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 Serena Ansell • Serena is the founder of Serena Ansell Fine Jewellery, a ready-to-wear and bespoke brand, and is engaged to Oliver Wilson, whom she will marry at St John the Baptist Church, Burford, Oxfordshire, in May. She is the daughter of Harry Ansell of Burford, Oxfordshire, and Tessa Ansell of London W4.

Wishful thinking

Country Life

Mama, ooh… • It’s been 50 years since Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody pondered the difference between real life and ‘just fantasy’, 250 years of Jane Austen and 40 years of loving/hating Rupert Campbell-Black. Carry on, carry on

Town & Country Notebook

Letters to the Editor

Payback time for Defra

Athena • Cultural Crusader

My favourite painting Alice Webster

The long goodbye

A world of illusion • In the first of two articles, William Aslet looks at the ambitious work of the painter and architect Sir James Thornhill to recast a major 17th-century house as a Baroque masterpiece

Robert Burns and Auld Lang Syne

All creatures cute and revolting • Did you know that rats can giggle and starfish can remove their stomachs? Our native fauna has a host of talents that may go unacknowledged, says our compère John Lewis-Stempel, as he names the winners of the COUNTRY LIFE British Wildlife Awards

When one door closes • January is a time of beginnings and endings and the two-faced Janus was god of both: an emblem of change, hopes and fears, discovers Deborah Nicholls-Lee

Completely in the dark • Connected to a vastness that’s beyond comprehension, the night sky has inspired both artistic and scientific visionaries since the dawn of time, says Anna Levin

Skating on thin ice • Wordsworth resembled ‘a dancing cow’ and Prince Albert disappeared through the ice ‘up to his head’: for all its pleasures, natural skating was a risk to both life and reputation, discovers Harry Pearson

Whatever next? • Giles Kime’s interior-design predictions for 2025

Give me land, lots of land • Some estate sales were trickier in 2024, yet overall most eventually found buyers, some of them first-time landowners

What’s on in London • Amie Elizabeth White rounds up the best things to do in the capital in 2025

Keeping it in the farm • There’s a new crop of London restaurants supplied by their very own farms, bringing a whole new meaning to the phrase farm to fork, finds Richard MacKichan

Plant a winter pantry • Stock your vegetable beds with easy-to-grow and delicious crops that you can pick all winter long, suggests Val Bourne

Taste explosions

Kitchen garden cook Red cabbage

Highland Base, Kerlingarfjöll, Iceland

New year, new you • To feel better, you often have to journey backwards, finds Mark Hedges on a reviving break to the Greek mainland

All roads lead to Rome • Ahead of an influx of thousands of pilgrims, Rosie Paterson visits the Italian capital to find a swiftly modernising city where the past is very much alive

Beginnings and endings

A leap in the dark • Whether it’s bleak chapels or a menacing clock, it takes a whisper of fear for a stage set to draw in the public and artist and designer John Macfarlane excels at instilling...