Country Life 28-Jul-2021

HURRAH for the Proms. This extraordinary festival of music, one of the best achievements of the BBC, invariably amazes with its range and quality: a testament to London’s claim to be the music capital of the world. Now, it’s more welcome than ever. Recorded music, however well the sound engineers have done their work, is no substitute. Nothing replaces the thrill, drama and risk of a live performance. The promenading tradition lives; you can still buy tickets on the day for a smidgen over £7. There is joy in rubbing shoulders (metaphorically: there will no doubt be a degree of distancing) with other enthusiasts. Homo sapiens is a social species. For those at home, 20 Proms are being broadcast on BBC 4: Bach’s St Matthew Passion and Elgar’s Cello Concerto (see…

BUCKINGHAMSHIRE’S Ludgershall Meadows—rare, ancient land that has never been intensively farmed and still shows evidence of medieval ridge-and-furrow ploughing—could be lost if the Berks, Bucks and Oxon Wildlife Trust (BBOWT) cannot raise £330,000 to buy it. The 77-acre plot is home to two of the UK’s rarest butterfly species—black and brown hairstreaks—plus protected great crested newts (above), linnets, reed buntings (below) and skylarks. ‘Floodplain-meadow habitat of the type found here is extremely rare—there are fewer than 1,500 hectares [3,707 acres] in the whole country,’ says BBOWT’s Debbie Lewis. ‘If we don’t buy this land, it is in serious jeopardy from being turned into pony paddocks… resulting in a permanent and irretrievable loss of wildlife.’ Visit www.bbowt.org.uk/ludgershall…

ALL the rights and freedoms we now enjoy began with protests, such as those by the Chartists and Suffragettes. Without protest… we’d have tyranny… we’d still be living in the Dark Ages,’ says Peter Tatchell, who has participated in more than 3,000 protests and been arrested 100 times over the past 54 years. His photographs are the first in a new digital display of banners, placards, flags and other expressions of revolt at www.cartoonmuseum.org, in tandem with the Cartoon Museum’s latest exhibition ‘V for Vendetta: Behind the Mask’ (until October 31). Anyone can take part by emailing their images to hello@cartoonmuseum.org, together with a short bio and answer to the question ‘what does protest mean to you?’.…

TRIBUTES have poured in for John Woodcock OBE, the finest of all cricket writers, who died on July 18 aged 94. Best known for his writing in The Times (1954–87), he was also COUNTRY LIFE’s last ever cricket correspondent (1962–91), filing meticulous Test Match summaries. Charming, unassuming and universally admired, he loved cricket, the countryside and the Hampshire village of Longparish, where he was born the son of the vicar and died in the same cottage he moved into in 1947. The River Test flows through the village and Woodcock was an accomplished fisherman. He also loved shooting and his ideal day was walking up wild partridge with local farming friends. Woodcock contracted septic arthritis and nearly died aged 15, resulting in seven hip replacements. When asked whether they were…

Puzzlers After a 16-month hiatus, the COUNTRY LIFE crossword competition is back! See page 116 Leicestershire It's finally become the last English county to have an officially recognised flag; the new standard features a running fox and cinquefoil Pig English North American parents have noticed their children talking with an English accent-‘tomato' instead of ‘toe-may-toe' and so on-and using words such as ‘telly' and ‘biscuits'; it's called the Peppa Pig effect, after the world's second-most popular kids' cartoon Boys about town A few weeks ago it was Gainsborough's Blue Boy; now, it's Sir Thomas Lawrence's Red Boy that has been saved for the nation, with the National Gallery committing to pay £9.3m for the painting Homeowners Some 4.6m properties-21% of UK homes-have increased in value this past year by more than the average salary (£30,500), according to Zoopla. The…

THE flip side to the controversy over last week’s BBC Panorama programme, The Dark Side of Horse Racing—which revealed upsetting scenes from F. Drury & Sons in Swindon, Wiltshire, one of only three licensed equine abattoirs in the UK, of former racehorses being euthanised inhumanely, contrary to regulations—is the programme’s apparent failure to recognise how life for former racehorses has improved significantly over the past few years, according to statistics from charity Retraining of Racehorses (RoR). RoR was launched in 2000 by the British Horseracing Authority (BHA) to improve the welfare of retired racehorses and currently has 9,010 on its books. Working with organisations such as the RSPCA and World Horse Welfare, RoR promotes and funds long-term sustainable solutions such as rehoming and retraining and stages more than 40 competitions a…