Cinnamon Club is past its prime; try Kricket instead. Your stomach and bank account will thank you.

Trips down memory lane often lead to disappointment. Case in point: a recent return to the once-remarkable Cinnamon Club was profoundly underwhelming. Meanwhile, an unexpected drop in to one of the three branches of Kricket demonstrated the innovation and excitement Cinnamon Club was once known for, but at a fraction of the price.

Let’s start with the disappointment. 

The Cinnamon Club was one of the places to be seen in the '00s. Its concept of Indian food as something worthy of fine dining was, at the time, revolutionary. Vivek Singh shot to celebrity chef-dom and inspired a howdah of imitators across the UK. Turning its back on the cheap and easy "Anglo-Indian" of the local curry house, the Cinnamon Club and its progeny introduced a more delicate and subtle side of Indian cuisine, fit for fine dining and grand events. Even the decor was revolutionary. No flock wallpaper or tinny Bollywood music here. Singh had rescued the old Westminster Library from dereliction and kept its floor-to-ceiling bookshelves intact and full. You ate in what was once a grand reading room, surrounded by literature, and your bill came tucked inside a book. 

Throughout the restaurant's first decade I was there regularly for everything from corporate events to private parties to dinner with friends. I hadn’t been there in its second. Regular readers will know that the combination of my husband’s tomato allergy and his dislike of anything too spicy makes Indian a rare cuisine for us, and we only attempt it with kitchens we trust on the allergen procedure front. We had fantastic luck at Quilon nearby (review here) so I thought returning to the godfather of Indian fine dining in the UK would be a good bet. Not so.

On the positive side, the food was delicious, though not the novel experience it was in the ‘00s. We both opted for fish for starters (kingfish and a salmon carpaccio) and moved on to venison and king prawns. Puddings … a caramelised banana and pistachio mille-feuille and a creme brûlée laced with spices of the Indies … were by far the best part of the meal. The presentation was beautiful and the spicing exquisitely delicate, each flavour rolling over the other with distinct character and nothing overwhelming the star protein on each dish. If all I had to consider was the food, it would go down as a perfectly pleasant evening, though not special enough to prompt a return engagement any time soon.

The problem was everything else. First of all, we were sat in a balcony area off the main dining room that I had not realised existed. When part of your appeal is your iconic dining space, putting people in another setting starts the evening with frustration. And when you’re in the middle of a pandemic, with restrictions still in place, and you populate every table in a low-ceilinged room with little ventilation, you add anxiety to the frustration. (Six days later, despite being fully vaccinated, my husband tested positive for Covid. Fortunately, the vaccination reduced the illness to a bad cold, and I can't confirm he picked it up at the Cinnamon Club, but nowhere else that weekend were we in such a confined space with so little air flow.) Lesson learned: if you are booking at the Cinnamon Club, insist on the main room or don't go.

Next, the tomato challenge. At the aforementioned Quilon, we were able to opt in to the entire chef's menu. Almost nothing was a problem. Almost everything everything could be altered to accommodate. It was a much bigger deal at the Cinnamon Club, where the chef's menu was strictly off-limits (giving me a sense that much more was pre-prepared here). Even though they had been warned of the allergy at the time of booking, the waiter had to do several consultations with the kitchen to see what dishes were OK. Meaning it took an exceptionally long time just to get our orders in. My husband is used to asking "what can I eat?" and going with recommendations. That process was hard work here.

And then, the service. Our starters took well over half an hour to arrive, and when they did, they brought my husband the wrong dish. (Something he said would be his default if they couldn't make his first choice without tomato, which they did.) Given that my starter was served hot, it meant that I ate alone, and we waited another 15 minutes before his finally arrived. We might have enjoyed some wine while we were waiting, but the wine waiter took so long to take our order that the wine showed up halfway through my starter. (At least the husband's delayed dish meant that he could enjoy the wine throughout.) 

We had booked The Cinnamon Club well in advance, excited for a special night out as pandemic lockdowns eased and ready to explore a cuisine we rarely eat. Instead, we had an anxious evening with bad service and an enormous bill. Note that there are very few reasonable options on the wine list. We made a tactical mistake, instinctively ordering wine in a nice restaurant when beer would have been just as nice with the food and far better on the bill. I'm happy to lay out cash for a great dining experience, as scores of articles on this blog attest. But there are few things worse than the disgruntlement of parting with your credit card for an evening deeply inferior to something you could have had for half the price.

Or a quarter of the price ... if you go to Kricket Soho and drink beer.

To be fair, Kricket didn't have to face the tomato challenge, since I was out with a friend instead of the husband. And there's no fine dining or fancy presentation to challenge the staff here. The concept is a crazy mash-up (should I say masala?) of Indian street food, tapas-style sharing plates, and British ingredients turned on their head. You can hardly call it a dining room. It's a long bar with stools that overlook the food prep, with a few tables along the outside wall and ... while the pandemic curtails traffic in central London ... a few picnic tables outside on Denman Street. But the service is light years ahead of the Cinnamon Club in attitude, speed and information volunteered about the dishes. And the tastes! Every dish was eye-rollingly delicious, leaving us wanting to order more even when we were full.

The Hyderabadi aubergine, with coconut, peanut and curry leaf, would tempt even the most resistant to that vegetable, showing off its essential beauty as a conduit of other flavours. Another item that divides people, sardines, swam in a lusciously spiced tomato chutney given added life with ginger pickle and a bit of fresh fennel. If you think the taste of that fish is too strong, this dish will convince you otherwise as that chutney pulls back the flavour profile. Thankfully, we had the brown butter paratha on hand to scoop up every last drop. The love of British products is obvious in the rabbit and pork fat kebab, where a spice-laden "sulla" sauce perks up the rabbit, while the pork fat retains the rabbit's moisture and flavour. Carrot pickle comes on the side. Keralan fried chicken was a brilliant variation on a classic, best dipped in lashings of  curry leaf mayonnaise. 

Sweets are limited. We split the Mishti Doi. a puddle of caramelised white chocolate with a panna cotta-like consistency dappled with strawberries, hazelnut and mint. Its most striking element was an almost overwhelming flavouring of cardamom. White chocolate is tricky, often managing to be too sweet without actually tasting of anything. The cardamom here actually brought out the taste of the chocolate while holding back the sugar.

When not enjoying the luscious food, we were entertained by the clientele. There'd been plenty of open spots at 7, but by 9 the place was heaving with primped and preened 20-somethings out to see and be seen. Kricket's owners, Will Bowlby and Rik Campbell, are due to open what they're describing as a "speakeasy" in the space next door in September, and they appeared to be hosting a preview evening. A parade of extraordinary costumes streamed by us, high heels, make-up and suits seeming as exotic, after lockdown, as the spice mixes on our plates. 

Time moves on. Twenty years ago, the young and glamourous were flocking to The Cinnamon Club. Today, it's Kricket. Everything about my recent experiences makes Kricket my preference of the two. But it's worth remembering that Kricket wouldn't exist without the revolution Vivek Singh started in Westminster. And, someday, Kricket will be old and tired. That's how the culinary world turns, and how we diners can find our enjoyment. As long as we're brave enough to follow new roads and be wary of memory lane.

Hockney’s Norman spring is pure joy for the soul

Anyone who has helped older relatives come to grips with mobile devices and apps will approach David Hockney’s new exhibition with a sense of wonder before they even see the paintings. The 84-year-old artist produced everything in his new show, The Arrival of Spring, Normandy, 2020 on an iPad, working at speed.

To be fair, the British-born artist is a long way from your average octogenarian. He is probably the world’s best-known modern painter, producing steadily since the 1960s, and holds the record for the most expensive work ever sold by a living artist. He’s had an interest in innovative tools and technology his whole career, from the high-tech acrylics he used in his early works to initial explorations of the drawing power of computers in the mid ‘80s. His iPad has been a favourite canvas for at least a decade now, and he has become so associated with it that app developers work with him to create new brush styles and functionality.

This show is special not because of the technology but because of its circumstances. Hockney was visiting a house he owns in Normandy early in 2020 when the COVID-19 pandemic spread across Europe. He ended up locked in there. While most of us binge-watched Netflix and overindulged on comfort food and alcohol, Hockney saw a chance to do something special with his art. He created a new painting every day in his garden, returning to subjects as the world progressed from stark winter to glorious spring.

He’s taken a page out of Monet’s book, fitting since the impressionist painter’s famous garden is not far from Hockney‘s Norman place. Looking at 2020’s progressions of an apple tree, the sunrise over distant hills or the same stand of poplars, you’ll immediately think of Monet’s repetition of haystacks or water lilies, and have the same joys of comparing and contrasting. Also in common with the Impressionists is the way these paintings look radically different from up close and far away. In close proximity, you will marvel at the composition, the brushstrokes, and the way simple, repetitive techniques coalesce to create an object. Look back from across the room and all the detail fades into a spectacularly beautiful picture.

Most of all, however, these paintings will just make you happy. Hockney‘s colour palette is as joyous as the season he is representing. The three exhibition rooms are bright, cheerful, and full of hope. As every gardener knows instinctively, spring is a time of unbridled joy and possibility, when everything bursts fresh from the ground and all the colours seem more intense after the gloom of winter. The 116 paintings hung here capture that perfectly, starting with bare branches in a stark landscape and taking us through the to full, lush greenery of early summer. Trees blossom. Buds pop. Daffodils dance. Leaves creep over a treehouse. Gentle spring rain makes fairy circles on the pond.  

These paintings are deceptive. At first glance, many of them seem remarkably simple; large blocks of colour, single trees, basic shapes. You might dismiss them as graphic design or illustration. But the longer you look, the more complex they become. In fact, there are no solid colours. The green of a lawn is layers of subtly different brushstrokes and colours to give that sense of life and variety between blades of grass. A spill of white blossom is a careful construction of minute dots and dashes of whites, pinks and greens. Skies are a fabulous riot of much more than blue.

Hockney is a master of light. From the watery, weak sun glimmering through bare branches, to the sharp, crisp light of a spring morning to the low spotlights of late afternoon falling across bushes, you can feel the earth moving the sun ever higher. When fog dispels that light, he blurs every edge and surface to create such a perfect atmosphere you can almost feel gentle mist on your skin. Night skies perfectly capture the reflections of a bright moon against drifting clouds

The show is hung in chronological order, allowing you to walk through the developing season. You will then want to go back to find the repetition of the different subjects and compare and contrast. The catalogue, reasonably priced (as exhibition catalogues go) at £25 focuses more on the objects painted as a series. I snapped it up, not just for the smile it will put on my face every time I flip through it, but to study his techniques in colour and layering as I try to get better at drawing and painting. 

As all really good art exhibitions do, the Hockney show sparked all sorts of great conversational topics afterwards. Though these were different than the usual. How does intellectual property work when your art is digital, and therefore easily reproduced? Does the artist dictate the size of the reproduction? What difference does printing technology make? Certainly the colours of ink must vary and threaten the artist’s vision. If digital art can be easily reproduced, is there any point in seeing it in a gallery? Can’t you just look at a book or browse it online?

I can answer this last one. You still need to see it in person. It is a matter of size. Most of these paintings are quite large… they would overwhelm any room in a typical family home. Seeing them at this size drives home the magic of the variation between up close and the long view. Being surrounded by a dense hang of them is like being enveloped in colour and delight. My body might have been in the Royal Academy in late August, but my soul was in Normandy in the spring.

It’s a delicious irony that art created by a forced incarceration has allowed all who look at it to travel in time and distance. And in a time when the word is so full of worry, it’s a potent and much-needed medicine to see something that inspires such pure joy. 

The Arrival of Spring is on at the Royal Academy until 26 September. At posting, there was limited availability, mostly on weekdays, with Sunday the 19th and 26th the only weekend dates left. 

Treasure house or treasure garage, Beaulieu is a great day out

In 1985 the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC hosted what's since become known as one of the most influential exhibitions of modern history. "The Treasure Houses of Britain: 500 years of Private Patronage and Art Collecting" fanned the flames of American anglophilia, established "country house studies" as a discipline in British universities and super-charged the transition of the British stately home from aristocratic playground to heritage enterprise. At the show's heart was the argument that British country houses, though often heavily foreign in their architectural influences, furnishings, art, and even the craftsmen who built them, came together to create something entirely unique to Britain.

At the time, I was a senior at Northwestern University, majoring in journalism but minoring in history and studying the British past with renown Tudor specialist Lacey Baldwin Smith. Journalism would give me a career, but Smith's classes were my passion. He'd been to the exhibition, of course, and sang its praises. I was dying to go. But I was a poor student, about to graduate into a tough job market with $55k in student loans hanging over my head. (More than $131,000 at today's value.) No matter how badly I wanted to get to Washington that year, I just couldn't make it happen.

My interest in the show and its exhibitions didn't fade, however, so in the years to come when I finally got to the UK ... first as tourist, then on work assignments, and finally as immigrant and naturalised citizen ... I followed the trail of what I'd missed back to the sources. In England, a group of 10 privately-owned houses formed a marketing consortium off the back of the show called "The Treasure Houses of England" and I visited them all. Some multiple times. 

All but one. Beaulieu remained a mystery.

Given that I have shared a county with the place for a decade and have driven by the entrance multiple times, this may seem unbelievable. But for me, Beaulieu had one significant problem: it was best known … and priced … for its motor museum. The Victorian Gothic house had little to recommend it by way of architecture or interiors. So I never went out of my way. All that changed with the need to entertain and impress a 12-year-old godson.

He was impressed. And, I admit, even I enjoyed the cars. I have pragmatic view of motoring. One car is much like the other, they exist to get you from point A to point B, and as long as it’s comfortable enough for a road trip and big enough to pick up visitors with luggage from the airport, I’m not bothered about make or model. I am puzzled by the whole obsession with“driving experience”, think people spending vast amounts on performance cars are idiots, and have been delighted with the idea that electric cars will silence all that silly engine noise. But I do love design, appreciate anything handcrafted, and I am intrigued by how things are marketed. And there is enough of all of that at the National Motor Museum to keep even this autophobe intrigued.

Early motor cars have more in common with horse-drawn carriages than the things we drive today, and Beaulieu has a hefty collection from the late 19th and early 20th century. Most are rich with gleaming bronze, polished wood, and hand stitched leather. One quirky example had a round driver’s windscreen like a giant monocle, and a horn-shaped basket on the side for umbrellas and walking sticks. 

Best of all from that era, the film version of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang sits in the centre of the museum on its own plinth. There are also race cars, motorcycles, James Bond cars and super-fast prototypes. Those who want to dive deep can pop into smaller galleries on everything from tyres to how engines work to green motoring. There’s an early 20th century street with old shop fronts and commercial vehicles, campervans, an amphibious car, and even a whole section on car-inspired children’s toys. Yes, it was good fun.

But as the boys started to linger in a car park filled with vehicles brought by enthusiasts (it was Aston Martin day) I started to get anxious. The day was spinning away and I had yet to lay eyes on any art or architecture. Is the house worth the effort? If that is all you come to look at, probably not. It is an attractive place with mediaeval roots, though most of what you see today is a Victorian reinterpretation and expansion of the abbey gatehouse that once stood here. There’s lots of wallpaper of the type Burgess put into the Houses of Parliament. Some beautiful rooms with vaulted ceilings and atmospheric Gothic windows. But you only see about five historically-furnished rooms along the public route, best among them a great Hall, a sitting room, and a dining room. Nothing particularly noteworthy on the art and furniture front.At least, not in the traditional sense.

The most interesting things in the house, to me, were the artworks of the current owner’s mother. Belinda Crossley is a well-known artist working in tapestry and embroidery. Rooms here show wall hangings as well as paintings, panels and clothing design. There were some spectacular things on display, my favourite being a wall hanging somewhere between Klimt and a Tolkien book illustration. 

One assumes her artistic flare has flown down to her son, the fourth Baron Montagu, who works as a graphic designer and had turned both house and grounds over to a massive display of modern sculpture all up for sale. From abstract to traditional, small pieces for a tabletop to massive items for the garden, there was something for everyone here. (Though most of it at hefty prices.) Had I been on my own, I would have cut the cars short and spent much more time on the sculpture trail.

There is more to see in the grounds than most people could race through in a day. The ruins of the original Abbey are worth exploring. They are both picturesque and historically noteworthy for being the only abbey in England founded by King John. There are some pretty long borders … exploding with a fantastically colourful range of dahlias at the moment … and  several garden “rooms” walled by hedges. These run the gamut from working vegetable plots to a romantic rose garden to a delightful topiary garden on the theme of Alice in Wonderland. There’s a monorail you can ride around the grounds to view everything from on high. 

A small display in one of the garden buildings tells the house’s story in training intelligence officers during World War II. If you haven’t had enough cars, there’s a “World of Top Gear” section (I avoided that, but the boys liked it.) and a separate exhibition on cars in the movies (that I might have checked out if it hadn’t been hidden behind the testosterone-drenched Top Gear franchise,) There’s a playground area full of climbing frames and zip wires targeted at younger guests. There are falconry exhibitions and a proper hunting mews; logical since from its entry into private hands at the Dissolution of the Monasteries to relatively recent times, Beaulieu was used more as a hunting lodge than a main home. Much of the charm of the place comes from the fact that nobody has ever done the kind of massive remodelling that would have wiped away the past for something new.

At £16 per adult (more if special events like the Aston Martin day are on), it’s good value for money for a family day out. But if all you’re interested in is the house, gardens and ruins, it would be a pricey visit. Beaulieu is a member of the Historic Houses Association but doesn’t allow members to use benefits on pre-booked tickets. Which are currently necessary given the pandemic and the crowds caused by all the “staycations”. If I can use my membership to drop in at some future date, I would like to spend more time exploring the ruins, and pay more attention to the falconer. 

Beaulieu’ s not a traditional “treasure house” of Britain, but it did give us a family day that we each treasured for different reasons.

The Purefoy Arms delivers gourmet gastro pubbage on the outskirts of Basingstoke

Some might accuse me of being a food snob. In my defense, I’m just being practical when it comes to restaurant selection.

We like to cook. We cook from scratch most nights. Even if I wanted convenience food, my husband’s unusual tomato allergy takes the vast majority of prepared foods off limits. It can also make chain restaurants, or those who get packaged ingredients from an industrial source, a gamble. We love great ingredients and are lucky to live in a county blessed with excellent fruit, vegetables, meat (farmed and wild), trout streams and a coastline offering a wealth of seafood. Winchester’s twice monthly farmers’ market is as good as any you’ll find in France or Italy. 

Quite simply: unless we are dropping from exhaustion or away from the house doing other things, we don’t see the point of going out unless it’s better than we can make at home. And that attitude takes all of the pubs in our immediate neighbourhood, and most of the restaurants in Basingstoke, out of consideration. 

At last, however, I’ve found an exception. A 25-minute meander down lovely country lanes puts The Purefoy Arms on the edge of what we can properly call local, but it’s worth the drive, and what’s coming out of the kitchen is far beyond my abilities. We’ve tested the place twice in a week; once by chance for a Sunday lunch, again as a planned dinner for visiting friends from France. Aside for some slightly dry burgers on the first visit, it was a triumph. 

The menu is upscale British classics, locally sourced, with a fairly limited but interesting selection. The expansive garden could double potential covers, as it did on our Sunday visit, but on a Thursday night with steady rain booking was essential and the cozy dining room was limited to eight tables. It’s an intimate place and feels very local, given that it’s on a country road that neither outsiders nor tourists have any reason to traverse. I suspect the residents of Preston Candover, a picture-postcard village with plenty of thatch and substantial homes that turn up in the advertising pages of Country Life, like it that way. 

Their local, named after a local nobleman and not the famous actor, occupies a sober yet elegant Georgian brick building that would be at home in any Jane Austen adaptation. (Little wonder, given we’re in her home county and the pub is just 10 miles from the house where she did her best work.)  The bar at The Purefoy spans the dining room on the left and the pub on the right; and though occupants of one can get a peak at the other, they have separate doors from the entry porch.

My meal on the Sunday was so exceptional I had to order it again: the ox cheek donut followed by pork belly. The donut was more accurately (though less poetically) a dome-shaped pudding, with an outer crust that was both sweet and savoury, and more the consistency of cornbread than wheat pastry. (Though wheat it was.) Crispy on the outside, fluffy beneath, giving way to a filling of shredded ox cheek stewed down in a rich, tomato-based sauce. As if that weren’t special enough, it was crowned with a smooth onion jamb and a sprinkle of herb crumb. I nearly wept that my husband’s allergies kept him from trying this wonder.

The pork belly that followed was probably the best I’ve ever had. Every distinguishable bit of fat had been rendered into the flavoursome meat, which didn’t even need a knife to cut. It had been both smoked and cured, and after its long and slow (one assumes) cook augmented with a rich, sticky sauce and an orange and almond granola. There was also a bit of pickled fennel. None of this shouted out on its own, but rather made every bite of the pork an explosion of flavour. The additional element on the plate that did stand out was “crispy bubble and squeak”; essentially a sphere of that butter-laden, tasty side dish breaded and then deep fried. This is comfort food elevated to a higher plane.

I wasn’t the only one indulging in culinary reveries. My godson, a slight 12-year-old who isn’t normally a big eater, demolished an entire side of ribs that looked and smelled worthy of a Midwestern BBQ master’s grill. The peppered fillet stake won raves for its spectacular combination of accompaniments. Celeriac remoulade, mushroom and spinach tartlet, truffle and creamed potato combined for that perfect “Masterchef bite”. But the real accolades were saved for one particular starter.

It was not the pan fried scallops, beetroot, apple foam, peanut, chilli and ginger, even though that tasted delicate enough and looked pretty enough to grace any Michelin-starred table. But rather the more prosaic-sounding caramelised onion quiche with onion ice cream, pickled onion and fennel. Who raves about a quiche? And there was so much that could go wrong in this trio of rather odd treatments of a vegetable usually in a supporting role. Instead, this was an exercise in delicacy. The quiche was more of a delicate flan, each onion element subtle but full of flavour, the fennel barely there but adding a little hint of spice. The sample bites my husband shared out were so beguiling we immediately ordered another for the table to share.

Unsurprisingly, the desserts we sampled were also excellent. A plate of English cheeses did their patriotic duty and conquered the taste buds of our French guests. A rum baba managed to be both beautiful, delicate and boozy enough to make me slightly worried about my designated driver status. A white chocolate mousse was an Instagrammable thing of beauty.

The only failure here was my godson’s white hot chocolate. Without the redeeming bitterness of cacao it drifted into mouth-numbing sweetness I’ve only tasted twice in my life: the truly vile butterbeer at the Harry Potter studio tour and the St. Louis Ritz Carlton’s attempt to turn that city’s classic gooey butter cake into a martini. As with the other two, one taste of this concoction was exquisite, the second a bit much and the third overwhelming. Served in a shot glass, it might have been perfect.

A bit of research into the man at the helm indicates that such excellence in this quiet country pub should not come as a surprise. Having cut his teeth at The Vineyard near Newbury (my review here), Gordon Stott moved to The Sun in Dummer (just down the road from Preston Candover and an equally affluent area) where he became head chef at just 20 and went on to win a host of accolades, including gastropub of the year. In 2018 he moved to become owner and head chef at the Purefoy, where he’s earned a “plate” mention in the Michelin guide and where I suspect he’s on track for a star. He is, after all, barely 30. We’ll be keeping our eyes on him, and the pub’s phone number on hand for those nights when we want someone better than us … much, much better … to cook.

Booms, The Bard and Bach herald the return of live audiences in England

Domestic restrictions regarding COVID-19 ended in England on 19 July, pretty much in line with the traditional start of the summer school holidays. Most of the events of “the season” … the Chelsea Flower Show, Henley, Glastonbury, etc. … were either cancelled or curtailed, but the ability to welcome crowds again ushered in a high summer that felt almost normal.

For us, the first two weeks of August brought a welcome return to the Highclere Battle Proms, Shakespeare at our local pub and our first foray into a London theatre for 16 months.

I’ve written of the Battle Proms here multiple times over the years. Its unchanging features have never been more comforting than after our long, forced separation from normality. The Regency cavalry display. The opening act of WW2 classic songs. The Red Devils parachute display drop. The Spitfire flyover. The classical music concert with the rousing programme of patriotic tunes and fireworks that never varies.  

There were two new elements for us this year. We chose to hire a marquee rather than bringing our own. It was supposed to simplify the organisation of a large family group, though five of our planned eight were stuck on the continent due to continuing quarantine rules for foreign travel. At £122 is was a humorously palatial splurge for the three remaining ticket holders, but we realised it came with distinct advantages. A guaranteed spot meant we didn’t have to arrive early and join the mad scramble to claim a space. We could turn up at leisure and set up in the first row of marquees with a straight view to the stage. None of the hassle of pitching our tent or, even better, trying to strike it and find all the tent pegs and ropes in the dark.

Second, since our last Battle Proms we’ve met the Earl and Countess of Carnarvon. I wrote about the surprisingly intimate cocktail party on their lawns here, which gave us the familiarity to say hello. They didn’t remember us, of course, but the earl returned our greetings and the countess stopped for a lengthy chat. As ever when exposed to the modern aristocrats running the enterprises built around England’s stately homes, I’m amazed by their easy familiarity and ease with “the people”. Highclere’s owners floated amongst the crowds like any other attendee, looking and interacting like the people next door. You can’t run a hospitality business without that talent, of course, but it always amuses me to imagine what the founders of these dynasties would think of the way “aristocracy” has evolved. 

The event could have been concocted by the English tourism board to give life to the fantasy most foreigners have of this country. A benevolent lord and lady welcoming the locals into their grounds. Genial, well-behaved crowds spreading lavish picnics on the sloping lawns of a stately home, flags fluttering in a gentle breeze, a view of picturesque countryside stretching for miles and the slowly setting sun turning a world of green and blue into gold and dark purple. 

English tourism would also do well to celebrate Fuller’s “Shakespeare in the Garden” series. Growing up in America, my early exposure to The Bard was all high culture to be slaved over at school and given worthy respect in serious theatres. That happens here too, of course, but in the land of Shakespeare’s birth there’s enough familiarity to bring a more casual treatment, plus more actors trained in his works. Thus we get David Mitchell and Ben Elton’s Upstart Crow on screen and stage, and a hefty schedule of outdoor performances throughout the summer by small companies in the grounds of stately homes. Fuller’s pubs make things even merrier with their “Open Bar” company.

These talented young actors know their Shakespeare, but they’re also skilled at improv, physical comedy and audience interaction. We saw them put on The Merry Wives of Windsor at The Calleva Arms in Silchester in 2019 and were curious to see what they’d do with the much more challenging Love’s Labour Lost. They updated bits of the text with contemporary humour, added music and slipped in and out of character and gender. We watched just four of them take on a story about of trio of men wooing another trio of women, who interact with at least five significant secondary roles. With basic costume changes, a couple of dummies assembled from balloons and a tremendous amount of skill, the company managed to tell a complex story and keep us entertained.

That’s no mean feat for what I consider to be one of Shakespeare’s most difficult comedies. It’s an early one, much in need of editing … no surprise it holds both Shakespeare’s longest scene and longest soliloquy … and the characters are neither particularly memorable nor loveable. It’s a romantic comedy without a resolution or a happy ending. But its biggest challenge is being laden with rapid-fire wit and pedantic word play at a pace that would be familiar to fans of Hamilton.  As with that modern musical, I suspect contemporary audiences would have needed to see Labours three or four times to digest all the dialogue. With more than four hundred years of linguistic evolution since then, it’s hard for even well-read Shakespeare fans to follow. The fact that four young actors could transform it into a jolly, comprehensible romp in a pub garden was truly amazing. 

Our theatrical outing a week later was much more serious. Bach and Sons explores the difficult relationship between the magnificently talented Johann Sebastian and his two eldest sons. Firstborn Wilhelm was reportedly a prodigy, but frittered his life away in drink and undemanding jobs. Carl Friedrich lacked his father’s spark, but hard work sharpened his proficiency enough to become a court musician to Frederick the Great and a composer whose work is still played. (I was a bit disappointed that the much younger sibling, Johann Christian, who went on to be known as “the English Bach”, didn’t feature.) 

Written by award-winning Nina Raine, directed by London theatre giant Nicholas Hytner and starring the wonderful Simon Russell Beale, you’d think there would be enough talent here to create something as memorable as Amadeus. No such luck.

Bach and Sons can’t decide what it wants to be. On one side, it’s an exploration of J.S.’s  music and genius. On the other, it’s the story of parental favouritism and the trauma that fault inflicts on a family. Amadeus offered a similar mix of genius profile and everyman story (in that case, professional jealousy), but did it much better. With Bach and Sons, I think people without a solid background in the music and the history might struggle to keep up. And while the family dynamics delivered enough melodrama to bring tears to sensitive eyes at the end, the whole thing was entertaining rather than profound. Good, but not great. I suspect the flaws are most evident in the fact that the relatively small role of Frederick the Great (played with a masterful mix of vulnerability, megalomania and charm by Pravesh Rana) stole the show comprehensively. I left the theatre thinking a play about him, starring Rana, would have been far more exciting than the time I’d just spent with the Bachs. 

All that said, if you’re a fan of Bach and his music I’d still recommend this as an excellent night out. If you don’t have that foundation as a starting point, I’d pass. Bach and Sons is on at The Bridge Theatre through 11 September.

Despite my joy of being in public at these three events, the spectre of COVID-19 still haunts us, of course. Even though it was an outdoor activity, Highclere reduced ticket sales by 40% to ensure plenty of room between family groups, and it was fascinating to watch how strangers … even in the most gregarious circumstances … now instinctively give each other a wider berth. Staff at all the concession booths wore masks and guests were respectively asked to do so while moving around the festival grounds.  The same mask protocol was in place at our pub. The Bridge, more sensitive because they’re indoors, kept buffer seats between booked groups, asked everyone to remain masked throughout, kept their coat check closed, didn’t serve food and requested that people pre-book interval drinks online to reduce the potential contact that comes with queuing. These are tolerable irritations for guests but must be cutting into producers’ profit margins severely. So while life is starting to appear normal, we have a long way to go.