Standing up for Nature
The Lady is the oldest weekly magazine aimed primarily at women in the UK and is probably the magazine of choice for grouse moor owners who are looking for some new domestic staff. I have never, knowingly, picked up a copy and it isn’t exactly where I would have expected to find a glowing review…
Henry comes to Mayfair. He felt very much at home. Allens of Mayfair is a game dealer as well as a butcher and is thought to supply quite a lot of London restaurants with their game including grouse. I wonder whether this part of Mayfair is part of the 100 acres owned by the Duke…
On a recent trip to London, Henry (you didn’t think he’d gone away did you?) looked in to Rules restaurant. Now Rules has a very strange attitude to customer care (see here, here, here) and although there was initial friendliness from some of the waiting staff someone looking more senior started closing curtains and…
Those who oppose the excesses of field sports are often written off as ‘lefties’ and ‘townies’ who know nothing about the countryside, as opposed to ‘real country people’ who do. I’ve never seen anything to back up this oft-heard statement, and in another life I used to point out to people voicing it that the…
I don’t say much about the animal welfare aspects of grouse moor management – they are well-covered by others and they aren’t my main gripe with the whole system of land management (does that sound hard-hearted?). But these photos (which you should find upsetting) of a Mountain Hare leveret caught in a fenn trap touched…
Bulgy-eye is a growing problem it seems on grouse moors in the north of England (see here, here and here). We hear that one grouse moor in the Peak District has cancelled all its grouse shooting days for this year because of an outbreak. It’s not totally surprising is it? When you are engineering unnaturally…
Here are a few quotes from emails and tweets about Inglorious: ‘I’ve just finished ‘Inglorious’ and I have to say I’m impressed. You’ve written a masterpiece of clarity and persuasion.’ ‘Yes I think it WILL be a classic of conservation but only in the UK. Nowhere else would it be necessary’ ‘Yr book Inglorious…
I did a couple of radio interviews yesterday morning, from the BBC Millbank studios in London – with BBC Radios Leeds and York (one of which was with Amanda Anderson of the Moorland Association). You can see how glamorous the studios are from the photo. And the evening before I’d been in the same Millbank…
Usually, on the first day of the Red Grouse shooting season, there are lots of photos of men in tweed ‘oop on t’moors, wi’ guns’ practising a peculiarly British unsporting sport. But yesterday the papers were practically devoid of such nonsense and what coverage there was seemed to carry news of the fact that grouse…
I’m quite often asked whether I really want a ban on driven grouse shooting – I do! And then I’m sometimes told that ‘It’ll never happen’ and I say ‘It will’. This is why. Let’s start with the very obvious, but rarely stated, fact that driven grouse shooting is not essential. We don’t need it….