There’s a bit of a hidden treasure, if not quite on my doorstep, then only an hour’s drive away towards the Cotswolds. Compton Verney is an historic manor and parish, with a Grade-I listed country house, redesigned by Robert Adam in the 1760s and landscaped by Capability Brown in 1768. The tiny parish was 119 souls in the 2011 census, and for one reason or another, the manor house has not … [Read more...]
Archives for October 2021
Down Mexico Way (with a detour to Italy)
I could not at first remember why I bore a grudge against the late Angela Carter. But a rapid search turned up, as its first item, a review in The London Review of Books for 24 January 1985, of The Official Foodie Handbook by Ann Barr and me. The piece is uninformed, egregiously silly and vindictive in a class-warfare way. Angela Carter mistakenly thought that Ann Barr’s books for the now … [Read more...]