Entertainment
Country Life UK
Plenty to grouse about
THERE were high hopes of a vintage year for grouse shooting: warm, dry conditions and the abundance of fly life for chicks (Town & Country, July 23) left many thinking that this Glorious Twelfth was going to be glorious indeed. However, it now looks as if the 2025 season will be only moderately better than 2024 and, in some cases, worse. The GWCT's Cathy Fletcher suggests, based on the charity's summer grouse counts, that this will be a 'building year'. Since 1990, the average rate of loss of adult grouse on moors has been 24%, but this year in northern England, a stronghold for the native gamebird, it was 36%.
1 min |
August 13, 2025
Country Life UK
University challenge
EW A-level students need to be reminded that results are released this week. Nor will television presenter Jeremy Clarkson, who cheerfully consoles the disappointed by flagging the fact that despite a 'C' and two 'U's at A level, he's really done rather well.
1 min |
August 13, 2025
Country Life UK
The not-so-cowardly lion
It may appear lethargic, but no one could argue with the hunting prowess of the common buzzard when it transforms into a surging missile intent on an unsuspecting victim
3 min |
August 13, 2025
Country Life UK
Will weedkiller be rounded up?
SWATHES of the countryside will soon be turning what many consider to be an unpleasant shade of orange, the result of spraying fields with glyphosate (Roundup) to kill weeds before drilling an autumn crop. However, farmers may have to think again about using this effective, but controversial herbicide following a recent study. Researchers at the Ramazzini Institute in Italy found that rats developed multiple types of cancerous tumours when exposed to currently permitted levels of glyphosate. The EU has asked for the raw data so it can decide if dosage rates should be changed; current UK regulations expire in December 2026.
1 min |
August 13, 2025
Country Life UK
Growing pains
THIRTY-TWO is a funny age. You are no longer kicking about trying to find your way in the world—you should probably be beyond that stage—yet you're hardly at the height of your powers. Many of my friends have bought their first house, but don't have children yet. We are in that relatively happy period where we can still go to the pub on a Tuesday night or head out to stalk roe deer when the mood takes us. Yet, for all that, there is a growing sense that we should be taking our professional lives seriously. All of sudden, things have become more expensive. Pals who were fishing gillies or were making cider now seem to be heading to the City or becoming barristers.
2 min |
August 13, 2025
Country Life UK
The present is a foreign countryside
WHAT, then, is different about being a countryman? Why do we know we are not the same as our urban and suburban friends? We could list lots of small things that mark that difference, but, fundamentally, it is that the outdoors is at the heart of our lives.
2 min |
August 13, 2025
Country Life UK
Time to join the fan club
As summer temperatures continue to soar, fans—long considered a fashion anachronism—are back in the style spotlight, says Jack Watkins
5 min |
August 13, 2025
Country Life UK
Get the scoop
With its glorious weather, endless beaches and world- famous dairy farms, it's no wonder that Guernsey is an ice-cream hotspot, finds Emma Hughes
3 min |
August 13, 2025
Country Life UK
For the love of Eleanor
A grief-stricken Edward I built a legacy to love across the middle of England in memory of his adored Queen Consort, marked by 12 Eleanor Crosses. The historian Alice Loxton walks in the footsteps of the epic funerary procession from Lincoln to London
6 min |
August 13, 2025
Country Life UK
‘Flashes of rage, terror, elation, relief and amazement’
On the 80th anniversary of victory over Japan, Charles Harris looks back at the 14th Army’s extraordinary campaign and the remarkable characters who shaped it
5 min |
August 13, 2025
Country Life UK
The legacy Robert Bakewell and livestock breeding
THE crowds flocking to the open days organised by the innovative Leicestershire farmer Robert Bakewell (1725-95) at his Dishley Grange, the high prices his beasts commanded, his portentous, secretive air (he had one ram no one was allowed to see) and the cannily promoted image of a food producer for the working class—fuelled what the papers called the 'Dishley craze'. 'Is it not amazing that this extraordinary genius should be able to electrify so many people with the same or nearly the same degree of enthusiasm,' wrote George Culley, a former pupil, in 1784.
1 min |
August 13, 2025
Country Life UK
The designer's room
For this kitchen on the Sussex coast, Isabella Worsley dispensed with a classic seaside palette and turned to rich colours and natural textures
1 min |
August 13, 2025
Country Life UK
My favourite painting Tim Robinson
Pope Innocent X by Diego Velázquez
1 min |
August 13, 2025
Country Life UK
The road well travelled
The Yellow Boy by Joshua Reynolds saw multiple peregrinations, passing even through (Romanian) royal hands for a time, before returning to London in 1981. It now headlines a selling exhibition of magnificent 18th- to 20th-century works
4 min |
August 06, 2025
Country Life UK
Not mush-room for error
With poisonous fungi hitting the headlines in recent weeks, John Wright introduces Britain's most deadly species and advises on how best to avoid eating them in the first place
6 min |
August 06, 2025
Country Life UK
Sporting chances
One of the oldest squash courts in the country could tempt buyers in Surrey, as Thames river frontage and Sussex sea views offer havens for water babies
5 min |
August 06, 2025
Country Life UK
London Life
Your indispensable guide to the capital
1 min |
August 06, 2025
Country Life UK
How to attract a new generation
Young parents are leaving the city earlier than in previous years, according to new research. Annabel Dixon finds out what they're looking for
2 min |
August 06, 2025
Country Life UK
Leaders of the pack
Enhancing employee morale and increasing productivity is no longer reliant on outdated management techniques—if you want to get ahead, bring your dog to the office, advocates Sarah Todd
6 min |
August 06, 2025
Country Life UK
The legacy Romek Marber and the Marber Grid
WITH their bold, linear look and uncompromising use of colour, Penguin's 1960s paperbacks encapsulated the spirit of Swinging London and changed book design forever.
1 min |
August 06, 2025
Country Life UK
Istria on a plate
Blessed with perfect growing conditions and a proud culinary tradition, Croatia's abundant north-western peninsula promises rich pickings for gastronomes
5 min |
August 06, 2025
Country Life UK
The glories of Glenarm
The gardens at Glenarm Castle, Co Antrim, Northern Ireland The home of Randal and Aurora McDonnell
5 min |
August 06, 2025
Country Life UK
Eat up your lilies
OF all the edible flowers rightly championed, I think daylilies receive too little appreciation. In both beauty and culinary pleasure, they really are hard to equal. Daylilies are not true lilies, but belong to the genus Hemerocallis—from the Greek hemera, meaning day, and kallos, meaning beauty —which hints at the flowers' fleeting nature. Typically opening at first light, each flower cheers the garden until the evening, when it fades rapidly. At first, I had trouble with the idea of robbing the garden of something so beautiful, but picking them late in the day before the decline sets in means I get to enjoy them twice: outside and in the kitchen. Happily, flowers are typically produced over a number of weeks, so you can expect more beauty to replace that which has gone.
2 min |
August 06, 2025
Country Life UK
Emancipation and renewal
Built between 1758 and 1764, this Georgian house was brilliantly reinvented in the 1960s. It also possesses an opulent chapel, a triumphalist product of Catholic Emancipation.
8 min |
August 06, 2025
Country Life UK
The grill seekers
Going back to 'fire school' to learn how to barbecue better might conjure images of scorched sausages cooked over a fast and furious heat. However, as Paula Minchin discovers, long and slow is best
7 min |
August 06, 2025
Country Life UK
Don't rub people up the wrong way
I BLAME Gunther, the large, German masseur who brought an end to the idea of a couples massage in my married life. This was not an enormous hardship, of course, and I cannot claim either my life, or my marriage, has been significantly worse off for the absence of a side-by-side rub down, but it has taken a while to lay Gunther's ghost to rest.
2 min |
August 06, 2025
Country Life UK
Splendido, a Belmond hotel
THE funny thing about Liguria, a region in northwestern Italy, is that few people could point it out on a map—unless you told them that it's where the Splendido is. The hotel, part of Belmond, treads a careful line, attracting everyone—the glitterati, the self-made man, seasoned jet-setters, the British upper crust—and alienating no one. The destination, Portofino specifically, is postcard perfect and still less crowded than other Italian hotspots, such as Lake Como and the Amalfi Coast. The landscape, all stately villas and private yachts, is a proper Mediterranean mirage, flecked by pines, holm oaks and chestnut trees, roses, jasmine and bougainvillea. If we're getting biblical here, then Portofino is surely Italy's answer to the Garden of Eden.
1 min |
August 06, 2025
Country Life UK
Reading alfresco
COUNTRY LIFE staff pick where in London they most enjoy getting lost in the written word
5 min |
August 06, 2025
Country Life UK
The designer's room
The owners of a Georgian house in Somerset asked Nicola Harding to strike a balance between romantic and informal in the design of their principal bedroom
1 min |
August 06, 2025
Country Life UK
The artists' artist
So close was JeanFrançois Millet to the humble peasants he painted that he wore clogs and coarse clothing. He was steeped in nostalgia, yet inspired avant-garde artists from van Gogh to Salvador Dalí, finds Mary Miers
6 min |