Entertainment
Country Life UK
Like a duck to water
There's no denying the appeal of waterfront property, which now sells for some 51% more than its inland equivalent, finds Knight Frank. Annabel Dixon explores the shore
3 min |
July 09, 2025
Country Life UK
SAVE at 50
On the 50th anniversary of SAVE Britain's Heritage, Simon Jenkins, a trustee since 1975, looks back on the past half century of successes and failures
8 min |
July 09, 2025
Country Life UK
Heavy petal
A new book on botanical bas-reliefs—exquisite casts of plants—is a testament to one artist's relationship with the natural world. Catriona Gray meets her
3 min |
July 09, 2025
Country Life UK
In the footsteps of a doomed queen
THIS is a Scottish book, through and through.
3 min |
July 09, 2025
Country Life UK
À la recherche du temps perdu
LAST month, I revisited our old house in France. We lived on the Cherbourg Peninsula for 14 years and made a garden where we never ran out of space to plant more trees and shrubs.
3 min |
July 09, 2025
Country Life UK
Call it a knight
Armigers from the Tudor and Stuart era had their moment last month, with a seal ring linked to Royal Exchange founder Sir Thomas Gresham and a ruffler once owned by philanthropist Sir Edwin Rich causing a stir at auction
4 min |
July 09, 2025
Country Life UK
I've got chills, they're multiplying
Descended from the thirst-slakers that cooled Arabian nights, sorbets are a beguiling way to embrace the colours and flavours of the season, salivates
3 min |
July 09, 2025
Country Life UK
In God's acre we trust
Home to a veritable ‘Noah's Ark of species’, thanks to never being ploughed, sprayed or fertilised, our churchyards are a sacred haven for flora and fauna
5 min |
July 02, 2025
Country Life UK
Walk like an onion
EGYPTIAN walking onions sound almost too good to be true: from one plant, four harvests and, if you do it properly, you can pick them year after year after year.
3 min |
July 02, 2025
Country Life UK
Blazing a trail
The Pyrenees reserves its best treasures for walkers prepared to venture off the well-beaten trail, says Teresa Levonian Cole, on a solo holiday in Ribes de Freser
5 min |
July 02, 2025
Country Life UK
Stranger things
From topless staddle stones outperforming complete ones to two versions of the same desk selling on the same day 212 miles apart, bizarre occurrences are par for the course at contents sales
3 min |
July 02, 2025
Country Life UK
Lost, but not forgotten
The garden of Knowle House, East Sussex George Dillistone's original Arts-and-Crafts design has been lovingly restored and updated with contemporary planting, discovers George Plumptre
5 min |
July 02, 2025
Country Life UK
Family affairs
Three stellar estates in Wales and Staffordshire show how careful restoration is always worth the effort
6 min |
July 02, 2025
Country Life UK
Jnane Rumi, Marrakech, Morocco
THERE is a case to be made that Marrakech, Morocco, is the world capital of hotels. From boutique riads in the Medina to adobe estates in the desert, the variety and quality is probably unmatched anywhere.
1 min |
July 02, 2025
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 |