CATEGORIES
A colour symphony
Flamingos may draw the crowds, but it is the brilliant flower borders that keep people coming back to this wonderful garden.
Take me home
Private members' club 5 Hertford Street has precipitated a quiet revolution in interior design through colour, comfort and decoration for decoration's sake. Now, its founder has launched a collection that embodies his approach to living
What Cath did next
Having turned her distinctive style into a much-loved business, Cath Kidston brought a beautiful 17th-century house in the Cotswolds back to life. Now, she's back at the drawing board
The future's bright
Colourful tables, selected
An absurd little bird
Parasitic creatures with murderous and greedy offspring they may be, yet the prospect of no annual competition to hear the cuckoo's first call is a bleak one
Small is beautiful
Many aspects of farming are expanding-and not always in a good way. Jason Goodwin argues that it needs re-balancing, with a return to multiple small family farms, neighbourly cooperation and a bolstering of the local community
The art of wallpaper
A new wallpaper company is unleashing the potential of digital technology to realise ranges of designs created by artists and designers
Cool as cucumbers
MY father was a meat-and-two-carbs kind of a guy, who was cursed in his rare liking of cucumbers, which reduced him to a chest bashing hiccuper.
Hooray for clay
The growing emphasis on handmade interiors is reviving interest in the tactile appeal of handmade ceramics
AHOY THERE CITY SAILOR
From Chelsea to the canals, Londoners are taking to the water in search of a more peaceful way of life. Jo Rodgers clambers aboard
A garden of the mind
Developed over 30 years by an art historian, this thought-provoking garden is filled with Classical references
The designer's room
A distinctive wallpaper was the foundation for this drawing room of a London townhouse
Something to crow about
Clever, companionable and mischievous, the crow or corvid family of birds has long loomed large in our lives and imaginations, as symbols of death and crop destroyers. But, contends Simon Lester, they’re not all black-hearted scoundrels
Peer review
Two lords and one lady share their most enjoyable experiences abroad with Eleanor Doughty
At home in the world
British artist Aimee del Valle reveals why she loves French village life
A right royal home
Royal connections shaped the history of two country houses that are now on the market
A hunting hall - Auckland Castle, Co Durham A property of The Auckland Project
After a major restoration programme and largescale archaeological investigation, this former palace of the Bishops of Durham has been re-opened to the public. John Goodall reports
The girl with the golden touch
Shunning the discrimination between canvas and textiles, painter and fabric designer Althea McNish was a onewoman colour explosion who made the impossible possible, finds Ian Collins
‘I have finally moved into song'
Best known as the creative force behind Dicky and Daffy, it was her son’s death that prompted Annie Tempest to learn ‘the grammar of the sculptor’s language’, discovers Ian Collins
Under the Italian sun
Mary Miers considers how the country that fascinated J. M. W. Turner from youth shaped his artistic vision
The sound of spring
Carla Passino follows chirruping birds, croaking frogs and rushing waterfalls to enjoy the new season across Europe
The protector of cherry trees
Val Bourne tells the extraordinary story of the creation by a Japanese schoolteacher of a new race of flowering cherries, which is now available in this country
Rhododendron heaven
The garden at Ramster, near Chiddingfold, Surrey The home of Mr and Mrs Paul Gunn and Mr and Mrs Malcolm Glaister In its centenary year, Ramster’s reputation continues to grow–together with its magnificent woodland garden, reveals Charles Quest-Ritson
For he's a jolly good Fell
A royal favourite, the hardy and hairy little Fell pony can pull a sledge, emerge alive after weeks in a snowdrift and win hearts with a glance. Julie Harding celebrates the breed society’s 100th anniversary
The sound of spring
March’s spring equinox is invariably optimistic, as winter likes to cling on, says John Lewis-Stempel, but the toads and the rooks are busy making breeding plans
The narcissi you cannot do without
DAFFODILS glaring from verges and parks are not among my favourite flowers. The brashest of the large gold trumpets bears the name of King Alfred, yet he was, by all accounts, a modest and thoughtful man.
English Home part III Early Tudor 1485–1560
Each month of this 125th anniversary year, COUNTRY LIFE illustrates a period in the development of the English great house, from the Middle Ages to the present day. In the third of this 12-part series, John Goodall looks at the architecture of the Tudor home
My Family and Other Animals
Britain’s greatest masterpieces
Dedicated follower of fashion
Be it fur-lined robes, tailored suits, woollen flat caps or clean-shaven jaws, men’s clothes and bodies have been subjected to the dictates of shifting tastes throughout history, reflects Matthew Dennison
Let it fly
At the start of the new fly-fishing season, our correspondent confesses to being a ‘possibilitarian’, who fishes as often as he can wherever fish are to be found