Entertainment
Country Life UK
Hedge of eternity
As old as husbandry hedges may be, but that doesn't mean they cannot be beautiful, too. Charles Quest-Ritson considers the many options,
5 min |
February 21, 2024
Country Life UK
A seed of an idea
There is a lot more to successful wildflower propagation than scattering a packet and hoping for the best, discovers Tilly Ware, as she visits the UK’s biggest wild-seed producer
3 min |
February 21, 2024
Country Life UK
A tower of thorns
Made with wind, sea and thorns on the wild west coast of Scotland, Blackthorn Salt brings surprising health benefits, as well as being a unique example of sustainable craftsmanship, says Ben Lerwill
3 min |
February 21, 2024
Country Life UK
Love and marriage
Marital relations are the central theme in these three plays. A real-life couple put on bravura performances, but an Austen adaptation misses
4 min |
February 21, 2024
Country Life UK
When West met East
The Arts flourished in the Ottoman Empire during the 16th century and their influence reached across space and time to Tudor and Victorian England
3 min |
February 21, 2024
Country Life UK
All in a life's work
Shropshire lads supreme and joined-up thinking in Oxfordshire
4 min |
February 21, 2024
Country Life UK
Where be dragons?
Lucien de Guise finds the answer in the original source of Hic sunt dracones ('Here be dragons'): a small copper globe of about 1510. The location is East Asia, where the dragon is still most active... as it is, of course, in Wales
5 min |
February 21, 2024
Country Life UK
On a wig and a prayer
Like marmalade on toast, saying sorry and the Shipping Forecast, there are few things more typically British than the courtroom wig, says Agnes Stamp
3 min |
February 21, 2024
Country Life UK
Follow your art
In a heist with a happy ending, a stolen Lavery oil made its way back to Stonyhurst College, Lancashire, where it now inspires headmaster John Browne,as Carla Passino discovers
2 min |
February 21, 2024
Country Life UK
Man of the world
Sir John Lavery is best known as a Society portraitist, but he was also a plein-air painter of modern life who moved easily between continents, painting as he went. Mary Miers follows his peregrinations
6 min |
February 21, 2024
Country Life UK
Blooming marvellous
From Duccio, who sneaked a vase of lilies into his depiction of the Annunciation, to Georgia O’Keeffe, who plunged viewers straight into the heart of her poppies, Michael Prodger explores how flowers have inspired artists across the centuries
7 min |
February 21, 2024
Country Life UK
Brothers in art
IN October 2022, the museum and former home of the celebrated Victorian artist Frederic, Lord Leighton reopened after an award-winning redevelopment.
8 min |
February 21, 2024
Country Life UK
All in a day's work
Duck dating, snowdrop splitting, welcoming avian visitors and manning the barricades against an unwanted national park
3 min |
February 21, 2024
Country Life UK
Lighting the way
LAST week’s announcement by Arts and Heritage Minister Lord Parkinson that four historic gas lamps on Russell Street, WC2, have been granted listed status is seen as a good omen by lobby group The London Gasketeers.
2 min |
February 21, 2024
Country Life UK
Love in the time of Austen
FOLLOWING on the dainty heels of Hilary Davidson’s Jane Austen’s Wardrobe (Books, September 6, 2023) and with a canny Valentine’s Day publication date, comes another stance on the Austen age. As the writer acknowledges in the preface, all authors of such social histories owe a debt to Lawrence Stone’s The Family, Sex and Marriage in England, 1500–1800, published in 1977.
3 min |
February 14, 2024
Country Life UK
The stuff of legends
The late Maurice 'Dick' Turpin, a celebrated antiques dealer and largerthan-life character, had wide-ranging interests, from fine furniture to Blue John, revealed in one of Sworders' final sales of his London home's contents
3 min |
February 14, 2024
Country Life UK
More than a pretty face
John Singer Sargent shot to fame for his Society portraits, but he was as adept in other genres and excelled at watercolor, often capturing 'off-duty' records of his many trips and travelling companions
5 min |
February 14, 2024
Country Life UK
Root planner
I HAVE a house plant that will be 50 years old in April. We used to call it Setcreasea purpurea—in fact we still do— but the RHS tells us that we should use the older name of Tradescantia pallida ‘Purpurea’, which is almost as grim as its common name of purple spiderwort.
3 min |
February 14, 2024
Country Life UK
Grand tour
History lives on at these fine country houses in the North of England
3 min |
February 14, 2024
Country Life UK
Family affairs
The comings and goings of various generations and owners make these houses all the more fascinating
5 min |
February 14, 2024
Country Life UK
Interiors
Louise Bradley transformed the rear of her Chelsea home with a calming, pared-back garden room
1 min |
February 14, 2024
Country Life UK
In the hat of the moment
The hat was once as essential for leaving the house as a pair of trousers, but the sight of a dapper gent sporting one is now all too rare
6 min |
February 14, 2024
Country Life UK
Taking the rough with the smooth
With the initiative to rescue sheep and the daring to question its master, the rough collie not only lives up to its heroic reputation, but is always right
6 min |
February 14, 2024
Country Life UK
Thoroughly good eggs
Tom Parker Bowles meets the mother-and-daughter connoisseurs who supply ethically farmed caviar to the Crown
3 min |
February 14, 2024
Country Life UK
The romance of the rose
Generations have sought that unattainable mystical creature, the perfect rose: shapely, dark red and sweetly scented. What is it about this flower that holds us so in thrall,
6 min |
February 14, 2024
Country Life UK
A Georgian reinvention
The ingenious integration of the polite and service rooms of a handsome 1790s villa has created a modern family home, as Jeremy Musson discovers
8 min |
February 14, 2024
Country Life UK
Let's stick together
COMMUNITY-OWNED businesses are on the up, says the Plunkett Foundation-a national charity that helps these types of initiatives. Of particular note are community pubs, which increased by 10% in 2022, against a backdrop of widespread closures; some 8,000 pubs, amounting to 15%, closed between 2012 and 2022.
1 min |
February 14, 2024
Country Life UK
Park that thought
LAST month, opposition to the proposed creation of new national parks in Scotland brought some 110 farmers, crofters and other stakeholders to the Isle of Skye for a summit chaired by Alasdair Macnab, vice-president of NFU Scotland.
1 min |
February 14, 2024
Country Life UK
Surf and turf
The jaguar is the jewel in Belize’s conservation efforts, but they’re notoriously elusive, discovers Nigel Tisdall, on a journey to find them from rainforest to reef
5 min |
February 07, 2024
Country Life UK
On the strait and narrow
Istanbul's Bosphorus Strait is one of the world's most evocative and significant waterways in a constant state of flux, says Catherine Fairweather, who journeys upriver to find out what's occurring on the European and too-often-overlooked Asian banks
5 min |