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Second Homes: Why dreams of the rural idyll put our countryside at risk
On a damp bank-holiday weekend, most peoples’ thoughts turn to a place in the country. Whether it means a fortifying yomp up the nearest high fell, a few hours fishing in placid silence, or just a gentle slide from the lunch table towards afternoon oblivion, the idyll remains more or less intact; a house, a family, a garden, the Great British Countryside. |
Cold Comfort Farm: What's happened to British farming? And why are so many farmers giving up and getting out The Croft is not the sort of farm from which urban
dreams are made. It’s lacking in several important scenic
details; the land is flat, it’s surrounded by the suburbs
of Carlisle, and at night the fields are tinted orange by the glow of
the nearby street lights. |
Guardian Column - Reading Every summer and every Christmas, the weekend broadsheets
publish some sort of holiday reading list, calling in the favours of
the famous to give their views on the best books of the year. For book-lovers,
the lists do several important things... |
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She Lost a Son At Dunblane, Too But who will shed a tear for the mother of Thomas Hamilton?
Dunblane. It’s just a word, a name for a small town north of Stirling once known for its charm and churchiness... |
A Whale of a Problem Once, there were 101 uses for a dead whale. These days, disposing of 16 tonnes of beached bone and blubber is a major undertaking. Bella Bathurst meets the ‘receivers of wreck,’ whose job it is to give Moby and his friends a dignified ending. Somewhere far away, in the lost corners
of the Natural History Museum, Richard Sabin passes me a jar
of pygmy sperm whale’s eyeballs... |
Sick Drunks and Rock ’n’ Roll Fuelled by the fumes of lager, lechery and cheap aftershave, Bella Bathurst stealthily gatecrashes a Club 18-30 reunion. ‘You’re lovely,’ said Fausto blearily, sidling a little nearer along the double bed. ‘Really nice. You’ve got really nice ears, d’you know that?... |
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It isn’t clever, and it isn’t fun The government doesn’t approve of them, adults are scared of them and their peers are no help at all. Bella Bathurst on the hell of being a teenager Did anyone actually like being a teenager? If some
kind-hearted almighty decreed that, from now on, everyone would go
to sleep aged 12 and wake up aged 20, would anyone really mind?... |
How I learned to love my silent world Acclaimed author Bella Bathurst began to lose her hearing after a car crash. She ignored it at first but then started the long and emotional road towards an appreciation of life in the quiet lane. Sometime back in the early ‘90s,
I went with a group of friends on a cheap last-minute skiing holiday.
So cheap, it turned out, that the resort had forgotten to include
any snow... |
Hidden Depths This summer, Tate Liverpool looks at the way contemporary artists have been inspired by the sea. Bella Bathurst charts the deep cultural impact of the ocean over the past 200 years. When JMW Turner first stepped on to the Ariel’s decks, it seemed he had finally found a subject vast enough to fit the size of his own gifts. Snowstorm, the painting which resulted from a tempestous journey he took out of Harwich, had demanded a suitably epic form of research; a new, ‘method’ approach to art... |
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| Site contents ©2005 Bella Bathurst | Site by Jetlabs Ltd |