ON long summer days, Mark Blathwayt remembers his childhood tortoises’ faces appearing at the kitchen door. Lured by the sound of the Test match, there was often evidence of a trip to the raspberry canes lingering around Duffer and Daisy’s mouths. ‘Where the radio was, we were and, where we were, there might be a dandelion flower, a bit of tomato or a strawberry,’ says Mr Blathwayt, who took the tortoises with him to Somerset in the 1970s, after he got married. By the time the sweet-toothed pair died as nonagenarians, they had been a mainstay of his four children’s childhoods, too.
‘It’s not a short-term project, having a tortoise,’ admits Heather Alston, alluding to a life expectancy that exceeds a century for the creatures that roam her West London garden. ‘It’s quite a responsibility because they live for such a long time.’ Of course, that hasn’t stopped these docile reptiles from cropping up in an eclectic mix of homes.
Jeff and Geoff did their bit for Red Nose Day, in 2013, by running a 6½ft sponsored race—although the tortoises’ owner, Emma Freud, isn’t entirely sure which is which, so the winner wasn’t definitive. Maggie the tortoise is an important part of the Commons Speaker Sir Lindsay Hoyle’s home in Lancashire (together with his other pets, all named after prominent politicians). At the University of Oxford, the reptile is said to be the most popular college pet; Balliol’s Rosa Luxemburg, who went missing in 2003, had grazed on its garden quadrangle for 42 years.
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A tapestry of pinks
THE garden is now entering its season of vigour and exuberance.
Bringing the past to life
An event hosted by COUNTRY LIFE at WOW!house is one of the highlights of a programme that features some of the biggest names in interior design
This isle is full of wonder
GEOLOGY? A bit like economics, the famously boring science? I confess I suffered the prejudiceâagriculture and history being my thing, both of them vital in every senseâ but Robert Muir-Woodâs voyage through the past 66 million years of the making of the British landscape has biblical-level drama on almost every other page. Flood, fire, ice⊠or, perhaps, the formation in rock, sand, mud and lava of these isles is best conceived of as fierce poetry.
Empire protest
Without meaning to issue a clarion call for independence, E. M. Forster perfectly captured the rising tensions of the British Raj. One hundred years later, Matthew Dennison revisits the masterpiece A Passage to India
Hops and dreams
A relative of marijuana, hops were a Teutonic introduction to British brewing culture and gave rise to the original working holiday
Life and sol
The sanctuary of the Balearic Islands has enchanted a multitude of creative minds, from Robert Graves to David Bowie
'Nature is nowhere as great as in its smallest creatures'
Giving himself neck ache from constantly looking upwards, John Lewis-Stempel makes the most of a sunny May day harvesting âtree hayâ and marvelling at the myriad wildlife including flies and earwigsâthat reside on bark
'Plans are worthless, but planning is everything'
Country houses great and small were indispensable to D-Day preparations, with electricity and sanitation, well-stocked wine cellars, countesses to run the canteens and antique furniture to feed the stoves
The darling buds of May
May Morris shared her fatherâs passion for flowers, embroidery and Iceland, but was much more than Williamâs daughter. Influential both as a designer and as a teacher, she championed the rights of workers, particularly women, as Huon Mallalieu reveals
Achilles healed
Once used to comfort the lovelorn or soothe the wounds of Greek heroes, yarrow may now have a new starring role in sustainable agriculture