GOODWOOD | ISSUE 27

NEW BEGINNINGS

WELCOME TO OUR FIRST ISSUE OF 2024. Spring is always an exciting time here at Goodwood as we finalise our plans for the major events of the year. We kick off the season with the 81st Members’ Meeting, where we will be honouring Niki Lauda (p21) and saluting some of the incredible stars of the legendary Can-Am Challenge Cup (p17).

We are lucky that since 2003, Rolls-Royce Motor Cars has been here on the Goodwood Estate – a friendship started by my grandfather, Freddie March, the 9th Duke of Richmond. This most revered of British marques celebrates its 120-year anniversary in 2024 and in this issue we tell the story of when Mr Charles Rolls met Mr Henry Royce. We also meet two titans of their respective fields: jockey Frankie Dettori, who talks about building a new life in America, and Frank Stephenson, creator of many landmark vehicles over the past 30 years, who shares the inside story of his current passion project – designing a game-changing new motorbike (p50).

Away from the thrills and spills of the motor circuit and racecourse, we analyse the enduring importance of woodland to our national wellbeing (p42) and take a look at some of the women artists set to be showcased in major exhibitions this year. One of these creative forces was Angelica Kauffman, whose portrait of Mary Bruce, wife of the 3rd Duke of Richmond, we are proud to have here in The Collection at Goodwood House.

Finally, in a new section of the magazine, Good life, we focus on some elements of life on the estate that continue year-round, from health and wellbeing to land management and biodiversity, vintage fashion to seasonal recipes from our restaurant Farmer, Butcher, Chef, created with produce from Goodwood Home Farm. And what better emblem of these less wellknown aspects of Goodwood life than the striking Common Brimstone photographed on our cover, one of the 19 butterfly species with whom we are delighted to share this corner of the South Downs.

We look forward to seeing you at Goodwood soon.

CONTRIBUTORS

Ben Fogle

A broadcaster, author and adventurer, Ben is also a nearlifelong enthusiast for one breed of dog: the Labrador. In fact, he literally wrote a book about them: 2015’s Labrador: The Story of the World’s Favourite Dog. As Goodwoof prepares to celebrate the breed as never before, on page 28 Ben shares the personal story of how his dog Inca changed his life.

Nancy Durrant

Nancy is culture editor of the Evening Standard, writing across the arts. She co-hosts the Standard Theatre Podcast, has interviewed artists such as Tracey Emin, Marina Abramović and El Anatsui, and chairs the judging panels for the Evening Standard Theatre Awards and the Evening Standard Art Prize. On page 64 she writes about 2024’s treasure trove of shows focused on women artists.

Jo Bird

Fashion illustrator Jo has created artworks for high-profile brands including Ralph Lauren, Chanel, Harrods and many others. Her work includes print illustrations, wall murals and sketching at live fashion events. For this issue of Goodwood Magazine she created the illustration gracing our new Dressing Up column, which can be found on page 84.

David Robson

An award-winning science writer specialising in the extremes of the human brain, body and behaviour, David’s newest book is The Expectation Effect: How Your Mindset Can Transform Your Life. He has contributed to titles including New Scientist and The Atlantic. On page 94 he speaks to Professor Edward Bullmore about his revolutionary new approach to understanding depression.

Mark Hooper

As well as being the founding editor of Hole & Corner magazine and a contributor to Esquire and Wired, Mark is the author of 2021’s The Great British Tree Biography: 50 legendary trees and the tales behind them. On page 42 he takes a walk through the past and future of British forestry, arguing that the conservation of our woodland heritage ought to be a national priority.

Editorial

Editors

Gill Morgan

James Collard

Deputy editor

Sophy Grimshaw

Creative director

Sara Redhead

Art director

Vanessa Arnaud

Sub-editor

Damon Syson

Picture editor

Joe Hunt

Project director

Sarah Glyde

Head of Editorial for Goodwood

Jon Nicholson

Jon’s richly varied photography has appeared in 16 books, within the pages of magazines such as National Geographic and for brands including Tag Heuer and Ferrari. He has also frequently photographed Goodwood’s grounds. You can see his images of woodland around the estate on page 42, as well as a selection of the stunning automotive photographs from his new book, Macchina, on page 72.

Catherine Peel catherine.peel@goodwood.com

Junior picture editor

Max Carter

Goodwood Magazine is published on behalf of The Goodwood Estate Company Ltd, Chichester, West Sussex PO18 0PX, by Uncommonly Ltd, 30-32 Tabard Street, London, SE1 4JU. For enquiries regarding Uncommonly, contact Sarah Glyde: sarah@uncommonly.co.uk

DEFINING ELECTRIC

No matter how much the car changes, one thing stays the same: the feeling of Mercedes-Benz. DEFINING CLASS since 1886.

DEFINING CLASS since 1886.

Stirling Moss p104

The Goodwood Interview Frankie Dettori p34

Mane attraction p22

p90

Driven p72

COVER STORY

THERE ARE MORE THAN 19 SPECIES OF BUTTERFLY that grace the grounds of the Goodwood Estate during the spring and summer months, including Painted Ladies, Marbled Whites, Common Blues and Red Admirals. Our cover star is one of these visitors, a Common Brimstone (Gonepteryx rhamni) – a favourite of Darren Norris, our Head of Forestry. In spring, the female Common Brimstone searches for buckthorn plants on which to lay her eggs. Only the males will develop this splendid, iridescent yellow hue to their wings. Maintaining a fertile organic farming environment and well-cared-for woodland is a key part of the stewardship of the estate at any time of year. In spring we relish seeing the first signs of new life, and the return of some welcome, if temporary, residents.

Common Brimstone

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Shorts

Noted: people, objects, news and ideas, from the rise of rustic chic to Niki Lauda,s legacy and why we all love a Lab

Iconic photographs are often unplanned, as photographer Terry O’Neill recalled when discussing this now-legendary shoot for David Bowie’s Diamond Dogs album

Terry O’Neill, David Bowie, 1974

WORDS BY MATTHEW DAVIS

David Bowie wasn’t just a 1970s rock icon – he was several icons in one. Not content with reinventing his music from album to album, he adopted an array of personas to suit his sonic styles. But 50 years ago, in January 1974, the man who sold the world Ziggy Stardust, Aladdin Sane and the Thin White Duke was almost upstaged by an overexcited Great Dane.

“Bowie walked into the studio with this giant, beautiful dog,” recalled the British photographer Terry O’Neill, who was shooting the promotional stills for the singer’s forthcoming Diamond Dogs album (which featured the gender-bending classic Rebel Rebel). “He sat in a chair, all stretched out, with the dog standing next to him. But every time we took a photo, the dog would bark at the strobe light. [He] got so excited by the light, he started to leap at it.”

O’Neill confessed to being “a bit taken aback”, but as the contact sheets for this iconic photograph reveal, Bowie remained utterly unfazed. Resplendent in a Cordoba hat and platform boots, he seems unmoved – entertained, even – as the dog bounds towards the camera.

This came as no surprise to O’Neill, who started out on Fleet Street and found fame in the 1960s with photos of the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Audrey Hepburn, Sophia Loren and Frank Sinatra. He first shot Bowie as Ziggy Stardust on tour in 1973, and once described the singer as “my creative muse” – high praise when you remember that O’Neill married another of his subjects, Faye Dunaway.

“I treated David like a Shakespearean actor, as you never knew who was going to show up,” he told The Guardian in 2019. “He could look alien-like or female-like; it was always so exciting, as everything he did was so unpredictable.”

Their professional relationship lasted for 20 years and saw the singer pose for O’Neill alongside Elizabeth Taylor and the cult author William Burroughs. Bowie died in 2016, and O’Neill three years later, but their memory lives on in an image that the photographer rightly called “one of the most iconic shots in rock ’n’ roll”.

Limited-edition David Bowie Diamond Dogs contact sheet available to buy from iconicimagesgallery.com

Under pressure: despite his canine companion’s increasing agitation, Bowie never lost his cool

GHOST

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economy and CO₂ results for Rolls-Royce Ghost: NEDC combined: CO₂ emissions: 343 g/km; Fuel consumption: 18.8 mpg / 15.0 l/100km. WLTP combined: CO₂ emissions: 359-347 g/km; Fuel consumption: 17.9-18.6 mpg / 15.8-15.2 l/100km.

Freewheeling

BY PETER HALL

WORDS

Can-Am’s anything-goes approach created extraordinary cars, amazing racing – and a near-mythical status among motorsport fans

Amid all the pulse-quickening action at this year’s Goodwood Members’ Meeting is a celebration of 50-year-old sports cars like no others. Built to compete in the Canadian-American Challenge Cup, or “Can-Am”, their presence on the motor-racing scene was short-lived – the championship lasted only nine seasons, from 1966 to 1974 – yet they remain the most mechanically unfettered and viscerally exciting machines you could ever wish to experience. And Can-Am lives on in legend.

Much of the attraction stemmed from minimal regulation. In 1966, motorsport’s rule-makers announced a new formula for “Group 7 two-seater racing cars” that largely gave designers a free hand. With no restrictions on dimensions, tyres, aerodynamics or engines, most teams used thundering Chevrolet V8s. But high prize money was also key, and of several Group 7 championships around the world, it was Can-Am's super-fast cars and amazing circuits that captured the public imagination. Exploiting the anything-goes formula, the Chaparral team pioneered spectacular innovations including side-mounted radiators, aerodynamic wings and ground effect, although the series was dominated by McLaren, which took five consecutive titles with its orange M6 and M8 cars. Drivers Bruce McLaren and Denny Hulme won so often that Can-Am came to be known as “the Bruce and Denny Show” until June 1970 when McLaren sadly died.

In the end the series succumbed to rising costs, the 1973 oil crisis and Porsche’s 917 sports prototype, which overwhelmed the competition in 1972 and 1973. In its final iteration, the 917/30 was a 5.4-litre twinturbocharged monster producing more than a thousand horsepower. Nicknamed the “Turbopanzer”, it was almost unbeatable. Interest dwindled and after the 1974 season the series ended. The Can-Am title was revived in 1977 for rebodied Formula 5000 cars, but they failed to set the asphalt alight as their predecessors had done. To recapture that kind of magic, you have to be at Goodwood. Bring earplugs.

Can-Am racing cars will be celebrated at this year’s Goodwood Members’ Meeting, which takes place on 13 and 14 April 2024

Above: Lothar Motschenbacher’s McLaren M12-Chevrolet leads the field in the 1969 Can-Am

Furniture makers are going back to basics with hand-crafted pieces inspired by traditional country classics

Rustic goes luxe

WORDS BY EMMA O’KELLY

You don’t have to be Tess of the d’Urbervilles to appreciate the simple wooden stool, the humble Windsor chair and the handy wicker basket. At a time when high-quality sustainable design is recognised as its own form of luxury, contemporary interpretations of traditional country furniture are very much in demand.

For more than 300 years, that quintessentially English chair, the Windsor, has been reworked by designers. In his 1917 tome, A Windsor Handbook, American antiquarian and artist Wallace Nutting writes: “In a good Windsor, lightness, strength, grace, durability and quaintness are all found in an irresistible blend.” Hampshire-based maker Sitting Firm is among those that specialise in new interpretations. But core features – a solid wood seat with back slats and legs drilled into it – remain. The renowned Arts and Crafts furniture maker Edward Barnsley Workshop –perched up in the ancient woodland of the Ashford Hangers, some 16 miles from Goodwood, also specialises in beautifully executed updates of English vernacular pieces, such as its tall stool and oak rocking chair.

Just as classic a country design is the three-legged wooden stool. When Dorset-based Another Country launched a decade ago, its first piece was a new take on this seating stalwart. “To this day, the Stool One encapsulates our ethos,” says founder Paul de Zwart, “a sustainably made, versatile and archetypal design that will last a lifetime.”

Designer/maker Alex Walshaw has also found a market for carved chairs, tables, bowls and stools, working with sustainably grown or reclaimed wood, including “storm fall”. Designer Jan Hendzel often simply salvages wood from the streets around his southeast London studio. “The old growth of these woods adds textural quality that is very tactile,” he says. Meanwhile, Sussex Willow Basket weaver Stephen Caulfield makes both contemporary and traditional use of the natural properties of English willow.

Interior designers are bringing hand-crafted rustic pieces like these into even the most urban of schemes. In December, London-based design studio Pirajean Lees launched Editions, a range of furniture and objects made by UK-based artisans. Among them is a hand-woven Danish cord headboard and a solid wood dining table. “Clients have become increasingly interested not only in the design of their space but also the furniture and objects in it,” says co-founder James Lees. “Our homes should be filled with pieces that have meaning and evoke emotion. They should last for years and be passed on to future generations.”

Left: three-legged stool made from reclaimed wood, by Alex Walshaw

Forever Lauda

WORDS BY NORMAN HOWELL

As Goodwood prepares to celebrate Niki Lauda, we take stock of his legacy as one of the most influential, mentally resilient drivers in history

The year is 1984. We are in Estoril in Portugal and it’s Formula One’s last race of the season. Two-time world champion Niki Lauda is in second place, having fought his way from 11th, behind his young team-mate Alain Prost. It’s the last lap and Prost has a comfortable lead over his Austrian rival.

The unmistakable voice of BBC commentator Murray Walker captures the final drama: “Alain Prost crosses the line and takes the chequered flag to win in Portugal but ironically and very, very sadly from his point of view, provided Niki Lauda appears in the next 15 seconds or so… and there he is! There he is! The World Champion of 1984!”

Thirteen seconds on track and half a point in the standings, this was a paper-thin margin for Lauda, but enough for victory, and typical of his approach after his life-defining crash at the Nürburgring in 1976 – which wasn’t about being the fastest driver so much as winning while driving at the slowest possible speed. Prost, who went on to win four world titles, was generous in recalling what he learnt from his teammate – in particular his resilience in defeat. “He taught me how to put things into perspective… after a loss, he taught me how to get detached... That was his philosophy.”

Five years on from his death and 40 years on from his 1984 World Championship triumph, Lauda’s legacy is still felt throughout the F1 world and will be celebrated at the Members’ Meeting in April.

Above: Lauda in 1982, the year he came out of retirement to drive for McLaren

Astoundingly, Lauda had come back from his crash to win another world title in 1977. But then he left Ferrari, and after two seasons at Brabham, he quit racing to focus on his airline business. Yet his influence continued: in response to his accident, circuits and cars became much safer and in 1982, on his return to racing, he led a driver rebellion to ensure better commercial conditions. He finally retired as a driver in 1985, but in 2012 he found his spiritual home at Mercedes. As non-executive chairman, he made best use of his straight-talking style by cornering Lewis Hamilton in a Singapore hotel room and signing him to Mercedes – an inspired move. He became the team’s driver sounding board and management advisor and was instrumental in making Mercedes such a dominant force.

Hamilton has always acknowledged Lauda’s role: “I am grateful for the opportunity and forever [will] love Niki. I know he is with us every race in spirit.” A man of extraordinary resilience, Lauda’s uncompromising approach to racing – and life – is best summed up in his own words: “There is no friendship out there. When you race you have to fight… giving up is something a Lauda doesn’t do.”

Niki Lauda’s life and legacy will be celebrated at the Goodwood Members’ Meeting, 13 and 14 April 2024, where his winning car from his final Grand Prix win at Zandvoort will run

With her evocative equestrian-themed paintings, Sarah Miska is emerging as an artworld favourite

Mane attraction

“The horse is like a fantasy in itself,” says the California-based painter Sarah Miska. “Horses have such an impactful presence, and in my paintings I want them to operate as an escape. I was an amateur rider in my youth and adored jumping. Today, as an artist, I am more of a voyeur than a participant.”

It would also be fair to call Miska a rising star, praised for canvases “too compelling to look away from” by art title Frieze and billed as “the painter re-examining the ‘Horse Girl’” by W Magazine. Her first equestrian-themed solo show, 2023’s High Stakes, saw her gallery – California’s Night Gallery, which specialises in emerging artists – sell every work on opening night.

As well as the raw physicality of horses, Miska’s paintings delight in the meticulous, ritualistic details of equestrian sports. All this is rendered in a palette bright enough to meet and match the tones of jockey silks, shining riding boots and glossy equine eyes. “I have so many ideas for future shows with this subject,” she says of her ongoing equestrian fixation. “I wish I could paint faster to get them all out.”

Miska has previously said that her work “is meant to be moderately sexual” as well as having a healthy dash of humour. Perhaps it’s this ambiguity that keeps viewers returning to it, regardless of whether they’ve ever set foot in a stable or a racecourse. “I find that an awkward moment can be an entry point,” Miska tells us. “It’s an invitation to look longer.”

See more of Sarah Miska’s work and her 2024 exhibition dates at sarahmiska.com

WORDS BY SOPHY GRIMSHAW

Right: Trifecta by Sarah Miska, part of the artist’s 2023 exhibition, High Stakes

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Field trip

WORDS BY JAMES COLLARD

Why the prospect of creating a special menu for Festival of Speed is getting star chef Ollie Dabbous all revved up

He’s a celebrated chef, but Ollie Dabbous is also a “real petrolhead”, albeit currently a largely unfulfilled one. “I love muscle cars,” he explains, from Dodge Chargers to the more muscular line emerging at Aston Martin today. And while he feels that owning one wouldn’t chime with his current life as a hardworking father of two, he’s always wanted to visit Goodwood’s Festival of Speed. So he’s looking forward to bringing his innovative cooking to a pop-up that will feed some lucky attendees at 2024’s FoS. “It was no hardship,” he deadpans, “making the decision to do it.”

Once his Goodwood menus are conceived and the orders are placed (“the more I’m in control, the fewer curveballs I face”), he’s hoping that he might have time to pop out of his pop-up kitchen and “see some of it”. But don’t expect precisely the kind of elevated cuisine he creates at his celebrated London restaurant, HIDE. “This is an Ollie Dabbous pop-up, not a HIDE one,” he clarifies, and besides, at festivals anything too precious and “restaurant-finessed” on the plate tends to “get drowned out by the colours,

the noise, the smells”. What’s more, for all the temporary infrastructure around you, “you’re still cooking in a field”.

So Dabbous has set out to make his menu for Goodwood “very summery – fish fresh from the South Coast, British quail and lamb cooked on charcoal grills, spelt bowls in which vegetables take centre stage, and a kind of tacos made with lettuce leaves”. Having worked under Rowley Leigh and Raymond Blanc, he burst onto London’s culinary scene with his Dabbous restaurant in 2012, before launching HIDE in partnership with Hedonism Wines in 2018. He loves his Piccadilly flagship, but with 600 covers a day “and about 300 people in the building”, back-of-house can sometimes feel like “working in a nuclear bunker”. So it’s easy to see the appeal of cooking in a pastoral setting in Sussex – one that also happens to come with the prospect of a muscle car or two. “I’m really excited,” he says. And we believe him. Ollie Dabbous will create a special menu for the Surtees Pavilion at FOS. See goodwood.com/hospitality/festival-of-speed/surtees-pavilion/

Above: star chef Ollie Dabbous at Goodwood Home Farm

Game changer

WORDS BY ALEX MOORE

The new generation of motorsport simulators allows would-be champions to race in a virtual world that is more realistic than ever before

There aren’t many sports that give amateurs the opportunity to compete against the planet’s most decorated stars. eRacing, the booming world of virtual motorsport, has become so life-like, there’s little to distinguish it from the real thing – which is why you might find yourself lining up against Max Verstappen, Fernando Alonso, Lando Norris or any number of F1 drivers fine-tuning their muscle memory or brushing up on certain bends online.

“There’s no doubt that eRacing is democratising motorsport, which historically has always required quite serious financial investment,” says Goodwood Simulator Operator Jack Heeley. “It’s remarkable to see young gamers, some of whom have never even driven a real car, giving professional drivers a run for their money.”

Goodwood Motor Circuit recently opened its own Simulator Suite, equipped with four state-of-the-art Exsim VR5 Motion Simulators, the same models found in the training centres at Mercedes-Benz, Williams and McLaren. The suite lets visitors race the historic circuit without the need for a car, a licence or indeed any driving experience. “A lot of people use the sims to practise before they take to the track proper,” says Heeley.

There is now an increasingly competitive market for providing a virtual F1 experience good enough for the pros (as well as would-be pros). Other manufacturers include Dynisma, a Bristol-based brand that prides itself on a hyper-realistic experience and counts the Ferrari F1 team among its customers, and Vesaro, whose machines offer a “full re-creation of the suspension and vehicle movements of real-world equivalent race cars”.

“Of course, the other major benefit to eRacing is that it’s a lot more environmentally friendly,” adds Heeley. “In fact, a number of racing categories are beginning to include virtual rounds in their championships in an attempt to reduce their carbon footprint.” Formula One might not be quite there yet but eRacing’s impact on the sport is undeniable. McLaren CEO Zak Brown recently commented that over the next decade there may well emerge an F1 champion from a gaming background (rather than karting). Who knows, they might even have learned the ropes at Goodwood.

Below: Vesaro Formula V100 Stage 3 Formula racing simulator

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As Goodwoof 2024 prepares to celebrate the Labrador, one renowned long-time enthusiast reflects on the breed’s enduring appeal

Lab partners

Labradors changed my life. Inca, my first black Lab, was my best friend for 13 years. Today, she is long gone – she died in 2012 – but not forgotten. Inca was always by my side, always loyal, always loving. And, like many Labradors I know, always hungry (that might be part of why Labradors are among the easiest breeds to train). We had many adventures, from moving to the Outer Hebrides together to co-presenting television programmes, but most importantly, Inca helped me to meet my wife.

Marina was walking Maggi, her chocolate Labrador, through Hyde Park, when we four crossed paths. It was because of these two dogs that we met and fell in love. When Marina and I got married in 2006, two marzipan Labradors topped our wedding cake.

My dad was a vet and we had something of a menagerie at home. We were a golden retriever family, but when the time came for me to choose my own dog, I always knew it would be a black Labrador. I just liked the way they looked and what I knew of their temperament, both of which can be traced to canine ancestry from Portugal and Newfoundland, as well as Britain.

The first published account of a Labrador is in the 1814 diary of Colonel Peter Hawker, describing working dogs on Newfoundland trawlers. Hawker observes a dog that is “by far the best for any kind of shooting”. The versatile Labrador can also be a gentle, cheerful companion for the very young, a guide dog or an assistance dog, a search and rescue dog or a sniffer dog.

The breed emerged from the mix of dogs taken to sea by Spanish, French, Portuguese and English fishermen. These animals, with the capacity to withstand icy water – and even to fetch or carry an object as they swam through it – made desirable shipmates. And as gun dogs, Labradors would be prized for carrying prey without damaging it. Some Labs can even carry an egg in their mouth without breaking it.

Today, as the proud owner of three splendid Labradors – Storm, Nero and Swift – I’m still very much in love with the breed. And I still miss Inca and Maggi. But whenever I want to stop for a chat, I know where to find them. Their ashes are scattered under a little tree in Hyde Park, planted on the spot where Marina and I first met.

Ben Fogle is a writer and broadcaster and the author of Labrador: The Story of the World’s Favourite Dog. Labradors will be the celebrated breed at the 2024 edition of Goodwoof, which takes place on May 18–19. On both days, The Duke of Richmond will lead a parade of hundreds of Labradors. For information, and to purchase tickets, visit goodwood.com

WORDS BY BEN FOGLE

Left: the Labrador is Britain’s most popular breed of dog

World class

WORDS BY TIMOTHY BARBER

Barely altered since its first incarnation 70 years ago, Rolex’s GMT-Master II remains the definitive watch for seasoned travellers

In 1955 Rolex ran an advert for its most recent new watch, the GMTMaster, which introduced the innovation of displaying two time zones on a single dial. It was, said the advert, “especially designed to fit the needs of air-pilots, ships’ captains, navigators, travellers, international businessmen and members of the armed forces”. As with so many Rolex models, the GMT-Master not only unleashed a new genre in wristwatches, it also redefined the way in which a watch can be both a practical tool and an avatar for an entire lifestyle. As the age of jet airliners and long-haul travel dawned, Rolex had the robust, modern, high-tech timepiece – given added pep by its conspicuous bezel split into bright red and blue halves – to embody a new realm of aspiration and opportunity.

Not least, the GMT-Master was introduced as the wristwatch of the world’s largest and most glamorous airline, Pan American Airways. With fast intercontinental travel looming, Pan Am had asked Rolex for a watch that could help its pilots stay in touch with time at home as they leapfrogged time zones. Rolex presented its solution in 1954: the GMTMaster could track time locally with traditional hands, but had a distinctive additional hour hand performing a 24-hour rotation. Read against the 24-hour markings on the rotating bezel (the red half denoted daylight

Above: Rolex GMT-Master II in Oystersteel and Everose gold

hours, 6am-6pm, and the blue half night-time), it could follow time back home, or indeed in any other destination. The airline industry norm was to co-ordinate to Greenwich Mean Time, which gave the watch its name. Little has changed. Today’s GMT-Master II, while benefitting from technical and manufacturing upgrades, follows an unchanged blueprint, though the brand’s experiments with precious metals and bezel colour variants have birthed a raft of nicknames that are now part of Rolex lore, like Batman (blue/black), Root Beer (brown/gold on a gold bracelet), Green Lantern, (green/black left-handed version of the watch) and, of course, the iconic Pepsi style of the blue/red original. Aficionados are yet to settle on a nickname for the new style introduced in 2023, where the luxurious case and bracelet, in either Rolesor (steel with yellow gold links) or full yellow gold, contrasts with a bezel divided into elegant black and grey sections. It’s remarkable to think that a design born back in the early part of the jet age still exudes the same vitality after seven decades. To this day, the GMT-Master II remains relentlessly modern: the definitive travel watch, and a dynamic, worldly symbol of the global citizen.

To enquire about the Rolex GMT-Master II visit Wakefields Jewellers, 11 West Street, Horsham, or call 01403 264001; wakefieldsjewellers.co.uk

A new story begins.

Ferrari invite you to discover the Ferrari Roma Spider. A timelessly elegant high-performance car, encapsulating a contemporary take on the chic, pleasure-seeking Italian lifestyle of the 1950s and 60s.

Contact your Official Ferrari Dealer to discover more.

Exeter

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Solihull

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Fuel economy and CO2 results for the Ferrari Roma Spider in mpg (l/100km) combined: 14.7 (19.2) – 29.7 (9.5). CO2 emissions: 437 – 217 g/km. Figures shown are for comparability purposes; only compare fuel consumption and CO2 figures with other cars tested to the same technical procedures. These figures may not reflect real life driving results, which will depend upon a number of factors including the accessories fitted (post-registration), variations in weather, driving styles and vehicle load.

Stories

Tales worth telling, from the reinvention of the motorcycle to the rediscovery of forgotten female artists.

Plus: The Goodwood Interview with Frankie Dettori

“Riding the favourite in a big race... it’s like the devil and the angel meeting in the middle”

Champion jockey Frankie Dettori was set to retire last year in a blaze of glory – but shortly before the climax of his triumphant season, he stunned the horseracing world with the news that he wasn’t quite ready to hang up his cap. He talks to Julia Llewellyn Smith about his new life in America and why the “farewell tour” ended up being not goodbye but au revoir.

Frankie Dettori beams with pride as he remembers his first appearance at Goodwood, back in 1987, when he was, in his words, a “flamboyant, nutty, full-of-energy” 16-year-old apprentice from Italy.

“I rode my first [English] winner there, Lizzy Hare,” he recalls. The horse was named after the secretary of his boss at the time, Newmarket trainer Luca Cumani, “so Lizzy herself actually drove me to Goodwood. And I won. It was a great thrill and I chewed Lizzy’s ear off all the way back to Newmarket about how well I rode the race. That went on for a week, me still banging on about it.”

It was a glorious start to a magnificent career. Since then, Dettori, 53, has become one of the most famous jockeys of all time, riding more than 3,300 winners. Triumphs have included an unforgettable afternoon at Ascot in 1996 when he made history with his “Magnificent Seven”, becoming the first (and only) jockey to ride all seven winners on the card, at odds of 25,000-1.

He was British flat racing champion jockey three times in 1994, 1995 and 2004, and has racked up dozens of Group 1 races around the world, including 14 Breeders’ Cup successes, the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe a record six times, four Dubai World Cup victories and two Epsom Derbies.

Last summer Dettori returned to Goodwood for (probably) the final time in the saddle, winning the Group 2 World Pool Lennox Stakes aboard Kinross, a triumph he marked with his signature flying dismount. The win was another leg of what he’d billed as his “farewell tour” before retiring forever from horseracing, with crowds applauding him at each track.

Yet just before he was supposed to bow out forever at Ascot in October, he dropped a bombshell, announcing, “I don’t feel ready to let go yet.” The plan had been to launch himself into a television career, starting with

competing in I’m A Celebrity (Get Me Out of Here) at the end of last year, but now, a couple of months on, he’s in workout gear and a back-to-front baseball cap, talking to me over Zoom from a hotel lobby in Miami, where he’ll race the following day in the Pegasus World Cup.

So what about that “farewell tour”? Has he confused himself with Elton John, unable to quit the spotlight? He gives a snort of laughter. “I realised I still wanted to ride but in England they made this major farewell for me, so I thought it would have been wrong to carry on there. That’s why I moved to America. It’s a new challenge for me and that way I didn’t offend anyone.”

He couldn’t have left English racing on more of a high, winning the Gold Cup at Ascot – and famously breaking with royal protocol. “I kissed [Queen] Camilla when she presented me with the Gold Cup,” Dettori grins, “out of sheer excitement. Afterwards, I thought, ‘Maybe I shouldn’t have done that.’” On his final Ascot appearance, British Champions Day in October, he rode King of Steel in a fairytale victory from near last to first. “That last day went so quickly, I’d like to do it again,” he sighs. “All my family were there. Then Queen Camilla unveiled a big statue of me. It was nuts, completely nuts.”

Dettori can’t really imagine life without the nerves that accompany every race. “I suspect every sportsman has that feeling: your mouth’s dry, your heart’s pumping. Because you’ve done it for so many years you can control it, but you get addicted to it. There’s nothing better, nothing worse –when you’re riding the favourite in a big race, the anxiety is dreadful but the adrenaline is great. It’s like the devil and the angel meeting in the middle.”

It’s that addiction that’s making it so hard for Dettori to hang up his cap for good. “But in the end, the sport retires you,” he shrugs. “The day I can’t get a ride in the big race, that buzz goes away and then you’re finished; it’s time to give up. But at the moment I’m still there, on top.”

Opposite page: Frankie Dettori by Alistair Morrison, part of the National Portrait Gallery collection. Above: the jockey in 1989, aged 19

Since moving to Los Angeles in December (on his Instagram he posted a snap posing in front of the famous hillside sign with the caption “Frankie Goes to Hollywood”), Dettori has shown no signs of winding down – riding a treble on his opening day at Santa Anita Park. He and Catherine, his wife of 27 years, are adapting to the West Coast lifestyle. “We’re not missing the dark winter days. Everything happens earlier here; we’re in bed by 9pm. If you go to a restaurant at 8pm they won’t serve you. We go out to eat at 5.30pm now.” It was the perfect time to move as the couple’s five children have all now left home. “Everything’s different suddenly. Catherine and I haven’t been this close for 30 years. There’s been a bit of pulling with the duvet, getting used to spending so much time together, but we’ve got around it.”

Dettori is revelling in the anonymity he’s afforded in the US. “At home, they’re all very nice, but you always feel somebody is watching you. Here,

I’m very well known on the track but as soon as I step off it, I’m no one. It’s completely different to England – and I love it.” In general, he’s been struck by the laid-back atmosphere at US racecourses: “England is more traditional: suits, members areas, the rich people on one side, the people there for drinking on another. Whereas here we’re all in one area in shorts and flip-flops. I’m not saying one is right and one is wrong, it’s just different.”

There’s also the question of prize money. “We have fewer than 10 races in England where the prize is over £1m. In Australia or America, they have one a week. That’s how far behind we are.” For junior jockeys the situation is even more acute. In the UK, post-pandemic, the average prize pot is around £12,000 – the smallest amount in the world.

“ The Queen always wanted to know the gossip, who was going out with who”

“I will advise any young [British] jockey to go abroad,” Dettori says. “England has the glory and the good horses and the tradition, but prestige doesn’t pay bills. You earn the same prize money now as you did when I was starting out in the 1980s.” For that reason, he was relieved when his daughter Ella, 23, decided to take a different path. Ella had shown an inclination to follow in her father’s footsteps, racing in Goodwood’s Magnolia Cup three years ago, “but luckily she was accepted for medical school and she loves it. It would have been hard seeing one of my kids leading that tough life and not succeeding. There’s a lot of travelling, riding mediocre horses. Everyone would have been comparing her to me, but she’s not me.”

Christened Lanfranco, Dettori grew up in Milan, the son of jockey Gianfranco, a 13-time Italian champion. Initially he was more interested in football than horses, but that changed when his father gave him a palomino pony called Silvia for his eighth birthday. Gianfranco, now in his eighties, remains his son’s fiercest critic. “Dad’s straight to the point when I lose. But I like that. If he wasn’t critical, I’d worry he’d lost his marbles.”

Clockwise from top: Dettori chats with the late Queen after winning the 2018 Gold Cup at Royal Ascot; riding Angel Bleu to victory in the Unibet Vintage Stakes at the 2021 Qatar Goodwood Festival; another Ascot win, on Tac De Boistron, in 2014

His mother Mara, a circus performer who divorced Gianfranco when Dettori was still a baby, hasn’t fully registered the extent of his success. “She doesn’t follow racing. She just wants to feed me, like all mothers do.”

Feeding a son like Dettori must be challenging, as his diet is restricted to protein and water (he is 5ft 4in, or 1.63m, and weighs about 8st 7lb, or 54kg). “I like to eat once a day, not too late so it doesn’t sit on me,” he says. “Most of the time I eat fish or chicken, maybe once every three months a steak. I love sushi. Tonight, I fancy a little bit of Italian.” Surely not pizza and pasta? “No, something like sea bass. Maybe mozzarella. I’m as skinny as I’ve ever been here in America, because the weights here are very light. The weather helps.”

Gianfranco despatched Dettori to live in Newmarket when he was 15 with 1m lire (the equivalent of a few hundred pounds) in his pocket and barely a word of English, in order to toughen him up. “Now I’ve lived in England far longer than I’ve lived in Italy. I dream in English. But my character is still Italian; I’m much warmer and more outgoing than the stereotypical English person. It’s a Latin fire inside us that comes out.”

After decades living near Newmarket, has Dettori embraced any English habits? “Everything, really. Actually I find life back in Italy really slow because the English way of doing everything is really flat out – like a dog chasing his tail every day. Everything we do, we do fast: travel, eating – it’s an English way of life. I was brought up to spend three and a half hours over a meal. I’m not used to that any more.”

That fast pace suits Dettori, who is visibly impatient, fidgeting as we talk. “My wife says it will say on my tombstone, ‘I’m not waiting!’ That’s what I say to my family, especially when we’re skiing. I just leave them and go off.”

Dettori has embraced one aspect of British life in particular – the monarchy. He had an excellent relationship with the late Queen. “I can’t

“I’ve got a threeyear US visa, so I could be here three months or three years. I’m just enjoying the moment”

Left: Dettori, who has ridden more than 3,300 winners, is one of the most famous jockeys of all time

say we were close, but I knew her really well. I rode 50 winners for her. I went to Buckingham Palace and Windsor Castle, and she visited my stables. She loved horses, and she always wanted to know the gossip about Newmarket, who was going out with who. She was good fun like that.”

There was one embarrassing incident in 2011 when the Dettoris’ dachshund ran away, only to be picked up by Her Majesty’s racing manager John Warren. “My daughter Ella, who was 10 at the time, and I went to collect her. The Queen happened to be there. She spent 30 minutes talking to my daughter about riding in school. We had a gin and tonic together by the fire. But then they let the dog out. She ran straight to me and was so excited to see me, she peed on John’s Persian carpet. The Queen found it really funny, but John didn’t at all. I was marched out of the house very briskly.”

Naturally the Queen’s death in 2022 was, he says, “a shock. We thought she was immortal. I was really sad.” But Dettori is impressed by how neatly King Charles and Queen Camilla have filled her shoes in the racing world.

“Last year, for my final Royal Ascot, I was invited by the King to do the royal procession. That was amazing, and it’s clear that he really enjoyed it. He had a winner and it looked like he and Camilla had a lot of fun. He said to me, ‘If my mother knew that I was going to do five days straight here, she’d have laughed at me.’ I don’t think he had ever done more than two days before.”

Dettori is sure he will return to Goodwood in some capacity. “I’m good friends with The Duke [of Richmond] and I’ll probably be there as a pundit.” In general, however, he has no idea what the future holds – and he likes it that way. “There’s no timescale. I’ve got a three-year US visa, so I could be here three months or three years. I’m just enjoying the moment and living in it. But my family are all in England, so in the end I will come back.”

And with that, he’s dashing off to the gym, preparing for the next race.

and Britain’s leading luxury motor group

BACK TO OUR ROOTS 42

Two thousand years ago, Britain’s landscape was dominated by native woodland – including large swathes of rainforest – but over time this rich natural heritage has been brutally eroded. Today, with our remaining trees under threat, Mark Hooper argues that good forestry has never been more vital. Photography by Jon Nicholson

t is increasingly, inarguably clear that forests are good for us all, whether in terms of improving biodiversity, the quality of our air and soil, or our own mental wellbeing. And yet despite being a country known for its countryside, its woodland landscapes and their associated wildlife, the reality is that the UK, for the most part, has not been looking after its forests. Today we are one of the least wooded countries in Europe, with a little over 13 per cent tree cover in total, while the average per country is around 38 per cent for the EU as a whole and 31 per cent worldwide.

When it comes to our ancient native woodlands – areas that have been continuously wooded since 1600 in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, and since 1750 in Scotland – the situation is even worse. These now cover just 2.5 per cent of the UK. Furthermore, as the Woodland Trust reports, “Around half of what remains has been felled and replanted with non-native conifers… and even more is under threat of destruction or deterioration from development and wider impacts such as overgrazing and air pollution.” The trust has recorded almost 1,000 ancient woods as damaged or permanently lost since it began tracking them in 1999. It also reports that only 7 per cent of our existing woodlands are in a state of ecological good health.

And yet we clearly care about trees. There’s a national outcry whenever significant trees are lost through disease, storm damage or vandalism. Witness the reaction when the iconic Sycamore Gap tree was felled in September 2023, or when Plymouth Council cut down 110 trees in the city’s Armada Way in March of the same year. These individual cases are symptomatic and symbolic of a wider and far more serious malaise throughout the UK – one that has prompted the Woodland Trust to call for ancient trees to be afforded the same level of protection as heritage buildings. A Heritage Trees Bill – “to promote the protection and stewardship of heritage trees” – was introduced in the Lords by Barbara Young in January 2024, but there’s little hope that it will become law at this stage.

“Trees are living heritage,” says Ted Green, whose new book Treetime details his 80 years of “observing, questioning and caring for the natural world and all its wildlife” in his role as a conservation advisor for the Crown Estate, focused mainly on Windsor Great Park. He describes the site’s many ancient oaks as “thousand-year-old gene banks” and decries a situation in which “pretty well every other country in Europe reveres their old trees; we just take them for granted”.

Green also advised on the rewilding project at Knepp, the 3,500-acre farm in West Sussex owned by Charlie Burrell and the aptly named Isabella Tree (whose book Wilding details their experience). She describes Green’s first visit as “an epiphany” that inspired her “to get some dynamism back into the landscape, because that’s where you get all the knock-on effects like soil restoration and water purification”.

Clearly, this goes beyond a natural affinity for the countryside and a desire to preserve our natural landscape in the face of urban creep. There are three major reasons why it’s important that we not only protect our existing woodland but try to reverse its decline wherever possible: it’s good for the environment, it’s good for wildlife and it’s good for us.

Goodwood engages in its own major tree-planting and woodland creation initiative, started in 2019, and one of the largest of its type in the South of England. “The woodland project is essential to stop the decline of our wooded areas as they are needed to produce oxygen, maintain wildlife habitats and reduce pollution,” says Darren Norris, Goodwood’s Head of Forestry. “We are just custodians – looking after the trees is a vital part of maintaining the landscape for future generations to enjoy.”

The scheme will eventually see 40 hectares of new woodland in 12 locations (adding to the Goodwood Estate’s existing 727 hectares of forestry), with over 78,000 trees introduced to the estate. In addition, an extra 600 metres of hedgerow is being planted, together with other ongoing rewilding initiatives. Native English trees such as oak, sweet chestnut, hawthorn, hazel, beech and field maple are being planted across the estate to provide a protective canopy for wildlife, alongside a woodland planting scheme that will provide extra self-sufficiency. Certain softwood trees, for example, are in short supply in the UK and can be used for gateposts and cladding, as well as providing wood chippings to fuel Goodwood’s biomass boiler.

There will also be a programme of woodland-based activities available, including a guided walk led by Norris himself, an early-morning outing to experience the dawn chorus, and forest bathing, or Shinrin-yoku, a practice that emerged in Japan but which is gaining popularity in the UK. Forest bathing aims to improve an individual’s mental or physical health using a range of therapeutic relaxation techniques, focusing on connecting with nature in a woodland setting. This echoes a simple, everyday practice that psychotherapist Kevin Braddock advocates in his book on mental health and wellbeing, Everything Begins with Asking for Help. Braddock talks of the importance of absorbing oneself in nature, breaking the process down into identifiable stages of “listening, looking, sensing, breathing and accepting”.

“Being in nature is very calming for all five senses, but there’s also the sixth impact, which is the actual physiological, chemical impact on our bodies that being in woodland provides,” says Merlin Hanbury-Tenison, the Cornwall-based founder of the Thousand Year Trust, which has a mission to

“We are just custodians... looking after the trees is a vital part of maintaining the landscape for future generations to enjoy”

triple the amount of Atlantic Temperate Rainforest growing across Britain over the next 30 years (from the current estimated 330,000 acres to one million acres). His project sits within a different climatic envelope and habitat to landscapes like that of Goodwood, for example, but his knowledge of native tree species is relevant across much of the UK. Atlantic Temperate Rainforest is found across the west of the British Isles: “Everywhere from Stornoway on the isle of Lewis down through the Western Highlands, Cumbria, The Lake District, Anglesey, the west of Wales from Aberystwyth down to Pembrokeshire, and then Exmoor, Dartmoor and Bodmin Moor.” These upland, windswept wet areas of woodland are defined by rainfall of at least 1,400mm per annum and by their native mix of trees.

“They’re the best habitat we have for the mental health and wellbeing of the humans who wander among them,” he explains, “because during the photosynthetic process, the trees secrete volatile organic compounds, terpenes and phytoncides, which have a marked physiological impact on the humans who breathe them in. It introduces them into our parasympathetic nervous system, reduces cortisone levels, improves kidney function and immune-system response… so they’re really remarkable.”

It’s perhaps no coincidence that many of these areas are mythologised in ancient legends. “These are the forests of Arthurian legend, of the Welsh Mabinogion, Jabberwocky and Tolkien’s Fangorn Forest,” says HanburyTenison. “They are culturally vital and heartfelt habitats that the British

public are very familiar with and fall in love with.” Like Norris, HanburyTenison is an evangelist for re-establishing at least some of what has been lost over the centuries. “It’s thought that 3,000 years ago, up to 20 per cent of the UK was covered in Atlantic Temperate Rainforest,” he says. “It’s now down to about half a per cent.”

While acknowledging the need to grow non-native timber crops such as Sitka Spruce and Douglas Pine (the UK imported 81 per cent of all its timber in 2021, making it the second-highest net importer of wood in the world), Hanbury-Tenison emphasises that these species are poor in terms of biodiversity and their carbon sequestering impact, as well as epiphytic growth (the rich mixture of plant species living in the canopy of native trees and the mycelium network in the soil). He acknowledges that his project –re-establishing wet woodland across a section of Bodmin Moor alongside a research station so that relevant data can be recorded – is a drop in the ocean, but hopes it will spur on national bodies such as the Woodland Trust, National Trust, Wildlife Trust and the Forestry Commission.

The willingness is certainly there at a local level – the Kent Wildlife Trust, for example, has set a target of ensuring 30 per cent of the 1,368 square miles of land it oversees is in recovery by 2030. But any such project needs a far longer-term vision. At Goodwood, Norris and his team are working on a 100-year cycle from seed to mature tree, ensuring that the planting process continues for generations. Simply by visiting, you can become a part of that evolution. As Norris says, “Everyone who comes to Goodwood can be proud that they will be contributing to positive eco-action through the planting of native species to preserve the UK’s environment and biodiversity.”

And it helps you breathe more easily, too.

To experience the forest at Goodwood, including guided tours with Darren Norris and our forthcoming tree-top climbing experience, visit goodwood.com

Above and previous pages: Goodwood’s woodland captured throughout the seasons

MOTORCYCLE DIARIES

Frank Stephenson is the celebrated design mastermind behind an array of pioneering vehicles, from the new MINI to the McLaren P1. Now he’s turned his attention to creating a wholly new kind of motorbike. Alex Moore meets the man behind the legend

Perhaps the most remarkable thing about Frank Stephenson’s glittering career in automotive design is the fact that he doesn’t particularly love cars. His driveway in the Chiltern Hills isn’t, as one might imagine, lined with his own concours-commanding creations: the McLaren P1 (one of the Holy Trinity of hypercars), the Ferrari 430 Scuderia or the Maserati GranSport, for example. His heart, it turns out, lies elsewhere.

“I don’t drive – I don’t have a car,” says the designer, somewhat unconvincingly. He’s flicking through sketches of his latest creation, poised to reset the boundaries of traditional motorcycle design. “OK, I have a car,” he finally admits, “but I don’t call it a car. It’s a piece of junk – something to put the dogs in.”

There are, principally, two reasons for this ambivalence. Firstly, Stephenson suffers from what he describes as chronic obsessive-compulsive disorder. “My whole life is completely OCD,” he grimaces. “All I see is mistakes. I’m never satisfied. And that goes for every car I’ve designed. But I think anybody who reaches the peak of what they do has to be a bit like that.”

To demonstrate the extent of his malady, Stephenson removes his watch, a sleek, space-inspired timepiece he designed for Szanto’s ICON series. There are aspects he’s proud of – the twinkling granite dial, the use of a zero instead of a 12, and the fact that he hasn’t had to calibrate it in two years – but he now thinks the date is too small and he’d prefer it if the inner bezel were chrome. He claims never to have met anyone who cares for detail in the same way – and in every aspect of life. “It’s insane,” he says diffidently. Has he shaken the imposter syndrome he developed after being appointed the first-ever design director for Ferrari and Maserati? He shrugs guiltily: “Do you ever?”

There is, however, a more pertinent reason why Stephenson gives cars – his bread and butter for nearly 20 years – such short shrift. “On today’s congested and camera-controlled roads, I get no pleasure from driving a car,” he explains. “Motorbikes, on the other hand, are all about emotion. When you’re riding a bike, it’s like it’s actually a part of you, whereas a car is merely a tool. When you can feel the wind in your face, and the torque from the throttle, it’s like you’re controlling a beast. That, for me, will always be the most emotional way of getting from A to B.”

Stephenson’s passion for all things two-wheeled is no secret. After graduating from high school, he took up motocross, winning Spain’s junior national championship twice before becoming a factory rider for Honda.

Contrary to popular belief, Stephenson’s accent is the only American thing about him. He was born and raised in Casablanca, Morocco, to a Norwegian father (his name is actually pronounced “Steffensen”) and a Spanish mother, and moved to Madrid at the age of 16. He spent six years competing with the world’s best motocross riders before his father, a satellite engineer for Boeing, called time.

“At 22, my father sat me down and said, ‘Look, you’re pretty good, but you’re not winning, and no one remembers second place. Go get a degree or come work for me.’ He was the best guy I ever knew. And he demanded the best.”

Stephenson did as he was told, and after reading an article in Auto & Design, a magazine to which he still subscribes today, he enrolled for the prestigious car design course at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California. To say the class of ’86 was an all-star year would be an understatement. Apart from Stephenson, only five other people finished the notoriously difficult course: Miguel Angel Galluzzi, Grant Larson, Ken Okuyama, Andreas Zapatinas and Craig Durfey.

When you can feel the wind in your face, and the torque from the throttle, it’s like you’re controlling a beast

Right: Frank Stephenson. Above and overleaf: Stephenson’s game-changing new creation is set to push the boundaries of motorbike design

Mastercard is proud to champion women in motorsport, celebrating the heroes of today and inspiring the trailblazers of tomorrow.

They designed, respectively, the Ducati Monster, Porsche Boxster, Ferrari Enzo, Fiat Barchetta and Dodge Viper.

When Stephenson announced that he was reinventing the motorcycle in July last year, there was a sense that the project had been a long time coming. In a presentation at the Barber Vintage Motorsports Museum in Birmingham, Alabama, the designer said, “Our goal is to challenge the industry’s lack of innovation and present a motorcycle that embodies the future. At Frank Stephenson Design, we see a tremendous opportunity to disrupt the current landscape and introduce a motorcycle that incorporates advanced technology, radical design elements and unparalleled functionality.”

The concept unveiled that day was indeed radical, with its hubless wheels and hydrogen fuel cell technology, but, he concedes, if you want to get a product to market, it’s often worth starting from a point where the engineering is realistic, homologated and credible. “This one isn’t a concept,” he says of the revised design. “We could start building tomorrow.”

Today, dressed down in Adidas running shoes, chinos and a Zegna knit (the fashion brand’s artistic director, Alessandro Sartori, is, he says, almost as fastidious as he is), Stephenson is in high spirits. We’re in conversation at an atmospheric riverside restaurant in Marlow, Buckinghamshire – his go-to while his state-of-the-art new studio is being built. Outside,

the Thames has well and truly burst its banks. Stephenson is totally unfazed, however, and far more concerned with discussing his new bike project. “What I’ve learnt from car design is that we now expect our vehicles to be able to adapt to different situations,” he replies, when asked how his new project embodies the future of motorcycle design. “These days, the best cars often have a number of personalities. With that in mind, this bike could be a café racer, it could be a superbike or it could be a tourer. But we’re not compromising in any way; it’s not a Jack of all trades, we’re mastering them all.”

So, a beautiful-looking bike, frighteningly fast, that’s comfortable even on longer journeys. Stephenson is in search of the consummate all-rounder, the kind of bike that has eluded designers until now. That’s not to say some haven’t come close, and Stephenson has clearly taken cues from one or two of the more protean examples. There are, for example, distinct similarities between the battery-module carbon monocoque of the Arc Vector, touted in 2020 as the world’s most advanced motorcycle, and the paraleverinspired forks of the Vyrus 987 C3 4VV, formerly the world’s most powerful production bike. Neither of those bikes can change colour at the touch of a button though, nor can they be instantly modified to accommodate riders of different sizes. “Customisation and adjustability are two of the big things

“If you look at anything, it’s never really perfect… perfection doesn’t exist, it’s just a nice thing to aim for”

we’ve been working on,” he explains. “I wanted to design a bike that anyone can ride, so you can adjust the handlebars, the foot pegs and the seat to cater for much smaller or taller riders. You can change the riding position for more wind protection or to relax your riding style; you can change the type of power delivery, and you can even add a subframe if you want to take a passenger on the back.”

Stephenson admits it’s a little too soon to properly discuss performance figures but he seems confident that 200 miles per hour will be light work. “There are so many highperformance bikes out there and they all do silly numbers,” he adds. “Performance is pretty much at its limit. Nobody can drive a car that has more than 2,000 horsepower and nobody, except perhaps the odd Moto-GP rider, can handle a bike with more than 200 horsepower. So now you have to start playing on the emotional aspect, and I think design will start to count more than ever.”

His philosophy has always been less is more, and this, he says, is particularly important when it comes to motorcycle design. “The inherent beauty, the essence of a bike, is in the components themselves. The moment you start clothing all that off [ie, adding panels], it just becomes less – less emotional, less interesting to look at.”

“Simplicity is the hardest thing to achieve in design,” he adds, tracing a finger admiringly over a photo of his own motorcycle, a heavily modified Ducati 1198S. “If you look at the most beautiful and enduring designs, they’re pretty simple. For me, a bike should look aggressive but not overly aggressive; clean and light.”

Towards the end of Chasing Perfect, the 2019 film about his career, Stephenson shares a hard-learned lesson: “Never fall in love with your designs,” he says, “because you always realise that you’d do something differently if you could do it again. If you look at anything, it’s never really perfect because there’s the process of evolution, the constant drive to become more effective and more efficient. Perfection doesn’t exist, it’s just a nice thing to aim for.”

It’s no surprise, then, that Stephenson is already dreaming up a second iteration of the bike, one that will incorporate his “wish list” of nascent technologies. And does he have a name for this revolutionary new ride? “I’m close,” grins the designer. “Back in 1974, when Marcello Gandini unveiled his latest Lamborghini, everyone gasped, and in Piedmontese, the local dialect, one of the factory workers let out the colourful expletive: ‘Countach’. It stuck. And while translations vary somewhat, that’s the kind of name I’m hoping for.”

BALLOONS, PLANES AND AUTOMOBILES

HALO Space capsule

Stephenson has designed a luxurious eight-passenger capsule that is carried up to 40km above Earth by a stratospheric balloon. Commercial flights begin in 2025.

MINI Cooper

The 21st-century reimagining of Sir Alec Issigonis’ much-loved Mini, Stephenson’s bold 2001 creation was an instant classic, spawning a series of variations.

Prosperity I Stephenson is currently working on the design of this spectacular electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) aircraft, which aims to redefine urban mobility.

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WHEN ROLLS MET ROYCE

Clockwise from top left: Charles Rolls, 1902; Sir Henry Royce at Elmstead, his beloved home in West Wittering; Royce, 1920s, part of the National Portrait Gallery’s collection; Rolls in his Peugeot Voiturette, c 1900

One hundred and twenty years ago, two men from very different backgrounds, but with a shared belief in the future of motor cars, met in Manchester. Peter Hall looks back at one of the most significant events in automotive history

According to legend, The Honourable Charles Stewart Rolls and Mr Frederick Henry Royce met at Manchester’s Midland Hotel on Wednesday 4 May 1904, and decided to go into business together, with Royce producing and Rolls selling the world’s finest motor cars under the Rolls-Royce brand name.

The 120-year anniversary of that meeting will be celebrated this year, yet there is no direct evidence that history was made at the Midland Hotel. A silver lighter presented to Royce on the day was engraved with the date, presumably anticipating a successful outcome, but Rolls-Royce historians CW Morton and Lord Montagu of Beaulieu agree that no record was kept of the meeting itself. We have only the recollections of electrical engineer and businessman Henry Edmunds, who accompanied Rolls to Manchester.

Edmunds doesn’t even mention the Midland: “I remember we went to the Great Central Hotel in Manchester and lunched together, and I think both men took to each other at first sight.” The problem with this account is that there was no such hotel in the city; it has long been assumed that Edmunds mis-remembered the location, but journalist and Manchester tour guide Ed Glinert asserts, based on local geography and contemporary train timetables, that they met somewhere else.

In his Reminiscences, Edmunds recalled that on the train from London he and Rolls sat in the dining car discussing business. According to Glinert, the only train offering a dining service that morning left London Euston at 8.30am and arrived at Manchester’s London Road, now Piccadilly Station, which happened to be the headquarters of the Great Central Railway and was right next door to a dining establishment called the Great Central Refreshment Rooms. Is it possible that Rolls and Edmunds actually met Royce here, rather than travel another mile across a busy city?

What we can say is that although their backgrounds were very different, neither Rolls nor Royce was the sort of man to favour conspicuously grand establishments such as the Midland (whose extravagance later tempted Adolf Hitler to earmark it as his future British headquarters).

The younger of the two by 14 years, Rolls certainly enjoyed a wealthy upbringing as the son of Welsh landowner the 1st Baron Llangattock. He was born in 1877 at 35 Hill Street,

Mayfair, not far from Berkeley Square, and educated at Eton and Cambridge, where he studied Mechanical and Applied Science. However, thanks to his enthusiasm for disreputable new technologies such as aeroplanes and motor cars (he purchased his first car, a 3¾ HP Peugeot, at the age of 18) he was known by his peers as “Dirty Rolls”. He tended to dress like a mechanic and was never happier than when taking part in dangerous, oil-stained pursuits such as reliability trials and races, including the 1899 Paris-Boulogne and the ill-fated 1903 Paris-Madrid. He was only the second Englishman ever to fly an aeroplane (and ironically for a man committed to engineering excellence, also the first to be killed in one when the tailplane of his Wright Flyer broke off during an aerobatic display in Bournemouth in 1910). In January 1903 he used £6,600 from his father to establish one of Britain’s first car dealerships, CS Rolls & Co, selling French and Belgian machines from a converted skating rink in Fulham, but was soon on the lookout for British-made cars of superior quality. Royce, in contrast, suffered an impoverished childhood. Born in 1863, the fifth child of a miller in the village of Alwalton near Peterborough, he had only a year of formal education and was just nine years old when he was obliged to find a job selling newspapers and delivering telegrams in London. In 1876 he was based at the Mayfair Post Office, so it is possible that when Rolls was born he carried congratulatory messages to the family in Hill Street.

As one of countless children working long hours on a poor diet in Victorian London, we might never have heard of Royce had his aunt not funded a £20-per-year engineering apprenticeship at the Great Northern Locomotive works in Peterborough, where he also attended evening classes in English and Mathematics. At the age of 17, when his aunt’s money ran out, he found a job as a toolmaker in Leeds. Two years later he was Chief Electrician at a company producing electric lighting in Liverpool. Then in 1884 he used his own savings to set up a small electrical and mechanical engineering company in Manchester, FH Royce and Co, where he was joined by his fellow engineer, friend and brotherin-law Ernest Claremont.

This company – known as Royce Ltd from 1894 – quickly expanded, producing everything from domestic fuses, switches and bulb holders to electric motors, winches and

cranes for the nearby Ship Canal. It was hard work: Royce and Claremont often slept in hammocks above the workshop and cooked meals on the same stoves they used for enamelling.

The Boer War and cheap imports led to a decline in sales and by 1902 Royce’s health, never robust, had deteriorated to the point that his wife Minnie suggested he take a trip to the warmer, dryer climate of South Africa. It was during this long voyage that he read The Automobile – Its Construction and Management, by French engineer Gerard Lavergne. Royce already owned a French-built De Dion quadricycle and Lavergne’s book confirmed his fear that British engineering was falling behind.

On his return to Manchester, his health at least temporarily restored, Royce bought a second-hand Decauville car with which to experiment. Having persuaded the twocylinder machine to start, he then dismantled it and identified numerous flaws in its design and construction. Rather than make modifications, he decided to build a better one himself.

On 1 April 1904 the new Royce 10HP car made its first run, and a few weeks later at the Side-Slip Trials endurance event it covered 145.5 miles from London to Margate and back at an average 16.5mph, proving itself to be exceptionally refined and reliable. As it happened, the driver on that occasion was none other than the aforementioned Henry Edmunds, managing director of WT Glover & Co, one of Britain’s largest electric cable manufacturers (of which Royce’s partner Ernest

Claremont was also a director) and a friend of Charles Rolls. Thus the connection was made, and in Manchester on 4 May, a switch was thrown that brought Rolls-Royce to life.

Immediately installed as chairman of the board, Claremont was not in fact a motoring enthusiast. Although never above getting his hands dirty, he was a naturally cautious man who had handled Royce Ltd’s accountancy and administration; he opposed the production of cranes on the grounds of technical inexperience and was appalled by the idea of making motor cars. Undeterred, Royce assigned him an early model with which to test new ideas, but everywhere he drove he insisted on having a horse-drawn cab follow him. He likewise opposed the production of aero engines –which later proved very profitable – yet his steady hand on financial matters was an invaluable counterbalance to Royce’s incessant pursuit of perfection.

Another steadying hand was provided by Claude Goodman Johnson, an extrovert character who became the most influential contributor to the company after Royce himself. Born in 1864 in Datchet, near Windsor, and educated at St Paul’s School in London, Johnson was expected to follow a career in the arts – his father worked at what was then the South Kensington Museum, now the V&A – but although he attended the Royal College of Art he found himself working at the Imperial Institute, a museum devoted to the achievements of the British Empire.

Rolls tended to dress like a mechanic… his scruffy appearance was barely tolerated at the RAC

In 1896 Johnson was commissioned by the Prince of Wales to mount an exhibition devoted to the fledgling automobile industry. Here he met many of the influential figures who made up the car-owning fraternity, among them Frederick Simms, founder of the Automobile Club of Great Britain and Ireland, later the Royal Automobile Club, who offered him the position of club secretary, responsible for attracting new members. These were expected to come from the upper classes of society, or at least to possess sufficient wealth to excuse any questionable background or behaviour. One such was Rolls, whose scruffy appearance was barely tolerated and whose habit of bringing his own sandwiches into the club was discouraged with a sixpence fine.

Notwithstanding the club’s exclusive attitudes, Johnson soon acquired a deep understanding of the car-owning elite. Having joined Rolls’ car sales business in 1903, he was among the first to hear of the meeting with Royce in Manchester, and his flair for organisation, marketing and publicity (aided by his friendship with Daily Mail proprietor Alfred Harmsworth, later Lord Northcliffe) made him a natural choice for the role of commercial managing director at Rolls-Royce, a position he held from 1906 until his death 20 years later. He remains the company’s longest-serving chief executive. Indeed, as the man responsible for rationalising the range, coining the Silver Ghost model name and introducing an official mascot – the Spirit of Ecstasy – as well as steering the company through

Above, left to right: the first 10hp Rolls-Royce motor car parked beside Hay Tor in Devon, 1904; assembling the legendary Rolls-Royce Merlin aero engine, which powered the Hurricane and Spitfire

Even as Royce lay dying he produced drawings for a new adjustable shock absorber

Royce’s declining health and Rolls’ sudden death, little wonder he is often referred to as “the hyphen in Rolls-Royce”.

One of the strangest twists in the story is that Henry Royce outlived his business partners, in spite of his straitened childhood, his lifelong habit of skipping meals and his workaholic disposition. Royce was obliged by ill-health to work from home after 1912, either at his summer residence in the

South of France or his home in West Wittering, not far from the present Rolls-Royce Motor Cars factory at Goodwood (the current Duke’s grandfather, Freddie March, used to ride his bike as a young boy to visit him, initiating a long and prosperous relationship). Yet Royce’s technical contributions continued right up to his death in 1933. Even as he lay dying he produced drawings for a new adjustable shock absorber and expressed regret that he had not worked harder. Knighted in 1930 for his contribution to British aviation – his “R” aero engine won the Schneider Trophy in 1929 and 1931, prompting the development of the legendary Merlin – Royce remains the only engineer to be honoured in Westminster Abbey.

What becomes clear as one recalls the birth of Rolls-Royce is how much of a human story it was, shaped by the talent and character of remarkable individuals. And there were others, of course: Ernest Hives, Rolls’ chauffeur who rose through the ranks to become Chairman; Dr Frederick Llewellyn Smith, who transformed post-war production; and more recently, Torsten Müller-Ötvös, who expanded the range and customer base and oversaw the creation of the first electric Rolls-Royce, Spectre, fulfilling a prophecy made by Rolls himself in 1900.

The task of greening Rolls-Royce now falls to new CEO Chris Brownridge, while a host of engineers, designers and craftspeople continue to pour their skills into the creation of what are often described as the world’s finest motor cars. It is a legacy of which Rolls and Royce would surely be proud.

Above: Rolls-Royce 30EX, experimental Phantom III “Spectre” car (1934)

From 18th-century painting to 21st-century sculpture, 2024 is shaping up to be the UK’s best-ever year for exhibitions focused on the work of women artists. Nancy Durrant surveys the high-quality – and long overdue – selection and asks, “Why now?”

Stealing the show

Rarely does news of a forthcoming exhibition make me punch the air. A lovely Frans Hals show may inspire a frisson of warm anticipation; a Picasso retrospective might elicit a grudging interest, even if it’s only five minutes since the last one. Neither will cause an exclamation of “Finally!” Tate Britain’s forthcoming exhibition Now You See Us: Women Artists in Britain 1520-1920 is that show. Because it’s about time.

“That seems to be the response of so many people,” says the exhibition’s curator, Tabitha Barber. “Everyone I talk to says, ‘Wow, I really want to come and see this one.’ I feel that there’s been growing momentum over the years, but just recently, there’s something about the concept of women artists that has really taken off and has captured the [public] imagination.”

It does seem that way, with a bumper crop of 2024 exhibitions focused on women artists. Yoko Ono is the subject of a large-scale retrospective called Music Of The Mind at Tate Modern until September – a show that

might help give Ono a shot at her rightful place in the cultural landscape, as a pioneering and prolific artist, rather than reduced to a Beatles-adjacent figure. At the Whitechapel Gallery from May 2024, there is a chance to see French-Algerian artist Zineb Sedira’s critically acclaimed Venice Biennale installation, which earned France the equivalent of second place at the “art Olympics”, the top spot and Golden Lion having gone to Britain’s Sonia Boyce, for Feeling Her Way – a British pavilion that encompassed song, video and collage. A major new show of Boyce’s work will arrive at the Whitechapel Gallery in October 2024. The work of pioneering 19th-century photographer Julia Margaret Cameron and the 20th-century American photographic artist Francesca Woodman will also be brought together by a major National Portrait Gallery show, Portraits to Dream In

Beyond London, there’s a chance to see the late Phyllida Barlow’s innovative, contemporary sculptural work take over at the idyllic setting of Hauser & Wirth Somerset in May – an exhibition to help cement Barlow’s legacy following her death in 2023. Further north, the Ugandan artist Leilah

Babirye will create an installation in the Chapel at Yorkshire Sculpture Park at the end of March; in June, a new body of work by contemporary sculptor Hannah Perry goes on display at Baltic in Gateshead; and Manchester’s Whitworth Art Gallery will host the first survey of Turner Prize-nominated portrait artist Barbara Walker in October.

Has there ever been a year like it for women artists? Not that I can recall. “If you’re not seeing artwork by a wide range of people, then you’re not seeing society as a whole,” says Katy Hessel, author of the bestseller The Story of Art Without Men. The book has its origins in her Instagram account @thegreatwomenartists, itself prompted by “finishing university, and walking into an art fair and realising that I didn’t see a single artwork by a woman artist. And then realising, myself, that I couldn’t even name 10 women artists off the top of my head, and I was art-history obsessed.”

“There were certain women who were names to be reckoned with in their day, who have just completely fallen off the map,” says Tate’s Tabitha Barber. “Some 19th-century women like Henrietta Rea, or Louise Jopling,

THE GOODWOOD COLLECTION

are just not household names. But they were in every single Royal Academy exhibition, being reviewed and praised.” The archive survives of Louise Jopling, a supporter of women’s suffrage and the first woman, alongside Lucy Kemp-Welch (a name few would recognise today), to be admitted to the Royal Society of British Artists in 1901. “So, how many paintings she produced is known; which exhibitions they were shown in is known; and how much money she got for them is known,” says Barber. “But of those –and they number more than 600 – there are literally only about 30 that we know the whereabouts of today.”

One woman artist whose name hasn’t been lost to the mists of time is the 18th-century painter Angelica Kauffman, one of the only two female founding members of the Royal Academy, along with Mary Moser. Kauffman is the subject of a major exhibition at the RA this spring, which follows the elegant Swiss painter, if not quite from her earliest days as the talented daughter of a singer and an itinerant painter, then from when she began to be established in Rome as an artist to visit on the Grand

Tour, through to her move to London in search of a broader market. Then came her election to the Royal Academy and the inevitable misogyny she encountered (as well as the support and the friendship) and her return to Rome as a grande dame of art.

Kauffman was something of a phenomenon. “She was an only child and I think that’s significant,” says Annette Wickham, the exhibition’s curator. “She was considered a child prodigy, both in music and painting. Without a talented brother to encourage, both parents tutored her in singing and painting. It already seemed to be a given that she was going to have a career of some kind and not just be an amateur.”

In London, Kauffman became a sought-after artist, working for highprofile clients. Her 1775 portrait of Mary Bruce, Duchess of Richmond, hangs at Goodwood. The Goodwood Collection’s curator, Clementine de la Poer Beresford, plans to bring it out onto public display for a limited period in 2024 and it will certainly be well worth a visit. The subject’s magnificent, if somewhat fanciful, costume presents her as a “Persian sultana”.

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“The Duchess was known as quite a hostess and there are lots of comments from the time about her in wonderful dress,” says de la Poer Beresford. “There was a huge trend for society women at that time to dress in this sort of Ottoman, Persian attire. There was a general interest in the East and artists were going over there, having access to courts and harems, and lots of drawings and paintings came back.”

After Kauffman, it would take the Royal Academy 168 years to appoint a third woman, and that was English painter Laura Knight in 1936. Knight’s captivating realist paintings are among the highlights of Now You See Us When she died, aged 92, in 1970, it was after a lengthy, prolific career as a prominent artist – and the first woman, in 1965, to have a major retrospective at the Royal Academy. Her subjects ranged from London theatre and ballet performers to the scenes she observed during the Second World War. It’s shaping up to be a magnificent year in terms of redressing the underrepresentation of women artists in gallery shows. But why now? Tabitha Barber notes that it wouldn’t have been quite as easy to put on

Now You See Us even 10 years ago. “I think I’d have had to fight much harder,” she says. “But now, I wouldn’t say we’re on the crest of a wave, but there is a wave. Museums want to improve the representation of women artists in their collections. People want to come and see that women were engaged in art over the centuries and haven’t been ignored. Dealers want to feed that, so the price of works is going up and up at auction.”

Which isn’t entirely good news, at least for curators. “It’s been quite a fight, actually, to get the works that we want to show because there’s so much competition for them,” she says, ruefully. “There are competing exhibitions all over the world. Some things we’re tracking down only to find that they are being sent to auction. I knew it was going to be hard to track down the works I wanted, but I hadn’t anticipated this sort of market desire.”

Now You See Us: Women Artists in Britain 1520–1920 is at Tate Britain from 16 May to 13 October 2024. This year’s Goodwood summer exhibition, Her Story: Women of Goodwood, will take place at Goodwood House from May to October 2024

1. Portrait of Emma, Lady Hamilton, as Muse of Comedy, 1791, by Angelica Kauffman

2. Tea with Sickert, 1911-12, by Ethel Sands

Polka Dots no 5, Providence, Rhode Island, 1976, by Francesca Woodman

Installation view from Dreams Have No Titles at the Hamburger Bahnhof – Nationalgalerie der Gegenwart, Berlin, 2023, by Zineb Sedira

Wild Flowers at the Corner of a Cornfield, 1855-60, by Martha Darley Mutrie

Mary Bruce, Duchess of Richmond, c 1775, by Angelica Kauffman

Fly, 1970, by Yoko Ono

A Dark Pool, 1917, by Laura Knight

Decoration: The Excursion of Nausicaa, 1920, by Dame Ethel Walker

DRIVEN

Photographer Jon Nicholson has spent decades training his lens on the automotive world, from Festival of Speed and Revival at Goodwood to hot rods in Bonneville. Now, he tells James Collard, a collection of his most striking images have been gathered together in a stunning new book

DAMON HILL, 1995 (opening pages)

“Totally submerged in the task at hand, the gladiator preparing to go into the arena,” writes Nicholson.

BONNEVILLE SALT FLATS, UTAH, 2022 (above and right)

“Bonneville is a surreal experience. At first I was surprised to see these great old cars heading across salt! It goes against all preservation theories. At the end of the day in the neighbouring town of West Wendover, Nevada, kids would line up to wash the cars.”

TYRE TRACKS, CALIFORNIA, 2023 (below)

“While driving from El Mirage to Barstow in California I took a turn that ended up going nowhere. The road opened up to reveal a drifter’s heaven with burnt rubber juxtaposed against the surrounding desert.”

Jon Nicholson is flicking through his cherished copy of At Speed, Jesse Alexander’s landmark book of photographs of all things automotive, first published in 1972. “When I was growing up,” he says, “I used to look at this and think, what an amazing piece of work.” Nicholson would grow up to enjoy a long and successful career as a photographer, encompassing everything from chronicling the sporting world and work for the United Nations to a vastly ambitious project recording life on the Goodwood Estate. But Alexander’s At Speed remained lodged in his memory, which is why his latest project, Macchina, is “a sort of homage to Jesse’s and my own take [on the automotive world], 50-odd years after his book came out – especially now that world is going electric.”

Macchina is the first limited-edition book published by Fyshe, the automotive apparel specialists, the result of a chance encounter at Goodwood between Nicholson and the brand’s founder Christopher Nurse, shortly before the pandemic. Like Alexander’s book, it is large format and has an epic quality, with Nicholson’s lens trained to extraordinary effect on the automotive world, from the Bonneville Salt Flats and NASCAR events in South Carolina to banger racing in King’s Lynn. Nicholson had photographed cars, crowds and drivers at Festival of Speed and Revival over many years for his Goodwood project, soon to become a book, but everything else was shot specifically for this new publication – using a Nikon Z9, a 4x5 and his trusty Leicas.

In Italian, the word “macchina” is akin to the English “motor” – a friendlier, more demotic-sounding word than automobile, and alongside its stars, Nicholson has a sympathetic eye for the fans, enthusiasts and amateurs of the racing world. Or as Nurse puts it in his foreword to the book, “Although entitled Macchina, at its heart this book is about human endeavour.” It is also very much about cars – which is clearly no bad thing.

MACCHINA is published by Fyshe, with a limited edition of 850 signed copies for £750 each and an artist’s limited edition of 150 copies at £1,750

NASCAR, SOUTH CAROLINA, 2023 (left)

“Extreme colours in the pit lane and the Saturday night truck race as the sun was setting. These cars really fly. As they pass, the ground shakes, the stands shudder – more so than at any other form of racing I’ve ever been to.”

MICHAEL SCHUMACHER, 1994 (above)

“Michael Schumacher in his office before the epic two-part race at Suzuka that Damon Hill won on aggregate. We then headed to Adelaide to witness the collision that ended Damon’s chance of a first Championship.”

FERRARI PIT STOP, 1994 (below)

“Years later I spent three years working with Michael at Ferrari. Michael, love or hate him, was totally dedicated to winning and worked relentlessly to bring Ferrari as many wins as he could. For me, it was a privilege to watch him. Here, his team work to send him on his way to another win.”

GOODWOOD, 2019 (above)

“And so to Goodwood… Paul Stewart gives me the victory V from a Tyrrell 003 after making it up the hill.”

GOODWOOD, 2019 (below)

“Sir Jackie Stewart, Paul and Mark Stewart enjoy a joke with Emerson Fittipaldi and Arturo Merzario at Goodwood. What a moment – and look at the years of friendship in their faces.”

Goodlife

Living well, Goodwood-style: vintage looks, ways to wellbeing, news from the farm and recipes straight from our table

HIGH TIME

Spring/summer 2024’s key trouser shape is a high-waisted style with all the plucky, can-do attitude of Amelia Earhart’s aviator uniform and the elegance of Katharine Hepburn’s signature cinched silhouette. But one caveat: today’s high-waisted trousers are rib-ticklingly tall. Think Annie Hall’s aesthetic, but bra-skimming; some even have complex inner corsetry to keep them in place.

Climbing this season’s trouser summit are Hermès, Louis Vuitton, Alaïa and Saint Laurent, but leading the charge is Loewe, where creative director Jonathan Anderson elongated trousers to such an extent that Vogue branded them “supersuper-high-waist pants”. By yanking them up, said Anderson, he hoped to present a way of seeing his work through a fish-eye lens from the ground. In practice, wearing his high-risers requires investing in ultrashort knits and shirting for fear of regular basics bulging and spoiling the slimline profile. Loewe’s menswear collection, featuring sparkly iterations of the towering trews, tells us the boys are buying into this narrow look, too.

Fashion has, then, come a long way since Movie Classic magazine asked “Will It Be Trousers For Women?” in 1933, pinpointing Hepburn, along with Greta Garbo and Marlene Dietrich, as liberators of the strict female fashion codes that would later become more relaxed, a process accelerated when World War II broke out and practicality became key. Were Hepburn shopping now, she would procure her wide-leg pants from The Row, which has, in recent years, become a magnet for Hollywood muses and supermodels. There could be no chance of refusal at Claridge’s for wearing slacks (astonishingly the Bringing Up Baby star was forced to use the staff entrance in 1951), because she would more than likely be one of a handful of guests taking tea in the brand’s versatile, tailored Igor trousers, which give the air of a person entirely put-together.

Hermès, another barometer of excellent taste or “quiet luxury” as the industry is still affectionately calling it, also exemplifies the timeless allure of the commanding high-waister. The French house majors in long, lean lines and clothes that facilitate movement, owing to its equestrian heritage, and for spring, the Hermès woman is marching out in paperbag-waist leather pants and athletic tops that reveal just a slither of skin. Forget Diane Keaton/Annie Hall-approved ties, there’s an undercurrent of sexiness at play here – surely one that those agendasetting individuals in the 1930s would have approved of while they were making great strides for women. ∙

Opposite: Katharine Hepburn in The Philadelphia Story

A Martian landing in 2024 would no doubt be struck by the curiousness of what we nostalgically refer to as our “style”. For where in the past, clothes were broadly defined according to task-related boundaries – day and night, work and leisure, indoor and outdoor – today, such demarcations have collapsed into a single sartorial paradox: high-tech sports attire in which its wearers do nothing.

The pandemic proved the nail in the coffin in terms of humanity’s resistance to “athleisure” (any “ath” here is a misnomer). As the workplace seeped into the home, so slovenliness leached over everything. By autumn 2020, a national jogging-bottom shortage had been declared. Brits craved sweats in which to remain supine. Years earlier, Chanel’s Karl Lagerfeld had decreed: “Sweatpants are a sign of defeat. You lost control of your life, so you bought some sweatpants.” And, lo, when the whole world lost control, so it transpired.

Beyond the irony of our Lycra-clad lounging, it’s such a wasted opportunity. Home wear used to mean beguiling boudoir chic. One’s personal space became a private pleasure palace of sumptuous fabrics in cunning cuts in which one’s own time spelled the best time. What hope elegant intrigue in elasticated moisture-wick?

Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn sported fur-lined “dressing gowns” for socialising with their intimates. Later, banyans took hold, those decadently decorated robes introduced by the British East India Company. The Victorian era yielded chaps in

HOME WEAR USED TO MEAN BEGUILING BOUDOIR CHIC… PERSONAL SPACE BECAME A PRIVATE PLEASURE PALACE

velvet smoking jackets, their womenfolk in quasi-medieval gowns, while the Thirties were the heyday of that poster boy for pyjamaed posing, Nöel Coward, embodied on stage as Garry Essendine (the semi-autobiographical protagonist of his play Present Laughter) in striped dressing gown and polka-dot bow tie.

As Northern Europeans occupying patchily heated houses, here was a mode we Brits excelled at. Silk dressing gowns, cravats and velvet slippers allowed for corridor creeping. After my first excursion to my beloved’s bachelor pad, I despatched a pair of vintage kimonos. Without these, I felt unready merely for a fling. As I type, I am sporting a velvet opera coat, monogrammed slippers and a vicuña scarf.

Matters need not become an exercise in retro. For all those who swoon over Olivia von Halle, there will be Loro Piana or Jil Sander for Uniqlo by way of “softpower dressing”. There should be comfort, but also a degree of structure. You, the lounger, must be washed, spruced and scented, or you’ll feel schlumpy. Nap, but never sleep, in said garb.

As for what else you might engage in, the rise of the jogger has corresponded with a fall in the nation’s sexual activity. We have nothing to lose but our Spandex, and everything – not least our mojo – to gain.

Sartorial history lesson – N01

THE SADDLE BAG

WORDS BY JAMES COLLARD

Saddle bags aren’t new– they’ve been around for as long as we’ve been riding horses and, much later, bikes and motorbikes. The ancient Persians made them out of rugs; the Romans, out of leather, as seen on Trajan’s Column and various other monuments showing the empire on the march. But what the ancients sorely lacked was this dinky little number: the Dior Saddle bag, as designed by John Galliano – a muchloved handbag that turns 25 this year. Not much use for a centurion, perhaps, but with its beguiling shape and stirrup-like “D” for Dior, this bag quickly became the accessory of choice for the fashionable woman on the cusp of the 21st century – and back then it might have contained an MP3 player, Nokia phone, Smythson diary and a purse with real cash in it. (And for Sex and the City’s Carrie Bradshaw, a packet of ciggies which she was hiding from her non-smoker date.) A whole generation later, its contents might have changed, but the Dior saddle bag lives on as an enduring classic.

In praise of the beauty spot

From Ancient Greece to 18th-century Europe, 1950s Hollywood to 1990s catwalks, the beauty spot has floated in and out of fashion. A mole by any other name – in other words a small cluster of cells containing a dense quantity of melanin, the skin’s natural pigment – the positioning of the beauty spot is key to its allure. Just above the mouth, on an ivorysmooth cheek, à la Marilyn Monroe, is enticing, accentuating the lips and hinting at all kinds of sensual possibilities. It was the French (naturally) who first made beauty spots fashionable, even inventing a stick-on velvet variety – nicknamed a mouche, or fly. Originally used to cover smallpox scars, these became a coded signifier of flirtation. Today, stars like Eva Mendes and Angelina Jolie show off their beauty spots with pride. For those who want to channel a mood of vintage glamour but are unblessed on the melanin front, a pencil-drawn mouche may just hit the mark.

THE ART OF MENDING: INVISIBLE DARNS

Up until the early 1970s, invisible mending was fairly common, but with the rise of disposable fashion it became cheaper to replace an item than repair it. Now, a renewed interest in make-do-and-mend is sparking a revival of these skills – and who better to learn from than The British Invisible Mending Service. Their speciality is the restoration of woven woollen fabric, erasing those maddening moth holes that appear in all our favourite woollies. The key is to remove threads of wool from an unseen part of the garment and “reweave” the missing part, creating the vertical warp, then weaving the weft threads across. This effectively creates a woven patch to fill the gap. The examples on their website are pure darning magic: now you see it, now you don’t.

Above: Dior’s iconic Saddle bag was reworked in 2018 by creative director Maria Grazia Chiuri

DOUBLE BACK

WHETHER WORN FOR WORK OR PLAY, DOUBLE-BREASTED

TAILORING IS UNDERGOING A RENAISSANCE

WORDS BY CHRISTIAN BARKER

This is the year that fashion designers enthusiastically reembrace that most securely fastened of tailored garments: the double-breasted suit jacket or blazer. The spring/summer 2024 men’s collections now arriving in boutiques are brimful of “DB” sartorial styling. Double-breasted coats were seen in a slew of recent runway shows, ranging from the fashion-forward likes of Dior Men, Saint Laurent, Alexander McQueen, Versace and Givenchy through to more classically minded brands such as Alfred Dunhill, Canali and Brunello Cucinelli. A label once synonymous with double-breasted suits, Boss, is leaning into the renaissance with a DB-heavy new collection of office-ready attire it labelled “corpcore”.

Double-breasted tailoring hasn’t been this mainstream for decades. It was first popularised in the 1930s, when a smart double-breasted suit became the dominant look in corporate and political corridors of power, and the uniform of matinee idols such as Fred Astaire and Douglas Fairbanks. It all but disappeared in the 1940s due to wartime cloth rationing, which killed off such fabric-wasting frivolities as French cuffs, turn-ups and voluminous lapels.

When restrictions lifted, men celebrated their freedom by draping themselves in capacious DB suits with broad shoulders and lapels, wide pleated trousers and deep turnup cuffs – a sartorial reflection of the prosperity during the boom years of the 1950s. Unsurprisingly, double-breasted suits also became popular in the era of excess that was the 1980s. The exaggerated double-breasted suits of those times – the upturned-triangular Hugo Boss DB “power suit” favoured by thrusting yuppies, or Giorgio Armani’s outsized and unstructured take – remain emblematic of the era.

“A lot of people are turned off by lingering memories of that ’80s image,” says bespoke tailor Robert Bailey, an alumnus of Savile Row’s Huntsman and Davies & Son who now trades under his own name. “But once you convince someone to experiment with double-breasted, they quickly recognise the beauty of it. You can get so much more shape into a DB, when it’s well cut, than a single-breasted suit. You can really show off a modern hourglass figure with it.”

There’s a common misconception that double-breasted tailoring only suits a certain build, but Bailey recommends DB both for slim men, as it lends them a more powerful physique, and for chaps battling an expanding waistline. “With a double-breasted coat, you can create a flattering silhouette and hide more of the things a man might wish to conceal around the midsection,” he explains delicately.

The DB resurgence may be partly due to the higher profile of avowed enthusiast King Charles. Colin Heywood, managing director of the tailors in possession of the King’s royal warrant, Anderson & Sheppard, says, “The doublebreasted style has always been a popular choice among our customers. However, we can clearly see that in more recent times, the cut has risen in popularity and is worn far more often now than it was just a few years ago.”

The attraction of double-breasted, Heywood says, is that “it’s such an elegant and glamorous look, and it oozes style. As we recover from the effects of the pandemic and the subsequent dress-down effect, we have noticed a clear shift and passion for dressing up again. For us, nothing says style more than a beautifully cut double-breasted suit or coat.”

British bespoke tailor Kimberley Lawton concurs. “Since the pandemic, people don’t have to wear suits for work as much any more,” she says. “We’re wearing suits to be elegant, to be glamorous and to make an occasion of it. With many of my clients, suits are now for fun, so if they’re going to do it, why not the whole shebang? Why not opt for the full-on glam DB with big peak lapels?” Why not indeed. ∙

Left: cashmere, silk and linen twill Plume jacket by Brioni

Why men love pockets

FROM RUGGED WEEKEND ATTIRE TO SUITING, YOUR CHOICE OF SARTORIAL STORAGE SPEAKS VOLUMES. DAMON SYSON APPLAUDS THE PERFECT POUCH

Whatever anyone tells you, no selfrespecting gent really wants to own a man-bag. For men, carrying a bag feels like an admission of failure – which is why there is genuine satisfaction, even joy, to be derived from a well-designed pocket. I still remember trying on my trusty Barbour Bedale jacket for the first time and the gratifying discovery that it featured not just generous lower pouches but also moleskinlined hand-warmer pockets. It’s the little things.

Classic tailoring addresses male storage needs by accommodating everything vital in a jacket’s inside breast pockets. These marvels of engineering will carry a slim wallet, phone, pens, business cards and reading glasses – and all without ruining the line of your suit. Exterior pockets, meanwhile, offer a coded personal statement. Flap pockets imply that you’re a traditional sort. Jetted pockets, with only a slit in the fabric on show, are for men who want to look sharp and sleek. Patch pockets? A marker of Italian informality.

NOTHING IRKS MORE THAN A RANDOMLY POSITIONED POCKET, ONE THAT BEGS THE QUESTION: “BUT WHAT’S IT ACTUALLY FOR?”

It’s important to remember that specific styles have evolved for a reason. Take the side pockets on a hacking jacket – slanted to make them more accessible while in the saddle. The smaller “ticket pocket” above them also catered to men on horseback, allowing them easy access to coins at toll booths. Today, this historical flourish provides a handy place to stow your credit card. Indeed, even if a pocket’s original function is now obsolete, it’s the sense of walking in the elegantly booted footsteps of past men that matters. Nothing irks more than

a randomly positioned pocket, one that begs the question: “But what’s it actually for?”

In casualwear, most pockets in the male wardrobe have military or outdoorsy origins, conferring on the wearer a rugged manliness. The four-pocket field jacket, for example, derives from US military staple the M-65 (as modelled by Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver), while the capacious pouches in Barbour jackets were originally designed for shotgun cartridges and other rural paraphernalia.

Some Barbours even feature a “game pocket” – roomy enough for a brace of woodcock, and rubber-lined to prevent blood from seeping onto your trousers. Belstaff, of course, started out making four-pocket jackets for motorcyclists, pioneering pilots and the occasional revolutionary leader (Che Guevara) – and it doesn’t get much more rugged than that. Practical pockets send out the message that you’re a useful sort of chap. This explains the enduring popularity of utility trousers such as carpenter pants, which feature multiple pockets and hammer loops. You may never need to carry a hammer, but it’s nice to know you could.

For me, the golden rule is: the pocket must always be in keeping with the fabric. That’s why cargo-pant joggers are an abomination. And one type of leisurewear pocket is beyond the pale. Rear pockets (ie, on your lower back) should be shunned unless you genuinely are heading out for a 40k cycle-ride. Your goods are inaccessible, you risk discomfort if you sit in a chair, and you resemble a camel. For normal life, they’re useless. And when it comes to pockets, useless is unforgivable.

Above, left to right: Lord Snowdon looking rugged in a field jacket; the future king in Barbour, 1978; David Beckham’s biker chic for Belstaff

Some 50 years ago a nostalgic TV advert for Hovis – directed by Ridley Scott – featured a boy pushing his heavy bike up a steep cobblestone hill. The boy is delivering bread for the baker and, this being a throwback to pre-war times, he is, aptly enough, wearing a baker boy cap – essentially a soft, small-brimmed tweed flat cap, but larger, with the crown comprised of around eight panels stitched together like sections of a pie chart.

Scott was riffing on all sorts of motifs here, not least the cap’s association with the working class of the English North. The baker boy (sometimes “newsboy”) cap was, after all, the signature style of Andy Capp, Reg Smythe’s long-running comic strip character for the Daily Mirror, the pigeon-racing and darts-loving Hartlepool resident who never removes his cap, not even while bathing. And, of course, more recently, of the shady but stylish Brummies of Peaky Blinders. As in the UK, so in the US: the famous 1932 photo Lunch Atop a Skyscraper shows the construction workers of Manhattan blithely eating their sandwiches while sat on a girder 850ft in the air. Nearly all are wearing the dependable, no-nonsense baker boy cap.

Many of these men were Irish immigrants. And, indeed, the cap style is thought to have originated with Irish workers as early as the 15th century. Yet, inevitably, its down-home roots would be undercut by luxury iterations – and the style is also known as the Gatsby, ever since Robert Redford wore one (in a very un-proletarian cream) for the movie version of Fitzgerald’s novel, also 50 years ago.

Details on display ― N01

BAKER BOY CAP

WORDS BY JOSH SIMS

Return of the crew cut

Maybe it’s that tough times require a tough haircut. Or perhaps fashion is simply now exploring the counter to its phase of floppy-haired romanticism. But the crew cut is the cutting-edge hairstyle again. “It’s trained to stand upright in front and on top, with the sides cut close to the shape of the head,” as an ad for the pomade Crew Cut by Max Factor explained in the 1950s, by which time the style had come to represent American progressivism, the country’s post-war dominance of the world stage. It was the neat style of car salesmen, ad executives and NASA engineers. It was, of course, already the haircut of its mighty military, having been favoured for its simplicity and perceived hygiene and first mandated for members of the US Navy – hence “crew” cut, though some suggest this name comes from its being favoured as a badge of membership by the rowing jocks of elite Ivy League universities. After all, nobody needs a fringe getting in the way when manning those oars.

Above: a recently drafted Elvis Presley receives a US Army crew cut in 1958

Below: Jazzed baker boy cap by Ted Baker

SPRING FORWARD

HOW THIS SEASON’S DISHES AT FARMER, BUTCHER, CHEF ARTFULLY BRING ORGANIC INGREDIENTS TOGETHER

“I just love the ethos here,” says Ollie Joell, senior sous chef at Goodwood’s Farmer, Butcher, Chef. “Seasonal produce, farm-to-table; it fits perfectly with my cooking style, which focuses on clean plating and showcasing ingredients.”

Lamb is, as you’d expect, a spring favourite for the chefs and at Farmer, Butcher, Chef that has prompted a new addition to the menu of a Lamb Cannon, a main dish made from lamb loin that’s loosely equivalent to a fillet steak. Here, it’s served with a pea purée and asparagus from the Wye Valley – “easily the best in the world”, in Joell’s view – and Jersey Royal potatoes. “Sliced, grilled and pickled Jersey Royals are absolutely my favourite way of serving potatoes,” says Joell. “They add a real acidity to the dish but also a light starchiness that helps with the beautiful fatty lamb.”

Other dishes currently on the menu include long-standing Farmer, Butcher, Chef favourites such as a smoked mackerel starter served with treacle bread. To smoke the mackerel, Joell uses a barbecue for the perfect slow caramelisation, but for ease at home he shares the recipe method here using pre-smoked mackerel.

Another eye-catching starter on the menu is a flavourful pig’s head terrine.

“You won’t find many restaurants that put pig’s head on the menu,” says Joell, “but that’s the beauty of what we do here. By using secondary cuts that very few chefs even consider, we can produce dishes that you won’t find anywhere else. Producing our own meat is one thing,” he continues, “but having our own butcher on site is a dream come true. Goodwood provides the chefs here with endless possibilities.” ∙

Lamb Cannon

with pea purée, pea and broad bean fricassée, asparagus and dressed Jersey Royals

Serves 4

FOR THE LAMB

600g lamb loin

70g butter

500g Jersey Royal potatoes

500g peas

400g broad beans, podded

3-4 asparagus spears per person

FOR THE VINAIGRETTE

1 part white wine vinegar to 3 parts rapeseed oil and a pinch of salt

• Mix your vinaigrette ingredients in a medium bowl and set aside.

• Cook half of the peas, strain and blitz in a food processor with a splash of cooking water and a pinch of sodium bicarb (for colour). If possible, pass through a chinois until smooth and reserve for serving later. Cook the remaining peas and add the podded broad beans to the boiling water until blanched.

• In a new pan, combine 10g of butter, a splash of water and a pinch of salt. This is your seasoned butter emulsion. Prep the asparagus spears by removing the bottommost part of the spears and peel the outside with a vegetable peeler until smooth, being careful not to overpeel, which would leave the stalk too thin. Then cook in the butter emulsion until softened.

• Place a griddle pan on a high heat, and thinly slice the jersey royals so that they are almost transparent. Cook the slices on a hot griddle pan for 1 to 2 minutes, which will add char marks from the pan, then place them in your vinaigrette.

• Sear the meat in a suitably sized pan to add colour, starting with it fat-side down and then on each surface in turn. Add in 10g of butter and allow it to foam in a pan. With a tablespoon, continuously spoon more butter onto the meat. This will help cook the meat while also caramelising it. Cook until the lamb is golden and crispy all over. Leave it to rest for 5 minutes.

• Arrange all your side dishes onto each plate, finishing with slices of the lamb.

Smoked mackerel starter with Goodwood gin jelly and treacle bread

Serves 2 to 3

FOR THE SMOKED MACKEREL

200g smoked mackerel tails

100g cream cheese

10g dill, chopped

1 lemon, juiced

• Combine the smoked mackerel and cream cheese in a food processor and pulse until smooth, then add chopped dill and lemon to taste. Split between 2-3 serving bowls.

FOR THE GOODWOOD GIN JELLY

80ml Goodwood gin

1 lime, zest and juice

220ml hot water

20g sugar

2.5g setting agent, such as gelatin or equivalent

• Combine all the ingredients in a pan, bring to the boil. Remove from the heat and whisk until all the setting agent has dissolved. Add around

2 tablespoons of the resultant jelly to the top of each serving of mackerel. Place in the fridge to set.

FOR THE TREACLE BREAD

500g strong flour

125g rye flour

100g black treacle

250ml water

15g fresh yeast

10g salt

• Place all ingredients in a food processor with a dough hook and knead on a high setting until you hear the mix slapping in the bowl. Pull out the dough and place into a bowl and prove for 1 hour or until doubled in size. Knock the dough back and fold. Prove again in the same bowl, then knock back the dough once again and weigh into 50g balls (ideally placing them in small bread moulds for a round shape). Oven-cook at 180°C, 100% moisture for 20 minutes.

• Make sugar syrup by combining 100g of sugar with about the same amount of water. Brush the cooked bread rolls with sugar syrup before serving them with the mackerel and gin jelly portions.

From top: smoked mackerel starter; pig’s head terrine

ALL IN THE MIND?

PROFESSOR EDWARD BULLMORE IS REVOLUTIONISING OUR UNDERSTANDING OF THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN BODY AND MIND WHEN IT COMES TO MENTAL HEALTH. DAVID ROBSON MEETS HIM

Every paradigm shift endures a period of disbelief. From Galileo’s argument that the Earth orbits the Sun to Louis Pasteur’s germ theory, scientists have faced ridicule for overturning dogma. We may be witnessing a similar revolution in our understanding of mental health. Accumulating evidence suggests that many people’s depression may originate in the body rather than the brain – with widespread inflammation triggering the characteristic lethargy and hopelessness. If this theory is correct, it may inspire more effective treatments and practical lifestyle changes to boost our everyday resilience. Yet medical opinion has been slow to change.

Edward Bullmore (pictured, right), a professor of psychiatry at Cambridge University, is on a mission to overturn the dogma. His 2018 book The Inflamed Mind set out a powerful argument for the new theory and was the subject of a session at Goodwood’s Health Summit in September 2023.

Bullmore’s interest was driven by “desperation” at the current state of mental health care. Existing antidepressant drugs aim to level patients’ moods by correcting a balance in their brain chemicals. After huge excitement over pills like Prozac, however, it became increasingly clear that these medications only bring relief to a limited number of patients – but pharmaceutical companies struggled to find better options. Bullmore experienced the brunt of this in 2010 while working part-time for a major international pharmaceutical company. “They pulled out of psychiatry altogether, just closed it down,” he says. “And that was a bit of an existential moment for me. It showed that you can’t just take progress for granted.” His boss told him that the only way forward would be to find a fundamentally different way of understanding depression. Bullmore took those words in earnest. His attention soon fell on the immune system, with inflammation, in particular, falling in his crosshairs. If our white blood cells are the body’s foot soldiers, then inflammation is their crudest weapon – an indiscriminate attack on potential intruders. This can help hold the infection at bay, but the human body itself can suffer from friendly fire, as the inflammatory chemicals damage surrounding tissue.

When we are in good health, inflammation is a temporary response to a threat that passes quickly. Unfortunately, our immune army can sometimes start attacking its own organs – leading to chronic inflammation in diseases like rheumatoid arthritis. Could widespread inflammation also contribute to depression? Multiple lines of evidence point in this direction. Around 40 per cent of people with arthritis are also depressed (according to a 2013 study carried out by King’s College London) and they often

experience rapid relief from the mental symptoms in response to an anti-inflammatory drug called Remicade. “Nurses would compete with each other to set up the drip and infuse the drug, because they knew that the patient would immediately feel better and be delightfully grateful,” says Bullmore. “They called it the Remicade high.” Scientists have also studied the reactions of healthy people who have been given vaccines, which temporarily increase inflammation. “You can demonstrate that there are mood changes that follow this inflammatory shock.”

Many people have low-grade bodily inflammation without having a diagnosed autoimmune disorder, and they are significantly more likely to develop depression than those who do not. Bullmore suspects this may account for 25 per cent of people diagnosed with the illness.

Some initial scepticism was to be expected, of course. Our little grey cells are enveloped in a membrane known as the “blood-brain barrier”, which was thought to protect them from the actions of the body’s immune system. However, recent studies have demolished this argument, showing that there is much more communication across the partition than previously recognised. Yet, Bullmore says, many scientists and doctors still resist the idea. “There seems to be an automatic veto on the concept that the brain and the body can have anything to do with each other.”

He hopes further research will turn the tide of opinion, with clinical trials that directly test the effects of anti-inflammatory drugs on depressed patients. “If that materialises, it might change minds,” he says. “And it would have immediate practical implications.”

He would also like to see more research on lifestyle changes that could increase our mental resilience. Fatty tissue is known to produce inflammatory chemicals, for example. “If you are obese, losing weight may help to reduce your future risk of depression – though that is easier said than done, as we all know.” He is more cautious about popular claims that dietary supplements, cold-water swimming or yoga can protect us from depression. “These claims are quite abundant, but the evidence for them is not always very strong,” he says.

When Bullmore was at medical school, the idea that yogic breathing could influence your immune system would have seemed “oddball”, but concepts like this “have become much more scientifically conceivable – and need to be tested”. The mental and physical are interconnected in ways we have only just begun to understand. ∙

Goodwood offers a range of holistic Health & Wellbeing retreats. For information, visit goodwood.com

“There seems to be an automatic veto on the concept that the brain and the body can have anything to do with each other”

YOUNG HEARTS RUN FREE

WHETHER IT’S BY TRYING THEIR HAND AT FARMING OR EXPLORING WOODLAND, CHILDREN THRIVE WHEN THEY SPEND MEANINGFUL TIME OUTDOORS. CHARLOTTE HOGARTH-JONES MEETS THE ORGANISATIONS RECONNECTING YOUNG PEOPLE WITH THE NATURAL WORLD

“Being in nature makes me very happy.” It’s a statement that 88 per cent of the children aged 8–15 who were surveyed by Natural England in 2023 can agree with. And from forest to farmland, countryside to coast, many of the physical and mental health benefits of time spent outdoors have been scientifically proven.

Yet for many families, and particularly those with lower household incomes, meaningful time spent in nature has never felt more out of reach. In 2019, government-backed research found that one in five children living in England’s most deprived areas “never spend time in the natural environment”. And for children of all backgrounds, time spent indoors on electronic devices feels like it’s only going one way: up. Alongside these changes, the proliferation of mass market and processed foods also means that children (and adults) feel less connected than previous generations to how the food they eat was grown or farmed.

Helping children to enjoy life outdoors has long been a passion for celebrated author Michael Morpurgo. In 1976, he and his wife Clare founded Farms for City Children. Today, led by CEO Donna Edmonds, the charity offers children from disadvantaged backgrounds a chance to be “farmers for a week” in Devon, Pembrokeshire and Gloucestershire. It hosted 3,288 children in 2022-2023, with 98 per cent of adults accompanying them reporting that the young people’s social connections and wellbeing were improved by the experience. The Morpurgos both worked as schoolteachers in Kent, and as Michael recalls, “We felt that at best only half of the children we were teaching were on the road to fulfilling their potential.” For some children, the sense of purpose from outdoor work on a farm could be a revelation. “They know their work is essential and important, that it matters to the animals, to the farm; that it simply matters,” he adds. “They matter.”

Jamie’s Farm, a charity founded in 2005 by schoolteacher Jamie Feilden and his psychologist mother, Tish Feilden, shares a similar ethos. At farms in Yorkshire, Sussex, Somerset and Wales, as well as a city farm in London’s Waterloo, children are offered a hands-on chance to experience the work of running a real farm, such as herding sheep. “Children are spending increasing amounts of their life on technology – some retreating to their rooms straight after school and not engaging with the real world much at all,” says Chloe Thomas, the charity’s Head of Impact and Influence. “They tell us that it’s like having a full-time job, constantly feeling as if they have to be ‘on’.”

A break from screens and phones allows children “to be children again”. The farm visit is often “the first step in lighting a passion for the environment within children – and creating a sense of hope and optimism for their own futures,” says Thomas. “Many of those who visit have battled with negative labels in school, and their behaviour may have spiralled.” Whereas on the farms, “children tell us they

Field notes

Spring is my favourite time of year at Goodwood Home Farm, when everything is waking up from a long sleep. The plants start growing, there’s greenery on the trees, and at Goodwood we start thinking about putting the crops in. We’ll be looking at ploughing the land, and we need two weeks of dry weather for drilling, which is the farming term for sowing. You start seeing lambs and calves being born on the estate, too; lots of new life.

A break from screens and phones allows children to be children again

feel truly listened to – often for the first time in their lives.” In 2021/22, 63 per cent of those referred to Jamie’s Farm for self-esteem issues were said to have shown improvement when back in the classroom.

At the Goodwood Estate, the distinctive outdoor environments, including the woodland and farm, are made accessible to primary-school-aged children (including those in Special Schools and Alternative Provision, as well as some secondary-school children) through the Goodwood Education Trust. In addition to the on-site Education Centre, the main “classroom” is the estate’s woodland, with activities such as campfire laying, lighting and cooking, den building and woodland crafts. At Home Farm, young visitors can observe cows being milked and butter being made, and quiz artisanal food producers about their work.

“Children can learn at their own pace – there is no right or wrong answer,” says Trust Manager Catherine Cannon, who says she relishes the freedom children can experience within the setting of Goodwood’s greenery. She has, however, learned never to take any prior knowledge for granted. “We have badger setts in the woods, so we showed those to children, and were politely told that some in the group didn’t know what a badger was,” she explains. But the experience is about more than simply brushing up on outdoorsy general knowledge. “We’ve had some children who don’t usually speak up, who were able to make a contribution,” says Cannon. “And sometimes, when children are outside and take a deep breath, you can almost physically see a weight lift off their shoulders.” ∙

Goodwood Education Trust has provided outdoor learning opportunities for more than 40 years. Nestled in eight hectares of ancient woodland, the Goodwood Education Centre hosts visits for up to 60 children at a time, year-round. Discover more at goodwood.com

I’m a fourth-generation farmer at Goodwood, having grown up on my parents’ tenant farm, which is also on the estate. And I now oversee farming at Goodwood Home Farm. The farm is four and a half thousand acres – all organic, with no artificial herbicides, fertiliser or insecticides on the fields or crops. Animal welfare standards are also much higher: the animals have more space to roam, lie down and feed than they do on

conventional farms. With organic farming, your aim is to use nature’s fertility to create a distinguished product. We favour native breeds: Dairy Shorthorn cows for producing milk, Sussex cattle for producing beef, and Saddleback pigs and Southdown sheep. We are a flagship for breeds that, while not endangered, have gone out of fashion on commercial farms. The yields are not as high, but it’s about quality over quantity.

I’m also excited about our plans to put in robotic milkers. The cow walks herself to the robot, so it’s good for animal welfare as the cow decides when she wants to be milked. We’re keeping the traditions of the English countryside alive, but combined with the best new tech. Learn more about farming at Goodwood, and the organic produce available, at goodwood.com

HARRY HOLT, FARM MANAGER AT GOODWOOD, ON THE GLORIES OF SPRING, ORGANIC FARMING AND ROBOTIC MILKERS

CALENDAR

MARCH 31, APRIL 1

EASTER SUNDAY & MONDAY LUNCH

Make the most of the long weekend at The Kennels with a delicious two- or threecourse Easter lunch, where every dish is a celebration of the season.

APRIL 13–14

81ST MEMBERS’ MEETING

Epic motor racing and fun-packed festivities: see p101 for full details.

APRIL 17

SUSTAINABLE & WILDLIFE

GARDENING MASTERCLASS

Horticulturists Beverly Exall and Hannah Clements join us for an evening at The Kennels where you will discover how to nurture wildlife habitats in your garden.

MAY 3–4

HORSERACING SEASON OPENER

Expect high-quality action on the track as the most eagerly anticipated season ever at Goodwood Racecourse begins. From perfectly placed private hospitality to great value celebration packages, racegoers can look forward to a memorable day out.

MAY 8

SHEERLUCK HOLMES MURDER MYSTERY DINNER

A laugh-out-loud murder mystery dinner show. Get ready for an exhilarating night of fun and mayhem at The Kennels with hilarious characters, deadly twists and a three-course meal that’s simply to die for.

MAY 9

MOËT & CHANDON AND RUINART CHAMPAGNE DINNER

Join us at The Kennels for an exclusive dinner that includes a four-course pairing menu accompanied by Moët & Chandon and Maison Ruinart champagnes.

MAY 18, 19

GOODWOOF

Goodwood’s much-loved annual celebration of our canine friends returns: see p103 for full details.

JUNE 7, 14, 21

THREE FRIDAY NIGHTS

A trio of internationally renowned DJs will headline our famous 3FN events.

JUNE 9

FAMILY RACE DAY

Get set for two high-class Listed contests, the Tapster Stakes and the EBF Agnes Keyser Stakes, plus themed attractions for all ages and a free fairground.

JUNE 16

FATHER’S DAY LUNCH AT THE KENNELS

Celebrate this very special day with a delicious two- or three-course lunch.

JUNE 27, JULY 25

SMOKE & FIRE SUMMER

SUPPER CLUB

A unique al fresco dining experience on our Putting Green at The Kennels, with your supper cooked in front of you on an open fire. The menu is filled with fresh seasonal ingredients, showcasing the finest produce from the Goodwood Estate.

81ST MEMBERS’ MEETING

The 81st Members’ Meeting presented by Audrain Motorsport is a thrilling weekend of epic motor racing, high-speed track demonstrations and a range of other attractions. Exclusively open to members of the Goodwood Road Racing Club (GRRC), this year’s event promises to be as thrilling as ever, and it includes the introduction of two sustainably fuelled races: the Ken Miles Cup and the Gordon Spice Trophy, both of which will be run exclusively on sustainable synthetic fuels.

The weekend will also host a celebration of the Canadian-American Challenge Cup, with as many as 20 iconic Can-Am cars taking to the track for a spectacularly ear-splitting demonstration. We will pay tribute to a true icon of motorsport, Niki Lauda, in what would have been his 75th year. The McLaren MP4/2B – the car in which Niki took his final victory in the Netherlands in 1985 – will make a star appearance in a special demonstration each day.

Every Members’ Meeting attendee can take part in the House competition, led by four brand new House Captains, and win points for their House through off-track games and by supporting their drivers. Even once the chequered flag falls on the final race on Saturday, the fun doesn’t stop. Enjoy fun-packed festivities, delicious food and drink, and spectacular fireworks at our Saturday night party. goodwood.com/motorsport/members-meeting/

GOODWOOF

Goodwoof presented by MARS Petcare is back and 2024 is the year of the Labrador.

For the first time, the celebratory parade will be taking place on both Saturday 18 and Sunday 19 May. Led by The Duke of Richmond, hundreds of Labradors will take centre stage, gathering in front of Goodwood House and walking to behind The Kennels, where Goodwoof will take place. Barkitecture returns with a new theme for 2024, Lounge Access: The Jet-Setting Dog. All the designs will be auctioned by Bonhams, with the proceeds going to Jai Dog Rescue, our charity partner for 2024.

A new woodland walk is on the agenda, with opportunities to try forest bathing and truffle hunting, as well as the wellness centre, studio (with classes for dog massage and yoga), action sports, field and trail competitions – including the incredible sheepdog trials – and the Ministry of Hound, to get you and your dog dancing! Tarot card reading also returns with additional sessions on crystal healing and animal communication, while the Literary Corner is back for 2024 with a fantastic line-up of authors and illustrators, including Clare Balding and Tracey Corderoy.

Plenty of activities are included in the ticket price and under-12s and dogs go free, making Goodwoof the perfect family day out. goodwood.com/goodwoof

PHOTO FINISH

Every picture tells a Goodwood story

PAT AND STIRLING MOSS AT GOODWOOD, 1955. Many of us know the name Moss as a shorthand for motor-racing success, but the question ought to be: “Which Moss?” In the moment seen here, Patricia “Pat” Moss is congratulated by her older brother Stirling on winning Goodwood’s Ladies Handicap race – and she was just getting started, going on to triumph as European Ladies’ Rally Champion five times. “Driving was part of life because dad used to race and mum was doing rallies and hillclimbs,” MossCarlsson (as she became known after her 1963 marriage to fellow rally driver Erik) told The Telegraph in 2005, three years before her death. “Stirling, of course, was car mad,” she remembered. “When I was 17, [his] manager took me on a rally and I thought it looked fun, so I decided to have a go.”

And have a go she certainly did, driving – and winning – for high-profile 1960s teams such as Renault Alpine and Lancia. Like many drivers, she had a habit of giving her cars nicknames, such as “Bloody Mary” and “Dirty Gertie”. In her later years, Moss-Carlsson kept horses, but she would occasionally enthral listeners with accounts of her glory years. “We were paid and dedicated but we had camaraderie,” she said. “Now [drivers] are so single-minded… If you look at the interviews, none of them would dream of cracking a joke.” Whereas Pat liked to make light of it all sometimes – as she passed you at the finish line.