A room of one’s own

In his book Men and Sheds (New Holland, 2002), Gordon Thorburn tells us that ‘‘wise men’’ were generally hermits – and that hermits had a retreat where they lived and kept things of significance. According to Thorburn, they “collected strange objects, the importance of which others could not understand” and in time, these places became the hermit’s “intellectual pantry, his workshop, his spiritual home”.

Understandably, given the title of his book, Gordon Thorburn was talking of sheds but much of what he writes applies equally to readers of . While I’m not suggesting we’re all hermits – far from it bearing in mind the generally gregarious nature of game shooting – most of us, where household space and finances allow, like to escape into a place of our own where, like the hermits of old, we can collect and keep things of