JANE TUCKWELL’S first job interview was at the age of 18, in the hunting field, when Col Frank Weldon, the fairly imperious director of Badminton Horse Trials, ‘rode round and round me and said “Well, young lady, I hear you didn’t do a bad job helping with the Pony Club championships. You’d better come to work for me”’.
Not many people wait 45 years for another interview, but that is what happened to Mrs Tuckwell when Col Weldon’s successor, Hugh Thomas, surprised the eventing world by announcing his retirement (after 30 years), on the Monday after this year’s event in May, and she was subsequently invited into Badminton House to talk to the Duke and Duchess of Beaufort. ‘I’d never been frightened of walking in there before, but I was then,’ she confesses.
‘I definitely thought, do I really want to do this? But there aren’t many chances to go in at the bottom—I mean, I used to go puce if Col Weldon even spoke to me —and come out at the top. I’ve been bowled over by the support I’ve received.’
Directing Badminton, the world’s oldest, richest and most famous horse trials, a major sporting event in its own right with about 160,000 plus visitors, is considered the plum job in equestrianism—Mr Thomas often said ‘I’m a lucky chap’—and speculation about his successor was rife.
In truth, no one else was in the running. The announcement that Badminton was to have its first female director in 70 years, and that it was to be the modest, discreet woman who, for decades, has calmed and charmed riders, volunteers and tradestand holders behind the scenes, has been extremely popular.
Denne historien er fra September 18, 2019-utgaven av Country Life UK.
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Denne historien er fra September 18, 2019-utgaven av Country Life UK.
Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.
Allerede abonnent? Logg på
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.
