Straight talking from a business-minded climate activist, plus two of the few professional models to appear in a Country Life photoshoot.
Pardon his French… but he’s got a point
‘If we don’t decarbonise heat, we’re buggered,’ Christophe Williams of Naked Energy Ltd told The Times yesterday. He was speaking in response to the news that The British Library has installed the UK’s largest solar hot water system, which is exciting for two key reasons.
Reason number one: It’s always good to see new, sustainable energy technologies, especially with regard to heat, which apparently accounts for half of all energy usage worldwide.
Reason number two is that if you can install a great big solar heating machine on the roof of the nation’s most famous library, then you can probably install them anywhere.
The British Library, London.
Much has been said of the new government’s plans to build lots of solar panels, but the technology used on the British Library will use the sun’s power to provide hot water, providing 200 MW of the library’s annual 5,000 MW needs.
‘Compared to a solar photovoltaic panel, solar thermal produces four times the amount of energy and carbon savings,’ added Mr Williams, whose firm installed the system.
‘Solar thermal is like the Cinderella of solar. It’s beautiful, it’s efficient, it’s clean, but it’s being overlooked.’
Quiz of the Day
1) In which part of your body would you find the cruciate ligament?
2) According to Walkers, which is its most popular crisp flavour?
3) What is the name of the antagonist in Shakespeare’s Othello?
4) How many permanent teeth does an adult dog have?
5) In which decade was pop singer Madonna born?
Answers below
Stop those people ruining the view
These days, Country Life doesn’t shy away from featuring people in pictures — quite the opposite, in fact.
It wasn’t that way, though: for many years, the only person to appear in the magazine was on the famed Frontispiece page.
Yet this image of Broughton Castle in Oxfordshire, published on December 17, 1918, must pre-date that policy, since a man and woman — undoubtedly professional models — repeatedly appeared in the exterior shots.
©Country Life
Clearly, The Editor of the day wasn’t impressed, and the magazine returned to photograph the castle again, just three years later — and this time, without the models getting in the way of the architecture.
An ASBO for His Grace?
Police were called to St Peter Mancroft Church in Norwich after reports of ‘suspicious youths’ on the roof. The rascals in question turned out to be the Bishop of Norwich and a few others examining new solar panels. We’d suggest that the local neighbourhood watch might want to pop down to the optician — but then again, it doesn’t seem likely that His Grace Graham Usher was wearing his mitre and finery while clambering across one of the great medieval churches still standing in Britain.
The future of Country Houses
Our interiors guru Giles Kime is chairing an event at Thyme on November 6, at which he’ll be talking to Andrew Inchley, a director of Yiangou architects, the interior designer Emma Sims-Hilditch, Tim Moulding, whose eponymous building firm was founded in 1798, and Edward
Smith, a founding director of the bespoke British stone specialist Artorius Faber. The topic? Country houses for a new generation. Nab a spot at www.thyme.co.uk/thyme-events
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That’s it for the day — we’re back tomorrow
Quiz of the Day answers
1) Knee
2) Cheese and onion
3) Iago
4) 42
5) 1950s (She was born 1958)
