CURIOUS OBSERVATIONS: A Country Miscellany

Country Life magazine has been delighting readers with its observations from rural Britain for 130 years, and this collection of extracts covers a range of subjects - sports, pastimes, village life, landscape and architecture - from the magazine's first 50 years. An old boy of Winchester College takes the reader on a walk round the school as it was in 1902, including the "bare and cheerless" dining hall. 1903 sees a portrait of an old-mole-catcher with a bizarre contraption round his neck, but disappointingly the profession is reluctant to reveal any secrets of the trade. "Ponies for Children" in 1934 urges parents to get a pony who is keen but not too keen, just enough to keep the child on their toes without actually endangering life, and as late as 1926 a doctor is called in to pronounce on the dangers of women riding astride. Although the matter was considered too delicate for detail, the MD concluded by saying his own daughter rides the modern way. A celebration of barge-painting in 1944 reveals that the typical bargee is hazy about the origins of the traditional designs depicting "big old teapots with roses and castles". Knickerbockers or trousers for golf? To the regret of the writer, the traditional plus fours have been discarded in favour of slacks and (whisper it) shirt-sleeves. In 1940 the travel writer H .V. Morton writes patriotically from the tower of the village church, where he was doing guard duty, saying "All over our land, villages, once proclaimed dead and done for, have awakened to arms." In the same year the historian A. L. Rowse is confident that "it is the English who provide the best example of a people in harmony with their environment". 244pp, numerous black and white illustrations.