Proof of a nation's love

IN the hours after the news from Balmoral, I walked through St James’s Park, joining little streams of others converging on Buckingham Palace. Reaching the road, we found many more coming down the Mall.

Athena Cultural Crusader Glasgow's magnificent temple to the Arts

A THENA recently had the good fortune to travel through Glasgow on her way to the Highlands. The city was bustling with life and bathed in sunshine. It was also overwhelmed with rubbish, a consequence of the bin strike, with great ziggurats of boxes, cups and bags stacked up on every street corner.

Elegy Written In A Country Churchyard

Thomas Gray

The majesty of slate

Silenced Welsh quarries evoke a vanishing world

Treasures from South Africa

Clusters of delicate flowers, often in muted colours, will bloom for several months, making tulbaghia an irresistible garden plant, writes John Hoyland

Testing boundaries

We are a nation of hedge lovers-and rightly so-but there are myriad traditional means of dividing land and containing livestock that are both charming and a boon to wildlife. Octavia Pollock reports

Each month of this 125th-anniversary year, COUNTRY LIFE illustrates a period in the development of the English great house. In the ninth of this 12-part series, John Goodall looks at developments during the Regency

ON October 5, 1826, Hermann, Prince of Pückler-Muskau, wrote from London to announce his safe arrival in England. The letter was one in a whole series written to his former wife over a period of three years that described a tour of England,

Neither beautiful nor useful

THE RHS has taken leave of its senses, telling us to share our gardens with slugs, wasps and vine weevils.This is bad news for plants-which are what the RHS is all about and it's not what gardeners want to hear.

Little frizzle and other spooky stories.

Now a thriving tourist spot, the Isle of Mull was once a perilous place to survive-particularly if you stumbled upon its multitude of myths and magic, believes Helen Fields

Sea fever

In the aftermath of civil war, one of the great painters of the New World developed a highly expressive and personal language to explore Man's connection with wild Nature, conflict and race

In the dead of the nightshade

Employed by Roman archers to poison arrows, by emperors' wives to achieve widowhood and by Cleopatra to enhance her beauty, folklore has not exaggerated the fatal tendencies of belladonna

The secret to growing coriander

CORIANDER might be the most global of herbs, bold enough to combine with flavours from lemongrass to chilli in food cultures as diverse as Indian and Mexican.

Field trials

The Prairie at The Barn, Serge Hill, Hertfordshire The home of Mr and Mrs Tom Stuart-Smith

Family affairs

Past grandeurs flourish again at two elegant country houses, one overlooking Blenheim Palace and the other rolling Hampshire parkland

The 21st-century country house

At this month's Focus/22, COUNTRY LIFE will host an event at which interior designer Emma Sims-Hilditch will discuss the changing face of the English country house

Playing with history

A post-Modern livery hall that is a striking home for an ancient company can teach us something about sensitive development in London.

Confessions of a lifetime

The author on the painful memories evoked in his new memoir

The Great Tower, Dover Castle

WHETHER the Norman Conquest of England was, as maintained by those notable authorities W. C. Sellar and R. J. Yeatman in 1066 And All That, ‘a good thing’ has been much debated by scholars.

Lily of the Valley by Charlotte Verity

My favourite painting Shane Connolly

Old in name, but not in nature

Six years ago, the Government sold the War Office– Sir Winston Churchill’s former haunt and the heart of First and Second World War logistics–on a 250-year lease. On the eve of its rebirth as a luxury hotel, Clive Aslet looks back its extraordinary history

Go with the flow

The banks of the River Thames are littered with historical houses and royal residences, says Carla Passino, who advocates experiencing them all on a walk upstream

‘I gave up my career for the Sealyham’

A lot of vulnerable native breeds have their fans, but not all have someone as determined to save them as Harry Parsons. Julie Harding travels to Sealyham HQ to meet his latest litter of puppies

Read in order to live

Fewer students are taking up A-level English Literature and some universities are dropping it. Jonathan Self explains why this is short sighted

Cross-country collaboration

For watercolourists of many nationalities, Italy was inspirational. Work by the country's leading light, Lusieri, proves covetable, as Meissen birds fly high

Heavenly places

BOOKS

Far away and long ago

On the centenary of W. H. Hudson's death, John Lewis-Stempel wonders how the celebrated writer and founder member of the RSPB came to be forgotten

Heatwave raves

New and glorious hybrids keep appearing

Halls of fame

Three country houses with notable histories offer the best of family living

A shared vision

A harmonious relationship between architect and interior designer is the secret to every successful project

Wild riding

This is how riding holidays should be, says Octavia Pollock, as she crosses Dartmoor in the company of an Olympian