A true taste of summer

The word strawberry is cheering, partly because of its associations with summer, like the shrill cry of the swift. As with asparagus and green peas, the strawberry was seen as an emblem of sunny joy at the dinner table. In the middle of the 18th century, when the ultra-cultivated Horace Walpole set about building a fanciful Gothic house for himself, he replaced Chopped Straw Hall, which wouldn’t do at all, with the tasteful Strawberry Hill. But the strawberry itself became too cultivated for its own good and, like the supermarket tomato, lost its flavour. Now tastier British strawberry varieties are to be had in season – and the season is still with us. The hot spell at the beginning of the week renewed the crop. Let us hope that some poor motorists queuing for hours to get through Dover might hop out and pick their own.