The GunsOnPegs Podcast

Sporting artist Alistair Makinson returns to explain how an artist looks at a drive or shooting estate differently to someone standing on the peg, and how a great drive doesn't necessarily make for a great painting. With Chris and George he explores why sporting art commands a premium over standard landscape paintings, and how painting to the tastes of the aristocracy is as savvy a move for an aspiring artist todat as it was in the Rennaissance. The team also ask why it is that a painting can sometimes capture a feeling and a moment rather better than a photograph, and whether sometimes a little bit of artistic license is needed to make a painting feel more 'true'.

Is shooting becoming something we have to keep secret? Sporting artist Alistair Makinson joins George and Chris for an episode of listener correspondence that takes an unexpectedly serious turn. First up, what do you do when a shoot day goes spectacularly wrong? From kit and malfunctioning equipment, the team discusses the best ways to rescue a day in the field. Then there's the question of a rather unfit host on a walked-up grouse day - is it reasonable to expect your host to be fit enough for the shooting he's organised? Finally, a listener raises a thornier issue: prejudice against shooting in the workplace. Should Guns have to conceal their sporting interests from colleagues and employers? Why can companies entertain clients on the golf course but not in the shooting field? Plus, Alistair discusses his experiences of anti-shooting hostility, Chris reveals his foolproof shoot-day packing system, and George contemplates the possibility of shooting's answer to militant veganism.

George and Chris return to Kitchen W8 in Kensington for the second part of their conversation with Michelin-starred chef Mark Kempson, this time to discover what makes wild ingredients so special and appealing for chefs, why more professional chefs aren't cooking game, and whether our traditional approach to cooking game birds is due for a rethink. From his early days at The Square, preparing grouse for the table on the Glorious Twelfth, to nearly seventeen years championing seasonal British ingredients at Kitchen W8, Mark explains why game deserves a much bigger place on restaurant menus and in our kitchens at home. Along the way, the conversation takes in why venison is succeeding where feathered game struggles, whether roasting whole birds is fundamentally flawed, and how shooting estates could forge stronger relationships with restaurants. Mark also shares some practical advice for home cooks, from a simple partridge schnitzel to hare-filled pasta and an ambitious grouse ballotine, before revealing his ultimate Desert Island Shooting experience.

George and Chris visit Kitchen W8 in Kensington to record with Executive Chef Mark Kempson, winner of Game Chef of the Year in 2024 and 2025. Oh, and the restaurant has a Michelin star too. Mark serves up a mini game feast before helping to tackle listener questions on taking extra birds home, tips for shoot staff who aren't keepers, whether pheasant actually tastes good, and why shooting’s benefits reach far beyond the day in the field.

Diggory Hadoke returns for a dive into vintage guns: how an air rifle, an eccentric primary school teacher and a childhood spent taking old farm guns apart led to a life as a gun dealer, writer, archivist and vintage gun expert. We ask what makes a gun “vintage” rather than simply old, and whether the best sporting guns were effectively perfected before the Second World War. The conversation then turns to steel, bismuth, proof marks and whether vintage guns are still worth owning in the non-toxic era.