 million visits a year to our countryside (insofar as you can measure its use). We own 250,000 hectares of land in the countryside, particularly in upland areas like the Lake District, Wales and Derbyshire. We own 700 miles of coastline, in order to give people access to walking along the coast. In Britain it is regarded as a human right to walk along the coast, so in the 1980s we launched a public appeal called Operation Neptune to raise funds to buy coastline. It is probably our most successful ever public appeal, because the British people love the sea.
How many subscribers do you have?
We have 4 million.
Their numbers are growing?
They grow by about 100,000 every year.
Probably the majority join because if they are members it is a very good deal, at £70 a year on average, to get into the houses for free and the gardens and park in our car parks. And about 30% are members because they really care about our cause. The importance of the cause to preserve beautiful places is felt more strongly by people as they go through life.
And after the War?
We continued to acquire country houses and started to acquire coastline as a result of Operation Neptune, but we also started to think more about how we could make what we do seem more relevant to ordinary people’s lives. So, some of the historic buildings we bought in recent years are not great country houses collapsing, but are more ordinary buildings, examples of houses that poor people would have lived in. We own in Birmingham three back-to-back houses of poor quality, small Victorian 19th century terraced houses, as an example of how poor people lived and we have recreated how they would have been. And then, in terms of historic connections, for example we bought the childhood homes in Liverpool of John Lennon and Paul McCartney, which are among our most popular properties. People love them and they are much visited and highly enjoyed.
And since you became the Director General, what are your major concerns?
Two things, the first is that I think about our founders and our core purpose, and I ask myself what examination mark would be given for what we have done over the last 120 years. And I think they would give us 8 out of 10 on historic buildings, though I worry that it may be true of the people of this country that people are increasingly disconnected from history, and that we should use our houses and present our houses in a way that makes people understand better how history has shaped the world today.
A good example of that is that we own the house of Benjamin Disraeli, a Victorian Prime Minister who was very much engaged with what was then called the Eastern Question, how you sort out relationships between Russia and Turkey. At his house I think we should do more to explain how the treaties and arrangements that 19th Century European statesmen made in the Middle East have an impact on what we see on the news now and shaped the events of today. We also have Churchill’s country house, Chartwell, and there we should show how Churchill helped to create the post-war settlement and the Europe we know today.
If we give ourselves 8 out of 10 on history, I think we should mark ourselves much lower on the state of nature in this country and biodiversity. Perhaps 3 out of 10.
In our countryside all sorts of species of birds and butterflies are disappearing, suffering catastrophic loss. 40 or 50% of their numbers are going, and some species that we would have thought common ten or twenty years ago have now more or less disappeared, species like the cuckoo. Species that people love are disappearing, like cuckoos and hedgehogs.
What about trees?
Many of our trees have been attacked by parasites and fungus. Some of that has to do with the globalisation of trade, but we need to find a solution. We are very worried about disease in our Ash trees, almost certainly imported by spores carried on the wind.
As an organisation we can do our bit to restore landscape and habitat for birds and butterflies and hedgehogs. And we can also, as we own a large amount of woodland, help find solutions