An inspirational woman
Above: Prue Leith, picture by Mike Charity
Prue Leith’s beautiful five-acre Cotswold garden is a joy on many different levels. It provides her with a view from every window, with vegetables and fruit, and it has even proved an inspiration for her latest novel, The Gardener, the story of the restoration of a run-down country estate.
In many ways, the garden is a testament to her varied and fascinating life. There’s a bright, colourful part – full of reds – that reflects her South African background. There’s a lake she created with her late husband, the historian and businessman Rayne Kruger; and it’s packed full of memories of happy times with their children, Daniel, and Li-Da whom the couple adopted as a baby from Cambodia.
Gardening is another talent to add to her already impressive list: for she’s well-known as a food writer, restaurateur, caterer, cookery-school founder and businesswoman. She divides her time between London and the Cotswolds, where she lives with her new partner, the musician Sir Ernest Hall.
Where do you live and why?
In a village near Moreton-in-Marsh, in the sort of old house that every family has added to over the years. There are runnels in the floor of the cellars – which I believe are 16th century – as if animals were once kept there, so it must have been a sort of farmhouse once. The main part of the house is Georgian; we know the wing with the guest rooms is Victorian; and the sitting room dates back to the 1930s. With Cotswold stone, higgledy-piggledy additions never seem to matter.
How long have you lived in the Cotswolds?
Since 1976. We were living in London with two toddlers, and I noticed that every time they were in a supermarket, they’d be miserable, but when we took them into Hyde Park, they’d start running round and be happy as Larry. So I thought: let’s move to the country and it will be like Hyde Park all the time. We looked at lots of wonderful houses. What my husband wanted was not to be able to see another dwelling: he was really very reclusive – terrified of neighbours jumping over the fence and asking to borrow a cup of sugar! I wanted a fairly flat garden so the children could play.
The main reason we chose the Cotswolds was because my husband’s best friend was Sir Peter Parker who used to run the railways. He lived in Minster Lovell and we wanted to be within half an hour of him so they could play tennis every Sunday morning. It was absolutely my husband’s character: he didn’t like seeing anyone except his oldest friends and our family.
What’s your idea of a perfect weekend in the Cotswolds?
It’s a mixture. Last weekend was perfect. We had friends come down for the Friday night, and I had enough time to pick blackberries and late autumn raspberries and dig up beetroot for supper. So I did a bit of cooking, a bit of picking, a bit of gardening, and then a lot of wandering around the garden, down to the lake. Because it was lovely weather we got the boat out and had a drink in the evening, with the sun going down. We created the lake ourselves because my husband wanted water.
If money were no object, where would you live in the Cotswolds?
I’m afraid I wouldn’t move and I don’t intend to move. Since my husband died, I’ve wondered about it, but we’ve been so happy here: the children come down all the time and I now have a new partner. I was on Fi Glover’s Saturday show, recently, (Saturday Live, Radio 4) and I was explaining how I don’t know what to call him. I’m not going to say partner because that’s too business-like, and I’m too old to have a boyfriend. Fi got hundreds of listeners ringing in with suggestions: the best was my ‘sous chef’!
Where are you least likely to live in the Cotswolds?
Bourton-on-the-Water. It’s a beautiful village and I sometimes take visitors there, but it’s a nightmare to me: you can’t park and it’s overrun with tourists.
Where’s the best pub in the area?
The Fox Inn at Lower Oddington, which is also the best restaurant because I like good, simple food. Above all else, it’s important to eat fresh food. I’m not an organic campaigner, though I do like the idea of putting fewer chemicals in the soil. For me, the great argument for organic food is that the farmer is likely to care more about how he treats his animals.
What would you do for a special occasion?
Because my new partner is a musician, he ‘imported’ a young Russian pianist – Veronika Shoot – to whom he is a mentor, and we had a concert here in the sitting room. We invited 100 people, expecting 60 to come, but they more or less all did! When Veronkia was six, Yehudi Menuhin called her a genius in the making, but it’s so difficult for young pianists – however talented – to get off the ground.
So then I thought: If he’s promoting young pianists, I’m going to promote young caterers! I had met a young woman doing market research in Notting Hill because she and her husband wanted to set up a catering business. It’s very rare I answer questionnaires as I’m always in such a hurry, but I stopped to give her some advice and invited them both to cook dinner for me in Gloucestershire. It was all absolutely delicious. The first course was a thick beetroot soup with crème fraiche and cumin; the only thing they got wrong was that the pudding looked exactly the same: a raspberry and rhubarb compote with a dollop of lemony ice cream! The main course was salmon. They want to leave their current jobs and set up together, which is exactly as I started.
What’s the best thing about the Cotswolds?
The wolds: The constant ups and downs mean the view changes all the time.
... and the worst?
Caravans on the road in summer.
Which shop could you not live without?
Daylesford Organic: their own organic cheddar is absolutely sensational. I go in there saying I’m just going to buy cheese and sourdough bread and then, of course, I see the Italian prosciutto, and so it goes on... Everybody says it’s so expensive but, if you buy their own products – lamb and veg and yogurt – it’s not that bad.
What’s the most under-rated thing about the Cotswolds?
When we started looking for a house, I wanted to live in Somerset or Wiltshire because I had this Cotswold image of cream teas and dinky little houses with roses round the door – pretty but dull. When I got here, I found it was quite different. People think it’s awfully twee but some of it is actually quite rugged.
What would be a three course Cotswold meal?
Last weekend, when we had these Italian friends come and stay, we had beetroot and salad out of the garden; French-type soft cheese from Simon Weaver (at Upper Slaughter); lamb from Yvonne Brown who farms locally; followed by summer pudding with all the fruit from the garden. Good fresh ingredients, turned into an uncomplicated meal.
What’s your favourite view in the Cotswolds?
The view from my husband’s study window: I’ve seen more beautiful views but I love this one. In the morning, when it’s misty over the lake, you can just see the little Chinese pagoda sticking out, and it’s dreamy. It’s also sentimental for me: the fact that my husband and I created it together. I did all the planting, and he did the design.
What’s your quintessential Cotswolds village and why?
Kingham, because it’s a proper, working village – it doesn’t have a surfeit of posh people who put carriage lamps outside their front doors. It has a school and, best of all, a 364-day-opening shop, which is indispensable. When I’m supposed to make a cake for the local something-or-other sale, I very often just go and buy a coffee and walnut one from there! They’re so good and I don’t make good cakes.
Name three basic elements of the Cotswolds
Hills, dales and stone cottages: A sense of place. It’s also the fact that everything slows down. If you’re in a shop in London, the girl in the checkout is going as fast as she can. But when you go into Checker’s, the butcher in Moreton-in-Marsh, and the woman in front of you is having a good chat about her daughter’s A-level results, you think: This is real life. There should be time to talk.
If you lived abroad, what would you take to remind you of the Cotswolds?
Jilly Cooper and I were once discussing colour within gardens. I said my South African origins allowed me to have a vulgar red garden, full of cannas and fuchsias; but she said the point about Cotswold gardens is soft colours. So I suppose it would be a photograph or a watercolour of that herbaceous border feeling: slightly chaotic; everything growing into each other; drifts of this; drifts of that; but all in soft pink, mauve and white.
What would you change about the Cotswolds or banish from the area?
Ridiculous and unnecessary street signs.
What’s the first piece of advice you’d give to somebody new to the Cotswolds?
Get to know the farmers who are your neighbours. It can be difficult to bridge the gap when you move into a village, but it’s important to try. When I first came to the Cotswolds, the local farmer delivered two buckets of food for me. One was full of sheeps’ balls and the other was their tails. I had no idea this was a windup; in fact, I was absolutely thrilled, though I didn’t know what to do with them. I thought the testicles looked most like sweetbreads so I looked up glands, and treated them as such: they were unbelievably delicious. As for the tails, I boiled them to get the woolly bits off – it smelt like socks because of the lanolin – then marinated and griddled them. They were the most wonderful crunchy little things, rather like pork scratchings, which the children adored. I was looking forward to a bucket of these every year, but I never got another.
And which book should they read?
I’d love them to read mine! I never realised just how much I was using my own garden as an inspiration for The Gardener. Of course, mine is a five-acre garden, while the one in the novel is 500 acres, so it’s all blown up. But I came to realise I was writing from experience. At one point my heroine manages to spray all the roses with herbicide instead of insecticide – which is very unprofessional, but there are reasons for it. As this fictional garden houses the national collection of old roses, it’s serious ghastly. That came from me once spraying one lupin with the wrong stuff! I try to stay off the chemicals but these damn greenfly were winning.
If you were invisible for a day, where would you go and what would you do?
I’d go and see Botox being done. I need a Botox moment for my next novel, but I don’t want it done myself. I’m amazed at how people will help if you write to tell them you’re researching a novel. I had a wonderful time going round Highgrove for The Gardener. I wish I could say my compost bins are like Prince Charles’s. His get turned every week or every month; mine get turned once a year, if they’re lucky. The result is that I do not have compost like his.
With whom would you most like to have a cider?
I’ve actually had not a cider but a glass of wine with Laurie Lee. He used to hold court at the Woolpack in Slad. He wasn’t insisting on being the centre of attention, but he held the conversation in the sense that many famous people do – simply because you want them to talk. n
The Gardener by Prue Leith is published by Transita, priced £7.99. For more information visit www.transita.co.uk. You can find out more about Prue and her work by visiting www.prue-leith.co.uk