Christmas 2013: The Country Life guide
Everything you need to know about this year's festive season


With Christmas 2013 just around the corner, it's time to get ready for the festive season. From presents to markets and advent calendars to homemade crackers, we've put together the ultimate guide to this year's holiday...
Gifts
Christmas shopping on Sloane Street
Events
The best Christmas markets to visit 2013
Exquisite houses, the beauty of Nature, and how to get the most from your life, straight to your inbox.
The best charity Christmas carol concerts
Decorations
Top 10 Christmas advent calendars
How to make your own Christmas crackers
Food
Delicious Christmas recipes to download
The very best festive jams and preserves
Simon Hopkinson suggests a new Christmas lunch
Country Life is unlike any other magazine: the only glossy weekly on the newsstand and the only magazine that has been guest-edited by His Majesty The King not once, but twice. It is a celebration of modern rural life and all its diverse joys and pleasures — that was first published in Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee year. Our eclectic mixture of witty and informative content — from the most up-to-date property news and commentary and a coveted glimpse inside some of the UK's best houses and gardens, to gardening, the arts and interior design, written by experts in their field — still cannot be found in print or online, anywhere else.
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21 of the greatest craftspeople working in Britain today, as chosen by the nation's best designers and architects
We've persuaded some of the most celebrated names from our Country Life Top 100 to name the craftspeople they have in their own personal little black books.
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The garden created by a forgotten genius of the 1920s, rescued from 'a sorry state of neglect to a level of quality it has not known for over 50 years'
George Dillistone’s original Arts-and-Crafts design at Knowle House, East Sussex, has been lovingly restored and updated with contemporary planting. George Plumptre tells more; photography by Clive Nichols.