JOHN WHITTOW is the last survivor of the founder committee that met in 1964 at the National Trust’s Westminster headquarters to plan Enterprise Neptune. He has now published his memoirs, The Edge of The Land, to explain how that groundbreaking effort to save the British shoreline from development and neglect came about.
The book is also the story of a man who has dedicated his life to the study of landforms, with a special focus on what he calls ‘the edge of the land, the zone where the three elements of earth, air and ocean truly conflate’. As he’s now 91, that amounts to a considerable span of time, underlined by his memory of seeing George V and Queen Mary on holiday near Sandringham in 1935. ‘I remember them waving to us as they swept past in a limousine and I also remember being told how important that was, because the King died the next year,’ he says.
To paraphrase Noël Coward, however, Norfolk is very flat, and it was the rockier undulations of the north Wales coast that prompted an interest in geology and coastal matters. ‘My father was born in Pembrokeshire and, as we lived in Staffordshire, he would take us to the north coast. Llandudno, a planned Victorian town with the huge limestone headland of the Great Orme rising up behind it made a great impression. Those places where the mountains meet the sea have always appealed most to me.’
Denne historien er fra October 13, 2021-utgaven av Country Life UK.
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Denne historien er fra October 13, 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.
