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Our lucky winner can win a handbag of their choice from the gorgeous new Luella Grey London collection
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The Runnymede on Thames Hotel and Spa remains open, book your Summer stay at Runnymede and enjoy the outdoor pool and boats from the 5th May
Eagle-eyed locals & spa-lovers might have noticed that The Runnymede is being refurbished. With Warner Hotels now offering breaks from later on this year, we wanted to share a sneak peek of what’s to come in the autumn…
All 205 rooms will have a stylish new look with characterful artwork that reflects the history and natural beauty of the surrounding area. Fans of The Runnymede, which overlooks the Thames, will be pleased that the signature duck association will remain! There will also be 25 newly built rooms and those overlooking the river will have the added luxury of balconies.
There will be a choice of two restaurants – Market Kitchen and Brasserie32. Market Kitchen will replace Leftbank and will feature a deli bar, fresh fish counter and a roast of the day, carved to order. At the other side of the property, Brasserie32 will be located in the former Lock Bar & Kitchen with a menu filled with British classics. The property will also feature The Coffee Nest, an informal setting for sweet treats, tea and coffee, alongside further bars and lounges.
Those who would otherwise visit London for the theatre won’t be disappointed, as the hotel will host a diverse programme of entertainment in the new Live Lounge. From comedians to tribute acts and party bands, every stay promises an impressive line-up of unique shows.
The Runnymede remains the go-to place for R&A, with treatments to help put a spring in your step, including the highly recommended Salt & Polish Scrub: a thorough body exfoliation followed by an application of nourishing body oil to leave the skin smooth and free of dry skin.
Alongside plenty of entertainment, there will be ample time for R&R at the spa with pools, a sauna, steam room, state-of-art gym, studio room for yoga and other fitness classes, a relaxation lounge, and an extended wellness programme. This is in addition to a range of soothing treatments designed to nourish your mind, body, and soul. From May to September (weather permitting), guests will also have use of the outdoor pool with sun loungers.
There will also be activities to choose from including tennis, archery, laser pistol shooting, tasting experiences and cooking demos. During the summer months, there will also be boat hire available from the property’s private jetty. So much to look forward to!
Not forgetting the Runnymede’s complimentary shuttle service to and from Windsor!
Breaks are available to book online for autumn onwards. In the mean time the hotel will continue to operate as an independent property for stays, dining and spa treatments and days, though the team do advise that the hotel might not be looking its best while construction work is going on.
Feel fresh this year with a crop of palate pleasers – Giles Luckett reviews some seasonally appropriate wines
Spring is in the air. Well, spring rain is in the air at least, and the new season calls for a fresh crop of wines. For this month’s column, I’ve looked for classics that will pair with the new season’s produce alongside a couple of head turners that you may not have encountered before. Anyway, enough preamble, let the recommendations flow…
I’ll start with a wine that’s always been synonymous with spring, Muscadet. One of the breakthrough wines of the ‘60s and ‘70s, Muscadet played a big part in turning the UK into a nation of wine lovers. At its best, it’s as fresh as a spring morning, with citrusy fruit offset by a yeasty tone and a taste of the sea that makes it the perfect partner to fish and seafood – it’s glorious with new season oysters. The Adnams Muscadet (Adnams £9.99) is as a delicious example of this classic wine, providing the complexity that many a more expensive Chablis can only dream of. Dry, crisp, and loaded with green apple, melon, and greengage fruit, the creamy-saline finish makes for a surprisingly satisfying glassful.
Next up the first of two Rieslings. Riesling is invariably an excellent wine, but many people are put off as they think it will be sweet. Riesling is capable of astonishing sweet wines such as the fabled Trockenbeerenauslese from Egon Mueller (a snip at around £10,000+ a bottle), but most New World producers focus on producing crisp, dry wines that are as food-focused as my Springer Spaniel. A great example is the VillaMaria Private Bin Riesling (Waitrose £10.99). White gold, the piercing bouquet comprises of apple blossom, citrus, and white peaches with a suggestion of honey and lime. On the palate, it’s just as complex, with green and white fruits vying with minerals and a rapier-like grapefruit acidity. This is just the thing for new- season asparagus or a herby spring chicken.
Staying with Riesling, we have something that shows this grape’s incredible range. The Empire Estate Dry Riesling Reserve (Good Wine Good People £34.50) hails from New York’s Finger Lakes region. This is an arresting iteration of Riesling that nods at France’s great Alsace Rieslings in its dryness and piercing intensity, but it is very much a Finger Lakes wine in its sophisticated, slightly idiosyncratic style. Pale green-gold with an evolved nose of candied lemons, grapefruit, apple blossom, and a green herb bitterness, it seems to change with each inhalation. In the mouth, almond-tinted grapefruit leads the fresh, tangy attack. This is followed by ripe pears, peach stones, a white peel bitterness, and a very fresh, lemony acidity that’s mellowed by honey and minerals. This is a wine to buy by the case and see how it evolves over the coming decade.
Viognier is an interesting, not to say mercurial grape. In California, it can produce buttery behemoths, while in South Africa it tends towards leaner, cleaner wines. In its home of France’s Rhône Valley, it can produce wines that combine freshness with depth, power with finesse as showcased by the Chapoutier Combe Pilate Viognier (London End Wines £15). Opening up with a surprisingly subtle nose of apricots, oranges, and bergamot against a background of citrus, it was love at first sip. Supercharged with fruit and very fresh, it quickly develops in the mouth revealing juicy apricots, peaches, and vanilla spice that contrasts beautifully with the firm mineral and lemon finish. This would be lovely with baked white fish, pan-fried poultry, or salmon.
A good Chardonnay is always a treat and is the ideal foil to spring staples such as roast pork, goats’ cheese and rocket salad, or roasted guinea fowl. I recently tasted one from Austria, the Allacher Chardonnay Reserve (Good Wine Good People £24). I’m a big fan of Austrian wines, though my experience has been largely confined to their stylish Rieslings and brilliant Gruner Veltliners. This was an unusual and delicious take on this noble variety. Deep gold, the nose brims with honey-coated tropical fruits with a soft, perfumed edge. Big and bold, the generous palate has a creamy texture and is suffused with baked apples, apricots, honeydew melon, vanilla, and spices before the fresh, zingy finish adds a refreshing balance.
Sauvignon Blanc is another great spring wine. Its freshness and easy drinking nature means it lends itself well to garden sipping or as a partner to new season treats like steamed Jersey Royals, creamed broad beans, or roasted celeriac. Sauvignon grows well all over the world except for Tasmania, apparently, where a leading winemaker told me it was a ‘weed that needs grubbing up’. I touched a nerve there, it seems. South African wineries are better disposed to it and when you taste wines like the Journey’s End ‘Eagle Owl’ (Majestic £9.99) it’s easy to see why. Rhubarb and gooseberries are the signatures of this weighty, rounded Sauvignon. The nose is bright, zesty, and suitably intense, but – as with the body – it’s not green peppers and citrus that dominate, there’s more to it than that. Over a bedrock of acidity is overlain a tart-sweet tone of stewed rhubarb with a sherbet edge and some riper flavours from the gooseberries, giving a wine that’s refreshing and seriously good fun.
I’ll finish on a patriotic note with an English wine, the Denbies Chardonnay 2022 (Denbies £24.50). When I started in wine, England’s vineyards were just about getting marginal grapes like Müller-Thurgau – which usually tastes as good as it sounds – to produce something. Roll forward thirty years and leading English wineries like Denbies are being spoken of by the likes of Oz Clarke as being capable of giving Burgundy a run for its money. On the evidence of this, I think he has a point. The nose is creamy, nutty, fruity, and harmonious with the rich red apple and peach fruit freshened by lemon and lime. On the palate, it has a lovely peachy texture that displays nectarine, red apple, and lychees with a honey and lemon coating. Thoroughly impressive it shows that English wine, not just English sparkling wine, is capable of being a world-beater.
Well, that’s it from me for now. Next time I’ll be joining in the World Malbec Day celebrations and running down (bigging up) my top ten Malbecs.
Peter Henry tells us about his rewarding role as a volunteer with Schoolreaders… Perhaps you could sign up to change lives, too?
Schoolreaders is a national children’s literacy charity which helps children to catch up on their reading by recruiting, training and placing volunteers into primary schools in their local area.
I am happily retired after a successful career however; I can truthfully say that nothing I did in my professional life seems as worthwhile and satisfying as watching the children I read with improve their literacy.
Why is this so important? One in four children leave primary school unable to read to the expected standard.
This means they cannot fully access secondary education and only one in 10 of these children will get a GCSE in English and Maths. This can severely diminish their life chances. One in seven adults in England (7.1 million) are functionally illiterate so cannot read instructions on a medicine label, sit a driving theory test or fill in a job application form. That is why helping children to improve their literacy at primary level, has never been so important.
“Nothing I did in my professional life seems as worthwhile and satisfying as watching the children I read with improve their literacy.”
I volunteer in a local infants’ school and my role is to focus on those children, especially those from more disadvantaged backgrounds, who need a little extra help learning to read. Fortunately, one thing of which you can be sure is that all children aged between five and seven are eager to learn and great fun to be with!
I, like many other Schoolreaders volunteers, could share a great many heart-warming stories. These include the boy who, for over a year, had really struggled, then one day was comprehending sentences and asking questions about the book, to the girl who not only reads the stories, but gives each character a different voice. I always return home from school with a spring in my step!
We are always in need of readers especially as more and more schools are asking for our help, which is provided absolutely free. So, if what you have read here has inspired you to think about joining us, and you can commit to an hour a week during term-time for a year, the next step is easy – please just visit School Readers to learn more.
We’re sharing a taste of Gennaro’s Verdure: Big and bold recipes to pack your plate with veg by Gennaro Contaldo (Pavilion Books).
Arancini di funghi; filled mushroom balls
(makes eight)
These filled mushrooms may seem a little fiddly to make but, believe me, they are well worth the effort! Once filled, the mushrooms are pressed together to form a ball or, as I’ve called them in Italian, arancini (little oranges). I like to serve them with a selection of salads and pickles. You can easily make these vegetarian by omitting the pork and Parmesan by substituting with extra breadcrumbs and chopped mushrooms.
Ingredients:
16 small-medium chestnut or white mushrooms (approx. 500g/1lb 2oz), wiped clean
2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
knob of butter
100g (3½oz) minced pork
Two sage leaves, finely chopped
4 tsp white wine
50g (1¾oz) ricotta
30g (1oz) grated Parmesan
plain flour, for dusting
Three eggs, lightly beaten
abundant dried breadcrumbs, enough
to coat the mushrooms
abundant vegetable oil, for frying
sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
Remove the stalks from the mushrooms and, using a small spoon, very carefully remove as much of the interior (gills) as possible without tearing the mushrooms. Finely chop the stalks and combine with the gills.
Heat the olive oil and butter in a small frying pan, add the chopped mushrooms and stir-fry for a couple of minutes over a medium heat until softened. Remove from the pan and set aside.
Replace the frying pan on the heat, add the minced pork and sage and stir-fry until the meat is well sealed. Season with salt and pepper, then add the wine, stir and allow to evaporate. Add the cooked mushrooms to the pan and cook for a minute, then take off the heat, allow to cool, then stir through the ricotta and Parmesan.
Fill the mushrooms with this mixture. Join two mushrooms together, pressing well, then coat in flour, dip in beaten egg and repeat to double-coat. Finally, coat in breadcrumbs.
Heat plenty of vegetable oil in a deep, heavy-based pan over a medium/highheat until hot, then deep-fry the mushroom balls for about four minutes until golden brown. A deep-fat fryer is ideal for this if you have one!
Using a slotted spoon, lift the mushroom balls out of the oil, drain well on kitchen paper to soak up the excess oil and then serve immediately.
Recipe 2:
Torta di carote e mandorle – carrot & almond cake
(serves eight)
Delicately light and healthy, this easy carrot cake would be perfect with a morning coffee or at teatime. I like to use the Italian raising agent known as Paneangeli, with its delicate vanilla flavour, and it should be obtainable from Italian delis and international shops. Otherwise, regular baking powder will work just fine.
Ingredients
Four eggs, separated
225g (8oz) caster sugar
130g (4¾oz) plain flour, sifted
2 tsp Paneangeli baking powder, sifted
(or regular baking powder)
150g (51/2oz) ground almonds
275g (9¾oz) carrots, grated
a little icing sugar, sifted
handful of flaked almonds
Preheat the oven to 160°C fan/180°C/ gas mark 4. Grease a 20cm (8in.) round springform cake tin and line it with baking paper.
In a large bowl, whisk the egg yolks and sugar together for about 10 minutes, until nice and creamy.
In a separate bowl, whisk the egg whites until stiff. Fold the flour, Paneangeli (or baking powder), ground almonds and grated carrots into the egg yolk mixture, then fold in the stiffened egg whites.
Pour the mixture into the lined cake tin and bake in the oven for 55–60 minutes, until risen and cooked through. If you insert a wooden skewer, it should come out clean.
Remove from the oven, then leave to cool completely before carefully removing it from the tin. Place on a plate and dust the top with icing sugar and a handful of flaked almonds, before serving.
TIP
This cake is best eaten fresh but will keep in an airtight container at room temperature for up to three days.
Taken from Gennaro’s Verdure: Big and bold recipes to pack your plate with veg by Gennaro Contaldo (Pavilion Books). Images by David Loftus.
Job Type: Full-time, Permanent Salary: From £27,000 per year Location: On-site at our Wallingford office
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Reporting to the Sales Manager, you will look after an existing advertising client base of print and digital customers, maintain current sales levels whilst building key relationships through effective account management. Once you are up to speed with your client base, you will also seek out new leads and sell multi-platform, advertising solutions to businesses across our Buckinghamshire titles, ultimately increasing the volume of client advertisers in our award-winning magazines and online.
This role would suit someone with a good background in sales and account management, preferably in advertising sales. The right person will be well organised, able to meet deadlines, confident with telephone work and able to interact well within a team environment. Having won awards for our commercial team, the successful candidate will be able to hit the ground running, with plenty of assistance and training on hand, and continue represent our ethos and values to our customer base.
We have an extremely rewarding package with a competitive salary, a good bonus structure and uncapped commission to be earned. The right candidate should be achieving £33,000 OTE within their first year.
About the company
Round & About Magazine is the region’s leading free magazine. Launched in 1994 and now distributing over 614,000 magazines each month across the south of England, we have an award-winning brand for you to sell across our print, digital and social media platforms.
Our team culture is hard working, friendly, supportive and sociable. We are based on the award winning Howbery Park, with a canteen, gym, tennis court, free parking but importantly in a beautiful green environment on the river Thames to work in.
Benefits: • Canteen • Company events • Company pension • Cycle to work scheme • Free fitness classes • Free on-site parking • Health & wellbeing programme
Author and journalist Michael Smith is talking murder this month with the popularity of whodunnits, a good mystery and quirky characters all adding to the killer plots
Those easy-paced detective novels – where you try to solve the crime before the detective – are perennial bookshop favourites. Witness the recent success of Richard Osman’s The Thursday Murder Club novels or Robert Thorogood’s similarly titled The Marlow Murder Club series.
Now the Crime Writers’ Association is getting in on the act with a new addition to its legendary Dagger awards. The Daggers have tended to go for more complex and innovative crime thrillers, with interesting settings and psychological twists rather than the more traditional Agatha Christie-style detective mysteries. But the Whodunnit Dagger will celebrate the increasingly popular “modern cosy, traditional crime, and Golden Age mysteries”. The association says the new award “will focus on the intellectual challenge at the heart of a good mystery and revolve around often quirky characters”.
The quirky character is of course one of the most important staples of the ‘whodunnit’. Dilly Knox, himself one of the quirkiest of the Bletchley Park codebreakers, and his two brothers Evoe, a journalist, and Ronnie, a successful writer of murder mysteries, devised a set of 10 strict rules to which whodunnits must adhere. They included that the killer must be mentioned in the first five chapters, and that no supernatural causes, no previously unknown poisons and no more than one secret room or passage were allowed. The rules were adopted in 1929 as the Solemn Oath of the Writer’s Detection Club, which included such luminaries as Agatha Christie and Dorothy Sayers.
The small south Oxfordshire town of Wallingford, where Round & About is put together and published, can fairly claim to be “cosy crime central”. Agatha Christie was one of the town’s most famous inhabitants. She and her husband bought a house there beside the Thames in 1934 and she was still living there when she died in 1976. There’s a bronze bench statue looking out over a park where you can sit beside her.
The town and the surrounding villages have also been repeatedly featured as locations in that long-running cosy crime series Midsomer Murders. Now Marlow, just down the river, is to be featured on television as well with Thorogood, a successful television writer and producer with Murder in Paradise, bringing The Marlow Murder Club to the small screen. Samantha Bond plays the lead character Judith Potts, a retiree living alone in a Thames-side mansion who drags two of her friends into investigating murder.
Love horses and racing? The Posh Pundit Racing Club is offering readers the chance to own a part share in Kingston Lisle-trained Thank You Ma’am
March brings one of the highlights of the racing calendar; Cheltenham Festival serving up the year’s biggest jump race meeting.
Excitement will be building among those lucky enough to go and even more so among those with horses preparing to take part.
If the sight of the majestic equines in full flight gives you a flutter then how about becoming a part owner?
Thank You Ma’am, named in tribute to the late Queen who was an enormous supporter of horse racing, is trained in Kingston Lisle by Georgina Nicholls, former wife of champion trainer Paul Nicholls.
Georgina started her yard following her divorce and now has 30 horses in training. When racing, ‘Leroy’ as he is affectionately known in the yard, is ridden by Olive, Georgina’s 18-year-old daughter who was recently crowned top amateur jockey at the McCoy awards.
Thank You Ma’am has already performed well and has the hallmarks of a potential champion, indeed when he was sourced by Georgina, Sir A P McCoy rode him, giving him a firm thumbs up.
With backing from racing royalty and his poignant name, Thank You Ma’am is one worth investing in with The Posh Pundit Racing Club who are selling memberships for a yearly one-off fee of £60.
Membership offers a certificate and photograph, a stable visit to meet Thank You Ma’am, see where he is trained and watch him work on the gallops. You’ll also enjoy entry into a ballot for exclusive Owners and Trainer tickets when he runs which grants free entry to the races, lunch, access to the parade ring before the race and the winners’ enclosure afterwards. Become an owner and you’ll enjoy access to an online forum of fellow owners to chat all things horse related, as well of course, as a share of any prize money.
In his last two outings, Thank You Ma’am finished third at Kempton against his odds of 125/1 and an impressive second at Fontwell on Boxing Day, so the future is looking bright.
The Racing Club is managed by Rupert Adams, a well-known figure in the racing and betting industries, who says: “We hope we are giving our members a genuine ownership experience without the costs or risks.”
Round & About readers who take up the offer of ownership can do so for a discounted cost of just £50. just quote the code ‘Olive’.
Artist Helen Grimbleby shares her love of the natural world through her work in a monthly series of observations
March many weathers is here. Although, the first month of meteorological spring, March is such an unresolved month, sometimes clinging on to freezing conditions and snow, unsure whether or when to allow the slow warm fingers of spring to get a hold.
It is nevertheless a joyful month with spring flowers ignoring the meteorological hesitancy, harnessing the sunshine to bring us verges of yellow primroses, cowslips, celandines, dandelions and narcissi/daffodils.
Where there are flowers, there are usually butterflies. In March we begin to see them emerge and arrive. Red admiral butterflies typically migrated from North Africa and were seen from spring onwards. In 2023, there was a 400% increase in their UK population. Experts suggest this may be due to the species now overwintering here rather than migrating due to warmer temperatures resulting from climate change.
Many of our early spring flowers are yellow as early pollinators, mainly insects, are attracted to the colour which appears as ultra-violet blue to them.
And it is attraction which brings us to the final association with March, and idiomatic mad hares. I have seen hares in West Berkshire but not engaged in the boxing behaviour which inspired the phrase. This is a tale of unrequited ardour with male buck hares pursuing female doe hares in the hope of mating and then, it seems, taking it too far. The unimpressed doe will demonstrate her lack of interest in dramatic fashion by turning on the buck and thumping him, initiating the boxing when fur may fly!
Helen Grimbleby is a West Berks/North Hants based artist who is inspired by the natural world’s changing seasons. After exploring outside, she enjoys writing and illustrating her Nature Sketchbook and painting larger landscapes at her home studio (@burbleartstudios).
Marc Burrows is bringing his celebration of Terry Pratchett to Norden Farm
Author, comedian and Terry Pratchett fan, Marc Burrows invites audiences to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the landmark comic fantasy Discworld series with his beautiful tribute.
In 2020, Marc penned the first ever biography of Sir Terry. The book received critical acclaim, won a Locus Award and was embraced by fans. This new, live multimedia show, based on the book, was then created with the full endorsement and support of Narrativia, the company founded to protect and promote the late author’s work in association with his estate.
The Magic of Terry Pratchett is a comic lecture in which Burrows explores Pratchett’s influences, his rise to fame, impact, and unique life, becoming one of the most beloved storytellers of all time. From the national treasure’s days as a school librarian, his time as a trainee journalist to his untimely death in 2015 and in keeping with Pratchett’s own style, the show is a gently comic celebration and exploration of his work. It will also seriously examine his death, and the activism he was involved with toward the end of his life surrounding dementia treatment and the right-to-die; an important part of his story and legacy.
In addition to using the framework of the The Magic of Terry Pratchett book, the show incorporates additional elements of Rob Wilkins’ official biography, Terry Pratchett: A Life in Footnotes, (A Sunday Times Bestseller) as well as licensed media.
Sir Terry Pratchett OBE is one of the world’s most widely read authors. Conventions dedicated to his work are held globally every year. His works have been translated into 40 different languages, sold 100 million copies and have been performed on stage on seven continents. John Lloyd was right when he said “of all of the dead authors in the world, Terry Pratchett is the most alive”. Pratchett’s short story The Abominable Snow Baby was adapted by Channel 4 as a Christmas Day animation in 2021. Sky released a feature film adaptation of his Carnegie Award winning book The Amazing Maurice in cinemas in 2022, and Good Omens, a TV series based on the book Pratchett wrote with Neil Gaiman, will have a second Amazon Prime season in the autumn.
Marc Burrows often writes on culture and social issues for The Guardian, New Statesman, Big Issue and Independent and his Edinburgh Fringe shows include The Ten Best Songs of All Time and Mind Your Head. Marc’s second book, The London Boys: David Bowie, Marc Bolan and the 60s Teenage Dream was published to considerable acclaim in 2022 and is in the early stages of adaptation into a feature-length documentary. Outside of writing and comedy, Marc plays in the cult punk band The Men That Will Not Be Blamed For Nothing, regularly performing at the Download, Glastonbury, Bestival and Latitude festivals and touring the UK and US.
The Magic of Terry Pratchett is at Norden Farm on 28th March. Tickets are available here.
