Country Life 15-Feb-2023

SOMETHING to look forward to: the BBC has commissioned another wildlife series featuring 96-year-old Sir David Attenborough. This time, unusually, the beloved presenter stays in Britain. Wild Isles, which will celebrate British woodlands, grasslands, rivers, lakes and sea, airs this spring and promises to be as compelling as all his other works. Meanwhile, the sun has set after nearly 20 years on the BBC’s Autumnwatch—viewing figures in 2022 dropped to about one million and it has been axed in a cost-cutting exercise. Both Winterwatch, which will have reduced programming in 2024, and Springwatch saw reductions in audience numbers this time. Perhaps some people have had Naturepresentation overload. Flora and fauna was able to flourish undisturbed during lockdown in 2020 as the public was forced to stay away. This painful deprivation—and the…

For all the latest news, visit countrylife.co.uk Fast train to loss of trust A ROW between The Wildlife Trusts (WT) and HS2 broke out last week, after the charity claimed that the infrastructure project ‘undervalued Nature and overvalued its compensation measures’. WT claims that there are ‘fundamental flaws’ in the way HS2 Ltd has assessed the value of Nature along the path of the railway project. In response to the claim, HS2 Ltd wrote on Twitter that the claims by WT are ‘incorrect and based on unreliable data from limited desk research’. The firm said that HS2’s data is ‘independently verified, accurate and reliable’ and accused the charity of ‘seeking PR opportunities’ by refusing to work with the firm. The row is the latest in a long-running fight between those who say HS2 is…

Quiz of the week 1) Which settlement was Roman Britain’s first colonia, but only received city status in 2022? 2) What colour is the female blackbird? 3) The expression ‘My salad days’ appears in which Shakespeare play? 4) Fair Maids of February is a name for which much-loved flower? 5) The UK has how many native toad species? Word of the week Pusillanimous (adjective) Timid, cowardly 100 years ago in COUNTRY LIFE February 17, 1923 THE journey from Hai-phong to Mengzi takes two days. For half of the first day the train humps itself like a caterpillar along steppingstones in a wet wilderness of rice-fields. Soon the rice-fields are not so much replaced by hills as trapped among hills. The skyline bristles with small-crested palm trees, like golden hands outspread at the end of grotesquely thin arms. After dark, the…

Letter of the week Men (and women) of letters WE have just spent the weekend with friends Walter and Janet Reid at their lovely Charles Rennie Mackintosh house in Renfrewshire. Our friendship began in 2015, when you published follow-up correspondence to my husband’s missive about George V’s trouser creases (Letters, January 28, February 4 and 18, 2015). The first rejoinder came from Mr Reid. An internet search and a tentative phone call located the author. We met and discovered common interests (in addition to royal trouser creases). I wonder how many readers share the experience of making friends through the correspondence columns of COUNTRY LIFE. Lady Stewart, Edinburgh The writer of the letter of the week will win a bottle of Pol Roger Brut Réserve Champagne A broader church WONDERFUL that COUNTRY LIFE’s exemplary coverage of…

LIVING in the countryside, we have had an increasing problem with policing. County forces are spread thinly across very large areas and inevitably concentrate on dealing with their centres of population. This is, in part, a change that simply parallels the loss of other local services. Fewer garages, pubs, post offices, banks and shops—rural life has changed radically and the loss of the village bobby, the local police station and the centralisation of licensing activity are all part of this general decline in rural services. As are all those other changes, these things are justified on the grounds of efficiency and cost saving, but centralised policing has a more serious and different effect from those other losses. It undermines the public trust that local connection fosters. The policeman becomes someone from…

IT’S nearly 10 years since Athena last visited the ruins of Ruperra Castle, in the county borough of Caerphilly, but, to judge from photographs, this magical and unexpectedly sequestered ruin between Newport and Cardiff has only grown more melancholy with the passage of the years. Last month, planning permission was granted for the redevelopment of the former dairy, laundry, coach house and stables in the shadow of this Scheduled Monument and Grade II*-listed building. Redevelopment is welcome, but—scandalously—it has been granted without any firm accompanying proposals for the ruins themselves. Ruperra Castle was built in 1626 by Sir Thomas Morgan, steward to the Earl of Pembroke. It’s one in a group of late-Tudor and Stuart buildings that were compactly planned to resemble castle keeps on a foursquare plan with turrets at…