Entertainment
Country Life UK
Burning topic causes heated debate
RURAL bodies have reacted with dismay to the announcement last week by Defra that the ban on controlled burning will be extended from covering 222,000 hectares (548,574 acres) of deep peat to 676,628 hectares (1,671,984 acres). This comes after a summer of wildfires in moorland areas.
1 min |
September 17, 2025
Country Life UK
Slightly foxed
John Hoyland never misses a chance to scour a second-hand bookshop for old gardening books, not only for advice, but for a glimpse into past gardening lives
4 min |
September 24, 2025
Country Life UK
Out of Africa
A chance encounter with a huge, shimmering panel led art dealer John Martin to discover Nigerian sculptor Asiru Olatunde, a man who also owed his artistic career to an accidental find
3 min |
September 24, 2025
Country Life UK
Life in the sloe lane
If you know where to look and what to do with it, profound pleasure can be gleaned from foraging autumn's hedgerow bounty
5 min |
September 24, 2025
Country Life UK
Town Mouse
Keeping bad company
1 min |
September 24, 2025
Country Life UK
Let battle commence
A sturdy bonsai freshwater swashbuckler, the spiny stickleback is often the first fish we catch as children
3 min |
September 24, 2025
Country Life UK
Dream houses of the West
These four glorious properties need only a modicum of tender loving care and offer great rewards to the far-sighted
7 min |
September 24, 2025
Country Life UK
Timeless elegance
Vintage Cartier and Rolex watches from Susannah Lovis Jewellers are symbols of refined taste, enduring design and exceptional quality
3 min |
September 24, 2025
Country Life UK
My favourite painting Leslie MacLeod Miller
Adelina Patti by Franz Xaver Winterhalter
2 min |
September 24, 2025
Country Life UK
Hot lips and the blue angels
THERE comes a point in the long summer holidays when we let out a huge sigh and reach for the bulb catalogues. Not this year. If, like us, you find yourself in need of flower power right to the end for some reason—a wedding, perhaps—your tribulations will have been exacerbated hugely by this no-mow, cloudless summer.
3 min |
September 24, 2025
Country Life UK
Act now for Man's best friends
THE ingenuity of crooks is often a source of wonder.
2 min |
September 24, 2025
Country Life UK
A stitch in time
From Bertie Wooster's dressing gown to Mr Darcy's shirt, Deborah Nicholls-Lee unpicks the art of period costume at world-famous historical costumier Cosprop
5 min |
September 24, 2025
Country Life UK
Plum and hazelnut galette with plaited pastry edge
Kitchen garden cook Plums
1 min |
September 24, 2025
Country Life UK
Mackmurdo's paradise is restored
GREAT RUFFINS GARDEN in Wickham Bishops, Essex, which is privately owned, has just been awarded Grade II listing by Historic England. It is the only surviving landscape created by the Arts-and-Crafts architect, designer and artist Arthur Heygate Mackmurdo (1851–1942), who built the Grade II*-listed house in about 1903–04. The original plan had been for him and his wife, Eliza, to make Great Ruffins their home, but, by 1920, the property had been sold and the Mackmurdos were living in a nearby cottage.
1 min |
September 24, 2025
Country Life UK
The long and short of it
From traditional stone-built longhouses to picture-perfect thatched cottages, Arabella Youens finds a tempting selection of properties in beautiful West Country locations
2 min |
September 24, 2025
Country Life UK
Facelift for the library of Rylands
A $7.6 MILLION refurbishment of John Rylands Library in Manchester has been completed in its 125th anniversary year.
1 min |
September 24, 2025
Country Life UK
The roads less travelled
Roger Morgan-Grenville celebrates the shapeshifting glories of Britain's sea paths, evanescent byways revealed by the tides
6 min |
September 24, 2025
Country Life UK
A Regency prospect
Belmont House, Kent The property of The Harris (Belmont) Trust
8 min |
September 24, 2025
Country Life UK
Top drawer
A brass-inlaid rosewood table, three of four Seasons bursting with colour and a rare pair of powder-blue vases should draw every eye at the forthcoming Decorative Art Fair in London
3 min |
September 24, 2025
Country Life UK
If music be the food of love
MUSIC takes centre stage at the Foundling Museum from next week, with a new exhibition exploring Georg Frideric Handel's Hallelujah! chorus.
1 min |
September 24, 2025
Country Life UK
Plum advice
Charles Quest-Ritson has grown more than 20 types of plum, gage, mirabelle and damson over the years. Here, he recommends some of the finest
5 min |
September 24, 2025
Country Life UK
Country Mouse
Welcome to autumn
1 min |
September 24, 2025
Country Life UK
A break from reality
Bryher in the Isles of Scilly is a place to wander in solitude with wildlife and the wide expanse of the Atlantic as your only companions
2 min |
September 24, 2025
Country Life UK
Friends at art
THE creative friendship of the Victorian artist-illustrators Kate Greenaway and Helen Allingham is the subject of a new exhibition opening next week.
1 min |
September 24, 2025
Country Life UK
Pick up a penguin
THE publishing company Penguin, which is celebrating its 90th anniversary, has produced a new book—about its mascot bird.
1 min |
September 24, 2025
Country Life UK
Time is running out on TB target
SEVEN years is a very long time in politics. In 2018, Michael Gove was Defra Secretary and he commissioned a review of Britain's bovine TB (bTB) strategy.
2 min |
September 24, 2025
Country Life UK
It's good to talk
IN vain have I struggled. It will not do. My feelings will not be repressed. You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you,' declared Mr Darcy to Elizabeth Bennet in Pride and Prejudice. Scroll along two centuries and this sentiment might have been distilled to a row of love hearts in a text message.
2 min |
September 24, 2025
Country Life UK
Cast in a royal mould
So vast is the array of sculpture in the Royal Collection that it took Jonathan Marsden, former director of the Royal Collection and Surveyor of the Queen's Works of Art from 2010-17, a quarter of a century to catalogue it all.
1 min |
September 24, 2025
Country Life UK
The gall of it!
Galls, which can range from the delicately beautiful to hideously unattractive bulbous growths, are among Nature's most intriguing phenomena, discovers Deborah Nicholls-Lee
6 min |
August 27, 2025
Country Life UK
What lies beneath
August has a reputation among followers of the natural world for being something of a non-event, but, with a sickle in his hand, John Lewis-Stempel is granted a glimpse of a magical underworld in a field of ripe wheat
4 min |