Country Life 9-Mar-2022

WHEN Nancy Lancaster bought the country’s most respected decorating business from her friend Sibyl Colefax in 1948, it wasn’t only her exquisite taste and sound judgement that secured commissions to spruce up Buckingham Palace, Chequers and great houses from Tyningham to Grimsthorpe—her career was turbo-charged by family connections and a gilt-edged address book. Her aunt was the politician Nancy Astor and her husband the Conservative MP Ronald Tree, with whom she entertained Churchill. Much has happened since then. Not only has Britain become more cosmopolitan, but the wealth attracted by London’s growth as a financial centre has precipitated a golden age of house building, renovation and restoration and, in turn, a thriving interior-design industry. Having employed relatively rudimentary resources to beautify the threadbare homes of the aristocratic and/or landed, Lancaster wouldn’t…

The arrival of a litter of 12 wire-haired dachshund puppies to ‘super mum’ Sizzle has left owner Emma Tennant wondering if a record has been broken. ‘I contacted the Kennel Club, but they don’t keep a record of litter sizes,’ she says ‘and the largest I can find referenced online is 10.’ The seven dogs and five bitches, now 10 weeks old, have all gone to new homes stretching ‘from Peebles to Jersey’, but not before this adorable photo was taken at their birthplace in the Borders. ‘As you can imagine, trying to get 12 puppies in a row wasn’t easy…(right)’ The face that launched 1,000 letters ON a Tuesday in February 1952, history was made with the click of a camera. Dorothy Wilding—of whom historian Val Williams wrote ‘nobody knew better……

RARELY seen artworks from the Duke and Duchess of Devonshire’s private collection, including their favourite commissions of the past 40 years, are presented in a new exhibition at Chatsworth, Derbyshire. ‘Living With Art We Love’ (March 26–October 9) is ‘a marker in time—a record of our acquisitions that we want to share’; works from the historic collection by Poussin, Boltraffio, Rembrandt, Picasso and others will also feature. Contemporary artists on show include Michael Craig-Martin, Edmund de Waal, Michael Leonard (above) and ceramicists Natasha Daintry, Pippin Drysdale and Felicity Aylieff (above right). There’s also a section on Lucien Freud—in this, his centenary year—who painted six members of the family after he became friends with the 11th Duke in the 1940s, including the late Deborah, Duchess of Devonshire. Meanwhile, three participatory sculptures will be…

Reincarnation for bugs It has long been known that insects are an excellent source of protein for humans and animals, but a new scientific paper claims the discarded exoskeletons from insects farmed as aqua feed ingredients could protect crops from pests Golden oldies Paul McCartney will be the oldest ever headliner for the Glastonbury Festival in Somerset. The other headliners are Billie Eilish (the youngest ever) and Kendrick Lamar New spice A nutmeg tree in the Rainforest Biome at the Eden Project, Cornwall, is bearing fruit, which could be a UK first Shaggy-dog stories The Old English Sheepdog has been removed from the Kennel Club's list of vulnerable breeds, after a 66% increase in puppy registrations in 2021 Crop management AI technology can be used to predict the appearance of fields under clouds, finds Cornish start-up Aspia Space. The…

AN 80-tree avenue to be planted at Dyrham Park, Gloucestershire, is among 70 National Trust projects for The Queen’s Green Canopy (Town & Country, January 19). Stretching 1,575ft, the planting will be particularly poignant, as only one tree survives from the original 1766 avenue, the rest having been lost to Dutch elm disease, ash dieback and the great storm of 1987. Another avenue of 24 sweet chestnuts will spring up at Abinger Roughs in Surrey, where the last of the original trees planted in the 18th century were lost in 1987; 15 new poplars will re-create Harold Nicolson and Vita Sackville-West’s 1932 vision for an avenue at Sissinghurst Castle, Kent; a 66ft-long pear-tree archway will emerge at Rudyard Kipling’s home, Bateman’s in East Sussex; and Tredegar House in South Wales will…

Net-zero fever has hit the National Trust, with its largest tree-planting project to date underway at the 2,471-acre Wimpole estate, Cambridgeshire. Some 90,000 trees will spring up across 296 acres by the middle this month, funded with £1.3 million from the Government's Green Recovery Challenge Fund and HSBC UK. This will include 14 native species, such as oak, hornbeam, wild cherry, field maple and birch. There will be 39 native or heritage apple varieties, with some, such as Ash-mead's Kernel (right), Egremont Russet and Greensleeves, grown for harvesting and juicing. As well as feeding pollinators, ‘the 2,000 apple trees will be planted in rows to link two areas of well-established woodland, roughly 330 metres apart, to encourage the estate's rare Barbastelle bat population to travel,' explains Wimpole farm manager David Hassall.…