TO look at Highclere Castle, an Egyptian sarcophagus is probably the last thing you'd expect to find inside. Yet, below Charles Barry's tower and the Reynolds paintings inside lies a perfect replica of a 3,000-year-old coffin belonging to a pharaoh. Highclere Castle, six miles from Newbury, Berkshire, is now best known as the location of the Sunday-night toff-buster Downton Abbey, but, a century ago, it obtained fame of another kind. On November 26, 1922, its then owner George Herbert, 5th Earl of Carnarvon, alongside his daughter Lady Evelyn Herbert and the archaeologist Howard Carter, stood in front of the door of the boy pharaoh Tutankhamun's tomb in the Valley of the Kings.
Since then, Carter has been celebrated as the great discoverer of Tutankhamun and Carnarvon reduced to merely the financier. In this centenary year, the current Earl and Countess of Carnarvon-the 8th Earl, great-grandson of the 5th, and his wife, author of an upcoming biography of the 5th Earlare determined to give their forebear his time in the limelight. When we meet, on an exceptionally busy day at Highclere, complete with visiting public, fire alarms and bounding labradors, the first thing is to establish exactly what kind of man the 5th Earl was.
Denne historien er fra August 10, 2022-utgaven av Country Life UK.
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Denne historien er fra August 10, 2022-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.
