Country Life

Published by Time Inc. (UK) Ltd 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.

Miss Fleur Elizabeth Meston • Fleur Elizabeth works in public affairs for a Westminster-based charity and is also a writer, political commentator and host of the Bombshells podcast. She is the daughter of Ian and Anita Meston of Durham and is engaged to John Power, whom she will marry at Lumley Castle, Chester-le-Street, Co Durham, in July.

Give me land

Country Life

Follow the yellow brick road

Town & Country Notebook

Letters to the Editor

Trade winds blow one way

Athena • Cultural Crusader

My favourite painting Dr Ximena Fuentes Torrijo

Power games and the battle for beauty • The Government’s plan to cover the countryside in ugly pylons with seemingly no regard for aesthetics must be vigorously challenged

A sense of delight • The process of stitching together the architectural fabric of a Scottish estate has created an outstanding group of new and restored buildings, as John Goodall explains

The legacy • Gilbert White and ecology

Mad as a box of frogs • With genes that bear an uncanny resemblance to our own, our amphibious frog friends have aided medical advances and captivated many cultures with their mystical powers, discovers Ian Morton

Snakes and snails and puppy-dog tales • Two kindred spirits made it their lives’ work to collect ‘the smallest great poems of the world’s literature’, preserving for children the nursery rhymes, games and fairy tales no longer handed down by their mothers, says Matthew Dennison

The ghost of golden daffodils • The flower remains the national emblem of Wales, but how many today are aware of the true Welsh or Tenby daffodil, asks David Jones

Working it out • Exercise equipment has been taken up a notch, with designs now so elegant you won’t want to put them down, says Hetty Lintell

The designer’s room • Louise Bradley designed a drawing room that makes the most of its spectacular outlook

New looks for a new season • Favourite finds at spring’s unmissable interiors event, selected by Amelia Thorpe

Kentish variety • Renovations, showjumping and archbishops lend character to two period properties

Brave new world • A handful of stylish new-builds brings fresh perspective to the market

Shaping the view • A Modernist garden was exactly the right choice for this newly converted agricultural building, writes Tiffany Daneff

The moment of gratification

Kitchen garden cook • Main-crop potatoes

Play it by ear • The gelatinous texture of this common fungus may not be to everyone’s taste, but its rare ability to reconstitute itself makes it a clever pantry staple, says John Wright

The star who burned too bright • Thomas Girtin was, with Turner, the artist that earned watercolours the title of paintings and was poised to become one of the Georgian era’s greatest landscape painters when his life was cut tragically short

The lure of Venice • Vedute, the kaleidoscopic views of the maritime republic made popular by Canaletto, so enchanted the British that they not only collected them in large numbers, but soon began painting their own shimmering visions of the city, reveals Matthew Dennison

Put it in print • Masterly...