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 Leah Wood • Leah is a Nature and landscape painter. She is the daughter of Ronnie Wood of Little Gaddesden, Hertfordshire, and Josephine Wood of Bugbrooke, Northamptonshire, and is married to Jack MacDonald, with whom she has two children.

Hug a tree

Country Life

Town & Country

Town & Country Notebook

Stuff & nonsense

Letters to the Editor

Put the F into Defra

Athena • Cultural Crusader

My favourite painting Elizabeth Shanks

Country-house treasures

A world without care • A summer picnic in 1743 prompted Frederick the Great to create a retreat for himself outside his capital at Berlin, as Aoife Caitríona Lau explains

Joseph Paxton and Crystal Palace

Autumn ablaze • With fears of a false autumn past, the long hot summer and early September rains are at last yielding the glorious reds, oranges and golds of fall

Texts in the city • Eccentric, awe-inspiring and a home-from-home for literary giants, the London Library is an institution like no other and anyone can join it. As it celebrates 180 years in St James’s Square, Emma Hughes steps inside

It’s in the greens • Ground yourself with earthy tones and floral motifs, suggests Amie Elizabeth White

Spill the beans • No longer considered bland, bleak sustenance, glorious beans, whether bottled, tinned or dried, have skipped into the hearts and pantries of the nation, enthuses Tom Parker Bowles

A labour of love • When antique dealer Will Green set out to create a kitchen that is both sympathetic to his historic home and suited to his young family, he used clay dug out of the ground below, distemper made from rabbit glue and 19th-century furniture to bring the space to life, as he tells Arabella Youens

Timeless good looks • Classic choices for today’s kitchens, selected by Amelia Thorpe

A cut above • The living is easy at two impeccably restored historic country estates, one visited by Henry James and Virginia Woolf, the other the birthplace of a flying ace downed by the Red Baron

Beauty within budget • A cottage overlooking the sea in Cornwall and a handsome Georgian townhouse in Lincolnshire are only two of the prime properties currently on the market for less than £1 million, finds Arabella Youens

Sow the seeds of summer now • Ursula Cholmeley recommends sowing sweet peas now for stronger plants that will better withstand the weather

On the hedge

Kitchen garden cook Pears

Holm is where the heart is • From ancient Greece to Norfolk, the story of one of England’s loveliest naturalised trees brims with antiquarian intrigue and sylvan charm, discovers Aeneas Dennison

The X factor • When he noticed an uncanny resemblance between John Singer Sargent’s painting of Virginie Gautreau and a Cecil Beaton portrait of Leslie Caron, Patrick Monahan called on the Hollywood Golden Age actress to investigate

A brush with power • Anne Boleyn dropped suggestive hints and Elizabeth I projected undying monarchy through her portraits: Tudor women knew how to use art to send a message, Philippa Gregory tells Carla Passino

Gently does it • A spell in a crumbling country house with snow on the billiard table...