THE Land Rover is such a sturdy and enduring British symbol that it’s per-haps little surprise it makes a brief appearance in one of our better war films, Ice Cold in Alex (1958), starring John Mills and Sylvia Syms. The only problem, as many have gleefully pointed out, is that the film’s action is set in 1942, fully six years before the first vehicles rolled out onto the market.
There is, however, a wartime link in the story behind its creation. In 1947, Maurice Wilks, technical director of the Rover car company, took possession of an ex-US Army Willys Jeep, one of America’s first mass-produced military vehicles. Wilks found the four-wheel drive very useful for heavy jobs around his home near Leamington Spa, such as clearing fallen trees brought down in the gales of one of the hardest British winters on record. However, accessing spare parts was an issue. Wilks remarked that if he was incapable of designing something comparable to the Jeep, he was in the wrong job. He also recognised that there was a gap in the market for a utilitarian farmer’s vehicle of this type that could be sold on the valuable export market, so he began sketching out ideas for his own version.
Esta historia es de la edición October 20, 2021 de Country Life UK.
Comience su prueba gratuita de Magzter GOLD de 7 días para acceder a miles de historias premium seleccionadas y a más de 9,000 revistas y periódicos.
Ya eres suscriptor ? Conectar
Esta historia es de la edición October 20, 2021 de Country Life UK.
Comience su prueba gratuita de Magzter GOLD de 7 días para acceder a miles de historias premium seleccionadas y a más de 9,000 revistas y periódicos.
Ya eres suscriptor? Conectar
Give it some stick
Galloping through the imagination, competitive hobby-horsing is a gymnastic sport on the rise in Britain, discovers Sybilla Hart
Paper escapes
Steven King selects his best travel books of 2024
For love, not money
This year may have marked the end of brag-art’, bought merely to show off one’s wealth. It’s time for a return to looking for connoisseurship, beauty and taste
Mary I: more bruised than bloody
Cast as a sanguinary tyrant, our first Queen Regnant may not deserve her brutal reputation, believes Geoffrey Munn
A love supreme
Art brought together 19th-century Norwich couple Joseph and Emily Stannard, who shared a passion for painting, but their destiny would be dramatically different
Private views
One of the best ways-often the only way-to visit the finest privately owned gardens in the country is by joining an exclusive tour. Non Morris does exactly that
Shhhhhh...
THERE is great delight to be had poring over the front pages of COUNTRY LIFE each week, dreaming of what life would be like in a Scottish castle (so reasonably priced, but do bear in mind the midges) or a townhouse in London’s Eaton Square (worth a king’s ransom, but, oh dear, the traffic) or perhaps that cottage in the Cotswolds (if you don’t mind standing next to Hollywood A-listers in the queue at Daylesford). The estate agent’s particulars will give you details of acreage, proximity to schools and railway stations, but never—no, never—an indication of noise levels.
Mission impossible
Rubble and ruin were all that remained of the early-19th-century Villa Frere and its gardens, planted by the English diplomat John Hookham Frere, until a group of dedicated volunteers came to its rescue. Josephine Tyndale-Biscoe tells the story
When a perfect storm hits
Weather, wars, elections and financial uncertainty all conspired against high-end house sales this year, but there were still some spectacular deals
Give the dog a bone
Man's best friend still needs to eat like its Lupus forebears, believes Jonathan Self, when it's not guarding food, greeting us or destroying our upholstery, of course
