When I was a kid, seeing a badger was a bit of a rarity. When Country Life's boss, Mark Hedges, was a kid, it was even rarer: his dad once stopped the car to let little Mark and his family take a look at a badger who'd been hit by a car, since they'd never set eyes on one before.
Years of extensive protection for badgers means that they're far more numerous — great news for badgers, but much less good news for hedgehogs and cattle farmers. They're far more easily spotted than they once were.
One place where you'll *really* see badgers easily is, apparently, St Leonards-on-Sea. The Sussex seaside town is home to a host of Eurasian badgers who happily toddle round the streets, feasting on scraps left out for them, prompting photographer Ian Wood to set up a hide to see if he could snap some photos of them.
Naturally, he set that hide up across the road from some Banksy-inspired badger street art.
Ian's effort paid off in fine style when one of the badgers didn't just stop nearby, but even paused to take a look at his Ganster Badger doppelganger. The resulting picture has just earned Ian the People's Choice award in the Natural History Museum's Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition. See www.nhm.ac.uk/wpy/peoples-choice to see more of the shortlisted pictures.
Quiz of the Day...
...has moved into its own little story, with buttons, and pictures, and all sorts of fun bits, whcih we're published every weeknight at 5pm. Give it a whirl.
Interesting times
The Bank of England trimmed interest rates on Thursday in a move that looks — at least in part — designed to boost the property market ahead of the impending Stamp Duty increase coming in April.
That said, a slight trim in interest rates won't do that much. At the moment, first-time buyers pay no stamp duty when buying a home worth £425,000; come April they will be paying £6,250.
And the savings they'll make on interest rates? Should they put down £50,000 and borrow £375,000, that 0.25% equates to about £50 a month. At that rate it'd take just over ten years to recoup the six grand. Ouch.
Lifestyles of the rich and famous
We've no idea how Architectural Digest persuades so many big names to show them around their homes, and stick the resulting videos on social media. But they do, and it's fascinating as you'll find out in this one with Sienna Miller. In which she casually drops the news that she just decided to buy it, more or less on a whim, when she was 25., proving that not all first-time buyers are worried about interest rates and Stamp Duty.
'The 20th century Tarzan, a party animal swarmed under by supermodels, rock stars and the rest'
If you haven't yet read Christopher Wallace's piece on the incredible life of photographer Peter Beard, go and do it now.
We'll wait...
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See? We told you it was worth it.
A day in the life of Peter Beard.
That's it for this week — we're back on Monday!
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Isabel Bannerman: The year’s first and most abundantly cheery, uplifting and undemanding of winter flowersCyclamen coum is one of the plants that lights up our gardens at this time of year.
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Country Life's Quiz of the Day, 6 February 2025: Britain's strangest flying creature, guess the house price, and eight more questions to test youGuess the house price, remember the stuff you learned at school and take wild stabs in the dark. You'll love it.
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The truth about rewilding, by seven of Britain's most influential farmers, landowners and conservationistsAlthough the term 'rewilding' is contentious, most agree that our countryside could be better managed for wildlife. Yet what should we actually be doing to improve it?
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Six of the most beautiful waterfalls in Britain, from Devon to the Isle of SkyeSurging, foaming, trickling, crashing, cascading or flowing, waterfalls paint the landscape with rainbow-scattered spray and misty plumes. Here, we celebrate these streaks of molten silver, from wild moor to woodland dell, as picked out by our picture editor Lucy Ford.
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10 truly breathtaking images from Country Life to celebrate the landscapes and seasons of BritainTake a look at some of the great depictions of the seasons and landscapes of Britain, as celebrated in the new book 'Country Life: 125 Years of Countryside Living in Great Britain'.
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The 25 stunning images shortlisted for Wildlife Photographer of the Year's People's Choice awardVoting is now open for the Wildlife Photographer of the Year's People's Choice award — take a look at all 25 shortlisted images.
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15 of the most incredible pictures from the 2023 British Wildlife Photography AwardsNature’s fierce beauty emerges forcefully from the 2023 British Wildlife Photography Awards. Our Picture Editor Lucy Ford has the pick of the best shots, from a somnolent fox to a hungry buzzard.
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Country Life's best Instagram posts of 2022Our Instagram feed @countrylifemagazine has proven enormously popular over the years, and it's a real joy finding the best images to share with you.
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Landscape Photographer of the Year 2022: The best pictures, as chosen by our picture editorCountry Life picture editor Lucy Ford chooses her very favourites from the astonishing images of nature in the 2022 Landscape Photographer of the Year competition.
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12 of the world's most extraordinary and beautiful weather phenomena — and what makes them happenWe can all identify bolts of lightning, rainbows and stormy skies, but what of some of the earth’s more unusual and most spectacular weather phenomena? Here, photographers explain the science behind their astounding images in an extract from ‘Royal Meteorological Society: Weather A–Z’.
