IF ever there were a fruit designed for pure, unashamed pleasure, it’s the cherry. Sure, the peach might have more blatant, come-hither appeal and the strawberry her own buxom allure. Yet the cherry, with its comely, concupiscent curves and fecund, luscious succulence is a sybaritic wink in edible form, pure scarlet temptation. And, although most believe that an apple was the original forbidden fruit, used by that naughty snake to lead poor Adam and Eve into temptation, would you really risk being driven from Eden for a dreary old Granny Smith? I thought not. It’s hard to resist a cherry.
‘The precious, unkeepable cherry,’ sighs Jane Grigson, ‘was the fruit of paradise, the glimpse and symbol of perfection.’ Because it wasn’t always about lascivious desire, rather (and paradoxically) purity and innocence, too. In medieval art, cherries often represented sweet, unsullied virtue and in Renaissance paintings, from Leonardo da Vinci to Titian, the fruit was associated with the Virgin Mary, blood red like Christ’s wounds on the cross. And it’s not just in Europe. The ancient Chinese saw cherries as fruits of immortality and, in Japan, the cherry-blossom (or sakura) season is not only a celebration of spring and new birth, but a contemplation on the transience of life, as short as it is sweet. Rather nearer to home, A. E. Housman, in A Shropshire Lad, decrees the cherry ‘the loveliest of trees’ and P. Morton Shand is characteristically bombastic in his praise. ‘It is a blessed tree, the cherry-tree, and no garden planted in honour of God or Voltaire should be without one.’
Denne historien er fra July 19, 2023-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 July 19, 2023-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.
