Country Life June 21 2017 is our fabulous France number which explores shooting Reeves’s pheasant, drinking Armagnac and buying property; plus extraordinary love letters, building an elegant pool house and big questions for the Royal Astronomer. Find out more:
ARCHITECTURE: The magnificent Château de Lassay in the Mayenne département has a remarkably colourful history, as Desmond Seward explains
GARDENS: Kirsty Fergusson discovers how one man’s passionate vision created the luxuriant gardens of le manoir d’Eyrignac
SHOOTING: Mark Hedges heeds the purist’s call of la chasse when walking-up Reeves’s pheasants in France
MY FAVOURITE PAINTING: The crime writer Peter May found a French port to be familiar and then realised it had been on his wall for years
WILDLIFE: On a warm June afternoon, John Lewis-Stempel is taken back to his childhood by the sight of a weasel washing itself in the yard
COOKING: Melanie Johnson’s combination of fennel with cod has a distinctly Japanese flavour
ART: Huon Mallalieu profiles the Groam House Museum in Rosmarkle, Ross-shire, dedicated to this country’s Pictish history
INTERVIEW: Lord Rees, the Astronomer Royal, talks to Roderick Easdale about God, robots and the origins of life
SUNSETS: Jay Griffiths explores our timeless desire to capture sunrise and sunset in words, music and paint
LOVE LETTERS: In years gone by, great men poured out their feelings on paper. Victoria Marston peeks at their love letters
INTERIORS: Rose Uniacke shows us how to create the perfect pool house
FRENCH PROPERTY: Arabella Youens seeks out the pick of French properties
ARMAGNAC: Nick Hammond visits the land of musketeers, foie gras and a superior brandy that’s painstakingly crafted
UK PROPERTY: A little-known house by John Nash and an ‘urbe in rus’ come to the market says Penny Churchill
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A well-connected rural playground with 23 acres on the edge of the South Downs National ParkOld House Farm is an impressive family home with a wealth of amenities that would inspire any rural passion.
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Who wrote The Tenant of Wildfell Hall? Country Life Quiz of the DayThere's angora, aluminium and the biggest English star of the silent movie era in Monday's Quiz of the Day.
