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 Rebecca Kate Kitchin

Not only for the birds • Future Publishing Ltd, 121–141 Westbourne Terrace, Paddington, London W2 6JR 0330 390 6591; www.countrylife.co.uk

Country Life

Let there be light and song

Town & Country Notebook

Letters to the Editor

Littered with snags

Challenges of listed conversion

The way we were Photographs from the COUNTRY LIFE archive

My favourite painting Jemma Powell • My Wife and My Children by Joaquín Sorolla y Bastida

Show me the way to go home • Plodding home in the gloaming, through a wood stripped bare by November gales, John Lewis-Stempel stumbles across a magical fairy ring of wood-blewit fungi

The Mousetrap

English Home part XI, 1890–1939 • Each month of this 125th-anniversary year, COUNTRY LIFE illustrates a period in the development of the English country house. In the 11th of this 12-part series, John Goodall looks at the early 20th century

Fair-feather friends • Come autumn, millions of migrant birds flock to Britain to overwinter here. Stephen Moss charts their gruelling journeys from the Arctic, Scandinavia and Siberia and considers why they are prepared to fly so far

Taking the right turn • Joey Richardson’s artwork is so exquisite that the Royal Warrant Holders Association asked her to create a gift for the Queen. Serena Shores meets the master craftswoman taking the ancient art of woodturning to new heights

Lost London • A fascinating new book of more than 800 historic photographs by Philip Davies examines London before its 20th-century transformation into the city we know today

Luxury Notebook

A few of my favourite things • The legendary British tailor began running errands for his uncle’s East End trouser workshop aged 12 (he has just turned 80) and went on to cut cloth for the most famous physiques on the planet. In 1969, Mr Sexton dressed The Beatles for their Abbey Road album cover and, with Tommy Nutter, he founded Nutter’s on Savile Row, which counted Mick Jagger, Twiggy and Elton John as clients. In 1971, he cut Mick and Bianca Jagger’s white wedding suits and, this year, the tailor opened a new shop on Savile Row.

All tied up • Pretty bow jewels to top any present this Christmas

A room for all reasons • Party barns were once little more than useful venues for large social gatherings, but now, former agricultural buildings are being converted into multifunctional spaces that are transforming rural properties, finds Arabella Youens

Putting a barn to work • Transforming a barn into a wedding venue, accommodation- or both-can be a nice little earner, finds Arabella Youens

Halfway houses • Two properties could be greater than the sum of their parts with a little investment, as another shows that a ruin is anything but

An extraordinary north Norfolk retreat

Welcome to the party • Tired of hiding away the fine cutlery and taking down the family heirlooms? Then where better to entertain than a party barn?

Trumpet majors • The magnificent new glasshouse display at West Dean, West Sussex, shows why it’s time that hippeastrums came in from the cold, says John Hoyland

A remarkable restoration

Kitchen garden cook...