Country Life

Published by TI Media Limited Country Life, the quintessential English magazine, is undoubtedly one of the biggest and instantly recognisable brands in the UK today. It has a unique core mix of contemporary country-related editorial and top end property advertising. Editorially, the magazine comments in-depth on a wide variety of subjects, such as architecture, the arts, gardens and gardening, travel, the countryside, field-sports and wildlife. With renowned columnists and superb photography Country Life delivers the very best of British life every week.

Dame Mary Berry • Mary is a food writer, chef, baker and television presenter who has written more than 70 cookbooks. Her latest, Mary 90: My Very Best Recipes, is out now, and her gardening memoir, My Gardening Life, will be published in February.

When Bethlehem is everywhere and anywhere • The Church of the Nativity still moves millions of people to tears and represents the power of hope. It is why, says the Revd Fergus Butler-Gallie, we flock to our local church at Christmas, no matter how far removed it may seem

Country Life

Town & Country

Town & Country Notebook

Stuff & nonsense

Letters to the Editor

Dear Chancellor…

Athena • Cultural Crusader

My favourite painting Dame Sarah Mullally

Sir John Betjeman and Christmas

The heavenly city • This idiosyncratic masterpiece illuminates the sophistication and personalities behind the development of late-medieval English architecture, as John Goodall explains

Rubies for Christmas • Its twinkling seeds bejewel festive feasts, but there’s much more to the pomegranate than meets the eye, discovers Harry Pearson

Give me all your turtle-dovin’ • The beautiful, soft-voiced turtle dove may be synonymous with Christmas, but as a symbol of courtship and love this endearing bird resonates all year round and must be saved, urges Mark Cocker

We make Christmas happen • This time of year represents big business–and exhaustion–for the producers of festive fare, from crackers to hellebores to ham. Jane Wheatley visits six stalwarts who are flat out right now

Merry Christmas, Peter Rabbit! • As Unitarians, the Potter family’s festive season was an abstemious time–something the young Beatrix railed against, joyfully, into her adult life and within her beloved children’s books, writes Matthew Dennison

And so this is Christmas • Whether it’s a rosy-cheeked girl wrapped up warm, sun-bathed sheep at twilight or a snow-blanketed apple orchard, myriad pictures sum up the festive season, as 16 friends of COUNTRY LIFE tell Carla Passino

The spy who came in from the page • As a new exhibition in Oxford charts John le Carré’s legacy, Emma Hughes takes a closer look at his most enduring creation, George Smiley

The Editor’s Christmas quiz • Challenge yourself with COUNTRY LIFE’s end-of-year general-knowledge test and discover who is the seasonal Noel it all. Answers on page 240

Relative values • Ever wondered what the difference is between a second cousin and a first cousin once removed? Or how to describe your great-grandmother’s sister? Decode your family tree this Christmas with COUNTRY LIFE’s cut-out-and-keep guide

It’ll be all right on the night • Never work with animals and children, they say, but surely it isn’t a proper Nativity without them?

Muff and nonsense • Is that furry handwarmer merely a decorative symbol of feminine passivity or does it conceal a meat cleaver, a pistol or a pugnacious pet, wonders Deborah Nicholls-Lee

Toy story • Today’s queues may be digital, but the fight to secure that must-have present and avoid small, disappointed faces is timeless. Tom Howells looks at the toys topping recent (and less recent) Christmas wish lists

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