Country Life

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Future Publishing Ltd, 121–141 Westbourne Terrace, Paddington, London W2 6JR 0330 390 6591; www.countrylife.co.uk THE Government’s desire to get building fast has put it at odds with some of the wildlife charities that heralded its coming to power. The lifting of restrictions on bat-protection measures has caused disquiet, although surely all parties were shocked to discover the cost of the tunnel being built by HS2 to protect rare Bechstein’s bats in Buckinghamshire: up to £119 million (with some £65 million already spent). HS2 responds that the process of environmental consent is beyond its control; The Wildlife Trusts retorts that a different route should have been chosen. The farming industry and conservation charities, not always in agreement, are now united in condemnation of Defra’s cessation of Sustainable Farming Initiative (SFI) grant…

YN milhyntal yth omgellir, yn Kerdroya yth omgevir.’ No, you haven’t stumbled across a page from The Lord of the Rings. These magical words, uttered by Will Coleman, creator of the extraordinary immersive land-art piece Kerdroya, which opened in Cornwall last month, are Cornish and mean ‘In a maze you get lost, but in a labyrinth you find yourself’—Gandalf-worthy wisdom indeed. Years in the making and formed from local, natural and recycled materials, Kerdroya came about as part of the 60th-anniversary celebrations of Cornwall’s protected landscape in 2020; it also marks 4,000 years of the humble Cornish hedge. Here, the hedge, Mr Coleman told us when we wrote about Kerdroya (Town & Country, March 17, 2021), is not ‘a hedgerow. Nor is it a dry-stone wall. It is somewhere between…

Quiz of the week 1) Which French term describes a bunch of herbs in a muslin bag or tied together? 2) In which Dickens novel does Jerry Cruncher appear? 3) What is a lacuna? 4) The Stone of Scone was captured and placed in Westminster Abbey by which English king? 5) The name of which mythical creature is used to describe a tree that has fallen, but is still alive? Riddle me this High high high high high—what am I? 1) Bouquet garni 2) ‘A Tale of Two Cities’ 3) A space or gap 4) Edward I 5) Phoenix. Riddle me this: A high five Time to buy On this day… April 2, 1935 Scottish physicist Sir Robert Alexander Watson-Watt was awarded a patent for his device for detecting and…

Trash talk IT had been in the back of my mind for some time that a lot of what was going into our rubbish bin had ‘Don’t recycle at home, recycle with bags at large supermarkets’ on the label. Who has the time or inclination to hoard rubbish and take it back to the shop, I wondered. Yet, as I have become increasingly horrified by the state of our planet, I decided this was one small thing I could easily do to help. Small? Honestly, I think the amount of waste we send to landfill has more than halved. It is staggering the number of packets that, on closer inspection, can be recycled if taken to the correct place—but I fear many of us won’t be bothering. Is it not…

FEW of us dispute the merits of diversity. Being readily open to the contribution made by people from different backgrounds, as well as affirming an equal place for women in what was once a man’s world, is surely no longer controversial. Why, then, have we missed one glaring exclusion in national life that has grown more pronounced over the past decade? Rural England is now almost unrepresented in national decision making. The present cabinet contains not a single country person and, more surprisingly, neither does the shadow cabinet. The Conservative Party, once the ‘Country Party’, doesn’t have a farmer on its front bench and the jobs held by its leaders outside politics do not include any with a rural connection. When the Labour cabinet meets to discuss the future of…