CHARLES II has had his critics down the centuries, but he wasn't called the Merry Monarch for nothing and it seems highly fitting that the first time ice cream appeared on the menu in this country came during his reign. In fact, the King himself was probably among the first to savour it, when it was served at a Windsor Castle banquet in 1671, held to mark the Feast of St George. Sadly, the delectable treat was only destined for royal and aristocratic taste buds for some time, simply because, for years after, the difficulty of storing ice ensured it remained a rare luxury, largely confined to estate owners with ice houses.
It's probably fair to say, therefore, that Covent Garden's third annual Cool Down icecream festival (August 19-September 4) is more the spiritual descendent of the so-called 'Ice Cream King' of Victorian London, the entrepreneur Carlo Gatti (1817-78). Born in Ticino, a poor Italian-speaking region of Switzerland, Gatti had headed for Paris at the age of 12, where he became involved in several small business ventures, before finally arriving in England in 1847. He settled in London's Little Italy, an area of Clerkenwell that was home to many Italians escaping the economic and social turbulence of their homeland. At first, he sold waffles from a cart, but, within two years, he'd opened a coffee house in partnership with a fellow émigré from Ticino, Battista Bolla. The shop made its own chocolate, drawing in curious customers by showing the cocoa roasting behind the shop window.
Diese Geschichte stammt aus der August 03, 2022-Ausgabe von Country Life UK.
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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.
