The Queen's Christmas Message

At the BBC, here.
Happy Christmas, everyone!

Fairy Tale Films: The Chagford Filmmaking Group

Perfect for the holiday season - and for the child in us all.

From the site:

The Chagford Filmmaking Group is dedicated to making films of British fairytales - traditional stories rooted in the British landscape.

We are a non-profit organization creating films that we would want our children to see. We simply wish to tell the magical stories that are part of our heritage.

"Elizabeth-Jane Baldry's films are imaginative and refreshing - a new storyteller from the green heart of Devon"

- Alan Lee
Academy Award winner, conceptual designer, Lord of the Rings

We love their work and wish the group every success.

Please subscribe to their free mailing list at the site.

Hedgerow Trees: A Strategy for Renewal

"The importance of hedgerow trees:
Hedgerow trees are just one of the many assets that contribute to the
natural wealth of our countryside. As individuals they provide firewood,
habitats for wildlife, offer shade and shelter and often carry local
significance marking boundaries. Collectively however, they provide the
countryside with a stature and irregularity of form that visually defines its
beauty – a cultural asset of unquantifiable value to our society."

From the Game Conservancy Trust. PDF

Dominick Dunne: A Tribute

A beautiful memorial to Dominick Dunne is offered at Vanity Fair
Leave your condolences here.

Wikipedia

Exeter catacombs identified as potential swine flu mortuary

"Exeter city council is considering using 19th century catacombs to store the bodies of swine flu victims if the outbreak worsens.

They’ve identified the empty underground burial chambers in Bartholomew Street, currently used as a tourist attraction, as a potential mortuary.

A council spokesman said the plan would be implemented if the crematorium and cemeteries could not keep up with funeral demands."

Link

BBC: Lorna Doone

Now we can enjoy the romance of Exmoor online...

"The BBC dished up Lorna Doone as its classic costume drama for Christmas 2000 and served its source material well. R. D. Blackmore's novel of dangerous times and inter-clan warfare on Exmoor during the time of the Monmouth Rebellion is highly romantic. At its centre is the ongoing war between John Ridd (Richard Coyle), the yeoman with a noble heart, and Carver Doone, the reckless young leader of the outlawed family who murdered Ridd's father. Aside from their familial enmity, they are also rival suitors for the hand of the eponymous heroine (a spirited performance from Amelia Warner). The production avoids overkill on the swashbuckling front: the battle scenes are grim and bloody; Lorna herself is cocooned by her family but the Doone clan lives in a bleak, rough encampment with few comforts. And in Aidan Gillan's Carver, we have an anti-hero of extraordinary charisma, driven and ultimately destroyed by his single-minded determination to make Lorna his wife or see her dead. A stirring evening's viewing which offers the good old-fashioned satisfaction of just desserts all round." --Piers Ford

Read an online illustrated version of the book here.

BBC: A walk in Lorna Doone country - Link

The Devil Rides Out

Christopher Lee has been knighted. Congratulations, Sir!

The Avengers

Marvellous then - and now.

When Boris Met Dave

Much ado about some Hoorays.

English Cider, the apple of my eye

'...I sip a pint of Aspall Draught Suffolk Cyder with Henry Chevallier Guild, a partner in family-owned Aspall and the newly installed chairman of the National Association of Cider Makers.
"Cider has suffered from a serious image problem over the years," he says. "For too long it was seen as the preserve of tramps such as you describe, students and Wurzels. It was to get you drunk, quickly and cheaply.
"Happily that has changed, thanks in part to the efforts of Bulmers and Magners, and cider is currently outperforming every other drinks category. The market doubled in value between 2004 and 2008 and increased in volume by 91 per cent. Cider now accounts for seven per cent of all alcohol sales in the UK, with the trade worth £1.8 billion."
Guild's family has been making cider ever since his five-times great grandfather – Clement Chevallier – arrived in Suffolk from the apple-growing island of Jersey in 1725.
"In those days, cider was held in great esteem and would have been drunk in the grandest of houses," Guild explains. "My dream is to see English cider restored to its rightful place, served in the best hotels and restaurants alongside the finest of wines."'

Yes, please!
Article at the Telegraph


From Chambers' Book of Days for September 25th
CIDER-MAKING

"Debarred by the adverse influences of climate from the profitable cultivation of the vine, the northern nations of Europe have endeavoured to supply this deficiency by the manufacture of exhilarating liquors from fruits and grains of various kinds, more congenial to their soil and skies. Of these rivals to the grape, with the exception of John Barleycorn and his sons, there is none which may more fairly claim to contest the palm of agreeableness and popularity than the apple and her golden-haired daughter, the bright and sparkling cider, whom some ardent admirers have even exalted to a level with the regal vintage of Champagne. Hear how John Philips, in his poem of Cider, eulogises the red-streak apple and its genial produce:

'Let every tree in every garden own
The Red-streak as supreme, whose pulpous fruit
With gold irradiate, and vermilion shines
Tempting, not fatal, as the birth of that
Primeval interdicted plant that won
Fond Eve in hapless hour to taste, and die.
This, of more bounteous influence, inspires
Poetic raptures, and the lowly
Muse Kindles to loftier strains; even I perceive
Her sacred virtue. See! the numbers flow
Easy, whilst, cheer'd with her nectareous juice,
Hers and my country's praises I exalt.
Hail Herefordian plant, that dost disdain
All other fields! Heaven's sweetest blessing, hail!
Be thou the copious matter of my song,
And thy choice nectar; on which always waits
Laughter, and sport, and care-beguiling wit,
And friendship, chief delight of human life.
What should we wish for more? or why, in quest
Of foreign vintage, insincere, and mixt,
Traverse th' extremest world? why tempt the rage
Of the rough ocean? when our native glebe
Imparts, from bounteous womb, annual recruits
Of wine delectable, that far surmounts
Gallic, or Latin grapes, or those that see
The setting sun near Calpes' towering height.
Nor let the Rhodian, nor the Lesbian vines
Vaunt their rich Must, nor let Tokay contend
For sovereignty; Phanaeus self must bow
To th' Ariconian vales.'

Like hop-picking in the east, the gathering of apples, for cider, forms one of the liveliest and most interesting of rural operations throughout the year in the western counties of England. These comprise mainly Hereford, Monmouth, and Gloucester shires, Somerset and Devon, the first and last counties more especially representing the two great cider districts of England, and also two separate qualities of the liquor, Herefordshire being noted par excellence for sweet, as Devonshire is for rough cider. Both descriptions, however, are made in the two counties. In the sweet cider, the object of the maker is to check the vinous fermentation as far as possible, so as to prevent the decomposition of the saccharine matter, which in the rough cider is more or less destroyed. The cider lauded by Philips in such encomiastic terms, is the sweet Herefordshire cider; but as a native of the west midland counties, a due allowance must be made for local predilection. It, nevertheless, enjoys a deservedly high reputation, and it is stated as a positive fact that an English peer, when ambassador in France, used frequently to palm it on the noblesse as a delicious wine.

In the manufacture of cider, those apples are preferred which are of a small size and have an acid or astringent taste. Red and yellow are the favourite colours, green being avoided as producing a very poor quality of liquor. Where cider is made in small quantities, or where it is desired to have it of a specially fine description, the apples are gathered by the hand when thoroughly ripe, care-fully picked, and any rotten portions that may appear, cut away.

For general purposes, the fruit is beaten from the trees by the aid of long poles, and collected in baskets beneath, by women and children. It is then spread out in heaps in the open air, and remains exposed to the weather till it becomes mellow. It is then conveyed to the cider-mill, a primitive apparatus, consisting of a stone wheel revolving in a circular trough of the same material, and driven by a horse. The apples are ground as nearly as possible to a uniform consistence, it being especially desirable that the rinds and kernels should be thoroughly pressed, as on the former the colour, and on the latter the flavour of the liquor essentially depend. The resulting pulp, or, as it is termed, pomage, is taken to the cider-press, a machine constructed on the principle of the packing-press, on the floor of which the crushed fruit is piled up, between layers of straw or hair-cloth, and subjected to a severe and protracted pressure. The heap thus formed is styled the cheese. Wooden tubs or troughs receive the expressed liquor, which is then. placed in casks, and left to ferment. This operation being successfully completed, the cider, bright and clear, is racked off into other casks, which are allowed to stand in the open air till the ensuing spring with their bungs lightly fixed, but which are then tightly closed. The best time for bottling it is said to be when it is from eighteen months to two years old, or rather when it has acquired its highest brightness and flavour in the cask. If the proper time for doing this be seized, the liquor thus bottled may be kept for a very long period, but, as a general rule, cider is extremely difficult to preserve, from the readiness with which it turns sour, owing to the development of lactic acid.

As a summer drink, cider is a most palatable and refreshing one, though its extended use seems to be confined to the western counties of England, where it occupies the place in popular favour held, in other parts of the country, by beer. The percentage of alcohol which it contains, varies from 5½ to 9. We retain a most affectionate remembrance of the liquor in connection with the fairy nooks of Devon, and the rich pastures of Somerset, through which, some years ago, it was our fortune to ramble. Enchanted land of the west! how our fancies are entwined with thy sunny valleys, deep shady lanes, and the beauty and vigour of thy rustic inhabitants. Long may Pomona shed her choicest blessings on thy head, and her refreshing juices cheer the heart of the thirsty and way-worn traveller!"

Farthing

"One summer weekend in 1949--but not our 1949--the well-connected “Farthing set”, a group of upper-crust English families, enjoy a country retreat. Lucy is a minor daughter in one of those families; her parents were both leading figures in the group that overthrew Churchill and negotiated peace with Herr Hitler eight years before.

Despite her parents’ evident disapproval, Lucy is married--happily--to a London Jew. It was therefore quite a surprise to Lucy when she and her husband David found themselves invited to the retreat. It’s even more startling when, on the retreat’s first night, a major politician of the Farthing set is found gruesomely murdered, with abundant signs that the killing was ritualistic.

It quickly becomes clear to Lucy that she and David were brought to the retreat in order to pin the murder on him. Major political machinations are at stake, including an initiative in Parliament, supported by the Farthing set, to limit the right to vote to university graduates. But whoever’s behind the murder, and the frame-up, didn’t reckon on the principal investigator from Scotland Yard being a man with very private reasons for sympathizing with outcasts…and looking beyond the obvious.

As the trap slowly shuts on Lucy and David, they begin to see a way out--a way fraught with peril in a darkening world."
from http://us.macmillan.com/farthing

Riveting... read it online.

Walton, Jo - Farthing

The Homebody: Traditional British style

"Fashion is going through one of its periodic love affairs with tartan and tweed"... We like to shop, but must admit that we can probably manage with the things we already have.
Link
Olivia Pollack tells how to wax a Barbour jacket at Country Life.

THE CHAP warns against clothes that aren't really made in England, and have a petition to sign. We hope Barbour has everything made in Britain now.

Why are posh people so scruffy?

Rachel Johnson, now editor of THE LADY

"So why do some of the upper classes live in what some might think of as squalor?
What's the point in ironing your underclothes?
The truth is they like to be comfortable. What is more comfortable than wearing an old sweater with that special 'eau de cologne Anglais rustique', which is a mixture of damp wool, dog and gun oil - with the odd gravy stain added for good measure.
After all, who wants to take their boots off if they are shortly going back outside - and anyway, what is the point? Why spend hours spraying 'surfaces' with chemicals when there are so many more amusing things to do? Is there any point in ironing your underclothes?
It could be said that the upper classes are highly eco-friendly. They don't hoover very much, hardly ever turn on the washing machine and have the heating on only when it is really very cold.
And, more to the point, where would you rather go for a cup of tea? To Rachel's comfortable messy house or to an immaculate drawing room where you are frightened of leaning back in the chair in case you crush the perfect cushions?
Dirt is a way of life to me and my fellow toffs. It's both comfortable and relaxing. It's medically desirable as you build up resistance to an enormous range of bugs.
You save lots of money as you don't need to buy many clothes, and when you do they last for ever. And it's even environmentally friendly.
A blind eye to the dust on the mantle and the mud on the kitchen floor has served our family well for more than 800 years. Neat freaks be damned, I have no intention of changing those habits of eight centuries. Not now. Not ever."
Read more of this delightful article by Kishanda Fulford here.

Diary of a Nobody

An introduction and links to enjoy this classic of Sloane humour - including an audio version - are here.
A new Pooterish diary is here.

Meet the aristocrat who's got prisoners in stitches

http://www.finecellwork.co.uk/products/show/DeMorganAnimals

This interview from THE INDEPEDENT with the delightful Lady Anne Tree, friend of the rich and famous and penniless and infamous, will give you a wonderful lift.



'Throughout all these years, Anne Tree had continued writing her letters to ministers about her plans to give prisoners something worthwhile to do – including one that was hand-delivered to her cousin, Lord Cranborne, when he was a defence minister. "They had become," she admits, "ruder and ruder. One told one minister that, 'It is shits like you who let this country down.'" Its dispatch was followed by a long silence. "Then, out of the blue, Angela Rumbold [a Home Office minister in the Thatcher and Major governments] wrote to say she had read that letter. We met and finally she gave me the go-ahead. It was a humbling surprise. I nearly died."

Among the first to support the fledgling charity (Fine Cell Work) were friends of Tree and her husband in the States. Bill Paley, a former head of CBS, and Henry Ford both commissioned rugs to be made by prisoners. She even managed to persuade her sister-in-law, the 1960s supermodel Penelope Tree, to get some of her fashionable friends, including Mick Jagger, to do designs for cushions. Fine Cell Work was finally registered as a charity in 1995 and, with Tree now its president, is thriving with a six-figure sum generated annually by sales.

Needlework is suddenly very fashionable, and not just among Fine Cell Work's prison workers. "Stitch 'n' Bitch" circles are the new book clubs among young urban professionals. Julia Roberts, Madonna, Russell Crowe and Kate Moss are all said to relax with their tapestries. And versions of graffiti artist Banksy's street creations in cross-stitch are currently on sale in London's Spitalfields Market. So Anne Tree could claim to have been ahead of the pack. She prefers, though, to see herself as taking her lead from her grandmother who restored the hangings at Hardwick Hall, one of the properties linked to Chatsworth. Single-handed? "Yes, with a team from Chatsworth of mainly miners' wives."

On prison reform, too, Tree was arguing for more humane, enlightened treatment of offenders long before the modern penal-rehabilitation movement got going in the 1960s, but again perhaps, there is a better sense of perspective on her role in looking back. In the forthcoming V&A exhibition, the quilt commissioned from Fine Cell Work will hang with one made 160 years ago by female prisoners on a convict ship heading for Tasmania. It is sometimes known as the Elizabeth Fry Quilt, as the women had been given the materials to make it by the celebrated 19th-century prison reformer as part of her drive to find them useful things to do while incarcerated. I can't help wondering whether ministers placed as many obstacles in Fry's path as they did in Anne Tree's.'

Link

Here are some little-known facts: 52% of male and 72% of female adult prisoners have no qualifications. 40% of prisoners under twenty-one have been in the care of the local authority in their childhoods, where in the population as a whole the figure is only 2%. Half have serious problems with reading, two-thirds with numeracy and four-fifths with writing.
This means that giving support and incentives for learning is critical to improving these lives.

Please help Fine Cell Work.
http://www.finecellwork.co.uk/products/sponsor/

W House Tours: "The Marchioness"

"A member of the fabled and complicated Guinness family by birth and marriage, Lindy, the Marchioness of Dufferin and Ava, presides over Clandeboyne, an astounding 2,000-acre estate in Northern Ireland."
Featured in America's fashion bible, W Magazine. Link

Girls' guide to life: 10 golden rules for surviving the decades ahead

Author and editor Nicholas Coleridge with daughter Sophie.

We like all of Nicholas's observations and wisdom - perhaps these were the best.
"I've noticed that people with a sense of humour invariably survive better than neurotic, perpetually anxious ones.

Marry someone nice
Another crucially important one. Only marry nice men who are going to be kind. It's fine to have dangerous, unpleasant, unreliable boyfriends — by all means have several at university — but don't actually marry them.

Never marry men who eat wine glasses as an after-dinner stunt or have a crazy gleam of madness in their eyes. Because probably it is madness, and it's seldom a long-term good bet."

Extracted from a speech to leaving girls at Queen Margaret's School, York. Nicholas Coleridge is managing director of Condé Nast magazines. His novel Deadly Sins is published by Orion (£12.99).
Link

The Season: The Hampton Court Flower Show

Link: Royal Horticultural Society.
Link: Debrett's

Saving "The Chap"

One of our favourite magazines, The Chap, was recently in a spot of difficulty. But friends rallied round - read about it here, and join the campaign!

Welcome to Hedgelink

Everyone is worried about the economy - banks and hedge funds; we turn for some relief to the enduring beauty of hedge banks and hedge rows.
All About Hedges
Welcome to hedgelink. The first place to look for information on the UK's native hedges, hedgerow conservation and hedge management.
Link
Hedgelink offers a library of delightful photos here; one is shown above, with thanks.
Still yearning for green? Visit Linnette Applegate's blog Toddington Manor.
Linette has created some garden design software - and it is lovely work! She offers samples and free downloads
which are wonderful in themselves, and the software is superb.

Daphne du Maurier's Cornwall

An article from The Times' series on Walks.

To explore the Cornish countryside setting of Daphne du Maurier’s romantic Frenchman’s Creek, choose a sunny summer’s day when the waters of the Helford Estuary flash like pirate gold and the roses and hydrangeas blaze on the whitewashed walls of Helford. Sunken paths, roofed with beech branches, lead between banks thick with ferns and moss. In the fields around Kestle Farm are hedgebanks of brambles, purple vetches and the creamy froth of meadowsweet. Amid such rural richness the modern age seems far away — the perfect time-warp through which to drop to the secret banks of Frenchman’s Creek.

Link

The Ecologist Online

Congratulations to THE ECOLOGIST and Zac Goldsmith on the launch of their beautiful new website - Friday, June 19th. Link

Who Dares, Wins: MP leaks came from SAS member

Link to BBC story
Link to Telegraph interview

The Camomile Lawn - Ravel's Music

Ravel's String Quartet in F Major - music from the beloved CAMOMILE LAWN series in two different versions. Listen...
you'll find it after some delightful Indian music, here, about 29 minutes in...
and another version is here.

May Day and Bank Holiday

Tired Horse Bank by Thelwell


The Guardian has some good ideas on what to do to celebrate this holiday - without breaking the bank.
Link

The Story of My Heart by Richard Jefferies

The lovely STORY OF MY HEART - a long essay, really - is so refreshing to the spirit.

Published In 1883, Richard Jefferies' account of his soul's awakening describes how he placed himself in the eternal Now, and allowed the Now to become his soul's guide. Freed from the usual blocks to awareness, Jefferies' senses became windows for his soul, through which the natural world could be seen and which filled him with longing and love for 'soul-life'.

It is free to read at Project Gutenberg.
Link

Paintings by the Brotherhood of Ruralists, quintessially English, are the perfect accompaniment to this beautiful book. The beautiful image of a swan, below, is by Ruralist David Ingram. Symbolically, birds represent the mind and spirit, and swans represent the purity of the soul.
http://ruralists.com/ Visit the Brotherhood of Ruralists here - and enjoy their wonderful art, which is also for sale through the site.

Sebastian Peake's blog on his father Mervyn

Delightful to find, and rewarding to peruse. Thank you to both Peakes.

Sloanes are OK, ya?

A short letter from Ann Barr to the editor of The Observer was a delightful surprise.

Sloanes are OK, ya?

Carole Cadwalladr's spiky article 'The rebirth of posh' (Review, last week) was very interesting, but two points. Peter York was not the author of the original Sloane Ranger's Handbook, 1982; it was a communal book by 60 Harpers & Queen contributors, woven together by me as features editor and deputy editor (and Sloane Ranger person). Peter York was the co-author, for his media skills.

My other concern is confusing the Sloane Ranger with the super-rich. Sloane Rangers are not necessarily well-off or aristocrats, but a stratum of a bygone middle class, at least one rung down from David Cameron and friends. They work behind the scenes to help the community, but do not expect to lead it - and don't all vote Tory.

Ann Barr
London W11
Link

Nicholas Coleridge was fortunate enough to be mentored by Ann Barr and remembers her here.

The authorship of the Sloane Ranger Handbook is apparently a sore point with poor Peter York (Wallis). Link

Chelsea - Army Veterans Include Female Pensioners

Female army veterans become first women Chelsea pensioners
Royal Hospital, Chelsea, takes new step after 300 years

'One of the army's oldest institutions took the arrival of two pioneers from what some – but not old soldiers – might think of as the monstrous regiment of women in its stride today, as two female veterans became the first women Chelsea pensioners.

It has taken the Royal Hospital, Chelsea, founded by Charles II in 1682 for "the succour and relief of veterans broken by age and war", more than 300 years to accept women army veterans; though Dorothy Hughes and Winifred Phillips, both in their 80s, looked very far from broken as they posed in their new uniforms.

"I think it's wonderful," confided Phillips. "I like men. I am alone. And I wanted to be looked after in my old age."

By their side, the male pensioners on parade to welcome their new comrades were equally enthusiastic. Ralph Dickinson, in the Parachute Regiment for 22 years and at the Royal Hospital for nine, said: "I don't see there's a problem. Women can come anywhere now, even working men's clubs, can't they? They've served just like us. Of course, you're going to get some who grumble, but they're the sort who always do."'
Article and Video at Link

Chav! A User's Guide to Britain's New Ruling Class

A DUMMIES GUIDE might be more appropriate; but here it is... Will offer hours of amusement for Sloanies (practicing Chavspeak) and to other observers of the social scene.

In the Shadow of the Iron Duke

from the Times Literary Supplement
In the shadow of the Iron Duke


As seen by a descendant of the Duke of Wellington: the secret misfortunes of his family
Jane Ridley

...The first Duke left a glorious legacy; but he also bequeathed a troubled inheritance. Like many public figures, “the greatest man England has known” did not enjoy spending time with his family. Wellesley gives a sympathetic account of Kitty Pakenham, his wife. As a penniless younger son in Ireland, Arthur Wellesley proposed to Kitty and was rejected by her family as not being good enough. When he returned from India fourteen years later, a major-general on the make, he proposed again without even seeing her. “She is grown damned ugly, by Jove!” he allegedly remarked when at last they met. Kitty had grown neurotic and depressive too, and Wellesley relates the story of the Iron Duke’s unforgiving cruelty towards his reclusive but obsessively adoring wife. Towards his children he was equally hard. “My father never showed the least affection for any of us”, recalled his son. Not surprisingly perhaps, the two sons of the great man grew up lacking in confidence.

The grateful nation voted the Iron Duke a house at Stratfield Saye, but there was never quite enough money to support it. The Wellington survival strategy was to marry money. As many as three dukes married heiresses to cotton fortunes. Most unconventional of these heiresses was Wellesley’s grandmother, Dorothy Ashton. She divorced her husband Gerry, later the seventh Duke, when her son Valerian was only seven. Even today Valerian is reluctant to talk about the trauma and disgrace of his parents’ divorce. Only towards the end of the book does Wellesley reveal that Dorothy, who was a friend of W. B. Yeats and herself wrote poetry, belonged to the lesbian coterie that revolved around Vita Sackville-West and Virginia Woolf. Dorothy's lonely life ended in depression and drink, but her defiance of social convention was “unbearable” for the upper-class Wellesleys, and it led to a family rift. Another blot on the family honour was the fifth Duke, who was a member of the pro-Nazi Right Club.

Jane Wellesley has written this book partly as a tribute to her parents. Because they are both alive she cannot perhaps be quite as candid as she might; she says little about her own childhood, for example. Her father is evidently a good man, a brave soldier and an excellent Duke, but he has survived by locking the skeletons into the family closets. In this sympathetic and enjoyable book, Wellesley invites the ghosts to take their place at the family feast.


Jane Wellesley
WELLINGTON
A journey through my family
384pp. Orion. £20.
978 0 297 85231 5


Link

England's Glory: The Country House

Image: Knole House
This delightful review from the mid-1980's expresses the power over the imagination which the country house exerts. Poetic, wonderfully written.
Link

Victorian Taxidermy - an Exploration

This article is a good introduction to the somewhat arcane but - to Sloane Rangers and country house visitors - familiar world of taxidermy.

Royal Website Redesigned

Congratulations are in order!

"She may be well into her 80s but the Queen has always prided on keeping herself up to date with the newest technological developments.
Now she is about to launch a new 'all-singing, all-dancing' website which will allow her subjects to track the movements of both herself and her family on a daily basis....
Users can also find out in advance when the royals are coming to their town, suburb or village....
The feature is part of a major re-vamp of the monarch's website, which was launched more than a decade ago, and was described this week by one courtier who has been treated to an advance peek as 'rather whizz bang'.
Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the British-born creator of the World Wide Web, is flying over from the US especially for the launch tomorrow and royal aides are promising a host of exciting new gimmicks."

The site is here.

Happy Valentine's Day

A Valentine's Day greeting to all Sloanes and their friends. and especially to Ann Barr, loved by Sloanes everywhere.
Read Ann Barr's article on the origins of Sloanes here:
http://www.intrepid-fox.co.uk/feature/archive/sloaneorigin.html

Cambridge Ball to Celebrate Empire, Party like it's 1899

The theme of the college's May Ball this year is a celebration of the British Empire. The organisers exhort students to "party like it's 1899" and to "celebrate the Victorian commonwealth and all of its decadences".

Sounds wonderful! See you there.

The Complete Foxhunter

Archived and free online; just click on the title link.

Lovely footage of an American hunt using anise.

Beautiful Cambridge

Sloane Rangers and others are certain to find this gallery of beautiful low-light and night photographs of Cambridge, England nostalgic and refreshing to the spirit.
Fine art prints are available for purchase, and photographer Sean T. McHugh discloses of some of his methods and offers a discussion board for fellow photographers. Top-notch.

Taki on the Madoff Scandal

Cartoon of Gstaad's Palace Hotel by the wonderful Oliver Preston; visit him here.

Taki Theodoracopulos writes this week that many of Bernie Madoff’s friends own chalets in Gstaad, where he lives, and tells what he knows of of them.

Madoff used Jewish charities to build up immunity from snoopers. Anyone suspected of being anti-Madoff was leaned on—heavily. There were many who steered clear of Madoff nonetheless. In 2003, the French Société Générale figured that Madoff’s numbers didn’t add up and placed him on its blacklist.

The trouble is that the U.S. government will not go all the way while prosecuting Madoff. Uncle Sam would if there were pension funds involved, but going to bat for some rich white Europeans is not Sam’s habit. Obviously Madoff has hidden assets, perhaps in the billions, and most of his feeder fund managers have money, too. I don’t see any of them wearing striped pyjamas any time soon. Smart lawyers, the best money can buy, will defend them against underpaid government mouthpieces. The leading players so far have maintained a stony silence, making sure to avoid any kind of apology or statement of responsibility. Villehuchet’s suicide is probably seen as a dumb act by the Madoffs, Picciottos, Piedrahitas, Toubs and Noels of this world. It’s going to be an interesting Gstaad season, to say the least.
Visit Taki here.


UPDATE: Feb. 2009 - Taki adds a very funny sequel on the Madoff scandal here; we'd like to join you, Taki, and hope that Her Grace The Dowager Duchess of Devonshire will also be there!

Sloanes in the Kitchen: AGA and the Green Movement

"This is indeed a class war, and the campaign against the Aga starts here"
Mr. Monbiot writes
"It would be stupid to claim that environmentalism is never informed by class. Compare, for example, the campaign against patio heaters with the campaign against Agas. Patio heaters are a powerful symbol: heating the atmosphere is not a side-effect, it's their purpose. But to match the fuel consumption of an Aga, a large domestic patio heater would have to run continuously at maximum output for three months a year. Patio heaters burn liquefied petroleum gas, while most Agas use oil, electricity or coal, which produce more CO2. A large Aga running on coal turns out nine tonnes of carbon dioxide per year: five and a half times the total CO2 production of the average UK home. To match that, the patio heater would have to burn for nine months.
So where is the campaign against Agas? There isn't one. I've lost count of the number of aspirational middle-class greens I know who own one of these monsters and believe that they are somehow compatible (perhaps because they look good in a country kitchen) with a green lifestyle. The campaign against Agas - which starts here - will divide rich greens down the middle."

Prole or posh, it is time to green all our machines. Let us consider microwave ovens. Microwave ovens are so unhealthy that they were banned by the Soviets in 1976.

And, like other appliances that are never truly "off", microwave ovens are energy vampires.

Read an eco-friendly story - about AGA creating huge savings in electricity - here. AGA now has a green section at its site here. And there is a delightful blog, Girl at the Aga, by Laura James here.