Entertainment
Country Life UK
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 min |
December 10, 2025 ( Double Issue )
Country Life UK
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 min |
December 10, 2025 ( Double Issue )
Country Life UK
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 min |
December 10, 2025 ( Double Issue )
Country Life UK
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 min |
December 10, 2025 ( Double Issue )
Country Life UK
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 min |
December 10, 2025 ( Double Issue )
Country Life UK
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 min |
December 10, 2025 ( Double Issue )
Country Life UK
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 min |
December 10, 2025 ( Double Issue )
Country Life UK
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 min |
December 10, 2025 ( Double Issue )
Country Life UK
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 min |
December 10, 2025 ( Double Issue )
Country Life UK
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 min |
December 10, 2025 ( Double Issue )
Country Life UK
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 min |
December 10, 2025 ( Double Issue )
Country Life UK
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 min |
December 10, 2025 ( Double Issue )
Country Life UK
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 min |
December 10, 2025 ( Double Issue )
Country Life UK
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 min |
December 10, 2025 ( Double Issue )
Country Life UK
New Government plan gives Nature top billing
Plans to improve the environment include peat restoration and methane reduction
1 min |
December 10, 2025 ( Double Issue )
Country Life UK
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 min |
December 10, 2025 ( Double Issue )
Country Life UK
Far from the madding crowd
As a lifelong Londoner, Will Hosie shares his tips on how to beat the throngs and make the most of the city this Christmas
4 min |
December 03, 2025
Country Life UK
The sound of silence
Between a Constable resonating with Nature and a Castiglione blaring with turbulence, a picture by Algernon Newton captured the quietude of absolute stillness
4 min |
December 03, 2025
Country Life UK
The legacy George Orwell and Nineteen Eighty-Four
In 1936, Orwell set off for Lancashire on a mission to document unemployment and poverty, talking to families who had suffered humiliating 'means tests' and going down a mine.
2 min |
December 03, 2025
Country Life UK
Off her own bat
Painting a local cricket match, Sherree Valentine-Daines received an invitation that changed her career and led her to become artist-in-residence at Goodwood
5 min |
December 03, 2025
Country Life UK
Let sleeping dogs lie
A furry hot-water bottle? Or a restless snoring pest? Sharing a bed with a dog isn't ideal for everyone, but it certainly warms the soul, says Bethany Stone
5 min |
December 03, 2025
Country Life UK
A matter of faith
Andrew Graham-Dixon tells Carla Passino why he thinks we have read Vermeer wrong all along- and who the Girl with a Pearl Earring really is
5 min |
December 03, 2025
Country Life UK
Kale and hearty
Of the many small consolations of winter, the sight of a tall, elegant, frost-painted perennial kale catching the early light and the flavour of the shredded leaves pushed around a pan with olive oil, chilli and garlic are hard to beat.
3 min |
December 03, 2025
Country Life UK
Still caring for the fields and the beasts
Life at the Royal Agricultural University in Cirencester is as jolly as ever after 180 years, but the diverse degrees on offer reflect the challenges of 21st-century farming. Kate Green charts a history of seismic change for the industry and Mary Skipwith talks to students past and present
8 min |
December 03, 2025
Country Life UK
London Life
Your indispensable guide to the capital
1 min |
December 03, 2025
Country Life UK
She's the one
PROBABLY no professional gundog trainer would want to admit it, but, when it comes to working breeds, I tend to think you either get lucky or you don't. Sure, there are middling dogs and, sure, they can be made better, but the countryside is full of totally useless labradors and spaniels; equally, there are some superb workers who have seemingly had all the right ingredients since puppyhood.
2 min |
December 03, 2025
Country Life UK
Season's tweetings
Jolly frock-coated robins, majestic geese and arboreal partridges make for both literal and symbolic centrepieces at Christmas, says Matthew Dennison, as he revels in the cultural history of the season's feathered fowl and game
6 min |
December 03, 2025
Country Life UK
Stuff & nonsense
LISTEN to the media (not me, mind) and you'd be forgiven for thinking that young people are a bunch of mopes, who refuse to drink, go dancing or have sex and are ruining British nightlife for all. Rejoice, then, for the tide is turning. A recent book by Norwegian sociologist Willy Pedersen argues that binge drinking in one's youth can improve career prospects. People have taken note: The Hart in Marylebone, W1, is rammed every night.
3 min |
December 03, 2025
Country Life UK
Hidden gems of North Yorkshire
Comfortable seclusion is on offer at three historic houses, each beautifully presented and set in glorious landscapes worthy of God's own county
4 min |
December 03, 2025
Country Life UK
Let there be light
Johannes Vermeer brightened his native Delft with luminous pictures of women caught in intimate moments, but the serenity of his work, of which he produced remarkably little, is at odds with a life mired in debt, as Carla Passino discovers
7 min |