The Grumpy Vegan is embarrassed to admit to liking Country Life. It is, after all, the magazine for the aristocracy. Imagine the fusion of People magazine with Martha Stewart’s Living and picture Her Majesty the Queen comfortably settled on an English Knole in a sitting room at Buckingham Palace reading it. As Alan Clark noted, these are the people who don’t have to buy their own furniture. They inherit it along with a castle or a manor house or two or one of each or more. Country Life is also read by the snobby subgroup of the nouveau riche. By this I mean to exclude the City yahoos who tend to know (paraphrasing Oscar Wilde) the price of everything and the value of nothing.
Of course, it has a schizophrenic attitude toward animals, which, come to think of it, is no different from the rest of us. But the aristocracy and the upper classes are different from the rest of us. They have money (lots). We have none.
The aristocratic attitude toward animals is alive and well in Country Life. A beautifully photographed two-page spread of 14-year-old Clarissa Ponsoby (daughter of Lord and Lady Much) and her dwarf white albino Blue Ridgeback rabbits from Montengro she breeds will be in the same issue that some score of pages later will provide useful tips on how long rabbit should be hung before cooked. They are, of course, the huntin’ and shootin’ class, who are rabidly pro-Conservative Party and virulently anti-Labour Party.
The Grumpy Vegan turns his nose away from The Sun‘s infamous “page 3 girls” but the Country Life “gals” are compulsive.
Miss Lucy Yorke-Long, aged 19, is the daughter of Mr and Mrs Jonathan Yorke-Long, of Shrob Lodge, Towcester, Northamptonshire. She is in her first year reading history of art at Bristol, and is shown here with her eventer, Silver Monkey. [Grumpy Vegan: That’s a horse–Country Life is full of aristocratic words like eventer.] Lucy will be working on the Dubarry stand at the Mitsubishi Motors Badminton Horse Trials, which start today.
The Honourable Alexandra Parker is in her second year reading biology at Exeter [Grumpy Vegan: You’re expected to know that this refers to Exeter University], is the eldest daughter of Viscount and Viscountess Boringdon, of Whitwell, Hertfordshire. She is photographed here at Pound House, in Devon, the home of her grandparents, the Earl and Countess of Morley, where she and her father will be holding a combined birthday celebration: Alexandra’s 21st and her father’s 50th. [Grumpy Vegan: Isn’t that nice?]
Miss Amanda Squire, aged 23, is the daughter of Mr and Mrs Jonathan Squire, of Faulkners Farm, Hartfield, East Sussex. Educated at North Foreland Lodge, she trained as a physiotherapist at UWE Bristol (Grumpy Vegan: Teaching hospital), and now works for the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford. Next February, she will undertake an eight-day bycycle ride in India in aid of Hope and Homes for Children. (Grumpy Vegan: At least this one has a social conscience.] Amanda is shown here in her aunt and uncle’s garden at The Red House, Ken, with one of their three-week old Labrador puppies.
The Country Life gals cry out for a political-sociological study and the scathing wit of the sharpest tongued satirists.
But the greatest fun of Country Life is at the front of the book. Page upon page of advertisements for multi-million dollar homes. Sweet dreams are made of this.
Georgian house of historic note with superb gardens in idyllic village setting, incldues 3 reception rooms, 5 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms & shower room, kitchen/breakfast room, conservatory, swimming pool, tennis court, double garage and ancillary accommodation. About 2 acres. $3.8 million.
A beautifully restored and remodelled Country House, dating from the 17th Century, with outstanding equestrian facilities and about 20 acres in a delightful rural seeting. $5.3 million.
Historic estate with 4 principal rececption rooms, 8 bedrooms, 4 bathrooms and far reaching views. Orangery and formal gardens. 2 lodges, cottage, 4 flats. Coach house and stable block with consent for offices, sawmill with consent to convert to a dwelling. Pasture, woodland and arable farmland. About 127 acres.
This last property isn’t priced. Of course, if you have to ask, “How much?,” you can’t afford it. It’s too easy to dismiss these properties as McMansions because they’re not. They’re part of Britain’s history. And, you’ve got to wonder who built them? Who lived in them? How did they afford it? Where did they get their money from? Yes, the Grumpy Vegan confesses that it would be lovely to live in a fifteenth century stone Cotswold manor house with 300 acres, including ha-ha and a long carriage drive. Who wouldn’t? Yet, there’s something compulsively irrestiable and nauseating disgusting about them.
