THE complicated, close and much-misunderstood relationship between fox and huntsman is adroitly captured in fiction by David Rook in T his 1970 novel The Belstone Fox. An abandoned cub, Tag, is brought up in hunt kennels before being released into the wild, where his cleverness in evading hounds engenders affection and respect from the huntsman who reared him. After many runs: "Tag had the devil in him the game had slowed down to the point where it had become boring, so now he was going to liven it up a little' and the fox leads the pack across a railway track with tragic, bloody results.
The huntsman, maddened by grief at the loss of his hounds, obsessively determines to catch Tag and, some members of the antihunting fraternity may be pleased to know, dies in the attempt; the fox and his hound protector, Merlin, soberly regard the man's prone body from a granite rock on Dartmoor. (The film The Fox and the Hound is a Disneyfied version of the tale, with Tag renamed Tod.)
The peerless naturalist writer and artist Denys Watkins-Pitchford (BB'), a schoolmaster and field sportsman, also captures that complex hunter-quarry dynamic in his evocative book Wild Lone: The Story of a Pytchley Fox (1938). BB's hero, Rufus, exemplifies both the 'survival of the fittest' principle by which wild species are preserved and the bitterly accepting 'Nature red in tooth and claw' line in Tennyson's grief poem In Memoriam. His Rufus is a ruthless, casual killer of wildlife, including hedgehogs, and domestic fowl, yet the heart of the hunting man rejoices as he evades the Pytchley Hunt time and time again: 'May the good earth keep you, now and for always. Good hunting, little red fox.'
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Denne historien er fra December 13 - 20, 2023 (Double Issue)-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.
