Episode 3 Land of Hope and Glory - British Country Life

From the green and pleasant land of William Blake's Jerusalem,

to the hills and glens of Flower Of Scotland,

it is to nature that we turn when we celebrate who we are.

CHURCH BELL RINGS

We cherish the beauty of our villages,

churches, fields, hedges, forests and streams.

Nature's everything to me. It's my religion, if you like.

Our countryside is shaped by man

and driven by our needs for shelter, food, worship

and an appreciation of lives lived well and lost.

This is a document, if you like,

of the whole of the English countryside as it went to war.

For almost 120 years, Country Life magazine has been aspiring

to capture the elusive soul of the British countryside.

We spent a year going down lanes, turning corners,

stepping through front doors.

-Where do you want to go? Through the back, or...?

-Yes!

Up staircases, opening boxes...

"My darling girl, I do believe that as long as one had

"enough for a cup of tea and a cottage here or there,

"one could live like a prince in the light of another's eyes."

..to discover the meaning of beauty to people in the countryside.

More than epic, isn't it?

I mean, you know, look how far your eye can see.

But when we dream about the British landscape, what do we dream of?

And how do we keep that dream alive?

Who owns the landscape

will become an increasingly important question to ask.

So, if you own the land,

does it mean you own the landscape?

This programme contains some scenes which some viewers may find upsetting

DOG BARKS

Harry Parsons moved from London to live in Devon ten years ago.

You get the breeze off that sea.

You smell the cutting of the grass, the farmers working.

You're just in a part of merry old England and it's lovely.

Harry regularly roams the hills

with his pack of endangered Sealyham terriers,

which he breeds from home,

having made it his life's mission to save them.

'I've got Ethel,

'Maud, Alice, Betty, Madge, Doris, Flo,

'Frankie, Victor, Edward.'

I try and keep them old-fashioned Victorian names.

Some of the names of me old aunties.

Once popular with the royal family and Hollywood stars,

the breed has almost died out.

DOGS BARK

In 2013, only 48 Sealyham puppies were born in the UK.

-That's that one, there.

-Harry turned to the magazine for help.

That's me Molly.

She's a very laid-back dog.

We got so much help from that bit of publicity, you wouldn't believe it.

The Sealyham is quite a tricky balance.

We wanted the breed to be saved.

We don't want to turn it into the next greatest fashion that, er,

super models have one trotting behind them.

But without our help, I don't think it would've existed.

When we wrote the article, I think it was rarer than the giant panda.

INTERVIEWER: Did people want to buy them

after you appeared on the cover?

It did. That's the downside of it.

One person phoned from Dubai.

I won't disclose the money they offered for that actual puppy.

It was ridiculous.

And he wanted it for the sole reason

that it had been on the front cover of the Country Life.

Give us an idea of how much he offered you.

You have a guess.

-£5,000?

-A lot more.

-Ten? 15?

-A lot more, a lot more.

-20?

-A lot more.

-30?

-3-0.

What did you think?

I think it's disgusting.

To want to pay 30 grand just to own a dog

that's been on the front cover of a magazine, it's ridiculous.

Brrr!

Ethel, behind! Back up, stay behind. Oi! Stay up, stay up!

I think we met him at the game fair

and he came along with six or seven of these charming little dogs.

Without him - I mean, I wouldn't want the magazine to take too much credit -

he is the great advocate.

We just gave him the mouthpiece for trying to save this breed.

He's a remarkable man who seems to have given his life

-to the Sealyham terrier.

-Lilly!

I was a window cleaner in London.

The only sort of contact I had with the countryside was hop-picking.

I come to Devon, I found out Devon through fishing.

I liked it so much down here, as the years rolled on,

I've changed this...for London.

It's a nicer way of life.

It's really a slow, slower way and I'd rather be here with my dogs.

Of all the dogs that Harry has owned,

it was Alice that stole his heart.

"Alice was born on the 9th of October in 2001 in France.

"We share the same birthday.

"She has shown all the true traits of a Sealyham,

"documented here in this book, including gameness with discretion,

"a scenting ability that has never once let me down

"and on a few occasions

"she has made me feel so proud that it's brought me to tears.

"Above all else,

"she has been to Gary and I...

"the most lovable, loyal terrier that one..."

HE EXHALES DEEPLY

"..that one could wish to meet."

That one's Alice, who's looking head-on. The side one is Betty.

They was like partners in crime.

She's been dead about two years now, but it seems like yesterday.

It was just one of them things. It just happens.

If you keep livestock, you're going to have dead stock.

I might be a bit soft on it, but she was... She...

If it wasn't for Alice, we wouldn't be having this conversation.

-Do you like people, Harry, as much as dogs?

-No.

I think we're disgusting creatures.

I think our greed and our thing to do things quicker and faster,

the way it's spiralling out,

I like to step off of that and see where we've been today

and go and talk to a farmer who's been out sitting down by his tractor

with a lump of cheese and bread.

What this nation has come to,

from how great we was and what we was,

I think it's... I think it's sad.

# Ohhh....

# Ohhh... #

650 miles north of Harry's Devon home lives Mary Miers,

the magazine's fine arts and books editor.

'I suppose it is a bit odd to be living quite so far'

from where I work and to have chosen a place

that isn't part of a village or a town,

but is actually on its own in the middle of a wood!

It's just so wonderful and quiet and I can work here.

I can't work anywhere else properly like I can here.

There's a wonderful sense of sort of peace and stillness here.

The nearest neighbour is about quarter of a mile away.

I can't get up the lane in winter, because it's too steep and icy.

But I love the fact that it's mine.

To fulfil her dream of living in a remote

and beautiful landscape,

Mary's prepared to travel for over 12 hours each way every week

to reach her desk in London.

'I love the city for what it offers, but it just makes me feel chilled.'

Oh, the potholes are getting so bad.

I just could not imagine having my only home in a city.

-TANNOY:

-..at 20:26.

Caledonian sleeper service to London Euston.

'There's something about the idea that you're rolling through

'this unbelievably desolate,'

beautiful, but bleak landscape

and that you're going to wake up in a city.

There's something about that contrast.

There is definitely a romance.

'There's certainly a romance to the travel.

'The old-fashioned image of the sleeper, you know,

'as this place with sort of waiters serving you at a white tablecloth'

with wonderful silver service and freshly caught

salmon and grouse - all of that is obviously, you know,

long since gone.

Here we are. Ah.

So here we have ScotRail's complimentary washbag.

It has everything you need in it - shoe-cleaning equipment,

a very useful cloth, which makes a good dishcloth, actually.

The walls are paper thin, so if you've got any secret things

you want to discuss with your companion,

don't do it on the sleeper.

The basin, I never really bother to use,

and I do know some people use it as a toilet.

So, um, it's probably best avoided.

(Hi there.)

How are you?

-Very well, how are you?

-Oh...

-How was your day today?

'The Inverness train stops at all those wonderful little stations,

'down towards Perth, and they all have such wonderful names -

'Kingussie, Newtonmore,

'Pitlochry and Blair Atholl.'

Sorry, Blair Atholl first.

Um, you've got... Oh, Aviemore, I forgot.

'Aviemore's a wonderful station,

'because that's one of those, um, the Swiss chalet-style stations,

'which you see quite a lot on the West Highland Line.'

'The noises of the train are quite soporific.'

Doors rattle.

The ladder rattles.

And I find it very easy to fall asleep

with this sort of gentle rhythm.

Ooh, they've done the fruit salads differently.

Oh, they've packaged them in a more sort of smart way.

They never used to be like that.

Because you get so dehydrated on these...trains.

Ah...

And it's not cos I've had too much whisky the night before.

So, I've got to go to a party tonight.

I've got to go to a book launch.

So the big question - there's always these dilemmas -

do I put on my clothes that I'm going to be wearing tonight?

Bearing in mind I'm not going to have time to go back

and have a shower.

You know, I won't have washed, my face probably looks

all, sort of, a bit horrible and, um,

you know, then I've got to sort of think,

I've got a busy day in the office.

Yesterday morning I woke up to the sound of an owl, quite early,

and I had that owl hooting at me, on and off,

for about half an hour,

and I read in bed and it was just bliss and quiet.

'And, um, here in London it could be any time of day,

'any time of year, really.'

'I don't feel I could ever put down my roots in the city.'

'Country Life, you know,

'I mean, it's representing a view of Britain

'which sort of does exist,

'but also is a sort of romanticised image of the country.'

Morning.

The magazine was founded in 1897 by Edward Hudson,

the son of a wealthy printer.

His original office clock needs to be rewound once a week.

Everyone in the countryside has superstitions,

but I'm worse than most.

If the clock ever stops, something will go wrong with the magazine.

Er, it's a bit like the ravens in the Tower Of London for me.

It goes for about eight days,

but if we all have a break at the same time,

I get in a complete panic.

-INTERVIEWER: And that was Hudson's clock?

-Yeah, yeah.

In fact, you can just about see, there's the initials EH there.

So it's rather amazing to think that's been ticking away

in the editor's office for whatever that is now -

114 years or so.

BIRDS TWEET

The countryside we know and love is shaped by history,

and the First World War

had a significant impact on villages up and down the country.

In 1914,

Mells was a thriving rural community,

with a blacksmith, baker, farmers

and even miners living amongst its medieval layout.

By 1918,

many of its menfolk had died in the trenches.

Today, Mells has a population of 638 - many of them commuters.

At its heart is Mells Manor.

It was a very happy place.

I think the manor's always been a happy place, actually.

I know my grandmother Catherine always had a...

She regarded it as a person, but she calls it a magical place.

Mells is an entrancing...place.

I've never been to the manor.

I've only peered at it over a garden wall.

'You can feel that Mells,

'when you just go to the village, is really a work of art.'

That sense that beauty is a very important thing in life,

pervades Mells.

INTERVIEWER: Why does Country Life want to feature Mells Manor?

We particularly want to write about it at the moment

because it's got a very strong association

with the First World War, because both Edward Horner -

who was the last of the Horners,

who'd been here since the 16th century -

and his brother-in-law,

Raymond Asquith - who was the son of the Prime Minister,

a brilliant young man - they were both killed

and they both have remarkable monuments in the church,

which in a way tell the story of their generation.

Um, so it's a very appropriate place for us to write about,

when there's the anniversary of the First World War.

The manor dates from the 15th century.

-BELL RINGS

-Ah, there was a bell.

-Hello.

-Clive.

Its many famous visitors include Charles II,

the writer Hilaire Belloc,

the most notable architect of his day, Edwin Lutyens,

and many of the pre-Raphaelite artists.

-That's a Dante Gabriel Rossetti of Frances.

-Gosh.

-But, well,

I don't know, Clive, I mean, they all look rather the same!

-THEY LAUGH

-I have to say they all come up the same, whoever it is.

So that's a Burne-Jones to that design

-and that's a Burne-Jones design.

-Gosh...

-So we've got a lot of sort of...

-..quite serious.

-..Burne-Jonesy stuff here.

-Hm.

Raymond's grandmother and great-grandmother

were avid letter-collectors and diary-writers.

Oh, my goodness. This is amazing.

And this is a very ad-hoc archive room.

It used to be the main laundry for the estate.

It was all over the place. Um,

everything was swirling around, um, you know,

a good 150, 200 years' volume of correspondence,

-and then there are letters from, sort of...

-But that's...

..from Virginia Woolf,

next to, you know, a sort of advertisement for Stannah Lifts.

Were there record books, too?

Every day the aunts were recording rainfall

and, you know, I mean, I don't know what to do with it, really, but...

No, but well worth keeping.

In 1907, Lord Oxford's grandmother Catherine married Raymond Asquith,

the son of the future Prime Minister, Herbert Asquith.

There's the Prime Minister and other mem...

daughter and wife,

and there's Catherine, looking up at Raymond,

um, who's sitting up on top of this balustrade.

Let's see, letters from Raymond to Catherine. Let's see.

Let's look at 794.

We might have to...

..get out this box.

-CLIVE LAUGHS

-This is all just one box.

I mean, these go on...

-So they were writing to each other...

-..for seven, seven years.

-..all the time.

-Um...

That's absolutely great. Here you are.

"My darling girl, from..."

something, "as long as we live,

"because in spite of all abuse of romances,

"I do believe that as long as one had

"enough for a cup of tea and a cottage here or there..."

something, "according to the season,

"one could live like a prince in the light of another's eyes."

Well, yes, it's very nice.

It was an enduring love story, actually, their marriage.

In 1914, Herbert Asquith led the country to war.

His son Raymond, along with all the young men in Mells,

went off to fight.

You can see there's something not quite...

There's no frivolity in the eyes at all any more.

"We came out to this utterly bloody camp, where we

"now are on Sunday night, leaving behind one the flash and clatter..."

Raymond wrote to Catherine daily from the trenches in France.

"Many thanks for the razor blades and watch strap, et cetera,

"and please thank Frances for the marmalade and treacle tart.

"Mells must be rather pleasant now among the hollyhocks and dahlias.

"2nd of September 1916." So just a fortnight before he was killed.

"Another night I was in a much worse place than this.

"The most accursed, unholy and abominable wood,

"where all the trees had been cut off by the shells the week before

"and nothing remained but black stumps of really the most...

"..craters swimming in blood and dirt, rotting and smelling bodies

"and rats like shadows, fattened for the market."

He knew he was going to die.

When he writes about the horrible noise

and how the men absolutely hate the noise of the bombardment,

it's worse than the shells coming down, it's worse than the mud,

it's worse than the rats. It's just this noise.

Um, and that always betokened, for me, a sense in him

that, er, something dreadful about to happen.

BELL TOLLS

On the 15th of September, 1916, Raymond was killed,

leaving Catherine devastated.

It was a catastrophe for Catherine. A catastrophe.

And only eight months later, her brother Edward,

heir to the Mells estate, also perished, in the Battle of Cambrai.

They're remembered in the church in two astonishing memorials.

One is to Edward, which is by Munnings -

a great painter of horses - and his only work of sculpture.

Raymond Asquith, who was a great scholar,

is remembered in an inscription in Latin,

carved into the very stone of the church of Mells by Eric Gill,

who was the greatest carver of his age.

This last line was added by Catherine,

because she thought this was a little bit too formal.

It's almost untranslatable, but it says,

"In unassuaged incomplete love, his own" - his loved ones,

but his own - "are following him."

By 1919, Mells, like every village in the country,

wanted a war memorial.

Edwin Lutyens, who built the Cenotaph in London,

was a family friend and agreed to design it.

He walked around the village one morning,

just after the end of the First World War,

trying to find the right place for it, and he described it

in a letter to his wife, Lady Emily,

how particularly sad it was to walk around with the Horners

and some of the leading members of the, er, the village

and he said, "All their young men are dead."

"We died in a strange land, facing the dark cloud of war,

"and this stone is raised to us in the home of our delight."

Mells was an estate village and the whole community -

the whole male community - would have gone.

Francis Baber, Geoffrey Bates, Oliver Burge, Stanley Burge,

Edward Chamberlain, Edward Fricker, Wyndham Hames,

Edward Horner, Raymond Asquith at the top.

This is a document, if you like, of the whole of the English countryside

as it went to war and what it meant when these men didn't come back.

So there's a whole span of English history there.

Country Life is immortal, because it has an absolutely unchanging vision.

It must be like the royal family, which is an odd thing.

It's something that's always there. It's a kind of rock.

It doesn't wind you up much.

You turn its pages and you go for a walk in those photographs.

You are seduced by this sort of wonderful vision.

So that, in fact, it does offer a kind of anchor.

An anchor of what the country represents.

And it's comfortable, and it's peaceful,

and it's rural and it's about dogs and nature and the sky.

And it may be raining, and you may be shooting, you may be fishing.

All those things are absolutely enchanting

and they're not politically divisive in any way.

They're out of all that.

And I think it's all such a relief.

The magazine may well celebrate traditional values,

but they aren't averse to the odd gimmick.

# This is a man's world...

They're on the hunt to find the perfect English gentleman.

# This is a man's world... #

You know, it is the greatest prize that a man can get.

You know if you go and you meet somebody and you said,

"He was a complete gent", you know, forget OBEs and MBEs

and peerages and whatever, that is the ultimate award from your peers.

That's what I really want to achieve, is just actually celebrate

this highest form of manliness that you can have.

SHE LAUGHS

-Is he heavy?

-Yes. A proper man. Ha-ha!

Country Life is many things, but it tries to be a civilised

magazine and, er, hopefully helps civilise other people.

Being a gentleman has been as much part of Country Life

as any of the country sports or the great houses or the gardens

or anything else that we do.

It remains a great ideal, and Country Life is about ideals.

When you... You girls, when you meet a gentleman, I mean, how do you...

How quickly do you realise that he is a gentleman, opposed to...?

-Pretty quickly.

-I think very, very quickly.

If they stand up and they, you know, to shake your hand,

that's very important. Eye contact.

There's space in his wardrobe for... He's got,

you know, his smart black-tie and things for a wedding,

-but he's also got, like, his bonfire jumper.

-Yeah, exactly.

And the reading glasses that come off the peg at Boots

and they've got thumb prints on them.

-He's shabby, but never grubby.

-Yes, exactly.

And those ghastly women that hate it when you open the door for them.

We could sort of explain to them that we're actually only

trying to be nice to them and, er, the battle of the sexes doesn't

need to be carried on to being... You know, we're only being gentlemanly.

What's happened to his feet?

We couldn't get his shoes on.

We've been shoehorning for about half an hour!

He's come home, he's taken his shoes off, he's pouring himself a whisky.

-Yeah, and he's just chilling out.

-Just chilling.

They have to look good in their clothes.

There's a lovely man called Shepherd Mead,

warning women never to go to bed with an English gentleman,

because his clothes, his clothes are so well cut

you can never tell what his body is underneath

and then it's too late!

I don't know anything about David Bowie,

except he was a pop star, wasn't he?

Is that Jimmy Carter the pop... The... The, um, head of America?

What about David Beckham?

Yes, I think so.

I'm worried about his tattoos.

But he's got so many.

David Beckham was 7/4 favourite.

Duke of Edinburgh is 5/1.

Prince William I think is 6/1.

Prince Charles is trailing at the moment at 50/1.

I think it's a brilliant idea,

because everybody's obsessed with class.

We're not allowed to talk about it now, are we?

-Do you think a gentleman is about class?

-No, I don't.

I don't think it's anything to do with class.

It's to do with chivalry and kindness

and courteousness and tremendous, um, lack of vanity.

A gentleman is at ease in any situation and puts others at ease.

A gentleman is always on time.

A gentleman dresses to suit the occasion.

A gentleman will eat anything that's put in front of him,

but left to his own devices is happiest with unfussy fare,

such as omelettes and shepherd's pie.

I think manners are hugely important to a gentleman,

but I think the first thing is style.

I think you have to have style. It can be very much your own style.

It can be odd. It can be much more regular, but you have to have style.

A gentleman will occasionally be drunk, but never disorderly.

A gentleman makes love on his elbows.

You know, I think the old adage that they went to a posh school,

the fact that they wore a Savile Row suit, the fact that they

wore New & Lingwood shoes, is very much out of the window.

That's what would be called probably in the old days a dandy.

And, you know, dandyism exists.

You know, I mean, gentlemen's eyes don't swivel at parties.

They dance with wallflowers occasionally.

If they go to bed with somebody, they don't rush round telling everybody.

They don't kiss and tell, gentlemen.

This is nothing... It's much more behaviour than appearance.

In the run-up to the announcement of the Gentleman of the Year,

articles about gentlemen's luxuries are featuring

in the pages of the magazine, much to one reader's horror.

Well, I think that's just so vulgar and tasteless as to be unbelievable.

And all this thing, "luxury new".

I actually find, in a period when we are getting more socially divisive,

when the poor are getting poorer and the very rich

are getting richer, and richer, and richer,

that is something this magazine has never,

NEVER aligned itself with, ever.

To me, that is a betrayal

of what the essence of Country Life is about.

It was never about money.

The people may have been rich. They may have had grand houses.

But it was never about money and flogging rather vulgar wares.

Thank you all very much for coming.

We're here to judge the Gentleman of the Year.

We've all got a list that I think you've been given.

I will just go round the table, um, see if anyone's got any additions.

The third person I'd like to have on my list

is Ricky Wilson of the Kaiser Chiefs.

Federer. I don't know what his Christian name is.

Roger. Roger.

I'm rather fond of Grayson Perry. He is the most extraordinary intellect.

David Miliband. Now that's a strange one.

In fifth place we have David Miliband.

In fourth place, Jim Carter.

In third place, David Attenborough.

In second place, David Beckham.

And the winner of Gentleman of the Year 2014 is...

DRAMATIC STRINGS

..David Dimbleby.

MUSIC: It's A Man's Man's Man's Man's World by James Brown

Mark, what was David Dimbleby's reaction

when he was told he was Gentleman of the Year?

Um, he was thrilled, wasn't he?

Yeah. He behaved like a gentleman should.

Thrilled. But then slightly discreet about it.

Terribly embarrassed, but quite pleased, I think!

The judges may not have chosen a countryman

as their Gentleman of the Year, but the magazine does spend much

of its time celebrating the men and women who champion and preserve

the British landscape, like gamekeeper Simon Lester.

Yes, yeah. I was, I was... I played in a punk band.

My, er, stage name was Percy Cute

and, er, did a tour with XTC,

supporting XTC, with a band called The Secret.

Did you think about nature during that time?

Constantly, yeah.

Living in London and being on tour,

I really missed the countryside

and sort of, as we were sort of half-comatosed

driving round the country from gig to gig,

did look out the window, thinking, "I want to be out there."

Simon leads four gamekeepers on Langholm, a 30,000-acre grouse moor.

His main job is to regenerate the rare heather

and protect the grouse from predators of all kinds.

This is a rail trap.

Stoats and weasels favour walls, and they'll follow the tracks.

So we put the traps in the places where they are.

So, a stoat or a weasel will run over that little bridge

over the stream and get caught in that trap.

And they're killing traps,

so, those traps actually kill the animal straightaway.

'When I was little, I used to shoot with my grandad.'

And my other grandad was a fisherman

and we just used to roam around the countryside

and press wild flowers with my mum and had a real passion for nature.

Simon has almost 300 snares and traps on the moor,

which he checks every morning.

The snare is actually a holding device.

There's a stop on the snare which stops it restricting,

and it holds the animal until I come along and dispatch it, shoot it.

If there was a better way to control foxes, I'd be delighted

because I spend my life walking round in weather like this,

checking snares every day.

This is a midden. So there's snares around here.

This is a fox I caught last week.

And we use the dead foxes to actually draw other foxes in.

And why does this attract other foxes?

Because of the smell.

They're attracted to the smell of rotting meat

and they think they're going to get a feed out of it.

-Will they? Will they eat that?

-Yeah, yeah.

They'll scratch it about and tug it about.

That's why foxes are so successful - because they eat virtually anything.

This is the problem with predation.

You get a fox in the wrong place.

There's an awful lot of foxes out there.

There's less people killing foxes than there was in the countryside.

Langholm used to be a successful grouse shoot.

But, 20 years ago, they took part in a scientific experiment

to measure predation by birds of prey.

Ultimately, grouse shooting stopped and the gamekeepers were dismissed.

When they took the gamekeepers off here originally in the '90s,

the actual grouse numbers went down.

And that was mainly due to predation.

And, as I say, since we've been back here for the last seven years,

we've produced lots and lots of harriers.

The grouse are doing better, the black grouse.

And that's simply by removing the predators -

mainly the fox and the crows.

Since Simon and the other keepers were brought back,

the grouse population has successfully risen.

But they're still far short of the numbers needed

to be able to shoot 2,000 birds in a single season.

If you want this iconic environment,

then it's got to be paid for.

To shoot a brace of grouse is 150 quid.

So, times that up, you know.

But you need to generate that money to pay for the management.

Simon is married to Paula, the features editor of the magazine.

They live 365 miles from London.

Because I've grown up in the countryside,

because I am a gamekeeper's daughter,

because I'm a gamekeeper's wife,

I feel like I understand the countryside and the issues,

and also the beauty of it.

And the reality of living in the countryside

and what that means to people.

'Nature is such a huge, strong force that you can only be in awe of it.

'And when you live in the countryside all the time,

'you have an enormous respect for all the flora and fauna

'and how it survives, how it gets through incredibly harsh winters

'or wet weather, but it's still there.

'Nothing's going to change it too much.'

It will always try to keep coming back in its own way,

because it's stronger than us.

And it's something that keeps us grounded.

All through the summer, I had a couple of adders, three adders.

I mean, I'd say good morning every time.

And I'd watch them for five or ten minutes.

And you build up, I suppose, silly little relationships

with different animals.

It's like looking for the salmon in the river.

When you find nests, when you find so many nests

and you check on those nests,

whether it be a curlew, or a lapwing,

or a grouse, or a harrier, or a merlin.

You know where those nests are and you mark them

and, every so often, just have a sneaky peek

to see everything's all right.

Is it people have an idealistic view

of what it's like to live in the countryside?

There is a romantic notion. Like this house that we live in here.

It's in a beautiful valley, it's completely secluded.

It's a great place to live if you want to live and work and write

and have that solitude.

But, with that romanticism comes a harsh reality.

And when it's freezing, when it's minus 17

or when it's chucking it down with rain,

you've still got to go and take your dogs out, tend to your animals.

There are no choices.

It's not just being sat by a lovely roaring fire

and looking at it snowing outside.

Gamekeeping still carries on after sunset.

Every night, Simon goes out lamping for two to three hours,

searching the whole estate for foxes.

Called lamping because you're using a powerful lamp

and the fox's eyes really shine out.

All animals' eyes shine out at night.

But the fox's are particularly bright.

Once we've located the fox, if it's within range,

then we can shoot it with a high-powered rifle.

Do the foxes not run away when they see this light?

Sometimes. Sometimes they will do.

You can get a lamp-shy fox. If the fox has been shot at and missed,

then they don't take long to learn.

As soon as they see the light, they'll leg it.

They are incredible animals,

you know, that's why they're so successful.

I've got a lot of admiration for foxes.

You've got to be self-motivated to do this job.

You can go out night after night and it be fruitless.

But you've just got to keep going.

It's the same with checking traps and snares,

that you've got to put the time in.

-Do you go out on Christmas Day?

-Er, no.

I think there's a little bit of respect for everything.

-So, there's an amnesty on, is there, at Christmas?

-At Christmas.

Yeah, definitely.

There's always going to be a fox on a place like Langholm.

That's how it should be.

I would hate to think that we'd killed the last fox.

Mark Hedges, the magazine's editor,

spends much of his time travelling to all corners of the country

to ensure the magazine captures

the beauty and diversity of the landscape.

Today, he and his fishing editor David Profumo

are on a research trip to North Uist.

What we're really lucky about is how many

extraordinary different places there are in Britain

that people can find enormous pleasure and affection for.

You know, one of the great problems that we face

is that we don't know how to put a price on beauty.

And that means that it's very hard to protect it.

Politicians only seem to see things in terms of money

and how much can be got out of it,

or how much can be given away about it.

Whereas this is just beautiful and it's free.

When we make the final westward turn onto the road to the Isles,

I always feel that that's the beginning of the final approach

to the spectacular series of mountains - bens, they call them here -

riding their way down to the sea.

Their population level is so low suddenly,

and you realise you're in one of the last bits of wilderness

there is Europe, let alone in what we can still call Great Britain.

North Uist has a population of 1,254

and more than half the island is covered by water.

I just love the fact that it's just nature and me.

You feel that you are on the tip of,

well, I suppose we're on the tip of the United Kingdom.

It's beautifully bleak

and so peaceful.

I really do think Britain is the most beautiful country,

but this is another area,

a different landscape I've never seen before.

Beautiful grey colours against the sort of kelp and the seaweed.

It's really special.

It's quite good sometimes, having a bit of time by yourself

and some time to think.

I quite often think of the big changes I want to do to the magazine

when I'm fiddling around with a fishing rod.

I should charge all my fishing to work

because some of the big ideas come when you're just allowed

to let the mind relax and you just get a chance to think.

After 16 hours of fishing, Mark and David call it a day

and feast on their catch - two small brown trout.

Cheers, David. Thank you very much. Great trip.

That is sweet. Absolutely one of the nicest fish I've ever tasted.

-It's really good.

-Good work.

-Yep.

Back in London, Mark Hedges has a new idea.

He's asking readers to nominate their pets,

to find the naughtiest dog in Britain.

So, this is Dickens and he ate that carpet.

So, this is Barney, who is a working Cocker,

and Barney likes to steal and eat people's false teeth.

We're a very doggy nation.

With Country Life, you know, above all things,

if you want one guarantee, the readers love dogs.

This is Dexter. His owner said he's the only Dalmatian

that Cruella would give back!

So, I had this idea just to try and find Britain's naughtiest dog.

Highlights include chewing through

her brand-new Argentine collar and lead at the National Polo...

It's great fun when dogs are naughty.

And everyone loves telling each other

about what their dog has got up to.

A particularly memorable occasion was when she ran away

to incur a large bill at the seafront cafe.

There is this balance between being naughty, which is funny,

then there are some dogs obviously that are really not very good

and that's why we have the Dangerous Dogs Act.

We've got to find the naughty dog,

not the Genghis Khan of the canine world.

And what's the prize for the winner?

So, the winner will be on the cover of the magazine.

They will be a Country Life cover star -

which, you know, is an amazing prize -

and they will also get a big hamper of treats.

DOG BARKS

One man who won't be entering his dogs into

the naughtiest dog competition is Harry Parsons.

-Oliver! Shush up now. Pack it up.

-DOGS BARK

He may be on a mission to save the Sealyham Terrier,

but he and his dogs still have a job to do.

He's come to a free-range chicken farm

to let them do what they do best.

It's to kill the rats that are here.

It's more like pest control than some sort of hunting.

There's rats in here in abundance.

so, today is about controlling the amount of rats that are here.

The farm produces a million eggs a year.

To keep vermin down and maintain hygiene regulations,

the rats have to be regularly culled.

The sheds are moved probably once every 18 months.

Cleaned, washed down, new chickens are put in.

The rats live up in the rafters. They become immune to poison.

There's one, look, now!

Up to 200 rats can be killed each time the dogs are brought in.

Nell, that's dead now. Nell, leave that one.

I've been killing rats all my life.

I've come to respect them.

I mean, I don't want to upset anyone in the filming of this.

There's going to be some with pet rats

going to be screaming about it.

At the end of the day, you've got to understand the rate that they breed,

and can multiply in no time at all, it's frightening.

Look under. Here, here, under. Go on.

You got it?

There's no nice way of killing anything.

You know, poisoning, we hate the poisoning.

It's a slow, horrible death.

Shooting, you might injure some of them.

Trapping them. This way, it's quick, it's done.

I'm not trying to justify it.

As I say, I enjoy doing it.

Leave it! Eddie.

For Christ's sake. Eddie, drop it! Eddie!

-Leave it alone. Leave it!

-Why are you telling him to put it down?

-Because it's dead.

-HE LAUGHS

And there's others running around.

Good girl, Lou. Drop it.

Drop it, Lou. Drop it down, dead. Good girl.

Good girl, Lou.

Shit!

Eddie, Eddie, Eddie!

What a lot of people don't realise, the countryside,

it supports and maintains the cities,

its food, its beef, its lamb, its corn, its wheat.

And it's the pretty little hedges and the things that you see

were put in there by man. It's managed by man.

We need to have it carried on being managed.

If you've got something carrying disease,

like rats, badgers, or anything,

you can't take the cattle or chicken out and kill them

and leave that to thrive. It needs to be managed.

That's all it needs, is sensible management.

Eddie! Eddie!

'Some of the old-fashioned ways have got to be kept.'

Eddie!

The problem starts when people in Westminster

tell people in the countryside how to live and what to do.

It's wrong. They shouldn't do it.

Good boy, Ed. You don't like rats, do you, son? It's a good dog.

Come on, Nell! Come on, girl, you and all.

The battle to manage the land and the landscape is all around us.

Simon and Jo Murray

live above the villages of Westbury-on-Severn and Newnham.

Locally, it's called Mugglewort,

but I think on the map it's something else.

But we've always known it as Mugglewort since we've been here.

Simon is the deputy head at the National Trust,

and Jo works for Age Concern.

This is where you come after a long day.

Climb up here and stand at the high point and look at this lovely oak,

which is different every time we come, and then at the view beyond.

You come here for peace and quiet

and you get to the top and you get this fabulous view.

Over to the north, you've got Gloucester Cathedral.

You've got the spire there in the middle distance,

which is the entirely wooden, with wooden shingles,

spire of Westbury Church.

You can see the Cotswolds in the distance.

Basically all the way down to the Severn Estuary.

And it's just extraordinary that it's so broad.

Do you think it has an epic quality to it?

Well, it's more than epic, isn't it?

I mean, look how far your eye can see.

But some views like this are changing,

with renewable energy sources such as solar panels and wind farms

appearing around the country.

Many support this advance, saying

the benefits to the environment outweigh the aesthetic opposition,

but others consider it a blot on the landscape.

Wessex Solar Energy is currently examining the potential

for a solar park at Elton Road,

about 1.1km west of Westbury-on-Severn.

The solar park could generate enough renewable electricity

to power about 2,500 homes.

It would also help to prevent harmful emissions

from fossil-fuelled power stations

while the land would continue to be available for grazing.

Your first reaction is to sit down and cry.

And then, actually, you get to feel quite angry

that somebody else thinks that it's all right.

And, of course, the guy who owns the land doesn't live close.

He won't look at it.

He's not going to sit and look at it day after day as we are.

When we first came up the drive, we hadn't even been into the house.

We just stood in the garden

and we knew that we wanted to be here and this was the place

that we wanted to spend the rest of our lives here, to be honest.

Susan and Geoff live 100 metres from the site

of the proposed new solar park.

It just turned up in the letterbox.

Not really much of an introduction to a very big change in our lives.

Our understanding is that it would start where the small,

the low hedge is there.

And then, from there onwards, all the way down to the white house,

Pound Farm, and you can see the garden cliff in the background,

and extending all the way round here

to the white building over there.

And right over to the brook at the far right-hand side.

-We went and bought some white boards and took some photographs.

-From B&Q!

And we took these photographs from up on the escarpment looking down

and, just very, crudely etched on the extent of the two fields,

because it's actually two solar farms.

And, in our hugely professional campaigning mode,

we kind of just wrote what we wanted to say on the boards.

"Say no to Elton Solar Park.

"Two fields of glass, steel, fencing, CCTV and other structures."

It is not a farm. Those are weasel words to use for this.

If somebody had been putting up, I don't know, 50 acres of warehouses,

and you said to everybody,

"They're going to put up an industrial park here,"

everybody would have been, "Yeah that's terrible. We're with you."

But, actually, the first reaction of most people is,

"Yeah, but solar's fine."

The community have been consulted for their views

and the proposal for the solar park

was recently rejected by the local council.

I mean, we'd bought this place for the view.

And everybody you talk to, they say that's why, pretty much. I mean,

obviously people were born here and they're here for their jobs,

but they are living where they are living because they value that view.

Nobody has said to me in the last year,

"I've bought a house and I don't want to look at that."

If you look at a tourist brochure for coming to England,

they have views like this, don't they?

It is those big trees, and the big clouds, and the green grass

that they're putting in all the pretty, glossy pictures, isn't it?

# Some kind of nature

# Some kind of soul... #

Almost 20,000 acres of British farmland

is now covered by solar panels, such as this one in Norfolk.

# Some chemical load. #

You can understand why farmers do it

because, if they're going to get nearly £1,000 an acre

a year, guaranteed for 25 years,

as opposed to maybe £100 if they were letting it for agricultural,

yes, of course, you can see their point of view.

# Some kind of plastic I could wrap around you... #

People who support solar farms do so because they're silent,

non-polluting and fulfil renewable energy quotas.

It's not that we've got it in for the farmers.

It's more that, because it could go elsewhere,

there's a lack of political will to pass the legislation

which has just been passed in France

that means that all new commercial buildings built in commercial zones

have to have roofs of solar panels.

Since we moved here, it was the first time I'd ever seen a lapwing.

I couldn't believe it that we suddenly saw

a flock of birds land in this paddock and in the main field.

And we looked out with the binoculars, they're lapwings.

I'd never seen them before.

I think, increasingly, and particularly in public terms,

who owns the landscape will become

an increasingly important question to ask.

So, if you own the land, does it mean you own the landscape?

So, does landscape come deliberately first, as our greatest glory?

Almost everything else that is great hangs off the landscape

and the variation that we have, and why places are different

and why you have dairy farming in one place,

and cereal farming in other places.

So, everything starts with the landscape, for me, anyway.

The hunt for the naughtiest dog in Britain is over.

He's been found in a sleepy village in a Wiltshire valley.

Rabbit was nominated by his owner Violet, aged five.

Rabbit was a Christmas present for me.

Rabbit arrived years ago from Battersea Dogs' Home

and, in that time, he's eaten £250 in cash, a pair of trousers,

an entire chair, two pairs of specs, a mobile phone,

sofa, many favourite toys,

steals every egg the chicken lays, and that is only the beginning.

Sit, sit.

One of his most brilliant adventures was when he decided

that life in the back of a delivery van was much more interesting.

He jumped in the back when a delivery was being made

and then spent a morning in the back of the van,

whirling around Wiltshire and Dorset,

chewing parcels with the driver totally unaware.

He is really... He is unbelievably... He deserves it.

He decimates everything.

But he does love her massively, so it comes out in the wash.

Silly Rabbit.

-How much money did he chew?

-I got... I had some cash. £250.

I'd left it on my bed for all of 30 seconds while I went to run a bath

and came back, and Rabbit was having the time of his life.

Yeah, he's cost us a fortune.

-But...

-It's all your fault.

And he chewed... I think he chewed this one first.

Um...

And there were bits everywhere.

This one was in my room.

He chewed the back. The back's damaged, but not really the front.

I think there's a bit of Scottie

and I think there's a bit of Yorkie, Skye Terrier, that kind of thing.

But then I think... Sometimes I think there's a bit of sheep dog

in him because he herds the children!

But, even at the printers, Rabbit has the last laugh.

BELL

The magazine was founded to celebrate the countryside,

its houses, its gardens and its way of life.

A love affair the readers continue to this day.

We are part of nature. Humans are part of nature.

As I say, I mean, we've done what we've done to the countryside

because we've lived here all these years.

What we've got to decide in the countryside is

what we want from the countryside.

One lot of people want a raptor in every tree

and another one want so many badgers

and another lot want so many grouse, or whatever.

It's not the animals.

It's the humans that are the problem.

It may not be a simple love affair,

but it is the stuff of dogs, cottages, fields and rivers,

a soaring coastline and undulating hills.

You have Munlochy Bay, the distant hills of Strathglass.

You have the wonderful farmland of the Black Isle.

I love coming back late at night, by full moonlight,

walking up the lane in the snow.

In summer, it never gets dark.

I can go out and do some gardening at midnight.

The natural world can bring us great joy and peace.

Just to walk out under those big old oak trees around there.

Those oak trees, I think a gentleman came in from the estate last year

to measure them, and he estimated them at 500 or 600 years old.

You know, I love the place. I love the place to bits.

And I hope I don't need to go anywhere else in life.

Sometimes, to be truly human,

you have to feel small in your landscape,

rather than the master of it.