In this issue

The Country Life Top 100
Our guide to the best architects, interior designers, landscape gardeners, builders and craftsmen to create your dream home.

Let them make furniture
Pieces by Marie-Antoinette’s favourite cabinetmaker, Jean-Henri Riesener, are back in favour, discovers Rufus Bird.

Thelwell: more than a one-trick pony

Sixty years after Penelope and Kipper rode into our lives, Alice Wright explores Norman Thelwell’s expert touch in capturing all aspects of country life

5 mins

Improving on history

A beautifully preserved Georgian house reveals the influence of pattern books in the practice of English architecture. John Goodall admires its revival and the addition to it of two well-judged new wings

8 mins

The female of the species

They may be championed by Sir David Attenborough now, but the first women entomologists had to overcome great prejudice to study insects, reports Ian Morton

6 mins

Let Them Make Furniture

Once the height of fashion among collectors, including George IV, pieces by Marie-Antoinette’s favourite cabinetmaker Jean-Henri Riesener are back in the spotlight, reports Rufus Bird

7 mins

It's simply pure racing

The Cheltenham Festival will be a strangely silent affair, with no Guinness, no Irish punters and no amateurs, but that won’t detract from the quality of racing, which is set to be as illustrious as ever, says Marcus Armytage

6 mins

Pretty in pink

Only available for a fleeting moment, rose-hued forced rhubarb–grown in the dark and harvested by candlelight in Yorkshire’s ‘tusky triangle’–is an ephemeral vegetable with a muted, yet distinct, lip-smacking tartness.

3 mins

Sussex secrets

A manor and a villa on the site of a lost mill are two examples of the fine country houses in this home county

4 mins

The plants are the thing

The garden of the eminent plantsman John d’Arcy, The Old Vicarage, Edington, Wiltshire, is home to an astonishing collection of plants, finds Charles Quest-Ritson

8 mins

Gardens Are Like People– Most Don't Age Well

When I was 18 and waiting to go up to the Varsity (as my grandmother called it), I hitchhiked out to Italy in search of all those new excitements that young men hope to experience. Culture, mainly, in my case—the girls were unassailable in those days. It was my first solo trip abroad and I fell deeply in love with Baroque churches, olive landscapes and classical gardens.

4 mins

Day and night, night and day

The Radio 3 anchors on the values of silence and patience

5 mins

Read all stories from Country Life UK

Country Life UK Magazine Description:

Country Life; architecture, gardens, countryside, property, the very best of British life Published by IPC Media. 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.