Simon Courtauld

‘A unique opportunity to purchase the home of a famous weekly magazine.’ Thus might an estate agent market No. 56 Doughty Street, London WC1, now up for sale after more than 30 years as the offices of The Spectator. But an estate agent cannot know how des a res is this early-19th-century house in Bloomsbury. It should be sold not so much for its fabric — handsome as it is, if slightly worn — as for its recent history, for the rich variety of people who have passed through its doors and the voices which may come out of the now possibly rotting woodwork.

My grandfather used to enjoy eating ortolans in Biarritz, sometimes in the company of Rudyard Kipling. In London, it amused him to ask for these little birds of the bunting family when dining at the Savoy, though I don’t think they were ever on the menu. Ortolans have always been a French delicacy: la chasse aux petits oiseaux, which involves trapping small birds in nets, may continue in parts of south-west France, but their sale for the table has been banned for some years. President Mitterrand, no great respecter of the law, was said to have had ortolans for one of his last meals, a week before he died — almost fulfilling the wish expressed by a character in Disraeli’s novel, The Young Duke, that he should die ‘eating ortolans to the sound of soft music’.

There won’t be any wild turkeys eaten in Britain this Christmas. There won’t be any wild turkeys eaten in Britain this Christmas. However, a few of these birds, which are indigenous to north and central America, are being reared in south-west England. It is possible that one or two dark-plumaged turkeys may be seen in flight over Salisbury Plain or the hills of Devon, though no one is yet treating them as game birds, which they are in the USA. In the eastern states, in Texas and New Mexico, the male birds are shot — when strutting about they have beautifully fanned tails — and no doubt their gamey taste was enjoyed at a few tables in celebration of Thanksgiving last week.

In my early days as editor of the Field, I read an article submitted by one of the magazine’s venerable hunting correspondents In my early days as editor of the Field, I read an article submitted by one of the magazine’s venerable hunting correspondents — the subject was harehunting and a day out with, I think, the Cambridgeshire Harriers — which mentioned that, in the course of the chase, ‘puss clapped’. This slightly disconcerting expression apparently means, in the recondite language of the harehunter, that the quarry stopped and ‘froze’, trying to make itself invisible.

The countryside writer Ian Niall, a columnist in these pages some 50 years ago, told in his classic work, The Poacher’s Handbook, of one of the fraternity known as Black Bill who had an affection for partridges and could never bring himself to kill them. ‘The partridge is the one bird I don’t touch,’ says the sentimental old poacher, expressing his contempt for those to whom it is ‘just a little snack on a plate with gravy runnin’ round it’. One can understand Black Bill’s feelings as he listens to and watches a partridge collecting its family together, huddling in a furrow when danger threatens.

The red grouse is a resilient little bird. Prone to an unpleasant disease called louping ill which is transmitted by sheep ticks, and vulnerable to attack by nasty, invasive little worms, its population may crash in some moorland areas for several years; and then it will reappear in healthy numbers as if nothing had happened. Grouse-shooting in Scotland has suffered a serious decline recently, due in part to the increased population of red deer, which may also be infested with ticks, and to cold, wet weather during the hatching season. (I have only just learnt that the Dr Edward Wilson who did so much valuable work in the early 20th century on the causes of grouse disease is the same Wilson who perished with Scott in the Antarctic.

The Countryside Alliance, through its Game-to-Eat campaign, has been doing some good work in promoting venison. It is higher in protein and lower in fat than other red meat; some supermarkets are now offering venison steaks and sausages, but fewer than 10 per cent of the population buy the meat. Since deer numbers in Britain have apparently never been so high, and the government has been advised that they should be reduced by a third, wild venison, generally with a better flavour than deer that have been farmed, should be more generally available. Thanks to friendly persuasion by the Alliance, wild venison was introduced last year on the menus of Great Western and Anglia trains.

If, as I was told the other day, much of the frozen chicken and duck meat brought into this country comes from the Far East, it may be that some of us have already been exposed to the risk of contracting avian flu. But I don’t suppose that this will weigh with the government when there is another major scare — a couple of chickens found to have the dreaded virus in a heavily populated part of southern England. With its instinct for over-reaction, the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs will order that all poultry be kept indoors. When shall we then be able to enjoy a free-range chicken or a free-range egg again? Not wishing to be a Jeremiah, I would rather describe the joys of eating this remarkable domestic bird.

There never seems to be any shortage of pigeons. Whether feeding in a field of corn or rape by day or coming into woodland at dusk, they are always around. Depending on the weather and the time of day, you may have to wait a while for them, but, as William Douglas-Home once wrote in a memorable article for the Field on pigeon-shooting, ‘they always turn up in the end’. They may be shot over decoys in spring and summer or from the shelter of trees on a winter’s afternoon; with no close season there should always be a plentiful supply for the table. These, of course, are wood pigeons.

While we are all worrying about the threat to poultry from an alien virus which has now reached these shores, there seems to be little concern at the threat to our countryside and livestock from an alien animal now roaming free in England. I am referring to wild boar, hundreds of them, which are inhabiting forested areas of Kent, Sussex, Dorset and Gloucestershire, having escaped from farms and bred in the wild. If nothing is done about them, there could be many thousands of wild boar in 20 years’ time, marauding through woodland, threatening walkers, destroying crops and pasture, and spreading diseases — swine fever, bovine tuberculosis — to domestic pigs and cattle. The spread of avian flu may be easier to contain than the proliferation of these dangerous wild beasts.