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.

Ms Lara Robinson • Lara is an Impressionist-style artist, who works with oil paints on canvas and has recently focused on sports subjects, including racing, Sunningdale Golf Club in Berkshire and the Cresta Run in St Moritz, Switzerland. She is married to Tom Turner and is the daughter of Nick and Mo Robinson of Ham, Wiltshire.

Comfort and joy

Country Life

Save our family farms

Town & Country Notebook

Letters to the Editor

Paying to package

Athena • Cultural Crusader

My favourite painting Mayara Magri

The legacy David Willcocks and Carols for Choirs

The master builder • Harald Altmaier’s photographs of floral tableaux, as colossal in effort as in scale, recall 17th-century Dutch still lifes, but the inspiration behind them is far wider, as Carla Passino finds

A little mite with a mighty heart • Shy yet bold, furtive yet fearless and fond of nesting in your trousers, the tiny ‘Jenny wren’ has a lusty voice that matches its sense of adventure, observes Mark Cocker

Hardy and the country house • With the help of specially commissioned drawings by Matthew Rice, Jeremy Musson considers the abiding presence of the stone-built manor house in the stories of Thomas Hardy

Beauty by numbers • What do spiders’ webs, snowflakes and snail shells have in common? They all contain fractals: Nature’s exquisite, endlessly repeating mathematical pattern. Deborah Nicholls-Lee unpicks their complex geometry

The fall of Albion • Grey and bleak in midwinter, yet purple and exotic come high summer, our heathland is an unloved landscape that has become rarer than rainforest, laments John Lewis-Stempel

Get a Grip • Waddling ravens, horses in harness, subservient dogs and supercilious cats: Charles Dickens’s life and work were both inexhaustibly influenced by his animals, finds Andrew Green

Worth its weight in gold • Myrrh isn’t only an expensive motif of mortality, a potent analgesic and an Ancient Egyptian mouthwash, it’s also associated with untamed lust and sensuality, discovers Deborah Nicholls-Lee

First out of the lychgate • There are few things more romantic than a gabled lychgate leading to a charming church, says Jack Watkins, despite their funereal and functional purpose

Now that packs a punch • Today’s punch might be an insipid fruit cocktail best left to students, but Charles Dickens and George IV knew how to conjure heady pleasures from their five key ingredients, says Lucien de Guise

Pie say! • Today’s baked goods pale in comparison to a Georgian festive speciality, says food historian Neil Buttery, as he lifts the lid on the Yorkshire Christmas Pye

Little things that make a big difference • Nina Campbell, Tom Parker Bowles, Clodagh McKenna and members of the COUNTRY LIFE team suggest 10 little luxuries that matter at Christmas

Thank you for the memories • What do you buy for the person who has everything? A special day out flying a Spitfire, sharpening their gardening knowledge or quaffing wine among the vines, says the COUNTRY LIFE team, as they try out some of the best gift experiences around

Christmas gifts • Put your feet up as we solve all your present predicaments

Luxury...