Sink Or Swim

The humble dumpling is a stomach-filling staple, but what exactly constitues a Norfolk ‘swimmer’, asks Eve Stebbing.

Too Cool For School

A revelatory new exhibition prompts Charles Darwent to reflect on the nature of American inter-war art

My Favourite Painting Pam Ayres

The Boundary Rider by John Pickup

New Balls, Please

It has witnessed boom times and bust and, now, Price of Bath is the UK’s last remaining tennis-ball maker. Julie Harding meets the family putting the bounce into our balls

Respect Your Elders

TO be in the countryside in May, when spring allows summer to float across its mind, is a pleasure that never wears off.

Picturesque Wonderland

Tim Richardson is impressed by an intimate exhibition that explores the relationship between Humphry Repton and one of his greatest clients

Rich Tapestries Of Life

The contents sale of North Mymms Park brings back happy memories

Roll Out The Red Carpet

Liz Rowlinson explores the real-estate bubble that is Cannes and what the glamour of the film festival has done for the area

Southern Sun

Glittering sea and soaring mountains make for a dramatic backdrop to Cyprus’s increasingly upmarket coastal resorts

The Race Is On

Speed, skill and mega-watt glamour: Holly Kirkwood tracks where to buy in Monaco to benefit from Grand Prix fever

Delighting inDevizes

In the first of an occasional series celebrating Britain’s outstanding market places and high streets, Ptolemy Dean considers–and illustrates–what makes the centre of Devizes so satisfying

Turtle ortoffee?

Next week is the start of Glorious Goodwood. Clive As let examines the social whirl that surrounded this event before the First World War and the remarkable collection of photographs that documents it

Designs For Happiness

Clive Aslet discovers how this unsung hero of the Arts-and-Crafts Movement realised his vision for changing lives with thoughtful architecture and planning

No Doctor, No Village

What am I doing in this eternal winter?’ bemoans the title character in Franz Kafka’s Ein Landarzt (A Country Doctor) when called out of bed one stormy night to attend to a sick patient.

Three cheers for Daffy's new bloom

David Austin’s newest roses are eagerly awaited at the Chelsea Flower Show and, this year, COUNTRY LIFE has reason to celebrate

Wildflower Meadows? Give Me Strength

I DON’T see the point of wildflower meadows. I know they’re fashionable and lots of our friends have made them, but I have never seen a really convincing one. Why not? Well, for starters, there’s something ridiculously artificial about cultivating wild flowers.

I'm All Right, Jack

The jackdaw, perhaps the most dignified of the corvid family, has a strange affinity with Man

Author Of His Own Undoing

David Gelber is gripped by this sympathetic, thought-provoking account of Charles I’s life

A Modern Romantic

Michael Murray-Fennell observes how John Piper discovered a very British type of Modernism

The designer's room

Antique dealer Christopher Howe evokes a classic English drawing room

The Missing Lynx

Moves are afoot to reintroduce the enigmatic lynx to Britain, but there are strong arguments for and against

My Favourite Painting Andrew Graham-Dixon

John McEwen comments on Cupid and Psyche

The Pressure's Off

The actor and playwright on balancing ‘the quietness of writing with the showing-off of acting’

Fifty Shades Of The Grey Seal

Known as ‘people of the sea’ and often described as sad-looking, due to their huge, doleful eyes, the gigantic–yet surprisingly agile–grey seal can hold its breath and slow its heartbeat to dive to depths of 200ft, reports David Profumo.

A Georgian Renaissance

In the second of two articles, John Martin Robinson looks at the recent restoration of this magnificent Georgian house and its dazzling series of re-created 1770s interiors by James Wyatt.

Embracing The Hopes And Fears Of All The Years

The Rt Revd Rachel Treweek, Bishop of Gloucester.

Living National Treasure

Cake maker

The Return Of The Prodigal Son

‘ I commissioned this batik from Solomon Raj while I was working in an inner-city parish, near a large prison. In the traditional Indian caste system, Solomon comes from among the Dalits or “untouchables”. His work, like much of Luke’s Gospel, reflects Jesus’s particular love and compassion for the marginalised and the rejected. I asked him to create a simple, uncomplicated image depicting God’s unconditional love and mercy offered to all, not least the most marginalised. Inspired by the parable of the Prodigal Son, Solomon focuses deliberately only on the forgiving father and the returning prodigal, who, in his depiction, could be male or female ’

He's Behind You!

Perennial pantomime villain Kit Hesketh-Harvey explains why this corny, hammed-up, ritualistic theatrical format is loved so dearly. Oh yes, it is!

Pa Rum Pa Pom Pom

Why bobble fringes are the new tinsel this Christmas