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 Elizabeth Charlotte Mary Down • Elizabeth works for a global financial-services firm specialising in crisis management. She is chair of the Royal National Lifeboat Institution’s Kensington and Chelsea branch and a Land Rover 90 enthusiast. Elizabeth is engaged to Christian St John James, whom she will marry at All Saints Church, Crudwell, Malmesbury, Wiltshire, in August, and is the daughter of Mr and Mrs Julien Down.

Joined-up farming

Country Life

Town & Country

Town & Country Notebook

Letters to the Editor

Food comes at a price

Athena • Our cultural infrastructure needs care

My favourite painting Robert Hardman • The Lion and The Mouse

And they called it puppy love • Partial to a poodle? Loopy about labradors? Cuckoo for cocker spaniels? You are not alone, says Victoria Marston, as she discovers the nation’s favourite dog breeds, decade by decade

How does your garden village grow? • Knebworth Garden Village, Hertfordshire A garden city planned by Sir Edwin Lutyens was never brought to completion. Plans to redevelop it today, however, threaten to destroy the character of what was created. Clive Aslet reports

Here’s rooking at you • Rooks may be fond of gathering in sociable eyries high in the treetops, but it would be unwise to take them for granted, cautions Mark Cocker, for they are one of the most complex and consistently misrepresented birds in this country

Hitting the sweet spot • Barley sugars, pink shrimps and flying saucers: more than merely a sugar high, ‘sweets were like currency at school’, discovers Madeleine Silver as she gets stuck into tuck shops

Book your place • Independent schools around the country are offering prospective parents and pupils an insight into their atmosphere and facilities through open mornings. Here are 50 to choose from

Rascals and rusticants • Pet bears and lobsters on chains, horses in the bedroom and firearms at the window: British universities have long tolerated outlandish behaviour. But when is enough enough, asks Harry Pearson

Character building • How do you make a newly built space look like an old one? The transformation of a house on the Cornish coast, by HÁM interiors, may provide the answer, believes Arabella Youens

The meaning of home • Join COUNTRY LIFE at London Design Week 2024 at 3pm on March 13 to hear two leading designers discuss the rise of individuality in interior design

Luxury Notebook

A few of my favourite things • As the great-niece of Nancy Lancaster, Jane Churchill grew up surrounded by good taste. Her fabrics and wallpapers made her a household name in the 1980s and she now runs her interior-design practice from London’s Pimlico Road. Her interiors cookbook Entertaining Lives was published in 2021 and she has recently designed a collection of lamps and candlesticks with The Lacquer Company.

Off the cuff • Elegant wrist watches with blue dials are showcased against fine gentlemen’s shirts and beautiful ladies’ summer jackets

End of an era • After more than a century in one family, the sale of a great Suffolk estate reveals a history that runs from a 17th-century MP via a Repton Red Book to a ‘Galloping Major’

A new vision...