WHAT is it that makes Somerset so special? The answer, as Arthur Fallowfield would have said, lies in the soil. Trodden and worked by generations of people and their animals, what is arguably England’s most fashionable county now produces some of our most exciting food, from legendary cider and traditional Cheddar cheese to yoghurt, charcuterie, oysters and even savoury granola.
The food community was one of the most compelling aspects of our home county when we started on our third ‘Deepest’ book. Following in the successful footsteps of Deepest Dorset (2016) and Deepest Wiltshire (2019), Deepest Somerset again sets out to capture the roots of the unique county, neighbouring the others, but different in so many ways. The sales of all three books benefit local charities and each one is based on the ceremonial boundaries of the counties, before unitary authorities were dreamt of and edges massaged to suit electoral patterns.
Our Somerset takes in Bath and parts of Bristol. It’s home to nuclear-power station Hinkley Point C, now Europe’s biggest construction site, Glastonbury Festival at Michael Eavis’s Pilton family farm, Cheddar Gorge, Henry the smiling vacuum cleaner and, increasingly, figures from the worlds of finance, showbusiness, politics and the media, nestling alongside the well-hidden landed gentry.
The introduction to Deepest Somerset, written by The Prince of Wales, stresses the importance of ‘agri-culture’—both parts of the word: ‘We dwell within the landscape that feeds us and within the culture that is derived from maintaining its rhythms and natural cycle.’
هذه القصة مأخوذة من طبعة April 13, 2022 من Country Life UK.
ابدأ النسخة التجريبية المجانية من Magzter GOLD لمدة 7 أيام للوصول إلى آلاف القصص المتميزة المنسقة وأكثر من 9,000 مجلة وصحيفة.
بالفعل مشترك ? تسجيل الدخول
هذه القصة مأخوذة من طبعة April 13, 2022 من Country Life UK.
ابدأ النسخة التجريبية المجانية من Magzter GOLD لمدة 7 أيام للوصول إلى آلاف القصص المتميزة المنسقة وأكثر من 9,000 مجلة وصحيفة.
بالفعل مشترك? تسجيل الدخول
Save our family farms
IT Tremains to be seen whether the Government will listen to the more than 20,000 farming people who thronged Whitehall in central London on November 19 to protest against changes to inheritance tax that could destroy countless family farms, but the impact of the good-hearted, sombre crowds was immediate and positive.
A very good dog
THE Spanish Pointer (1766–68) by Stubbs, a landmark painting in that it is the artist’s first depiction of a dog, has only been exhibited once in the 250 years since it was painted.
The great astral sneeze
Aurora Borealis, linked to celestial reindeer, firefoxes and assassinations, is one of Nature's most mesmerising, if fickle displays and has made headlines this year. Harry Pearson finds out why
'What a good boy am I'
We think of them as the stuff of childhood, but nursery rhymes such as Little Jack Horner tell tales of decidedly adult carryings-on, discovers Ian Morton
Forever a chorister
The music-and way of living-of the cabaret performer Kit Hesketh-Harvey was rooted in his upbringing as a cathedral chorister, as his sister, Sarah Sands, discovered after his death
Best of British
In this collection of short (5,000-6,000-word) pen portraits, writes the author, 'I wanted to present a number of \"Great British Commanders\" as individuals; not because I am a devotee of the \"great man, or woman, school of history\", but simply because the task is interesting.' It is, and so are Michael Clarke's choices.
Old habits die hard
Once an antique dealer, always an antique dealer, even well into retirement age, as a crop of interesting sales past and future proves
It takes the biscuit
Biscuit tins, with their whimsical shapes and delightful motifs, spark nostalgic memories of grandmother's sweet tea, but they are a remarkably recent invention. Matthew Dennison pays tribute to the ingenious Victorians who devised them
It's always darkest before the dawn
After witnessing a particularly lacklustre and insipid dawn on a leaden November day, John Lewis-Stempel takes solace in the fleeting appearance of a rare black fox and a kestrel in hot pursuit of a pipistrelle bat
Tarrying in the mulberry shade
On a visit to the Gainsborough Museum in Sudbury, Suffolk, in August, I lost my husband for half an hour and began to get nervous. Fortunately, an attendant had spotted him vanishing under the cloak of the old mulberry tree in the garden.