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Country Life UK Magazine - December 10, 2025 ( Double Issue )

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In this issue

When Bethlehem is everywhere and anywhere
In a messy world, we can still find love and hope in our local church, believes the Revd Fergus Butler-Gallie

We make Christmas happen
Jane Wheatley meets the people beavering away behind the festivities,from cake-bakers to cracker-makers

Life in the slow lane
John Lewis-Stempel wanders rural by ways

Celebrate the winter solstice
Tilly Ware falls for the frosty magic of the gardens of Helmingham Hall in Suffolk

The lion’s share
Matthew Dennnison goes through the wardrobe to the dawn of the land of Narnia

When Bethlehem is everywhere and anywhere

The Church of the Nativity still moves millions of people to tears and represents the power of hope. It is why, says the Revd Fergus Butler-Gallie, we flock to our local church at Christmas, no matter how far removed it may seem

5 mins

Search is on for the UK's living heritage

CHRISTMAS traditions such as pantomimes, carol singing, bell ringing, decorating the tree, knitting festive jumpers, making wreaths and attending a Boxing Day meet of hounds are the kind of activities the Government wants to hear about for its community-led inventory of the UK's living heritage.

1 mins

Burns's home seeks funds for restoration

ELLISLAND FARM, the place where Robert Burns created the New Year's Eve 'anthem' Auld Lang Syne, is now in such poor condition after suffering from decades of underinvestment that an ambitious $12 million appeal has been launched by the Robert Burns Ellisland Trust to save it.

1 mins

New Government plan gives Nature top billing

Plans to improve the environment include peat restoration and methane reduction

1 mins

Hardy's words inspire new carol

FOR millions of people around the world, Christmas officially begins with the Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols from the candlelit King's College Chapel, Cambridge. It is a tradition long observed by Rachel Portman, who has written a new carol for this year's service, using Thomas Hardy's The Darkling Thrush as the text.

1 mins

A historic window rejuvenated

THE east window of Stapleton's chantry within North Moreton's All Saints Church, Oxfordshire, was celebrated recently with a blessing by the Bishop of Dorchester, after the finest flowering of the courts of Edward I and Edward II in glass and stone had been saved for the nation.

1 mins

COUNTRY LIFE library online

THE superb photography featured in COUNTRY LIFE every week since its launch 128 years ago has always set it apart and, now, every one of the images in its archive has been digitised and tagged/catalogued, an ambitious project that has taken three years to complete.

1 mins

Dear Chancellor..

DEAR Rachel Reeves, I am writing to you because I think someone ought to explain how your Budgets affect the ordinary people trying to run the businesses upon which the nation depends. No one around you seems capable of telling you, in simple terms, what your two Budgets have done to the countryside, where nine million of your voters live.

2 mins

Churches urgently need a plan of action

THE celebrations of the season may cause memories of the chaos surrounding the Chancellor's recent Budget to fade, but we will still have to live with its consequences.

2 mins

My favourite painting Dame Sarah Mullally

Virtues of Unity by Halima Cassell

1 mins

The legacy Sir John Betjeman and Christmas

Who was Joan Hunter Dunn?

2 mins

The heavenly city

The Cathedral Church of St Peter, Exeter, Devon, part I This idiosyncratic masterpiece illuminates the sophistication and personalities behind the development of late-medieval English architecture, as John Goodall explains

8 mins

Rubies for Christmas

Its twinkling seeds bejewel festive feasts, but there's much more to the pomegranate than meets the eye

5 mins

Give me all your turtle-dovin’

The beautiful, soft-voiced turtle dove may be synonymous with Christmas, but as a symbol of courtship and love this endearing bird resonates all year round and must be saved, urges Mark Cocker

6 mins

We make Christmas happen

This time of year represents big business—and exhaustion—for the producers of festive fare, from crackers to hellebores to ham. Jane Wheatley visits six stalwarts who are flat out right now

8 mins

Merry Christmas, Peter Rabbit!

As Unitarians, the Potter family's festive season was an abstemious time—something the young Beatrix railed against, joyfully, into her adult life and within her beloved children's books

5 mins

And so this is Christmas

Whether it's a rosy-cheeked girl wrapped up warm, sun-bathed sheep at twilight or a snow-blanketed apple orchard, myriad pictures sum up the festive season, as 16 friends of COUNTRY LIFE tell Carla Passino

10+ mins

The spy who came in from the page

As a new exhibition in Oxford charts John le Carré's legacy, Emma Hughes takes a closer look at his most enduring creation, George Smiley

5 mins

It'll be all right on the night

Never work with animals and children, they say, but surely it isn't a proper Nativity without them?

5 mins

Muff and nonsense

Is that furry handwarmer merely a decorative symbol of feminine passivity or does it conceal a meat cleaver, a pistol or a pugnacious pet, wonders Deborah Nicholls-Lee

5 mins

Toy story

Today's queues may be digital, but the fight to secure that must-have present and avoid small, disappointed faces is timeless. Tom Howells looks at the toys topping recent (and less recent) Christmas wish lists

4 mins

Ice, ice, baby

What do you do when the Thames freezes solid? For the Stuarts and Georgians of London, the great frosts that descended on the city meant wrapping up and making merry

4 mins

Very fetching

How might Hermès dress a corgi? What unites a dalmatian and Dior? Agnes Stamp meets the haute dogs

1 mins

Green and pleasant band

Rarer than diamonds and more valuable than any other coloured jewels, a fine emerald represents natural beauty at its most beguiling. Jonathan Self journeys into the lustrous world of this revered gemstone

5 mins

How to find your interior-design DNA

Complete our quiz to uncover the essence of your personal style, urges Giles Kime

5 mins

Celebrate the winter solstice

Half a millennium of careful tending has given this ancient garden a rare magic, most noticeable in the depths of winter, writes Tilly Ware

5 mins

Pickings for Christmas

IN the comparative austerity of a 1960s childhood, the electric thrill of Christmas I was switched on with the lights in London's Regent Street and the Norwegian tree in Trafalgar Square.

3 mins

Life in the slow lane

Plundering a local byway for a spot of festive foraging, John Lewis-Stempel finds all life proliferating in the multitudinous micro-habitat of the winter hedgerow

4 mins

Deck the halls!

Celebrated in the loveliest of carols, holly warms hearts anew each winter, but there's more to the spiky gem than merely Christmas cheer

5 mins

Now you've borscht it

For Ukrainians, the fortifying, beetroot-based stew of borscht is more than a delicious dish-it's full of familial and existential nourishment, says Tom Parker Bowles

2 mins

Brussels sprout and potato gröstl with pancetta and fried eggs

Kitchen garden cook Brussels sprouts

1 mins

Wholly smoke

There's a world of difference between mass-market smoked salmon and the traditionally produced kind, as Tom Howells discovers on a trip to London's Secret Smokehouse

3 mins

The lion's share

As C. S. Lewis's enchanting children's classic The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe turns 75, Matthew Dennison pulls back the coats to explore its evergreen spell

6 mins

Living with the Arts and Crafts

LORD AND LADY INGLEWOOD hold a copper dish locally produced at the Keswick School of Industrial Arts (KSIA), Cumberland.

1 mins

Santa Claus is coming to town

Andy Warhol found Christmas a tricky time, yet threw himself into the festivities and, when he decided to illustrate his series on American myths, he had no doubt he should include the jolly old man in the bright red suit

7 mins

From Macau with love

A Bonhams sale last month provided the perfect excuse to rediscover the works of peripatetic artist George Chinnery, who went to the Far East to escape his wife

3 mins

Sing, choirs of angels

We owe much to the Victorian figures determined to resurrect the joy of Christmas through music. Andrew Green charts how carol collectors have shaped the way the world celebrates

5 mins

The good, the bad and the overblown

Our critic looks back at the best, worst, most underrated and most irritating performances of 2025 and recommends the plays to see this Christmas

6 mins

The best books of the year

COUNTRY LIFE reviewers reveal the works that impressed and absorbed them in 2025

10+ mins

Fifty shades of tartan

Rupert Campbell-Black rides again as the Duke of Inchtyra, impoverished laird of rock and bog'

2 mins

Read all Stories from Country Life UK

Country Life UK Magazine Description:

Publisher: Future

Category: Lifestyle

Language: English

Frequency: Weekly

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.