Country Life

Country Life; architecture, gardens, countryside, property, the very best of British life.

Country Life1 min read
Miss Imogen Orr
Imogen is a figurative painter, specialising in landscapes and animals, who trained at the Florence Academy of Art, Italy, and was selected for the annual RBA Rising Stars exhibition. She is engaged to Charles Adcock, whom she will marry this month,
Country Life2 min read
The Power Of The Podcast
SOME readers may have been perplexed by the amount of coverage devoted to the behaviour of a man of whom they had never heard, who presented a daytime television programme they had never watched. Yet, however unfamiliar the cast of characters, the st
Country Life1 min read
Country Life
Editorial Editor-in-Chief Mark Hedges Editorial Enquiries Editor’s PA/Editorial Assistant Amie Elizabeth White 6102 Telephone numbers are prefixed by 0330 390 Emails are name.surname@futurenet.com Deputy EditorKate Green 4171 Managing & Features
Country Life11 min read
Town & Country
MUNSTEAD WOOD in Surrey, the house and garden created by Gertrude Jekyll as her own home from 1898 until her death in 1932, has been acquired by the National Trust (Athena, page 54). It had been in the hands of the Clark family for some 40 years, but
Country Life5 min read
Letters To The Editor
REGARDING the morality, or otherwise, of blue tits (‘When I am feeling blue’, May 17), an encounter in our garden may help explain the need for many offspring. Our attractive hemispheric bird box hung on our tree for a couple of years with no residen
Country Life4 min read
Town & Country Notebook
1) Who wrote The End of the Affair? 2) The word caprine refers to which animals? 3) Which English explorer was knighted by Elizabeth I, survived two spells in the Tower of London and was eventually beheaded in 1618? 4) The plumage of which bird helpe
Country Life3 min read
The Fun Of The Fair
IF there’s a day that stands beside Christmas and Easter for Agromenes’s family celebration, it’s the county agricultural show. We wouldn’t miss it for the world. From the Royal Cornwall to the Royal Highland and the Royal Welsh to the Lincolnshire,
Country Life2 min read
Munstead Wood Is Secured For The Nation
THE news that the National Trust has bought Munstead Wood in the Surrey Hills should—in Athena’s view—be greeted with rejoicing. Built by the young Edwin Lutyens for Gertrude Jekyll in 1896, Munstead Wood is a small, but outstandingly important house
Country Life1 min read
The Way We Were
A picturesque, but unidentified juxtaposition of a house and post mill. An ambiguous label suggests that the photograph was taken near Walberswick, Suffolk. Certainly, there are several post mills nearby. Perhaps a reader can identify the precise loc
Country Life2 min read
My Favourite Painting Joanne Ooi
Joanne Ooi is the founder of EA Festival, an annual East Anglia-based culture festival taking place this weekend, and EA Sustain I love this painting for its kinetic energy, the iconicity of José Parlá’s calligraphic “writing” and its urban patina,
Country Life4 min read
The Rub Of Time
TOWARDS the end of his life, Chekhov said that everything he read seemed to him ‘not short enough’. I know the feeling, and I’ll try to keep this short. When the Russian writer said that I don’t know—I heard it from Martin Amis who, when asked about
Country Life7 min read
Reduced To Splendour
MANY ancient houses of the Crown having been demolished, we have taken a liking to Audley End and purchased it from James, Earl of Suffolk, for £50,000.’ So wrote Charles II in a letter to his attorney general on April 17, 1669. The King was attracte
Country Life1 min readHorses
Native Breeds Suffolk Horse
THE noble Suffolk horse was recently highlighted in the 2023 Watchlist of the Rare Breeds Survival Trust (RBST) as being of conservation concern, with fewer calls on stallions to sire foals. The breed, also popularly known as the Suffolk Punch and a
Country Life6 min read
For King And County
THE long, slow curve of Norfolk’s coastline fades almost imperceptibly into the North Sea. It’s a mysterious, intoxicating landscape where low chalk downs, peppered with woods, fields and flint villages, merge into vast stretches of beach and marsh.
Country Life5 min read
The Pride Of The Peacock
WITH the imperious upturned head and rustling walk of an Edwardian dowager duchess, the peacock is the very emblem of elegant rural existence. The bird’s exotic radiance fits as reassuringly into a world of croquet lawns, terraces, topiary and ha-has
Country Life1 min read
Going Off On One
Meal for two at Petersham Nurseries, Richmond, three-course meal with appetisers and cocktails, Friday to Sunday, about £190 (https://petersham nurseries.giftpro.co.uk) Luxury match box with personalised lid, £185 and £5 per letter, Noble Macmillan (
Country Life1 min read
The Designer’s Room
ALTHOUGH this 17th-century house had been very well looked after by its previous owners, it had lost much of its character. ‘My job was to reconnect the house with its past and create a sense of place,’ says Nicola Harding. The project began with the
Country Life2 min read
The Living Is Easy
Neptune has collaborated with textile maker Christopher Farr to create an eye-catching new collection of outdoor furniture in its Carnival Celeste design that ranges in price from £145 for a cushion to £995 for a 3m parasol (01793 934011; www.neptune
Country Life7 min read
Treasures Of The East
TODAY’S COUNTRY LIFE sees the launch onto the open market, for the first time in its history, of Grade I-listed Wolterton Hall and its surrounding, 458-acre Wolterton Park estate near Itteringham, in north Norfolk’s picturesque Bure Valley, four mile
Country Life3 min read
Eastern Promises
When Sheila Kirk was driving down Pakenham Road, near Bury St Edmunds, she spotted something strange, but familiar—chimneys. But not just any chimneys, no, these were for sure chimneys in the vernacular of Philip Webb, one of the ‘fathers’ of the Art
Country Life2 min read
London Life
JUST as faces age, a few unwelcome lines were beginning to show on the National Portrait Gallery, so it was decided that a little bit of work was called for—although something more than a light nip and tuck. Three years and £35.5 million later, the r
Country Life6 min read
London Life Need To Know
Jeeves of Belgravia, 8–10, Pont Street, SW1 ONCE, at a Mayfair club, a server dropped a chicken masala over my shoulder and the upshot was a paid-for visit to Jeeves of Belgravia on Pont Street. The dry cleaner has held a Royal Warrant since 1980 and
Country Life5 min read
The End Of The Line?
THE current opposition to plans to erect a cantilevered, 16-storey tower over the concourse of Liverpool Street Station is the latest in a series of stand-offs across the decades to protect the best of London’s railway architecture. At the time of wr
Country Life5 min read
The Adam family
THE road to London runs through Rome. Or so it did for Robert Adam, who left his native Scotland (and a place in the family’s established, but regional practice) for a European Grand Tour that eventually propelled him to worldwide architectural glory
Country Life4 min read
Family Treasures
LUCY SKELLORN never intended to own a National Collection. ‘I had this idea you’d have to be a nursery or a big outfit,’ she remembers, ‘whereas this is just me and my garden’. Plant history hovered in the wings at her first gardening job at Langham
Country Life1 min read
Sing A Rainbow
The Tommy chair in Vintage Blue Stripe, £225, folds up into a backpack, from Daylesford (01608 731670; www.daylesford.com) The Pimlico Jazz lounge chair, £880, has a solid teak frame with a zingy all-weather weave seat and back, from Indian Ocean (02
Country Life4 min read
Sugar And Spice
I FIRST grew sweet cicely (Myrrhis odorata) thanks to my father-in-law: one mention that I’d recently read about it had him trowel in hand, lifting multiple self-seeded plants into pots of varying size for me to lighten his burden. I introduced him t
Country Life4 min read
For Whom The Harebell Tolls
POISED and elegant on slender stems, their delicate flowers blue as summer skies, harebells are ever a pleasure to encounter. They nod in meadows, but are equally happy on high hills and sand dunes, in poor, dry soil on chalky grasslands and acid hea
Country Life2 min read
Kitchen Garden Cook Strawberries
➤ Preheat your oven to 160˚C fan/180˚C/350˚F/gas mark 4 and grease two 20cm (8in) sandwich cake tins and add a parchment circle to the base of each. ➤ To make the syrup, bring the lemon juice and sugar to the boil in a small saucepan. Simmer gently f
Country Life2 min read
Borgo Santandrea, Amalfi, Italy
HOTELS can be made or broken by their breakfast offering, so you’ll all be relieved to hear that at Borgo Santandrea, I was well and truly made up. The buffet was bountiful, buttery scrambled eggs with sauteed vegetables and a DIY cannoli station bei
Country Life5 min read
God’s Country
IF you stand still in the centre of Villa ANM’s terrace—the infinity pool in front of you, Isle Planitis and its sole building, a squat stone lighthouse, in the distance—you’ll soon realise that you’re not alone. Your visitors arrive from the sea, th
Country Life4 min read
The Elixir Of Youth
I AM in Okinawa, a prefecture of 150 islands where the locals refuse to die. The archipelago, part of Japan and one of the so-called Blue Zones, regions in the world where people live longer than average, has a higher percentage of centenarians than
Country Life3 min read
A Golden Oldie
THERE has been a big birthday in the household. A milestone, some might call it, although the man in question would prefer to see it merely as a number. The occasion called for some sort of celebration, but the instructions were strict. No hullabaloo
Country Life5 min read
A Breath Of Fresh Air
THE wind is whispering in the pine trees that loom over Thorington Theatre. The stage and seating, built by hand in these woods a few miles from Southwold on the Suffolk coast, are empty, save for a scattering of fallen leaves. In six weeks’ time, ho
Country Life4 min read
Remembering The Queen Of The King’s Road
IF not yet swinging in the early 1960s, the eastern stretches of the King’s Road in Chelsea were at least beginning to twitch. Soon they would be colonised by affluent young couples in weekend uniform of denims and lined by antique indoor markets and
Country Life6 min read
Spot The Real Locals
Rebecca Smith (William Collins, £18.99) THE author, you’d say, was brought up posh, in a big house on a country estate, running free through the rhododendron groves, sailing on Windermere from a private beach, surrounded by carefully tended woods and
Country Life2 min read
Bridge
HERE are a couple of random Six Spade slams, with the aim being to increase your odds of success. On our first, there is a 100% line once you discover West has (at most) two Hearts. As declarer, you win the Knave of Diamonds opening lead (West put of
Country Life2 min read
Crossword
A prize of £25 in book tokens will be awarded for the first correct solution opened. Solutions must reach Crossword No 4783, Country Life, 121–141 Westbourne Terrace, Paddington, London, W2 6JR, by Tuesday, June 13. UK entrants only ACROSS1 Dead loss
Country Life3 min read
In Search Of Bare Facts
SOME years ago, on a partridge day, I met a very nice and very successful businessman who had made the mistake of sending a photograph of himself, in a state of undress, to a young tabloid journalist posing as an admirer. The topic came up in a round
Country Life1 min read
Tottering-by-gently
Visit Tottering-By-Gently on our website: www.countrylife.co.uk/tottering ■

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