Here's a look at some of what you'll find inside.

Hide and squeak

Miniature Mouse Town has been captivating audiences for half a century, but the rodent realm has reached the end of the road, as Harry Pearson reports

Flour power

Ancient and heritage grains are enjoying a revival. Makers and growers tell Tom Howells why they are going back to the future

Property market

Penny Churchill surveys a West Country scene sparking into life with the launch onto the market of a spectacular coastal estate

Properties of the week

West is best, says Julie Harding, as she showcases characterful and comfortable cottages for sale

To boldly go on

James Alexander-Sinclair finds out what the future holds for the innovative Eden Project as the Cornwall garden turns 25

Chorus of approval

Henrietta Bredin hails opera’s unsung chorus lines in a look at life beyond the solo spotlight

Iain MacGregor’s favourite painting

The historian picks a work that reveals beauty in ordinary things

Country-house treasure

A tribute to ‘justice, honour and humanity’ catches John Goodall’s eye at Grey Abbey in Co Down

Ruling the waves

Admiralty House and the Ripley Building in London represent 400 years of our naval history, as Billy Hurley Reading discovers

The legacy

Kate Green celebrates the ever-popular 19th-century Savoy operas of that peerless creative double act Gilbert & Sullivan

Get ready for rush hour

Rush is not only a haven for all manner of wildlife, but also a precious resource for artisan makers, declares Laura Parker

Deep thinking

Next stop, Aldwych... Emma Hughes goes underground to tour the forgotten platforms of London’s lost Tube stations

Luxury

Amie Elizabeth White chooses classic check prints making an impression this autumn

Interiors

Arabella Youens warms to a fossil-stone fireplace in an Exmoor retreat and Amelia Thorpe shares some bright ideas on wall lights

Countryside mystery

The wonder of choke fungus takes John Wright’s breath away

Travel

Sophia Money-Coutts stays on the secluded Flete Estate, a favourite south Devon destination

Arts & antiques

Carla Passino visits a new British Museum exhibition exploring how Korea mastered foreign art forms and made them its own

On the hoof

Satyrs, centaurs and fauns have been strident symbols in art from Ancient Greece to the present day. Charles Harris investigates

And much more

Even angels may fear to tread across bogs. Humans certainly do. You know when you have reached a bog: the sinking feeling as your booted feet disappear into the dark mire, the view before you possessing nothing above shin-height except apocalyptic aloneness, endless coarse-heathery hummocks and pools that are the upcast unseeing eyes of Earth.

In bogs, whimbrels delve carefree and adders brazenly sport the forked lightning down their backs cast from the spells of witches. Most north European nations have reposed their national psychic fears onto woodland (Little Red Riding Hood being the case in point), but, for the British, the peat bog of lowland heath or highland moor became the repository of dread.

Beowulf, the Anglo-Saxon epic composed between the 8th and 10th centuries, was an early cultural iteration of the national psyche of bog-fear: the carousers in King Hrothgar’s mead hall are attacked and devoured by a monster, angered by their merry making: ‘Grendel this monster grim was called,/march-riever mighty in moorland living.’ This creature is exactly the sort you would find dwelling beneath a tarry mere of bog-land.

In the acidic peat of the bog, all manner of folk fears became deposited; over the Pennines, the ghosts of a lost Roman legion march eternally and everywhere in the mist-writhed boggy places at night, the will-o’-the-wisp awaits, an apparition of blue light that lures, devil-spritely, the travellers of bog-land to their death.

The bog will take more than your knees — its pools will swallow down your body and that of your horse, too. Hark the warning issued to Sir Henry Baskerville on his arrival from Canada to take up his West Country inheritance in Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Hound of the Baskervilles: ‘As you value your life or your reason keep away from the moor.’ Dartmoor, that is, with its bogs.

A bog may be scientifically explained. A bog is acid peat fed wholly from the sky and forms in wet places, with which Atlantic-faced Britain abounds (fen, in chemical contrast, is alkaline peatland, watered from underground). There are two principal types of bog in Britain, this reducibility to numeration suitable, as bogs are simple mechanisms.

Our bog cover is threefold. First, the blanket bog of high-rainfall, high areas is our most common bog. Then we have the raised bog, a dome of peat in a low basin. A variant of the blanket bog is the quaking bog, where a mat of moss, perhaps a yard thick, floats on the surface of the bog. Cors y Llyn near Builth Wells in Powys will serve as the paradigmatic quaking bog, should you be tempted to visit.

The crucial ingredients of bog are binary, too: moss and rain, which together make peat. You know peat. It’s the stuff from the garden centre you formerly, before recent environmental legislation, thrust your hands into lovingly to pot-up plants, which was as sensually rich on skin and nose as Romeo y Julieta cigars.

Of course, like so much in Nature, the peat-making process is a deceptive miracle, if at sub-snail pace. Peat forms, on average, at 0.039in per annum. Rainwater gathers in a pool, where few plants like the acidic conditions, but the sphagnum-sort mosses thrive and, as they die, they fall into the bog-pool, to become compressed as peat.

You can play the bog-numbers game endlessly. The British have deplored bogs as brown, featureless wasteland, if not an actual waste of space. Hence the pejorative ‘bog-standard’ and ‘bogged down’. Peat has been cut unceremoniously as fuel and compost, the bogs drained victoriously for farming. This fitted the Anglo-Saxon mind, agriculturalist and suspicious of the mirey places where not only Grendel lived, but so did the recidivist remnants of the Celts and Britons, with their guard corps of midges and mosquitoes.

The hosts of raiding Vikings did little to promote the cause of the bog, as they were said to brew the habitat’s aromatic shrub bog myrtle for a pre-battle potion on which they went ‘berserk’ in battle against the Angles and the Saxons. None of it, the cutting and the draining, was intrinsically evil-intended, but it was always one vision of Britain, ordered and attended, against another that was wild and free.

Although Britain’s bogs have reduced and degraded, their story is not requiem, but resistance. Even in This Year of Our Lord 2026, 9% of Britain’s land surface is bog, with peat the single biggest store of our carbon, locking down the equivalent of 20 years of all the nation’s CO2 emissions. Another number: 70% of our drinking water comes from upland areas dominated by the spongy, boggy peatlands.

Bogs, however, quench more than human physical thirst. They are still avoided by the pars maior and, if you want to escape from the madding metropolitan crowd, the bog is the go-to, a place where you can drink solitude. Come to know the bog’s secrets, too, for they hold rare magic. Under their mottled flatness, they entice water with mystic mechanics; under each bog is a watery mass, a suspended subterranean lake. Regard again, the surface of the bog: it is a haunting thing of minimalist metaphysical beauty, silent and serene, except for birds crying.

Boglands have few animals, but birds proliferate, for wetness is avian fastness. It is a place where curlews (Numenius) probe mire with their decurved bills and golden plover (Pluvialis apricaria) tumble down the big sky that is suspended above the bog and which is its rightful partner.

Insects, too, are in adoration of bogland; the large marsh grasshopper (Stethophyma grossum) — Britain’s largest grasshopper, with the female of the species reaching 1½in— is a habitué. The rare fen raft spider (Dolomedes plantarius), lurks there too, dangling its hairy legs in the water to detect vibrations from potential prey, then rushing out over the surface to seize the victim, walking on water to kill. For variation, the raft spider can hunt underwater in a form of arachnid scuba-diving, by trapping air bubbles to its body.

Bogs belie their apparent boring blankness with dramas small, yet potent. Members of the dragonfly clan patrol the mirror-still pools scattered through the hummocks and use them as kill-zones. They are also places of preservation; the Old Time people called dragonflies ‘flying jewels’ and they would have pointed to the Highland’s azure hawker (Aeshna caerulea) as evidence, as it is lapis lazuli given gauzy wings. The flora of bogland, however, is its true private and preserved esotericism.

Sphagnum moss, miraculously able to hold more than 20 times its own weight in water, lives, dies and pickles itself in acid. The plants of the bog have names seemingly conserved from misty antiquity. Bog asphodel, golden-headed, is a lily once gathered by Lancashire maidens as hair-dye. In and near water, bladderwort, butterwort and bogbean grow. The first two eat insects trapped on greasy leaves.

A bog has reason to take you soakingly by the ankles, as you must then gaze down into its fantastic Lilliputian sparkling and strange plants. In among the many mosses lurks the tentacled sundew, with leaf-borne drops of mucilage (‘dew’) shining like elven diamonds, all the better to entice the bog’s midges and flies. The plant then slowly curls shut on the unlucky insects, fly-trap original, and consumes them carnivorously. There is nothing bog-standard about a bog.

This feature originally appeared in the September 16, 2026, issue of Country Life. Click here for more information on how to subscribe.

Nick Ashley-Cooper was a 24-year-old DJ in New York when his brother, Anthony, came to visit for a holiday. During that trip, Anthony tragically died of a heart attack. It was the second tragedy to hit the family in the space of a few months: Nick and Anthony's father had been murdered the year before, though at the time of Anthony's death the father's body had only recently been found at the bottom of a ravine in the south of France.

This might seem an odd place to start a story about a Georgian townhouse for sale on one of the smartest streets in London, but there's a reason for going off on this tangent. Nick's father had been the 10th Earl of Shaftesbury; Anthony had become the 11th Earl; and thus, at the age of 26 and living 3,000 miles from the family seat, Nick suddenly found himself becoming the 12th Earl. Rather than turn his back on he jumped in with both feet: 'I took my inheritance incredibly seriously and wanted to do a good job,' he told Country Life back in 2013. 'I have a strong sense of family and I've grown up incredibly proud of what my ancestors have achieved.'

Lord Shaftesbury quickly earned the right to be proud of what he achieved himself. His inheritance centred around the dilapidated St Giles House in the Dorset village of Wimborne St Giles, whose restoration and salvation he led with remarkable focus, dedication and panache. Instead of attempting to turn the clock back, he and his team of architects and builders restored the house in a way that didn't resurrect the fabric of the place to its original condition, but instead celebrated the beauty of it as it was.

Thus the ancient portraits hang in rooms where the plaster has long since fallen away from the brickwork, where walls bear the marks from where long-broken mirrors once were, and where all that's left of the grand chandeliers are the wires that once held them from the ceilings.

The resulting work caused something of a sensation, winning pretty much every award going — among them the Georgian Group Award, the HHA/Sothebys Award and the RICS National Building Construction Award. It also inspired many other owners of period houses to do the same thing.

Today, it's not at all unusual to find homes where marks on the wall and cracks in the plaster are left untouched despite refurbishment work taking place, to keep the original character of a house. One such place, an art and antique dealer's home in New York which came up for sale in March, is particularly memorable.

That Manhattan home is probably the most extreme example we've ever seen — but the property at 61 Colebroke Row — a four-storey townhouse for sale at £3.5 million in a conservation area in Islington — runs it close. And it's sparked a huge debate in the Country Life office between those who have fallen head-over-heels in love with the place... and those who have done pretty much the opposite.

The house had lain derelict for many years before being bought in 2021 by the present owners, who've carried out a huge amount of work (the Google Streetview picture of what it used to look life from the outside gives a fair clue as to its condition).

The whole place has been gutted, rewired, re-fitted with top-end materials and expertise (including a Plain English kitchen and some incredibly smart bathroom suites).

There is underfloor heating beneath wonderfully-refurbished original floorboards, and even a 55-feet garden that's been designed by the great Dan Pearson.

That garden was apparently the starting point of the project, and Pearson based his layout around a beautiful old fig trees that had somehow survived years of neglect in this central London courtyard garden.

There's just over 2,000 square feet of space on off over the four storeys, with dining room and kitchen on the lower ground floor, and a reception room plus a study (or third bedroom) on the ground floor.

The two larger bedrooms each have a floor to themselves, and each has its own generously-sized bathroom. It is, in short, an ideal city pad in a much sought-after street where Boris Johnson lived while he was Mayor of London.

But as fascinating as the work that has been done is the work that hasn't been done. Some rooms have been plastered but left roughly unfinished, and several others have original timbers and walls that have been stripped right back but then left unpainted and unfinished.

Taking the stairs up from the ground floor, for example, the wall to one side of you is so blemished and scarred that it feels almost Dickensian.

We did also wonder something else: the shabby chic on display in the other examples in Wimborne St Giles and Manhattan contrast their intentionally-unfinished rooms with wall-to-wall art, from ancient portraits to modern pieces. The house on Colebrooke Row has sparse furnishings and almost nothing hanging on the walls.

That's not to say it isn't starkly beautiful. We doff our cap to the photographer Dan Glasser, whose pictures for estate agents Hemingway & K are breathtakingly beautiful, and could happily hang in a gallery. But there's no point ignoring the elephant in the room: some people might walk in and love the place, but an awful lot of others will wonder if the renovation budget ran out before the owners had a chance to go down to Farrow & Ball. It might be original and full of character, but what would it be like to live here on a cold night in February?

Rather than wonder, we put that question the way of the owners and agents, and while the work on the house is finished nobody has yet moved in: 'The house today is the result of a long and painstakingly detailed restoration, so, the house we are marketing has not been lived in,' says agent James Klonaris.

'The restoration was done by carefully chosen craftsman and in a manner that is befitting of the period,' adds Klonaris. 'This means lime plaster over lath and lime-wash finishes, the natural beauty of stripped wood stairs, rails, panels and architraves, and the mottled effect of hand-blown Georgian glass.'

As for the lack of decoration? 'Some would argue that it is a more modern trend or fashion to cake our homes in non-breathable paints,' James adds. 'There is undoubtedly an increasing consideration in home renovation around harmful volatile organic compounds found in many modern paints and composite materials.

'The design achieves a great balance of originality and comfort; exposing the layers of centuries and celebrating natural materials, but incorporating some wonderful contemporary punctuations.'

Though the house hasn't been lived in, Klonaris points out that the furniture and art that has been put in place has been done 'with fastidious attention to detail, to bring the spaces to life through carefully chosen pieces... They compliment shades and give light an intriguing canvas on which to fall. They also provide perspective so that the eye can gauge the spaces and volume....

'The owners have a wonderful art and furniture collections, and everything from antique to Mid-Century Modern and contemporary pieces have been chosen, really highlighting the versatility of this Georgian aesthetic.'

And then there's that garden. 'The garden was actually the first part of the project to be completed, the first element from which everything else followed,' Koldaris explains.

'It is indeed a rare thing to have such a large and quiet garden in this central part of Islington...

'The creation of the garden was like sculpting in reverse; forming spaces for people within and around the huge snaking limbs of the unruly, but glorious fig trees. That first step, to create usable outside spaces and give the house the outlook it deserves, gave the owner a huge amount of hope at the start of what was inevitably going to be an Odyssean journey.'

No 61 Colebrooke Row is for sale at £3.5 million through Hemingway+K — see more details.

Last week, Athena was fortunate to attend one of the private views of the Bayeux Tapestry at the British Museum. She emerged exhilarated by the experience.

As she has observed before, the display of the celebrated embroidery has caught the public imagination and this occasion reflected that fact. For one thing, it was exceptionally well attended. No less remarkable was the fact that, on arrival, lots of the guests walked straight past the drinks and refreshments, determined to see the object itself. Athena was one of them.

It took her almost exactly 40 minutes to walk the full length of the Tapestry. Her expectation had been that it would be difficult to see when laid out flat, but in fact the arrangement works well. The object itself is displayed in a single, long case that allows the visitor a really close view. Added to which, although the lighting levels are low, it is not difficult to examine and — crucially — onlookers don’t cast shadows across it. Despite continuous polite requests from the museum staff to keep moving along, the visit didn’t feel hurried and there was time to examine details.

Projected onto the wall behind the case as a backdrop to the Tapestry is a series of interpretative animations. Athena noticed them as she waited her turn to see the Tapestry, but, at the end, she realised that she had paid absolutely no attention to them at all and can’t speak for their quality or interest. The same goes for the short display on the architectural legacy of the Normans that leads from the exhibition proper to the shop.

Setting aside the undoubted pleasure of seeing the Tapestry and the manner of its presentation, the experience did raise one concern about what lies ahead. Athena was warned to arrive early for the event and, consequently, the queue for the exhibition was relatively short when she joined it. It nevertheless took a full hour and 20 minutes of queuing to get to the start of the tapestry.

There was the offer to join a ‘fast lane’, but very few people took it and Athena suspects that the system will be abused as a means of jumping the queue. In short, there are clearly going to be real practical difficulties in getting large numbers of people through the exhibition. After all, the Tapestry presents a narrative that can only be read in one order — from the beginning to the end. Athena doesn’t envy the staff on the ground the challenge of managing the crowds in the months to come.

Finally, leaving the exhibition behind and passing through some of the British Museum’s familiar galleries, Athena was struck by how tired they looked. It was a sobering reminder of the massive challenges of repair and renovation that still face this great institution. In relation to those tasks, this memorable and magnificent display of the Bayeux Tapestry — a triumph for all involved — is a mere side show.

This feature originally appeared in the September 16, 2026, issue of Country Life. Click here for more information on how to subscribe.

The Country Life Quiz is published every weekday at 4pm.

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For generations in Britain, moving to the countryside with a young family has been both a rite of passage and a mark of success. Outside observers find it curious and somewhat enviable. Several years ago, the Editor of Country Life was asked at the Japanese embassy in London to explain the very different attitudes the two countries had to rural living. While the Japanese flock to the cities of Tokyo and Osaka, they questioned why, in the UK, a move to the countryside is seen as aspirational. The answer was simple, he replied: both the countryside and the desire to live in it are in the nation’s DNA.

While the phenomenon continues, there is a subtle but noticeable shift in how families live in these houses. The changes are less a rejection of the historic English country house tradition and more a different perspective on what the house is expected to do. Today’s younger owners focus on preserving the property's character while gently bringing it into the 21st century and making it more suitable for family living.

Dispensing with drink coasters

Chief among these changes is a loosening of formality: today, the house is a home first and foremost, not a showpiece. While older generations maintained a distinction between formal rooms and private life, younger owners are much more likely to want the whole house to work around family life and informal entertaining. Today, a dining room doubles as a home office, no child (nor dog) is banned from the drawing room, cocktail bars are built into the joinery and fewer surfaces need drink coasters. Comfort and ease are key; decorating is less about statement-making and more about being welcoming.

Social spaces

Kitchens have borne witness to some of the most noticeable changes. Once a purely functional space, it has morphed into an all-in-one living, eating and relaxing room and the social hub of the home. While the fashion for vast open-plan spaces seems to have peaked, younger owners increasingly appreciate smaller dedicated rooms because each can have its own atmosphere and function. Life is busy and a sense of order and a place for everything is important. Into the list of desirables has moved a connection to the garden — or, even better, a kitchen garden.

Provenance and craftsmanship

Decoratively, there has been a move towards a more eclectic and personal style: one that feels immediately settled, even if things have been acquired recently. Moving away from being historically faithful to one period, a room might have a chair inherited from a grandmother, a painting bought on holiday or an antique found at auction, which all sit alongside a brand-new George Smith sofa. There is a clear desire to invest in interior architecture where modern joinery is made using traditional methods and craftsmanship. Colour and pattern are used in a bold, almost theatrical way (see Blythe Collinson).

An eye on energy

Sustainability is an important consideration: heat pumps, solar panels, electric charging points and good glazing — anything that will bring down the reliance on fossil fuels. While older generations might have been more concerned about preserving the building, the focus today is on respecting the architecture and reducing its environmental footprint. Estate agents routinely prepare documents detailing how much a house will cost to run; it’s a question nearly every buyer now asks. Energy prices have played a part. Heating a large and poorly insulated country house in the 1980s cost roughly £3,500 to £8,500 a year in today’s money; today the same house might cost tens of thousands.

Country Life panel discussion

These topics and many more will be the subject of a Country Life reader event taking place at Daylesford, near Moreton-in-Marsh, Gloucestershire, on Friday, October 2. The panel will feature interior designer Nicole Salvesen, co-founder of Salvesen Graham; Cirencester-based architect Ross Sharpe of Yiangou; Edward Smith of family-run British stone specialists Artorius Faber; Greg Tirri of the construction firm RW Armstrong; and Andrew Petherwick of cabinet makers Guild Anderson, who are based in Tisbury, Wiltshire.

Moderated by Country Life’s interiors editor Giles Kime, the panellists will discuss their perceptions and views on how the country house is being reinvented for the 21st century. The event runs from 11 am to 2 pm in the Heritage Barn and includes lunch as well as an opportunity to seek advice from the experts.

To book, telephone 01608 692871 or visit the Reinventing the Country House event page on the Daylesford website.

'It’s no use going back to yesterday, because I was a different person then,' said Alice to the Caterpillar during her Adventures in Wonderland. And so, too, would it be useless in trying to re-create the magnificent gardens at Cowley Manor, Gloucestershire, as they were when Country Life published an article on them in 1906.

Lewis Carroll was said to have gained inspiration for his famous tale of transitioning from childhood to adolescence while staying at the nearby Cowley Rectory. During his time in the Cotswold idyll, he was permitted to wander through the high-Victorian, heavily-manicured gardens of Cowley Manor. Their fantastical scale and exoticism were believed to have fed into the author’s imaginary world that he later created.

Situated to the south front of the lofty manor house, the impressive terraced gardens — said to be based on the Villa Borghese in Rome — tumbled down to a lake fed by two of seven springs said to be the source of the River Thames. Another source fed the dramatic water cascades, which saw pure spring water gush from the mouths of lions, past stone eagles and into another ornamental lake in the pleasure grounds.

By 1906, when Country Life paid a visit, the vast property was in the possession of a man who, along with his brother, had made their fortune from selling spring water. Well, spring water mixed with malted wheat and dried milk.

The drink was originally called Diastoid, which, frankly, sounded dire. Wisely, the decision was taken to use the family name instead, and James and William’s beverage launched first in Racine, Wisconsin, USA, and then in Slough, UK. It was a huge success. Their surname? Horlick.

The Horlicks had been born in Ruardean, some 26 miles west of Cowley Manor. They had both moved to the USA to make their fortune, with James returning to England in 1890 in search of a property in which to invest some of his new-found wealth.

James Horlick bought Cowley Manor in 1895, vastly extending the square house on the site built by James Hutchinson in 1850.

By the time Horlick had finished, his new country seat included a 65 feet by 40 feet ballroom, 31 bed and dressing rooms, six bathrooms and, by the 20th century, electric light powered by the property’s ever-present water. But Horlick’s main passion was the outdoors.

By 1906, he had planted a pheonomenal 700,000 trees on his land and the surrounding area. Roses were, according to the article of 1906, 'everywhere to be seen', and his statue-festooned terraces were ornamented in the distinctly dated (by that time) Victorian style of potted shrubs and seasonal annuals.

The grounds were graced by all manner of exotic creatures. Imported parrots, macaws and Australian swans were among the collection of non-native birds to be found in the grounds. And grazing majestically in the distance from his magnificent water gardens was Horlick’s prize herd of English Shorthorn cattle.

Despite all this magnificence, Horlick decided to sell in 1911, with adverts appearing in Country Life marketing the house, pleasure gardens, village, woodlands and the local George Hotel at Birdlip all to go as one lot.

The newly-knighted Sir James Horlick then retreated to the south coast, renting at first the famous West Dean house and gardens, before eventually ending up at Kidbrooke Park.

Cowley didn’t sell, so, by 1915, he took the decision to rent his Cotswold home out. It was leased to Mrs Enriqueta Angela Scully until 1929. In 1921, Sir James died.

The property was inherited by one of his sons, Sir Ernest, who had to take legal action against Scully in 1927, where she was found guilty of not keeping the ornamental lakes and boat house clear of mud. Ordered to pay £300 (just shy of £17,000 in 2026) to make good the lakes and a further £20 (£1,122) for the deterioration of the fishing water, she relinquished her tenancy.

In 1928, Cowley Manor was put back on the market for the 'sacrificial price' of £14,500 (£813,714.89), eventually heading to and being withdrawn from an auction after it only garnered bids amounting to £7,500. There was talk of demolition.

In March 1929, however, it was bought by a local man for an undisclosed sum. From there, it changed hands once more before going into service as first a school, then a care home for the remainder of the 20th century.

Cowley Manor’s formal Victorian gardens have long-since disappeared, but the house and grounds are once more thriving in the form of a throughly modern luxury hotel. And Sir James Horlick’s ornamental lakes remain a very good spot by which to enjoy a drink accompanied by a good book.

The Country Life Image Archive contains more than 150,000 images documenting British culture and heritage, from 1897 to the present day. To search and purchase images directly from the Image Archive, please register here.

The Searchers sang about them in the Swinging Sixties, Jane Austen used them with as much professionalism and sharp observation as she did a quill pen and countless people have searched for them in haystacks — usually fruitlessly.

Needles captured Shakespeare’s attention, with Helena intrinsically linking them to friendship in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. As a needle joins stitches and attaches them to material elements, so she says: ‘We Hermia, like two artificial gods,/Have with our needles created both one flower,/Both on one sampler, sitting on one cushion.’ Slight, svelte, invariably shiny and pin sharp (note not ‘needle sharp’, for in a linguistic slight the eyeless pin has somehow out-pointed the needle), needles have, throughout history, punched above their weight.

They can pierce through fabric and flesh and are adept at taking on a diverse range of tasks, from creating clothing to tattooing and drawing blood; they deliver medication (or worse); they are used to make sutures in all kinds of creatures; they are a key tool of the acupuncturist; and they give sound to singles spinning on record players. Where would we be without a needle — made up simply of a shaft, an eye and a point — to prise out a deeply embedded thorn from a sore finger?

Our ancestors understood the power of needles and were using them at least 50,000 years ago, no doubt to unite various animal hides in the earliest examples of cave couture. The oldest needle fragment, made of bird bone and discovered in 2016 in Siberian Russia’s remote Denisova Cave, has been dated to the Palaeolithic period. This was aeons before one of the latest developments, the ‘modern’ sewing machine needle — with a plump, rounded shank and front groove that set it apart from the hand-held needle — was even a twinkle in designer Thomas Saint’s eye. (The term ‘modern’ is used loosely, for Saint’s first sewing machine design appeared in 1790.)

Worcestershire’s Redditch, famous in recent times for its designation as a new town (in 1964) and the butt of comedian Jasper Carrott’s jokes about the inescapability of its ring road, was once something more formidable — the needle-making capital of the world.

Documents show William Lee making the slender spikes in Studley, a satellite village, in 1639, with small-scale producers subsequently proliferating, until the Industrial Revolution gave rise to the‘dark satanic mills’ of William Blake’s poem, with brutal work practices and unceasing production.

In Hard Times, Charles Dickens writes of the rattle and tremble of the windows caused by the machines running ‘all day long, and where the piston of the steam-engine worked monotonously up and down, like the head of an elephant in a state of melancholy madness’.

By 1869, Forge Mill was one of 116 mills in Redditch. The former iron forge turned to needle-making and scouring/polishing in the 1730s and only fell silent in 1958, after which it was transformed into a museum. Today, it’s tranquil. The half-dozen visitors meander, sit at the picnic tables with ice cream or browse the well-stocked gift shop.

As a keen, but time-deprived hand-sewing curtain-maker, I can’t resist a teal-coloured pack of ‘general needles’, assembled and inspected on nearby Washford Industrial Estate by 186-year-old firm John James Needles, a rare survivor.

A couple of sightseers have found their way into the three-storey, red-brick museum and are reading placards that recall how this building once thrummed with ceaseless toil.

Firstly, coils of Sheffield steel wire would be drawn through a series of diminishing holes, until, slim enough, the wire would be cut about 30,000 times, each time into the length of two needles, point to point, these conjoined twins heading through the factory together. Next, a bunch of some 15,000 wires would be heated, rolled and straightened before they made a beeline for the pointing process — a job fraught with danger.

Jo-Ann Gloger, curator, is explaining the many processes of needle-making (there are 30 stages in all) and listening to her is not unlike tuning in to Aggers delivering a cricket masterclass for the BBC. She knows her stuff. ‘To point the wires, the worker would press them hard against the grindstone and roll them,’ she elaborates. ‘Then, he would flip the wire over and point the other side, all in less than 30 seconds. Because he’s dry grinding, the metal dust goes into his lungs and causes silicosis or “pointer’s rot”. Within two or three years, he'll be coughing up blood and, by the age of about 35, he’ll be dead. Sometimes, a metal sliver may fly into his eye, blinding him. Occasionally, the pointing stone will fracture and cause a fatal injury, the fate that befell Edward Matthews in 1816. It was pretty horrific, but they were very well paid because it was so dangerous.’

The next stage saw a fly press stamp out the two eyes, with outworkers trimming away the excess metal left by the weighty drop hammer. The conjoined pair of needles was then split in two and sent to a hardener, who heated them to 800˚C until they glowed cherry red, at which point they were plunged into whale oil for quenching. Reheated to 200˚C and left to cool slowly to temper their brittleness, the needles were then scoured/polished before finally being tucked into folded paper packets.

‘This is the only water-powered needle-scouring mill left in the entire world,’ reveals Gloger proudly, adding that the process she has just detailed remains ‘very similar today. They’ve simply mechanised it more extensively. At its height, this mill was scouring something like three million needles per week. Early needles were really treasured because they were expensive, but, when machines were introduced, they became cheaper. In the 1880s, they cost just 1/d a packet.’

Armed with this fascinating knowledge, I head from the gloom of the former mill into the sunshine of the tranquil museum garden. ‘Any more questions?’ asks Gloger. I do have one, but I think she might baulk at being asked whether it is at all plausible that a camel — a diminutive one, certainly — could pass through the eye of a needle.

Visit the Forge Mill Needle Museum website for more information.

This feature originally appeared in the September 16, 2026, issue of Country Life. Click here for more information on how to subscribe.

As the glitterati readies itself for Frieze London in October, a more discerning chorus of collectors will gather from 24–27 September at the Saatchi Gallery. The occasion? The 36th edition of the British Art Fair, which this year welcomes 72 dealers in total — 65 of whom are specialists in modern and contemporary art.

Works by two of the most covetable painters on the market — Bridget Riley and the late David Hockney — are on display and available to purchase. ‘His work feels all the more poignant now that he's gone,’ the fair's founder, Gay Hutson, tells me of the Bradford-born painter. Having hosted the fair's inaugural edition in 1988, she has presided over it for nearly 40 years. Somehow, it has never felt more relevant. As fatigue and oversaturation continue to befall the high-profile Frieze (held from 14–18 October), true connoisseurs are flocking to more discreet outlets such as hers in the hope of forging more personal relationships with dealers.

What should one look out for at this year's fair in particular? Sculpture, Hutson says, ‘is clearly having a moment’. Among the works available to purchase are several by Henry Moore (with Osborne Samuel) and Lynn Chadwick (with Pangolin London). ‘These shifts in the market seem to happen almost by osmosis,’ says Hutson, nodding to this year’s installation of Chadwick’s work at Houghton Hall and Moore’s at Kew Gardens. ‘When I started out, all anyone wanted to collect was Victorian watercolours. Art creates its own momentum.’

Besides these notable names are also those of living artists, whose works will be exhibited on the Saatchi Gallery’s second floor. ‘The British Art Fair has always been about having more established artists in dialogue with more nascent and emerging voices,’ Hutson notes. With prices ranging from £1,000 to the high-six figures, the show is open ‘to connoisseurs of all kinds’. Hutson stresses the word ‘connoisseurs’: ‘This show has always been for the insider,’ she concludes. Tickets are now on sale for general admission (£23), concessions (£20) and the collectors' preview (£70).

This feature originally appeared in the September 9, 2026, issue of Country Life. Click here for more information on how to subscribe.

No car in history has been flattered by imitation so much as the AC Cobra. At the last count, there were over a dozen different British specialists producing spurious clones of the machine that epitomises the ultimate in muscle cars. In the USA, where the Anglo-American Cobra was created in the 1960s by shoehorning a big V8 engine into the neat, race-bred spaceframe of the AC Ace, there are several more. However, any that use the AC or Cobra names face the threat of litigation by Ford, who own both.

Ford bought AC from Autokraft, the company that acquired the rights to make the Cobra from the original Thames Ditton-based makers, last year. Now they take an aggressive stance against imitators who infringe their copyright, not least because Autokraft (whose owner is also managing director of Ford-controlled AC) still makes the real thing, albeit in very small numbers, mostly for the US market.

The replica makers confuse the issue by giving their cars other names: Brightwell Viper, Dax Tojeiro (in association with John Tojeiro, who designed the chassis of the original AC Ace), Magnum 427 (an evocative number that signifies the capacity in cubic inches of the 7-litre Cobra’s engine), Pilgrim Sumo, Python Roadster, Ram ST, SRV8 Roadster and others besides.

If the proliferation of Cobra lookalikes is rooted in the original’s classic looks and raw performance, it has been bolstered by soaring prices that have put the genuine article beyond the reach of all but wealthy collectors. A damaged AC Cobra sold recently at auction for £90,000.

What price, then, a respectable replica that looks, sounds and goes like the real thing? You see them advertised at anything between £10,000 and £20,000 — even more for outstanding examples — which is a lot of money to pay for a kit car. Oh yes, I forgot to mention: most Cobra clones start as a kit of parts, quite possibly a very incomplete kit that requires a very donor car, usually a Jaguar, from which to scrounge key components like the suspension, steering and brakes.

DIY car construction is not a job for anyone without patience, skill or proper facilities. However, there are now enough ready-made, upper-crust replicas on the market to attract the attention of enthusiasts interested in more than just enjoying the end product than in creating it.

I would not touch a car that had been shoddily built from a poor kit by a corner-cutting amateur. However, a professionally built machine with a decent chassis (like the Ram ST’s, designed by Adrian Raynard, a racing-car constructor of high repute) and refurbished Jaguar suspension (more sophisticated than that of the original leaf-sprung car) should ride and handle better than the real thing. If the glass-fibre body is expertly painted and free from ripples (not all of them are) it is indistinguishable from the original’s aluminium skin.

The best and most authentic Cobra lookalikes have large American V8 engines, preferably from Ford, though Rover’s 3.5 V8 powertrain, complete with five-speed gearbox and a clutch that does not need Herculean strength to work, is an acceptable down-market alternative: it performs with alacrity in the Morgan Plus 8 and TVR 350, so why not in a Cobra replica?

Jaguar’s 5.3-litre V12 has been prized under the bonnet of some cars, sacrificing authenticity (and, probably, handling balance, too) for engineering art. Either way, do not expect the sort of shattering performance (0 to 100mph in under 10sec) that put the original 7-litre Cobra, albeit a tweaked one, into the Guinness Book of Records as the world’s fastest-accelerating road car.

Many famous supercars, past and present, now have spurious lookalikes. Those that were hybrids in the first place — the cross-pollinated Cobra, born out of wedlock, is the classic example — seem to work best. They do not offend me in the least, provided they are well made and finished. Others in this category include Transformer Cars’ HF2000, which apes the Ferrari-powered Lancia Stratos rally car, and GT Developments’ GTD 40, authentically reproducing Ford’s Le Mans-winning GT40 sports racer of the 1960s. Tom Keating would have been proud of both.

There are several other categories. Pseudo-off-roaders like the Escort-based Jago Jeep, Rickman Ranger and Eagle RV account for a surprisingly large slice of the burgeoning kit-car market. Then there are the pared-to-the-bone sports cars, low on creature comforts, high on raw driver appeal. Here, Caterham’s expensive Super Seven, its lineage straight from classic Lotus stock, has the best pedigree, Westfield’s respected SE being its strongest rival.

I rather like the open sportsters that imitate nothing in particular but capture the spirit of another era. The Jaguar-based Kougar — another kit that has become a classic — is probably the fastest if not the prettiest.

I can summon little enthusiasm for those impertinent replicas of current aristocrats such as the Lamborghini Countach or Porsche 911. It is a question of breeding, I suppose. Good Cobra clones get away with it because they faithfully reflect the original in spirit and hardware. A Ford-Granada-powered Countach does not. Nor does a poorly finished 911 with a flat-four engine.

Not all the clones originate from kits. The ultimates, like Lynx’s Jaguar D-type replica (also a road-ready car), are so superbly crafted that they are collectors’ items in their own right. Better to play with a £50,000 fake than a priceless original.

The Country Life Archive contains more than a century of British architecture, rural life, photography, and property records dating back to the magazine's launch in 1897. You can search and explore historical content using the Country Life Archive tag on our site, or access the complete backfile (1897–2005) via the ProQuest Country Life Archive

'Little Billiee the Pekin[g]ese spaniel, hails from China, and is a wonderfully good specimen of his breed. He is very small, well built, and has extraordinary feather on the legs and feet, and quite the longest ears imaginable. He is certainly a most charming little pet, being lively and having the best of tempers,' Country Life reported in 1897 on visiting the Princess of Wales’s kennels at Sandringham.

The Pekingese has long enjoyed royal attention and was once the exclusive companion of China’s emperors, who regarded the breed as sacred, confining the dogs to the Forbidden City. However, it was the sacking of Peking, during the Second Opium War of 1860 that brought the breed to Britain. The emperor of China had fled the Summer Palace — which had been inhabited by his aunt — and a British officer spared a thought for the five little dogs mourning the loss of their mistress, who had committed suicide on the advance of the allied troops.

One of those dogs he presented to Queen Victoria, who named it Looty and consigned it to the kennels at Windsor Castle, where it survived until 1872. Of the remaining dogs, two were given to the Duchess of Richmond and Gordon, who went on to develop the Goodwood bloodline, and two were secured by Admiral Lord John Hay.

However, it would be a wealthy barrister’s wife, Clarice Ashton Cross, who founded Britain’s most distinguished peke kennels at Alderbourne, and took Edwardian dog shows by storm, arriving by carriage with footmen carrying her dogs in hampers.

Ashton Cross proved to the nation that a 'show dog is not necessarily a beautiful imbecile' and that the diminutive little dogs were perfectly capable 'of running and hurdling, the obstacles, of course, being graded to suit their size' and that those ‘'reared sensibly are most pleasing outdoor dogs and are an ornament to any lawn.' Indeed, Arthur Croxton Smith confirmed in 1931 that they 'are not merely lapdogs, suited only for lying about on cushions,' a sentiment that was echoed in 2010 when Country Life reported that the Pekingese’s 'instincts for herding and for chasing quarry were stronger than the pampered indolence of the popular stereotype.'

Brave, imperious, and undeniably fluffy, displaying a 'certain aloof air of disdain, as though the memory of royal ancestry never quite leaves him' the Pekingese has captivated many enthusiasts including the 3rd Duke of Wellington, Idina Sackville, Barbara Cartland, Elizabeth Taylor, Elizabeth Banks, the first woman president of the RHS, and Mary Russell, the 'Flying Duchess' and wife of the 11th Duke of Bedford, who built a charming little temple in the pet cemetery of Woburn, Bedfordshire. Beneath a wrought-iron dome supported on Corinthian columns sleeps a cast of Che Foo, otherwise known as Wuzzy, the duchess’s Pekingese.

Famed for resembling a pain au chocolat (or a fig roll?), a Pekingese called Eric stole the nation’s heart when he competed for Crufts Best in Show in 2016.

This is an extract from 'The Country Life Book of Dogs' (Rizzoli, £50) by Agnes Stamp.

Gloucestershire — £15 million

Foxcote Manor is pretty much as grand as the Cotswolds get. This historic, eight-bedroom house near Cheltenham is magnificent, and sits in almost 60 acres of rolling countryside.

For sale via Savills — see more details and pictures.

Leicestershire — £18 million

Leicestershire's answer to Versailles is Stapleford Park — and it's on the market right now. This Grade I-listed property is currently run as a hotel, with all the facilities you'd expect; there are also six cottages within the 54 acres.

For sale via Strutt & Parker — see more details and pictures.

Buckinghamshire — £3 million

Five bedrooms, seven reception rooms and 10 acres that include a pool, tennis court, paddock and stables — this 17th century rectory has it all.

For sale via Michael Graham — see more details and pictures.

Gloucestershire — £4 million

This Georgian home in the Cotswolds has been refurbished in utterly immaculate fashion. Five bedrooms, six bathrooms, a separate coach house and even a self-contained bothy are part of the deal.

For sale via Knight Frank — see more details and pictures.

Devon — £2.25 million

This 16th century farm comes with a couple of dozen acres, six cottages and some excellent equestrian facilities.

For sale via Stags — see more details and pictures.

Warwickshire — £6.5 million

Where do you start with a property like Upper Billesley House? It's grand, beautiful, charming, historic, and yet also somehow a cosy and very liveable home.

For sale via Knight Frank — see more details and pictures.

Britain is facing its biggest surge in housing development since the 1970s, with 1.5 million new homes due to be built by 2029 and the ‘biggest council house building programme since the post-war period’ announced by Prime Minister Andy Burnham.

The mantra, regularly quoted by former Housing Secretary Steve Reed, is ‘build, baby, build’; seven new towns are proposed and, to facilitate this revolution, the Government has slashed red tape. Major infrastructure-project decisions have been removed from local-authority control and, at a smaller scale, planning committees are being bypassed in many cases.

The need for new homes is clear. Groups such as the Rural Services Network and Countryside Alliance have long warned that a shortage of affordable housing leaves rural towns and villages dominated by the well off and retired. Building 370,000 homes a year could allow young people and key workers to stay in rural areas. Local authorities also need to conform to mandatory housing targets, and this may mean more rural communities mobilising to fight inappropriate developments foisted upon them.

Packsaddle Fields near Frome is an eight-acre patch of former farmland that sat untouched in Somerset County Council’s land bank for 50-plus years. Originally earmarked for a school in 1973, the plan was dropped and the site had been left to its own devices.

‘It’s a really special place, with old hedgerows and tiny fields,’ said Janet Hague of People for Packsaddle. ‘Generations have used it and, when we heard in 2022 that the county wanted to sell it for development, we put out a call to try to understand local feeling. The council thought it was a useless bit of scrubland and nobody would care, but we knew different.’ The group gathered testimony from residents who love the fields — a green refuge bordered on three sides by housing — and secured Asset of Community Value (ACV) status in 2023. That same year, Somerset County Council recommended approval for a plan by LiveWest to build 74 houses and a specialist home for disabled children on Packsaddle, but the planning committee refused it after receiving in excess of 260 objections.

In August 2025, People For Packsaddle had to hire a barrister and fight a planning inquiry. They won and thought that was the end of the fight. However, this March, Somerset Council removed the land’s permissive access and put up temporary fencing to keep out local people. A council statement said that it was obliged under an Option Agreement to help the developer pursue planning permission or any appeal, including closing the permissive path and fencing the public footpath. Failure to do so, it said, could expose the council to legal action.

A survey conducted after the fencing went up found that 95% of respondents felt it had harmed community connection and their physical and mental wellbeing. ‘We’ve applied for a certificate of lawful use because we can prove people have used the land for more than 50 years,’ said Hague. ‘We fight on.’

Other campaigners who beat the developers only to face another threat include Woodhall, Faskine and Palacecraig Conservation Group (WFPCG), which has been protecting a mile-square area of green-belt land near Calderbank, North Lanarkshire, for a decade. In 2014, an application was made to build 1,000 homes, business premises and other infrastructure on the land that includes ancient woodland, the remains of the Woodhall and Faskine estates, old hedgerows and former canal ways that form a wildlife corridor. WFPCG fought and prevailed over that application and then an appeal earlier this year, but now fears the land is at risk of becoming subsumed into Scotland’s only AI growth zone.

‘It’s by the M8 and surrounded by housing. Everyone was told it was urban scrapland because it was mined a couple of hundred years ago, but Nature has totally reclaimed it,’ said Diane Davidson of WFPCG. The group mounted organised resistance — packed public meetings, a 6,000-strong Facebook community and volunteers leafleting across Calderbank. When the application reached the council, Davidson coordinated 18 speakers, a strategy that helped to secure victory. ‘We won that, but now we must start again,’ she notes.

Local concern now centres on the land housing potential solar arrays and other infrastructure linked to the expansion of the DataVita data centre. Developers have already bought adjoining land, although no new planning applications have been submitted. ‘Why should we have to do this?’ questions Davidson. ‘I feel totally let down by the system. Why should small community groups be left to fight for these sites? It’s exhausting.’

Running a campaign takes over people’s lives, but that is the price they must pay if they want to win, say Janine Lee and Dr Guy Esnouf who defeated a 10,000-home project that would have swallowed their Warwickshire villages. Wilmcote (home to Mary Arden’s Farm, Shakespeare’s maternal home) has 550 houses; nearby Bearley (where actor Richard Griffiths lived) only 320. ‘It would have been an 800% increase for Wilmcote,’ said Lee, who is now parish chair and a district councillor.

A year ago, they separately spotted the initiative in the South Warwickshire local plan and, finding their respective parish councils unaware, took matters into their own hands, canvassing local views and joining forces last October as the Bearley Wilmcote Action Group. ‘I told the parish council that we needed a public meeting,’ said Lee. ‘About 200 people came, including Dr Esnouf, and, when it seemed clear the parish wasn’t going to do anything, I took action.’ A similar meeting in Dr Esnouf’s village showed 97% opposition to the plan. ‘The first thing you need to do is find out if you have support,’ said Dr Esnouf. ‘It’s no good if it’s only a few individuals.’

Because the village demographic tended to be somewhat elderly, the pair ran sessions to help people make online consultation submissions. ‘I also ran a petition in the pub for those who couldn’t manage online and we knocked on doors to get responses from the elderly people who couldn’t even manage that,’ said Lee. ‘We had a march in November and I got the subject out to the press.’

‘My background is research,’ said Dr Esnouf. ‘We exposed the fact that it was not a well-planned site. It was not driven by Stratford District Council, but rather by the developer. The district had a need to build a certain number of houses and the developer offered them that, but it wasn’t appropriate or sustainable. It’s been hard work, but we’re now at the end of our fight. Bearley and Wilmcote are no longer on the list of suitable places for these houses.'

This feature originally appeared in the September 16, 2026, issue of Country Life. Click here for more information on how to subscribe

One of the wonderful things about Britain is the wealth of beautiful and remarkable historic places that are distributed across the country, sometimes in ostensibly unlikely settings. One such, on the southern shores of the River Mersey among the quiet suburbs of the Wirral, is Port Sunlight, an oasis of greenery and Arts-and-Crafts beauty featured in Country Life in May 2018. At its heart is a long formal axis with gardens framed by trees and at the north end is a low neo-Classical building of pale stone: the Lady Lever Art Gallery. Village and gallery are among the legacies of William Hesketh Lever, 1st Viscount Leverhulme (1851–1925), one of the greatest businessmen in British history and also one of the greatest collectors.

Lever was born into a middle-class family in Bolton, Lancashire, the son of a successful wholesale grocer. The values of Congregationalist Christianity, self-help, hard work, free trade and Gladstonian liberalism shaped his life and his astonishingly successful career. He left school at 15 to join the family business, became a partner at 21 and married a Bolton woman, Elizabeth Ellen Hulme, at 22.

In his thirties, Lever specialised in soap manufacture, concentrating on marketing and developing a brand, Sunlight Soap (1884). He studied his customers and modern American marketing methods with great care. Lever Brothers was duly formed (James Darcy Lever was a semi-invalid and a sleeping partner) and bought a factory in Warrington (1885). Production soared from 10 tons of soap a week to 450. In 1888, Lever bought a 56-acre site in the Wirral, of which 24 acres were allotted to a new factory and 32 to a planned village for the workforce; the village expanded to cover 140 acres. In the same year, he rented Thornton Manor at Thornton Hough, four miles away, buying it outright in 1891. The house was grandly extended in Jacobean style and numerous other residences followed, including Roynton Cottage at Rivington in the Lanca-shire moors (1900); the Hill at Hampstead, London (1904); and Lews Castle, Stornoway, when Lever bought the island of Lewis (1918).

Lever always pointed to a pair of Derby biscuit porcelain figures of a shepherd and shepherdess, bought in about 1877–80 for his home in Wigan, as the foundation of his collection. However, the demands of business came first until the 1890s, when he began to buy paintings, furniture and ceramics on a large scale. His first major purchases were genre pictures that could be used in advertising, such as The New Frock by William Powell Frith. It is evident, however, that Lever genuinely loved art and came to have great knowledge and firm opinions about it.

If his art acquisitions grew in the 1890s, they increased exponentially in the 1900s. Lever Brothers was growing spectacularly in these decades and, by 1914, Lever’s personal fortune was estimated at £3 million. The scope of his interests broadened to embrace sculpture, furniture, embroidery and ceramics, with his friendship with James Orrock, a watercolour painter and dealer who campaigned for the recognition of British art, a major influence. On three occasions, Lever bought Orrock’s whole collection, including about 450 oil paintings, 240 watercolours and more than 1,000 works by Orrock himself. Orrock’s judgement seems to have been patchy, however, and relatively few of these remain in the gallery.

By this time, Lever was thinking of his collecting as being for public benefit, as well as his own. In 1902, he presented a fine historic house, Hall i’ th’ Wood, to the town of Bolton, with historic furniture and objects. In the same year, he mounted an exhibition of paintings at Hulme Hall, a canteen for the factory girls at Port Sunlight. In 1911, he opened a museum in Rivington Hall, a Georgian house on his estate north of Bolton, and a permanent display at Hulme Hall. By this time, his thoughts were tending towards establishing a major public gallery. That same year, he was granted a baronetcy, becoming Sir William Lever.

Events in 1913 prompted a new initiative. In May, Lever bought several major Victorian paintings from the collection of Australian mining magnate George McCulloch. The pictures were too large for Hulme Hall, which was already full, so, on June 24, he instructed his architects, William and Segar Owen of Warrington, to prepare designs for a new art gallery and library at Port Sunlight. A month later, on July 24, his wife, Elizabeth, Lady Lever, died and a new foundation was established later that year to commemorate her. An active public figure in the Wirral, she was a notable traveller, circumnavigating the globe twice and visiting Europe, Africa, America and Australia. In 1913, she was elected one of the first female Fellows of the Royal Geographical Society. In 1917, Lever was raised to the peerage as 1st Viscount Leverhulme. His title incorporated his wife’s family name, but Elizabeth herself never held it. Hence, the Lady Lever Art Gallery.

Work began on the new building in 1914, but was delayed by the outbreak of war. The early stages of Port Sunlight in the 1890s had a picturesque quality with winding roads, but, in 1910, a revised masterplan had introduced a more formal quality with a grand central axis; it seemed natural to site the gallery at its north-west end. The gallery was completed in 1922 and opened on December 16 by Queen Victoria’s daughter Princess Beatrice.

William and Segar Owen’s may have been an obscure Warrington firm, but the gallery is a masterpiece. Earlier public buildings at Port Sunlight were in picturesque styles, but Lord Leverhulme suggested that this new one should be Classical (Fig 3). He had travelled in America and his grand new art gallery has a sophisticated Beaux-Arts quality, similar to the great Classical public buildings that were rising in the US at this time. The building is free-standing and rectangular, 364ft long, and perfectly symmetrical. It is contructed of reinforced concrete and faced with finely detailed Portland stone.

There are entrances with recessed Ionic porticos on all four sides, although only that on the west side is now used. Otherwise, the smooth stone-faced façades are largely blank, for the galleries are one storey high and top-lit. They are raised up on a high basement, which houses the shop, restaurant, offices and stores. Curiously, the restaurant is dressed in neo-Tudor fashion with timber-frame walls. The main interiors upstairs were beautifully finished with features such as mosaic floors, bronze sliding doors and linings of polished limestone in the lobbies.

Over 35 years or so, Lord Leverhulme bought 20,000 works of art, probably more than any other individual in British history. His interests were broad, but with a strong focus on British art. Many of the museum’s objects were selected from his existing collections, but a lot were specifically bought for it. In several areas, including ancient sculpture, Chinese art and Wedgwood, the gallery’s collections were acquired or developed to broaden its scope as a public institution. There is a strong sense that Leverhulme was personally responsible for these decisions, rather than a curator or adviser.

The interior is arranged around a long, galleried H-shaped hall (Fig 1). This introduces the visitor to two of the gallery’s main strengths: Victorian and Edwardian paintings, which embody high technical standards and tell stories, and fine British furniture. Magnificent works by Millais, Burne-Jones, Holman Hunt, Sargent and others line the walls. One end is filled by Frederic, Lord Leighton’s The Daphnephoria (1874–76) a spectacular vision of ancient Greece that was one of the McCulloch purchases. An adjacent ‘history gallery’ provides an excellent introduction.

Lord Leverhulme loved the decorative arts and he was a bold and innovative collector. The Lady Lever Gallery has one of the finest groups of Georgian furniture in existence, with works by cabinetmakers from Thomas Chippendale and William Vile to John Cobb and Ince & Mayhew. Two long galleries to either side of the entrance hall present a spectacular array of cabinets, commodes, tables and chairs. The galleries house a superbly preserved set of Mortlake tapestries, too, The Story of Hero and Leander (1660s).

At either end of the central hall, there are large transverse galleries, with mid- to late-Georgian paintings and furniture. British portraits are another of the gallery’s strengths, with fine examples by Reynolds, Gainsborough, Romney and others. Beyond these rooms, behind the north and south porticos, are beautiful domed rotundas that house sculpture (Fig 2). The one to the north has European sculpture from the 18th to the early 20th centuries, centred on the unabashedly erotic Salammbo (1899), by French sculptor Maurice Ferrary (Fig 5). Lord Leverhulme loved the contemporary ‘New Sculpture’ and bought works by artists such as Edward Onslow Ford and William Goscombe John, who were also personal friends. The south rotunda houses ancient Greek and Roman works, many of which were acquired in 1917 at the sale of the collection originally formed by Thomas Hope.

Another innovative aspect of the gallery, again made at Lord Leverhulme’s behest, was the inclusion of several ‘period rooms’, which were early examples of this genre. Three are lined with historic panelling that provides a setting for furniture, paintings and a range of objets d’art, including the Stowe State Bed from the Buckinghamshire house, a Rococo marvel of 1756–57 (Fig 6). The Adam Room, a neo-Classical vision in blue and white, was designed by furniture historian Percy Macquoid and made by White Allom & Co (Fig 7). Finally, the Napoleon Room has fine Empire furniture and paintings that commemorate Lord Leverhulme’s admiration for the French emperor and the art of his court.

Lord Leverhulme’s love of Wedgwood china led him to purchase Lord Tweedmouth’s impressive collection in 1905 — and add to it. As a result, the Lady Lever Gallery has one of the finest collections in existence. One of the gallery’s running themes is an appreciation of craft skill of all kinds; standing in the Wedgwood rooms, it is striking to reflect that these neo-Classical works of art, as beautiful and refined as anything produced in Europe at the time, were all designed and made by working-class people in Staffordshire. Leverhulme also had a long-standing interest in Oriental ceramics, buying examples in bulk and at a very high level of quality. His collecting initially focused on the Kangxi period (1662–1722), but, after the decision to establish the Lady Lever Gallery, he broadened the scope of his purchases to include carved hardstones, cloisonné enamels, Ming dynasty ceramics and other objects.

The galleries were all designed to be top-lit and the long central hall remains so. Other rooms, however, have had their top-lighting blocked, with mixed results. A few galleries, notably those housing the Wedgwood and Chinese collections, as well as one room of 18th-century British art (Fig 4), have been modernised with new display cases. In general, however, the gallery has been managed with an admirably light touch by its curators: in some ways, it remains a period piece, with a strong and appealing character of its own.

Lord Leverhulme kept adding to the museum collection until his death, on May 7, 1925. Thousands of his employees and their families filed past his coffin as it lay in state in the gallery, below The Daphnephoria. After his death, much of the private collection was sold, in sales that lasted 46 days. His descendants lived at Thornton Manor until the death of the 3rd Viscount Leverhulme in 2000. In 2001, the remaining collections there were sold by Christie’s for almost £10 million, still the record for a British house sale. Happily, several works from the collection were acquired for the Lady Lever Art Gallery at the event.

Lord Leverhulme has several memorials. Lever Brothers merged with the Dutch manufacturer Margarine Unie in 1930 to form Unilever. The company now trades in more than 190 countries and is valued at £108 billion. The Leverhulme Trust, founded under its namesake’s will, is one of Britain’s foremost cultural foundations, supporting scholarship and education across a very wide field, representing his success in business and his vast philanthropy. Port Sunlight and the Lady Lever Art Gallery are more personal memorials, expressive of his Victorian idealism and love of art. The latter was merged with the Walker Art Gallery and another four museums to form National Museums and Galleries on Merseyside, now National Museums Liverpool, in 1986, in recognition of the scale and quality of their holdings.

Port Sunlight may seem remote, but it is easily reachable from nearby Liverpool or Chester and it is an uplifting place to visit. Arriving at the village is like stepping into another world. At its heart is this serene Classical building with its extraordinary collections, so rich and varied that it feels like a national gallery for a small nation.

Find out more about Lady Lever Gallery at the Liverpool Museums website.

This feature originally appeared in the August 26, 2026, print edition of Country Life. Click here for more information on how to subscribe.

One year when I was at school, my English teacher set a summer homework task: to read The Go-Between, by LP Hartley.

I only remember two things about the book. The first was that as soon as we were given our dog-eared copies, we all set about 'improving' the cover to make the author's name become J.R. Hartley (if you know, you know). The second is the novel's opening line: 'The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.'

I never actually got beyond that line (one of the most famous openings in literature), but neither have I forgotten it — and I was reminded of it again today by reading that when the journalist and TV presenter Anne Robinson got her first proper job in journalism, by way of congratulation her mother sent her on her way to Fleet Street with a fur coat and a convertible MG. When I started in journalism four decades after Robinson, all I got from my mum were worried comments about what a precarious existence it would be, and how I should start driving a taxi at night and get some shifts pulling pints to tide me over when it inevitably all went wrong.

Well, Robinson's mother was spot on, because it was the start of a glittering career. While the budding reporter might have been gifted the car and the coat, everything else she earned for herself as she blazed a trail through a string of senior roles at newspapers including The Sunday Times and the Daily Mail before moving into television and becoming a household name. The latter era started with viewer-feedback show Points of View, moved on to consumer affairs show Watchdog, and finally, triumphantly, peaked with a long spell as the ultimate Bad Cop quiz show host on the BBC's show The Weakest Link. Caustic, rude, yet with a twinkle in her eye, Robinson became iconic in a role which she truly made her own, spawning dozens of international versions —, not least a highly-lucrative US edition featuring Robinson herself.

Throughout all that fame and fortune (which allowed her to buy a house in the Hamptons, among other places), she's called the Cotswolds home for 40 years. Now in her 80s, she is moving away, to a place overlooking Hyde Park that's close to her daughter. And that means her home in a village near Cirencester, Willamoor Barn, is now up for sale, with Butler Sherborn quoting £4.25 million.

The presenter bought Willamoor Barn 20 years ago after owning a couple of other properties in the area, and has done a huge amount to it — work, she says, that desperately needed doing. 'The inside, recently converted, was hideous,' she wrote of the place in a recent article in the Daily Telegraph. 'But its land and the views were breathtaking.'

Having bought the place soon after breaking up with her second husband, John Penrose, everything that's in Willamoor Barn now is Robinson's vision.

'Now I was on my own, without his eye or impeccable taste,' she continued in the piece. 'The barn was Grade-II listed, but I ripped out the tacky interior, installed several bathrooms, and filled it with my pictures and books. If you’ve got enough art and books, you don’t need an interior designer.'

The pictures speak for themselves: the ceilings are lofty and there are four reception rooms, seven bedrooms and six bathrooms.

Dating originally from the 1800s, the property and an adjoining cottage sit in the Coln Valley at Hatherop, with Cirencester only a short drive away.

The barn sits in 4½ acres of gardens and grounds — plenty of space to roam, relax and soak up the peace and beauty of this Cotswolds haven.

It is reached via secure gates, a driveway and ample parking for several cars.

Willamoor Barn is for sale through Butler Sherborn — see more pictures and details.

Paintings wear their years as people do. Colours fade, surfaces craze with cracks and spot with age. Although it is natural to think of them as permanent, in truth they are constantly evolving, nursed along the way by teams of highly trained and dedicated conservators. ‘The longer I’ve worked in my profession, the more I have come to see that we are walking beside these great paintings through time,’ says Rebecca Hellen, head conservator of easel painting for the National Trust. ‘They are changing just as we are.’

How to deal with those marks of passing time is a question with which every picture restorer wrestles. ‘There are contrasting traditions in conservation in southern and northern Europe,’ explains Alisa Vincentelli, a freelance conservator who has worked at Tate Modern, The Bowes Museum and Auckland Castle, as well as for Christie’s. ‘My first experience as a picture restorer came as a volunteer in the conservation room at the Byzantine and Christian Museum in Athens. In northern Europe, we tend to try to make “invisible” repairs, whereas in Italy and Greece, damage is often integrated into the painting — it becomes a part of its story.’

Pinpointing exactly which moment in its life to which a picture should be taken back is a key part of the restorer’s role. ‘Leaving aside the repair of damage, for most private clients the judgement is aesthetic,’ says Marine Andrieux, who trained as conservator at the Sorbonne and, after spells at the V&A Museum and Tate, is now a painting restorer with the long-established family firm of Everett Fine Art in Somerset. ‘Paintings that have been in families for generations are often simply so dirty [people] can’t see them anymore. At the moment, I’m working on a Cedric Morris still life that’s been hanging in the owner’s sitting room more or less since it was completed. Morris used very thick impasto, which forms a surface that dust and dirt really cling to, so it requires very extensive and careful cleaning’.

Dust and dirt deposits are removed using a soft, wide goat-hair brush, together with specially adapted vacuum-cleaner nozzles, with specialist solvents that can remove yellowed varnish without damaging the paintwork beneath. In the past, treatment was not always so gentle. Before the 1950s, the everyday job of caring for pictures was generally entrusted to household cleaners and restoration was carried out by local artists.

‘They came in and removed layers of oxidised varnish, often using caustic substances such as lye, vinegar and even urine. It not only took off the varnish, but often some of the surface paint, too. Then, they’d retouch it with oil paints as they saw fit,’ Hellen explains. Today, Andrieux notes, restorers are trained to be more cautious and minimal. ‘We want to repair the damage, not add to it.’ The appalling vision of the notorious 2018 ‘Monkey Christ’ restoration of Ecce Homo in the Sanctuary of Mercy church in Borja, Spain, haunts the nightmares of conservators the world over.

‘We base restoration on historic facts and scientific analysis,’ Hellen explains. Her work on Thomas Moran’s Nearing Camp, Evening on the Upper Colorado River, 1882, for example, involved ‘X-rays, a chemical analysis of the paint and a cross section of the canvas that revealed red pigment bubbling up through the greens and browns like a miniature volcano.’ Alongside that came a two-week field trip to Washington DC to consult with American conservators who had worked on Moran’s epic landscapes. ‘The decisions you make as a conservator in caring for a painting are based on the time you meet the artwork in its life and the time that you are in your own life,’ Hellen says. ‘As much as we try to understand the painting, the judgements we make will always be subjective.’

For that reason, Vincentelli believes, when it comes to the modern art restorer: ‘The most important thing is that we never do any work on a painting that is not reversible — because, however much we try to avoid it, there will always be some input from the era we are working in, whether that’s in terms of the materials or the aesthetics.’

Picture conservation is a profession that straddles the past and the present and even (almost) the future, requiring as it does both a detailed knowledge of materials that have been in use for centuries and an understanding of the latest scientific developments, such as the use of nanomaterials and lasers. It is work that combines the theoretical with the practical, art with analysis. Today, a large conservation department may use infrared reflectography to see through the top layers of the paint and pick out changes made by the artist. For example, in the spring of 2026, National Trust conservators discovered a ‘horse-drawn carriage, a lady in a bonnet, a gentleman and carriage dog’ hidden beneath the surface of a painting, Stourhead in its Infancy, by this very method.

X-ray fluorescence examinations, meanwhile, map the chemical compositions of pigment and can reveal hidden under-drawings. Pest infestations — common in old paintings — can be killed off in nitrogen chambers without damaging the canvas.

However, not every conservator works in laboratory conditions. Living in rural Northumberland with three small children to raise, Vincentelli created a studio in her home and worked on private commissions. ‘I’m pretty sure we were the only family in the village with a Salvator Rosa painting sitting on an easel in the spare bedroom,’ she says.

The joys and challenges of the conservator’s job come from both expected and unexpected quarters. The National Trust collection of about 13,500 paintings contains many that have had ‘interesting’ lives. ‘Often they were commissioned to display in London townhouses, before being transferred, as their owners’ fortunes increased, to country houses,’ Hellen reveals. ‘There, they would be moved around, reframed to fit in with the décor or changing fashion; often, they were made smaller, too, to fit into a new space.’

Perhaps the most dramatic example of the latter is to be found at Petworth House in West Sussex, long a centre of artistic patronage. ‘The celebrated Petworth Beauties, seven full-length portraits of Society ladies by Michael Dahl from the late 17th century were almost literally cut down to size by the 3rd Earl of Egremont in the 1820s,’ Hellen explains. ‘The Earl had the portraits removed from their frames and their legs were folded up behind their backs before reframing. The Beauties were in this uncomfortable position for nearly two centuries. We were given the task of bringing their legs back down again.’

Andrieux took pleasure in restoring a Turner painting of Caernarvon Castle in Wales (‘A tiny canvas that, amazingly, had one of his palettes stuck on the back of it’), but also found herself drawn in by the task of reviving an old metal sign from a West Country inn. ‘It was a vivid-green coat of arms and had swung back and forth outside the pub in the wind and rain for more than a century. Working on that, and other pieces that form part of people’s lives, is fascinating. The clients are so attached to these pieces that the reaction when we return them in their revived state is often quite emotional.’

One of Hellen’s career highlights also involved Turner. ‘Mercury Sent to Admonish Aeneas was one of four paintings completed in 1850,’ she explains. ‘It was never sold and came to the National Gallery as part of the Turner Bequest. After that, it suffered some rather rough treatment. It [was] sent around the world on at least half a dozen occasions and for some years hung in the British Embassy in Athens. Turner used red and blue spermaceti wax in his paintings. It melts at 39˚C, so having it on the wall of an un-air-conditioned building in Greece in summer is clearly not what a conservator would recommend.’

This was not the only way the painting suffered: ‘At some point, it had been re-lined and the restorers had attached the failing canvas to a new canvas by pressing down on the surface with heavy, hot irons.’ Working next to Turner scholar Ian Warrell, Hellen set about tackling the picture’s restoration. ‘It gave me more sleepless nights than anything I have worked on,’ she recalls, ‘but also the greatest pleasure. The rollercoaster of trying to understand Turner’s process, rarely repeated from one canvas to the next, to unravel what he was doing with that incredible non-linear surface… it was totally beguiling.’

Not all conservation work ends so happily, alas. Vincentelli recalls restoring an abstract painted wooden relief by a leading British artist of the 1950s for a large institution (which shall remain anonymous). ‘Shortly after I returned the work, which was in muted shades of grey and brown, a firm of decorators came in to paint the room it was mounted in. They evidently thought it was some kind of fixture that was in need of brightening up and slapped emulsion paint all over it. They did quite a thorough job, apparently, but I’ve never had the heart to go and look at it.’

This feature originally appeared in the September 9, 2026, issue of Country Life. Click here for more information on how to subscribe

Angela Hartnett has been busy. Managing Michelin-starred Murano and its cafe offspring is a full-time job, as is cooking at Wimbledon, Royal Ascot, Formula 1, Henley Regatta and Sugrue South Downs. It is at the latter, a vineyard in Haywards Heath, where we meet. She and her husband are both investors in the wine here, which pairs brilliantly with the three-course meal Angela has prepared — a fresh tomato and tuna salad, beautifully cooked lamb and roasted plums with cream for dessert.

This is part of a series of wine and lunch events hosted at Sugrue South Downs, and feels almost exactly being a guest on Dish, the podcast she hosts with Nick Grimshaw, where she cooks a bespoke three-course menu for each of their celebrity guests and explains why she has chosen each course. ‘The stressful part is making sure you deliver, because you’re in the lap of the gods always,’ Angela says of these pop-up events, where she’s removed from the comfort of her usual kitchens. ‘But the pressure is what I get a kick out of.’

The chef trained under Gordan Ramsay and was formerly Chef-Patron at Angela Hartnett at the Connaught, where she gained her first Michelin star in 2004. As well as her London restaurants, Angela has a restaurant in France, Cucina Angelina in Courchevel.

She was born in Kent, but was raised in Upminster, London. Angela’s interest in Italian food came at a formative age. Her Italian grandmother cared for her a lot as a child and it was in Italy, where Angela was working for a year as an 18-year-old au pair, where her heritage and her culinary tastes began to intertwine. She gained a history degree from Cambridge Polytechnic, now known as Anglia Ruskin University, before pursuing a career in hospitality.

It was in Cambridge, working in a hotel, that Angela learned how to cook, before going on to work at the Sandy Lane Hotel restaurant in Barbados. Returning to London, she trained at Ramsay’s restaurant Aubergine alongside Marcus Wareing, after which she became Wareing’s sous chef at his restaurant Petrus. She appeared on Hell’s Kitchen and MasterChef, and has an OBE.

Angela often works with her husband, the chef Neil Borthwick. ‘Neil’s a great chef. He’s just brilliant,’ she gushes. ‘I mean, I always say Neil’s a better chef than me, and I genuinely mean that. He has a little extra edge.’ She elaborates: ‘Recently we were cooking something that I would have served with a simple bit of lemon and sauce, but Neil served it with a Japanese spice and it elevated it all. That’s the difference between me and Neil. I’ll still make it taste delicious, but Neil will just give it that extra something.’

Your aesthetic hero

Someone like Hockney, at the moment. He made art approachable. Another person I would say is Elizabeth David. She was an Italian-American cookery writer who wrote with such a brilliant ability.

An exhibition that has really impressed you

The one that I always go to is the RA Summer Exhibition. I love it. Last year I bought a picture from there. It was of ladies eating chips in Pimlico, and it was just such a brilliant photograph. You can find different gems there.

The last thing of note that you bought for yourself

Probably clothes. I bought a nice dress, because I had to wear something. I’m not into clothes, but I’ll buy them if I have to. I’d love to basically be like Steve Jobs or Barack Obama, where you wear the same thing day in, day out.

Apart from that, there’s an amazing shop on Columbia Road called Vintage Heaven and I found these old antique snail plates and bought those for me and Neil to have for the house.

Your favourite painting

I suppose it depends. I think it changes, doesn’t it? I mean, you can go to the National Gallery and see something like Titian, and then you can go to a modern art gallery and see something by Tracey Emin. I think it always changes for me.

A possession you’d never sell

I've got some earrings I bought from a place in New York, when I first earned a big salary. I suddenly thought, ‘Oh, I'm earning a bit of money now,’ and I bought some vintage diamond earrings. So those and my grandmother's ring which was given to me.

A book that has inspired you

I love Christopher Brookmyre and Ian Rankin, both Scottish authors. I love Austen and I think she’s wonderful too. Pride and Prejudice is still one of my favourite novels. And also Franny and Zooey by J.D. Salinger.

The music that you work to

I do and I don’t. I love Mark Ronson and I love Raye at the moment. I also saw Lola Young the other night and I think she’s great too.

The last podcast you listened to

The Rest is Football. I’m an Arsenal fan.

Who would play you in a film of your life

Susan Sarandon. I think she’s amazing, though she’s lovely looking. I'm not nearly as attractive. She’s a class actor.

What you’d take with you to a desert island

I’d probably take music. If I was able to take a radio, that would be great.

The thing that gets you up in the morning

These days I don’t know if it’s menopause, or age, or whatever, but I seem to be waking up at 5:30am. The dogs really are what get me up though, and I don’t mind that, you get out of the house and get some exercise — so that’s good.

The items you collect

China and pottery. And antique cookery books — first edition preferred.

A hotel you could go back and back to

Le Bristol in Paris. We went there for Gordon Ramsay’s 40th birthday.

The most memorable meal you’ve ever eaten

To me, it's not about the food on the table, it's about who you're with and what you're doing. But, I've said it many times, it's got to be a family Christmas. We all went to Italy, we went to the local restaurant, they made us anellini, we had pork, veal, tiramisu, all the local wines. It was snowing when we came outside, and we were up in the mountains. It was just with my uncle, my aunt, my mum, my brothers and my sister, and it was brilliant. The food was amazing, simple but amazing. It was a great environment and to me, my best meals are always with my family. Family and friends.

The best present you’ve ever received

A good recent present Neil bought me was a face cream for Christmas. I’ll be honest, I wasn’t initially wowed by it as a gift, but actually I’ve been using it and lots of people have said: ‘Your skin is looking really great.’

Angela Hartnett is an investor in Sugrue South Downs. For more information visit their website.

St Moritz has never been short of five-star hotels — Kulm, Badrutt’s Palace, Suvretta… to name just a few — so when Grace La Margna marched into town in 2022 it wasn’t just determined to make a splash, it needed to.

A two minute walk from the station, it is wonderfully placed for arriving by train (and why, given the chance, wouldn’t you make the most of Switzerland’s gloriously efficient rail network?) and, more importantly, feels like a hotel designed for the St Moritz of today rather than its gilded past.

The first five-star offering to open in the Swiss resort for half a century, the Grace is a study in contemporary alpine design and art. Whereas St Moritz’s other grande dames embrace Gothic grandeur, the Grace is fresher and more obviously cool — it feels less like a palace and more like a stylish private members’ club.

Art doesn’t simply hang on the hotel’s walls — it is woven into its identity. Jurg Kaufmann’s Engadin alpine photography series is on permanent display, and a collaboration with Pietro Terzini saw his graffiti-inspired scrawls projected onto the building’s facade.

The newer Grace wing — home to Kaufmann’s creations — houses the hotel’s most modern and more compelling rooms (above). The view from the floor-to-ceiling windows is of Lake St Moritz — frozen in the winter and flecked with sailing boats in the summer — so that the room becomes a frame for the Engadin rather than a retreat from it.

And then there is La Margna wing — an Art Nouveau landmark with its distinctive cherry-red shutters. My Junior Suite was softer than its Grace Wing counterpart with a weighty faux-fur bedspread the colour of caramel, a long bathroom in tonal shades of more warm beige and flattering lighting (below). Frette bed linen and a complimentary mini bar are included as standard, and four-legged friends — and there are lots of them in St Moritz; you can see some pictures of our favourites here — are welcome in all room categories, except for La Margna Superior ones.

Back downstairs there’s a Beefbar outpost (joining siblings in Monte-Carlo and Saint-Tropez), which offers up something entirely different to the venison and fondue-heavy menus of some of the more traditional restaurants, and a fantastic bar. There are live DJ sets and a tarot-inspired cocktail list (although they make a mean gin gimlet; order alongside a plate of late-night fries) and it’s busy most evenings in a ‘I’m in the right place’ kind of way, as opposed to a ‘I cannot move, get me out of here’ one…

The tension between what people expect to find in St Moritz and what Grace has built has been a part of its appeal since the very beginning — and the old guard are starting to follow in its footsteps. Open year-round, other hotels are now starting to close later in the winter and open earlier in the summer. The Kulm and its friends still rule the mountain, but Grace La Margna is proof that St Moritz is ready for what comes next.

Rooms from £550 a night on a bed-and-breakfast basis. Visit the Grace La Margna website for more information and to book.

Click here to read our summertime guide to St Moritz.

North Yorkshire retains a good number of former monasteries around its hills and, at Mount St John, near Felixkirk, the outlines of a preceptory of the Knights Hospitaller can be seen in the park just below the garden, with York Minster a smudge on the far horizon. The present house, which dates from 1720, was built on the site of the 12th-century ‘Commandery on Mount Hill’ and overlooks the Vale of York.

The site’s many blessings (including protective woodland behind the house) had, sadly, not resulted in a joyous garden when Yorkshire businessman and former trustee of the RHS Chris Blundell and his wife, Jill, moved here 26 years ago. Old photographs show acres of steeply sloping lawns that made little use of the south-facing position and the walled garden lay unkempt and uncared for. This last did not remain derelict for long. Kitchen and cutting gardens now operate at full throttle, supplying the pubs and inns, including the local in Felixkirk, that form part of Blundell’s portfolio. The remainder of the 20-acre garden and the parkland, he knew, would need some outside help. The answer came in 2001, when the landscape designer Tom Stuart-Smith was awarded his first Gold medal at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show. Blundell looked no further.

Stuart-Smith’s contribution has been to develop Mount St John’s garden (including a ravine on the west side) into a contemporary pleasure ground. He has fulfilled his brief and more, with a client who is a highly energetic plant enthusiast and clearly embraces the idea that a garden is never finished. Part of the plan was to leave space for at least one marquee, to which end a series of formal flower gardens with expansive lawns unfold as they descend in two generous terraces from the Palladian house, culminating in a curved ha-ha. The lowest level, edged by immaculate stone walls, resembles an infinity pool, hanging over the paddocks and fields that spread out below. Extensive earthworks were carried out to balance the garden with the surroundings including the striking outline of Sutton Bank, looming over the nearby Hambleton Hills. It’s a monumental size, at about three acres on this south side. ‘Mount St John had to be big because the view is so awe-inspiring,’ explains Stuart-Smith. ‘It would be easy for a garden to feel very feeble in the face of those views.’

Whereas the flower garden creates a sense of occasion, a different kind of formality is at play over the hedge. Precision-cut yew is fringed with a wide canal of Miscanthus sinensis, an introduction to the broad strokes of prairie perennials, grasses and domed topiaries that are repeated on the grand scale, from a gravel garden at the top to a parterre sliced with lawn paths at the bottom. It is carried out with the kind of panache one expects from Stuart-Smith, making an unlikely, but seamless connection between the recently built house extension and the miles of farmland below.

Generally called the Meadow Garden, the design here reflects Stuart-Smith’s interest, at the time of making, in using landscape pattern in a garden’s layout. This one was partly inspired by an Ordnance Survey map from the 1870s. ‘I was very interested in the garden being a condensation of landscape pattern,’ he recalls. Beyond the park’s edge, the old field pattern was used to form lines of planting within the garden, starting with the ribbons of miscanthus that run through the parterre on the bottom terrace. It hardly matters that, after 20 years, this pattern is barely traceable; it created ‘a nice constraint’ and a guide in how to plant it.

The prospect from the meadow garden is more wooded than it is from the lawned terraces, which overlook parkland. On this eastern side, a series of domed beech topiaries make a graphic connection between the garden and the trees below. The clipped beech tumps effectively mimic distant tree canopies and their slowly changing autumn foliage adds richness to the developing scenery. Likewise, the colours and textures playing out in the perennials on the descending terraces interact with the farming seasons in the fields below.

On looking back to the house, the tumps also mark the beginning of a planting diagonal, continued in domes of box and repeats of hawthorn, Crataegus x lavalleei ‘Carrierei’, cutting across the axial pattern made by the terraces. Contrast is key at Mount St John and the meadow garden also takes time to pause with a large and narrowly rectangular pool with a plain wooden deck, its stillness enhanced by the slightest smattering of water lilies across its surface.

Stuart-Smith’s way with hard materials adds extra refinement to the landscape of giant perennials, as well as fitting seamlessly among more conventional lawns and flowers. Holding walls have flat tops for walking on, creating changing perspectives across the garden. Next to the great arms of yew that are the site’s partitions, simple lines of sandstone make a beguiling tracery, leading sometimes to dead ends and at others to viewpoints: the flower garden offers a tantalising glimpse down a steep bank to the valley garden, which is the continually evolving counterpart to Stuart-Smith’s original 2004 design.

The remains of three stew ponds, where fish were kept for the tables of the Knights Hospitaller, had lapsed into giant puddles that Blundell and a team of gardeners sealed using clay from the surrounding ravine, which is well supplied with springs. Brambles and weed trees were removed from the edges of the reinvigorated and restocked ponds, and planting began. Although Stuart-Smith has been involved in the development of the valley garden, the area has been mainly in the hands of Blundell and his head gardener, until recently Tim Marshall.

An experienced plantsman, who had worked with the Dutch landscape designer Piet Oudolf as well as on previous occasions with Stuart-Smith, Marshall was as delighted as his employer by the possibilities of the site. The valley garden is sheltered by old sycamores — eventually to be replaced by beech and oak — creating a microclimate that has opened up opportunities for rarer species. Sourcing plants from Bleddyn and Sue Wynn-Jones at Crûg Farm Plants near Caernarfon has been part of the pleasure in steering this area of the garden. Discussions are in progress about planting a middle storey to balance the existing Scots pines.

The valley garden is traced with paths and the ponds are crossed with stepping stones, creating more viewpoints in this garden of views. From certain angles, the magnificent Sutton Bank hoves into view, but this is mostly an inward-looking garden, a place apart, where the enjoyable discussion of plants and ideas continues to engage Blundell, his family and the gardeners.

The garden at Mount St John is private, but does hold occasional open days — follow them on Instagram for the latest details and dates.

This feature originally appeared in the September 9, 2026, print edition of Country Life. Click here for more information on how to subscribe.

Sweden — £1.9 million

'Welcome to the Remarkable World of Concrete' reads the listing for this remarkable (and perhaps Lego-inspired?) home, which bravely shuns any sort of soft design touches, instead being a simple series of rectangular blocks. I suppose even an absence of design is a design choice? Anyhow, the critics see things differently, for the man responsible — Jonas Lindvall — has won awards for his architecture.

In any case, the setting more than makes up for the house's rather odd look: it's on a three-acre private peninsula 'surrounded by the shimmering waters of Lake Vittsjön and majestic beech forests', in the words of the agent.

For sale via Residence Fastighetsmäkleri Christie’s International Real Estate — see more details and pictures.

Italy — £1.65 million

Portofino, the Italian harbourside town nicknamed 'The Pearl of the World', is as pricey as it is beautiful. At this budget, in this corner of north-west Italy, you'll get a modest two-bedroom flat — but you will be at the very heart of a place that's been beloved by A-listers for decades.

For sale via Knight Frank — see more details and pictures.

South Africa — £1.9 million

On the sheltered Bantry Bay, and 'located on one of the most prestigious streets in Cape Town' according to the agents, this home has outstanding ocean views, three bedrooms, and a location right next to Clifton Beach and beneath the striking Lion's Head mountain.

For sale via Chas Everitt International Property Group — see more details and pictures.

St Lucia — £2 million

At the top end of the budget, but worth the extra, Colibri Cottage sits right on the beach on the south-west corner of St Lucia.

Six bedrooms, infinity pool, and perfect views of Petit Piton, the island's UNESCO World Heritage site.

For sale via Christie's International Real Estate Caribbean — see more details and pictures.

France — £1.7 million

We couldn't go without a chateau on this list — and this one is an 11-bedroom beauty, sitting atop a remote hilltop in the countryside near Toulouse.

Château de Marquein sits in just under 30 acres, has been entirely refurbished, and comes with a string of outbuildings, heated pool, a four-bedroom cottage and much more. Amazing value.

For sale via Poncet & Poncet Christie's International Real Estate — see more details and pictures.

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How best to record the passage of time is a problem which has exercised the mind of man from the beginnings of history. The mechanical clock dates probably from the end of the 13th century, and since that date clock-making has evoked the finest and most precise — and often the most complicated — mechanism of which each succeeding age was capable. Not content with that, the clockmaker called in every appropriate form of applied art to decorate his efforts — the goldsmith, silversmith, enameller, lapidary and others.

The study of horology is, therefore, one which covers a great many forms of mechanical and artistic effort.

No one even remotely connected with horology would ever think of referring to 'the Ilbert Collection of Clocks and Watches.' All over the world the Ilbert Collection, without qualification, is known as the most complete collection of clocks and watches there ever has been, or is ever likely to exist.

The making of it called for the leisure, means, mechanical knowledge and artistic taste that are rarely found in one man. Courtenay Ilbert had them all, and he devoted 50 years to his tremendous achievement. Primarily, the emphasis of the collection is mechanical and scientific, but nearly every form of decorative art is also represented, and there is hardly any — certainly no important — aspect of horology from about 1500 to 1850 which is not worthily represented.

Ilbert died in February, 1956. The British Museum quickly realised the importance of acquiring his collection for the nation, and for two years his executors continued to hold it while the Museum has investigated the possibilities of raising the relatively modest sum of £85,000 for which it was offered to them. Unfortunately, at this time, their budget up to the end of this year had been fully bespoken, and although various substantial offers have been made towards raising the sum, the Treasury has so far refused a special grant for the balance.

Accordingly, despite their desire for the collection to remain intact and in this country, the executors and beneficiaries under Ilbert's will can no longer delay, and short of a miracle or a change of heart by the Treasury, the clocks will be auctioned at Christie's in November. This unique and never-to-be-repeated work of a lifetime will thus be broken up, and probably many treasures of national importance will go out of this country.

The oldest surviving clocks date from the late 14th century; they are monumental mechanisms such as the Salisbury Cathedral clock of 1386. Exceedingly few domestic clocks exist from before 1500 and the Ilbert Collection starts at about the beginning of the 16th century with the typical late Gothic house clocks, with iron movements, and up to three trains, for the main timekeeper and for striking hours and quarters. These are surmounted by one or two bells carried in a framework with crocketed decorations. The trains are weight-driven, and the escapement is the verge and foliot which was universal for clocks until the application of the pendulum in 1657, and for watches until the practicable development of the balance spring in 1675.

Until these two dates, accuracy of timekeeping made little progress and, perhaps as a compensation, this is the great age of decoration in clocks and watches. Watches, or at any rate portable, spring-driven time-keepers, date from the end of the 15th century. The oldest spring-driven clock is dated 1525 and belongs to the Society of Antiquaries of London. The earliest surviving watches, which could be carried about the person, date from 1550, and the Ilbert Collection has a small, drum-shaped instrument from the mid-century, almost completely without ornamentation, which was certainly intended to be carried. Towards the end of the century watches became less uncommon and the collection is well represented with French fusee and German stackfreed specimens in typical pierced and engraved, metal-gilt cases of flattened drum shape. Clocks became more adventurous, such as the lovely little drum clock with rock-crystal sides and a superimposed, dome-shaped alarum.

An alternative to the fusee or stackfreed, as a means of equalising the variable torque of the mainspring, is found in a mechanism by Hans Kiening. The almost drab, box-shaped case contains a movement of superlative finish in which the depth of engagement of the verge with the crown-wheel is reduced as the pull of the mainspring diminishes. Part of the pierced and engraved blued-steel fretwork which decorates the movement plates was missing, and a replacement was made by Ilbert himself. It is indistinguishable from the finest contemporary work.

Of unparalleled importance is the great clock of 1598 by Nicholas Vallin; it is the earliest dated clock of British make, and probably the oldest surviving musical clock. At each quarter a long performance is made of 13 bells, and the outer case is of architectural form, in metal gilt.

The first half of the 17th century saw increasing richness of decoration, and the collection has a superb variety of watches cased in painted enamel, cut rock crystal, engraved silver and silver-gilt, form watches, pin-work, and so forth; and examples of the early Baroque table clocks with complicated astronomical movements and gilt cases in 'tabernacle' shape.

The collection may have had rivals, but it is with the invention of the pendulum for clocks and the balance-spring for watches that it really comes into its own. Reasonably accurate time-keeping became possible after some 350 years of little or no progress; and British masters leapt at the new opportunities, so that within two decades they had established themselves as pre-eminent, and an export trade had been established.

The Dutchman Huygens first brought the pendulum to a stage when it could be produced commercially, and he confided his method to Samuel Coster, who made the first examples. The Dutch family of Fromanteel had previously settled in London, and they sent John Fromanteel to Holland to learn the new system from Coster.

By 1658, they were advertising pendulum clocks in England, and cased them in what was to become the standard British long-case or grandfather clock. Ilbert's specimen, from details of the pediment-topped case, can be identified as probably the oldest surviving British long-case clock. From it stems a selected range of long-case clocks. Next is an early example of the long pendulum and anchor escapement (Britain's first great contribution to horology) in the form of a superbly proportioned, very simple clock by Joseph Knibb. Then come three Tompions; a year clock by Quare; and then one of the first regulator clocks by Graham. George Graham, by his invention of the deadbeat escapement and mercury-compensated pendulum, brought timekeeping from limits of a minute or two a week at best, to a few seconds a month by soon after 1725. Ilbert's Graham regulator is a superb example, giving sidereal and mean time. It is matched by the slightly later sidereal and mean time regulator of Thomas Mudge, with a gridiron pendulum. This perfectly-proportioned piece was about Ilbert's last important addition to the collection.

Then came John Harrison's first practicable marine timekeeper and Mudge's invention of the lever-escapement. Of Harrison's two successful marine timekeepers one is in the National Maritime Museum at Greenwich and one, belonging to the clockmakers' Company, is in the Guildhall Museum. No example is in private ownership; but of the next steps in the development of the marine chronometer the Ilbert Collection is unsurpassed. Mudge's constant force escapement was too complicated for quantity production, but its performance was unsurpassed for a century. Of the three earlier timekeepers made by Mudge, Ilbert has one. Mudge is also not known to have made more than three instruments with the lever escapement, of which the only watch belongs to Her Majesty the Queen. Of the two clocks, Ilbert's is certainly the first. By 1780 John Arnold and Thomas Earnshaw were producing relatively cheap marine chronometers on lines which have not been seriously departed from or improved upon. It is questionable if any very early Earnshaw survives, but the Ilbert Collection has every important type of Arnold's work, and typical specimens of Earnshaw's.

Correspondingly came improvements in the accuracy of pocket watches, with the development of Mudge's lever escapement by Emery, Leroux, Grant and Breguet, and the detent escapement by Arnold and Earnshaw. All of these are represented in fascinating profusion, with cases of appropriately simple perfection. The last great step in the perfection of the pocket watch, by the virtual elimination of position errors, was Breguet's tourbillon. His first perfected specimen he gave in a simple, silver drum-case, with an inscription dedicating it to John Arnold. This unique piece and many other Breguet examples are in the collection.

Also of this final period of the artist-craftsman, before Swiss mass-production methods took the field, are some superb late decorative watches such as transparent enamel over engine-turning, complicated astronomical movements and a variety of unusual French clocks, including a bracket year clock by Berthoud.

As a background to all these mechanically and decoratively perfect clocks and watches is a huge chest of some 2,000 watch movements representing every imaginable facet of mechanism from earliest to latest.

There are many fine collections in the world of clocks and watches, but none covers the whole field so comprehensively as Ilbert's vast collection. With the fierce competition among collectors to-day such a thing could never be got together again. For the three and a half centuries covered by the collection, horology has commanded man's greatest mechanical and decorative skill. That the nation, on the responsibility of the Treasury, should throw away the chance of securing the finest horological collection there will ever be, for the want of part only of the agreed valuation of £85,000, seems almost unthinkable.

The Country Life Archive contains more than a century of British architecture, rural life, photography, and property records dating back to the magazine's launch in 1897.

You can search and explore historical content using the Country Life Archive tag on our site, or access the complete backfile (1897–2005) via the ProQuest Country Life Archive.

Sheep don’t get much of a press do they? Apart from their categorisation as less than intellectual (‘being a sheep’ is a synonym for thoughtless following), ovines are the bête blanche of a vocal wing of rewilders for their alleged ‘sheep-wrecking’ of the uplands by overgrazing.

However, those who farm sheep are generally as keen as the next person on biodiversity restoration, likewise in recognising the national wellbeing and the preservation of the history of these isles. Poetess Elizabeth Barrett Browning declared to her amour, ‘How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.’ In the same manner, we list the ways (15 of them) in which we love sheep and how they aid us, might even save us.

1. It was not slavery that gave Britain its original wealth, but the medieval wool trade, as celebrated in the magnificent ‘wool churches’ of the Cotswolds. Riches from that trade made Britain a notably stable society; in homage, the Lord Chancellor still sits on a ‘woolsack’ in Parliament.

2. Sheep meat is replete in protein, healthy omega-3 fats, selenium, niacin, zinc. If the lamb chop is a table familiar, remember mutton, the animals’ mature meat, with its profound depths of flavour.

3. Wool clothing is durable and biodegradable (unlike synthetics, made from fossil fuels).

4. Woollen carpets trap pollutants, leading to a healthier home.

5. Wool makes excellent loft insulation.

6. Sheep can be milked; ewe-milk cheese is undergoing a revival nationally.

7. A sheep is a walking muck spreader, reducing the need for artificial fertiliser.

8. Wool is an excellent organic fertiliser.

9. Dung from a sheep potentially fosters 250,000 insects per year, creating a natural food chain right up to apex predators.

10. The sheep is the emblem of innocence and compassion in the religion of the national church.

11. Shepherd’s Bush, Shepton Mallet, Lambeth — what would British toponomy be without ovines?

12. Tweed from Scotland, lamb from Wales — sheep are fundamental to local economies.

13. Sheep farms tend to be small family affairs and the backbone of rural society.

14. Britain has more native ovine breeds (about 60) than any other country, developed over centuries to place and purpose, from Shetlands for jumpers to Suffolks for plate. Regard the Cotswold sheep with its lustrous locks and handsome corporeality: it puts soul into the landscape. The ‘Cotswold Lion’ dates from the Roman era and is living national history, as are all native breeds.

15. Conservation grazing by sheep is essential for habitats such as chalk downs.

We could go on, but that would be like counting sheep to send you to sleep.

This feature originally appeared in the September 16, 2026, issue of Country Life. Click here for more information on how to subscribe.

The London commuter belt swells periodically and slims back down again, and needs adjusting on a semi-regular basis. Traditionally this has been linked to the property cycle. When the London property market gets too hot, homeowners sell up, cash in and take advantage of the huge value gap between the capital and the countryside.

Most recently the expansion of the commuter zone was due to a unforeseen disruption. During the pandemic and in the aftermath, commuters pushed the boundaries of travel time and distance to live in the most idyllic parts of the British coastline and countryside thinking that remote working was here to stay.

As working life reverted to more normal pre-covid patterns for many quick access to the office became a priority once again. However, some have managed to cling to a few days a week working-from-home and are therefore able to choose further flung locations from London.

This is the second in our ‘best villages’ series, based on research by Savills and Country Life. The first part looked at the super-commuter villages within an hour of London; this second instalment goes the other way, naming ten villages where you'll have to put up with a long commute of an hour and a half or more — but where you'll be glad you did.

Interestingly, speed and distance aren't directly linked here — and indeed the village on this list with the shortest commute is also the furthest away. Long Buckby, in the north of Northamptonshire, is on a fast line into the capital taking only 68 minutes. But would you consider it a commuter village? That part is up to you.

Notes on methodology: These villages have their own railway station, or one close by, with a direct service into London that goes during normal commuter hours. Season ticket prices are based on travel five days a week for a year. Average house price figures from Savills / Land Registry.

Long Buckby, Northamptonshire

• Average house price: £479,361
• Journey time: 68 minutes into London Euston
• Season ticket: £7,352

Long Buckby is not an obvious pick for commuters skipping over the home counties to move north. Many headed in this direction get distracted by the Notswolds (the villages on the Northamptonshire side of the Oxfordshire border) won over by an address close to the chi-chi Cotswolds AONB.

However, for value for money and a direct train service into London, buyers should keep going until they hit upon Long Buckby, on the other side of the M1 and to the northwest of Northampton. Rachel Johnston of Stacks describes it as 'a stealth commuter spot.

'It's a former shoe-making village,' Johnston adds, 'but feels more like a small, self-sufficient town with shops, a library, and pubs around the market square.'

Two-bedroom cottages start from around £217,000 to detached period houses from £600,000.

'For families and commuters, it provides an ideal balance between rural charm and convenience,' says Nick Rudge of Savills. Despite its remote feel, Long Buckby is only 10.7 miles to Northampton — and you can trim the journey time a bit by going from Rugby instead, though that means dealing with more traffic to get to the station, and busier trains.

Kemble, Gloucestershire

• Average house price: £584,966
• Journey time: 74 minutes into London Paddington
• Season ticket: £12,188

You might not think of Kemble as being the gold-plated epicentre of the Cotswolds. The Beckhams will not be your neighbours, and you won't have Soho Farmhouse on your doorstep. Yet you will have The King nearby — his place at Highgrove is just outside nearby Tetbury — and you'll enjoy living in a beautiful part of England that doesn't get hit by the tour buses you'll find at some of the more famous villages.

On top of that it's cheaper and more convenient, just four miles outside of Cirencester and with a direct train service into London. 'It offers buyers the best of both worlds,' says Sebastian Hipwood of Blue Book Agency.

'Buyers can enjoy excellent access to Cirencester, Tetbury and Malmesbury, strong schools and a genuine sense of village life — without the crowds or premium prices often associated with the north Cotswolds,' he adds.

'It's quieter, less touristy and represents better value while still offering everything people imagine when they picture Cotswolds living.'

Kemble — whose village church was the setting for the wedding of Peter Phillips and Harriet Sperling in June 2026 — is dubbed the gateway to the south Cotswolds and close to the source of the Thames at Thames Head, and the 180 lakes of the Cotswolds Water Park. It has a school, a village hall and the Tavern pub. Three-bedroom cottage start from £750,000 and £1.5 million for a four-bedroom family home. Country piles will fetch around £2 million.

And on top of that, the station you'd be commuting from looks like something out of Thomas the Tank Engine. Wonderful.

Crowhurst, East Sussex

• Average house price: £442,240
• Journey time: 90 minutes into London Charing Cross
• Season ticket: £6,764

This village suits several different (rather niche) groups and its wide appeal is clear, the number of people using the train station has increased by 27 per cent since covid (according to the Savills research). History buffs will feel at home in 1066 country, just 10 minutes from Battle (home of the Battle of Hastings), and the Crowhurst Yew supposedly predates the Norman Conquest.

For nature lovers the village is surrounded by Sites of Special Scientific Interest (such as the Forewood RSPB reserve) while bleak geeks can enjoy a foreboding stormy sky from the shingle beach of Hastings (under five miles away). It is even closer to Bexhill-on-Sea where there is a burgeoning arts scene. Walkers can head out from Crowhurst on many routes to either the coast or inland to the High Weald.

The village itself has a recreational ground, a village hall and the Plough pub. The nearest primary school is in Battle. Four-bedroom houses start for around £600,000 in the village with larger country homes over the £1 million mark.

Kingston-on-Soar, Nottinghamshire

• Average house price: £246,848
• Journey time: 101 minutes into St Pancras International
• Season ticket: £12,612

Kingston-on-Soar is the closest village to the East Midlands Parkway railway hub, what was meant to be an important stop on the second phase of HS2 linking Birmingham to Manchester. Due to spiralling costs, the former Prime Minister Rishi Sunak scrapped the line beyond the West Midlands, and his successor Keir Starmer (so many PMs in so little time) did not reverse this decision.

However, Andy Burnham has pledged to complete this section, guaranteeing better connections for the villagers living on the Nottinghamshire-Leicestershire-Derbyshire border.

Kingston-upon-Soar is a small and pretty village with an ancient church at its heart and the Grade II-listed Kingston Hall (once home to Lord Belper — a big deal in this neck of the woods). It has now been converted into homes within 16 acres of parkland; one wing, now a four-bedroom house, is currently on the market at £548,000.

Further amenities can be found in neighbouring Kegworth – such as a post office, a shop, two restaurants, three pubs and a primary school. If you need more entertaining, it's just a 25-minute drive into Nottingham city centre.

Barnham, West Sussex

• Average house price: £378,061
• Journey time: 89 minutes into London Victoria and London Bridge
• Season ticket: £6,236

From the train station at Barnham, travellers can reach London Victorian, Brighton, Littlehampton, Chichester, Portsmouth and Southampton. It suits families with older teens who want independence and mobility. Barnham is five miles north of Bognor Regis and the south coast – although the best beaches in the area are 12 miles away at East and West Wittering. In between the two lies the coastal Pagham nature reserve and on the doorstep are other West Sussex gems, namely Goodwood Race Course and Chichester Harbour AONB.

Farmland and industrial glass-house agriculture surround the village. One landmark is the old flint and stone windmill (now a home) and the pub which was an 18th century farmhouse.

Despite its incredible surrounds Andrew Richardson of Jackson-Stops says Barnham is not a traditional, picture-postcard West Sussex village (he cites Rowlands Castle and Amberley instead) but it has plenty of selling (or buying) points. 'Barnham occupies an interesting position within West Sussex, offering buyers access to the coast, the South Downs and the surrounding countryside, with direct rail links to London. The area appeals to buyers who are seeking more space and better value for money than they might find elsewhere along the same railway line,' says Richardson.

Meldreth, Cambridgeshire

• Average house price: £448,696
• Journey time: 70 minutes into London Kings Cross
• Season ticket: £6,280

Commuters to London and Cambridge choose Meldreth. It is to the southwest of Cambridge on the road that runs to Letchworth Garden City. It is surrounded by notable beauty spots and day out locations, such as the National Trust's Wimpole Estate, Shepreth Wildlife Park, RSPB Fowlmere and the Melwood Nature Reserve. Richard Freshwater of Cheffins calls it a 'lovely, lowkey, rural village'.

Properties range from pretty, thatched cottages and barn conversions, to larger detached houses with price tags from sub £400,000 to £1.5 million and higher. 'Houses don't tend to sit on the market for very long as demand is high from London-based buyers or professionals from Cambridge. Another driver is the schools, the primary school has a good reputation, older children can jump onto the train to the secondary schools in Cambridge,' says Freshwater.

The smaller cottages tend to be bought by first time buyers working in Cambridge who can't pay central Cambridge prices, he continues. Although day-to-day amenities are in neighbouring Melbourn (residents can walk from one village to the other) there is a pub in Meldreth (the British Queen), a primary school and a village hall with community activities.

'Meldreth is one of south Cambridgeshire's quieter success stories — which attracts well-informed buyers who want excellent connectivity, genuine village character and relative good value. It is one for buyers who look beyond Cambridgeshire's most expensive commuter villages, it offers a balance between lifestyle and accessibility,' says Katie Neale of Harringtons.

Lenham, Kent

• Average house price: £417,300
• Journey time: 83 minutes into London Victoria
• Season ticket: £6,200

Lenham residents use Harrietsham railway station (listed further down this page) which is two miles away, although Lenham is the bigger of the duo by population. The village sits between Maidstone and Ashford (although closer to Maidstone and Leeds Castle) on the southern edge of the North Downs. It is a pretty market village with a square at its centre surrounded by Georgian homes, listed properties and period cottages with newer family-sized homes too.

New build, three-bedroom detached homes built by the developer Countryside are priced at just under £500,000 while there is a handsome, Georgian, semi-detached, three-bedroom house overlooking the square for £650,000 (Jackson-Stops). 'Buyers are typically drawn to the area by the balance between character and convenience, with the market made up largely of growing families looking to upsize, together with some older couples choosing to downsize while staying close to amenities,' says Alastair Hancock of Jackson-Stops.

'The village has a great atmosphere with independent shops and restaurants (the Sweetpea Bakery and the Dog & Bear Hotel), schools (the Lenham School is a state secondary and sixth form) and it is close to grammar schools in Maidstone and Ashford,' he adds.

Rowlands Castle, Hampshire

• Average house price: £631,929
• Journey time: 90 minutes into London Waterloo
• Season ticket: £6,176

Although Rowland's Castle is an hour and a half commute from London it has a city on the doorstep being just 2.9 miles from Havant, a suburb of Portsmouth. The peaceful village is however bordered by countryside — including some wonderful bluebell woods — and feels a world away from the urban sprawl of Pompey.

Rowland's Castle is named after a motte and bailey castle that dates back to the 1100s and was once a fortified hunting haunt of Henry II. It now lies in the grounds of a private house by the green in the centre of the village. There are three pubs, the Robin Hood, the Castle Inn and a harvester, and a village hall with a stage and an indoor badminton court. The rec is next to Rowland's golf course and the village is bordered to the south by Staunton Country Park and farm and close to Standstead Park stately home.

Beyond is the glorious West Sussex countryside, chocolate box villages of South Harting and Buriton and beauty spots such as Harting Down. Rowlands Castle is one of the more expensive villages on the list, with six-bedroom country houses costing more than £2,000,000 and four-bedroom cottages from £700,000.

Harrietsham, Kent

• Average house price: £417,300
• Journey time: 83 minutes into London Victoria
• Season ticket: £6,236

At the foot of the North Downs, and along the Pilgrims Way, Harrietsham, on the banks of the River Len, is steeped in history. In the hills above the village, archaeologists have uncovered evidence of the Bronze Age, the Iron Age, the Romans and the Saxons. At the centre of the village is a Grade I-listed Norman church and the railway station opened in 1884.

Visitors and walkers head up the hills from the villages to the Ringlestone Inn, originally a retreat for monks, with stories of highwaymen, smugglers and ghosts. Harrietsham has a primary school, a doctor's surgery, a parish church, a village hall, and a local store.

Edward Torry of Knight Frank calls it one of the most desirable villages in Kent with 'charming character cottages, period houses, substantial country houses and new build developments, making it appealing to a wide range of buyers.' This is golf country with a group of clubs nearby: Bearsted Golf Club, Ridge Golf Club, Weald of Kent Golf Course and Tudor Park Golf and Country Club.

Dorridge, West Midlands

• Average house price: £691,488
• Journey time: 102 minutes into London Marylebone
• Season ticket: £7,360

Dorridge is pricey for the Birmingham area. It is a village on the outskirts of the well-heeled Solihull that runs into neighbouring village Knowle. It has its own 'golden triangle' of roads close to the station, which has a direct service into Birmingham as well as London. There has been a shift west and northwest as those looking to relocate to the Cotswolds realise they can get far better value for money and yet still achieve a village lifestyle in Warwickshire and Worcestershire and now the West Midlands.

This is a village well-stocked with pubs and bars including the Scandinavian Skogen — serving cocktails and pizzas – and the Drum & Monkey. There is a well-trodden Sunday walk from Dorridge to the National Trust's Packwood House by country lanes (around 50 minutes).

As I cycled home from work yesterday, I came across something odd. It was a teenage girl, only she was well groomed, impeccably dressed and wore her hair in a bob. Are teenagers not meant to look spotty and out of place, I wondered? As London Fashion Week returns to the city this week, has sartorial fever finally gripped our adolescents?

Not quite. Today’s young ’uns are empirically more elegant than we were — a result, some say, of TikTok, where the algorithm subsumes sartorially unfriendly cultures to the benefit of a safer, dominant aesthetic. It holds up, but I would like to propose another theory. Trends tend to work in 30-year cycles. Thirty years ago was 1996. Whereas I was stuck with mod haircuts and skinny jeans at the age of 15, 30 years on from 1983, today’s teenagers are donning camisoles, suede jackets and slacks à la Kate Moss and Johnny Depp. QED.

2026 has inspired comparisons to 1976 (hot summer, bleak economy) and 1999 (stock-market exuberance fuelled by only a handful of tech companies). These were also years remembered for the majesty of their fashion: think Cher in suedes and feathered bodysuits by the dearly departed Bob Mackie, or Gwyneth Paltrow in that Donna Karen ensemble. Fashion is only free to go off the rails when the economy is soaring, because people will buy it anyway. The 1980s, fittingly, is still known as the decade that style forgot. Where The City saw a Big Bang, most wardrobes faced a Big Bust.

In a more uncertain climate, customers are forced to become more discerning. Designers, for their part, are expected to take fewer risks. A cynic might call this boring — the death of creativity — but history suggests otherwise. Designers are often at their best when finding freedom within constraint.

Reining in excess allows the details to take centre-stage (see Tom Ford’s tenure at Gucci, 1994–2004), a commercially savvy idea in an era where the snapshots of an outfit — think Chanel’s recent barefoot sandals — go viral more easily than the overall ensemble. Reuse and timelessness also become more important, as they ought to. In perhaps the only upshot of economic downturn, this weekend’s collections are expected to be a triumph.

This feature originally appeared in the September 16, 2026, issue of Country Life. Click here for more information on how to subscribe.

It's always nice when a beautiful old country house has a lovely, original interior, with exposed beams, open fireplaces and the like. But, equally, it's always slightly thrilling — in a rather different way, of course — when a home comes on to the market whose centuries-old front door opens on to an interior that looks like the set of a glossy 1980s soap opera.

Today's house — Ripple Hall, near Tewkesbury, on the north-east extremity of the Cotswolds — is very much in the latter vein. It's for sale through Knight Frank at a nice, round-sounding £5 million. And it's the sort of house that makes you sit up a little bit straighter in your chair.

It's not actually that long since Grade II-listed Ripple Hall appeared in these pages. Back in December 2018 it came on to the market for the first time in 60 years, priced at £2.25 million for a home whose oldest parts date back to the 15th century, but which was remodelled in the 18th century into the exquisite Georgian country house that it is now.

Set in 13¼ acres of gardens, grounds and paddocks on the edge of picturesque Ripple village on the west Gloucestershire/Worcestershire border, it was offered for sale on behalf of Jean, Lady Huntington-Whiteley, widow of Sir Hugo Huntington-Whiteley (grand-son of former Prime Minister Sir Stanley Baldwin), whose home it had been for six decades.

It's changed hugely since then. The current owners have doubled-down on the recent trend for bright, light-filled interiors and uncluttered contemporary layouts, turning what was a smart but very traditional-looking home into a palace of clean, white, unsullied interiors.

Even the boot room is so white, bright and clean that it's hard to fathom how they get rid of the mud so comprehensively.

The changes are more than just cosmetic, though: the agents note that the present sellers have completed a meticulous programme of restoration and improvement, and have striven to preserve the house's architectural heritage and timeless character. Except that now the house has a gym, with a Coco Chanel yoga mat.

Significant investment has been made throughout, including major upgrades to the infrastructure and services. And did we mention the mirrored champagne bar?

Ripple Hall provides more than 11,000sq ft of light-filled accommodation on three floors, the entire interior a dreamy symphony of monochrome design, with the only touches of colour coming from the odd spots of gilt, and the occasional piece of furniture or artwork.

That said, upstairs some of the bedrooms and bathrooms (there are six of the former and four of the latter) have flashes of blue to liven things up.

The space on offer is enormous, with the main house having more than 11,000 square feet. The ground floor houses a welcoming reception hall, a gracious drawing room, a formal dining room, a library/study, a cinema, bar and well-designed kitchen/breakfast room that forms the heart of the house.

The bedroom accommodation is particularly impressive, comprising a vast principal bedroom suite, two further suites and a separate guest wing with two additional bedrooms and a family bathroom.

Further accommodation is available in an adjoining self-contained cottage and a large former coach house has planning consent for conversion to residential use.

Outside, the gardens and grounds have been thoughtfully landscaped to create a balance between formal gardens and open paddocks.

Leisure facilities include an outdoor swimming pool and a tennis court. Given the work that's been done here it's slightly surprising that they haven't also built a padel court, but perhaps that's a project for the new owners.

Ripple Hall is for sale through Knight Frank — see more details and pictures.

The Country Life Quiz is published every weekday at 4pm.

Missed a day? Want more quizzes? Catch up on previous editions, here.

In Reynolds’s time, English landscape painting was thought of as less erudite and important than history painting, but the sheer power of J. M. W. Turner’s sublime views and John Constable’s Suffolk scenes enabled the genre to be taken seriously for the first time.

David Hockney (b. 1937-2026) continued to draw inspiration from the landscape that surrounded him up until his death earlier this year. Throughout his career, he painted the hot hillsides of California and Yorkshire’s cool leafy lanes. In 2020–21, during lockdown, he closely studied the seasons in Normandy. A giant digital frieze of the fields, trees and orchards surrounding his French farmhouse spent the summer on display at London’s Serpentine North.

He would've turned 90 next year, but worked every day up until his death, scrutinising nature with all his might, as well as pushing the boundaries of painting, utilising modern technology to animate his thinking.

The peripatetic Peter Doig (b. 1959) is also drawn to landscape. He was born in Edinburgh and raised in Trinidad and Canada before studying painting in England. Today, he is known for his 1990s Canadian cabins and lakes, as well as moonlit Caribbean beaches. However, he now lives and works in London again and his dreamlike paintings increasingly feature views of the capital.

Both Doig and Hockney have looked beyond our shores for inspiration, but George Shaw (b. 1966) prefers to take his cue from the Midlands, where he grew up. His meticulous paintings in enamel on board depict terraced streets, waste land, graffiti and fly tipping. Yet, through their glowing orange skies and reflective puddles, he manages to give these everyday scenes a quiet beauty of their own.

This is part four of our five-part series on the new school of English painting. They will be published every Thursday afternoon throughout September.

Click here to read part one on the new abstract painters, part two on the new figurative painters, and part three on historical painters.

Alan Titchmarsh

I love what I call the ‘stained tulips’ — those with contrasting venations and stripes that smack of the old Dutch flower paintings. I plant up 10in terracotta pots with 10 bulbs of each: varieties such as ‘Gavota’ (plum purple and yellow), ‘Rem’s Favourite’ (purple and white) and ‘Princess Irene’ (dusky pink and salmon). My wife adores red tulips, so in the rectangular beds on either side of the house we planted two different varieties: ‘Ile de France’ and ‘Kingsblood’. At the risk of being unpatriotic, I have to say that ‘Ile de France’ (a really deep, rich red) was far better and much longer lasting than ‘Kingsblood’. I’d recommend it heartily.

‘Chatsworth: the gardens and the people who made them’ by Alan Titchmarsh is out now

Charlotte Harris

When it comes to tulips (as with many things), I’m drawn to the extremes. At one end are the species tulips that speak to where they’re from such as Tulipa acuminata, an elegantly wiry Turkish heirloom tulip with unusual twisted petals, or Tulipa sprengeri, native to Turkey’s rocky, scrub-covered slopes; scarlet, delicate, happy in dappled shade, with gorgeous senesced seed heads (as seen in our Chelsea September 2021 garden).

At the other far end is the bold flamboyance of two-tone Rembrandt tulips, named after the painter. These look best combined with solid, single-colour tulips for high contrast. My personal favourite: ‘Rem’s Favourite,’ purple flames streaking across ivory petals.

Harris Bugg Studio will begin work next year on designing the Centenary Garden at Newhailes House and Gardens in Musselburgh for the National Trust for Scotland

Arne Maynard

Although I love all kinds of tulip — especially historic tulips with their flamed and feathered markings — my absolute favourites are the species. These perennial bulbs naturalise well in meadows, lawn edges or beneath trees and, provided the ground is well drained, don’t require lifting over winter. I’ve been experimenting with Tulipa clusiana varieties and am fascinated by the difference in their habits. T. clusiana opens and closes without a change in petal structure, whereas T. clusiana ‘Lady Jane’ opens, then gradually curls its petals back reminiscent of Elizabethan hair curls, completely spiralling before fading. I am introducing them into the borders at home at Allt y bela in Monmouthshire, Wales, to give contrast to the larger flowering Rembrandts, adding a delicacy to be discovered close-up.

Other lovely varieties to try are T. clusiana ‘Honky Tonk’, T. cretica ‘Hilde’ and T. clusiana ‘Peppermintstick’, which complement each other beautifully.

Garden designer Arne Maynard has several projects in progress in America, together with his British and European work

Isabel Bannerman

Squirrels have made it impossible to plant tulips except in highly fortified pots and my conscience has stopped me growing mass-produced bulbs. That means it’s only delicate, long-lived, species tulips grown in grass or gravel for me now. Pheasants ate my Tulipa sylvestris, but both they — and the squirrels — seem to abhor T. humilis ‘Persian Pearl’ and ‘Odalisque’. They were both here already, so they must be tough. T. clusiana ‘Lady Jane’ and ‘Cynthia’ are miniature pink-and-white striped sweeties. T. batalinii ‘Bronze Charm’, is the colour of evening primroses with buff reveals. Formerly sold for rock gardens, it is just the scented thing for fashionable gravel gardens. The clue to longevity is to plant deep, even in sustainably sourced crushed concrete.

Garden designer Isabel Bannerman is making a wildflower meadow with species tulip bulbs at her home in Somerset

Fergus Garrett

This year, we are trying perhaps 30 new varieties and will test these out in pots to see how we like them, looking for distinctive flowers held above the foliage, a long season and an elegant habit. In the garden, elegant species Tulipa orphanidea Whittallii, with pointed petals of burnished orange with flashes of yellow and a hypnotic smoky centre, will sit in the cracks on Christo’s terrace — and we’re hoping that it will self-sow and naturalise. T. sylvestris, with long, elegant, fluted flowers of rich yellow on awry stems, will be planted in the grass under the mulberry tree. T. ‘Apricot Impression’, with bold, large, apricot and pink flowers, will float among self-sown blue forget-me-nots, mauve sweet rocket (Hesperis matronalis) and acid lime-green Smyrnium perfoliatum. Finally, jazzy T. ‘Banja Luka’, yellow with dramatic flames of fiery red, will run through a sea of blue forget-me-nots.

Fergus Garrett is head gardener at Great Dixter, East Sussex (former home of the late Country Life columnist Christopher Lloyd), and CEO of the Great Dixter Charitable Trust

Jo Thompson

I’ll be going for masses of Tulipa orphanidea (Whittallii Group) ‘Major’ among pale narcissi to follow the oxlips. This tulip is invariably described in terms of its main colour — copper orange — but it’s the deep golden-flushed blood-red-to-black base that makes the impact. Appearing a deeper red in the shadows, this rare, yet easy little tulip becomes more coppery depending on the amount of light upon it. The lightest scattering of red and yellow against green is all it takes to create an atmosphere that is simultaneously gentle and uplifting. The calmness of a backdrop of green grass is perfect, so dry patches of grass under the yet-to-emerge canopies of orchard trees is where I’ll be putting these little jewels.

Jo Thompson is currently designing gardens in the Cotswolds, Sussex and the south of France. Her next book, ‘Small Garden Design’, will be published in March 2027

Tom Stuart-Smith

I use tulips in three different ways in the garden here. Firstly, we plant a mêlee of brightly coloured tulips to give a real intensity of oranges, purples, rusts and cerise. (No yellows other than as a stripe in ‘Helmar’, an all time favourite.) We use them to edge the vegetable beds and in the courtyard, which is full of brick and tiles and corten steel, so the colours here are very powerful. I always order ‘Havran’, ‘Dolls Minuet’, ‘Ballerina’, ‘Princess Irene’ and ‘Paul Scherer’. We use lots of Tulipa saxatilis in the prairie, mixed up with cowslips and anemone blanda — the yellow at the base of the petals is rather wonderful with the cowslips.

Last of all, we use some more polite tulips in loose drifts through planting in the garden. Things such as ‘Maureen’, ‘Attila’, ‘Merlot’ and ‘Spring Green’ — single-coloured and/or a bit quieter, in among herbaceous plants. These never get lifted, whereas many of the others do. We replant a lot of tulips, but they do fade of course… I’m thinking of veering towards using more long-lived tulips only. The things they do to tulips to store are pretty terrible and the organic ones are very expensive, so a wake up is on its way, I feel.

Tom Stuart-Smith’s design for the Clore Garden at Tate Britain opens next year

Angel Collins

I prefer to plant tulips in either pots or long grass. In many gardens, I’ve created what I call a ‘parterre meadow’ and tulips are the perfect bulb to complement this design. Their glorious heads bobbing above the fresh green grass of spring create a wonderful sight.

When choosing tulips, I consider several factors: height, colour, bulb size (preferably 5in), and the bonus of flowering for a second or third year. ‘Rem’s Favourite’ is now with me for its fourth year, together with the lovely pink tulip ‘Discovery’. The viridifloras are also excellent at longevity (including ‘Spring Green’, ‘Artist’ and ‘Virichic’), as are, of course, the reliable Darwins.

However, my favourite tulip of all time — no, not the beautiful ‘Belle Époque’ — is actually ‘Mystic van Eijk.’ It has huge flowers of soft apricot pink and it seems to get taller and its flowers grow bigger as every day passes.

Garden designer Angel Collins is working on a number of projects, including Bruern Abbey, Oxfordshire

Tilly Ware

A freshly gravelled perimeter bed in the kitchen garden is my new playground for all things Mediterranean. I’ll be planting Tulipa orphanidea Whittalli Group in the impeccably drained soil, aiming for vigorous colonies that spread. The form is beautiful: neat, sharp buds with pointed petals that glow with the dusky smokiness of a fire’s ember, the burnt caramel and rich orange irresistible against silver foliage. At 1ft high, they will bob up among artemisia and euphorbia in late April; by summer, Eschscholzia ‘Milkmaid’ and Nigella papillosa ‘African Bride’ cover the gaps. Until now, my species tulips lived year on year in terracotta pots as treasures; now, it is time to set them free.

Tilly Ware is a garden writer and Country Life contributor

Charles Quest-Ritson

I always plant some Greigii forms to brighten the garden in early spring, with red-and-yellow ‘Stresa’ being a particular favourite. Likewise, ‘Carnaval de Nice’, double-flowered with red-and-white stripes and variegated leaves — the last of all to flower. Both look best in pots near the main door of the house. This year’s RHS trial had some promising novelties to try, too: ‘Apricot Pride’ will make a fine border plant, exceptionally large in height and flower, but I also fancy the spectacularly vulgar ‘New Santa’ — bright-red petals rimmed with a hoar-frost edging of white — and the ruffled parrot-tulip ‘Flaming Memory’, rather rudely described as rhubarb and custard in colour. Yum yum!

Charles Quest-Ritson wrote the ‘RHS Encyclopedia of Roses’

Mary Keen

I was once a tulipaholic, ordering them in thousands to be composted at the end of spring. This is far from sustainable, so I have changed my ways. I always want ‘Ballerina’ for its scent and its graceful habit, so those go in pots and, when the leaves have withered, the bulbs are saved. In the beds, multi-headed ‘Antoinette’ and ‘Queen of Night’ are so far perennial, but the best bet for lasting tulips are the species ones planted in grass. My favourite is ‘Honky Tonk’. The name is ghastly, but the flower is pale yellow, scented and lovely with cowslips.

‘Diary of a Keen Gardener’ by Mary Keen is out now

Rupert Golby

Lily-flowered tulips have a very appealing elegance in stature and form that extends their value far beyond their flowering period — for some weeks before flowering, their elongated necks have a swan-like quality. The flower buds are presented as refined spears, developing into pinched and waisted Cham-pagne flutes that fill and evolve into flamboyant explosions of petals, all over two to three weeks. ‘West Point’ has clear acid-yellow colouring initially of a green hue, ripening to a sharp and powerful citrus yellow. Flowering in late April, it can be strikingly partnered with a carpet of forget-me-nots. Planted in large verdigris copper containers, the contrast-ing colour combination offers a strong sense of spring. Where ‘West Point’ cannot be found, ‘Flashback’ offers a worthy alternative.

Rupert Goldby designs and consults upon gardens across the country. His work at Ferne Park in Dorset was featured in Country Life (May 13)

Polly Nicholson

I will be ordering a handful of Tulipa ‘Absalon’ to supplement the National Collection of Tulipa (historical) that I hold with Plant Heritage. ‘Absalon’ is a true Rembrandt (Division 9) tulip dating from 1780, with flames and feathers of the richest mahogany red over a base of primrose yellow. With a real aura of antiquity, it stands apart from modern cultivars, but is surprisingly robust and produces good-sized offsets. It should be lifted once the foliage has died back in July and stored carefully before being planted back in a pot again in the depths of winter. The investment and effort are well worth it.

Polly Nicholson is curating an exhibition on tulips at the Garden Museum, London SE1, opening March 2027

Bloms Bulbs — 01234 709099; blomsbulbs.com

J Parker’s — 0161–848 1100; dutchbulbs.co.uk

De Jager — 01622 840299; dejager.co.uk

Jacques Amand International — jacquesamandintl.com

Sarah Raven — 0345 092 0283; sarahraven.com

Avon Bulbs — 07425 833906; avonbulbs.co.uk

Peter Nyssen — 0161–747 4000; peternyssen.com

Scamp’s Bulbs — 07826 067175; www.scampsbulbs.co.uk

This feature originally appeared in the September 9, 2026, print edition of Country Life. Click here for more information on how to subscribe.

Where was it?

I rented a stone Cotswold cottage in the village of Notgrove, on a Gloucestershire estate between Bourton-on-the-Water and Northleach

A quick description

It had three bedrooms, a garden large enough for a badminton net and a defunct night storage heater in the kitchen. We were there from 1985–88.

What made you rent it?

I was dating a first-year Oxford student and, being eight years older, my strategy was to lure her out of university for weekends and pack the cottage with friends older than myself, so I appeared more age appropriate. It worked. Georgia and I have been married since 1989.

How did you find it?

I rented it from the parents of a friend. The Aclands were perfect landlords who owned the whole village and charged a peppercorn rent. In those pre-mobile, pre-wifi days, a red telephone box on the village green was used to organise social outings.

Any grumbling about the landlords?

Periodically, Liz Acland would ride past our front garden on her giant hunter and observe that Japanese knotweed was dimly visible between the flowers. I can’t recall doing much about it. Years later, they generously sold us their beautiful mahogany circular dining-room table for a small charity donation, and we have used it ever since at our house in Worcestershire.

Favourite aspect?

The walks — either across the fields to Turkdean in the hope of spotting rock legend Steve Winwood, who lived there, or to The Plough Inn in Cold Aston.

How did you make the cottage your own?

We arrived to find it fully furnished by our predecessors — every plate, pillowcase and log basket provided. When they eventually collected it, we got to know the antique shops and markets of Cirencester and Tetbury. Most of the mirrors and Turkish rugs we bought then are still with us 40 years later.

Why did you move?

The cottage had fulfilled its covert purpose and we became engaged in Calcutta and married in St George’s Hanover Square. We handed back the keys with the happiest of memories. Occasionally we take a detour through Notgrove and think: ‘That was cold but fun’.

Sir Nicholas Coleridge is Provost of Eton and chair of Historic Royal Palaces and The King’s Foundation. You can read his Consuming Passions interview with Lotte Brundle here.

This feature originally appeared in the September 2, 2026, print edition of Country Life. Click here for more information on how to subscribe.

When the fruits of autumn beckon, with them will come those pestilential little flies. Across every continent and every island where fructification is celebrated, they will take to the air in search of sustenance and reproduction, an abiding nuisance wherever the pomaceous perfume of decaying orchard mesocarp ascends, sugary cooking odours arise and picnic goodies and wine glasses attract.

Diminutive they may be, but they bear a big name, Drosophila melanogaster, a classification vested on them in 1830 by German entomologist Johann Meigen. It means ‘black-bellied dew-lover’, a strange description for flimsy brownish insects with big red eyes and a taste for fermenting fruit. However, what they lack in stature they make up for in numbers, and here’s an extraordinary thing — as we wave them away, we should also celebrate the little blighters, for this creature is entomology’s greatest gift to scientific research.

Learned papers concerning fruit flies run into thousands, many confirming previous work, and six Nobel Prizes have been awarded for medical and physiological findings based on this humble pest. Investigations were first triggered in 1901 after California-based entomologist Charles W. Woodworth bred fruit flies in captivity, noted variations over generations and suggested that the species could be used as a model organism for research into the genetic results of inbreeding.

This notion was taken up by a Columbia University team led by Thomas Hunt Morgan, whose studies into sex-linked inherited traits (such as the insects’ eye colour) resulted in the monumental conclusion that the units of heredity were genes strung on chromosomes inside cell nuclei. Not surprisingly, Morgan was duly awarded one of those coveted prizes. Today, as ever, it demands a leap across the credulity gap to attribute this seminal discovery to the constitution of a flimsy fly barely one-eighth of an inch long.

The mass of research that followed included putting fruit flies into a US space ship in 1946, when they became the first living creatures to be subjected to a rocket trip. Another batch was retrieved safely from a second launch the following year. However, the greatest significance of the huge body of study into fruit fly genetics has been the conclusion that 60% of their genes coincide with those of humans and that 75% of human genes linked to disease find an equivalent function in the insects.

This is increasingly important, for the humble fruit fly has accordingly become the genetic laboratory model for research into neurodegenerative disorders, such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and Huntingdon’s diseases. It has also been pivotal in an extensive range of other vital studies, from immunity and addiction to stress, cancer, diabetes, dementia and the mechanism of ageing. A further element in this insect’s contribution to research is the presence of a ‘fat body’, a component that stores nutrients and is the equivalent of the liver and body adipocere in mammals, including us.

It regulates the circadian cycle, the natural 24-hour biological oscillation whereby nights and days are managed to maximise physical condition. Where will this creature’s contribution to our knowledge of the human condition eventually lead? It is estimated that 50 million fruit flies are reared annually in more than 3,500 laboratories in 72 countries and their study involves some 10,000 scientists.

They are also the basic subject of most biological and genetic university courses. It is clear that this tiny nuisance has more to tell us about ourselves.

This feature originally appeared in the September 9, 2026, issue of Country Life. Click here for more information on how to subscribe

If Burberry has come to signify a quintessentially British style, it also represents the quicksilver nature of national identity, for, even in our class-conscious society, the brand has been adopted as a uniform across the social divide, spanning grouse moors and football terraces, worn by everyone from the late Duke of Edinburgh to Liam Gallagher.

Indeed, the company’s signature check became front-page news in 2002 after the EastEnders soap star Danniella Westbrook was snapped with her baby daughter in co-ordinating head-to-toe outfits, complete with a matching pram. ‘CHAVTASTIC!’ declared The Sun at the time, with gleeful delight.

Yet, despite solemn nay-sayers predicting the death of the brand, it continued to flourish, doubtless helped by the fact that it remained admirably practical for country sporting pursuits, with a durability evident in Elizabeth II’s hardworking Burberry raincoats.

‘Icon’ is a hackneyed term in fashion and, indeed, the wider culture, but it does seem to me appropriate for the title of the exhibition opening on September 21 at the V&A Museum. ‘The Burberry Trench: Crafting an Icon’ celebrates the brand’s 170th anniversary, tracing its history from 19th-century artisanship to the contemporary runways of London Fashion Week.

Founded in 1856 by Thomas Burberry — an enterprising 21-year-old draper who established his eponymous outfitters in Basingstoke in Hampshire — the business expanded thanks to his patented 1879 invention of weatherproof gabardine (a sturdy material that is still woven today in Yorkshire).

In 1891, Burberry opened its first flagship store on London’s Haymarket, followed by Paris in 1909 and Buenos Aires in 1912. The polar explorer Ernest Shackleton took it even further afield, wearing Burberry gabardine on his Antarctic expeditions in the early 20th century.

During the First World War, the brand’s gabardine coats acquired their famous military associations, advertised as ‘trenches’ that would be repaired free of charge for serving officers. Burberry was successful, too, in appealing to adventurous women, designing female mountaineering outfits as early as 1908 and for the pioneering aviator Betty Kirby-Green in the 1930s. This, perhaps, was the beginning of a subtle shift towards transatlantic chic, when Hollywood film stars such as Greta Garbo began wearing trench coats, suggesting an androgynous, yet glamorous mystique.

By the 1960s, the pendulum of fashion had swung back again to London, and Burberry’s signature check, originally introduced in the 1920s as a coat-lining, began appearing on accessories and umbrellas, exported around the world as jaunty emblems of a semi-imaginary English landscape.

Patrick Lichfield’s advertising campaigns added a charmingly graceful touch, depicting Burberry-clad models in the picturesque gardens of country houses (including the maze at Hever Castle, Kent) or alongside the Household Cavalry.

Several generations of the Royal Family remained loyal to Burberry — from George VI and the Queen Mother to the young Prince Charles and Princess Diana — and Catherine, the current Princess of Wales, has followed their example.

Yet the appropriation of the brand as subversive streetwear, embraced by mods, punks and the Britpop stars of the 1990s, has revealed its chameleon-like capacity to shape-shift through successive decades.

In an era in which some commentators are prone to dwell on the divisions in our society, I find it reassuring that Thomas Burberry’s egalitarian vision of robust textiles and tailoring still endures. Remarkably, his legacy has not fossilised into a fusty form of nostalgia; instead, it has proved to have the resilience and flexibility to run like a thread through our shared sartorial heritage, as well as forming new patterns, and standing boldly at the cutting edge of taste.

In this sense, it has a delightful quality in common with Country Life —and so I urge readers of all ages to search dusty attics or muddy boot rooms for forgotten trench coats and sally forth, as gallant Britannic ambassadors, with heads held high.

This feature originally appeared in the September 16, 2026, issue of Country Life. Click here for more information on how to subscribe.

The Country Life Quiz is published every weekday at 4pm.

Missed a day? Want more quizzes? Catch up on previous editions, here.

Hero hotel

Updown Farmhouse

'There were cows grazing here until the 1960s,’ explains Ruth Leigh when I run into her in the garden of Updown Farmhouse, the country-house hotel she owns and runs with partner Oli Brown. ‘The restaurant was the old cattle shed and your room was a rat-infested garage!’

It’s fair to say the place has come on a bit since then. The couple opened Updown in 2022 having spent years painstakingly restoring the Grade-II listed farmhouse, assorted outbuildings and seven-acre grounds. During the work, they invited an assortment of the country’s best chefs to host supper clubs as the spaces came to life. Rowley Leigh, Anna Tobias and Will Bowlby were some of the names who drew hungry crowds to the work-in-progress estate and proved to Leigh and Brown that this could be a full-time success.

Today, the main house is where you arrive. It has drawing rooms and snugs to settle into, enlivened with pops of colour and vivid artworks curated by Brown’s mother and brother.

Upstairs, four good-sized bedrooms make use of the house’s original features, each styled differently to be bright and inviting. I stayed in the two-bedroom Fig Tree Cottage (now thankfully free of rats), which sports arresting artwork from El Salvador-born, Margate-based painter Jose Campos and has its own outdoor terrace.

The pool is a short walk through the shaded gardens that, when bathed in heatwave sunshine, felt positively Mediterranean (crucially, it’s heated for when it feels decidedly less so).

Talking of the Mediterranean, then comes the restaurant. It’s undoubtedly the heart of the hotel and serves a seasonally changing Italian-accented menu in a light-filled, conservatory-style space where vines line the ceiling. There’s a wood-fired grill in the kitchen and the farm’s old bread oven is back in operation, churning out some of the most perfectly pillowy focaccia I’ve ever had.

Next door, the small, but mighty Bar Vita opened earlier this year, an homage to the chic drinking dens of Milan and Rome — Italian amaro features heavily on a menu that also has a signature martini (chilled, very precisely, to -15˚C) that comes with a smoked eel and olive gilda. You’ll want to linger here: it’s sexy and cosy and cool.

Ultimately, Updown pulls off that often-attempted, but rarely achieved trick of feeling like the country home of a very generous epicurean friend: a genuinely relaxing place in which you’ll truly feel at home — and well fed.

Rooms at Updown Farmhouse, Deal, Kent, cost from £250 per night on a bed and breakfast basis.

Need to know

Updown Farmhouse is only a 15-minute drive from the centre of Deal, beyond Betteshanger Park and down a narrow leafy lane, but feels distinctly peaceful and private. Its grounds are detailed on in-room maps so you can stroll and sit among the trees and watch chefs pick from the kitchen garden.

Venture into Deal itself and you’ll find a charming beach town that has felt the effects of ‘DFL’ (down from London) gentrification — a vibrant dining scene, cool concept stores, new galleries, popular antiques markets — but still retains an authentic soul.

The pebbly seafront is perfect for paddles and picnics and the houses and pubs set back on Beach Street and Middle Street transport you back to the town’s maritime past.

Where to eat

• When The Rose (on the High Street) was transformed from a tired pub into a boutique hotel and restaurant in 2018, it helped put Deal on the map. Now, the team has opened The Blue Pelican, the town’s buzziest new spot, a seafood-heavy Japanese joint on the seafront that opens for dinner on Fridays, lunch and dinner on Saturdays and exclusively ramen lunches on Sunday

• Elsewhere, Climpson & Sons is the place for coffee, cocktails and countertop snacks, Popup Cafe serves meat-free breakfasts and sandwiches on its renowned sourdough bread and beloved wine shop-bar Le Pinardier has recently doubled in size and scope, now also serving local beers and cocktails, plus a fine selection of French-accented bar bites
• Charming old-timey pubs, the kind you can imagine pirates propping up the bar in, are Deal’s stock-in-trade. The Ship Inn, on Middle Street, is one of the most untouched by time, with its copper table tops, upright piano, brick fireplace and maritime ephemera. The Forester, on The Marina, has a warm, homely atmosphere and perfect sea views. The Deal Hoy, tucked away on Duke Street, has been more recently spruced up and has a suntrap beer garden. If you fancy a walk, it’s about an hour south along the shore until you reach The Zetland Arms in Kingsdown, a picture-perfect pub on the beach

What to do while you’re there

• Walk Naturally, a stroll along Deal seafront is a must. Take a turn onto the pier, past the parade of locals with their fishing rods and you’ll find Deal Pier Kitchen at the end, perfect for a scenic snack. Continue south and you can take in the area’s history by stopping at Deal Castle, built in the shape of a Tudor rose, and on to Walmer Castle, both commissioned by Henry VIII to guard against invaders from the Continent
• Learn If you particularly enjoy the meat on offer at Updown Farmhouse, pay a visit to its supplier, the award-winning Black Pig butcher. Its locally sourced free-range meat is so well regarded that there are stories of people driving down from London just to stock up
• Explore Ramsgate, Broadstairs, Botany Bay and Margate are all within easy reach for day trips or head inland to explore the ever-growing patchwork of Kentish wineries

This feature originally appeared in the August 26, 2026, issue of Country Life. Click here for more information on how to subscribe.

My enviable job as Lifestyle Editor means that I receive an unenviable volume of press releases every day. Most of them barely get a look-in. A few hit the mark and earn replies. Some stand out for more quizzical reasons, as did one announcing the launch of a pub in Battersea Power Station. ‘Really?’ I thought. A pub in a shopping mall? Those don’t really go together, unless it’s the Wetherspoons at Heathrow Terminal 5, in which case they absolutely do.

The pub in question is called The Hero’s Return — not to be confused with The Hero, a pub in Maida Vale. The two hostelries share similar DNA: both belong to a new school of pub where the focus has shifted from the bar to the dining room. Overseeing the food at The Hero’s Return is Jonathan Woolway, an alumnus of London’s best restaurant: St John.

One cannot help but wonder if these pubs are really pubs. Our licensing laws do not prevent restaurants from calling themselves pubs, so long as they have a bar and can serve drinks on their own without a meal. Should this really be enough to qualify them, however? Above anything else, the pub is a watering hole: a space for friends and neighbours to gather, drink, play cards and perhaps join a trivia night. I find it odd when people go to the pub to read — or to have a meeting. (They do.)

Why, given the opportunity, would a restaurant choose to call itself a pub? Decades ago, the idea would have been unfathomable. Pubs wanted to call themselves restaurants, boasting of their brand-new dining rooms as the nation’s culinary nous and expectations rose for the first time. They attempted to shed their image as outmoded dives, good only for darts and men who go by Keith.

These days, the opposite is true. With good food to be found on every street corner, the playing field has changed. A restaurant can distinguish itself if it offers a convincing semblance of the pubs of yore — no matter how contrived. The search for conviviality (what young people call ‘vibes’) has replaced the pursuit of the edible in a city that frequently tops global dining rankings.

Perhaps the pub is the most unlikely victor of our glossy and artificial times. Why not have one in the same Battersea building that houses Apple’s UK headquarters?

But at the same time, why not preserve the essence of what makes a pub great? With that in mind, below is a short list of some of our favourite pubs in London; bastions in a strong tide, refusing to move with the times.

The Shakespeares Head, Islington

One of London's finest flat-roof pubs, there's almost too much to love about the welcoming Shakespeares Head. I adore the giant charity cheques and faded actors' headshots on the walls, the jukebox (which was free the last time we visited), the old school sandwich counter and the giddy afternoon rush of friendly posties from nearby Mount Pleasant HQ. Also, there's no apostrophe on the sign, so maybe the head doesn't actually belong to Shakespeare?

— Leonie Cooper, food & drink editor 'Time Out' and Co-host of Messy Lunch

The Victoria, Bermondsey

Like Tortuga in Pirates of the Caribbean, you'll never find The Victoria unless you know where it is. Not only is it hidden down a small residential street in SE1, it's also hidden in 1974. Fixtures and fittings are straight out of central casting (and are recognisable from many television shows filmed there, such as The Gold), while the pièce de résistance is a central horseshoe bar.

— James Fisher, Digital Commissioning Editor

The Nag's Head

The Nag’s Head on Kinnerton Street would feel familiar to the grooms and carriage drivers who drank here in the early 19th -century when this tranquil corner of Belgravia provided transport to residents of Wilton Crescent and Belgrave Square. Too many characterful quirks to mention. If you know, you know.

— Giles Kime, Interiors Editor

The Southampton Arms, Kentish Town

Only serves sausage rolls and often has a man in the corner playing an instrument he has whittled himself.

— Emma Hughes, acting Assistant Features Editor

Fox & Hounds, Belgravia

The man who created Coronation Street lived on this block off the Pimlico Road, so there is a theory the Fox inspired the Rovers' Return. It's a proper locals pub where you'll meet people from all walks of life, including, but not limited to, Chelsea pensioners, Pimlico road antiques dealers and interior design mavens, Conservative MPs, and BAFTA-winning actors who are doing plays around the corner at the Royal Court (back in the day, O'Toole and Harris, more recently Ben Whishaw).

All answer to the landlady Dee Dean and her enormous German shepherds. A punter once mentioned out loud that she bares a likeness to Eva Braun. He was never seen again.

— Adam Hay-Nicholls, journalist and author

The Coach and Horses, Soho

That carpet has seen it all, including I believe much urine.

— Will Hosie, Lifestyle Editor

Miranda Rock pens the newly restored golden gates within the gatehouse arch at Burghley House, Lincolnshire. The gates were designed by the celebrated French blacksmith Jean Tijou, active in England from about 1689–1720.

Little is known about Tijou’s background, but he was involved in some of the most prestigious building projects of the period, including St Paul’s Cathedral in London and Chatsworth in Derbyshire. His garden screen at the royal palace of Hampton Court, Surrey, cost the fabulous sum of £755 — that's around £140,000 adjusted for inflation, according to the Bank of England, but to the ordinary man it would have been even more. That cost is equivalent to almost 40 years of toil by the average worker, who in 1700 typically earned less than £20 a year.

Tijou’s work in the French taste brought about a transformation in the character of architectural ironwork in England, introducing to it the dense patterns, monograms, heraldic imagery and flowing foliage decoration seen here.

He published the design of Burghley’s gates in A new booke of drawings (1693). The ironwork was originally gilded by René Cousin, who also worked on the interiors of the house for John Cecil, 5th Earl of Exeter. In the Second World War, the gates were badly damaged by a bomb that fell nearby and were last repaired in the 1990s.

This most recent restoration was undertaken by specialist North Yorkshire firm Topp & Co, aiming to return the gates to their original form​ and make them structurally sound. They have been dismantled, cleaned and had missing elements pieced in using traditional techniques.

Visit the Burghley website to find out more about visiting.

This feature originally appeared in the September 2, 2026, print edition of Country Life. Click here for more information on how to subscribe.

Ten years ago, the author and critic Olivia Laing wondered whether 'an accelerated news cycle' may require 'accelerated art' in response. It was a question she raised in a review of Ali Smith’s 2016 novel, Autumn, that would later form part of an anthology of Laing's writing: Funny Weather: Art In An Emergency (2020). From said title came the name of Arina Izmestieva's gallery and outdoor exhibition programme. Herself a graduate of New York University and, now, a London-based collector and artist, Izmestieva opened Funny Weather's show in the forest in Hampshire last weekend.

Running until November 12, this year's theme is 'Strange Objects'. 'I wanted to place sculptures in a different context to the white-walled gallery we normally see them in,' Izmestieva explains. At the outset, the aim of Funny Weather is to reintroduce sculpture to the landscape that birthed the materials that created it — and to inspire the younger generation to start collecting. A collector herself, Izmestieva boasts a mature understanding of the dialogue between art itself, and the environment in which it is presented.

The current show involves 32 works by eight different artists, many of which were commissioned specifically for the setting. 'We want to invite visitors to rediscover a kind of childlike wonder,' says Izmestieva, 'and to move freely between works: some hidden among trees, revealed through light or discovered at the end of a path.'

Among the artists present are Jill Berelowitz (a South African sculptor who works with bronze and optical resin and has produced works for The Dorchester), Elium (a pseudonym for the multitalented Elise de Falletans, whose past clients include Hermès), Luke James (whose anthropomorphic sculptures are often made of wood, and who has contributed an impressive 12 works to the show) and Thibault Lucas (whom Izmestieva discovered at Poush, an artist incubator in Aubervilliers, just north of Paris, earlier this year).

The majority of works on display are made of bronze, wood or stone. 'These are all materials that can be found in the forest,' Izmestieva observes (wood is obvious, bronze less though — although it can be formed from the melding of copper and tin, found in weapons, jewels and other artefacts from past centuries, fallen prey to erosion and occasionally unearthed by archeologists). One of her favourites, she says, is Elium's Excalibur sword: a two-metre tall, sword-in-the-stone installation created from pink onyx, the material hailing from a foundry in Vicenza and later melded into shape by a stonemason in Britain. 'It took an entire week to install on site,' Izmestieva laughs.

Her own practice, she says, is 'all about texture'. 'With Funny Weather, I want to return materials to their origins, see how they interact with the landscape and what that dialogue sparks within the audience,' the ceramicist explains. That spark is catching on: young collectors, in particular, flooded the show during last weekend's launch, most of them descending from London. Laing's collection of essays, anticipating the dominant anxieties of our day (climate collapse and the threat to democratic institutions) offers not only a titular through-line but genuine clues regarding the ethos of Izmestieva's exhibition: concerned with repatriation, natural resources and continuity.

It seems only fitting that the generation most concerned with and affected by these issues should champion the art that addresses them.

'Strange Objects' is on until November 12 at Barley Mow Hill.

The Country Life Quiz is published every weekday at 4pm.

Missed a day? Want more quizzes? Catch up on previous editions, here.

Here's a look at some of what you'll find inside.

Country-house treasure

John Goodall finds a moving monument to Katherine Parr, the last wife of Henry VIII, at Sudeley Castle, Gloucestershire

Are you local?

How many generations does it take for a dynasty to be bona fide rather than blow-in? Mary Skipwith visits five Cotswolds estates in search of the answer

Property market

Renovated Cotswold manor houses with light-filled interiors and contemporary layouts catch the eye of Penny Churchill

Properties of the week

Julie Harding scours all corners of the Cotswolds as she show-cases a selection of the latest honey-hued homes for sale

Paint your garden

Tiffany Daneff is charmed by the colourful, considered palette of an artist’s garden at Ham Court in Gloucestershire

Jeremy Finnis’s favourite painting

The GWCT chairman chooses a purple-tinged landscape that evokes the spirit of the Highlands

A golden fleece

An array of parish churches are an enduring legacy of the wealth generated by Cotswolds sheep farming, reveals John Goodall

The legacy

Julie Harding travels back in time with the poetic prose of Laurie Lee’s classic Cider with Rosie

The artist’s way

The redstart’s striking looks and talent for mimicry make it a favourite for Mark Cocker

Don’t follow the lights

John Lewis-Stempel tries to avoid that sinking feeling as he ponders the precarious future of Britain’s precious peat bogs

Luxury

Justine Picardie celebrates the enduring appeal of the Burberry trench and Amie Elizabeth White rests easy with sleep essentials

Interiors

Amelia Thorpe reveals how to cook up an elegant kitchen look

Countryside mystery

John Wright debunks the myth surrounding the water-retention miracle of manmade dew ponds

Travel

A revived Ottoman masterpiece is the perfect retreat on Teresa Levonian Cole’s Greek odyssey

In a league of their own

Claire Jackson peers into curious British collections dedicated to everything from dog collars to canals and cuddly toys to clocks

Strike a posy

The Victorians were the original experts at saying it with flowers. Ashleigh Arnott reads the signs

It’s a stitch up!

Julie Harding traces the tale of the needle, a darn good creation made with pin-point precision

Arts & antiques

Feats of clay will always catch the eye of Will Gompertz, as he explains to Carla Passino

The play’s the thing

Turgenev and Sir Alan Ayckbourn supply the on-stage standouts for Michael Billington this month

And much more

There's something uniquely British about dressed crab, a dish that is at once smart and splendidly laid back, as happy in the hushed booths of Wiltons as it is in some shabby seaside shack. For this is a thoroughly modern crustacean that, having climbed out of tracksuit and trainers, lowers himself into a hot bath, before slipping into top hat and tails. Don’t, however, be fooled by his elegant attire. For beneath that suave façade lies a hint of full fathom five, of darkness and the debased.

This is, of course, part of its eternal appeal, the essential mix of bosky brown and virginal white, bass versus treble, where thud and grumble meet the choir celestial. This is a dish that not so much requires the dark meat as demands it. It’s also a dish that insists upon the very freshest crab, preferably killed, boiled and picked yourself. Pasteurised meat has no place here.

Ok, so I appreciate that live crabs are not always the most practical of ingredients. I once bought a pair of particularly boisterous browns from a fishmonger in London’s Chinatown. Travelling back home on the Tube, they made a sudden bid for freedom, ripping through their plastic prison and scuttling down the carriage. My fellow travellers were less than amused. If you can’t buy them live, ask your fishmonger for his most freshly boiled beasts. This year, they may be a little more expensive, thanks to a rampaging invasion of octopuses (never octopi).

As coastal waters continue to warm, in they swarm, finding easy feasts in the crab and lobster pots scattered across the seabed. For the cephalopods, it’s one endless ‘all you can eat’ buffet. For the fisherman, however, it’s less than ideal, as they haul in pot after pot filled with depressingly empty shells. I had stopped eating octopus after watching My Octopus Teacher. The eight-armed hero of that documentary seemed so sweet, so human, that it seemed awful to even contemplate throwing him on the plancha. But then pigs are every bit as sentient and intelligent and I still devour them with conscience clear. No one likes a hypocrite. So, in solidarity with our fine fisherman, it’s time to embrace octopus once more.

Back to the crabs and, for maximum gratification, you want to pick them yourself, twisting off the limbs and claws, cracking the carapace in half, digging and gouging into each tiny joint and crevice to extract every last morsel of sweet white meat. A specialised crab pick is ideal, but the handle of a teaspoon will do the job just fine. Use a rolling pin to crack the claws lightly. Brown meat is the easiest to remove, lurking at the top of the shell, simply peeled or spooned away. Once you get into a rhythm, the cares of the world slip away.

I find the whole process not only deeply satisfying, but rather therapeutic, too. Like artichokes and whole prawns, much of the joy lies in the undressing, but do beware the errant shard. Nothing ruins a dressed crab like the jarring, incongruous crunch of cartilage or shell. Sift through the white meat with your fingers, then sift again.

When it comes to the dressing, I err towards the simple. No surprises there. There’s little need for breadcrumbs, nor elaborate, baroque garnishes involving anchovy fillets, capers and olives. Sure, the recipe below incorporates a boiled egg, but that merely gives the brown a little more body. A half lemon and homemade mayonnaise is all you need at the side, together with soft brown bread, lustily buttered, a non-negotiable part of the deal — and, perhaps, a few drops of Tabasco.

For those who can’t face this most civilised of picking processes, you’ll find dressed-crab perfection at Wiltons, J Sheekey and Bentley’s in London, as well as The Company Shed in Colchester, Essex, and The Lobster Shack in North Berwick, East Lothian. Serve with a glass of something dry, white and cold.

River Cottage dressed crab

This comes from The River Cottage Fish Book, written by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall and the late Nick Fisher, and still one of the great works on all things piscine. ‘This is our favourite way to eat a really fresh crab’, they write, ‘usually one that we’ve caught, cooked and picked ourselves. It can be served up in the main shell of the crab or on a plate.’

Ingredients

• Brown and white meat from 1 medium-large brown crab
• The crab’s main shell, scrubbed under a hot tap and left to dry (optional)
• 1 large hard-boiled egg, peeled and coarsely chopped
• 2tspn mayonnaise
• ½–1 tspn English mustard
• Freshly ground black pepper

To accompany

• Buttered brown bread
• 1 small red onion, very finely chopped
• A few lemon wedges

Method

• Lightly flake the white crabmeat, doing a final check for any slivers of shell, then pile it up in the middle of the carapace shell or on a medium- size serving plate
• Put the soft brown meat in a bowl and combine with the chopped hard-boiled egg, the mayonnaise, some English mustard to taste and a twist or two of black pepper. Make two mounds of the brown-meat mixture on either side of the white meat
• Serve the crab with the brown bread, red onion and lemon wedges
• The idea is to put some white meat on your buttered bread, top with a little of the brown-meat mixture — use it almost like a sauce — then sprinkle the whole with a little chopped onion and a squeeze of lemon juice

This feature originally appeared in the September 9, 2026, issue of Country Life. Click here for more information on how to subscribe

It may be a well-worn cliché, but White Cottage truly is chocolate-box material. Even its location is like something from a storybook: the address is Peppercorn Walk, in the village of Holton le Clay.

Thatched, white walled and immaculate, this property — which is on the market through Fine & Country at £350,000 — dates back to the late 1600s, though it has seen plenty of alterations from 1800 onwards.

Exposed timbers proliferate, including in the spacious dining kitchen that forms the hub of the cottage — complete with its fire engine-red Rayburn.

in the adjoining sitting room there is also a sizeable inglenook fireplace.

Ground-floor living is possible, as what could be transformed into another reception room is currently furnished as a bedroom that has an adjoining bathroom.

The other two bedrooms have sloping ceilings and are on the first floor, tucked beneath the thatch — and thankfully there are no low ceilings to contend with, as if often the case with cottages of this vintage.

The mature gardens are a highlight, and very large given the size of the house. They run to about half an acre, with lawns, play areas, seating, and include a series of outbuildings that include a summer house and extensive storage.

The agent Jade Chapman describes the house as as if it’s part of a ‘fairy tale’. ‘This isn’t just a home; it’s a rare and beautiful piece of our heritage,’ she says, using adjectives such as ‘captivating’, ‘authentic’ and ‘timeless’ to describe the Grade II-listed home that is situated centrally in Holton-le-Clay.

The village itself is ancient, having been mentioned in the Domesday Book, but has been expanded greatly over the years with new housing, swelling the population to more than 3,500.

That growth has had an impact upon the character of the village, but on the other hand it's a big enough settlement to sustain shops, several pubs, a primary school, a cricket club and a thriving local community. The larger village of Waltham is just a few minutes away, while Grimsby is five miles away to the north.

If you need more to keep you entertained, the sandy beaches at Cleethorpes are less than 20 minutes away, as is the RSPB reserve at Tetney Marshes, and the charming landscape of the Lincolnshire Wolds is within easy reach.

White Cottage in Holton-le-Clay is for sale through Fine & Country — see more details.

Layered look 


Prints and plains can be combined to create an attractive layered effect: curtains and ottoman in Nori Ochre, £86 per metre, with chairs in Emile Copper velvet, £90 per metre and cushions in Leon Stripe Green, £92 per metre, all from Jane Churchill.

Classical accent 


The six-inch-diameter Tracery velvet rosette with floral motif, from the Velaré collection by Samuel & Sons, features embroidery, cutwork and appliqué. Each rosette costs £138 and can be used to add decorative embellishment to upholstery and soft furnishings, including cushions.

Decorative appeal

Floral brass castings sit beneath each wicker shade and crown the central stem of the Edith chandelier, resulting in a Parisian-inspired flourish. Shown here in Indian Red, it costs from £4,998 for the large size from Porta Romana.

Rug and roll

Julian Chichester is launching his debut rug collection in collaboration with Amy Kent Rugs, drawing inspiration from his favourite Tapa barkcloth designs from the Pacific Islands, which traditionally feature patterns in black and rust-brown dyes. The Harvest rug costs £845 per square metre.

Lighting the way

A pierced brass ring and pagoda top add to the decorative appeal of the Artemis lantern from Hector Finch. It costs £4,158 for the large size in Verdigris finish and is suitable for indoor and outdoor undercover use.

Star attraction

Fabric and wallpaper house Zoffany will be hosting a pop-up at Focus/26 in partnership with interiors brand Sharland England, featuring its indoor-outdoor collection of fabrics produced with celebrated American interior designer Michael S. Smith.

The collection includes Kyoto Stripe, Lily Stripe and Thorny Vine, from £134 per metre.

A parallel career

Alongside creating an evolving collection of lighting and furniture of enormous stylistic depth and breadth with his wife, Lucy, Michael Vaughan is also a talented painter whose work has been exhibited in New York and London.

A new exhibition of his recent work, ‘Two Experimental Years 2024–2026’, opens at No 11 Avenue Studios, Sydney Mews, London, on September 24–25, 12pm–7pm, and then on September 26, 11am–1pm.

Moveable feast

Made from solid brass with a fluted glass shade, the Cotswold rechargeable table lamp can be moved around the home with ease — without trailing wires. It has a touch-dim function and costs from £174 from Corston Architectural Detail.

Glossy good looks

The tapered, high-gloss base of the Malmo table lamp in Cocoa pairs elegantly with its wide shade in Almond Cream to create a striking look. The lamp costs £288 with shade, from £174, by David Hunt Lighting.

The wonder of wool

The Rannoch Wools collection from Osborne & Little includes wool checks and geometric patterns in a palette of soft neutrals, heathered tones and rich earthy colours that have been inspired by the Scottish landscape. Prices from £105 per metre.

Chelsea calling

Head to the London Design Social on September 23–24 to meet the creative people behind an enticing collection of boutique fabric, wallpaper and homewares brands, including Parker & Jules, Barneby Gates, Eadie & Crole and Speronella Marsh.

Explore their designs and enjoy talks by celebrated design experts at Chelsea Old Town Hall, King’s Road, London. Visit The Design Social website for more details and to purchase tickets, from £27.33.

Antiques in Colour

At Westland London, five distinguished designers demonstrate how thoughtfully considered colour can transform the way we experience antiques and enhance their enduring relevance in today’s interiors.

From left to right, below, Henriette von Stockhausen (VSP Interiors), Edward Bulmer, Marco Mansi, Aliénor Cros and Darren Price (ADAM Architecture) have each designed their own gallery space, using pieces from the company’s expansive antique collections, with each room focusing on a distinct historical period.

The designers will be in conversation with Country Life's Executive and Interiors Editor Giles Kime on September 24, 6pm, at Westland London, No 295 Willesden Lane, London, discussing Antiques in Colour: The Role of Colour in Reimagining Interiors. Tickets are free of charge.

To secure a place, please email nicole@rawlinsgeorge.co.uk

Focus/26 on Design

The annual interior-design event takes place at the Design Centre, Chelsea Harbour, London, on September 14–18 and offers an opportunity to enjoy talks and view the latest launches from a host of leading brands that do not exhibit anywhere else in the UK.

Everyone is welcome and entry is free of charge. For the full time-table and details, visit the Design Centre website.

This feature originally appeared in the September 9, 2026, issue of Country Life. Click here for more information on how to subscribe.'

The Country Life Quiz is published every weekday at 4pm.

Missed a day? Want more quizzes? Catch up on previous editions, here.

What was the single most important jewellery event of the past 100 years? For me, there can only be one answer: Gabrielle 'Coco' Chanel’s exhibition of about 50 (no one knows the exact number) spectacular diamond jewels, which took place in Paris from November 7–19, 1932.

The event was staged in the richly decorated étage noble of her 18th-century mansion at 29, rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré.

The word ‘staged’ is an appropriate one. Each piece was presented on a fully clothed wax mannequin complete with real hair and eyelashes (or, in some instances, part of a wax mannequin — a be-sleeved wax arm, for example) and placed in glass vitrines. The overall effect bordered on the surreal, especially as the mannequins had realistic facial expressions. Visitors paid 20 francs for entry, and the proceeds were donated to charity.

Chanel’s ‘Exposition de Bijoux de Diamants’ was attended by the great and the good — princes and politicians, artists and actors — photographed by the filmmaker Robert Bresson, featured in the newsreels and covered, often on the front page, by the world’s press. Why the fuss? By the 1930s, Chanel was an international celebrity. What began in 1910 as a millinery establishment had become one of the largest couture houses in Paris.

Chanel had created a style so unique, so timeless, so desirable that it is still in vogue today. She had been paid $1 million dollars to design costumes for only three Hollywood films and her perfume sales alone made her one of the richest women in Europe. A 10-year affair with the 2nd Duke of Westminster, the wealthiest man in England, added to the Chanel magic.

Timing played a part, too. To unveil jewellery with an estimated value of £55 million (in today’s money) during a period of widespread economic hardship — it was the depths of the Depression — was, to say the least, audacious; which brings us to the story behind the exhibition.

The collection was commissioned by the Diamond Corporation of London with the express purpose of reviving demand after the 1929 stock market crash. It loaned the diamonds and paid for all the pieces — many of which involved complex settings as thin as wire — to be made. De Beers stock, by the way, rose 20 points after the exhibition opened. At least two pieces from the show were purchased on the first day. Yet such was the power of the Parisian jewellery guilds that they were able to stop sales on the grounds of unfair competition. What of the jewellery itself?

The majority of pieces followed a celestial theme. Janet Flanner in The New Yorker wrote: ‘Mlle Chanel’s mountings for the jewels are in design dominantly and delicately astronomical. Magnificent lopsided stars for earrings; as a necklace, a superb comet whose nape-encircling tail is all that attaches it to a lady’s throat; bracelets that are flexible rays; crescents for hats and hair; and, as a unique set piece mounted in yellow gold, a splendid sun of yellow diamonds.’

There were also trompel’oeil textile motifs — ribbons, fringes and feathers — and a few with simple geometric patterns. It is widely believed that Chanel’s inspiration came from the orphanage where she spent much of her childhood. This was attached to the medieval Cistercian abbey at Aubazine in Nouvelle-Aquitaine, the coat of arms of which incorporates the sun, moon and stars and where stained-glass windows and mosaic floors contain other symbols found in the collection.

The show was surrounded by mystery. Chanel never said why she agreed to hold the show; she was famous for her costume jewellery and for combining real gems with fake ones, for wearing pearls with tweed instead of ballgowns, so the move into high jewellery was out of character, to say the least.

What happened to the pieces when the show closed? Long after Chanel had died, the company spent a small fortune trying to find out and we must assume that the collection was dismantled. I don’t think it is an exaggeration to describe this as a tragedy. Yet, although the originals are denied to us, all is far from lost.

In 1993, Karl Lagerfeld relaunched Chanel Fine Jewellery, and eight pieces from the original Bijoux de Diamants selection were reissued. In the years that followed, further designs were reissued and new pieces, inspired by the originals, were released.

I’ve not had the opportunity to visit the CHANEL jewellery mansion in Paris, but I will confess to being a customer of its London sister. After making an extremely modest purchase — considering the fabulous jewels on display — one of the assistants patiently waited as I breathed all over their display cabinets and then showed me one beautifully decorated salon after another. The interior, based on Chanel’s own private apartment, is almost as breathtaking as the jewellery.

This feature originally appeared in the September 9, 2026, issue of Country Life. Click here for more information on how to subscribe

For much of the early 19th century, the Channel Islands were considered key to Britain's security — and Alderney in particular. The northernmost of the islands, eight miles from France and 60 miles from the English coast, even Napoleon considered it the key to invasion. Forts and other fortifications were erected on the island — and elsewhere on the Channel Islands — in the mid-to-late 19th century by as part of Lord Palmerston's defence initiative, and among the most striking is Château à l'Etoc (or Château l'Etoc), on the very northern tip of the island.

L'Etoc's days as a fort are long behind it, though, and today it's up for sale as a magnificent coastal property, full of potential, with an asking price of £3.75 million through Harding Green.

The fort has a wonderful setting, atop a peninsula that juts out with the English Channel on three sides, and it caught the eye of man long before the 19th century: the site was a Neolithic burial ground dating from about 4,300BC.

Sadly, when the fort was constructed in the 1850s, sappers uncovered burial chambers, human remains and pottery, much of which was reportedly thrown over the ramparts into the sea.

Built with 23 guns and accommodation for 128 soldiers, it was inspected by Queen Victoria and Prince Albert in 1854. By the 1930s, it seemed as if its days of strategic importance were long gone, and it was sold to Vera and Charles Kay-Mouat in 1935.

Sadly, the fort's military history didn't end there. During the Second World War, the occupying Germans came to Château l'Etoc and added gun emplacements, reinforced bunkers and searchlights to the site.

Thankfully, after the War, the house was returned to its current owners, who have kept it in the family ever since, and who have a lovely history of the place on their website. It's been used as everything from an event space to holiday flats, as reported in Country Life back in 1967.

The same Country Life article — which dealt with all the forts of Alderney — noted that l'Etoc's original 1850s fortifications 'were obsolete before they were even finished', and added that, 'the only scars that any of the stonework bears, apart from those of age, are the wounds caused by Germans, practising gun fire from their own heavily-functional island fortifications.'

After over 90 years in the Kay-Mouat family the property is now on the market, and it's full of potential. Selling agent Pollyanna Hunter of Harding & Green believes that Château L’Etoc offers significant potential for commercial use, such as corporate gatherings, weddings and cultural events. ‘Its scale, seclusion and authenticity make it a one-of-a-kind venue for those seeking to combine privacy, creativity and legacy,’ she says.

The fact that it's set amid some spectacular scenery — the blue seas, the craggy rocks, and the wide open spaces of Arch Beach, Corblets Beach and Saye Beach — must also make it appealing. Alderney might not be easy to get to

For those wondering if it's subject to the same 'local market' or 'open market' restrictions in place on Jersey or Guernsey, the answer is apparently that it is not. As part of the Bailiwick of Guernsey, Alderney offers a similarly favourable fiscal environment, but without the restrictions on property purchases as is the case on those other islands.

Château L’Etoc is on the market for £3.75 million — see more details.

John Robartes, the 4th Earl of Radnor, was not a fashionable man.

He lived at Radnor House, in between Horace Walpole's (Horatio Walpole, 4th Earl of Orford) Gothic wonder that is Strawberry Hill and Alexander Pope's Villa on a highly desirable stretch of the River Thames in Twickenham. In the Georgian era, the then village west of London was very fashionable and the place to see, be seen in and, ideally, live.

Lord Radnor remodelled the riverside building in 1745 in an ornate Gothic style, which drew mild mockery from Walpole. The British politician nicknamed the neighbouring property Mabland — a reference to the overly ornamented and tacky public gardens in London's Marylebone. Rumour has it that he was also upset that someone had built in the Gothic style before he'd had a chance to bring Strawberry Hill to life.

Radnor’s miniature battlements framed the sprawling gardens, which ran all the way down to the river's bank. In the middle, Lord Radnor constructed a double-storey, Chinese-inspired summerhouse. He drew further ire from his neighbours by choosing to decorate the house's insides in a jumble of classically-inspired styles. There was a Baroque ceiling on the ground floor, by French artist Jean Francois Clermont, a Rococo-style one in the dining room and a bay window in the Teddington Room decorated with some interesting decorative plasterwork.

It was in these richly-decorated rooms that Lord Radnor desperately sought the company of the cream of London society. However, he wasn't the best of hosts.

In 1749, actor David Garrick, who lived in nearby Hampton, wrote: 'My Lord Radnor plagu’d our hearts to dine with him, we at last agreed (for we hate to dine from home) & he had invited the Parson’s Wife to meet Mrs. Garrick—but such a Dinner so dress’d & so serv’d up in unscour’d Pewter, we never Saw; the Wine was worse, but made somewhat better by the dead flies, in Short, we were soon both sick & unsatisfy’d; & we rattled the one horse chair home as fast as we could, where we recruited our Spirits again, with a clean Cloth, two roasted Pigeons, and the best currant Pye in ye Kingdom, the county of York excepted.'

Radnor died in 1757 and the curious house passed through the hands of multiple owners until, in 1903, it was purchased by Twickenham Borough Council. They had little interest in the house, and wanted, instead, to open up the garden to the public.

By 1937, the house — sad, unloved and used only occasionally as an office — was in a state of disrepair. Rain had made its way through the roof, damaging some of the painted ceilings, and the threat of demolition reared its ugly head.

At the last moment, it was recognised by someone as a building worthy of redemption.

Queen Mary declared Radnor’s retreat to be 'unique among the small houses of England', and was an early donor to a campaign to raise £1,000 towards the cost of repairs. Imagine how proud Lord Radnor would have been to see a member of the Royal Family declaring his home so fashionable.

Country Life rallied to the cause, publishing unusually hurried and ill-composed photographs of the interiors to illustrate the desperate need for further donations. The council happily handed the house over to the newly-formed Radnor House Preservation Society.

By early 1939, enough money had been raised to begin the preservation works, but Radnor House was not to have the Cinderella-style, fairytale ending it deserved.

A year after the works began, on the 10th day of The Blitz, the house was eviscerated by one of the thousands of bombs dropped on the British capital.

Today, a school stands on the site of the stricken house; its neighbour, Strawberry Hill, remains in fine fettle. And Radnor Gardens are, still, a public park for everyone to enjoy.

The Country Life Image Archive contains more than 150,000 images documenting British culture and heritage, from 1897 to the present day. To search and purchase images directly from the Image Archive, please register here.

Of all the parties I expected to attend in 2026, I hadn’t anticipated that the most fun would be had from vegetables. ‘Rovi has always been about great produce,’ says chef and cookbook author Yotam Ottolenghi of his restaurant in London's Fitzrovia, which hosted the capital’s foremost harvest party last Thursday. ‘It is about vegetables from root to tip, with a menu shaped by our growers and our kitchen garden near Tottenham.’ The shindig, harking back to Athenian tradition, was also an excuse for a hoedown. Moonlighting as disc jockeys for the night were Aimee Phillips, former manager of The Scissor Sisters, and Femi Koleoso, the live-tour drummer for Gorillaz.

As the country gets back to work and diners return to their old watering holes, restaurateurs are finding renewed success in celebrating the ancient food network. ‘We wanted an evening that had growers, cooks and consumers in the same room,’ Ottolenghi says of his party. Despite 2026 proving fatal for many crops — our winter saw record-breaking rain before the summer baked in record-breaking heat — the UK’s best kitchens are refusing to put on the brakes. Joshua Overington, co-founder of the award-winning Mýse near Castle Howard in North Yorkshire, is hosting the restaurant’s inaugural churn supper on October 4. ‘We had no idea, when we decided to do this, how challenging this summer was going to be for farmers,’ he notes.

The churn supper is an old, northerly tradition that was first named as such in the 19th century, perhaps after the jug of cream that would have been passed around the table or for the first churn of butter that would have taken place at the time. ‘Our supper will be for 26 people,’ Overington explains, ‘and to mark the occasion, we have invited chefs from far and wide to shine a light on a different aspect of British farming: meat, dairy, horticulture…’ Each chef will serve a different course.

‘Far too often,’ he continues, ‘kitchens are self-celebratory and overlook the fact that the hardest work is done by its suppliers. Yet without our farmers or growers, restaurants like mine wouldn’t exist.’ These events, then, are an opportunity for customers to engage in a more direct dialogue with the people who harvest the ingredients on their plate. ‘There’s a real desire to feel closer to our food again,’ says Ottolenghi. ‘To know who grew it, where it came from, and understand why it tastes better at certain times of year.

‘A harvest party,’ he concludes, both ‘makes that connection and celebrates it.’

This feature originally appeared in the September 9, 2026, issue of Country Life. Click here for more information on how to subscribe.

All boys like cars, right? We assume and expect a little boy to like cars from a tiny age. Perhaps it’s a gender thing — blue for a boy, pink for a girl and never the twain shall meet etc. It goes without saying this is an outdated idea, but I’m a man with a little boy and he does, unsurprisingly to some, love cars. I put it down to a simple evolution of interest; he loved playing with a little ball as a baby, balls are round, balls roll, what else rolls? Wheels. What has lots of wheels? Cars. The question I find myself asking is whether that love of cars will graduate from Hot Wheels and Matchbox up to the real thing — will my son become a ‘petrolhead’?

As the current generation’s first cars are invariably brand-new hatchbacks with Apple CarPlay, power steering, electric everything and a 100-year warranty, the days of tinkering with a ‘bit of a banger’ seem to be a thing of the past. I’m not sure the last time I saw a 1990’s Fiesta on the road. Now I’m no wrench monkey myself — I can check the oil, change a tire and refill a radiator — but to a 20-year-old in 2026, I might as well be Gordon Murray. My first car was a second-hand Peugeot 106 with a cheeky little 1.2-litre engine, just the four gears and a driver’s door only I had the knack to open. Oh, and it would spontaneously cut out for a reason that was never fully explained. It was great.

Thankfully there’s still a world out there of grey-haired men in sheds restoring and maintaining old MGs, Series 1 Defenders or their father’s Austin. But what happens when they are no longer with us? Can the CarPlay generation learn to play with cars?

To answer this question, I decided to take three generations of my family to a place that I believe had the best chance of enticing the youngest into the automotive world: The Goodwood Members' Meeting. The generational bridge would hopefully connect the dots in a family of car lovers — my brother and I spent our childhoods ogling supercars with our father at the Motor Show and my son and his cousins have had the benefit of my journalism career introducing them to many a Ferrari, Lamborghini or McLaren.

The Members' Meeting is, as it sounds, reserved for Goodwood Members, it’s an event that started small in 1949 and relaunched as the modern iteration in 2014. What’s important about this event, and why I think it may be useful to experience, is that it favours classic cars. You won’t see the latest Ferrari 296 GTS or a Lamborghini Huracan. I’m not sure you’ll see much past the 1980s and the vast majority tearing themselves around the course are 1930s/40s/50s racers.

And the racers go racing. This isn’t Salon Privé, where the cars are polished so much you can study your retina in a wheel arch — this is an open paddock culture where anyone can walk up and touch a 100-year-old award winner, talk to the owner and watch it head out for a few laps. It's noisy, it's hectic and it's palpably exciting. What that means is that cars, their drivers and their capabilities aren’t put on a pedestal or made to feel otherworldly. That’s important, as it’s too easy for them to feel out of reach and only for the rich and famous. Hopefully the rustic, informal presentation of them and their owners will make the world feel more accessible to newcomers.

When we arrived, we barely made it out of the car park; the culture is that if you have an interesting car, you drive it to the event. And if it's pre-1960, you get to park closer to the entrance. The cars get progressively more interesting as you head towards the entrance — a walk broken up with shouts of ‘oh a Ferrari! Oh, another one! Dad is that a Lotus? What’s this blue one? Papa, isn’t that an Alfa Romeo?’. I had to remind the youngsters that we hadn’t actually entered the event yet — it’s a great aperitif for what’s to come.

And what’s to come is an atmosphere of enthusiasm and openness, a place that doesn’t have a VIP section or corporate hospitality — whether you are The Duke of Richmond or Dave from Richmond, you can wander around looking at cars, talking to like-minded people without judgement or questions about your status. Plenty of the classic-car enthusiasts dress up in their finest tweed and chinos, which gives the event a classy country feel, but it's not a fashion show.

As the very loud and very tangible Goodwood Racetrack is full bloodedly placed at the centre of the event you are never far from the action or the soundtrack. In fact, that noise underscores the whole place, whether you are getting coffees from an old army truck or burgers from The Forge.

There is also a playfulness to the organisation; when you get your ticket, you are assigned a ‘house’ (or team essentially), which harks back to school. Each car racing through the weekend wears the badge of various houses and you can track the progress of your house on various scoreboards and online. It’s such a wonderfully silly idea that (thankfully for my narrative question) speaks to a youthfulness within the event — a scholastic rivalry manifesting in V8s, V12s and the odd V16.

To complete this prep school make-believe there is a huge dining hall with team emblems and flags, long canteen tables and hearty food that evokes Hogwarts as much as Eton. This of course is wonderfully playful for us grownups, but saliently recognisable for the kids — it was this room that made the kids think that all this noise and machinery could also be for them.

After we filled up on burgers from The Forge and beers for the dads, we got stuck into the noise. And what a thing. The £20 I spent on Amazon buying cute little ear defenders for my son is probably the most important money I’ve ever spent, this side of buying our house. There’s no way he would have stood avidly watching DB5s and E-Types ragging it past the pit lane without them. He was mesmerised by the spectacle. And as he is so small he could thread his way through any crowd and still get a great view — luckily the event is well judged in terms of capacity, so it never feels like you’re restricted at all.

Naturally with children there comes a time when you can tell they’ve had enough — classically ours came directly after they had all got themselves an ice cream. With faces plastered with a 99, we started to find our way back to the car.

Although exhausted by the day, they still had time to swing into a very well stocked toy shop and given the location it was of course only selling cars. Hotwheels, Matchbox and everything in between. My son went for a large, rather tatty NASCAR racer which may have been driven by his love of Lightning McQueen. His cousins favoured a more conventional pair of Ferrari 296s. (My brother and I may or may not have picked ourselves Porsche and Range Rover Dakar specials respectively …parents can have fun too). After the financial blood-letting had ended, we exited the event to ease our way back through a sea of great cars as we all digested the day.

I think if I was to distil the wide-eyed, joy-filled look on the face of a 4-year-old, 7-year-old and 9-year-old (not to mention the 41, 43, 76 year olds) it would be liquid passion. The tangible thrill was there, as was the vastness of it all — cars are large, noisy, smelly and colourful, an assault on the senses. But I think the more that kids are engaged on all sensory levels the better — it’s too easy for it all to be through a screen, no offence to Mr McQueen. Sometimes it’s best to get out there and see it for real. Feel it for real.

I may be wrong, but I’m pretty sure these kids will be back. And as for the big kids? Well, we’ll keep opening their eyes to the exciting things out there in the world. Some of which have 4 wheels and a V8.

With thanks to: Goodwood. The next Members' Meeting will take place on April 10-11.

'Alsatians and caviare have this in common: one either likes them or does not,' Country Life stated in 1928. Before anything Teutonic had become widely unpalatable, the breed had been known as a German shepherd dog, but 'on examination of the case in the critical spirit aroused by the war, British and French alike agreed that the true home of the dog was Alsace' and some went so far as to trace the breed’s roots to Scotland. Consequently, the breed would for a time be renamed the Alsatian wolf dog.

However, the breed had been developed by German cavalry officer Max von Stephanitz as a herding dog in the 1880s. The first German shepherd dogs came to England about 1911, but, as with so many other imported breeds that have ultimately become popular, they aroused very little public interest.

After soldiers returning from the First World War made the breed popular, impressed by the intelligence and sagacity of the dogs used by the Germans as messengers, guard dogs, and carriers of medical supplies (the Germans had been responsible for producing the first 'mercy dogs', trained to seek out the wounded and comfort the dying).

Rin Tin Tin, an Alsatian who had been rescued from the trenches, became the star of 27 Hollywood films, firing the imagination of millions of people by giving visual evidence of what a dog could be trained to do. Displaying 'intelligence and beauty, trainability and intense devotion,' the dogs were suddenly in great demand.

In 1921, Major C. E. W. Beddoes (who was stationed in Munich at the time) wrote two articles for Country Life championing the 'Alsatian wolf-dog, or, as he is called in Germany, the Schäferhund.' As well as detailing the breed’s 'remarkable'powers of scent, Beddoes would also recall an incident in which his wife was 'spoken to in a very unpleasant manner' and one of his dogs came vigorously to the rescue, “tearing the man’s coat” so his wife could tell him 'exactly what she thought of him in her very best German.'

Back on British soil, Country Life would reflect later that the breed’s sudden rise in popularity was probably 'England’s first experience of a boom in any breed, the dangers of which were not perceived until it was too late.' Poor breeding practices exacerbated undesirable temperament traits and by the end of the 1920s, the breed’s popularity was in sharp decline.

The magazine would reflect in 1928 that 'perhaps the Germans have taught us one thing, or they have talked more about it than we have — that is, the importance of temperament and the desirability of cultivating the intelligence by means of training.'

During the 1940s the breed managed to claw itself back into public esteem, despite being used in Nazi propaganda (Hitler’s own bitch, Blondi, was touted as proof that he was an 'animal lover'). The main factors that salvaged and restored the public image of the German shepherd were twofold: its use as a guide dog for the blind (the world’s and the UK’s first formally trained guide dogs were German shepherds), and secondly, the work the dogs did during the Second World War for the army, the RAF, and the police.

No longer considered 'a descendant of wolves, a dog ready and willing to attack man or beast with or without command, the Alsatian has steadily climbed back by virtue of his beauty, brains, intelligence and integrity,' and in 1977, campaigners succeeded in having their dogs registered under the original breed name as German shepherds once again.

This is an extract from 'The Country Life Book of Dogs' (Rizzoli, £50) by Agnes Stamp.

Gloucestershire — £2.65 million

Just a beautiful home in a beautiful place, this is a rare find: a Cotswolds farmhouse with six bedrooms, paddock, barn and eight acres of land that also has an edge-of-village location in Laverton.

Broadway, one of the most celebrated places in the Cotswolds, is just a couple of miles away.

For sale via Jackson-Stops — see more details and pictures.

Hertfordshire — £2.95 million

This former Dower House offers six bedroom and nearly 6,000 sq ft on the Grove Estate, home to the celebrated hotel, spa and golf course on the edge of London, and an easy commute.

It's a wonderful home, with summer house, cinema room, and two and a half acres of gardens that run down to the river.

For sale via Savills — see more details and pictures.

West Sussex — £5.95 million

Space to spread out in the 26.6 acres of this country home in a village not far from Horsham, with its outstanding access to London and the south coast.

Nine bedrooms, a pool, a lake and some wonderful outbuildings are all part of the appeal.

For sale via Strutt & Parker — see more details and pictures.

Berkshire — £2 million

Looking for a home for a big family? A very big family? This 12-bedroom home in Cookham Dean could be just the thing.

It's in need of some TLC, but the house is bursting with character — this is a wonderful opportunity.

For sale via Knight Frank — see more details and pictures.

Essex — £460,000

A dinky, thatched, 17th century cottage right on the village green in Chalgrove. Two bedrooms, a pleasant garden, and there's a pub, school and even an airfield (really) in walking distance.

For sale via Turner Properties via OnTheMarket — see more details and pictures.

Cheshire — £1.15 million

As handsome a townhouse as we've seen this year, with six bedrooms, four reception rooms and vast amounts of period charm.

The house dates to 1734, and sits near the centre of the town of Neston, on the southern side of the Wirral peninsula, easily accessible to Chester, yet despite its town location still has a large walled garden.

For sale via Jackson-Stops — see more details and pictures.