Country Life

Published by TI Media Limited Country Life, the quintessential English magazine, is undoubtedly one of the biggest and instantly recognisable brands in the UK today. It has a unique core mix of contemporary country-related editorial and top end property advertising. Editorially, the magazine comments in-depth on a wide variety of subjects, such as architecture, the arts, gardens and gardening, travel, the countryside, field-sports and wildlife. With renowned columnists and superb photography Country Life delivers the very best of British life every week.

Ms Lauren Rose-Smith • Lauren is content director (print) and editor of Tesco magazine. She is the daughter of Brian Rose-Smith of Norwich, Norfolk, and Fran Rose-Smith of King’s Lynn, Norfolk, and is engaged to Andrew Shephard, whom she will marry in Italy next year.

On the right track

Country Life

Town & Country

Town & Country Notebook

Letters to the Editor

Illiberal Britain

Athena • Cultural Crusader

My favourite painting Sir Stephen Hough

A glimpse of the sublime • The redecoration of a drawing room offers a fascinating insight into the aesthetic preoccupations of Grand Tourism in the mid 18th century, as John Goodall explains

The legacy Ralph Allen and Bath

An officer and a gentleman • Once so popular they were labelled the ‘English terrier’, numbers of smooth fox terriers have dwindled to worrying levels. Yet these smart and charming little dogs could rival the labrador if better known, devotees tell Flora Watkins

You belong with me • Drawing on his experiences as a troubled schoolboy, a burnt-out BBC screenwriter and an ‘awkward’ parish priest, the Revd Colin Heber-Percy reflects on the value of being lost–and found–in the forest of life

Knock on wood • Our beloved, bark-drumming woodpeckers are guardians of ancient broad-leaved woodlands, busy ecosystem engineers and keen consumers of ant porridge, discovers Vicky Liddell

What goes up, must come down • The welcome sight of a Cumbrian dry-stone wall on a murky February day offers John Lewis-Stempel solace, as he navigates the spooling, rocky path down from one of the Lake District’s cloud-capped peaks

There’s gold in them thar schools • Some of the most significant treasures and curiosities in British history, from Henry VII’s golden cope to Alan Turing’s reports, lie not in museums or galleries, but, unexpectedly, within independent schools, reveals Madeleine Silver

Wedding Notebook

A few of my favourite things • The Sunday Times columnist regularly sells out the beauty products she reviews. An author of five novels–including Darling, a retelling of Nancy Mitford’s The Pursuit of Love–India Knight also has a Substack newsletter, Home, hitting the inboxes of cultured folk globally. She lives in Suffolk with her partner and three terriers.

Wedding belles • Herald luck on your wedding day with some beautiful items to cherish forever

Little gems • A small space can be just as appealing as a large one. All that’s required is some decorating derring-do, discovers Arabella Youens

A pocket of Middle England • Idyllic Midlands counties appear to have been left alone by the hordes–all the better for those who live there

Lights, camera, action! • Renting your house out for filming can be fun, occasionally alarming, a good revenue stream and might even increase its value, finds Annabel Dixon

A brush with snowdrops • Tilly Ware meets the artist and galanthophile John Morley in his Suffolk garden, home to the oldest snowdrop nursery in the country

The electric limeade acid test

Bay leaves

Bitter together • Peppery, rocket-like and best eaten raw, this warming winter weed adds a decorative flourish to any humble...