How To Make A Good Impression

It’s time to break for the (Scottish) Borders: three fine houses there have come on the market, including the home of Rory Bremne

All's Well That Ends Well

Eschewing a cheap flight in favour of a good old-fashioned driving holiday, Nigel Havers embarks on a wine trip to France, accompanied by his wife George and their poodle, Charley

Oxford Sees Red

Brilliant in colour and bold in form, William Butterfield’s buildings for Keble College, designed in 1867, exemplify the avant-garde principles of the Pre-Raphaelite Movement, as Michael Hall explains

Rebuilding The Mother Of Parliaments- Palace Of Westminster, London SW1

John Goodall examines the fascinating story of the surviving Victorian interiors of one of Britain’s most familiar buildings and the seat of Parliament

Italy On The Isle

The search for privacy and peace encouraged Queen Victoria and Prince Albert to create an Italianate seaside villa. It offers an unparalleled insight into their domestic life and private interests, as John Goodall explains

An Englishman's Home Is His Castle

This great house has been made familiar by Downton Abbey. John Goodall looks at the real personalities and history behind a remarkable building

An American Evolution

Over the past half century, the care of an American university has returned one of the landmark buildings of early Victorian England to life and splendour. John Goodall reports

Who Let The Dogs Out?

Once, all working dogs were consigned to life in a draughty kennel, but now, attitudes and training methods have softened. Katy Birchall considers whether cherished pets can be great gundogs, too.

Seeing The Green Light

Once considered worthy and hippyish, embracing environmentally friendly ways of heating and lighting is catching on in town and country, finds Anna Tyzack

Sisters in the spotlight

Caroline Bugler admires a new exhibition that reveals the creative role of women in the Pre-Raphaelite circle

Love, Love Me Do

From the impressive stag beetle to the Devil’s coach horse and the iridescent glow-worm, David Tomlinson picks his favourite 18 beetles out of the 4,000-plus species thought to reside in the UK, together with an international interloper

Moving Heaven And Earth

The environmental lawyer on Buddhism, birdwatching and saving the planet

A Year On The Veg

Is it possible to live off vegetables and fruit from your garden all year round? John Wright considers how we could all do more to make the most of home-grown produce

A Family Affair

The restoration and revival of this house is bound up with more than merely bricks and mortar. It expresses a remarkably long family connection to the building and the place, as John Martin Robinson discovers

Bagging A Brace On The Brora

Spey casting in a gale in the peat-stained waters of Sutherland’s fickle River Brora proves to be something of a challenge, until our correspondent deploys a Willie Gunn fly

Modernising A Medieval Seat Of Learning

In the second of two articles, Geoffrey Tyack examines the development of one of Oxford’s most imposing medieval colleges from the Reformation to the present day

Meet Pici, Britain's Naughtiest Dog

Sociable, sun-loving and incredibly patient with children, this innocent-looking Jack Russell actually enjoys a secret life of crime. Victoria Marston finds out more and introduces the runners-up

My Stirrup Cup Runneth Over

Intricate and valuable silver stirrup cups, be they fox, hound, fish, bear, eagle or even gorilla, are far more likely to be found in a safe than on the hunting field today, explains Peter Greenhalgh

By The Light Of A Woodcock Moon

Beguiling, enigmatic and notoriously difficult to shoot, the woodcock is one of our most mysterious and coveted birds. Adrian Dangar considers how this wily wader should best be conserved

Paradise In Peru

WHERE better to sit sipping a pisco sour than watching a Peruvian Paso horse perform its extraordinary four-beat ‘swimming’ gait surrounded by a vineyard and the oldest working distillery in the Americas in a coastal valley of the Ica region of Peru?

Same Game, New Rules

He might devour snipe on toast with greedy glee, but Tom Parker Bowles believes that modern game cookery, from wild-boar ragu to pulled-pheasant bao buns, is the key to spreading the love

A Car For All Seasons

Is there a perfect all-round sporting vehicle that’s man enough for the field, with ample space for guns, rods and dogs, but slick on the road, too, asks Charles Rangeley-Wilson

What Shall We Watch In 2070?

Which playwrights’ works will survive the test of time and have audiences flocking 50 years from now?

When Mother Nature Does Her Own Thing

A new monthly column about the vicissitudes of life on a mixed farm in Scotland

Oxford's First Palace

In the first of two articles, John Goodall looks at the most widely copied university college in England, a building inspired by a great 14th-century palace

Green Monsoon By Howard Hodgkin

John McEwen comments on Green Monsoon

Crispy Crawlies

Cockroaches are tough, tenacious and in many ways remarkable, but Ian Morton still doesn’t want to eat them–or any other insect

‘I've Been In Disguise All The Time'

The actor synonymous with Hercule Poirot discusses his other life, behind the lens

Animal Magic

Robert Dalrymple’s African Grey parrot

A Moral For Our Time

Philippa Stockley revels in the humour, perspicacity and story-telling that radiate from Hogarth’s ‘Progress’ series