Entertainment
Country Life UK
When Britannia ruled the waves
ARTS Minister Sir Chris Bryant has placed an export bar on an extraordinary collection of British maritime charts, valued at $6 million, which is at risk of being sold abroad.
1 min |
August 20,2025
Country Life UK
Defender of the fish
I HAVE a friend who describes his past career as 'more of a verb than a noun'.
2 min |
August 20,2025
Country Life UK
One in a million
Three glorious West Country houses, including one that made property-price history, have come to the market
5 min |
August 13, 2025
Country Life UK
Colour outside the lines
Looking back at the past few months, an antique nest of drawers made to house artists’ pigments and a group exhibition of drawings spanning 500 years stand out as some of the most intriguing offerings of the summer
4 min |
August 13, 2025
Country Life UK
Don't be afraid of the dark
Why subtle lighting is about more than a dimmer switch
1 min |
August 13, 2025
Country Life UK
Heart Deco
Art Deco, with its exuberant passion for geometry, luxury and shiny chrome, cocooned troubled times in a layer of glitz. A century after the style gained its name, Gavin Plumley surveys one of the 20th century's most all- encompassing movements
6 min |
August 13, 2025
Country Life UK
It's good to stork
Long unseen on British shores, white stork chicks are hatching once again in the UK and a colony is now flourishing in West Sussex thanks to a pioneering restoration project, finds Jack Watkins
5 min |
August 13, 2025
Country Life UK
Back from the brink
The garden at Ballynure House, Co Wicklow, Ireland The home of Clare Reid Scott Where brambles once engulfed the historic gardens, colourful flower borders now hum with pollinators, writes Jane Powers Photographs by Jonathan Hession
4 min |
August 13, 2025
Country Life UK
Give me shelter
Verandahs and their Italian cousins, loggias, offer the delight of sitting outside, yet always protected from blazing sunshine and downpours. Arabella Youens finds houses with the answer to the British climate
2 min |
August 13, 2025
Country Life UK
Bring me sunshine
Powerfully garlicky and profoundly convivial, Le Grand Aïoli is pure Provence on a happy plate, says Tom Parker Bowles of this ‘joyous circus’ of vegetables, eggs, shellfish, charcuterie, chicken and salt cod
2 min |
August 13, 2025
Country Life UK
Sarnia-Cherie
The only British territories to endure Nazi occupation, the Channel Islands became a symbol of stoic resilience, says Adam Hay-Nicholls, as he celebrates the 80th anniversary of Guernsey's liberation
5 min |
August 13, 2025
Country Life UK
Great Dixter revisited
An enduring inspiration: the Great Dixter gardens still set the standard after 100 years
3 min |
August 13, 2025
Country Life UK
Winning moves
From a contemporary waterside retreat to a supremely elegant Georgian townhouse, Holly Kirkwood selects the finest properties currently for sale across Guernsey
3 min |
August 13, 2025
Country Life UK
‘In Guernsey, art is part of the conversation’
Inspiration is never far away in an enchanting place that has called to Renoir, Victor Hugo and a host of other creative people, finds Russell Higham
4 min |
August 13, 2025
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 |