IN February this year, I published my latest book, Taming the Four Horsemen—about the imminent threats we face and my rather radical proposals as to how to deal with them—with a big party at Stanfords in London’s Covent Garden. The major menaces of pandemics, war, famine and the death of the planet are listed on the cover and, on page four, I write: ‘There is little doubt that we face a major global pandemic before long.’ I go on to say how research into the infinite world of microbes and viruses is urgently needed if we are to avoid a pandemic and how much more valuable this would be than spending vast amounts on striving to reach outer space.
Then, in March, we went skiing in France. I was skiing pretty well, I thought, for a man in his eighties, but, on the last day, I felt a bit knackered. By the time we arrived back at our home on Bodmin Moor, I was exhausted. An ambulance came and whisked me off to Derriford hospital in Plymouth, where I was told that I had a choice: to stay in the comfortable admission ward and almost certainly die or to be taken down to the Intensive Care Unit (ICU), where horrible things would be done to me, but I would have a 20% chance of survival.
Those seemed reasonable odds, so I was taken down to ICU and mercifully remember very little of the next five weeks, which I spent in an induced coma. I was put on a ventilator, had kidney failure, which involved dialysis, and had a tracheostomy fitted to help me breathe. The nurses and doctors were amazingly patient and kind, never giving up on me, although, three times, they rang Louella, my wife, to say that I had a less than 5% chance of surviving and that she should prepare for the worst.
Denne historien er fra November 11, 2020-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
Denne historien er fra November 11, 2020-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.
