Comforting yet complex, intriguing and alluring, the village setting is territory to which writers — and readers — will return again and again. Flora Watkins looks at how the customs, characters and communities of the English village have long sparked literary inspiration, from Jane Austen to Midsomer Murders.
Beatrix Potter's most famous creation, Peter Rabbit, remains as popular as ever, despite his genesis being well over a century ago. Jack Watkins investigates the enduring appeal of one of the naughtiest rabbits in children's literature.
Our gardens editor Tiffany Daneff picks out her favourite new books on gardening, featuring the likes of Sarah Raven, Arthur Parkinson and her predecessor at Country Life, Kathryn Bradley-Hole.
Photographer Valerie Mather has chronicled the lives of farmers in her award-winning images, which are now collected together together in a handsome book: Yorkshire Born & Bred: Farming Life.
Many of us have ageing family members who have lived truly extraordinary lives, but have never had a chance to record them properly. Lifebook seeks to put that right by helping people write autobiographies and preserve their tales forever.
After being liberated from a Nazi death camp, a Jewish boy sketched more than 80 profoundly moving drawings detailing his incarceration. Charlie Inglefield explains how he came to co-author a book of Thomas Geve’s powerful words and pictures.
Giles Kime picks out some of the finest interiors books of 2020 for those seeking inspiration in 2021.
Charlie Mackesy is the author and illustrator of The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse, the bestselling — and hugely poignant — book that celebrates kindness and understanding. He spoke to Katy Birchall about why there’s no shame in showing weakness and asking for help.
For nearly a quarter of a century, J. R. R. Tolkien sent his children elaborate letters and pictures from the North Pole. Ben Lerwill explores the penmanship, kindness and magic that went into Letters From Father Christmas.
From sauerkraut and kombucha fruit leather to pickled plums and honey marmalade, the art of fermentation is one well worth learning, advocates lifelong forager John Wright.
A hugely charismatic country house in Yorkshire has come to the market, one with a great literary claim to fame: it was the inspiration for Emily Brontë's seminal novel Wuthering Heights.
Jack Watkins spoke to the Poet Laureate, Simon Armitage, about writing, the environment and refusing to write about Brexit.
Rosie Paterson rounds up the books to read now, and the places they're set in to travel to later.
Charles Dickens died 150 years ago, on 9 June 1870. Since then, Mr Micawber has become a byword for optimism, Scrooge for meanness and Uriah Heep for obsequiousness, and we still quote Mr Bumble’s ‘the law is an ass’. Rupert Godsal explains why these characters are so exuberantly unforgettable.
Michael Billington has been the theatre critic for Country Life (and several other publications) for decades. With theatres closed, he's turned his hand to picking out his 10 favourite books about theatrical life.
A hymn to the horse, a comment on slavery, an ode to rural Norfolk: Anna Sewell’s enduringly popular novel is all this and more 200 years after its author’s birth, explains James Clarke.
We tend to think of pheasants as a relatively ordinary sight, but they're among the world's most beautiful birds — and they're being celebrated in a handsome new book.
Children’s books offer an escape from reality that can last well into adulthood. Here's our pick of the very best.
