Hawkhurst mum's design to go on show at Gardeners' World Live
Ms Eastwood said she reached a career crossroads after giving birth to her second daughter.She said: "I couldn't face having quite a demanding London-based job with two children whilst living outside of London, and I also needed for my own mental health to do something that was outside, something creative, something with nature."The mum-of-two first signed up for a garden design mini-course at Hole Park, after which she was introduced to a work and retrain scheme by assistant head gardener Joe Archer.Mrs Eastwood handed in her notice after securing a student apprentice role at the Rolvenden grounds.
The Newborn Garden design is intended to be a "welcoming and peaceful space for anyone looking after a newborn baby".Ms Eastwood said: "I know it can often be stressful and lonely looking after a newborn baby, so I wanted to create a place where people can sit privately but also connect with others in the space if they want to."Her second design, The Millennium Garden, went on display last month.She said: "I wanted the design to compliment the Terracotta garden on the other side of the house, which is all hot reds and oranges, and create a lovely west-facing evening view."I couldn't believe it when they said that they loved my design and wanted to go ahead with it."Gardeners' World Live will take place from 12-15 June.
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The Guardian
an hour ago
- The Guardian
Again and again, we are shocked by the treatment of learning-disabled people. Yet we never learn from the past
BBC Radio 4 has just aired a short series about the writer Virginia Woolf, to celebrate the centenary of her novel Mrs Dalloway. According to the publicity blurb, the aim of Three Transformations of Virginia Woolf was to explore what she 'has to say to us today', and how she 'captured and critiqued a modern world that was transforming around her, treated mental health as a human experience rather than a medical condition, and challenged gender norms'. Because the three episodes immediately followed the Today programme, I distractedly caught two minutes of the first, before flinching, and turning it off. The reason? Only a few days before, I had read a diary entry Woolf wrote in 1915, presented alongside the acknowledgment that she was 'suffering deep trauma at the time', but still so shocking that it made me catch my breath. It was a recollection of encountering a group of learning-disabled people, who were probably residents of a famous institution called Normansfield hospital. 'We met and had to pass a long line of imbeciles,' Woolf wrote. 'The first was a very tall man, just queer enough to look at twice, but no more; the second shuffled, and looked aside; and then one realised that everyone in that long line was a miserable ineffective shuffling idiotic creature … It was perfectly horrible. They should certainly be killed.' That passage arrives a third of the way through a brilliant new book titled Beautiful Lives, straplined How We Got Learning Disabilities So Wrong. Written by the playwright and drama director Stephen Unwin, its story goes from the Greeks and Romans to the 21st century. Much of it is a history of the misunderstanding, hatred and appalling mistreatment experienced by endless millions of people. But partly because Unwin has a learning-disabled son – 28-year-old Joey, who he says has 'challenged everything I was brought up to believe in and turned it on its head' – it is also a very topical demand for all of us 'to celebrate the fact that such people exist and have so much to offer'. A sign of the ignorance Unwin spends some of the book railing against is the fact that this superbly original work, published in early June, has not been reviewed in a single mainstream publication. In the context of the attitudes he writes about, that is probably not much of a surprise – but there again, the book is so timely that its passing-over still feels shocking. After all, it follows the same unquestionable logic as all those high-profile discussions and debates about institutional racism and empire, and demands a very similar process of reckoning. On this subject, there is a mountain of questions to ask. Some are about language that still endures: 'imbeciles', 'morons', 'cretins', 'idiots'. How many of us know about the first official Asylum for Idiots – later the Royal Earlswood Institution for Mental Defectives – founded in Surrey in 1847, and infamous for what Unwin describes as 'widespread cruelty … and soaring mortality rates'? However much young people study history, do their syllabuses ever cover the Mental Deficiency Act of 1913, which formalised the idea that people categorised as 'idiots' and 'imbeciles' (and all disabled children and young people) should be institutionalised, let alone the fact that it granted local councils powers to remove such people from their families by force? Why is the US's record on institutional cruelty and cod-psychology even worse than the UK's? There is another part of the same story, centred on a slew of 20th-century politicians and cultural figures who believed that learning-disabled people – and disabled people in general – were not just pitiful and wretched, but a threat to humanity's future, an idea expressed in the absurd non-science of eugenics. They included that towering brute Winston Churchill, DH Lawrence (who had visions of herding disabled people into 'a lethal chamber as big as the Crystal Palace'), and lots of people thought of as progressives: Bertrand Russell, HG Wells, George Bernard Shaw, John Maynard Keynes, the one-time Labour party chair Harold Laski, and the trailblazing intellectuals Sidney and Beatrice Webb. Their credo of pure and strong genes may have been discredited by the defeat of the Nazis, but we should not kid ourselves that everyday manifestations of loathing and condescension that underlay those ideas do not linger on. Ours is the age of such scandals as the one that erupted in 2011 at Winterbourne View, the 'assessment and treatment unit' in Gloucestershire, where people with learning disabilities were left out in freezing weather, had mouthwash poured into their eyes and were given cold showers as a punishment. The year 2013 saw the death in an NHS unit of Connor Sparrowhawk, the autistic and learning-disabled young man whose life was dramatised by Unwin in a profoundly political play titled Laughing Boy, based on a brilliantly powerful book written by Sparrowhawk's mother, Sara Ryan. As well as its principal character's life and death, it highlighted the fact that the health trust that ran the unit in question was eventually found to have not properly investigated the 'unexpected' deaths of more than 1,000 people with learning disabilities or mental-health issues. Right now, about 2,000 learning-disabled and autistic people are locked away in completely inappropriate and often inhumane facilities, usually under the terms of mental health legislation. Only 5% of learning-disabled people are reckoned to have a job. Six out of 10 currently die before the age of 65, compared with one out of 10 for people from the general population. But this is also a time of growing learning-disabled self-advocacy, which will hopefully begin to make change unavoidable. One small example: at this year's Glastonbury, I chaired a discussion about the cuts to disability benefits threatened by the political heirs of Laski and the Webbs. The speakers onstage included Ady Roy, a learning-disabled activist who is involved in My Life My Choice, a brilliant organisation that aims at a world 'where people with a learning disability are treated without prejudice and are able to have choice and control over their own lives'. He was inspirational, but it would be good to arrive at a point where what he did was completely unremarkable. It may sound a little melodramatic, but it is also true: such people, and allies like Unwin, are at the cutting-edge of human liberation. Far too many others may not have the same grim ideas as Woolf, Lawrence, Keynes and all the rest, but their unawareness and neglect sit somewhere on the same awful continuum. That only highlights an obvious political fact that all of us ought to appreciate as a matter of instinct: that the present and future will only be different if we finally understand the past. John Harris is a Guardian columnist
Daily Mirror
6 hours ago
- Daily Mirror
Inside baby killer Constance Marten's dark spiral from aristocracy to bin scavenging
Constance Marten, who has this week been found guilty of manslaughter, has close links to the Royal Family, while her aristocratic family's former estate featured in a period drama starring Gwyneth Paltrow Constance Marten's estranged father, Napier, turned his back on his £115 million fortune after he had an 'awakening', seeking a very different life to the privileged one he was born into. His daughter, too, would take a very different road from the one expected of her, which would ultimately lead to a dock at the Old Bailey, following a harrowing chain of events. Aristocrat Marten and her boyfriend Mark Gordon, who stood accused of killing their newborn baby daughter Victoria, were this week found guilty of manslaughter. Marten, 38, and Gordon, 49, took tiny Victoria on the run in January last year to prevent her being taken away by social services, the court heard. The couple, whose four other children were taken into care, spent weeks living off-grid in the height of winter, with Victoria's body later found in a Lidl carrier bag in a disused shed. The couple were found to be repeatedly disruptive in the courtroom, with Birmingham-born Gordon even calling upon "compassionate and merciful" King Charles to issue a royal pardon. He begged: "I ask the King in his mercy and those who work for him to help me." As baffling as such a plea may sound to outsiders, privately educated heiress Marten enjoyed an upbringing not so very far removed from those who live out their days behind palace walls. Here we take a look at Marten's wealthy aristocratic background with historical ties to the royal family and why her father left his family and his huge fortune for a new life abroad. Marten was born in 1986, the eldest of four children welcomed by Napier and his wife, Virginie De Selliers, daughter of the Marchesa d'Ayala-Valva. She grew up with her brothers on the 5,000-acre Crichel estate in Dorset, where the former Tatler It-girl recalled enjoying "naked picnics, siestas amid [hay bales], and tractor scoops". The incredible Georgian property has featured in period dramas, including the 1996 adaptation of Jane Austen's Emma, starring Gwyneth Paltrow. Napier, who was a page to the late Queen Elizabeth II, was heir to a £115million fortune but left his family and his inheritance behind when he travelled to Australia in 1996 after having an 'awakening'. According to the Daily Mail, he experienced an "epiphany" over his materialistic life, shaved his head and lived in a lorry before training in head massage. Napier reportedly went whale watching and found it so emotionally charged that he cried "almost non-stop" for a week. He is also said to have had an out-of-body experience while standing with a group of Aboriginal people on a clifftop. Marten was nine when her father went to Australia. He left Crichel to her brother Maximilian, and it stayed in the family until 2013, when it was bought by American billionaire Richard Chilton. Eton-educated Napier later returned to the UK to work as a tree surgeon alongside his son Tobias. Napier was the fourth child of Mary Anna Marten and George Marten. Mary was the goddaughter of the late Queen Mother and a trustee of the British Museum. She attended the Brownies at Buckingham Palace with Princess Margaret and inherited Crichel when her father died during the Second World War. Marten's grandfather was a lieutenant commander in the Royal Navy and was an equerry to George VI. Their wedding in 1949 was attended by George VI, the Queen Mother, and Princess Margaret. Marten's mother, Virginie de Selliers, and Napier divorced after he left for Australia, and she is believed to have remarried. She is a psychotherapist specialising in trauma, family therapy and grief, with private practices in London. In February 2023, while Constance was still missing, she wrote a letter to her, appealing for her to return and offering her support. She wrote: "You have made choices in your personal adult life which have proven to be challenging, however, I respect them. I know that you want to keep your precious newborn child at all costs. "With all that you have gone through, this baby cannot be removed from you, but instead needs looking after in a kind and warm environment. "I want to help you and my grandchild. You deserve the opportunity to build a new life, establish a stable family and enjoy the same freedoms that most of us have. "Constance, I will do what I can to stand alongside you and my grandchild. You are not alone in this situation. We will support you in whatever way we can." By the time of her arrest in 2023, Marten was scavenging in bins for food, her off-grid life a far cry from the luxuries she'd once enjoyed. After completing her studies at the £30,000-a-year St Mary's Shaftesbury, Marten went on to achieve a 2:1 degree in Arabic and Middle Eastern studies at the University of Leeds, which saw her spend a year abroad in Cairo. An interview given to the society publication Tatler in 2008 sheds light on how the heiress spent her days. Then, just 18, the "babe of the month" opened up about the 'best party' she'd attended, revealing: "Viscount Cranbourne's party in Dorset – the theme was the Feast of Bacchus. There was a gambling tent and bunches of grapes hanging from the wall. It was like a debauched feast from ancient Greece." An avid traveller, Marten, or 'Toots' as she was known to posh pals, spent time in India, Nepal, Uganda and South America, and, at 19, also spent several months living at a Christian cult in Nigeria, which proved to be an unsettling ordeal. For a while, it seemed that ambitious Marten had a bright future ahead of her. After training in journalism, Marten worked as a researcher for Al Jazeera and also interned at the Daily Mail. She then moved to Essex, where she studied drama at the East 15 Acting School. As reported by The Independent, a drama friend recalled: "She was just beautiful, full of life, full of kindness . . . and she was very, very talented." However, everything changed in 2016 when Marten dropped out of the course. By this point, she was already involved in a relationship with Gordon, whom she'd met in a Tottenham incense shop in 2014. Two years later, they were married, in an unofficial ceremony held in Peru. As reported by the Mail Online, sources claim Marten's parents hold "odious creep" Gordon responsible for the grim fate that befell their daughter and grandchildren, describing their meeting as a "cliff edge" moment. Referring to Gordon as a "controlling predator", the source alleged: "Constance was the most beautiful, fun, lovely girl you could imagine. She was clearly quite a catch for him, and he clearly got his claws into her. "She has had the money and the wherewithal to settle down to family life like anyone else. Instead, she has preferred what is effectively a life on the run." However, during her trials, Marten gave a different account of her downfall, claiming her family had cut off her funds and hired private detectives to track her and Gordon. She stated: "I had to escape my family because my family are extremely oppressive and bigoted and they wouldn't allow me to have children with my husband. They'll do anything to erase that child from the family line, which is what they ended up doing." BBC News reports that, at the time police were looking for her and Gordon, Marten had more than £19,000 in her bank account, having received regular payments from the Sturt Family Trust via Hoares Bank between September 2022 to mid-January 2023, totalling £47,886. Marten and Gordon, of no fixed address, both denied manslaughter by gross negligence of their daughter Victoria between January 4 and February 27, 2023. The defendants also denied perverting the course of justice, concealing the birth of a child, child cruelty, and causing or allowing the death of a child. A first jury was discharged after being unable to reach a verdict on the charges of manslaughter by gross negligence and causing or allowing the death of a child. But they found both Marten and Gordon guilty of child cruelty, perverting the course of justice and concealing the birth of a child. The defendants then lost an appeal against these convictions. They will now be sentenced on September 15.
BBC News
6 hours ago
- BBC News
Wuthering Heights Day in Folkestone aims to spread joy
Over 1,000 people are expected to flock to Folkestone on Sunday for an annual dance tribute to Kate The Most Wuthering Heights Day Ever, events across the UK see people wear wigs and red dresses to recreate the iconic music video for the 1978 hit Wuthering Cotton, one of the organisers, previously told BBC Radio Kent it was "something that everybody really enjoys."Dances have been scheduled at midday and 16:00 BST on The Harbour Arm. 'Glastonbury meets flash mob' The Folkestone event, now in its fifth year, is part of a global phenomenon inspired by a world record attempt from Brighton-based dance troupe Shambush! in 2013.A spokesperson from the Folkestone version, which began in 2018, has described it as "Glastonbury meets flash mob meets cult classic fandom"."When it came back after Covid, people really got involved and I think it was just the experience of doing something with a huge group of people - everybody enjoying the same moment together - that was really powerful," Mr Cotton have made an instructional dance video and are encouraging participants to learn it in song from Kate Bush, who grew up in Kent, was based on the novel of the same name by Emily Brontë, first published in 1847 under her pen name Ellis Bell.
