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 Lucinda Smart • Lucinda is a lawyer specialising in dispute resolution at a London law firm. She holds a degree in Classics from the University of Oxford and is a member of charity Classics for All’s Lawyers Group. She is engaged to Edward Case, whom she will marry at St Mary’s Church, Ticehurst, East Sussex, next year, and is the daughter of David and Rona Smart of London SW1.

The news in 2025

Country Life

Town & Country

Town & Country Notebook

Letters to the Editor

Athena • Cultural Crusader

My favourite painting Tom Faulkner

When the saints march in • In the second of two articles, John Goodall examines some of the recent changes made to highlight the saints associated with this ancient church

Welcome home • Despite the trundling tractor and buzzing shears, our ancestors would still recognise the rhythm, ritual and practices of the traditional hill farm, argues John Lewis-Stempel

‘Eating is an agricultural act’ • Farmers need to convince consumers that the choices they make are integral to preserving the British environment

Where time stands still • Memorials are our nation’s collective memory, built to endure and ensure that achievements, individuals and disasters are never forgotten. Susan Owens takes an emotive tour around the British Isles in 50 monuments

Shake your pompom • Some can rock a bobble hat, others will always resemble Where’s Wally, but still this knitted creation belongs on every hat rack, says Harry Pearson

Give the dog a bone • Man’s best friend still needs to eat like its Lupus forebears, believes Jonathan Self, when it’s not guarding food, greeting us or destroying our upholstery, of course

Interiors • The designer’s room

Some like it hot • Spice up your room with warm shades of red, says Amelia Thorpe

When a perfect storm hits • Weather, wars, elections and financial uncertainty all conspired against high-end house sales this year, but there were still some spectacular deals

Mission impossible • Rubble and ruin were all that remained of the early-19th-century Villa Frere and its gardens, planted by the English diplomat John Hookham Frere, until a group of dedicated volunteers came to its rescue. Josephine Tyndale-Biscoe tells the story

Shhhhhh…

Private views • One of the best ways–often the only way–to visit the finest privately owned gardens in the country is by joining an exclusive tour. Non Morris does exactly that

Kitchen garden cook Citrus fruit

A love supreme • Art brought together 19th-century Norwich couple Joseph and Emily Stannard, who shared a passion for painting, but their destiny would be dramatically different

Mary I: more bruised than bloody • Cast as a sanguinary tyrant, our first Queen Regnant may not deserve her brutal reputation, believes Geoffrey Munn

For love, not money • This year may have marked the end of ‘brag-art’, bought merely to show off one’s wealth. It’s time for a return to looking for connoisseurship, beauty and taste

Paper escapes • Steven King selects his best travel books of 2024

Give it some stick • Galloping through the imagination, competitive hobby-horsing is a gymnastic...