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.

Miss Isobel Warde-Norbury • Isobel is a photographer, specialising in wedding and family photography. She is the daughter of Mark and Lucianne Warde-Norbury of South Yorkshire and London SW12, and is engaged to Owen Crote, whom she will marry at All Saints Hooton Pagnell, South Yorkshire, next year. Isobel follows in the footsteps of her mother (née Wainwright), who appeared on the Frontispiece on September 10, 1998.

Nature, art and the mind

Country Life

For the love of Cecil

Town & Country Notebook

Letters to the Editor

The battle for beauty

Athena • Cultural Crusader

My favourite painting Mary Miers

Is farm profitability a reality? • A new job beckons with Defra, which, given the current mess, could be testing in the extreme

‘Of the islands’ • An improving landlord in the Outer Hebrides created a remote Georgian house that has just undergone a stylish, but unpretentious remodelling, as Mary Miers reports

The legacy ‘Cherry’ Ingram and Japanese blossom

The very best of luck • Whether repetitive, colourful or potentially whiffy, a sportstar’s rituals, charms and peculiar idiosyncrasies are all part of ‘getting in the zone’, observes Harry Pearson

SPAM, SPAM, SPAM! • A tinned treat courtesy of our ‘special relationship’ with the US, Spam offered Britons a taste of the ‘hot-dog life of Hollywood’ and was once served in Simpson’s, discovers Mary Greene

Fern, baby, fern • A fascination with fronds gripped Victorian Britain, but the obsession with these terribly refined ‘domestic pets’ had a catastrophic effect on certain species, discovers Jack Watkins

Shaping the future • How is a new generation of interior designers responding to changing lifestyles, proliferating choice, the challenges of sustainability and the tireless demands of social media? Arabella Youens asked some of the profession’s brightest lights

The return of the drawing room • Lockdown revealed the deficiencies in open-plan living, as well as the benefits of areas dedicated to entertaining. Three designers tell Amelia Thorpe how drawing rooms are evolving into spaces used for both formal entertaining and quiet contemplation

New moods • Furniture, fabrics and flooring for a new season, selected by Amelia Thorpe

A hero of haute Bohème • Some of the world’s most beautiful furniture and works of art passed through the hands of Christopher Gibbs. Yet a new book reveals his rare gift for finding beauty in the ordinary and the obscure that had a lasting impact on classic English interiors, finds Giles Kime

The designer’s room • Classic materials meet contemporary lines in this striking kitchen design by Artichoke

Material world • Copper, brass, wood veneers and reeded wood surfaces are bringing richness to contemporary kitchens, finds Arabella Youens

Room service • Why British designers dream up the most desirable hotels

Best of the West • The launch onto the market of three historic Grade II*-listed manors heralds a bright start to the year in Cornwall, Devon and Somerset

Let’s get this party started • The party barn is taking off like never before, finds Madeleine Silver

What’s not to like? •...