Sarah Langford’s fantasy dinner party: Eve Balfour, an Anglo-Saxon king and archeologist Basil Brown

When we moved from London to Suffolk in 2017 and took on the running of my husband’s family farm, I began to learn not just about the land, but about a county steeped in farming history. I have decided, therefore, to host my fantasy dinner party in a traditional wildflower meadow on a perfect summer’s evening with local food and people.

My first guest, Eve Balfour, somewhat misses the point by arriving in a Tiger Moth plane. I am standing by the dining table, fussing over flowers. The aircraft skims my head and I drop the buttercups. Balfour lands, leaps out of the cockpit and waves her goggles at me. “Hallo!” she bellows.

I wave and pick up the buttercups. Smoke drifts past me. “Who’s that?” says a husky voice. The artist Maggi Hambling appears: trouser suit, hair in a wild halo, cigarette dangling from her lips.

“Lady Eve Balfour,” I reply casually. “Pioneering farmer and scientist. Co-founded The Soil Association. Wrote The Living Soil in 1943, before soil became cool. I think you’ll get on?” Hambling puffs her cigarette suspiciously, rocking back and forth on silver trainers. I realise it could go either way.

Suffolk-based chef Peter Harrison appears holding a platter of figs, each chunk topped with Mrs Temple’s Binham Blue cheese, chopped apples and walnuts from the nearby agroforestry farm, Wakelyns. He likes serving up food with local provenance. I once heard him tell a large table of diners they had just unwittingly polished off muntjac tongue (it was delicious).

“Canapé?” he asks, as I hand around cold glasses of sparkling cuvée from Gifford’s winery. Hambling removes her cigarette to pop in a cube of fig.

Low conversation floats over the hedge, then two men appear dressed in brown suits, waistcoats and flat caps, wheeling their bicycles. It is George Ewart Evans, writer and collector of Suffolk oral histories, traditions and folklore, and Basil Brown, the self-taught archaeologist who history nearly forgot when galleries failed to credit him for uncovering ancient treasures at Sutton Hoo in the late 1930s. They are getting on famously.

We sit down as Harrison sets out plates of slow-cooked Iken venison, griddled strips of courgettes and squash picked that morning, shredded spring greens and buttered potatoes, telling us where everything has come from. Everyone nods approvingly.

Suddenly, Brown, the least likely to cause a scene, stands up, knocking over his chair. We follow his gaze. Glinting in the setting sun stands King Raedwald, whose Anglo-Saxon burial chamber Brown uncovered, wearing a fur cape, gilded sword, red and gold shield and magnificent dragon helmet.

Raedwald strides over. “Wesaþ hāle,” he grunts. I giggle. “Fascinating!” booms Balfour. Hambling lights another cigarette. Harrison glances at Raedwald (chefs have seen it all) before putting a plate before him. Brown stage whispers, “He was buried with all that he needed to host a feast in the afterlife. Maybe he thinks this is the afterlife?” Raedwald locks eyes with me. He picks up the venison, tearing off a chunk with his teeth. Maybe this is the afterlife?

For pudding we have frozen summer berries drizzled with melted Pump Street chocolate and chilled glasses of Monks Mead with honey from coastal heather. Balfour, who once led a rebellion against tithe payments, and Evans, a card-carrying communist, debate politics while smoking Hambling’s cigarettes. Raedwald is taken with Hambling’s silver trainers, which she swaps for his shield and sword. She fashions them into a sculpture using Brown’s excavation tools (he always carries them, just in case). We circle around to admire how it reflects the moonlight.

Evans starts singing a Suffolk folk song and Brown joins in. Balfour gives a small whoop and runs tipsily to the Tiger Moth. “Nearly forgot!” she shouts, taking out her saxophone and picking out the tune. Raedwald is even more impressed with it than he was by the trainers. He is, it turns out, a marvellous baritone. Nightingales lend a chorus as tawny owls “twit” and “twoo” across the valley. We end the evening swaying, singing and dancing around Hambling’s sculpture under a canopy of stars and a moon as bright as a headlamp, and I think about how one does not always need to go that far to find a place layered with delights. Just, sometimes, back in time.

Sarah Langford is the author of “Rooted: Stories of Life, Land and a Farming Revolution” (Penguin)

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