industries. There are things that matter — the way you treat people, the way you pour into your children, the way you pay attention to what's going on around you. I've always found that to be a powerful message.

The music that you work to

The last genre of music that I really used to lose myself to was lo-fi hip hop. It is the most relaxing. Literally, I think scientifically, the frequencies that it hits are the frequencies of relaxation, comfort, nostalgia and warmth. So, I recommend it to anyone out there looking to have something on in the background that they can unplug but still feel free and creative to.

The last podcast you listened to

A podcast that keeps me up to date with Uganda, it’s called ON Uganda.

Who would play you in a film of your life

I feel like it has to be Daniel Kaluuya or Damson Idris, if we’re gonna lean into the ‘heart throbby’ vibe of George the Poet.

What you’d take with you to a desert island

I would need music, so some kind of speaker, and I’d love to take electricity. Also some seeded bread, because I’m fancy, and peanut butter, because I’m really fancy — and a notepad. My middle-class desert island experience would be complete.

The thing that gets you up in the morning

The fact that my kids are screaming. They are one and three. That’s me being a bit tongue in cheek, but literally the knowledge that there is all this life to live with them, and they’re up in the morning and raring to go so, emotionally and practically, that will get you out of bed.

The items you collect

Maybe Air Jordans, but I don’t think of it like collecting. I don’t have a ridiculous number of pairs, but it's definitely more than five.

A hotel you could go back and back to

The Waldorf Astoria, it’s just a classic. If you ever get the chance, go to the one in Amsterdam. It’s a work of art, man.

The most memorable meal you’ve ever eaten

I’ll never forget eating snails in France when I was 10, so that was memorable. I didn’t say good, but literally — I will never forget. I think I just prefer them alive. I see a snail, and I feel no animosity towards it. I'm perfectly happy for it to continue being a snail without being on my plate. I don't think I should have that snail. And they leave a trail of slime behind them.

The best present you’ve ever received

It will definitely be from my wife. She kills it with the presents. One time she literally surprised me with a trip and it was amazing. The details are between us, but yeah, she’s the best.

‘Writers on the Rails’ is a new literary collection of exclusive short stories featuring George the Poet. It was launched as part of Venice Simplon-Orient-Express, a Belmond train. Journeys will be departing from now until October 2026.

'It is definitely the only garden I have ever designed where old-fashioned roses have been the big thing,’ is how Tom Stuart-Smith summarised his garden at Lasborough Park in Gloucestershire, designed for Julia and Sir Hans Rausing. For the man whose creations with perennials have passed into horticultural folklore, the project was definitely a one-off, yet one that he will always recall with great affection.

Whatever style of garden a designer might be asked to produce, few could fail to be entranced by the setting at Lasborough. Here, in the south-western reaches of the Cotswolds, where the limestone uplands fold gently down towards the Severn estuary, is some of the most undisturbed and beautiful countryside in south-west England.

It includes a series of secluded valleys, wrapped around by wooded hillsides so as to appear little worlds of their own. This is certainly the case as you approach Lasborough and take the narrow lane that drops down from the A46 west of Tetbury and eventually brings you to the cluster of houses close to the church before crossing the River Wells and rising gently on the far side to Lasborough Park.

Lasborough’s long history stretching back over centuries has witnessed a succession of owners. It has also benefited from some garden and landscape highlights, evidence of which survives today. The present house was originally built in the late 18th century, designed by James Wyatt, and William Emes planned the surrounding landscape.

The impressive walled garden with its long, curving south-facing wall originally dated from the early 19th century and, in the mid 19th century, Lasborough was acquired by the famous Victorian tree planter Robert Stayner Holford of nearby Westonbirt.

Characteristically, one of his additions was Lodge Avenue, a double avenue stretching the five miles from Westonbirt to Lasborough, much of which remains today. Holford lived at Lasborough for a period and he also made extensive alterations to the outbuildings and added the original freestanding glasshouse to the walled garden. During the 1920s, the little known, but distinguished garden designer George Dillistone was commissioned by the then owners, Galbraith and Eleanor Cole, to plan an ambitious reworking of the garden, but Galbraith died in 1929 and Lasborough was sold before Dillistone’s work could begin.

There were to be five more sales of the house before, in 2014, it was purchased by the Rausings, who almost immediately commissioned Mr Stuart-Smith to carry out extensive work in the gardens, the major element of which was to be the re-creation of the early-19th-century walled garden. Perhaps the most significant factor for Mr Stuart-Smith was the degree to which the work on the garden would be a partnership with Julia. She had already been diagnosed with cancer and the creation of the Lasborough garden was an absorbing project that gave her great pleasure in the final years before her death in 2024.

When Mr Stuart-Smith started work, the walled garden had effectively ceased to exist. Holford’s impressive glasshouse had disappeared by the 1920s and the designer recalls that ‘all there was in the walled garden was an oil tank, an Astroturf putting green and some Christmas trees’. Repairing — in many areas completely rebuilding — the walls took a year, after which a new glasshouse was built on the footprint of the original. The new garden that emerged is something of a celebration of the great British tradition of walled kitchen gardens — on a spectacular scale, as it extends to more than an acre.

A symmetrical pattern of beds is arranged around a grid of paths, with those extending across the garden from one side to the other giving views that demonstrate the overall scale. The central area is set out with beds in front of the new glasshouse, to one side there is a concentration of vegetables, to the other the flower garden. The beds now overflow with a combination of plants that, if there is an unfamiliar emphasis on roses in many areas, bears all the hallmarks of Mr Stuart-Smith’s skill with a complex plant palette. In some places, there are mixtures; elsewhere, a single plant is massed for effect, for instance, a block of pinky/mauve-flowered echinacea.

There is the rich mixture of flowers, fruit and vegetables essential to a traditional walled garden, growing in such quantities that there is a constantly changing kaleidoscope from month to month. In the depth of winter, tall drums of clipped beech retain their golden leaves and provide structure, as do the arches and other metalwork over which a range of apple and pear trees is immaculately trained.

More fruit is trained against the walls, especially on the long curve of the south-facing one where a medley of gages, figs, apricots, plums and pears alternates with a similarly mouthwatering range of wall shrubs and climbers, such as different Clematis viticella, white and mauve solanum and abutilons. Mingling with them all are, of course, roses, including The Generous Gardener, ‘François Juranville’ and ‘Albertine’ to name only three reliable pink-flowered old favourites. Around the garden, some choice larger wall shrubs include Magnolia delavayi, Maytenus boaria, Hoheria sexstylosa ‘Stardust’, Viburnum cinnamomifolium and Clerodendrum trichotomum var. fargesii.

Through the weeks of summer, as the beds devoted to vegetables fill out with their burgeoning crops and beans and sweet peas smother hazel wigwams, the range of plants and plant combinations creates an atmosphere of richness that on a sunny day is sheer intoxication. In May and early June, a wonderful collection of Benton irises come into flower in beds in front of the glasshouse beneath espalier pears. In some beds, shrub roses predominate, underplanted with geraniums, erigeron and other appropriate low perennials.

The David Austin-bred Scepter’d Isle and Susan Williams-Ellis; old-fashioned shrubs ‘Tuscany Superb’, ‘Charles de Mills’ and ‘Fantin-Latour’; and hybrid musk ‘Penelope’ and ‘Felicia’, form a selection of roses picked out by Mr Stuart-Smith. Elsewhere, there is a variety of shrub and perennial combinations that would keep you absorbed for hours and, in the glasshouse, in traditional kitchen-garden style, there’s a collection of pelargoniums in clay pots, including a delicious pale-pink-flowered climbing variety trained against one wall.

The walled garden is definitely the centrepiece of the new garden at Lasborough and is best viewed from the Gothic folly built by Ptolemy Dean perched on the slope above. Yet Mr Stuart-Smith’s work attended to all the areas that make up the 12 acres — as well as extending out into the park to the south and west, which gives both garden and house such an idyllic setting. When he began work, the area immediately to the west of the house had been made into an enclosed courtyard with no proper links to the pool garden nearby and the areas beyond, such as the walled garden. Since then, the pool garden has been replanted and the courtyard opened up, so it now leads to the walk that extends parallel to the walled garden. Here, long borders either side of the path are at their best in May, with repeat cornus and other shrubs mixing with a palette of spring perennials.

A little over 10 years has witnessed a transformation in the garden at Lasborough, taking it to heights not achieved at any time in its past when, all too often, a change in ownership brought a period of stability to an end. In the creation and development through its formative years, the garden gave enormous and recuperative pleasure to Julia Rausing. Today, it gives the house a setting of horticultural excellence that is a fitting complement to the centuries-old landscape that surrounds it.

George Plumptre is the former chief executive of the National Garden Scheme, for which the garden of Lasborough Park, Gloucestershire, opens.

This feature originally appeared in the June 10, 2026, print edition of Country Life. Click here for more information on how to subscribe.

The clue’s in the name: Palm Beach. There are palm trees and a long strip of beach. There’s also bright-pink bougainvillea on every house, jasmine in the air, singing mockingbirds competing with the gentle purr of the odd Rolls-Royce and roads with names such as Hibiscus Avenue and Coral Lane (Gulfstream Road, too, which is appropriately Palm Beach because almost everyone here owns one). Right at the centre of it all is the new, gleaming, bright-white hotel on the block, The Vineta.

It’s boom time in Palm Beach, but not necessarily for the reason you think. Sure, Donald Trump is often in town and holds court at Mar-a-Lago, his Florida home and country club (the joining fee, cannily hiked shortly before his second presidential term began, is now $1 million).

However, the frenetic activity and influx into this surprisingly small, moneyed patch of America — which boasts the highest density of billionaires in the country, I’m told on my second night there — isn’t all due to him.

Think of it like the gold-rush to the Cotswolds. It’s a slightly glib comparison, but not entirely dissimilar. Californians and New Yorkers have flocked south to Palm Beach for more space, sunnier climes (at least, the ones from New York) and, crucially, more favourable taxes. This means that what has long been a wealthy area is now even more so.

It’s not possible, alas, to do a bus tour of the stars’ homes as you can in Hollywood, but take a walk up the lake trail and you’ll pass $50-million-plus house after $50-million-plus house. Drive around Palm Beach with a local and they’ll point out the Lauder house or Tom Ford’s house or the Peltz house, setting for the, ahem, controversial Brooklyn-Peltz wedding in 2022. Every other car is a Cullinan; a jar of jam in the new Bilboquet deli, a casual offshoot of the famous restaurant, will set you back $19.

This sunny spot has long been well served by swanky restaurants and members’ clubs that cost a cool half million or so to join. The likes of The Everglades Club, and Palm Beach Bath and Tennis have been here since Palm Beach started attracting the rich towards the beginning of the 20th century (on which more in a moment).

The famous pink Colony Hotel flung open its doors in 1947. However, other splashy openings are racing to keep up with demand. Polo kingpin Nacho Figueras opened The Polo Room restaurant last year. Über-exclusive members’ club the Carriage House, which opened in 2022 and is supposedly heavily influenced by 5 Hertford Street in London, has more recently jacked its joining fee to $400,000. Robin Birley has reportedly signed paperwork for a new club near Worth Avenue, which will be to Palm Beach what Maxime’s has become to Manhattan.

Then there’s the new jewel, The Vineta, a hotel bought by the Reuben brothers, David and Simon, in 2022 and managed by the Oetker Collection, the group’s first foray into the USA. Not bad for an island that is pretty small: just under four square miles or, if you prefer, the size of Richmond Park.

However, it’s technically incorrect to call The Vineta new. The building has almost always been a hotel (save for a brief transformation into a condominium block), ever since it opened to tourists in 1926. It was briefly called The Vineta back in the day, then it moved through various hands until it became The Chesterfield in 1989 and attracted Margaret Thatcher, Catherine Deneuve and Sir Rod Stewart.

After a three-year building project, the aesthetic now is classic Palm Beach: creams and blues, the odd splash of pink, with rattan detailing, shell sconces on the walls, orchids and ferns beside thick Assouline coffee-table books and wall-to-wall marble bathrooms (I should note here that the presidential suite is the only room with a bathtub; Florida is shower territory).

The interiors were handed over to the Paris-based designer Tino Zervudachi, who has looked after other hotels in the group, including the Hotel du Cap-Eden-Roc in Antibes, France, and Eden Rock St Barths in the Caribbean. I have never before stayed in such a serene hotel room — more creams, more blues, rattan lampshades, fluted bedside tables — or a hotel room that has a menu that includes a page of injectables, should I need some. How about Nefertiti Neck, to smooth out those pesky lines? Or Trapezius Tox to relax my shoulders after the long flight?

The swimming pool is sensational — destined to launch a million Instagram posts. Tino spent some time in Palm Beach doing his homework and it shows. The spiral pool handrails, for instance, are designed to match the swirl on the town’s famous Clock Tower, overlooking the beach. Coco’s, the hotel’s restaurant, features old-timers steak Diane and crêpes Suzette, which regulars from the Hotel du Cap-Eden-Roc may recognise. It all adds up to create a serene sense of continuity; the hotel may only just have opened, but it feels like a grande dame.

There’s also an in-room pet menu — including a ‘buddy burger’ beef patty with broccoli and rice for $18 or an ‘amuse pooch’ oatmeal cookie for $9. Every room (there are 41) is dog friendly. Palm Beach itself is extremely dog friendly. One morning, strolling the lake trail, I passed a chap in his eighties walking a Yorkshire terrier in a red MAGA cap. Moments later, I passed another with his poodle, in a navy MANA cap, worn by the other side; it apparently means ‘make America normal again’.

Walking is a good way to take in this place, because it’s small enough to explore on foot. Take a stroll down Worth Avenue and you’ll pass Chanel, Ferragamo and Palm Beach favourites Stubbs & Wootton (for slippers) and Lily Pulitzer (for tropical clothing). You’ll see plenty of Tesla Cybertrucks and perhaps even Mona Lisa. Not, I hasten to add, the painting, but a pig. One of the financiers has a pet pig, called Mona Lisa, whose walker takes her up and down the main drag every morning.

After that, I’d continue strolling to the Flagler Museum to brush up on Palm Beach history. Henry Flagler was the oil magnate and generous being who built the grand house that’s now a museum between 1900–02 for his third wife. He has been dubbed the ‘inventor’ of modern Florida for also constructing the railway that stretched the length of the state and allowed 19th-century travellers to discover this balmy patch of the USA. This was the Gilded Age, when it became fashionable for those who summered in Newport to winter down here.

Flagler constructed Palm Beach’s earliest glitzy hotels — the Royal Poinciana, The Breakers — and guests soon flocked. The architect Addison Mizner then rolled up his sleeves and started designing buildings in the style he’d become famous for, still evident across Palm Beach today: ‘Bastard-Spanish-Moorish-Romanesque-Bull-Market-Damn-The-Expense’, someone subsequently dubbed it. Houses and clubs that wouldn’t look out of place in Madrid, in other words, albeit with more tropical gardens. Palm trees, naturally, but also hibiscus, gardenias and plumbago. Colour is everywhere. Nothing is terribly subtle here.

‘The Palm Beach season, then as now, was a time of parties, concerts and entertainment as visitors arrived for a respite from the cold winter weather in Northern states,’ notes a plaque in the museum, beneath a grainy photograph of the Flaglers hosting a tea party on their lawn, alongside their friends visiting from Britain, the Duke and Duchess of Manchester.

That was as correct then as it is now, as the season still exists in these parts and runs roughly from Thanksgiving, when everyone descends from the north, until Easter, when they return to the east coast. ‘It basically empties, it’s a ghost town,’ says a friend, of the summer months, when it’s too hot and humid to do much outside.

However, during the season, oof, remember your vitamins — because it is busy. Supper after supper, charity event after charity event. Are we talking endless charity parties for blind and impoverished dolphins, I ask my friend, assuming there are a good number of rich people here looking for a cause — any cause — to distract them from pilates ($68 a class) and all that golf? ‘Not all,’ she says, contemplatively, ‘although we did go to a charity event for dolphins the other day.’

I stop by one drinks party at a private home (with the usual army of uniformed staff) with martinis the size of fish bowls and a woman tells me she’s drinking as many as she can before speaking to her lawyer about her divorce that evening. That party was to raise money for local beaches. The next night, at another charity do, in aid of the mangroves, former model and heiress Amanda Hearst makes a speech about the importance of the ocean and I talk to a Norwegian who only mentions half an hour into our conversation that he’s a director. Quite a major director. He’s Amanda's husband, Joachim Rønning, and he’s directed a ‘Tron’ film as well as the last in the ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’ series.

Then it’s off to dinner at the Everglades; the next night, a supper at another private home by the pool. At least American dinner parties finish early, all wrapped up by 11pm. I developed a chest infection after several days here, despite the tropical warmth. London socialising is nowhere near as frenetic as Palm Beach in season.

In 1995, when property tycoon Frank Lahainer died in Palm Beach, the story goes, his widow Gianna had his body embalmed and kept at a funeral home for more than a month, so she didn’t have to skip any parties. ‘Why would I wait?’ Gianna reportedly said, ‘I would miss the season.’ Quite right.

This is a party town — and the fun must go on.

Rooms at The Vineta start from £735 per night on a B&B basis, excluding taxes. Click here for more information and to book.

New York — $3,100,000

This dairy farm in upstate New York dates back to 1759, sits in 12 acres of gorgeous woodland — which is as old, or older than the building — and has been beautifully updated throughout.

It's close to the Appalachian Trail, has a gorgeous DeVol kitchen, and is just 90 minutes from Manhattan on the train.

For sale @buyingupstate and The Lillie K Team at Four Seasons Sotheby's International Realty.

South Carolina — $4,295,000

In the magical old city of Charleston, this 1743-built home pre-dates the Boston Tea Party by thirty years.

It's an architectural gem on South Lamboll Street, one of the prettiest in the city, and as well as its charming original features it also has double piazzas and verandas to provide the quintessential Charleston outdoor living lifestyle.

For sale via Daniel Ravenel Sotheby’s International Realty — see more details and pictures.

Pennsylvania — $999,000

Looking for all the world like the sort of cottage you'd find in Cumbria, this glorious little stone-built home dates back to 1753.

It's been updated sensitively, though, with a fine kitchen, a swimming pool and grounds of just over half an acre.

For sale via Kurfiss Sotheby's International Realty — see more details and pictures.

Massachusetts — $1,489,000

You'll find eight fireplaces, original wide-plank wood floors, and preserved period detail throughout a house that was originally the Cushing Tavern, built in 1746 in the town of Hingham, where you'll find some of the oldest homes in America.

It's had modern updates — heating system, roof, and central air conditioning — but is in many ways a blank canvas looking for an owner to bring their own personality to this 18th century home.

For sale via William Raveis — see more details and pictures.

Connecticut — $7,250,000

As rude as it might be to play favourites, we've left the best til last: this utterly magical house is described by the agents as having 'one of the most breathtaking private settings on the Connecticut River' — and it's not hard to believe.

Built in 1750, with almost 4,500sq ft of space and just under 10 acres, it's an irresistibly pretty house that has been remarkably well cared for — and the cool, wooded grounds and pool are sumptuous.

For sale via William Pitt Sotheby's International Realty — see more details and pictures.

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

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

Daniel Brush, who died in 2022, was a one-off, a phenomenon, a sort of genius without portfolio, a maker of marvellous objects. His output was tiny and he usually hung on to what he produced for decades before parting with it, if he parted with it at all. He never accepted a commission, seldom exhibited, didn’t have a dealer and sold only when and to whom he pleased. For these reasons, hardly anyone got to see, let alone own, the things he made.

Despite or perhaps because of his Sasquatch-like elusiveness, a retrospective of his work at New York’s Museum of Art and Design in 2012 was the best attended show in the museum’s history.

Now another opportunity to see a significant cross-section of his work has arisen. ‘Daniel Brush: The Art of Line and Light’, at Van Cleef & Arpels’ L’Ecole in Paris until October 2, 2026, comprises 75 pieces spanning most though not quite all of his career. There are some exquisite drawings, jagged, fraught and intense. There are sculptural, totemic objects of profound mystery in steel and gold. There are brooches and cuffs, some whimsical, some transcendent, in precious gemstones, Bakelite and ultralight NASA metal alloys — wearable sculptures that, for better or worse, earned Daniel a reputation as a jeweller (the finest since Benvenuto Cellini, in the opinion of no less an authority than Christie’s chairman and jewellery supremo, François Curiel).

I got to know Daniel and his wife Olivia in the mid-2000s and visited them whenever I was in New York. Their apartment on West 24th Street was itself a kind of installation, a 5,000-square-foot, open-plan living-working space and a mirror of their shared life and enthusiasms. Olivia is an artist who works primarily in textiles; Daniel’s Loose Threads — my favourite of his works, magnificently displayed in its entirety in Paris — is a moving tribute to her tendency to end each day covered in squiggly bits of yarn.

There’s such diversity among Daniel’s works that it’s difficult to believe they sprang from the same consciousness or were wrought by the same pair of hands. His conversation was no less eclectic. Looking at the transcript of our last meeting, I see that he spoke, for the best part of six hours, about cowboy boots, German bisque dolls, Bugatti engines, endangered species, the Noh concept of yugen, macaroons, calligraphy, snaphaunces, Hedy Lamarr, Vladimir Horowitz, Modern Farmer magazine, machine guns, mimesis, fishmongers, ballet, Scotch whisky, Polaroid film, ‘classic seven’ Upper East Side apartments, punctuation marks and Casio G-Shock digital watches. Among other things.

What’s the line through, the loose thread of connection? People ooh and ah endlessly about Daniel’s almost superhuman manipulation of materials, particularly metals. But curiosity, not virtuosity, is, I think, the key. He loathed the ‘v’ word. Virtuosity for its own sake meant nothing to him. Technique interested him greatly, but only as a means, not an end, a way to get things done. He was fascinated by the way well-made objects can serve as a direct and intimate link between artist and audience.

Every one of the pieces on display in Paris might be considered in terms of line and light. Some of them fit the bill to perfection: the astonishing Remembrance of Things Present sequence of ink drawings, for instance, which are all about line, and the mesmeric engraved steel sculptures, Thinking About Monet, which are all about colour.

And yet, while taking in the show, I was also reminded of something that usually happened when I went to see Daniel and Olivia at the studio — not every time, but more often than not. Shortly after I arrived Daniel would say: ‘Shut your eyes and open your hand. Here. Now close your hand and hold on to this.’ It would be something he’d made — maybe something he’d finished that morning, or 30 years ago. For as long as the object remained invisible in my closed hand, considerations of line and light were, of course, irrelevant. Daniel was inviting an act of imaginative engagement based solely on touch, a response to what I could feel but not see. I recall his fondness for Native American dreamcatchers — objects intended both to bring on dreams and to banish them while under the influence of hallucinogens in order to commune directly with the spirit world. ‘Can a jewel do that?’ he asked. ‘Can a jewel take your breath away, in and of itself, so that it doesn’t even have to be worn? Can it be held in your hand so you dream? Can it become an intimate sculpture without a utilitarian function?’

The questions were rhetorical. His belief that a jewel could do those things was absolute and unwavering.

‘So, you know,’ he went on, ‘I got this wonderful note the other day, from this sensational guy. I love it. He said he has one of my things in a fitted box in his study, where he reads about art. And every once in a while he opens the box with his eyes closed and touches it, because he wants to experience it as if he were blind. God, I love that. I absolutely love that. I keep thinking and hoping, the more I engage with people, that it’s not just the tactile nature of it, it’s that private, quiet, removed, you know, secret kind of thing… You’re engaging with another person you don’t know but you’ve become intimate with. It’s such an odd transference.’

The chance to see so much of Daniel’s work, so elegantly displayed under one roof, is unlikely to be repeated any time soon. Make your way to Paris and let the transference begin.

‘Daniel Brush: The Art of Line and Light’ is at L’Ecole School of Jewellery Arts, supported by Van Cleef & Arpels, Hôtel de Mercy-Argenteau, Paris, until October 4, 2026. Admission is free upon reservation. Click here for more information.

When Jess Rowe and Miriam Payne became the first duo to row from Peru to Australia in 2025, they were also the first to use a floating farm to sustain themselves at sea.

Growing their own salad over an 8,000-mile journey was made possible by one of their sponsors, Home Harvest, a tech firm whose flagship product allows consumers to grow herbs and leaves directly from seed mats. The company, which uses hydroponic technology to produce fresh leafy greens in days, adapted its product to be solar-powered and directly attached to the racing shell, to great effect: together, Jess and Miriam raised more than £120,000 for educational charity Outward Bound Trust.

Home Harvest’s flagship product is different. A three-tier box, powered by LEDs, it has a filtration system that disperses water to professional-grade seed mats; one prototype features a different salad crop growing on each level. The boxes connect to an app, which offers recipes and nutritional advice tailored to individual goals (such as to lose weight or increase vitamin C intake), as well as more generalist advice rooted in Home Harvest’s core belief: that our current agricultural system is as bad for us as for the planet.

A camera is built into each box to monitor the growth of the crops, accessible via the app. ‘We offer a direct-to-consumer business,’ explains Hedley Aylott, the firm’s co-founder and marketing director, ‘one that bypasses the need for a middleman and reduces the carbon footprint of imports.’

Hedley is keen to stress the anti-pesticide virtues of indoor hydroponic growing and invites me to sample the radish, rocket and pea shoots that have been grown by a Home Harvest box. ‘The technology works by using higher seed density in the paper seed mats to achieve faster growth,’ co-founder Andrew Johnson, nicknamed ‘The Salad King’, told Country Life last year.

‘The system creates the perfect growing environment with controlled temperature and light. You simply add water and can get fresh, leafy greens in a matter of days, rather than months.’

The market for such a product, according to both founders, is huge. ‘With the weather becoming more volatile and hard to predict,’ Andrew says, ‘it is becoming harder for consumers to rely on crops that are grown outdoors.’ As such, the firm subscribes to the same beliefs as were touted by Michael Gove when he was Defra Secretary: that vertical farming, ‘with vegetables grown in temperature, moisture and nutrition-controlled environments’, can ‘guarantee improvements in yield’ and reduce the risk posed to crop production by freak weather incidents.

‘Vertical farms not only minimise land use,’ Michael told the Oxford Farming Conference in 2019, ‘but can, of course, be located close to the urban population centres they serve.’ Home Harvest, then, stands at the frontier of what the minister teased as the fourth agricultural revolution. Founded in 2021, the company is on the verge of stateside expansion. ‘We launch in America this month,’ Andrew beams.

The US market, roughly five times the size of the UK’s and facing similar issues, could be poised for British invasion. There are, however, important differences to account for. Britain is far more reliant on agricultural imports for fresh fruit and vegetables, taking in about 65% of the latter and 83% of the former. The US, by contrast, is more independent: 59% of its fruit and only 35% of its vegetables hail from international markets.

It would be a great English success story if Home Harvest were to take off across the pond. The more immediate question, however, is whether the British smallholder could suffer from such innovation. If, indeed, the consumer becomes his or her own grower, does this render the work of our own farmers obsolete? Moreover, if this becomes society’s chief way of feeding itself, is it utopian to assume that an endless supply of professional-grade seed mats would become available? The market is likely to do as it always does: split into categories that distinguish between higher-quality, more expensive items and lower-quality, more accessible products.

The root of Home Harvest’s success so far — with £1.2 million secured in pre-seed funding — is the quality seed mats sold with the subscriptions, which are sourced from CN Seeds near Ely, Cambridgeshire. For those banking on this being the future of agriculture, exploring possibilities in the seed space could be a cunning move. The three-tier box costs £399, then £15 per month for seed mats; the one-tier box is £300 and £10 a month.

This feature originally appeared in the June 17, 2026, print edition of Country Life. Click here for more information on how to subscribe.

The one where you can smell the burning rubber — Silverstone, from £850,000

For diehard F1 fans, it doesn’t get much better than this: a property literally trackside at Silverstone, home of the British Grand Prix. Picture it: from the comfort of your home, you can watch (as well as hear, feel, and even smell) the action unfold on Maggotts and Becketts — among the most famous corners in motorsport.

The Escapade Silverstone development comprises 60 sleek properties and a clubhouse with top-notch facilities, including a ‘driver-focused gym’. There’s a myriad of other perks for homeowners too,, making the starting prices of around £850,000 easier to bear.

Think free access to major race events at Silverstone, with discounts available for friends and family. This is sure to appeal to anyone who takes their racing seriously (and more importantly, has the budget to match).

You may need to get used to sharing your trophy asset, though. According to By Design, which is marketing this four-bedroom house, Silverstone will rent out your home when you’re not there ‘to ensure each owner is making an income from their empty property’.

For sale via agents including Savills and United Kingdom Sotheby's International Realty.

The one with an underground 'Batcave' garage — Derbyshire, £6,000,000

Set on the edge of the Peak District National Park, this striking contemporary home comes with a twist: an incredible 4,000 sq ft underground haven that will have car collectors drooling.

On the lower ground floor, there’s a six-car garage with three — yes, three — automated roller doors, electric charging points and storage. And in the basement, there’s a separate garage space with enough room for a car collection, alongside a fully-equipped workshop and a maintenance lift. There is even a car wash and valeting bay to ensure cars leave looking track-ready.

And how do you reach this underground gem? Via a concealed hydraulic car lift from the driveway, of course.

The living space at this sprawling five-bedroom house is no less impressive, featuring everything from an eight-seat cinema to an altitude training room. You see, this really is an all-singing, all-dancing affair.

For sale via Fisher German — see more details and pictures.

The one with an underground garage in the middle of London — Hampstead, £16,950,000

It is not every day that you come across a London home with a private underground garage large enough for six cars. But then again, there is very little about this property that could be described as ‘ordinary’.

For starters, this glitzy penthouse is located on The Bishops Avenue in Hampstead, dubbed ‘Billionaires’ Row’. It also happens to have been rented by Ariana Grande while she was filming Wicked.

The enormous garage is only part of the appeal. The five-bedroom apartment — part of the swish Buxmead development — is packed with A-list-style amenities, including a cinema and games room, gym, and two kitchens.

If you are in the market for this type of home, privacy and security are likely to be top-of-mind. Fortunately, this home delivers on both fronts. The garage is accessed via a lift, while a uniformed — naturally — security team watches over the development. This is the sort of setup that will allow you to sleep soundly, no matter what's parked downstairs.

For sale via United Kingdom Sotheby’s International Realty and Alexander Main.

The countryside home with space to work on your Lamborghini — West Sussex, £1,800,000

At first glance, Duncans Granary looks every inch the idyllic countryside retreat. But hidden inside one of the outbuildings is a space that is likely to set car enthusiasts’ pulses racing: an ‘extensive man cave garaging and workshop’, according to selling agent Strutt & Parker.

Totalling almost 2,500 sq ft, it comprises two garage areas, a workshop and even a bar. In other words, it is a place designed as much for admiring cars as working on them. And judging by the photos, the current owners have set the bar high, housing what appear to be some pretty special engines.

The four-bedroom house and outbuildings sit within 3.2 acres of grounds, including a pond with a bridge and a decked seating area.

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

The one with its own rally stage to race on — Ceredigion, £3,500,000

Most farms come with barns. This one also comes with its own two-mile tarmac track that features loops and split roads.

Known as the Bont Dolebolion Rally Stage, the track winds through the rolling Welsh countryside. What is more, it offers the potential to generate income: a variety of motorsport events, including rally testing days, take place here. Yes, it's a rally stage rather than an F1 circuit — but it's surely the sort of thing petrolheads dream of.

Away from the motorsports action, the 395-acre beef and sheep farm includes a traditional four-bedroom farmhouse and numerous outbuildings. Some are in better condition than others...

This is a little more rough and ready than a track-side home at Escapade Silverstone — but therein lies its charm. Just try not to confuse the livestock count with your split times.

For sale via Savills — see more details and pictures.

The one that caters to every kind of horsepower — Berkshire, £2,950,000

With extensive garaging that’s in very good nick, this property has ‘car collector’ written all over it.

The stables at Willow Farm have been converted into an enormous garage and showroom, complete with an office, meeting room, kitchen, gardener’s room and games room. A separate garage and a car port sit just behind it. All-in-all, ample space for everything from cherished classics to the latest supercars.

The block is currently used as a smart showroom, but it given that it's entirely secure and has capacity for up to 20 cars, you could probably use it as a motoring museum.

And while it's one for serious car collectors, this is still a beautiful family home that's ideal for those who prefer a different kind of horsepower: the house is set in 12 acres, has a paddock, direct access to the bridleway, and the grounds are so flat, and in such good shape, that it's apparently ideal for creating a polo field.

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

The one where you can live in the home of a legend — Kensington, £2,625,000 

What this charming mews house in south west London lacks in high octane motorsports facilities, it more than makes up for in history.

This was once the home of James Hunt, the charismatic 1976 F1 world champion, who was loved by a generation of fans first as a driver, and then as the most hilariously honest commentator in motorsport. Younger readers will more likely remember him from the film, Rush — one of the best motorsport films ever made.

Unlike many F1 stars who quit racing and go to live in country homes, Hunt loved his famous playboy lifestyle in London, and moved to this home in 1980 after swapping his steering wheel for a BBC microphone — a decision he made, as he admitted, ‘for reasons of self-preservation’.

Originally two separate houses, the property has been transformed into a light and airy four-bedroom home. Unusually, all the living space is arranged on the first floor, where an open-plan kitchen, dining and reception room opens out onto a terrace.

The property comes with two private parking spaces — a feature that, according to current owner Dave Allan, drew Hunt to the house in the first place.

‘It’s been lovely owning a piece of history and hearing all the stories relating to the house,’ says Allan. ‘Apparently, during James Hunt’s time there, it was well known for hosting some rather lively parties.’

For sale via Hamptons — see more details and pictures.

If the Unloved Birds’ Club has an apex predator in its midst, then it is surely this giant of a beast. The white-tailed eagle is our largest raptor and among the biggest of all British birds. Everything about it is impressive: the huge talons, the deep hook-tipped beak, the loud, almost goose-like hacking call, but, above all, the square-ended 8ft wingspan.

Equally noteworthy in a separate sphere is its glorious flexibility as a predator. It will catch and devour animals ranging in size from lemmings or small chicks to large wildfowl. It will rob other raptors of their kills. It will — we should note — tackle the seven biggest species on the unloved bird-list, including herring and great black-backed gull, cormorant and greylag goose. For this predation alone we should perhaps learn to love it.

Yet, white-tailed eagles are not too regal to enjoy carrion, from whales and reindeer to strandline fish. Ironically, it is those clean-up operations of dead animals that have caused the species more trouble than any other part of its lifestyle. The birds were once found from the English South Coast to the outer Scottish isles, but were driven inexorably to the margins of Britain by an unofficial coalition of shepherds, landowners and keepers. The issue propelling that long history of persecution was an old charge against the eagle as a killer of livestock.

By 1918, the last ever individual was eliminated and eagles were absent as breeding birds until a reintroduction campaign was initiated on the inner Hebridean island of Rum in 1975. The organisers could never perhaps have imagined how successful their eagle project would become. Today, the breeding total is put at about 150 pairs, most of them concentrated in the Western Isles, with strongholds on Lewis, Skye and Mull, but a new initiative launched on the Isle of Wight in 2019 has restored the species to the South Coast.

These patient works may have brought back a magnificent eagle, but they have also resurrected the accusations against them as killers of sheep. Several members of Parliament have called for an eagle cull. A bird released on the Isle of Wight was poisoned by rodenticides at a Dorset site in 2019 and last summer saw a highly publicised charge by a Hebridean farmer that eagles may have taken five foals from his herd of Shetland ponies.

Few would deny that a predator so flexible in matters of diet will readily take a free meal. It is when its status as a consumer of dead animals crosses a line to make it a killer of live, healthy stock that the problems arise. However, let’s first consider the case of the mysteriously disappearing Shetland foals.

Environmentalists argued that it is nigh-on impossible for an eagle to perform such a feat: the ponies weigh two to five times as much as the bird. No matter how broad those barn-door wings, an eagle could never fly off with prey weighing up to 37lb.

Searches around nests of the nearest breeding eagles corroborated this first-principle physics: no pony remains were ever found. Yet the story garnered widespread media coverage founded purely on supposition. Like almost all of the Unloved Birds’ Club controversies, it is not a bird problem: it is a human problem. Entrenched positions on both sides make it so difficult to achieve any kind of compromise.

Let’s try a little thought experiment. A solution could be found if eagles were allowed to reach their full carrying capacity in the British Isles. Then, if a ‘rogue’ bird were proven to take livestock (such as lambs and piglets), we could act, if necessary, even eliminating that individual. The eagle population would be secure and the farmer could sleep at night.

Environmentalists would probably be horrified by such proposals, but no more than their opponents by a vision of eagle numbers climbing to their full breeding extent in Britain. At present, we should note that our 150 pairs represent only a fraction more than 1% of the European total. Thus both parties continue arguing, entrenched and siloed, with no agreement in sight. Given the slow, steady rise in eagle numbers in Britain, the disagreements over them will continue. Perhaps all we can say is, watch this space.

This feature originally appeared in the June 17, 2026, print edition of Country Life. Click here for more information on how to subscribe.