Mary Berry

by A. S. Dagnell

  CHAPTER 4

  FAMILY MATTERS

  As Mary’s journalism career started to take off, so too did her love life. In 1964, two years before she joined Housewife full-time, she met Paul Hunning. Although she may not have realised it at the time, their relationship would go on to be one of the most – if not the most – significant in her life. She was introduced to Paul – a dealer in antiquarian books and paintings – through one of her brothers, and they started dating. In 1966, the same year she started at Housewife magazine, they married, when Mary was 30 years old.

  Mary remembers the first years of their relationship with affection. In fact, she goes as far as to say that during the course of 45 years of marriage their love has grown even deeper. She never took his name professionally, but this is no reflection on the depth of her devotion.

  ‘I met my husband Paul in 1964,’ she recalled in an interview with Desert Island Discs in 2012. ‘He was a friend of my brother’s. We got married in 1966 and have just celebrated our 45th anniversary. I love him even more now than I did when I married him.’

  While Mary’s focus on her career earned her the admiration of her colleagues, her work life by no means came before her marriage. In many respects, Mary and Paul had a very traditional marriage – with both of them taking on quite stereotypical roles at home. Not surprisingly, it’s Mary who runs the kitchen, as Paul struggles with even the minutest of domestic tasks.

  ‘I know I spoil him rotten,’ Mary said. ‘My sister-in-law once visited while I was away working; she asked for a cup of tea and Paul didn’t know where the tea was or how to make it. It’s my fault because I’ve never encouraged him. Paul and I never shout at each other. To argue with my husband upsets me so much that it’s not worth it.’

  Soon after they married, Mary and Paul moved out of London for a slightly quieter life in Buckinghamshire. This meant that Mary could continue to commute easily to London for work, but the location felt more appropriate to them to start a family, which they would soon do. After spending some time searching for properties, eventually they settled on a house called Watercroft in the village of Penn. They still live there today, and it was there that Mary would bring up her family, write some of her best-selling books, mastermind her businesses, entertain hundreds of people at dinner parties and run the first of her now-famous Aga cookery classes.

  An online history website gives a run-down of Watercroft’s past owners. The house itself is steeped in a rich history. Watercroft was a farm that had been previously owned by the Grove dynasty, a large landed-gentry family whose association with Penn dates back to the 1300s. According to an online family tree, Watercroft was a farm when occupied by Thomas Blades Grove, the elder brother of Sir George Grove, both grandsons of Yeoman Grove, at the end of the nineteenth century. Twenty-eight years earlier John Grove, Yeoman Grove’s fifth son, the fishmonger of the village’s New Bond Street, had died there, in 1868. Believed to be a Queen Anne house, it has not been greatly altered and still has the original front door and interior panelling. The upper storey has wrought-iron balconies to the windows. It has a large, beautiful garden surrounded by a high wall, which Mary and Paul would put to good use. The dovecote – a structure for housing doves and pigeons – had originally been a brewery, many years previously. Articles on the Internet suggest that the ownership of the house passed from Thomas Blades Grove, who died there on 9 November 1897, to Sir George Grove, the music writer who became acclaimed as the founding editor of Grove’s Dictionary of Music and Musicians. It continued to be passed down through the generations, coming eventually to Edmund and Sheila Grove. During the Second World War, Edmund served in the army, and was killed in action in 1940. A Mr Kann wanted to buy Watercroft from Sheila, but she was so emotionally invested in the property she would only lease it to him to begin with, as she struggled to come to terms with the death of her husband. However, Mr Kann and his wife Joycie succeeded in buying it from her in 1953. Mary and Paul bought the property from the Kanns and have lived there ever since. Mary would even come to name some of her recipes after the property, including Watercroft Flaky Cheese Biscuits and Watercroft Whipped Potatoes.

  Both Mary and Paul became keen gardeners once they moved to Watercroft. Aside from her time in the kitchen, Mary would spend hours tending to their garden at Watercroft, which is made up of three sprawling acres, with beautiful views over the Chilterns. It became the focal point of the property, and Mary and Paul even open it to the public under the National Gardens Scheme, so anyone can enjoy it by paying a small entry fee of £3.50. According to local leaflets, some of the highlights include the garden’s rose walk, which includes lots of seating areas, summer pots and the herb and vegetable garden. There’s also a natural pond complete with wildlife, and a wildflower meadow as well. During the summer months, the Berrys lay on afternoon teas and occasionally a prize raffle as well, and one year called in an unusual favour from the local branch of the supermarket Waitrose: ‘Once we opened our garden for the National Gardens Scheme and I made masses of scones. There was no way I could put them all in the freezer, so I nipped down there and asked, “Do you mind keeping a couple of big bags for me and I’ll pick them up on Sunday morning?” and they said it was no problem. It’s lovely.’

  In an interview with the Daily Telegraph, Mary spoke about how the kitchen and garden provide her with hours of relaxation – and plenty of work: ‘This old trug always sits in the kitchen so I can nip out to the garden and pick flowers or herbs whenever I choose. We have two gardeners, Kevin and Simon, but I choose all the plants and muck in whenever I’m at home. We’ve just introduced an arch of pears, but the roses are the real feature. My favourite, Chandos Beauty, won first prize in our village show this year.’

  Mary has often spoken enthusiastically about her love of gardening, which appears to be second only to her love of cooking. ‘I absolutely must have big bunches of fresh, seasonal flowers dotted around the house,’ she told the Daily Express. ‘Paul and I are both passionate gardeners and we always make sure we have something growing all year round, even in the depths of winter. This morning I’ve been into my garden and picked a lovely bunch of jasmine and winter honeysuckle. I always keep a huge selection of paper and ribbons in the kitchen to make up bouquets of flowers from my garden for friends and family.’

  In other interviews Mary has gone into more depth about what she loves to grow in the gardens at Watercroft. ‘I grow parsley in rows, mixing the seeds of the moss-curled and flat-leaf varieties together,’ she told the Daily Telegraph. ‘I pour boiling water on the drill pre-sowing and have no germination problems. I have tried many plants, including bougainvilleas, but the pelargoniums are perfect. All they need is deadheading, feeding and watering and they always look amazing. Rocket is a magnet for flea beetle, but sow after August and you will avoid having leaves peppered with their minuscule holes.’ She told the Financial Times: ‘In the garden we grow what we enjoy most. As it’s winter, we have a few leeks, and that’s about it. In spring we’ll have salads, spring onions, carrots, a few strawberries; we don’t grow any brassicas because the pigeons would get them. We’re fairly fortunate with rabbits.’

  Above all else, Watercroft became a retreat for her and Paul from their busy lives. As Mary’s work schedule has become more and more hectic, she clearly finds returning to Watercroft a relaxing experience after a long day. Normally, if she’s filming, despite her age Mary is up at 5am and then not home before 7pm. But if she’s not working, like any other married couple, Mary and Paul have a set routine that they rarely waver from.

  ‘Paul gets up first and I have a little lie-in while he shaves,’ said Mary to the Daily Telegraph. ‘Then, while he takes our labrador, Millie, for a walk, I empty the dishwasher, put the dog food out and plan our evening meal. Breakfast is always toast and Marmite. If I’m not filming, I spend the morning testing recipes for my latest cookbook with my assistant, Lucy. In the afternoon I may go out with Paul to buy plants, and then it’s time to prepar
e supper. Paul’s favourite is fish pie with smoked haddock, served with cooked cubes of potato and white sauce flavoured with mustard and lemon, topped with cheese. We usually have vegetables from the garden, though after this year’s bumper crop I never want to see another runner bean as long as I live!’

  Such is Mary’s interest in gardening that she admitted to the BBC how, should Paul not be available to join her at a dream dinner, her alternative dining partner would be a gardener: ‘My husband, of course, but otherwise Monty Don. I’m a great gardener, and now he’s returned to Gardeners’ World, I watch it avidly. He’s so relaxed; and he always reminds me of all the jobs I ought to be doing over the weekend.’

  As well as cooking and gardening, Mary and Paul try very hard to keep as active as possible, despite both of them being well into their seventies. In particular Mary enjoys playing tennis, even today, as well as regularly going for long walks. ‘I hate gyms,’ said Mary in an interview with the Scotsman. ‘The whole thought of being cooped up, pedalling a bike or on a running machine, appals me. For me, a once-weekly morning of not-serious tennis is what I love, as well as plenty of gardening and walks with the dogs.’ Millie and Coco are important members of the Berry household, and are taken on long walks by Mary and Paul in the Buckinghamshire countryside surrounding Watercroft.

  With her usual modesty, Mary insists she’s not the world’s best tennis player, even though she always makes time to play with her friends … once they have exchanged gossip and caught up.

  ‘I’ve been playing tennis with the same three friends for 20 years and it means a lot to me,’ she said to the Daily Telegraph. ‘They arrive at 10 o’clock every Monday morning, but an hour later Paul will walk into the kitchen and say, “Have you had a good game?” and we’ll still be drinking coffee. My standard isn’t high, but at my age you have to keep fit. I’d hate people to see me huge and say, “Oh, that’s because she eats so much cake.”’

  Indeed, despite being such a champion of cake baking, Mary hates the thought of leading an unhealthy lifestyle. As well as staying active, she always makes sure that she and Paul eat a balanced diet.

  ‘I think moderation is the key,’ she has said. ‘So I eat healthily, a little of everything: meat, fish, butter, cream and lots of fruit and vegetables. No in-between-meal snacks, but I always say “yes” to strawberries with cream, a piece of cake on Sundays and a large glass of wine every day!’

  And despite having been together for so long, the couple rarely argue. You might imagine that, like most other couples, Mary and Paul would have the odd tiff. But Mary says that one of the last pieces of worldly wisdom her father Alleyne imparted to her before his death was to avoid fighting at all costs. ‘Never let a day end with a quarrel,’ Mary once said in an interview. ‘This was the advice given to Paul, my husband, on our wedding day by my father. We gave the same advice to our son and daughter before they got married, because it has stood us in such good stead. After all, arguments often start at the end of the day when you’re doing chores and you’re tired, so why lose sleep over something that you realise doesn’t even matter in the morning?’

  While appearances on TV and radio would go on to form a large part of Mary’s career, she admits she’s also partial to watching or listening with a cup of tea and slice of cake on the sofa when she has a spare moment. ‘Over the years there have been a few choice radio and television programmes that have enriched my life, or at least made a quiet night in more enjoyable,’ she said in an interview. ‘In the week, the moment I’m in the car it is Radio 4. The Today programme, Woman’s Hour or a good play all help the drive go by. Oh how I miss The Forsyte Saga and more recently Monarch of the Glen, but with any luck it’s Heartbeat – which always has a happy ending!’

  After settling at Watercroft, it wasn’t long before Mary and Paul decided they wanted to start a family. And they didn’t delay – having three children in the space of four years. At the age of 30, Mary was already considered relatively old to be having her first child and so it made sense that she wasted no time in having more children. First came Thomas, followed by a daughter, Annabel, and finally William. Her stable family life surrounded by her husband and three children brought Mary a sense of happiness. Asked in an interview with the women’s magazine The Lady what the most fulfilling moment of her life was, Mary said: ‘When Paul, my husband, and I had our third child. We had two boys and a girl and I just thought “Gosh, we’re a family now.”’ Finally, life felt complete for Mary.

  But as important as her home life was to Mary, she never forgot how hard she had worked to build up her career. It had been a hard slog for her to make her mark on the cookery world and, as a result, she rarely took time off work – even after she had given birth. In fact, after having each baby she only ever took five weeks off work from the magazine. Such a thing in this day and age is practically unheard of. Nowadays in the UK, female employees are entitled to 52 weeks of maternity leave, 39 weeks of which is paid, planned to rise to 52 weeks paid, with the first six weeks paid at 90 per cent of full pay. The remainder is at a fixed rate, which was £135.45 a week as of 2012. Most employers offer a more generous policy and annual leave continues to accrue throughout the maternity leave period.

  But it wasn’t always as good. At the time Mary had her children, the concept of maternity leave simply did not exist, as she has often recalled in interviews. The issue of women taking time off after giving birth was first put on the political agenda in 1911, following the National Insurance Act which was proposed by the then Chancellor David Lloyd George. It was the first time universal maternal health benefit was introduced, and as a result, debates started to be had about the rights of new mums. By 1941, women were being conscripted into industry. The issue of ‘double burden’ – the fact that women were both having to work and being expected to look after the children – started to be considered. Within two years, 1,345 nurseries had been established, whereas in 1940 there had been just 14. This enabled women to work by getting help looking after the children. During the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, when Mary was establishing herself professionally, maternity leave was still not on the agenda, although it was becoming a serious issue by 1974, after Sweden introduced a law on parental leave. By the 1980s, maternity leave varied from company to company and would depend on how long you had worked for the firm. A landmark case in 1987 appeared to show that mothers’ rights were being curbed when training supervisor Maria Brown lost a lawsuit against her employer after she was made redundant because she was pregnant. But a sea change came about in 1999 after New Labour swept into power. The introduction of the Employment Relations Act meant all employees were given a minimum of three months’ unpaid parents’ leave and mothers were entitled to 18 weeks of paid leave.

  When Mary gave birth to her children it was a different story. With no fixed system in place, Mary was determined not to leave behind the career she had worked so hard for. ‘I didn’t give up work at all. The maternity “leave” wasn’t really – you were really expected to leave and not come back,’ she says. ‘Well I so enjoyed what I did I came back very soon and didn’t have a smart nanny either.’ While at home Mary was always in charge in the kitchen, but Paul helped out when it came to making sure the kids got to school on time. ‘None of my friends had careers, but I loved my work and Paul was marvellous with things like the school run,’ said Mary. ‘It wasn’t like today. If you didn’t come back to your job soon, someone else would jump into your shoes. By then, I was cooking editor of a magazine and there was lots of competition.’

  Much like Mary’s own childhood, she and Paul made sure their own kids had a pretty idyllic life. In a lot of ways it was similar to the life Mary had growing up in Bath. Mary admits she was conscious that she wanted them to have the same experiences that she had. ‘When the children were young we very much had an outdoor life,’ she said. ‘They were all very sporty. And really, you had to keep them busy.’ Also, like their mother, the three much preferred their outdoor adventur
es to being bookish. None of them, it seemed, enjoyed the written word at a young age, just as Mary hadn’t when she was a youngster. ‘They were not the ones who were sitting in a corner with a book, none of them, with a book and their knees up in front of them,’ said Mary. ‘They were out playing and getting into trouble.’

  That outdoors existence was obviously something that had a deep impact on Mary’s oldest child, Tom. As he grew older, he turned it into a career and became a tree surgeon, eventually setting up his own business, called Penn Tree Services. Based near Watercroft in High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire, and established in 1996, the business is based at Tom’s family home. He later married Sarah and they went on to have twin girls – Abby and Grace – the first two of Mary’s grandchildren.

  Tom has, by and large, avoided being in the limelight as a result of being one of Mary’s offspring. But Mary’s daughter Annabel wasn’t so shy, and she went on to contribute a lot to her mother’s career. Following in her mother’s footsteps, she too trained at Le Cordon Bleu in Paris before returning to the UK. She had a brief stint at The London College of Fashion and afterwards took up a short placement at Vogue magazine. Unsure about exactly what she wanted to do with her life, Annabel moved to the island of Bali, Indonesia, where she set up her own fashion label called Venus Rising. Spurred on by its success, Annabel decided she wanted to return to the UK and try her hand at running a business there. Aged 19, she set up Cosmetic Candles in London, with help from a grant from The Princes Trust, the Prince of Wales’ charity that helps get youngsters a head-start in life. It was a hard slog to make the business a success, and this involved Annabel travelling around the country on a shoestring to sell her products wherever possible. It certainly wasn’t the glamorous life she might have become used to while at Vogue. She said, in an interview for the official Mary Berry website: ‘I had a VW camper and used to go around the country selling the candles at shows and festivals.’ Annabel’s early wanderlust is not something Mary shares, as she confided to the Daily Express. Despite loving the hot sunshine of an English summer, she’s so settled among family and friends that upping sticks for anywhere else is not a tempting prospect: ‘Yet as much as I love to be warm, I have never been tempted to move somewhere sunnier. Britain is my home and I really couldn’t imagine living anywhere else.’