Entertainment
Country Life UK
Tails from the hedgerow
For 45 years, Jill Barklem's 'Brambly Hedge' series has been captivating young readers. Emily Allen explores her magical miniature world
3 min |
July 30, 2025
Country Life UK
An ode to our wildflowers
Decorating the land with their brilliant and varied hues, our native flora—which operate as clocks, calendars and Nature’s medicine cabinet—are simply blooming brilliant
5 min |
July 30, 2025
Country Life UK
Throw in the towelling
Terry towelling—whether it be clothing babies, adorning a poolside Bond or mopping tennis players' brows-altered domestic life forever
3 min |
July 30, 2025
Country Life UK
Table manners
Kitchen island or table? It's a little distinction that makes a big difference to the appearance and function of a kitchen or utility room
3 min |
July 30, 2025
Country Life UK
Frill seekers
Graceful and practical in equal measure, the parasol has a long and colourful history when it comes to creating shade. Deborah Nicholls-Lee takes cover
5 min |
July 30, 2025
Country Life UK
The legacy Revd W. V. Awdry and the 'Railway Series'
LYING in bed as a child, listening to steam trains climbing 1:100-gradient Box Hill in Wiltshire, Wilbert Vere Awdry imagined he could hear voices.
1 min |
July 30, 2025
Country Life UK
Nights in white satin
SUMMER came early this year, which means that the dog days will come sooner.
3 min |
July 30, 2025
Country Life UK
Don't hurry, be happy
The marsh harrier, with its effortlessly slow and floating signature manoeuvre, is so enjoying its UK comeback that it now stays with us all year round
3 min |
July 30, 2025
Country Life UK
Nothing ventured, nothing gained
These four glorious properties need only a modicum of tender loving care and offer great rewards to the far-sighted
5 min |
July 30, 2025
Country Life UK
Clever ways to count curlews
THE AI phenomenon has its detractors and disadvantages, but one—niche—area in which it is proving useful is that of curlew monitoring.
1 min |
July 30, 2025
Country Life UK
Country Mouse
THIS is our third summer living in a house with a thatched roof. According to local myth, fleeing Royalists hid their weapons there after the bloody Battle of Cheriton in 1644.
1 min |
July 30, 2025
Country Life UK
Upland farmers criticise binary approach
AT the Groundswell Festival in Suffolk earlier this month, Defra Secretary Steve Reed intimated that the Government's new land-use framework would involve taking some of the poorest land out of food production. This could mean paying upland farmers not to produce food, but to ‘make space for Nature’ instead, with more productive land being supported to increase output. Yorkshire Dales farmer and National Parks England chairman Neil Heseltine disagrees with this binary approach: ‘A lot of Nature doesn't want to live on the top of a hill,’ he observes. ‘Both lowland and upland farms can be beneficial for the environment and still produce food.’
1 min |
July 30, 2025
Country Life UK
As busy as a queen bee
Bee venom and beauty might make strange bedfellows, but, as Jane Wheatley discovers, they are a combination fit for a Queen
4 min |
July 30, 2025
Country Life UK
Watching paint dry
WHEN the children were smaller and we lived further down the valley, one of our more remote neighbours was a man who did experiments with perpetual motion.
2 min |
July 30, 2025
Country Life UK
Town Mouse
ONE of the pleasures of passing through Edinburgh by rail is that there is so much on offer within a 10-minute walk of Waverley Station.
1 min |
July 30, 2025
Country Life UK
Pavarotti sings again in Wales
WERN ISAF FARM, North Wales, usually a campsite with dog-walking fields in the Dee Valley, has been used as a canvas for a huge portrait of Luciano Pavarotti.
1 min |
July 30, 2025
Country Life UK
Reassuring in their magnificence
THERE is a long tradition of using architecture to instill confidence in the eye of the beholder.
2 min |
July 30, 2025
Country Life UK
Love actually
From Raphael and the mysterious Fornarina to Jan Steen with his flirtatious Margriet and Suzanne Valadon, who broke many hearts until she lost hers to a much younger man, Nick Trend explores five romances that made art history
7 min |
July 30, 2025
Country Life UK
Don’t tax good works
BRITAIN is one of the meanest of advanced countries when it comes to support for ancient buildings, particularly churches. This year, as France was celebrating the state's huge contribution to the rebuilding of Notre Dame, our Government was announcing a cut in help given to listed churches to pay for repairs. It beggars belief that the state lists buildings in order to protect them and then doesn't contribute one farthing to their upkeep.
2 min |
July 30, 2025
Country Life UK
All that glitters
A cut-crystal bed, with associated mirrors and throne, sparkled at auction earlier this month, but no glamour could beat the prize that was the Union Flag flown by HMS Spartiate at the Battle of Trafalgar
4 min |
July 30, 2025
Country Life UK
A whale of a tale
They've recently made headlines for interfering with boats, but intelligent, family-focused and remarkably long-lived orcas—better known as killer whales—contain multitudes
5 min |
July 30, 2025
Country Life UK
Queen of contradictions
ELEANOR of Aquitaine (1124–1204), Queen of France and later Queen of England, is undoubtedly one of the most celebrated women of the European Middle Ages.
3 min |
July 30, 2025
Country Life UK
Save the city cows
ONE of Europe's largest city farms is fighting for its future after lease-renewal negotiations with the London Borough of Tower Hamlets stalled.
1 min |
July 30, 2025
Country Life UK
Between the easel and the sea
On her first day at the Royal College of Art, in September 1922, fresher Helen Binyon noticed 'a good-looking young man, whose large dark eyes lit up with enthusiasm as he talked animatedly about Sussex'. That man was the artist Eric Ravilious, who, although born in Acton, London, was a child of Eastbourne by upbringing. Now, the Towner Collection there will honour his connection to East Sussex with a gallery devoted to his work.
1 min |
July 30, 2025
Country Life UK
'Horn versus corn' in land sales
FALLING cereal prices may be prompting an increase in sales of arable farmland, according to research by Savills.
1 min |
July 30, 2025
Country Life UK
Roaching the subject
The roach might not be a tasty catch, but this sound and sociable shoal fish is so adaptable it can thrive in all manner of less than desirable waterways
3 min |
July 30, 2025
Country Life UK
Charlotte Mullins comments on Portrait of George Frideric Handel
ACCORDING to the Bath Chronicle and Herald, the celebrated composer George Frideric Handel visited the spa town on three occasions: in 1730, 1749 and 1751. Although born in Germany, he spent much of his life in Britain, working at the courts of George I and II, as well as writing dozens of independent operas and oratorios.
1 min |
July 30, 2025
Country Life UK
Remains of the day
Buying a property that includes a ruin carries undoubted romance, but there are caveats, reminds Lucy Denton, who advises on the help at hand
3 min |
July 30, 2025
Country Life UK
The hare's breadth
HARES today, but hares gone tomorrow? Once again, there are calls for the introduction of a closed shooting season to save the brown hare from decline. Baroness Helic has introduced a private members’ bill and a petition on the same grounds is doing the rounds. The latter is organised by former political adviser Chloe Dalton, whose lock-down memoir Raising Hare, about her care for a leveret, has been a publishing success.
1 min |
July 30, 2025
Country Life UK
A new way of seeing
IT is a rare privilege for a gardening writer to have a new edition of a book published posthumously.
3 min |