CATEGORIES

The play's the thing

The long-awaited tale of Thomas Cromwell’s downfall is narrative theatre at its best, but the new Hamlet underwhelms

Vive la France

The Fine Arts Paris fair should help re-establish the French capital as the international centre of the art world

The Charleston effect

The joyful exuberance of the Bloomsbury Group’s spiritual home is having a notable bearing on the work of designers and craftspeople living nearby

Hunting for solutions

The MFHA chairman on a lifetime with hounds, avoiding ‘own goals’ and the future

The thrill of la chasse

At the revamped Musée de la Chasse et de la Nature in Paris, it is still accepted that hunting and Nature can be mutually beneficial

Sweet like chocolate

Never judge a book by its cover–or a labrador by its chocolate coat, especially now they are no longer reviled in the shooting field

From rasher with love

Sizzling, crispy and irresistibly pork-scented bacon all starts with a well-reared traditional breed of pig and a slow, careful curing process.

A many-splendoured thing

Our correspondent savours the challenge of casting a few flies on the fabled Naver for the first time and ponders the endless paths a life of fishing roves

Best Autumn And Winter Escapes Across The World

Whether you’d rather take to the slopes or relax by the pool, Holly Kirkwood has the pick of autumn and winter escapes across the world

Into the blue

As one of the rarest gemstones, Paraíba tourmalines are getting rarer and even more desirable, reveals Joanna Hardy

Give us a clue

Can you explain what hair ice, cramp balls and pillow mounds are? If not, don’t worry–naturalist John Wright has all the answers to our most unusual countryside mysteries

Wild for magic mushrooms

No, not the fungi that inspire hallucinations, cautions Tom Parker Bowles, but do take the time to seek out divine-tasting ceps and chanterelles on the forest floor

The man who turned the tide

The first and last member of Enterprise Neptune on mapping the British coast

Fit for a king

Palaces around the world epitomise their countries’ varied architectural styles. Arabella Youens is enchanted

The lay of the land

As people moved into towns, they wanted peaceful depictions of rural life on their parlour walls, leading artists to look at farming through sepia-tinted spectacles

Sissinghurst Castle Garden

IT is impossible to calculate the number of roses which are climbing up old apple trees as a result of visits to Sissinghurst,’ wrote the late Anne Scott-James, author of the best-selling Sissinghurst—The Making of a Garden. Despite its country-house setting conferring a scale beyond that of the most amply proportioned cottage garden, Sissinghurst’s inspirational hold on amateur gardeners spans the generations, because its creator Vita Sackville-West was, or at least started out as, a novice gardener herself.

Easy does it

Despite classic proportions and lofty ceilings, Sophie Conran’s country house in Wiltshire blends comfort with intimacy

Building back better

Sizeable estates in the New Forest and Cotswolds rarely seen on the market show the benefit of improvement over centuries

The West on a roll

Three separate homes offer endless opportunities to make the West Country dream come true

What's good for the goose...

On a soft September morning, John Lewis-Stempel turns his attention to the farm’s Toulouse geese, which need to get fat on the latest flush of grass

Going out on a limb

An eclectic group of artists is breathing new life into the time-honoured pastime of painting trees. Laura Gascoigne meets The Arborealists

Tip-top tables

When laying a table, more is definitely the merrier

Up to speed

The debate over which is faster, the grouse or the golden plover,has raged for decades, finds Jonathan Young, as he aims to gauge our quickest sporting quarry once and for all

The man who can teach any dog new tricks

For many, owning a well-behaved gundog is a goal we never quite achieve, but Ben Randall’s methods and training app look set to change all that, finds Paula Lester, as she watches him put her labrador through his paces

Listening to the land

When Libby Russell moved to Batcombe House, Somerset, it was the countryside with which she fell in love. Over the past 17 years, she has taken cues from that landscape to create a garden that is entirely at home in its setting, reveals Natasha Goodfellow

Comfort and convenience

Modernist country houses of the 1930s and post-Second World War period could be stylish buildings that made use of new technology. They deserve to be better known, as Adrian Tinniswood explains

A taste of earth and sunshine

More than 60 years since Ladybird launched its much-loved series of ‘What to Look For’ Nature guides, Claire Jackson recalls fondly the quartet of books that have recently been re-released

A Northern powerhouse of conservation

Having returned otters to our waterways, the late Philip Wayre’s quest to improve wildlife lives on across a carefully managed tract of land in Weardale, finds Robin Page

Squawking points

THE grand Dutch Master paintings of arranged flowers—works by Jan Davidszoon de Heem and Ambrosius Bosschaert that are at once both orchestrated yet collapsing— are a constant inspiration when it comes to choosing what to grow.

Sweet relief

Faint heart never landed fair salmon, as our indefatigable correspondent discovers after a fishless run, which eventually (and thankfully) comes good