Say a prayer for this gently beautiful land Just occasionally, however, one can recapture a sense of a more restful and benign England - an England embodied in that green rolling pastoral, gently husbanded and lightly wooded, that we all get misty-eyed about. Exploited and commercialised by everyone from the National Trust to the supermarkets though it may be, it nevertheless still exists as a reality, offering a model of a harmonious relationship between nature and human community. The other reason to visit is the ordinary yet mysterious landscape embedding the church, set apart from the road. At first glance, it may not seem like anything much: relaxed and rough round the edges, spared intensive farming or the chainsaw, it is marked by a few straggling telegraph poles and a handsome but far from stately gentleman's mansion which sits comfortably at a distance. The trees include oak, beech, birch, willow and the poor doomed ash; the lie of the terrain is almost flat. I don't think any of this is specially conserved or even greatly noticed. But I was lucky enough to be there in all the glory of the autumn fall, illuminated by a sudden burst of sunshine. Someone was fishing in the water meadows, through which two swans regally drifted. Sheep grazed in the fields and skeins of birds wheeled in the sky. If this isn't beauty - if this isn't the soul of England - I don't know what is. Wall-to-wall Venetian opera in your home The sumptuously pretty opera house of La Fenice is one of the great sights of Venice, a delicious five-tiered rococo confection of pink, blue, red and gold: being there on a frosty winter's night 20 odd years ago for Luciano Pavarotti's production of Donizetti's La Favorita stands as one of the most romantic experiences in my operatic annals. Now my favourite blog, Intermezzo, informs me that I can bring that experience home. The American interior design company Trove has created a fabulous wallpaper which uses a Fifties photograph showing the boxes of La Fenice's sublime auditorium filled with a glamorous dolce vita crowd. A 6ftx9ft roll costs a trifling $398, and is available online via the home décor wing of Anthropologie.com. Now I know what I want for Christmas.