Interview Christopher Woodward
CHRISTOPHER WOOD-WARD is incandescent. The day before this interview, he spoke at a public enquiry that will decide this year whether to allow three blocks of luxury flats to be built overlooking the Garden Museum in St Mary-at- Lambeth, SE1, of which he has been director since 2006.
There is much to fight for. The only museum in the UK dedicated to the art, history and design of gardens, it is a typically British success story: one that began in the early 1970s with a battle to save the medieval and Victorian church and ended up creating one of the most innovative, eclectic venues in London. Although Mr Woodward is too young to have been in the vanguard of this struggle, the museum’s current popularity is undoubtedly thanks to his maverick touch of genius.
‘People will look at this decade as we judge the 1960s,’ he says, taking breath from his outrage for a sip of coffee in the contemporary glass cafe overlooking the tombs of Capt Bligh (of the mutiny) and of the Tradescants. The 17thcentury royal gardeners travelled widely, bringing home plants never seen before, and transformed our horticultural knowledge. It is the presence of the Tradescants’ tomb that explains why there is a museum devoted to gardening history squashed between the embankment, Lambeth Palace and busy thoroughfares—with no garden in sight. Now, the museum and its plans to green the area are threatened.
Denne historien er fra January 20, 2021-utgaven av Country Life UK.
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Denne historien er fra January 20, 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.
