I HAD my first driving lesson from Sir Stirling Moss at the Festival of Speed: brake into a corner and accelerate through, treat a fast car like a fast horse. I was 11 and we were at Goodwood House, where the then Earl of March had brought the roar of engines back to his West Sussex estate after a break of 27 years. It was his grandfather, the 9th Duke of Richmond, who had founded the grand tradition of motorsport at Goodwood, when RAF Westhamp- nett, the estate’s Battle of Britain base, was being decommissioned and Sqd Ldr Tony Gaze suggested that the 2.4-mile perimeter road would make rather a good racetrack. The Duke, a distinguished racing driver, leapt at the idea and, on September 18, 1948, the austerity of post-war Britain was lit up by the inaugural motor-racing meeting.
Some 15,000 people arrived, to a track with barely any fencing, wheat on the infield and an old Austin Six ambulance. Eighty-five drivers—including Moss, who won—contested eight races, heralding a countrywide resurgence of motorsport. ‘You have to consider it against years of rationing, a public deprived of spectacle,’ says motoring historian Doug Nye. ‘It is a beautiful place, below the Downs near the sea with salt in the air and the track is undulating, so has extra character.’
Diese Geschichte stammt aus der September 06, 2023-Ausgabe von Country Life UK.
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Diese Geschichte stammt aus der September 06, 2023-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.
