Entertainment
Country Life UK
Life's a pretty picnic
French artists have appropriated alfresco dining ever since Édouard Manet scandalised Paris with his Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe, yet many charming scenes were painted in Britain, too, and are worth rediscovering
4 min |
July 02, 2025
Country Life UK
Watch out for your socks...
Unhurried in flight and with a sideline in stolen goods, the handsome red kite is the gentleman thief of the raptor world
3 min |
July 02, 2025
Country Life UK
Keeping a low profile
For some trees, being blown over isn't the end of the story.
4 min |
July 02, 2025
Country Life UK
On your bike
White Heron Estate’s three-day e-bike tour includes a visit to Hay Castle, with a chance to browse its well-stocked bookstalls
2 min |
July 02, 2025
Country Life UK
Come on in, the water's lovely
The seaside lido offered safe swimming for holidaymakers irrespective of the vagaries of the tide. Kathryn Ferry looks at the architecture of these remarkable creations
7 min |
July 02, 2025
Country Life UK
West London roars back
The style set is returning to the very neighbourhoods it once made a habit of spurning, finds Will Hosie
6 min |
July 02, 2025
Country Life UK
London Life Your indispensable guide to the capital
By all means, party, but protect our parks
2 min |
July 02, 2025
Country Life UK
The legacy Sir James Clark Ross and the discovery of Antarctica
ON January 11, 1841, James Clark Ross and his expeditionary team saw land 'of so extensive a coastline and attaining such an altitude as to justify the appellation of a Great New Southern Continent'. The order to command an expedition for 'magnetic research and geographical study' in the Southern Hemisphere had come in 1839, by which time Ross was considered the most experienced (and handsome) polar officer in the world.
1 min |
July 02, 2025
Country Life UK
Where the wild things are
William Blake, Samuel Palmer and Beatrix Potter all inspired Maurice Sendak, as demonstrated by a sale of his own drawings and those he collected.
2 min |
June 25, 2025
Country Life UK
Strip the willow
SOME mornings I sit and marvel at the genius of William Morris. Our downstairs lavatory is screened from prying eyes by a panel of leaded lights made from hand-cast and painted Morris & Co glass in about 1887. Sunlight treacles through the bubbles and the painted willow wands. Willows are to us what olive trees are to southern Europeans, I would suggest, from time immemorial our most prolific and most useful crop. The osier beds must have been Morris's muse, living at Kelmscott in the west Oxfordshire flatlands on the upper reaches of the Thames: withy beds characterised the Thames valley for the manufacture of all things packaging. Before he designed Willow Bough, his most celebrated wallpaper, Morris mused in poetry of 'the happy willow tree, with the river by it sighing'.
2 min |
June 25, 2025
Country Life UK
Make an impression
Claude Monet and Camille Pissarro spent time in London, but it took James McNeill Whistler to act as artistic bridge with Britain and the 'sweetened' Impressionism of Jules Bastien-Lepage to inspire most homegrown painters
5 min |
June 25, 2025
Country Life UK
Water, water everywhere
With high summer beckoning, John Lewis- Stempel reflects on the incomparable richness of pond life and the rewards of pausing to peer into the murky depths on a warm June afternoon
4 min |
June 25, 2025
Country Life UK
Keep the Faith
The age of chivalry isn't dead—the Knights Hospitaller has defended its faith and helped the sick and the poor for more than 1,000 years, discovers Holly Kirkwood
5 min |
June 25, 2025
Country Life UK
Where Venice once ruled
Rich, resourceful and ruthless, the Venetians left handsome imprints across the Greek world, says Matthew Dennison, as he explores the lingering traces of a vanished empire
5 min |
June 25, 2025
Country Life UK
The King and I
A gruelling schedule, kamikaze flies and even a flying easel are all par for the course for four-time Royal Tour artist Warwick Fuller and he wouldn't have it any other way
8 min |
June 25, 2025
Country Life UK
A meeting of minds
The marriage of John Stuart and Harriet Taylor Mill produced some of the 19th-century's most influential ideas. They continue to resonate today, finds Eileen Reid
3 min |
June 25, 2025
Country Life UK
Going down in a blazer of glory
Everyone from royalty to rappers seems to have one in their wardrobe. Is this the world's most versatile jacket? Harry Pearson praises the blazer, a true sartorial team player
4 min |
June 25, 2025
Country Life UK
The return of the king
Threatened with extinction in the 1960s, the mighty peregrine—with its astonishing speed and super strength—has staged such a remarkable comeback that its now more successful than it was in the Middle Ages
3 min |
June 25, 2025
Country Life UK
Thwack!
Power up your serve in time for Wimbledon at these properties with tennis courts
2 min |
June 25, 2025
Country Life UK
We're still standing
With their potent blend of wild looks and mystery, Britain's ancient sites have an enduring magnetism–and there are far more of them than you might imagine, says Tom Howells
6 min |
June 25, 2025
Country Life UK
Cod almighty
A cold-water nomad with a voracious appetite, the overfished cod may be dwindling in numbers, but it is still a big beast of the sea
3 min |
June 25, 2025
Country Life UK
Laying ghosts to rest
Fifteen abandoned locks were part of the draw for the owners of this astonishing garden, created in the grounds of the former headquarters of the Somersetshire Coal Canal Company, discovers Caroline Donald
4 min |
June 25, 2025
Country Life UK
Fast living
TO visit some houses in the Devon boondocks in the 1970s was to be in Ireland with 70% of the rain and more cider. Hidden in deep folds in the landscape were families who seemed to share many of the bucolic eccentricities of the Anglo-Irish ascendancy, unconcerned by tumbling masonry or leaking roofs. It was there that I enjoyed some of the most carefree times of my youth with Robin Grant-Sturgis, one of life's great characters and a man who has prematurely joined the Turf Club after living his allotted span to the maximum on Southern Comfort and untipped Senior Service. He did a 'proper job', as they say in those parts.
2 min |
June 25, 2025
Country Life UK
De la panza sale la danza
In the land of jamón, tapas, gazpacho and flamenco, Spanish cuisine—studded with its superlative seafood—fuels the furnace within, declares Tom Parker Bowles
4 min |
June 25, 2025
Country Life UK
Secret society
Once a quiet fishing village west of Lisbon, Cascais became an unlikely hive of activity during the Second World War, attracting regal refugees and intelligence operatives in equal measure. Russell Higham investigates its enduring glamour-and its connection to Casino Royale
5 min |
June 25, 2025
Country Life UK
The legacy Leslie Hore-Belisha and road safety
LESLIE HORE-BELISHA (1893–1957) will forever be remembered for instigating the ubiquitous Belisha beacon to mark a pedestrian road crossing, but his contribution as Minister for Transport in the 1930s was far greater than that. He took office in 1934, a time when members of the public were taking to the wheel in their kamikaze droves, often with more enthusiasm than skill.
1 min |
June 25, 2025
Country Life UK
A bite of the cherry
Three blooming properties in Kent showcase the original garden of England
5 min |
June 25, 2025
Country Life UK
The virtues of history
One of the Great Twelve City Livery Companies is celebrating the centenary of its Tudor-style Hall. John Goodall looks at the remarkable story of the building.
8 min |
June 25, 2025
Country Life UK
Earthly pleasures
Used in the construction of Florence's Duomo and favoured by 19th-century architects and designers, Impruneta clay is as solid as rock, finds Arabella Youens
2 min |
June 25, 2025
Country Life UK
My piece of Heaven
Eleven friends of COUNTRY LIFE pen a love letter to their small, yet oh so distinctive patches of the British Isles, from the big skies of the north Norfolk coast to the street art of Belfast, from the glens of Perthshire to the Exe estuary in Devon via the apple orchards of Herefordshire
10+ min |