March 6, 2024

Country Life

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

Country Life2 min read
Timelessness Is On Our Side
Future Publishing Ltd, 121–141 Westbourne Terrace, Paddington, London W2 6JR 0330 390 6591; www.countrylife.co.uk THE English language offers plenty of words and phrases that describe being current: ‘cutting edge’, ‘of the moment’ and ‘up to the minu
Country Life1 min read
Country Life
Editor-in-Chief Mark Hedges Editor’s PA/Editorial Assistant Amie Elizabeth White 6102 Deputy Editor Kate Green 4171 Managing & Features Editor Paula Lester 6426 Architectural Editor John Goodall Gardens Editor Tiffany Daneff 6115 Executive Editor and
Country Life9 min read
Town & Country
THE latest Knight Frank Luxury Investment Index (KFLII), released last week, makes for interesting reading, with art the main headline. Of the 10 most popular ‘purchases of passion’—jewellery, watches, handbags, cars, whisky and so on, whatever float
Country Life4 min read
Town & Country Notebook
1) Who preceded Baroness Margaret Thatcher as Prime Minister? 2) ‘Knock at the door’ is the traditional bingo call for which number? 3) In which sport do boys under 19 compete for the Drysdale Cup? 4) Which river runs through Preston in Lancashire? 5
Country Life3 min read
Bring Back Democracy
FUTURE historians are bound to ask: ‘What on earth happened to British democracy in the early 21st century?’ How could Jeremy Corbyn have led the Labour Party and how could Liz Truss actually have become Conservative Prime Minister? Neither understoo
Country Life3 min read
Athena
LAST week, Athena travelled to Rochdale in Greater Manchester. She was not drawn there by the by-election, but the newly restored town hall. It is, by any measure, one of our greatest Victorian civic buildings, with a council chamber, rooms for the m
Country Life2 min read
My Favourite Painting Sir Alistair Spalding
‘I first saw the Fra Angelico frescos at the convent of San Marco in Florence in the summer of 1992. Among all the other great works of art in the city, these have stayed with me the most ever since. What makes them special is the setting. Each cell
Country Life4 min read
Out of Africa
READERS of Out of Africa never forget the haunting first line: ‘I had a farm in Africa, at the foot of the Ngong Hills.’ It’s that small past-tense verb ‘had’. My grandparents lost their farm in the Mississippi Delta in 1931, the same year Isak Dines
Country Life7 min readArchitecture
Renewal And Recovery
Boston Manor House, Brentford, Greater London A property of the London Borough of Hounslow BOSTON MANOR, Brentford, was put up for sale after the First World War in the face of the inexorable expansion of London. In 1924, it was purchased by the loca
Country Life1 min read
The Legacy
● Dame Miriam, a self-taught entomologist, wrote the first description of the flea’s jumping mechanism; she kept them in plastic bags in her bedroom ● She held eight honorary doctorates and produced more than 300 scientific papers, including one on g
Country Life5 min read
Reach For The Skye
WHEN Dr Samuel Johnson and James Boswell came down out of the hills to the west coast and Loch Duich on their Highland tour in September 1773, they paused at Auchnasheal. You won’t find it on today’s maps, but, then, Auchnasheal was ‘a kind of rural
Country Life2 min read
The Devil Wears Parsley
THIS month’s most famous piece of weather lore is ‘in like a lion, out like a lamb’. Sadly, March is rarely that predictable and the weather pattern is equally as likely to be the other way around, with late cold fronts swinging in to mess things up.
Country Life6 min read
Hail, The Conquering Heroes
THE inaugural running of the Cheltenham Gold Cup in 1924 brought National Hunt racing its first level weights championship test for the season’s best chasers. It took a few years to become established—the Grand National at Liverpool continued to be s
Country Life5 min read
How Does Your Garden Grow?
THE spring selling season kicks off in some style with the launch onto the market of two enchanting country houses set in prime Home Counties locations, one an early collaboration between Lutyens and Jekyll, the other once linked to a Rothschild fami
Country Life1 min read
London Life
A NEW exhibition at the Bank of England Museum, EC2, offers a glimpse into ‘The Future of Money’ in all its forms, including cash, plastic and fintech. The UK’s central bank is currently assessing plans for the introduction of a Government-backed dig
Country Life7 min read
Need to Know
SEVEN days a week in a mews behind Russell Square Tube station, a team of three bakers sip hot drinks when it’s still dark. They then pull on blue aprons and get to work: croissants filled with merguez sausages and chermoula, spicy Berber omelettes o
Country Life2 min readArchitecture
Worth The Climb
Fresh, modern simplicity reigns at Waterfield House, built into a hillside within the High Weald National Landscape (or AONB if you prefer to call it by its less confusing former name), with ‘earth and sky’, the design concept that won it the RIBA So
Country Life5 min read
From The Ground Up
IT takes pluck and vision to build a large swathe of London almost single-handedly. Developer James Burton had both and the figures of what he accomplished remain dizzying even 300 years later. In the 38 years between 1785 and 1823, he built (or supe
Country Life4 min read
Grounds For Change
THE Natural History Museum would feature in most lists of London’s best-loved buildings. Less appreciated are the five acres of grounds extending across its front and around its east and west wings. That will change this summer, on the completion of
Country Life4 min read
Bittersweet Symphony
CHICORY (Cichorium intybus) and endive (Cichorium endivia) are closely related bitter leaves that I wouldn’t be without. Think of them as the olives of the salad world. Our sweetened palates make them an acquired taste for some—we are programmed to r
Country Life2 min read
Kitchen Garden Cook Leeks
▸ Preheat your oven to 200˚C/400˚F/gas mark 6. ▸ Pour three tablespoons of boiling water over the saffron threads and leave to infuse. ▸ Melt butter in a large frying pan and add the thinly sliced leeks. Cook until softening and then sprinkle over th
Country Life5 min read
And So To Sleep…
HIDING, as Keats wrote in Endymion, ‘in desolate places, where dank moisture breeds’, mousey-smelling hemlock contains lethal alkaloids that can cause vertigo, shivers, muscle paralysis and asphyxiation. It’s a fittingly gruesome ingredient for the w
Country Life5 min read
Stancombe Revisited
The Gardens at Stancombe Park, near Dursley, Gloucestershire The home of the Llewellyn family GARDENS and especially their hidden buildings have always provided ample possibilities for both real and imagined clandestine liaisons. One such liaison was
Country Life3 min read
The Claws Are Out
WILDLIFE encounters come in all shapes and sizes, but the thrill of seeing any creature for the first time sticks with you forever. This was the case for me in the 1990s, when I was working as a gamekeeper on an estate in the Forest of Dean, Gloucest
Country Life10 min read
A Chip Off The Old Masters’ Block
IT was a portrait that changed a life. When Sarah Biffin (1784–1850) set out to paint George Douglas, 16th Earl of Morton, at a county fair in the early 19th century, it marked the start of a successful artistic career that would see her portray roya
Country Life6 min read
Architecture Brought Alive
Gavin Stamp (Profile Books, £40) IN the grand narrative of architectural history, it has long been conventional to think of the period between the two World Wars as being chiefly remarkable as the moment at which a conservative Britain—unwillingly th
Country Life3 min read
Bridge And Crossword
A prize of £25 in book tokens will be awarded for the first correct solution opened. Solutions must reach Crossword No 4820, Country Life, 121–141 Westbourne Terrace, Paddington, London, W2 6JR, by Tuesday, March 12. UK entrants only 5 Part of church
Country Life4 min read
The Taming Of The Lyle Lion
THE Victorian sugar baron Abram Lyle famously declared that he’d rather see his son brought home dead than drunk. It’s an extreme position, certainly, but I have a certain respect for Abram Lyle. He wasn’t afraid of speaking his mind, in Greenock whe

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