I wasn't at Drumlanrig Castle for the conference on Charles Jencks’s Multiverse; I fear the science would have gone over my head. Multiverse sounds as if it might be a brand of washing machine, but is actually a term to denote the latest astronomical theories, according to which billions of universes, some infinitely small, are present at the same time (if time exists).
I think that’s the gist of what my friends said when I joined them in Dumfriesshire the following day. I’d come for the best part: a tour of Jencks’s new Multi-verse landscape, composed of mounds, swirls and standing stones.
This is a garden of ideas in the tradition of Stowe. If I didn’t quite follow all the ideas, that didn’t detract from the joy of walking the extraordinary land forms, created, in an act of public-spirited patronage in the best traditions of his family, by the Duke of Buccleuch. Previously, the 55-acre site had been a redundant open-cast mine.
The result is astounding, sculptural, epic. Strange instruments made out of lengths of plastic tube were being played in preparation for a ceremony the next morning, Midsummer’s Day. The musicians had found that a hollow called the Navel of the Earth was a wonderful place for their speakers.
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Country mouse celebrate high summer
No time to waste.
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If the future of Ferrari is electric vehicles, then it is our future tooIt's widely believed that Ferrari will unveil its first electric car this year. It's the signal that the internal combustion era is coming to an end.
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Gaze over Cap Ferrat in this four-bedroom French villaIgnore the wind and the rain. Imagine yourself in this hillside home with some of the best views the Mediterranean can offer.
