Country Life

Published by Time Inc. (UK) Ltd Country Life, the quintessential English magazine, is undoubtedly one of the biggest and instantly recognisable brands in the UK today. It has a unique core mix of contemporary country-related editorial and top end property advertising. Editorially, the magazine comments in-depth on a wide variety of subjects, such as architecture, the arts, gardens and gardening, travel, the countryside, field-sports and wildlife. With renowned columnists and superb photography Country Life delivers the very best of British life every week.

Miss Chloe Urquhart

Still waters

Country Life

Town & Country

Town & Country Notebook

Letters to the Editor

Athena • Cultural Crusader

My favourite painting Allan Mallinson • The Last General Absolution of the Munsters at Rue du Bois

Murder most pitiful • A handsome 18th-century house, developed by the same family for the past four centuries, has an unexpectedly dramatic story to tell, as John Goodall explains

‘Still glides the Stream, and shall for ever glide’ • British river names trip off the tongue like the nonsense of Edward Lear, but the meanings behind these great watercourses run deep, says Vicky Liddell

Call of the wild • Embraced by kings, poets and medieval artists, the hirsute Wild Man endures as a forest-dwelling embodiment of Nature, says Susan Owens

The devil makes work for idle hands • Far more than a fancy of old ladies, unoccupied hands and evenings are never a problem for enthusiasts of needlepoint, discovers Matthew Dennison

‘Full of a watchful intentness’ • At the close of a pale January day, John Lewis-Stempel explores Egdon Heath, Thomas Hardy’s name for the Purbeck heathland overlooking Poole Harbour in Dorset, and reflects on the great writer’s role as an authentic voice of the countryside

The art of the hearth • Chimneypieces to keep the home fires burning, selected

In a class of its Soane • The reductivist simplicity of a chimneypiece designed 200 years ago by Sir John Soane explains the architect’s reputation as a founding father of Modernism, says Matthew Dennison

Lord of the rings • Self-confessed ‘wood-fanatic’ Simon Turner has a passion for creating ceramics that capture all the cracks, curves and contours of trees, as Ben Lerwill discovers

Luxury Notebook

A few of my favourite things • The Old Uppinghamian was born in Essex in 1985 and shot to fame aged 16 as the energetic drummer in pop-rock band McFly. Winner of Strictly Come Dancing in 2011, the fitness advocate’s book Get Fit, Get Happy was published in 2017. Most recently seen on BBC One’s Celebrity Race Across the World with his mother, Emma, the drummer lives with his musician wife, Izzy, and their three children, Lola, Kit and Lockie, in Chiswick, west London.

Thorn again • Astonishing rubies and rose-designed high jewellery Styled by Hetty Lintell.

What’s in a name? • A house that mocked beggars with its faux prosperity has kept its nickname and another is built by an architect known as ‘Pink’ for his colour of choice

Work like a dream • A happy-making home office is now more important than ever before

Chainsaw gardening • Gardeners can be reluctant to take a blade to a healthy tree, but sometimes, says Charles Quest-Ritson, a severe pruning will leave both plant and garden in better health

Seeds of summer

Kitchen garden cook Onions

There is wonder in the little things • Over the centuries, miniatures sealed marriages, captured stolen glances and celebrated power, loyalty or love. Huon Mallalieu delves into the history of these often small and always perfectly formed portraits

Small, but perfectly formed • With its diminutive size and hidden drawers, a...