This week’s cover, by the designer Frank Viva, is a colorful, lyrical springtime ode to the pleasures of biking. We spoke to Viva about his love affair with cycling, his island retreat, and learning to prioritize what matters.
The older farmhouses scattered across rural, deeply wooded areas on the Surrey and Sussex border have lost nothing of their appeal in the 21st century. Willards Farm, near Dunsfold, has recently been subject to sympathetic renovation and substantial extension. At its core, the house is a four-bay, 16th-century timber-frame house of two storeys, under a clay-tile roof, with a substantial off-centre chimney stack. It occupies an elevated site and was extended to its northern end in the 1930s and to the south in the 1980s. The latest works, completed in 2019, were imaginatively designed by architect Stuart Martin for a young family.
The brick walls enclosing the pool house create the impression of a traditional farmstead enclosure and the tiled coping echoes the treatment of a Lutyens pergola at Pasture Wood, Dorking, of about 1912. One angle of the walls is resolved with a fine dovecote and ceramic decoration of the pool by Craig Bragdy means that it resembles an ornamental pond.
Willards Farm, Surrey. ©Paul Highnam for Country Life
Monocle’s editorial director Tyler Brûlé, our Tokyo bureau chief Fiona Wilson and guests cover the weekend’s biggest discussion topics, live from Tokyo.
Mauritania, officially the Islamic Republic of Mauritania, is a sovereign state in Northwest Africa. It is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the west, Western Sahara to the north and northwest, Algeria to the northeast, Mali to the east and southeast, and Senegal to the southwest.
In human cultures in general, and perhaps particularly in Africa, the landscape is the first shrine of tradition. From the sand dunes of Mauritania to the currents of River Senegal, to the Lions of the Beninese savannah to the spirits of the forests of Gabon, this series explores the origin, the nature and the survival of deep links between several populations in West Africa and their habitat.
Each episode takes us to discover an emblematic landscape: the river (Senegal), the desert (Mauritania), the forest (Gabon) and the savannah (Benin). A compass of escape and meeting which rests on two main pillars: the spectacular character of the places, often classified with the UNESCO world heritage, and the charisma of the main characters who are transmitters of their respective traditions.
For over sixty years, Sayed Al-Mataany has been using thousand-year-old, Ancient Egyptian methods to carve hieroglyphs into vases and sculptures — but major blows to Egypt’s tourism industry have caused a steady decline in the number of tourists coming to Luxor to buy his ornaments. We went to Luxor in Egypt to see how his business is still standing. Sayed does not have a website. He sells his work locally in Luxor.
THE third book in our series, Deepest Somerset, is on its way to you. It was printed at Blackmore in Shaftesbury on the last weekend in August, and is now at the bindery, where the cover, again featuring a wood engraving by Howard Phipps, will be joined to the pages.
Tim and Fuzz are taking on their 100th car: a 1978 MGB, which is also going to be their first electric conversion. The car formerly belonged to family man, Jeff. When Jeff sadly passed away, he left his unfinished MG project to his daughter, Caroline, who promised her father she would complete the restoration of his car. Can the Car S.O.S team help Caroline fulfil her father’s last dying wish? For more incredible car renovations, amazing engineering and heartfelt stories, watch brand new episodes of Car S.O.S. Thursdays at 8pm, on National Geographic UK. 📺
Georgina Godwin sets the tone for the weekend, Simon Brooke reviews the papers and Monocle’s editor in chief Andrew Tuck is back with his weekend column.
Boomers Daily 