IT is going to be a strange, subdued Cheltenham Festival this year, something of a silent movie, and that will be most noticeable, symbolically at any rate, when the runners approach the tapes for the first race on Tuesday. Normally, there would be an almighty roar from 60,000 people in the packed grandstands, signalling that the nation’s four-day celebration of jump racing has started.
Next week (March 16–19), however, if you see a pint of Guinness, it is a mirage and if you spot an amateur rider, it might be Patrick Mullins, the 12-time Irish champion amateur, who was considering hastily taking up a professional licence in order to honour a book that included Sharjah in the Champion Hurdle.
The Festival today is the legacy of the two-decade stewardship of the late Lord Vestey, who died last month, as chairman—perhaps it’s better he does not see it in this muted incarnation—and his managing director, Edward Gillespie. Between them, they turned it into something much more than racing, a carnival of life, of spring, friendships, horses and, above all, sport.
In 2021, it will be stripped back to the bare bones. There are some who might rather enjoy that and, actually, ITV Racing has got this down to such a fine art after a year of crowd-less racing that its audience sitting on the sofa at home will hardly notice the difference.
Denne historien er fra March 10, 2021-utgaven av Country Life UK.
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Denne historien er fra March 10, 2021-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.
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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.
