Countryside

Ophiostoma novo-ulmi is not an expression that sits easily at the head of a Christmas Spectator column, so I’ll return later to the unpleasant fungus and disobliging beetle that over my lifetime have been devastating the English elm, and turn instead to one of our most beloved poets offering his own personal homage to his most beloved tree: Old Elm that murmured in our chimney topThe sweetest anthem autumn ever made. John Clare wrote ‘To a Fallen Elm’ in the 1830s: a poem that was partly a lament inspired by his boyhood memories of the English agricultural enclosures. Thoust heard the knave abusing those in powerBawl freedom loud and then

The last straw Farmers are threatening to strike over the government’s changes to inheritance tax in what is being described as a first in Britain. Besides France, where farmers regularly protest, India witnessed a farmers’ strike in 2020, which was eventually settled after the government dropped proposed new laws. But one of the earliest farmers’ strikes was conducted by the Farmers’ Holiday Association in Iowa in 1932, by farmers protesting at consistently low prices for their products. The idea was that farmers would go on ‘holiday’, refusing to sell any of their produce. Few, however, joined, leading to pickets blocking rural roads with telegraph poles. One policeman was killed, but

There’s a grumble, often repeated among country folk, that ‘hunting people got hunting banned’. What they mean (I think) is that a combination of complacency, arrogance and the failure to get the public onside is what did for hunting. It’s not really fair: arguably, without the disaster of the Iraq war, Tony Blair may not have felt he needed to chuck a piece of legislation at his backbenchers, like a juicy bone to a pack of hungry hounds. The hunting ban never was about animal welfare, but class hatred, Dennis Skinner declaring that the bill was ‘for the miners’. The ban, Blair later admitted, was ‘one of the domestic legislative

The new hunting year formally began last week. Should I resubscribe? Politically, the outlook is bleak. In February, Steve Reed, the shadow environment secretary, announced that Labour would implement a ‘full ban on trail and drag hunting’, on the grounds that there were ‘loopholes’ in Labour’s hunting ban. This even though, when advocating the original ban, Labour said it favoured drag hunting (trail hunting had not then been invented) and was worried only about live quarry. Mr Reed included his ban promise in a speech in which he announced that his party would treat rural voters with ‘greater respect’. His two aims conflict. The idea that chasing a scented rag

‘Thanks for calling Tesco bank,’ said the voice, before rather lavishly promising to get me to a member of the team who was going to help me. This wasn’t quite how it turned out, although I would say, up until the moment I asked to change my address I was a very satisfied customer. If any of these questions did not suit me, I would be allowed to object, he said, as though reading me my rights This credit card has a very reasonable interest rate, and a nice big limit. However, it has decided that I do not have the security clearance to change my address because I have

The mountain spring that feeds our house froze during the first ground frost, and we had no water. The builder boyfriend filled a bucket from the fountain in the garden so we could flush the loo. This really is living in faded grandeur. I spent the evening worrying about how we had cursed ourselves by drinking and bathing in holy water We are waiting on various tradesmen to turn up and do things to the plumbing in our run-down Georgian pile. We know we might have to drop a bore hole. But until then the water coming out of our taps is from a ‘holy well’. The stream pools into

I am wary of mentioning General de Gaulle in these pages, if for no other reason than remembering Auberon Waugh many years ago arguing against a statue of the leader of the Free French being erected in London. Waugh’s objections were based firstly on the fact that statues only worked with togas because statuary did not favour the trouser leg. His second objection was that this country had fought a long and costly war to get General de Gaulle and his friends out of London. That notwithstanding, I dare to mention de Gaulle here because he has been on my mind. Or at least one aspect of him has been

‘Let’s get out of here,’ I whispered, almost in tears, as the priest finished his horrible homily. Standing at the altar in front of a stained-glass window showing Jesus with his arms outstretched, this priest was telling us all off for what had happened in Dublin, three hours’ drive away. I suppose we expected a bit of a lecture, going by the speeches about Palestine that we had been subjected to in previous weeks. We did so want to fit in by going to Mass, which had been noted by our Irish neighbours as a good thing. The priest told us how un-Christian we were being for listening to social

‘Have you ever eaten breakfast at the Hilton before?’ shouted the woman on the door of the restaurant, as a guest attempted to gain entry. She told me I could help myself to coffee and I said I would, because I had As he mumbled something, she shouted: ‘And how are you this morning?’ He mumbled something else, and looked scared. I was already sitting down, having dodged the Cerberus of the breakfast bar because, when I entered, she had been marching around the diners shouting, ‘Anything else? More coffee? No?’ and I managed to help myself to what I wanted from the buffet and choose a table. This did

In the pitch dark, we stormed from the house to the pick-up truck and screeched out of our farmyard with me shouting: ‘Come on! This is our only chance! If we don’t get there now we’re done for!’ ‘They won’t sell to us because we’re English. It’s like those stories you hear about idiots who move to Wales’ It was nearly 10 p.m. and I had just scored something on the phone so elusive on this remote hillside that I was physically itching from the desperation of trying to get it. The dealer concerned had answered his phone after I had rung him repeatedly, on the hour every hour, like

‘I don’t know if hedgelaying is a dying art. But there’s a lot of old hedgelayers that are dying,’ says David Whitaker to chuckles from some of his fellow craftsmen. The occasion is the annual hedgelaying championship, organised by the National Hedgelaying Society, of which Whitaker is secretary. In a good year, the event draws around 100 competitors and a few curious spectators to a marquee in a muddy field in Hampshire. Britain’s oldest hedge dates back to the Bronze Age. Thousands of miles of hedgerow were laid in the late 1700s after the Enclosures Act carved up the countryside. There’s a formula for working out how old a hedge