COUNTRY LIFE is Britain's one serious magazine that is relentlessly happy. Each week, my hand hovers over the heap of pessimism and gloom lying on my doormat. Irresistibly, it moves to a glimmer of light in the darkness, to a reminder that there is still beauty to be found in Britain's natural and manmade environment. If ever I had to put the British Isles on the property market, I would smother it in copies of COUNTRY LIFE.
One hundred and twenty-five years is a good span of history. Memory is dead, but recognition still alive. Much of Britain at the turn of the 20th century would be familiar today. Suburbs were heaving with commuters. Schools and hospitals were proliferating and houses and businesses humming with electric power. Hypermobility was coming of age. Above all, an overwhelmingly urban population was discovering Octavia Hill's 'life-enhancing virtues of pure earth, clean air, and blue sky'.
The magazine founded by Edward Hudson in 1897 was intended to aid that discovery. Initially, it was upper-crust assistance. Hudson was no farmer or forester. He took a gentleman's delight in the joys of the country, his obituary recording that ‘all his life he searched for beauty, for himself and for his beloved COUNTRY LIFE'. But Hudson was also a Liberal. He saw rural Britain not only as a rich playground for the emergent middle class, but suffering from the effects of industry, with its agriculture in desperate need of support.
Denne historien er fra May 11, 2022-utgaven av Country Life UK.
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Denne historien er fra May 11, 2022-utgaven av Country Life UK.
Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.
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Happiness in small things
Putting life into perspective and forces of nature in farming
Colour vision
In an eye-baffling arrangement of geometric shapes, a sinister-looking clown and a little girl, Test Card F is one of television’s most enduring images, says Rob Crossan
'Without fever there is no creation'
Three of the top 10 operas performed worldwide are by the emotionally volatile Italian composer Giacomo Puccini, who died a century ago. Henrietta Bredin explains how his colourful life influenced his melodramatic plot lines
The colour revolution
Toxic, dull or fast-fading pigments had long made it tricky for artists to paint verdant scenes, but the 19th century ushered in a viridescent explosion of waterlili
Bullace for you
The distinction between plums, damsons and bullaces is sweetly subtle, boiling down to flavour and aesthetics, but don’t eat the stones, warns John Wright
Lights, camera, action!
Three remarkable country houses, two of which have links to the film industry, the other the setting for a top-class croquet tournament, are anything but ordinary
I was on fire for you, where did you go?
In Iceland, a land with no monks or monkeys, our correspondent attempts to master the art of fishing light’ for Salmo salar, by stroking the creases and dimples of the Midfjardara river like the features of a loved one
Bravery bevond belief
A teenager on his gap year who saved a boy and his father from being savaged by a crocodile is one of a host of heroic acts celebrated in a book to mark the 250th anniversary of the Royal Humane Society, says its author Rupert Uloth
Let's get to the bottom of this
Discovering a well on your property can be viewed as a blessing or a curse, but all's well that ends well, says Deborah Nicholls-Lee, as she examines the benefits of a personal water supply
Sing on, sweet bird
An essential component of our emotional relationship with the landscape, the mellifluous song of a thrush shapes the very foundation of human happiness, notes Mark Cocker, as he takes a closer look at this diverse family of birds