Episode 1 Land of Hope and Glory - British Country Life

The British countryside holds a special

place in the heart of the nation.

Swallows and rooks and creaking wood, and then incredible silence.

I mean, this is completely free from the noise of a big city.

It's really like being on another planet.

Yet only 18% of the population lives in the country.

Of those that do, some have been bred into it.

I was born in the front room of the house there.

And I've been here ever since. Never lived anywhere else.

A few have inherited.

It's one thing knowing your brother's going to inherit

everything, it's another thing when it actually happens

and you suddenly think, "Huh, it's his house now and not Mummy's."

Many have bought in to it.

It was meant to be, it was a matter of destiny,

I was just drawn to it like a magnet.

Within an hour of arriving, I made the offer to buy it.

But only 4% of us actually work on it.

When you go to the country, it's quite rough

and it's quite dirty, but nice dirt, you know, muddy.

-It's muddy.

-SHE LAUGHS

You know, you walk in the country, it rains.

For over 120 years, Country Life has been aspiring to capture

the elusive soul of the British countryside.

We spent a year filming with the magazine,

from muddy fields to stately homes.

DOGS BARK

Increasingly, there's a tension between town and country.

Eddie, Eddie, Eddie, Edward!

With 80% of us living in cities and suburbs,

the countryside is under threat from urban values.

Many rural dwellers are asking who runs the countryside

and what can be done to protect it.

I'm afraid it's the bloody do-gooders.

They interfere with everything we do now.

Hetty, do you know, have you done the pictures for this one yet?

It's a sort of Henley theme and a floral kind of jewellery theme.

MUSIC: Wouldn't It Be Nice by The Beach Boys

Would you not open this magazine? Come on, when this is there?

As a surf guy, looking at the West Country.

-Of course!

-Flora. Yeah. Flora.

I'll flick through the back and then I'll start at the front,

and of course we love the adverts, so I'll be looking at the houses,

like we all do.

I always look, first of all, at the property section, and then sometimes,

I'm afraid, rather egotistically, I look to see if I'm in it or not.

Although the magazine has been slavishly devoted to houses,

gardens and architecture since its Victorian origins,

its most famous page is its frontispiece, which still features

the engagements and achievements of young ladies in society.

Over 6,000 girls have appeared since 1897, although, strangely, the

very first edition featured a rather wry Earl of Suffolk and Berkshire.

116 years on, these girls are relevant, you know,

it's not just a picture of a pretty, erm,

aristocratic British woman. We want to show that the English rose

still exists, it's not something that is of the past.

You know, British women are still very much at the forthright...

-at the forefront of...

-British women are the most beautiful in the world.

-They are.

-Stop being so modest.

How do you get around that?

British women are the most beautiful in the world,

and the English rose is something very special.

Mark Hedges, the former editor of Horse And Hound,

became the 11th editor in 2006.

My job is to provide something that the readers want to read,

and no more and no less than that.

-OK, no, I like that.

-A variety.

-Yeah.

'We've made some very strong statements on wind farms and badgers

'and HS2 and all of those sorts of things,

'but it's also a magazine of pleasure,

'and it's an escape from the slings and arrows of normal life.'

Until recently,

copies of the magazine were sent out to soldiers in Afghanistan,

with the frontispieces subsequently pinned up in Camp Bastion.

# No matter where I roam

# I will return to my English rose

# For no bonds... #

"It is at Nethergill Farm, and a church just down the dale,

"where, this year, Ella and I will be married.

"She is, in truth, a wonderful character with sparkling eyes

"and a smile that lights a room, a true English rose.

"The mere sight of..."

Flight Lieutenant Ian Fortune,

who was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross

in 2010, wrote to the magazine during his sixth tour.

"Everything that Ella and I stand for, our love for the country,

"the countryside, and an aspiration for the finest

"things in life, as well as a deep-rooted desire to keep this

"country protected and great for future generations..."

At the end, he says, "Finally, it was always a pleasure to be reminded on a weekly basis

"of what other treasures Great Britain had to be proud of.

"I refer to the frontispiece and the wondrous girls and pearls adorning each glistening edition."

"It is for this reason that I write to request that

"Miss Ella Charlotte Clark be considered for the frontispiece

"of the magazine and become one of the timeless girls in pearls."

Wow.

Do you think you're going to be pinned up on anybody's wall?

-Oh, God, I hope not.

-SHE LAUGHS

I doubt it. Maybe on Ian's wall, but we'll see.

So she might become a pin-up now in Camp Bastion.

Yeah, absolutely. Will be on my wall.

-And that's the only wall it'll be on.

-SHE LAUGHS

-I'll give you reference points to look at.

-OK, fine.

What we're going to do, we're going to use a bit of controlled light.

Bring your head round towards me a bit more.

There's an authentic farm vehicle coming down the track over there

that we'll just see if we can capture that as well.

I want my daughter to be a girl in pearls

but I don't think she'd agree with me.

She'd be gorgeous in there, but I think every mother

wants their daughter to look like one of those lovely girls.

They all look lovely and pretty and young and peachy.

Well, I liked it better when it was grand ladies,

scions of families.

It was such fun.

Well, I remember arguing that they ought to get rid of them.

You know, when it was the Marchioness of Granby with

her daughter, you know, the Lady Diana Cooper on her

lap as a child, it was so stunning. I mean, all that Edwardian

splendour and hauteur of presentation.

I mean, and these sort of girls skimping around.

Well, they could be anybody on the pavement.

MUSIC: There She Goes by The La's

Simon Jenkins, former editor of The Times,

worked at the magazine in the '60s.

I wanted to be a romantic foreign correspondent, and my first job

in journalism was writing captions for the girl with the pearls.

We had a stack of them, we'd get probably 20 or 30 a week.

I'd sort of pre-select half a dozen of them, the...

-INTERVIEWER:

-Based on?

-Oh, goodness knows.

I mean, they... they really were all identical.

# There she goes... #

From stiffly staged black-and-white portraits of aristocracy

to more provocative modern poses,

the frontispiece still remains a badge of honour for a certain class.

I have to say, I looked back on the ones I did

and I thought they were much better.

As soon as they started including impedimenta, a setting round the

girl, she became a particular class, only with her dogs or horses or

whatever it might be. It immediately sort of dripped money.

Then it was literally a portrait of a face, and the fact that they

were all the same, I thought, was in many ways much more democratic.

It was kind of artistic rather than social.

They were simply English girls.

Up a bit, up a bit more, bit more. OK, and then turn it round.

It'll leave our readers wondering.

I think we should just go back. I'm going to go for that one

because that says Yorkshire, that says, "She's at home,

"she's clearly a country girl."

Oh, wow, look at the dog's eyes.

-Oh, it's cool.

-Yeah.

-I hope it's called Ziggy Stardust.

SHE LAUGHS

-INTERVIEWER:

-Do you feel you have to be politically correct?

I don't think political correctness comes into it at all.

Political correctness is, that's for newspapers to worry about,

that's for the BBC to worry about.

We don't support a political party, we support the countryside.

We try and give a sort of statesman-like lead rather than

a sort of jackboot lead.

Based in South London, the magazine is a Bible to the upper and middle classes.

Many of its Victorian readers would still recognise it today.

In the main, it's urban and always was.

The magazine was born out of the late Victorian

revulsion against the industrialised city.

And it was a time when the new middle classes had this vision

of wanting a country cottage and living, really, a kind of mythology.

-INTERVIEWER:

-Do you think it's a magazine for snobs?

I don't know what people mean by snobs.

If you like country life - I mean living in the country

by that - it's hardly snobbish to have a magazine to reflect it.

I mean, some people could say it's quite elitist, couldn't they?

There's nothing wrong with being elitist,

it's a step in the right direction, I think.

There seems to be too much uniformity in the world as it is.

Let's keep up some elitism.

-OVER TANNOY:

-Final call from X, subsection B pony fillies,

two or three-year-olds. Final call, X120...

Rupert Uloth joined the magazine 20 years ago,

and became the deputy editor in 2008.

He's also been a steward at The Royal Bath and West

agricultural show for the last 30 years.

This is, for me, the heart of country life in England, where all

these passionate people gather together to come and show all

their animals and to enjoy all these special things about the country.

It's a bit like London Fashion Week for farm animals.

The sort of Kate Mosses of the, you know, the cattle world,

I can put it that way. It means they're the sort of finest specimens.

Erm, they're a slightly different shape to Kate Moss, I must admit,

and the best ones are the sort of, you know, really muscled up

and look absolutely amazing, but they're all groomed and immaculate.

This is Milo, and this is Montenaro.

-INTERVIEWER:

-What do you use to make his horns so gorgeous?

Just baby oil.

SHE LAUGHS

He has to have a bath about a week before the show, then he's trimmed.

It looks a bit archaic, wearing a bowler hat.

You're expected to be identifiable, rather like, erm,

policemen in, er, in a town or something.

You know, if you're going round the showground, we're representing the show.

I'm delighted I'm wearing it, it was my grandfather's hat,

which I think he wore in, er, in the city.

You've got to have something you... Especially the stewarding that I do.

I steward in the main, er, in the main grandstand

and I help, erm, people who are giving the cups out to people,

and so I have to indicate things, you know,

when the show jumpers gallop off round the show...the ring.

I need to indicate, it's very useful to sort of put it on and say...

You know?

And they know straight away. It's amazing how symbolic it is.

There are lots of shows all round England,

and every county has a show. That is where a lot of people meet.

You know, human beings, we're all human beings, we all need to

exchange information on a social level, but also just chatting

to people, you find out what's going on, and especially farmers.

You know, as less people are working on the land,

they're seeing less people. I mean, they've all got, you know,

bigger and better tractors maybe, but it's, you know, employing

people is very, very expensive and so you need to meet people to share

ideas and find out what's going on and what the latest innovations are.

She got first, we got first and seconds all the way, so we did, and

champion Charolais and reserve interbreed,

so we had a really good day.

Very, very beautiful. They're very hard to keep clean,

they're the wrong colours.

THEY LAUGH

There's one local farmer who's come to the show,

leaving his cattle behind.

His herd was struck by TB four years ago.

-Because they what, they come and test every year?

-Yeah.

-And then they say...

-And once they find it, they test you every 60 days.

-Have you ever slaughtered some?

-We've slaughtered about

100 of them so far, over the four year.

Yeah.

An outbreak of TB is the news every dairy farmer dreads.

Maurice Durbin owned one of the biggest pedigree Guernsey

herds in the country.

My father changed to Guernseys the year I was born.

At its peak, he had 350 cows

delivering 10,000 litres of milk a day.

I grew up as the tractors grew up. I grew up as the milking

parlours grew up,

and I grew up with the land growing up.

In 2010, when TB was found in 47 of his cows,

they were condemned overnight and removed for slaughter.

Each one had been hand-reared and was worth up to £3,000.

This is Mum and Dad. Stood out there, outside that window.

I think it was their silver wedding. Charles and Evelyn.

That was me back in the goat days,

when I were going to make a fortune with goats.

That's me again, making a fuss of the farm cats.

-INTERVIEWER:

-What were they called?

-Oh, God. Cats.

They all had names at the time, but I can't remember that.

And that's my dad, yeah.

Charles Durbin, born, yeah, 1903.

Poor old Dad.

Why did you say that?

Had a hard life.

Did it all by hand?

Yeah, a lot of it.

TB continues to linger in Maurice's herd.

As a result, there's a movement restriction on the cows,

and he can't transport or sell any of them.

13, 14.

The milk from the healthy cows can still be used

but, in effect, the farm is shut down and the herd has to be

individually tested every 60 days until they're clear of TB.

-INTERVIEWER:

-Are Country Life taking a stand with TB? I mean, what is

the magazine's approach?

Country Life desperately cares about the farmers.

Some of these herds have been built up for three generations,

five generations, and then they get the TB, and they have to shoot these

cows that have taken decades and decades and decades to build up.

The vet, Ian Whyte, has made over 20 visits to date.

He'll spend two days injecting the cows with a small

extract of tuberculin

and another two days interpreting any reactions the herd might have.

This is, erm, Titiana, we took her to Frome Show, Frome Cheese Show,

and she was first prize there and reserve champion,

and we took her to the South West Dairy Show,

held at Shepton Mallet, and she's calved again since then now, so.

-INTERVIEWER:

-Is she one of your special ones?

Yeah. Yeah, she's a favourite, yeah, one of the favourites.

-Why is she called Titiana?

-It's just her family name.

The family names, they give each pedigree line, so each cow,

its daughter will carry on then and be the next one on.

This is Bramble. Her father was a bull that we kept

-from one of our show cows.

-You're very proud of them, aren't you?

Yeah, I am, yeah, I think you have to be.

I think it's something that I'm really excited about, you know.

We all are here because we've got pedi... There's pedigree cows, and if you want to work with pedigree

cows, you're going to work on a pedigree farm.

What was it like the day, the very first time you got the news

that TB had come in to the herd?

It was devastating because you go along and think, "Oh, yeah, that's right, we just have the

-"test and then we'll be all right."

-Five, five.

And then, as time goes on, you start hearing of other people that

go down and they don't, they don't get out of it.

And you start to think, "Well, when is it our turn?"

But even when that day comes, you're still not prepared for it.

-That was a hard day, wasn't it?

-It was.

Ian, do you remember that, that day that this farm first tested?

Yes, because the first cow came in, just coincidentally. She had

massive reactor lumps, and it was one of Laura's favourites.

There is, within the countryside, a certainty that the poor old

badger is transmitting the TB to the cows.

Now, I think one of the things that has to be understood is that

nobody dislikes badgers. I personally remember,

when I was aged eight, my father stopping the car

because one had been hit, and in those days they were so rare that

you got out and you looked at them, because you'd never seen one before.

The badgers were, at one stage, persecuted.

What has happened is that they were then protected,

and like any protected animal, their numbers surged.

There's probably 1,000 times as many badgers as there'll have

been in, say, the '60s.

The biggest...the biggest problem in many ways is that, erm,

the spread is very much easier from a badger.

If they become infected, not only do they become

infected in their lungs, but their kidneys can also become

infected, so they're actually excreting

TB in the urine.

As I say, nobody...

Six, six.

Nobody wants to condemn the badgers out of hand,

and most farmers, in, erm, in the old days, would have one

or two setts on the farm and they would tolerate that perfectly well.

And they would be healthy.

If there's any contamination from the badgers at all,

the cow's just got to hoover it up, that sort of thing.

So many badgers about.

There are so many of them about that, erm, we don't stand a chance.

In no way do we hate badgers, you know, it's just a case of wanting

an equal share of the pro... You know, to sort the problem.

Come on, then. Come on, Bab.

-INTERVIEWER:

-Do you have a good feeling about the results?

No. I daren't.

I daren't have a good feeling about this jab at all.

She'll get a disappointment.

When Laura was talking about her show cows,

I thought, "Careful, Laura, you're putting a price on her head."

It's taken all the manpower on the farm to test the cattle.

In two days' time, they'll get the results.

If a lump has grown on the injected spot, the cow will be sent

to the abattoir and the farm will be shut down for a further 60 days.

They're just on their way now.

They say, "Thank God for that."

We hope they, if they meet a brock

on their way out, they'll kick it.

Because I'm not allowed to.

I'm not allowed to kick anything like that.

Much as I'd like to.

We're at Smedmore House, in the Isle of Purbeck, in Dorset,

on the edge of the sea, facing France.

The house has been in different families, the Clavells,

the Pleydells, the Mansels.

Since it was built in the early 17th century, it's never been sold,

and the land hasn't been sold since around 1400.

Everybody's come in through marriage, gone through nieces

or nephews.

-INTERVIEWER:

-And how long have you lived here?

I've lived here since 1958, on and off,

when my father moved back after serving in the army.

I read a lot of books, I read a lot of the leatherbound books,

histories of France or Napoleon.

I spent half my childhood reading.

All my life, I've been coming back here.

There's probably never been a year when I didn't come back.

As I grow older, of course I enjoy the peace more,

and it's become more like a foreign country,

so coming here from London is like visiting a foreign

country, as the rest of England becomes more different from London.

Ah, look what I've found,

photographs of Smedmore from Country Life.

The last article about Smedmore appeared in the magazine

in 1935, when Philip's grandfather was still alive.

Well, this is Smedmore, which is owned by Philip Mansel. Like many

houses of this scale, I mean it's a, you know, large gentleman's house,

it's been extended, the earliest parts of it are probably 17th-century.

I'm very intrigued. Some of the existing

analysis of the building doesn't seem to be quite right, erm.

A very important element of our architectural analysis that

we're trying to, in the architectural articles, that we're

trying to look at houses, consider their evolution and development,

but write them up in the most engaging way we possibly can.

"Behind its prim Georgian front, Smedmore has certainly known

"strange goings-on, and a light winking through the window

"from the house would be picked up by a lugger exactly at the entrance to the bay."

And, in fact, the great untold story of Dorset is the relationship

with smuggling to the land and to the people on the land.

The coast on the army range is said to be one of the darkest

coastlines in England.

Country Life, in many ways, is recording, with these historic

buildings, the intersection of the past with the present,

and that is, after all, what's so marvellous about Britain.

And these two things do intersect, often so colourfully and engagingly.

-INTERVIEWER:

-Do people arrive here on time?

No, they're always late.

This is a private drive and it's not on sat nav, so unless I remember to

tell them, er, they get completely lost and rather flustered.

How lovely to see you, you've arrived.

John Goodall is accompanied by Jeremy Musson, who will be

writing the article on the history and curiosities of Smedmore House.

And it's so wonderful, seeing...

Now, you see, all the relics of previous Country Life visits

are laid out for you.

-Oh, my goodness, is this 1935?

-Yes.

And I have two aunts who can remember.

One says, "Yes, we giggled madly

"because everything was changed to suit Country Life,"

and another says, in a rather mysterious way,

"Nobody was told anything they weren't meant to know."

JOHN LAUGHS

-That's wonderful.

-There were already secrets being hidden.

This is my great uncle, Ronald Campbell,

who helped run the Washington Embassy in the Second World War.

His mother added on the locks to make it a prettier portrait.

THEY LAUGH

It's the perfect Country Life house, it's a beautiful, proportioned,

very liveable space, and, er, what I always try and do is

find out the history sufficient to tell its story.

Usually almost always, we'll find something new to say about that

early history. We will sort of put together a different story.

But it's important that it gets a wider public than

a lot of academic history, you know, that this

is about pleasure of reading about the past, and this sort of house

couldn't be better, because it's been in the same family for so long.

This is the Turkish room, which has just been created.

That's a famous print of Ali Pasha on the lake of Yannina.

Ali Pasha, of whom Byron said, "He was the mildest-mannered man

"who ever slit a throat."

He said, "Never judge a man by manners,

"Ali Pasha had the best manners of anybody I've ever met."

Because he ruled through terror. He ruled very well.

We're trying to capture the delight of these places.

You know, some people would say that the English country house is

one of our great contributions to world culture.

It's been pointed out that Philip is actually a descendent

of a figure who was in Domesday. I mean, that's an incredible length

of connection between a place and a family by any standards at all.

I made this a family museum. I put livery buttons and war memorabilia,

my grandmother's dolls, and opera glasses and documents all together.

I think they lived through their collections in part.

It's to give them something to do.

-INTERVIEWER:

-Why did plates end up getting hung on walls instead of paintings?

It's my idea. I think porcelain makes a room come to life.

And once it's up, it's up, you don't, erm, you don't get it down?

No, no, there's plenty left to use for dinner or lunch, yes.

And now I want to take you to another room...

about a harsher reality, which is the war room,

which has just been made from some letters and photographs of two

great-aunts, who were nurses with the French army in the First World War.

They wrote home to their mother, who was a dangerous revolutionary,

she was a suffragette who'd broken the windows of the war office

with other suffragettes...

How often do you two meet such a learned house owner?

Well, you'd be surpri... I mean, you know, people know a lot.

I mean, people who have lived and been brought up with objects

and things, they know an enormous amount.

And, of course, they know it often in a way that you cannot know it

unless you live with it.

It's the richness of being in Britain,

it's a part of the world where the past touches us

in all kinds of extraordinary ways, if we only open our eyes to it.

It doesn't mean we live in the past or just love the past,

but not to enjoy the past seems to be like not enjoying

music or not wanting to learn another language. It seems to me

it's a bit of wilful blindness, it's just shutting something off.

This is the grave of a tiger who was brought

back in about 1880 from India, because John Mansel was

serving in India, and he obviously wanted to show the neighbours

he was better than anybody else. He brought back this poor tiger, which

then died after its first English winter, or maybe because no vet

would come and see it, and everyone was terrified, and it's buried here.

-Didn't eat any of the children, though?

-Not as far as I know.

I'm sure people were invited to admire the tiger, which would've

roared and then probably died of sheer vexation at being in the cold.

I might just be able to make out "September" there but I might be wrong.

Very sharp eyes.

It's really wonderful, I've just seen these marvellous boats.

It's like something out of the 12th century

mixed with The Wind In The Willows.

It's just so colourful, so charming, this is the perfect English day.

The sun is sparkling, there's a parish church, it's just wonderful.

I joined Country Life in December 1977.

I had been studying history of art at Cambridge,

and I was recruited, rather as though I was a spy.

At that time, Country Life was looking for somebody to

write about country houses, about architecture, and because the

two people who were already there, erm, had gone to Cambridge,

and somebody else who'd been to Cambridge had just left, they

thought they had to go to Cambridge as the only place that they

could find somebody who was going to be, erm, appropriate for them.

That's probably not an attitude which would be taken now,

but anyway, that's how it worked at the time.

MUSIC: Straight To Hell by The Clash.

-INTERVIEWER:

-Why are you sending Clive swan upping?

I think it would be, erm, slightly out of his comfort zone.

I think it might produce a rather wonderful article.

Clive messing about on boats with a very large bird flapping

sounds like it might be quite fun, to me.

But don't tell him that.

I have, strangely, never done swan upping at all.

At this moment, I think I can truly say I knew nothing about it.

-INTERVIEWER:

-Do you hope he's going to get wet?

Erm, I'm sure he's going to get wet, I hope he doesn't fall in, because he might not forgive me.

# How's about a British jig and reel...? #

Swan upping is a 900-year-old tradition where

the Queen's swans on the River Thames are counted,

numbered and trapped to monitor their population and wellbeing.

The team of boatmen take five days to cover 79 miles of the river.

David Barber, Swan Marker for Her Majesty The Queen.

This is my 22nd swan upping.

We've got six skiffs,

and the first boat to see the family of swans,

and they shout out, "All up".

And that is the signal for us to get ready for a swan catch.

-Of course, you know, we have to check them all round...

-Yes.

-..we have the wings, like I explained before, round there.

-Oh, I see, to make sure...

So we have to make sure... Right, Clive.

SWAN SQUAWKS

Right, come on. Make sure he gets in.

But they look so beautiful on the river, and it's very touching

that they're relaxed when they can see each other.

Because swans, apparently, get very upset

when they can't see the whole family.

Which is quite moving, I think.

I suppose one mustn't be anthropomorphic,

but something very human about it, really.

They're a family.

Well, I mean, in a symbolic way it's still lovely.

# Clear as winter ice

# This is your paradise... #

I feel proud to be Her Majesty's Swan Marker.

I've met the Queen several times, she's been swan upping,

and hopefully she enjoyed it.

I'm sure she did. And it's very nice.

# ..take me home

# See me got photo, photo, photograph

# Of you and mamma, mamma, mamma-san... #

That's all right. It won't hurt you.

One of the cygnets had got back in the water with his feet still tied,

so one of the boatmen

sacrificed himself, or two of the boatmen did,

and jumped in after to go and get it,

and the swan, the big swans were coming

and so they had to splash them away, I think.

But er, they got the cygnet, untied his, untied his feet.

But, of course, so the poor guys, they're very wet.

Country Life has had really an extraordinary existence.

I suppose it was born at the close of the Victorian age

and through the Edwardian period

when there was a vision of, in particular, Englishness,

which really embraced the whole island as a kind of greater England.

Which I suppose the parallels with things like Elgar's music,

that kind of feeling of the countryside.

It's essentially a southern vision of England.

It's, er, non-urban,

it's, er, villages with little churches,

it's quite gentle landscape,

market towns,

it's old houses that seem to have been there forever,

old families that have lived in them seemingly forever.

It has a security and a continuity,

and, in a sense, it's an artificial vision.

Every year, over 4,000 gardens open in England and Wales

raising money for charity.

If an Englishman's home is his castle,

then his garden is surely his paradise.

Everyone has seen these at the roadside,

then you sort of think, "Well, actually I'm on my way

"to such-and-such a place,

"but, well, I may have half an hour just to pop in there

"and have a bit of tea and a quick whizz round the garden"

and you end up staying a couple of hours and being late for your,

er, other destination. But I do it all the time.

What I really love about gardens are the sort of romantic, blousy...

English sense that you get, and you get that lovely moment

in twilight when everything is in bloom

and the birds are sort of singing their hearts out

and it's something completely magical.

A lot of our readers open their own gardens,

so they will be saying,

you know, "Yes, I completely sympathise with that, oh,

"maybe we should put up bunting, we haven't done that before".

When you open a garden, it's a discipline

because it means that you have to get everything ready for that

particular day of the opening,

so beforehand you have to edge, weed,

mow, so it looks, so all the lawns are beautifully cut.

I'm quite keen on symmetry.

I love all the old-fashioned, good English, sort of standbys.

Delphiniums, lupins, erm, roses and monardas and penstemons,

phlox, they're all in there.

Who does what in the garden?

Er, Malcolm Holloway does the, um, kitchen garden.

He's been with me pretty much since we moved here,

and we couldn't manage without him.

I was bell ringing here in the church,

the head of the bell ringers, he said to me "Somebody's moved in to

"the er, rectory, he wants somebody to grow a few vegetables".

I said, "Well, I can grow a few potatoes".

I've been a farmer all me life.

So when you come in, in the morning,

what's the first thing you think "Oh, dear, I must do..."?

Greenhouse. Water the greenhouse.

It's watering everything that needs watering,

especially now, this time of year.

And he works, absolutely sort of, er, indispensable.

He does a lot of edging, weeding, helps in with the planning,

does a lot of hard landscaping.

Erm, my husband Andrew, obviously.

And what's Andrew's main job?

Paying for it!

Er, general dogsbody, really.

I'm far and away the least important person in the garden.

Er, I would say that I'm probably the third under gardener.

Unpaid, unqualified, unskilled.

Erm, and er, and essentially I do what I'm told.

Victoria sponge number six.

Is Victoria sponge THE cake to do for National Gardens Scheme?

No, probably not.

Lemon drizzle cake or coffee and walnut cake.

Da-da! I have previously made one.

Yeah. Tray bake, delicious.

Dorset apple cake, I've got a lovely lady who makes these,

Sunday Best Coffee Fudge Cake - Mary Berry's.

-Really lovely.

-So how many cakes do you need?

Do you know, I don't know.

I just actually don't know any more.

I can't, I can't think how many more cakes I've got.

I'm fed up with cakes.

This is going to make Mary Berry spin because she would be

very organised, and would have it all calmly laid out.

Calm shot.

Under control.

INDISTINCT

I think it's quite jolly, isn't it?

Think it, erm, cheers the place up.

And is it more complicated than it looks though?

-No.

-ANDREW LAUGHS

Oh. Lovely.

Is there always a moment when you do wonder

-if anyone's going to turn up?

-Yes, very much so.

Actually, the first two years no-one turned up at all, cos it poured with rain,

which was slightly disappointing.

One doesn't want to be absolutely inundated with people.

You want a lot, want enough to feel the whole thing's been worthwhile,

but you don't want to be absolutely swamped.

Da-da!

Now that, I think, looks just what an NGS tea should look like.

-Well done, everybody.

-So how much can you take at the gate?

£4.

It's worked out beforehand how much each garden is, can justify,

and er, we are £4.

There's a league table.

You check whether their gardens have made more than somebody else's.

I think, not that I ever participate in that because I...

-Surely not.

-..rise above it.

CAMERA CLICKS

It's a very jolly thing, it's a celebration of summer.

And, er, a celebration of beautiful gardens.

That's a lovely shot, isn't it? Isn't that lovely?

That's the owners, there.

Yes, prune them out, prune, take out,

leave four inches between each, each stem.

I think it's all lovely.

Yeah. All of it.

Marvellous, I wish mine was half as good.

THEY LAUGH

-It's so varied. There's such a lot of different parts of it.

-Yeah.

-Typical of what you'd think of as England, I think.

-Yes, definitely.

Perfect, isn't it, really?

WOMAN LAUGHS

Over 100 people turned up across the afternoon,

raising £350 for charity.

I feel very privileged.

Erm, because it is an enormous privilege living here.

Actually there's nothing nicer than a delicious cake,

cup of tea and a pretty garden to look at.

It's so essentially English, the whole concept,

and when the weather is good, it's just heaven.

And are you looking forward to the end of the, er, afternoon?

Erm, I'm enjoying every minute of it.

ANDREW LAUGHS

But you're going off somewhere, aren't you?

I am indeed, I'm disappearing,

I'm let off for good behaviour at five o'clock.

And where are you going?

Er, I am going to Norfolk, funnily enough,

to hit a golf ball for a couple of days.

ANDREW LAUGHS

Hello, old girl. What you got there, then? Eh?

What you got there?

Eh? You got a nice little burrit. You have?

You've got a nice little burrit?

Have you?

Hello, little tiger.

Eh?

Poor little calf.

You all right, are you?

COW MOOS

She was born during the dark hours,

been very pleased to see yet another heifer calf come along.

Ain't we, old girl, hey? You clever cow.

What do you think of her?

I think it's a nice calf.

Got a good future ahead of her.

COWS MOO

Ah-ah-ah! You.

That is Aiden...

..and he's just coming up to...four.

Do you think your grandson will be taking over

the farm in 30 years' time?

Well, he certainly talks and wants to be involved in it all.

He wants to be helping in his little way.

-RADIO ANNOUNCER:

-'Well, now it's time for Farming Today this week

'here on Radio Four with Sian Oldsmith.'

'Good morning. Well, this week, as the second year of the pilot

'badger culls got under way,

'we're looking at TB in cattle and how to tackle it.

'The disease is being fought on all sides,

'through tougher bio-security measures on farms,

'vaccination, cattle testing

'and movement restrictions and the controversial culling of badgers.'

It's results day on Maurice's farm.

The vet has come to measure any lumps that might've grown,

indicating the possible presence of TB.

Have you had a look at any of the cows?

-Have you looked at their sides, their flanks?

-Yes. But I'm not, er,

I'm not in a position to be able to read them.

I'm not allowed to.

But do you have an instinct?

No.

-Are you optimistic this time?

-Always optimistic. Always optimistic.

Got to be, haven't you? But er, erm,

we've been shut down for four years so, erm,

hopefully this will be the time that we go clear,

so, yeah, fingers crossed.

29-07.

29-07.

Clear.

Come on, then. Come on.

That's all right.

Clear.

29-14.

Clear.

Oh.

-Oh...

-Okey dokey.

-Don't like the sound of that.

12 on the top.

15 on the bottom, which er,

is outside...

..outside the range for a doubtful as well

because they're on, it's called severe interpretation here.

Poor old girl.

This is what it's all about.

She got to have a little trip.

Bloody badgers.

-It must feel very unfair?

-Yes, it does.

And they say that we don't do anything in regards of culling.

Normally in, er, in a first outbreak that would be an inconclusive,

erm, but in this case it was actually severe interpretation,

so although it's just to a certain extent, borderline,

it's still reactive.

Like I say, we've been through it... time and time again, so...

60 days ago she was OK.

-Will she get a second chance?

-No.

-No.

That's her condemned.

Most farmers believe badgers transmit TB to cows

and trialled badger culls have begun.

Many people are passionately against these efforts,

which involve gassing or shooting to control the disease,

maintaining they're inefficient

and cause unnecessary cruelty to wild animals.

7-7.

The only certainty is that any cow with suspected TB

will itself be destroyed.

Opinion remains deeply divided.

So why not have a cull?

Why not?

I can't think of any reason not to have a cull,

and I think now,

I say with the momentum of disease that they've got,

that it's the practicalities of funding it

and what was supposed to be a trial cull, you know,

provoked a major amount of, er, public opinion, didn't it?

But as I say, what is emerging more and more,

that until something's done, erm, to reduce the numbers,

they're not, erm, not going to make any progress.

Clear. Stay.

I think quite regularly decisions are made, erm,

in Westminster,

whereby if they'd asked some people in the countryside

about what was the likelihood of it being successful,

er, they would've,

it would've been pointed out to them that it was pretty unlikely.

You know, these are, these are wild animals who are extremely sensitive.

If they find that their sets or whatever have been disrupted,

they change their habits,

and because there is this short window,

it just wasn't a sufficient time to do it.

-12-10.

-So it was a disaster because, erm,

it's probably put some form of resolution to it backwards,

it polarised, in some ways, town against country.

Come on, walk on.

You know, last year, 38,000 cows were killed

because they had TB on their farms.

That's 38,000 heart breaks for farmers.

Am I frustrated with people that have sympathy with the badgers?

Yes.

Cos they can only see one side of the story.

But hey-ho, well, what's another dairy cow?

They obviously don't value a dairy cow.

Are badgers more important than what a dairy cow is?

They obviously don't like milk on their Cornflakes

or milk in their tea or coffee.

7-7.

-Is one as bad as 20?

-Yes.

Cos it have the same effect on us,

it shuts us all down and devalue the animals.

Come on.

-It's not good, no.

-Not good?

-This one's not, not good.

-MAURICE SIGHS

-Six on the top, 12 on the bottom.

Another...what was that?

This one's unusual cos there's nothing on the top, but...

..but a substantial lump.

This two-year-old cow is with calf.

A bloody-nother one.

Off to the abattoir, old girl.

A hole in her head, just to there.

Poor old girl.

Go on.

People have committed suicide as a result of this,

er, families have been broken up.

It's absolutely appalling what's happened.

And we have to find a solution to this, both for the badgers,

but especially for the farmers, the dairy farmers and their cattle.

-MAURICE:

-We can't retaliate in any way.

We can't retaliate against the badgers in one way at all.

7-7.

We are taking out our cows, our animals was affected,

but the other side of the fence is...

..not touched, they're encouraged.

The dairy industry has been on the floor anyway because of,

er, the price of milk,

there's been times when the supermarkets have

been accused of price fixing the milk to keep it at a very low level.

We may lose almost all our dairy industry,

because people cannot bear to go on.

Erm, of all the types of farmers that I know,

it's the dairy farmers that love their particular animal the most.

Clear, no change.

If it was rats that gave them TB, nobody would be blinking.

-Come on then, quickly.

-They're just like everyone else.

Want to make it better for your children.

Do you also think of your dad?

Yes, I do think of my dad quite a lot...

..and wonder if he could come back and pass an opinion what...

..his honest opinion would be.

I hope it'd be good...

..which I feel it would be, but, er...

Well, I try not to let him down, anyway.

WIND HOWLS

370 miles north of Maurice's farm,

honouring the past is also on the mind of the magazine's editor.

In 1902, Edward Hudson, the founder of Country Life,

made Lindisfarne Castle his home

to protect his own little piece of Britain.

The one thing you'd have to say about Lindisfarne is that,

you know, it is, you can only get here at low tide

so twice a day it's cut off,

and so there'd have to be a lot planning.

113 years later, Mark Hedges is on his first visit.

The first thing I notice is this,

which is exactly the same picture as I have in my office.

He looks slightly sadder than I've ever seen him before now.

The castle houses a considerable number of old issues

of the magazine.

September 14th, 1907.

It cost...sixpence.

Or by post...

..six and a half pence.

The quality of these black and white pictures

are far superior to any other magazine

or practically any other magazine that exists at the time.

-And was it noted for that?

-Yes, it was.

It's a bit like when, sort of colour comes in to newspapers,

it's something that is a game-changer

and so the magazine is a technical game changer

as well as tackling a subject that hadn't ever been done before,

and they combine together to make it

an instant success, because people perhaps are looking at it

because they hadn't ever seen pictures like this before.

And then they find this is a subject that fascinates them as well.

"The British burrowing spider."

Well, I'm quite good on my countryside,

but I didn't actually know there was a British burrowing spider.

I could spend all day,

the longer I look at these, the more fascinating it is.

I also nick ideas from these, there's...you always see something.

"The Burrowing Spider." I'll have to find out more about that.

It's amazing, they've actually put in a photograph of a badger.

Over 100 years ago it was worth putting

a picture of a badger in cos it was so rare.

Now we wouldn't. There wouldn't be, you wouldn't do that, you know,

everyone's seen a badger who lives in the countryside.

Since 1897, the magazine has been celebrating the landowners,

farmers and gardeners of Britain,

who, each in their own way, continue to protect the landscapes

that we know and love.

Ten days after suspected TB was found in two of Maurice's cattle,

the abattoir lorry arrives to collect them.

It's 8pm and Maurice has been waiting all day.

Emotions are running high.

-Get out.

-Go on.

Psst! Go on.

-Come on. Come on.

-Stop it.

-Go on, baby.

-Good girl.

-Go on.

WHISTLING

-Go on, baby.

-Come on.

Go on, baby. Go on, baby. Go up in there, go on. Go up in that.

Go on.

INDISTINCT

Go on, baby.

-It's kind of hidden all this, isn't it?

-Oh, very much so. Very hidden.

-People don't...

-Because everybody... no-one wants the publicity.

No-one at all. He didn't, I didn't.

I'd rather go on with my job

without any of this climbing on me back, of TB, and...

..and if they don't want us as dairy farmers, tell us,

we'll get out, everybody will.

There won't be a need for a hedgerow or anything, then.

Remember, the cattle's the only reason why there's a hedgerow.

Who's running the countryside now, Maurice?

I'm afraid it's the bloody do-gooders...

..what's taking it all over.

They interfere with everything we do now.

They dictate to how they think we should farm it.

And when you get, er...

..big noises, big money backing that side...

..we got, we got no hope in hell's chance.

They don't get it, they don't realise, yeah,

they're nice badgers, but the real, the real story,

or at least half the story,

and in my mind the majority of the story,

is 38,000 volts going in to cattle's heads

because nobody has done anything about it.

The Conservative Party have done a little bit recently,

but the Labour Party didn't do anything about it,

they have just allowed this massacre in the countryside

because they couldn't deal with the problem

that this animal that people are attracted to could do some damage.

It's politics gone mad.

The countryside doesn't have as many voters in it as the towns,

so the countryside gets trod on, stamped on, all the time,

because the votes are all in the metropolitan areas.

Thank you very much for sharing your experiences

and what you've allowed us to see, and...

Well, somebody got to stand up. Everybody's afraid.

No doubt I shall have reason to be afraid

now I've stuck me head above the water line.

But, somebody got to start somewhere.

What are you going to go and do now?

I don't know.

Water me flowers.

Been a long day.

Next week, inheriting a crumbling stately manor...

What are the challenges of keeping a house like this alive in 2014-15?

You need a good woman around, really.

..climbing to the top of the castle...

And who would the Philips have been trying to keep out?

Erm, probably the Welsh.

..and falling in love with the past.

Are we in a historic house? Are we in a 20th-century house?

Are we in the middle of a wedding cake?!