You can’t come out with me without seeing some teaspoons!” says Jake Fiennes on the phone before we meet for a romp across England’s largest privately owned national nature reserve.
It will be a while before I realise what the conservation director for the 25,000-acre Holkham Estate means, but it probably involves “some fucking drop-dead gorgeous nature”, as Fiennes puts it. The Norfolk coast estate – one third of which is nature reserve – was already brimming with rare birds, plants and butterflies before he arrived three-and-a-half years ago, but he has created even more with his management.
