Lifestyle
Country Life UK
Fifty shades of tartan
Rupert Campbell-Black rides again as the Duke of Inchtyra, impoverished laird of rock and bog'
2 min |
December 10, 2025 ( Double Issue )
Country Life UK
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 min |
December 10, 2025 ( Double Issue )
Country Life UK
Very fetching
How might Hermès dress a corgi? What unites a dalmatian and Dior? Agnes Stamp meets the haute dogs
1 min |
December 10, 2025 ( Double Issue )
Country Life UK
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 min |
December 10, 2025 ( Double Issue )
Country Life UK
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 min |
December 10, 2025 ( Double Issue )
Country Life UK
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 min |
December 10, 2025 ( Double Issue )
Country Life UK
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 min |
December 10, 2025 ( Double Issue )
Country Life UK
Rubies for Christmas
Its twinkling seeds bejewel festive feasts, but there's much more to the pomegranate than meets the eye
5 min |
December 10, 2025 ( Double Issue )
Country Life UK
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+ min |
December 10, 2025 ( Double Issue )
Country Life UK
My favourite painting Dame Sarah Mullally
Virtues of Unity by Halima Cassell
1 min |
December 10, 2025 ( Double Issue )
Country Life UK
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 min |
December 10, 2025 ( Double Issue )
Country Life UK
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 min |
December 10, 2025 ( Double Issue )
Country Life UK
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 min |
December 10, 2025 ( Double Issue )
Country Life UK
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 min |
December 10, 2025 ( Double Issue )
Country Life UK
The best books of the year
COUNTRY LIFE reviewers reveal the works that impressed and absorbed them in 2025
10 min |
December 10, 2025 ( Double Issue )
Country Life UK
The legacy Sir John Betjeman and Christmas
Who was Joan Hunter Dunn?
2 min |
December 10, 2025 ( Double Issue )
Country Life UK
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 min |
December 10, 2025 ( Double Issue )
Country Life UK
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 min |
December 10, 2025 ( Double Issue )
Country Life UK
How to find your interior-design DNA
Complete our quiz to uncover the essence of your personal style, urges Giles Kime
5 min |
December 10, 2025 ( Double Issue )
Country Life UK
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 min |
December 10, 2025 ( Double Issue )
Country Life UK
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 min |
December 10, 2025 ( Double Issue )
Country Life UK
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 min |
December 10, 2025 ( Double Issue )
Country Life UK
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 min |
December 10, 2025 ( Double Issue )
Country Life UK
Brussels sprout and potato gröstl with pancetta and fried eggs
Kitchen garden cook Brussels sprouts
1 min |
December 10, 2025 ( Double Issue )
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 |