Dame Kate Bingham hands over her phone to show me a photograph of mushrooms. Not any old mushrooms, but porcini, picked in woodland near her home, a restored watermill in the Welsh Marches. It's a huge haul, possibly her best yet, she says. 'I cook them in butter, shallots and garlic -off-the-charts delicious served with grouse breast. Some not so beautiful ones I dry in the Aga and pot up to make tea.'
The date on the photo is September 5, 2020, a Saturday, six months into the Covid-19 pandemic; in between picking through her porcini, she was running online meetings with colleagues on the Government's Vaccine Taskforce (VTF). Since her appointment as its chair in May that year, the race had been on to come up with vaccines in response to the virus and every day was a work day; phone calls would often be made at night as she climbed the hill behind her house.
What Dame Kate calls her 'bifurcated life' between the big skies and sheep-cropped hills of the border country and her day job, as managing partner at venture capitalists SV Health Investors, has its roots in her childhood. Her father was Tom Bingham, probably the most respected judge of the modern era who became Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales. 'Dad bought a cottage in Wales as an antidote to fast-paced London life,' she explains. "There was no indoor water, so washing up was done outside by Dad wearing an army greatcoat in cold weather. For me, London was school and the borders was play.'
This story is from the February 15, 2023 edition of Country Life UK.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber ? Sign In
This story is from the February 15, 2023 edition of Country Life UK.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber? Sign In
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.
