Simon Courtauld 
Verdi’s Don Carlos is the tops
I go to about half a dozen operas a year, mainly by 19th-century Italian and French composers, plus some Mozart, bits of Handel, Richard Strauss and Britten and, most recently,… Read more
Art and the raging bull
In these days of growing concern at the methods of factory farming and the welfare of the animals which are raised and killed for our consumption, it is instructive to… Read more
Cherchez la femme
The 22nd Earl of Erroll, Military Secretary in Kenya in the early part of the second world war, was described by two of his fellow peers of the realm as… Read more
Spain’s secret kingdoms
One of the joys of visiting Leon and Burgos, two of the principal cities of Spain, is that you are highly unlikely to meet another foreign tourist. It was midsummer,… Read more
Sacred heights
Simon Courtauld pays homage to one of the world’s great sights ‘Road is hilly, Don’t be silly’ was the advice by the roadside as our Nepali driver safely negotiated yet… Read more
Homage to Aragon
For students of the Spanish civil war, and especially its battlefields, Aragon, visited by few foreign tourists, is the place to go. We are now in the 70th-anniversary years of… Read more
Farewell to a noble figure in Spectator history
Ian Gilmour was not the only proprietor of The Spectator also to be its editor, but he was unquestionably the best. Patrician, wealthy, high-minded, unassuming, the 28-year-old Etonian ex-Grenadier Guardsman… Read more
Who wants to buy our old office?
‘A unique opportunity to purchase the home of a famous weekly magazine.’ Thus might an estate agent market No. 56 Doughty Street, London WC1, now up for sale after more… Read more
Small is beautiful
My grandfather used to enjoy eating ortolans in Biarritz, sometimes in the company of Rudyard Kipling. In London, it amused him to ask for these little birds of the bunting… Read more
Talking turkey
There won’t be any wild turkeys eaten in Britain this Christmas. There won’t be any wild turkeys eaten in Britain this Christmas. However, a few of these birds, which are… Read more
Good hare day
In my early days as editor of the Field, I read an article submitted by one of the magazine’s venerable hunting correspondents In my early days as editor of the… Read more
A little snack
The countryside writer Ian Niall, a columnist in these pages some 50 years ago, told in his classic work, The Poacher’s Handbook, of one of the fraternity known as Black… Read more
King of the moor
The red grouse is a resilient little bird. Prone to an unpleasant disease called louping ill which is transmitted by sheep ticks, and vulnerable to attack by nasty, invasive little… Read more
Eat your hart out
The Countryside Alliance, through its Game-to-Eat campaign, has been doing some good work in promoting venison. It is higher in protein and lower in fat than other red meat; some… Read more
Free for now
If, as I was told the other day, much of the frozen chicken and duck meat brought into this country comes from the Far East, it may be that some… Read more
Always around
There never seems to be any shortage of pigeons. Whether feeding in a field of corn or rape by day or coming into woodland at dusk, they are always around.… Read more
Crashing boar
While we are all worrying about the threat to poultry from an alien virus which has now reached these shores, there seems to be little concern at the threat to… Read more
Quail order
I wonder whether the US vice-president, Dick Cheney, will eat quail again after the shooting incident in south Texas last month, when he ignored the most basic safety rules in… Read more
Peter and friends
It is some years since I saw, in a Paris bookshop, a translated copy of Beatrix Potter’s The Tale of Peter Rabbit, but I still enjoy recalling the French names… Read more
A far from plodding pedestrian
How much more do we need to know about Sir Wilfred Thesiger? Alexander Maitland, his literary executor and friend for the last 40 years of his life, collaborated with Thesiger… Read more
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