GEORGE V said: ‘Abroad is awful. I know. I’ve been.’ He much preferred holidaying up the road from us, at Sandringham.
Although Lady Macclesfield wrote that ‘it would be difficult to find a more ugly or desolate-looking place: the wind blows keen from the Wash and the spring is said to be unendurable in that part of Norfolk,’ George’s mother, the dowager Queen Alexandra, adored it. The estuary mud reminded her of her native Denmark. COUNTRY LIFE would report in 1902 that ‘the exquisite kindness which permeates all she does finds constant expression in her love of animals’.
I’ve managed to get through life without a chalcedony model of a corncrake. In 1907, however, Alexandra was to commission the London outpost of the House of Fabergé to depict the animals on the Sandringham estate. At about £75 a throw, they made charming gifts and the list of semi-precious stones from which they were fashioned reads like the Book of Revelation.
Fabergé’s sculptors produced an opal stoat, an aventurine quartz sow, a silver woodcock, an obsidian shire horse, a jasper cat, a purpurine bantam, a jet Norfolk Black turkey and a sheep, modelled from a beloved royal pet that had been rescued from the lunch menu on a Nile cruise. (Abroad is awful.)
Denne historien er fra November 1, 2017-utgaven av Country Life UK.
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Denne historien er fra November 1, 2017-utgaven av Country Life UK.
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Happiness in small things
Putting life into perspective and forces of nature in farming
Colour vision
In an eye-baffling arrangement of geometric shapes, a sinister-looking clown and a little girl, Test Card F is one of television’s most enduring images, says Rob Crossan
'Without fever there is no creation'
Three of the top 10 operas performed worldwide are by the emotionally volatile Italian composer Giacomo Puccini, who died a century ago. Henrietta Bredin explains how his colourful life influenced his melodramatic plot lines
The colour revolution
Toxic, dull or fast-fading pigments had long made it tricky for artists to paint verdant scenes, but the 19th century ushered in a viridescent explosion of waterlili
Bullace for you
The distinction between plums, damsons and bullaces is sweetly subtle, boiling down to flavour and aesthetics, but don’t eat the stones, warns John Wright
Lights, camera, action!
Three remarkable country houses, two of which have links to the film industry, the other the setting for a top-class croquet tournament, are anything but ordinary
I was on fire for you, where did you go?
In Iceland, a land with no monks or monkeys, our correspondent attempts to master the art of fishing light’ for Salmo salar, by stroking the creases and dimples of the Midfjardara river like the features of a loved one
Bravery bevond belief
A teenager on his gap year who saved a boy and his father from being savaged by a crocodile is one of a host of heroic acts celebrated in a book to mark the 250th anniversary of the Royal Humane Society, says its author Rupert Uloth
Let's get to the bottom of this
Discovering a well on your property can be viewed as a blessing or a curse, but all's well that ends well, says Deborah Nicholls-Lee, as she examines the benefits of a personal water supply
Sing on, sweet bird
An essential component of our emotional relationship with the landscape, the mellifluous song of a thrush shapes the very foundation of human happiness, notes Mark Cocker, as he takes a closer look at this diverse family of birds
