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Forever England

24th April 2007 by Helena 1 Comment  

England is going to the dogs we hear. In fact it is one of the reasons we left. I couldn’t face a life surrounded by yobs, litter, child molesters and people who can’t speak English. The horrific news last week that a mother goaded her toddlers into what basically amounts to human cock-fighting and then filmed them did nothing to dissuade me that we had made the right move in abandoning Blightly.

Painting of Gravetye Manor by Jann Pollard - available for purchase at www.jannpollard.comBut whatever is happening to the rest of the country there is at least one place where the England of my childhood is alive and thriving. At Gravetye Manor in Sussex (www.gravetye.co.uk) you get the feeling nothing has changed for 100 years. Moreover there is a comforting sensation you get while sitting in the wood-panelled drawing room that things won’t change for the next 100 years.

We arrived Sunday just before lunch. My husband from Delhi and me from Montpellier. We were welcomed by a lovely girl who suggested we might like to have a drink in the garden before lunch. In fact one thing has changed at Gravetye over the last 100 years; the weather. We sat in warm sunshine looking over rolling hills down to the lake.

Lunch was a quintessentially English affair; roast beef and yorkshire pudding followed by the most orgasmic sticky toffee pudding which I ate with rather too loud enthusiasm. Another advantage of Gravetye is that all the other guests were well over sixty thus making my husband and I feel incredibly young and attractive.

After lunch we sat in the garden with our coffee enjoying the afternoon sun and the spectacle of a man in a straw hat sleeping with his mouth open while his wife pretended to look at the herbaceous border.

For how many years have people been snoozing peacefully in that beautiful garden? Long may it continue.

Copyright: Helena Frith Powell 2007


Filed Under: Britain, Travel, blog --> Tagged With: england, forever

One thought on Forever England

  • Debio says:
    24th April 2007 at 2:52 pm

    Ah yes, Gravetye Manor – both known and loved well.

    Ah yes, England – ravaged by the post-war welfare state and institutionalised socialism, conferring rights without responsibility.

    Is this the ‘freedom’ of which we are all so proud? A democratic distatorship.

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Helena Frith Powell was born in Sweden to a Swedish mother and Italian father, but grew up mainly in England. She is the author of eleven books, translated into several languages including Chinese and Russian. She wrote the French Mistress column The Sunday Times about life in France for several years. She is a regular contributor to the Daily Mail, Mail on Sunday, The Times, Daily Telegraph, Tatler Magazine and Harper’s Bazaar.

Helena has been the editor of four magazines, including M Magazine, a supplement for the Abu Dhabi-based National Newspaper and FIVE, a high-end fashion glossy, also published in Abu Dhabi. Helena was also editor-in-chief of 360 Life, a quarterly glossy magazine published with the Sports 360 Newspaper in Dubai, part of the Chalhoub Group.

Helena contributes regularly to UK-based newspapers and magazines and holds a Masters in Creative Writing from the University of Cambridge. She is working on a thriller set in Sweden as well as a novel about the relationship between Virginia Woolf and Katherine Mansfield called Sense of an Echo.

In 2022 her short story The Japanese Gardener came second in the Fish Publishing Short Story Prize. One of her stories was also shortlisted for the Bridport Short Story Prize. When she’s not writing, she works as a headhunter for the media and entertainment industry for the Sucherman Group. 

Helena, who was educated at Durham University, lives in the Languedoc region of France with her husband Rupert and their three children.

Bibliography

More France Please, we’re British; Gibson Square 2004

Two Lipsticks and a Lover 2005; Gibson Square (hardback)

All You Need to be Impossibly French; (US version of above) Penguin 2006

Two Lipsticks and a Lover; Arrow Books (paperback) 2007

Ciao Bella Gibson Square; (hardback) 2006

Ciao Bella Gibson Square; (paperback) 2007

So Chic! (French version of Two Lipsticks) Leduc Editions 2008 (also translated into Chinese, Russian and Thai)

More, More France; Gibson Square 2009

To Hell in High Heels; Arrow Books 2009 (also translated into Polish)

The Viva Mayr Diet; Harper Collins 2009

Love in a Warm Climate; Gibson Square 2011

The Ex-Factor; Gibson Square 2013

Smart Women Don’t Get Wrinkles; Gibson Square 2016

The Arnolfini Marriage; Amazon Kindle December 2016

Smart Women Don’t Get Wrinkles (paperback); Gibson Square spring 2018

The Longest Night; Gibson Square spring 2019

 

 

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