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 Fenella Kim Shields • Fenella is a private client coordinator to jeweller Jessica McCormack. She is engaged to Jack Blackmore, whom she will marry at St Peter and St Paul’s Church, Exton, Hampshire, in June, and is the daughter of Col Edward and Philippa Shields of Coulter, Lanarkshire.

Sauce for the goose

Country Life

Getting a wiggle-on with rivers • For more than a century, rivers have been straightened, but now, as Jane Wheatley reports, meandering projects are going on across the country to encourage ecology, discourage flooding and store water

Town & Country Notebook

Letters to the Editor

When the chips are down

Athena • Cultural Crusader

My favourite painting Christopher Price

From royal favourite to stranger’s heir • In the first of two articles, John Goodall looks at the stages by which a medieval hunting lodge developed from the 17th century to become a great country house

The legacy Sir John Soane and his Museum

Where the wild things are • In his paintings, Archibald Thorburn captured the essence of Nature, whether it was piercing-cold snow enveloping a stricken deer or the existential fear of the ptarmigan. This talent for conveying atmosphere set him apart, finds Charles Harris

The sound of centuries past • The past 50 years have seen an energetic revival of the instruments that would have been played in Bach’s day. Henrietta Bredin meets players fascinated by the noises Baroque composers would have heard

A (crab) apple a day • They may be too tart to eat, but crab apples can be made into all sorts of good things, from jellies to salves, and may even have been Adam and Eve’s forbidden fruit, says Ian Morton

Out of Africa • Safari style is an enduring one, with colours and fabrics that get better with every wear, says Hetty Lintell

Bright and breezy • New paints and wallpapers to elevate any interior, selected by Amelia Thorpe

A little help from your friends • Driven to distraction by paint charts? A colour consultant could be the answer for anyone befuddled by choosing the right hue

Escape to the hills • These four houses in the county of Surrey can offer the best of both worlds: rural settings and easy access to London

Up where the air is clear • Glorious houses for sale in the Surrey Hills

Smart thinking • How does a garden design begin? With a lot of questions and by finding a central theme, says James Alexander-Sinclair

Royal favours

Kitchen garden cook Jersey Royals

Parsley of Macedon • Not quite a native, alexanders can taste like joss stick-tainted celery or sweetly spiced parsnips, depending on your method, warns John Wright

Meet the ice queen • Gloves on, easel strapped, Polly Townsend spent five weeks as artist-in-residence in Antarctica, painting breaching humpbacks, wily orcas and the icily beautiful landscape

A hungry heart • A man who strove, sought and found, Wassily Kandinsky pioneered not one, but two artistic movements against the tumultuous backdrop of early-20th-century Europe, as Holly Black relates

Stashed away • The vast collection of the late George Withers, encompassing everything from Prattware pot lids...