Forces of nature

Proper boarding, gleaming pastoral care and the kind of leadership admired in a gentleman officer are top of the agenda for many prospective military families. Madeleine Silver reports

History in the making

This small slice of Hertfordshire is almost bursting with heritage, history and idyllic country homes

Beyond the Zoom boom

Many schools have adapted admirably to the challenges of delivering virtual learning, but when life returns to some sort of normality, might online elements still have a place in the classroom, asks Flora Watkins

Put Your Hands Together

There’s plenty to celebrate in leafy Clapham, including its historical links to the abolitionist movement

When Gorse Is Out Of Bloom, Kissing Is Out Of Season

Prickly enough to make a pony grow a moustache and with the ability to rise from the ashes, Nature’s vibrant carpet of ‘Dartmoor custard’ is sure to brighten the gloomiest of winter’s days.

‘A picture of magic beauty'

A Georgian house remodelled in the Gothic style became a seat of the Gillow family, famous for their furniture-making business, in 1824. John Martin Robinson looks at the remarkable story of the house and its collections Photographs by Paul Highnam

‘Thou wast not born for death'

Dismissed as ‘the Cockney Homer’ and a fey lovelorn dreamer, John Keats was actually a robust and spirited man with medical training and a penchant for fisticuffs, says Jack Watkins, on the 200th anniversary of the poet’s premature demise

The empire strikes back

With the Australians vanquished, India turn their sights on England. Can Joe Root and his men halt the juggernaut.

Taking the waters

Grand Tourists collected Canaletto’s paintings of Venice as we might postcards, but his later British scenes didn’t have quite the same pull.

A MARATHON EFFORT

The idea for the first London Marathon was born in a pub in Petersham. On the eve of its 40th anniversary, Jeremy Taylor looks back at the famous event that has raised more than £1 billion for charity

Beneath The Devil And The Deep Blue Sea

Fashioned from driftwood, barbed wire, sea urchins and barnacle-encrusted plastic mannequins, Earl Granville’s eclectic sculptures are inspired by the Hebridean island of North Uist’s wild weather and terrain, discovers David Profumo

Plant Some Colour This Year

Brighten up the kitchen garden by sowing seeds of crimson-flowered broad beans, purple cabbages and lime-green Romanesco cauliflower, suggests Steven Desmond

Farming's Brave New World

Five leaders in the field give their visions for reinventing British agriculture, from capitalising on Brexit and feeding a pandemic-hit nation to rewilding the soil, mob-grazing and facing up to lab-grown meat

Nothing here but a bothy

Once frequented by farm labourers and shepherds, lone bothies–often located amid some of Scotland’s most remote countryside –offer a welcome (and sometimes secret) refuge for wanderers, reveals Freda Lewis-Stempel

‘This enchanting spot'

Sheringham Hall, Norfolk, part I The home of Paul Doyle and Gergely Battha-Pajor In the first of two articles, Jeremy Musson looks at a house and landscape that constitutes one of the most important expressions of Regency Picturesque theory to survive in England

Life after the deal

IT has been almost two weeks since the UK began its new relationship with the EU and two weeks since the trade deal was signed into law.

When it comes to the crunch

Our fondness for celery has endured, but how can something composed almost entirely of water be quite so delicious? Ian Morton explores its virtues

Real resolutions

COVID-19 preoccupations may have meant that personal New Year resolutions have largely gone by the board, but that doesn’t let great national institutions off the hook. Agromenes has picked four that need real change in 2021.

Taking stock

Don’t emulate Macbeth’s witches by boiling stock to death, advises Tom Parker Bowles–slow, low and steady always wins the taste race

Missing you pig time

Far from being lazy, dirty and sweaty, pigs are actually house proud, affectionate and fond of the odd game of hide and seek, John Lewis-Stempel assures us

Chugging off the coal cliff

THE future of steam railways is in jeopardy, says the Heritage Railway Association (HRA), with coal produced in the UK likely to run out by 2022.

California dream

Calistoga residence, California A new garden for a new-build home succeeds in being both contemporary and belonging to the landscape, says Christopher Stocks

The foreshadowing of the watercolourists

Huon Mallalieu finds both the familiar and some unexpected, exquisite discoveries among the forerunners of the English School

The galanthophile's galanthophile

Joe Sharman started breeding snowdrops before anyone else and, after 10 years of meticulous work, he created the most expensive snowdrop ever sold. Today, he continues his quest for ever more curious and enchanting variations, finds John Grimshaw

Striking out

The director of the Garden Museum on wild swimming, skyscrapers and damp

Fresh fields and pastures new

Farms and estates are more popular than ever, both as investments and as places to escape the rigours of city life

The designer's room

Douglas Mackie invoked Sir John Soane and Nancy Lancaster in his scheme for this Belgravia dining room

The apogee of English taste

In the second of two articles, Jeremy Musson looks at the restoration of an outstanding Regency house and its garden, both integrally conceived with a celebrated Repton landscape

Inside the catmint trial

Under the auspices of the RHS, dedicated plant committees and trials teams grow different varieties of the same plants under controlled conditions, providing gardeners with unrivalled information. Judge Val Bourne reports from the Nepeta Trial

A life in oils

Keith Pask’s lifelong passion for painting burns as brightly today as it did during the Second World War, thanks, in part, to the pages of COUNTRY LIFE. Nick Hammond meets this remarkable nonagenarian