Comment & Opinion

The end of deference: Why using the right title matters

It might be an 'old-world problem', but using incorrect form when addressing someone is a symptom of laziness and inaccuracy that we should all worry about.

Minette Batters: 'There are serious questions to be asked as to whether the advice given to ministers is correct'

The former NFU President and crossbench peer worries about the effects of the latest budget, and asks why we can't test whether farmers are actually farming.

Agromenes: A budget of betrayal

Labour has turned it's back on the farming community with its latest plans on Agricultural Property Relief.

The law of unintended consequences is teaming up with Britain's latest tax rises — and it'll hit our historic houses hard

Country Life's cultural commentator Athena takes a closer look at last week's budget and foresees trouble ahead.

Dawn Chorus: The seven types of gentleman, the hillsides covered in Cadbury's, and try our Quiz of the Day

Looking for a new party trick? You've come to the right place.

Patrick Galbraith: 'What struck me is that English vineyards represent a rare example of farmland being re-peopled'

Going grape picking gives a glimpse of what the rural past would have looked like.

Curious Questions: How did a scrotum joke confuse paleontologists for generations?

One of the earliest depictions of a fossil prompted a joke — or perhaps a misunderstanding — which coloured the view of dinosaur fossils for years. Martin Fone tells the tale of 'scrotum humanum'.

Curious Questions: Why do we carve pumpkins at Halloween?

The devilishly smiling image of Jack O'Lantern is inseparable from Halloween, but what's the story behind it? Martin Fone explains — and discovers that the festival many complain about as an American import has been this side of the Atlantic for centuries.

Jonathan Self: 'one has more chance of discovering Atlantis, the Holy Grail or Lord Lucan in the local high street than getting one’s hands on a decent magazine'

He's not talking about Country Life, of course. We're great.

Agromenes: 'It is one thing when people recognise what is the right thing to do, but it becomes really game-changing when they see that it’s also the profitable thing to do'

The Countryside Crusader celebrates more positive news about regenerative farming.

London top-end property sales remain strong, despite impending budget terror

I don't know if Rachel Reeves is coming to take all your money. But what I do know is that London is a great city to live in, and that the wealthy aren't packing their bags just yet

The strange tale of why margarine used to be pink

Margarine has been a staple of our breakfast tables for over a century, but it hasn't always had a smooth ride — particularly from the dairy industry, who managed to impose a most bizarre sanction on their easily-spreadable, industrially mass-produced rival. Martin Fone explains.

Agromenes: From the big things to the little things, there are plenty of reasons to be cheerful

Our Countryside Crusader refuses to be melancholy as the autumn rolls in. Instead, he reveals plenty to be happy about.

'There are whole fields that are 100% taxpayer funded NOT to grow crops for people to eat'

Former NFU President Minette Batters has entered the House of Lords as Baroness Batters, giving her a new perspective, and a new opportunity to find ways to help British farming.

'It all looked too good to be true — and, indeed, it was': We must face up to the real future of farming

An over-reliance on fertilisers and yields has left our farmland in a perilous state. It's only by working with nature, not against it, that we can futureproof our countryside.

Opinion: The doom-laden terminology of conservation campaigners is dragging us down — it's time we embraced some optimism

We’re not perfect, says Kate Green, but nor are we bottom of the class — and it's time we embraced that.

Opinion: A vanishingly rare thing has happened — we have a minister for culture who actually sounds like he's visited some of the places he has responsibility for

Our culture columnist Athena is cautiously optimistic about the future of arts, culture and architecture — even if the same old problems remain.

The dog that costs £120,000, the definition of English style, great balls of fire and the Quiz of the Day

Plus, a €12 million estate, and a rare outbreak of good news in Britain's waterways — it's The Dawn Chorus, our regular daily round-up of things you don't need to know, but will enjoy finding out about nonetheless.

We used to fly cars across the English Channel in 20 minutes — why did we stop?

It seems hard to believe, but taking your car across the English Channel to France by air actually pre-dates the cross-channel car ferry. So how did it fall out of use almost 50 years ago? Martin Fone investigates.

'It may be vain to think that the past was a cleaner, quieter and kinder place, but it felt pretty decent when you knew your GP and your GP knew you, and milk in glass bottles was delivered every morning'

Carla Carlisle is homesick for the olden days, when we didn’t know we had it so good.