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Hedgerows are one of those things that most of us simply take for granted. Drive, walk, cycle or ride through the English countryside and you’re likely to see fields bounded by hedges, which change with the seasons. Blossoming in the spring, full of colour and berries in the autumn, and sprouting wildly thorugh the summer months. They are certainly having their moment in the sun. In the 1980s, farmers were encouraged under the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy to grub them up (dig them up, in laymen’s speak) in a bid to create larger fields, and grow more food. 23 per cent of the nation’s hedgerows were lost in that decade.

Here’s a question for you: if you were lucky enough to own a swimming pool or a tennis court – or indeed both – would you want to rent it out per hour to the hoi polloi, the great unwashed, the General Public? Although I am not in the happy position of being able to answer this question personally, I would have thought the answer would be a hard no. No to other people’s verucas, no to other people’s splashing and cavorting in earshot, and absolutely no to other people’s children bombing into your pool all day long. I concede that tennis might be a different matter. A quick set

I once read that after watching a James Bond film men speed in their Honda Civics: they might do 35 mph in a built-up area. If this is so, it is due to the Aston Martin Bond has driven since 1964 (the DB5 in Goldfinger, a man with ‘a cold finger’). The DB5 has appeared in six Bond films so far; and some kind of Aston Martin has appeared in twelve Bond films. Is it, I wonder, contemplating Bond’s internal wasteland of sex addiction, murder and laundry, the only real home he ever had? Is it his wife? When the DB5 was revealed in Skyfall, waiting calmly in a garage, it

BBC Director General Tim Davie, in his proclaimed push to create ‘landmark’ TV shows appears to be steering the Corporation in an increasingly conservative (small ‘c’) direction, intent on trading off past glories. Former soft drink marketer Davie’s lack of programming and editorial experience is often painfully apparent; he is increasingly given to sweeping crowd-pleasing statements, such as the remarks he made to the public about BBC’s staff’s attendance of Pride marches, telling staff to stop virtue-signalling on social media. Despite having spent 16 years in various senior roles at the Corporation, Davie doesn’t appear to have the antennae to pick up on the mood of his workforce. He may well believe upsetting the

Among the glorious shores of these islands, there is one of the best-kept secrets of sailing. It’s a ragged and rocky coastline that is blessed with the sort of idyllic, empty sandy beaches stretching on for miles that would make Tom Hanks’s castaway shake from method acting-induced PTSD. Here the blue waters are scattered with islands rising from the depths with the kind of muscular topography that would have your average geography teacher reaching for their colouring-in pencils. This, my friends, is the west coast of Scotland. Forget the Caribbean, wonderful though the punch, the people and the terribly reliable temperature all are. The untouched beaches of the Western Isles are

News that the gourmet dog food company Butternut Box has raised forty million pounds to expand its services in the wake of the pandemic puppy boom will surprise no one. More dogs means more chum, after all. But this isn’t just any old chum. This is gourmet dog food, the like of which you may not even sup on yourself. Founded by two former Goldman bankers, Butternut Box promises to deliver a balanced meal of chicken, turkey, fish, or lamb with vegetables to your dog, perfectly tailored to weight and calorie intake. David Nolan and Kevin Glynn who form the savvy former banking duo, even promise that someone will taste

Of all the things sacrificed to public health in the last eighteen months, I think the one I regret the least is the default poolside Summer holiday. I first began to understand something about it, and the counter intuitive aspects of human happiness, on holiday in Cozumel, off the coast of Mexico, in 1999. I was staying at an all-inclusive hotel, not the sort of thing I would normally have done, being more of a self-identified ‘traveller’ at the time, happier with ad-hoc hostels and thumbing from town to town. I immediately resented the little coloured wristband that alerted the staff to the level of service and the range of

When a dear friend recently was clearing out her dad’s house following his death, she uncovered a tin of ancient Harrods’ Madras Curry Powder – several decades old and emblazoned for some reason with the name ‘Ameer’ on the front. This sort of attic find is considered an offending item nowadays, if the recent ‘curry is racist’ furore is to be believed. Madras curry powder is an essential ingredient of Anglo-Indian cuisine. Indeed, the flavouring is as much a part of British cuisine as Worcestershire sauce and English mustard. And it is, happily, still labelled ‘Madras’ – the imperial name for the city of Chennai –  when bought today. ‘Chennai curry powder’ doesn’t quite have

The horror of August’s mass shooting by 22-year-old Jake Davison caused many commentators to point towards a dangerous underbelly of male disaffection. But what many overlooked was the fact that the shadowy underground group of disenfranchised males that inspired Davison to take up arms is part of a much larger network of male activism dating back to the late 1970s when the men’s liberation movement split into two camps consisting of the pro-feminist men’s movement and the anti-feminist men’s rights lobby. Focusing on what they saw as male disadvantage, oppression and discrimination, the men’s rights movement hardened into Men’s Rights Activism (MRA), an informal network of online communities known as the

With the release of Benedict Cumberbatch’s true life spy thriller The Courier, ten films about the era of (relatively) passive aggression between the Superpowers. Director Dominic Cooke’s new picture The Courier is based on the exploits of businessman-turned-MI6 agent spy Greville Wynne (Benedict Cumberbatch), who in the early 1960s smuggled Soviet secrets to the West from his GRU contact, Colonel Oleg Penkovsky (Georgian actor Merab Ninidze). The pair are eventually captured when the businessman travels to Moscow; Wynne faces 8 years’ incarceration at Moscow’s grim Lubyanka Prison, whilst Penkovsky is executed for treason. The prospect of another Cold War has been a familiar refrain over recent years, with events such