Top 10 Best german post war shooting award – 2nd place – this is from the new bundeswehr

It is the autumn of 1913. Sir Randolph Nettleby has assembled a outstanding array of visitors at his Oxfordshire estate for the most significant hunt of the year. An army of gamekeepers, beaters, and servants has rehearsed the intricate age&#8211outdated ritual, the gentlemen are slipping into the approved manner of fellowship and sporting rivalry, the girls intrigued by the most current gossip and fashion. Anything about this splendid weekend would seem a great consummation of the pleasures afforded the privileged in Edwardian England. And yet it is not: the ethical and social code of this group is not so secure as it appears. Level of competition beyond the bounds of sportsmanship, revulsion at the slaughter of the animals, anger at the inequities of class &#8211&#8211these forces are about to rise up and engulf the confident social peace, a peace that can very last only a brief while extended. In imagining Sir Randolph’s capturing party, wrote The Spectator, Skip Colegate has found a perfect metaphor for the passing of a way of daily life.